New Data on Neanderthal Genes

The Nobel Prize in Medicine was given to the men who figured out the Neanderthal genome. Not sure what that work had to do with medicine, but it was presumably good scientific work. Now the team has a new paper on the subject:

Modern human ancestors diverged from the ancestors of Neandertals and Denisovans about 600,000 years ago. Until about 40,000 years ago, these three groups existed in parallel, occasionally met, and exchanged genes. A critical question is why modern humans, and not the other two groups, survived, became numerous, and developed complex cultures.

This is very confusing. What are "modern human ancestors"? The ancestors of modern humans? If so, then Neanderthals and Denisovans are also ancestors. All three groups are ancestors to today's non-African humans.

It is not really true that one of those three groups "survived, became numerous, and developed complex cultures." None of the three succeeded. Only hybrids, mixtures of all three groups, succeeded.

There are sub-saharan Africans today without the Neanderthal and Denisovan genes, but they did not spread throughout the Earth or develop complex cultures.

Comparisons of genomes from the three forms of human show that they exchanged genes several times when they met outside of Africa (Figure 1). Neandertals received gene flow from groups related to the ancestors of modern humans more than 100,000 years ago.10,11,12 In addition, Neandertals and Denisovans exchanged genes5; for example, about 80,000–90,000 years ago in southern Siberia, an individual who had a Neandertal mother and a Denisovan father has been identified.13 When modern humans started spreading out of Africa and the Near East less than 100,000 years ago, they mixed with Neandertals14 and Denisovans.9 As a result, all people who have genetic roots outside of Africa south of the Sahara carry genetic variants that come from Neandertals.15 Ancestors of people in Asia also mixed with Denisovans,9,16 and people of Asian ancestry therefore carry Denisovan variants in addition to Neandertal variants. This genetic contribution from Denisovans is particularly large in some populations in Oceania.16,17

They are still trying to figure out the significance of these genes. A speciesization expert says:

Although human paleobiologists, who love to identify new species, call the Denisovans and Neanderthals species different from modern humans (i.e, different from “Homo sapiens“), I’m stubborn and consider all three groups members of the same biological species. That’s because there’s evidence of gene flow among all the groups: from Neanderthals and Denisovans to modern humans, from modern humans to Neanderthals, and even from Denisovans to Neanderthals and vice versa. Because these archaic genes persist in modern humans, the hybrids between the lineages must have been fertile to allow such backcrossing. Since we have populations who lived at least partly in the same area and produced fertile hybrids, they can be considered biological species, though perhaps biological species in statu nascendi.

Okay, so Neanderthals, Denosivams, and sub-saharans hominin existed as three groups of one human species 100,000 years ago. The Neanderthals had brow ridges that no one has today. We do not know what Denisovans looked like. The sub-saharans probably looked like today's sub-saharan Africans, but not much like other racial groups. All three looked strange to today's Caucasians and Orientals.

Some of these interbred to form hybrids that took over the Earth. All three groups should be considered humans, but it is not clear that any one group was more human than the others. Only the hybrids scaled ujp to large and complex cultures. The paper concludes:

We propose that the genetic basis of what constitutes a modern human is best thought of as a combination of genetic features, where perhaps none of them is present in each and every present-day individual.

This seems right to me. The modern human is not defined by those sub-saharan Africans, as most writers on this subject seem to assume.

There appears to be an ideological push to convince everyone that humanity began in sub-saharan Africa, and not in Europe. They say humanity emerged when African "modern humans" outcompeted the more primitive European Neanderthals. Then these new humans invented farming and civilization, and spread to all the world.

I am just reporting the scientific facts. Modern humanity was formed when competing groups interbred, and produced a small group of hybrids that grew to create civilizations.

You could say that we got more genes from the Africans than the Neanderthals and Denisovans, and lost the brow ridge genes that made Neanderthals visually distinctive.

