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This one is probably going to catch me a lot of heat from both the extremes, as it touches on that most sensitive and landmine-laden of topics: gender identity and the expressions thereof.

First, the parts which are going to piss the TERFs off: I am a proudly cisgender, XX-chromosome-having ("womyn-born-womyn" as they'd say) lesbian, with a strict policy of dating only other lesbians (after some bad experiences with bisexual women)...and I am also trans-inclusive. This is going to draw the usual predictable howls of outrage, and might even get me called "traitor to the lesbian race."

*Again.*

Because yes, that is a thing that happened once. Satire sometimes writes itself.

Incidentally, if someone knows where the lesbian race lives, please by all means send me a couple of plane tickets; I'm getting married soon and would love to have the reception there. Hopefully it's somewhere with nice beaches!

And now the parts which are going to annoy non-TERFs: some of the TERF arguments hold more water than their detractors give them credit for. In particular:

1) There are biological differences between the sexes. Note that this does *not* mean I believe transwomen and transmen are deluded or faking their lived experiences; it means that gender is not purely a "social construct," that one's brain structure and hormones play heavily into it. Incidentally, this is *not* an anti-trans argument. If anything, this is the reason I support trans* people in their transitions. Nature screwed up somewhere and put the wrong sort of mind/brain in the wrong sort of body. I can't imagine what that's like, but I can take their word for it, and having seen the real, positive changes in trans* friends of mine once they started hormones only cements this support.

Again: not being a gender essentialist here, and certainly not committing that stupid "physical sex and/or chromosome cohort *is* gender" fallacy. I'm on your side, I'm just not going to fall for the stupid, mush-headed "thinking" that attempts to reduce something as complex as gender to "just a social construct." Real data has borne out that this is not the case.

2) Trans* people do not have the lived experiences of cisgender people of the sex they are attempting to pass as. Transwomen: you do not bleed, you did not go through female puberty as a child/young teenager, you will never be pregnant, and you were not seen by society at large--this is different from "not seen by molesters and paedophiles!"--as potentially and primarily objects of convenience, sexual and otherwise, for men.

3) Expanding on 2 above, I support cisgender-women-only spaces. This does not mean I don't view you, transwomen, as "real women." Your experiences are your own, and if you feel so badly mismatched to your body that you want to change it, to me, that is enough to qualify you as "real women." Just...not cisgender women. Again, different life experiences.

So please, if some of us want *some* space that's not dealing with trans* issues, please, please, give us that. You can be in the inclusive spaces, and even start transwomen-only spaces; I will not intrude on those, because I do not have your lived experiences, and can't imagine what you've been through. I only ask that you extend us the same courtesy.

4) Having a genital preference does not make you anti-trans* or transmisogynist. I am a lesbian. I like ladybits. This means I'm not going to date a pre-operative MtF, no matter how well she passes otherwise. We can be friends, but we're never going to have sex. Of course, this one is a moot point *anyway* since I'm already taken, but even hypothetically, it's not going to happen. It's not personal, but it's also not negotiable.

5) Surgery does not change your chromosomes or your lived experiences. This is actually not anywhere near as important as TERFs make it out to be, since at least to my mind, most of gender and gender identity is performative anyway. I'm also not saying to feel invalid or less of a human because of who and what you are. But at the same time, understand that history is history, and it can't be retroactively changed.

Just understand that the social transition is going to be bigger than the physical one for you. We can spot otherwise well-passing early-stage transitioning MtFs very well based not on any physical cues, but based on behavior. It takes time to lose that male privilege, and understandably, some of you are going to be reluctant to let it go. It sucks on this side of the gender divide sometimes.

6) Please understand that much of the backlash from the TERF camp is because women have always, always, always been marginalized and shoved aside for mens' interests, and some of us feel that men are intruding *even as they become women.* There's hardly any discussion of FtM people compared to MtF, and I don't hear hardly anything about FtMs having trouble integrating into groups composed of cisgender men the way MtFs tend to kind of stomp all over womens' spaces sometimes (in my observation, mostly early in transition).

The reasons for this are probably complicated. They likely have something to do with male being the "default," so FtMs are basically going from other and different to default, if not "normal." And the MtF friends i have, both of them, both told me there was a tremendous backlash against them for abandoning being male, mostly backed up by "WHY would you want to be a chick?!" with the unspoken corollary being "womens' lives suck."

I am, again, not a TERF, and I will defend you against them in all arenas. In return, please keep the above in mind.

This all sounds reasonable enough, right? In the end, doesn't it just boil down to the golden rule, treating others as they want to be treated, taking their basic humanity (a level well below gender expression, mind you!) into account? But I'm sure this is going to catch me more flames than a California wildfire. So be it; I'm wearing my asbestos nightie. Have at it.