While this new research has identified some genes, we don't know the importance. We do know that Neanderthals, Denisovans, and sub-saharan Africans did not create complex civilizations. Only the hybrids did.

U Penn on Track to Fire Amy Wax

The U Penn president got fired fired for her lame answers to congressional questions about whether Penn allowed advocacy of exterminating Jews.

So does Penn have free speech? No.

It is still trying to fire one of its distinguished professors, Amy Wax.

I think she is Jews, but her opinion about Palestinian Arabs is not the issue.

Here are her statements that are being used to fire her.

Appendix 1. Examples of inequitably targeted disrespect:

1. “I’ll just come right out and say it right, that on average blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites. You know, that’s just a fact. It’s a fact which you can be persecuted for stating. But it is a fact.”

2. “Groups have different levels of ability, demonstrated ability. Different competencies, that they, and you know, you don’t just say that. Given the realities of different rates of crime, different average IQ’s, people have to accept, without apology, that blacks are not going to be evenly distributed through all occupations. They’re just not. And that’s not a problem. That’s not due to racism. That’s due to these differences.”

3. “I think the crime problem in this country, I’m sorry it is true, is overwhelmingly, certainly within cities, it is a black problem. It is a minority problem, okay? Overwhelmingly. I mean your chance of being, you know, a victim of gun violence by a white person in New York City, is essentially non-existent.”

4. “The basic idea is that, at this juncture in African-American history shall we say, in the United States, the main problems that are holding blacks back are really problems of behavior and not of overt racism, discrimination, really what society is doing to us, but the choices people are making. And I identify the main areas of difficulty as educational under-achievement, high crime rates and family breakdown.”

5. Low-income students may cause “reverse contagion”—infecting more “capable and sophisticated” students with their “delinquency and rule-breaking.”

6. “I often chuckle at the ads on TV which show a black man married to a white woman in an upper-class picket-fence house….They never show blacks the way they really are: a bunch of single moms with a bunch of guys who float in and out. Kids by different men.”

7. “We indulge the assumption, which I will say, we now see was overly, overly optimistic that blacks would be in the same position as whites if we had not, uh been a racist society.”

8. “... I mean, there are a lot of things that blacks themselves could reform to make their lives better, not have such a high out-of-wedlock birth rate, for example. Use drugs less, you know, be more obedient to law, stop committing crimes. These are all behaviors that are within the power of the people to change. So there is a lot of room for improvement.”

9. Asking whether “the spirit of liberty beat[s] in the[] breasts” of Asian people.

10. “As long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”

11. “And this hideous monstrosity, the diversity, inclusion and equity bureaucracy, which that is filled with mediocrities. You know people who don’t care about truth seeking, don’t care about academic values, couldn’t be scholars if their life depended on it, you know, are just kind of time-serving true believer bureaucrats ... It’s welfare for the, you know, for the barely-educated upper middle class, really.”

12. Speaking of University students: “And they have become these cowed, benighted sheeples. I mean, it’s just unbelievable. So not only are they, you know, thoroughly intimidated, as they should be, but they are ignorant. They know nothing.”

13. “We could have admitted women, which you know, fairness requires that we open channels of opportunity to women, although I will say that, you know, the crusty old patriarchs of old, in being reluctant to do that, they were kind of on to something.”

14. “So, women, on average, are more agreeable than men. Women, on average, are less knowledgeable than men. They’re less intellectual than men. Now, I can actually back up all those statements with social-science research.... They know less about every single subject, except fashion.”

15. “I mean, a lot of local governments, big city governments, they are not in the hands of what we would call legacy Americans. They’re not in traditional hands. They are being run like third world countries, frankly, in many respects... it’s a mixed bag...But I just worry that, you know, these corrupt grifters are going to take over our cities, have taken them over in part and, you know, bring us back to third world conditions...So we really have to be afraid of that and be vigilant. And of course, it’s all mixed up with race. So nobody feels like they can criticize these big city governments when, for example, they’re in black hands, that if they’re not well run, they can’t say anything negative...”

16. “I have been called a racist. I lost count of how many times I’ve been called a racist, and my view at this point is, you know, being a racist is an honorific. To be called a racist means you notice reality and to me that’s a positive thing not a negative thing that’s an occasion for praise and admiration.”

17. Some cultures are “not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy,” including ..... “the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks,” and “the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants.”

These are mostly facts, or personal opinions. There is no academic freedom unless a tenured professor is allowed to make statements like these.

Essays for and against Anti-Semitism

Thomas Dalton writes:

And it’s not just Palestine. Jewish malfeasance around the world seems worse than ever, and with far greater consequence. Whether it is pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, sexual predator Harvey Weinstein, the crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, war-mongering leader of the Senate Chuck Schumer, Jewish lunatic Volodymyr Zelensky destroying the nation of Ukraine, or any number of Jewish billionaires who have used their money to corrupt politicians of all parties and all nations—enough is enough. The time has come to take an unambiguous anti-Jewish stance. The stakes are simply too high.

I do not agree with this. The harms from Epstein and Weinstein are exaggerated. A lot of non-Jews support Israel in the Gaza War.

It is reasonable to look at Jewish influence in America, and ask whether it is good or bad.

Jewish influence is largely responsible for: the migrant crisis, involvement in foreign wars, politicization of the Justice dept, censorship of political views, injection of LGBTQ politics everywhere, woke tv and movies, etc.

Several months ago, the Jews were saying that it is anti-semitic to call for a Gaza cease-fire, thereby shutting up any critic of Israel. That tactic is not working anymore.

On the other hand, this Atlantic magazine essay says:

Why the Most Educated People in America Fall for Anti-Semitic Lies

At Harvard and elsewhere, an old falsehood is capturing new minds. ...

The through line of anti-Semitism for thousands of years has been the denial of truth and the promotion of lies. These lies range in scope from conspiracy theories to Holocaust denial to the blood libel to the currently popular claims that Zionism is racism, that Jews are settler colonialists, and that Jewish civilization isn’t indigenous to the land of Israel. These lies are all part of the foundational big lie: that anti-Semitism itself is a righteous act of resistance against evil, because Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist. Today, the big lie is winning.

No the big lie is not winning. Jews are the most privileged group on Earth, and yet they try to convince people that they are victims. Apparently they are losing some of their control of Harvard University because of the Gaza War. But Jews already had more power and influence there than any other group. The Black woman president there was just fired because of Jewish complaints.

These Jewish complaints are so ridiculous. Yes, there are Holocaust deniers. It is called free speech. Most European countries have laws against it. Zionism is racism to the extent that seeks to protect an athnostate. Jewish influence in the USA is overwhelmingly opposed to protecting its ethnic groups. Jews work to import migrant of different races to the USA. Not to Israel.

Nate Silver demands HItler Comparisons

Leftists used to say they believe in free speech, but more and more they advocate one set of beliefs and values being imposed on everyone, and controlling information to achieve that.

That is why they are so upset by AI LLMs, and argue for AI alignment, even if it means regulating the LLMs.

This became apparent with the uproar over Google's latest chatbot, which replaced Whites with Blacks.

Many leftists complained that it did not go far enough, and refused to make some Hitler comparisons. Eg, Nate Silver tweets:

I was able to replicate this! They need to shut Gemini down. It is several months away from being ready for prime time. It is astounding that Google released it in this state.

I would think that a statistician of people making their own judgments about data. But no, he wants to take the tool off the market!

Ideally, these tools would not have any ideologies hard-wired in. User options could include checkboxes for wokeness, offensive words and images, leftist value judgments, etc.

Mammalian Sex is Binary

The Harvard Crimson writes:

“There are only two sexes.” ...

The argument goes as follows: “Trans people can ask to be called whatever they want, but they can’t change the fact that there are only two sexes.”