Friends, I know a lot of you have been worried about me. Some beautiful DMs. And I can almost hear your prayers, thank you for those. And I'm sure you're worried about our beautiful, beautiful White House in Washington. It wasn't beautiful, it's becoming beautiful. Because Melania and I are working very hard, fixing it up. My predecessors left it very dirty, we're cleaning up a lot of messes. And covering up so much. But I wasn't at the Washington White House today. I'm at my Southern White House, Mar-a-Lago, in beautiful Florida (why does President Putin hate Florida so much?). Not in Washington. But our thoughts & prayers are with the family of the late Shooter, RIP!!!! And with everybody who got spattered. The guy wasn't a bad dude, maybe sick. Probably sick, nobody was in danger. Can we call it suicide? Why not, right? But let me tell you, he left a terrible mess. Not as bad as the mess Obama left me with, nowhere near as bad as that one. My Secret Service, as always, did a great job! Thank you and thanks to our wonderful first responders, our Police & EMTs. And our Coroner, very tough job, you have to be a very tough cookie to do that one, am I right, folks? If Crooked Hillary had won, she'd be keeping our Coroner very busy. And maybe she is anyway. Seth Rich, so tragic, he was a true patriot. As everybody knows. I'm having a fabulous weekend and I wish the same to every American. God bless! secretservice.gov/data/press/releases/2018/18-MAR/GPA_Secret_Service_Statement_Regarding_March_3,_2018_Shooting_Incident_Near_the_White_House.pdf

I ran out of work to do

I fixed a panic only I could reproduce, tagged and built a release, rolled an installer then put it where QA was sure to find it

I marked my panic Resolved in the bugbase

I sent out an email

The VP of engineering stepped into my office to ask "Do you think this is ready for our customers?"

"Yeah"

"Cool" then he stepped back out

I hung out on the tubes for two hours. Having gotten bored with that I left work two hours early

What did I expect? A ticker tape parade?

To appear on CNN a _second_ time?

I'm finished

And quite likely unemployed. The VP said there was no market for what was to be my second project. They haven't mentioned any others

Aren't I supposed to celebrate this?

I feel strangely let down

President Trump promised steel and aluminum executives Thursday that he will levy tariffs on imports of their products in coming weeks. He said the imported steel will face tariffs of 25 percent, while aluminum will face tariffs of 10 percent.

"We're going to build our steel industry back and we're going to build our aluminum industry back," Trump told reporters.

The president announced the action after meeting with leaders of the two industries at the White House. On Thursday afternoon, major stock market indexes fell sharply after Trump's announcement, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing down 420 points, or about 1.7 percent.

The obvious two problems with such a proposal is first, it makes everything more expensive for US companies since steel and aluminum get used in a lot of products. Second, there will be return fire. For example, most steel imports come in from countries friendly to the US (Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Japan, Mexico, etc). Retributive tariffs from our best trade partners is not to going to help the US's situation.

Even if this is a typical hard bargaining tactic (start off with an extreme demand and then negotiate down to what you really wanted), it's pretty provocative. There are already people making decisions based on what Trump might do (such as sell offs in the markets). Countries might follow shortly.

Trump is already looking at a massive route in the 2018 elections. This sounds like it'll dig the hole deeper since even the risk of a tariff war will depress economic activity. Right now, the US economy is doing relatively well. But Trump can fix that. Voters will look even less favorably on the Republicans, if the economy tanks on top of everything else.

The L3+, its sold-separately power supply and DHL shipping set me back $2,295.

I at first intended to set it up this evening, then decided I'd put it off until tomorrow evening because I was too tired. CryptoCompare's LiteCoin Mining Profit Calculator yielded the insight that putting it off that way would set me back $9.35 that I would have otherwise earned.

Or rather, that my L3+ would have earned.

I bought their LiteCoin rig rather than the Antminer S9 BitCoin miner because the S9 requires 220 volts. The L3+ can use 110 volts.

I puzzled over ways I could safely power it from my electric stove outlet. I was widely advised that if I didn't electrocute myself I'd burn my apartment building down. Despite all that I am confident that I could have made it work - safely and reliably - but in the end decided that doing so would be a huge pain in the ass.

I have the hope that I can provide for myself purely through mining. But that's not likely to happen anytime soon:

I ordered my L3+ in December, during the Irrationally Exhuberant Cryptocurrency Bubble. At the time the mining calculator said it would make me ten grand a year.

I live in a very modest way. Were I to buy three of them - and I really did have enough money, which I've since spent on hookers and blow - they would make thirty grand a year, which is far more than what I require to live comfortably.

I once earned $120/hour as a contract programmer but oddly never had any spare cash. My current monastic lifestyle is facilitated by having moved out of state then having changed my cell number.

(If the issue ever comes up I can truthfully claim never to have declared bankruptcy.)

To my great dismay that same mining calculator now tells me that my L3+ will produce just $2,900. That's the result of LiteCoin's fall in price after the bubble burst.

Try it yourself:

504 MH/s - Hash Rate

$0.0816 - per kilowatt-hour of electricity (cheap because Pacific NorthLeft)

800 watts - power consumption

$208.12 - LiteCoin Price

I'm not in a pool yet so I don't know what the pool will charge me. But the pool fee isn't really significant.

This is puzzling - the first time I tried today the calculator said my L3+ would mine 19.6 LTC per year. The second time it said 19.3. Now it says 16.65.

I'm going to try a different calculator...

WhatToMine sez it's 18.3, for an annual profit of $3,200.

Were the LiteCoin price to stay like this it would have been a far, far better investment to have bought a second macintosh. That would enable me to write OSX drivers without using my client's equipment.

Really the only way to know is to actually mine some LTC for the next little while as I follow the exchange rate.

I'm going to post this then play with my new toy.

The opioids have turned into a very big problem for our Country. It’s been going on too long. So I'm listening. I'm holding a Summit. Watch it LIVE at 1 pm EST, noon central, 11 am Mountain, 10 am Pacific, 8 am in Hawaii -- they're part of our Country now. youtu.be/C15wK65Luvs #TrumpTV

Holy crap, can you even imagine the response if Obama had proposed extrajudicial confiscation of guns?!

Trump: 'Take the guns first, go through due process second'

AC thinks I'm a creep. I wouldn't want my bad reputation to go to waste

Which of my posts is your favorite?

My wife had her surgery today: everything went well and she'll be in the hospital for a day or two or more.

Now that all is fine, I'm left wondering how much it would have cost us if our health care wasn't free. Enough to bankrupt us? Huh.....

As an aside, while waiting (we got up at 4am to be there for 6am for her surgery at 8am and she was in her room at 2pm) I was reading Isaac Asimovs 'study' of the old testament.

According to him, In The Beginning the Bible talked about, basically, polytheism:

"God
The Bible centers about God, and God is brought into the tale at once:
Genesis 1:1
  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The Hebrew word, translated here as God, is "Elohim" andthat
is a plural form which would ordinarily (if tradition were defied) -be
translated "gods." It is possible that in the very earliest traditions on
which the Bible is based, the creation was- indeed the work of a
plurality of gods. The firmly monotheistic Biblical writers would carefully have eliminated such polytheism, but could not perhaps do any-
thing with the firmly ingrained term "Elohim." It was too familiar
to change.
. Some hints of polytheism seem to have survived the editing. Thus,
after the first created man disobeys God's injunction not to eat of the
tree of knowledge, God is quoted as saying:
Genesis 3:22. . . . Behold, the man is become as one of us, to
know good and evil.. . Then too, still later, when God is concerned over mankind's ar-
rogance in attempting to build a tower that would reach to heaven,
He is quoted as saying:
Genesis 11:7. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their
language . . . It is possible to argue that this is not true evidence of early poly-
theism. God might be viewed as using the royal "we"; or as speaking
to an angelic audience; or even, in the Christian view, as speaking in
the persons of the Trinity.
Nevertheless, as far as we know the history of religion outside the
Bible, early beliefs were always polytheistic and monotheism was a
late development in the history of ideas."

I didn't know this. Interesting. (Copy/pasta from pdf is problematic: it seems to go through OCR which is not perfect. Hoping I didn't miss any fixes).

To me, the only 'true' word of God we have are the ten commandments. Why would anyone try to seek the word of God(s) in the Bible (written by imperfect people long after the events) when you just have to look at the Ten (taken down by an imperfect person and translated by imperfect people).

To me, the Bible just boils down to "be a good person". The ten commandments lay out a guide how to do that.

My wife's surgeons and anaesthesiologists were good. Very good.
Or, at least, good enough, thank god(s).
;)

I saw this the other day and found it quite interesting, given a lot of the 'arguments' being put forward here on SN.

what strikes me about the reaction to this growing backlash is not just its vileness, but its lameness. Trump’s response to Parkland — let’s arm teachers! — wasn’t just stupid, it was cowardly, an attempt to duck the issue, and I think many people realized that. Or consider how the Missouri G.O.P. has responded to the indictment of Gov. Eric Greitens, accused of trying to blackmail his lover with nude photos: by blaming … George Soros. I am not making this up.

Or consider the growing wildness of speeches by right-wing luminaries like Wayne LaPierre of the N.R.A. They’ve pretty much given up on making any substantive case for their ideas in favor of rants about socialists trying to take away your freedom. It’s scary stuff, but it’s also kind of whiny; it’s what people sound like when they know they’re losing the argument.

(Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/opinion/the-force-of-decency-awakens.html )

I see it over and over again here. Something's going on? It's George Soros' fault, of course! Don't like the argument someone makes, they're "socialists" who hate America, want to take away all your rights, and are worse (or at least as bad) as Stalin.

Care about your fellow humans or sick of crony capitalists, regulatory capture or xenophobic trashing of anything that's different? You're a Marxist who hates capitalism and pines for a land of gulags, collectivized everything and iron-fisted suppression of speech and expression.

It's pretty sad. If there's an argument to be made for/against stuff like municipal FTTP, single-payer healthcare, civil rights for all, gun control, women having control of their bodies, etc., etc., etc., then make a relevant argument.

"You're a socialist/marxist/anti-capitalist/SJW who wants to destroy $X and are just like Stalin." and other semantically null bullshit aren't arguments. It's just posturing and value-free (although apparently quite satisfying) name calling.

I'm not suggesting that folks not be allowed to spew whatever crap they wish to spew, rather I'm wondering aloud if there aren't more folks who, if they think about it (or at all), might opt for actual arguments rooted in logic and evidence rather than semantically valueless name calling.