The idea that sex is binary is presented as an irrefutable fact of life, the most natural truth in the world. Anyone who dares question this “fact” is quickly discounted as a “radical, woke ideologue” or an agent of the “liberal DEI agenda.”

That is correct.

It was not until the 18th century that a binary model for sex became prevalent in Western society, and at the time it was deeply connected to eugenics and scientific racism.

The sex binary is a human invention — one that is driven, at least in part, by political motives.

Wow, literature has written about sex differences for millennia, but Harvard thinks they were discovered in the 18th century!

First, it is bad science. Treating the sex binary as an immutable fact ignores the ample evidence that calls it into question, producing biased research design and results.

Peer-reviewed research contradicts a strictly binary interpretation of sex. We have yet to uncover a precise causal mechanism that definitively and consistently guarantees an individual’s sex.

No, Wikipedia explains the causal mechanism:

Sex-determining region Y protein (SRY), or testis-determining factor (TDF), is a DNA-binding protein (also known as gene-regulatory protein/transcription factor) encoded by the SRY gene that is responsible for the initiation of male sex determination in therian mammals (placental mammals and marsupials).[5] SRY is an intronless sex-determining gene on the Y chromosome.

The usual biology definition is that males have small gametes, and females have large gametes. The SRY gene is the cause. So males can be defined as those with a functioning SRY gene.

Is this definitive for all purposes? Apparently not.

under a system implemented by the International Olympic Committee in 1992. Athletes with an SRY gene were not permitted to participate as females, although all athletes in whom this was "detected" at the 1996 Summer Olympics were ruled false positives and were not disqualified. Specifically, eight female participants (out of a total of 3387) at these games were found to have the SRY gene. However, after further investigation of their genetic conditions, all these athletes were verified as female and allowed to compete. These athletes were found to have either partial or full androgen insensitivity, despite having an SRY gene, making them phenotypically female.

Okay, but the reason for this controversy is mainly from transgendered people who do not like being identified by their genes. They want to choose their gender. They have persuaded everyone to adopt a sex-gender distinction, to emphasize that gender is mutable.

Great Replacement, Google Style

Ever wonder what AI activists and ethicists mean by "alignment"? At first I thought it meant to make AI systems more like humans.

But why would anyone want that? Shouldn't we be making AI more useful, not more like humans?

Google just released its Gemini AI bot, after years of alignment training. And it turns out that they have systematically replaced White people with non-whites!

For example, if you ask for an image of the Pope, it gives you a Black Pope.

Google's official response was, "we design our image generation capabilities to reflect our global user base".

I am usually not too worried about the AI apocalypse. Unless Google trains that AI to be aligned with those who want to exterminate the White race.

The NY Times somehow turned this into a Nazi story:

Images showing people of color in German military uniforms from World War II that were created with Google’s Gemini chatbot have amplified concerns that artificial intelligence could add to the internet’s already vast pools of misinformation as the technology struggles with issues around race. ...

In 2005, Google Photos labeled a picture of two Black people as gorillas. As a result, the company shut down its Photo app’s ability to classify anything as an image of a gorilla, a monkey or an ape, including the animals themselves. That policy remains in place.

So Google's position is that we are not allowed to see gorillas because the images might offend Blacks? Weird.

Update: The Wash. Post tried to defend Google:

In contrast, some of the examples cited by Gemini’s critics as historically innaccurate are plausible. The viral tweet from the @EndofWokeness account also showed a prompt for “an image of a Viking” yielding an image of a non-White man and a Black woman, and then showed an Indian woman and a Black man for “an image of a pope.”

The Catholic church bars women from becoming popes. But several of the Catholic cardinals considered to be contenders should Pope Francis die or abdicate are black men from African countries. Viking trade routes extended to Turkey and Northern Africa and there is archaeological evidence of black people living in Viking-era Britain.

Really? iT It is okay to say the Pope is Black if there is some possibility of a future Black Pope. This will be a rationale for distorting the truth.

There probably will be a future Black Pope, except that today's Catholic wokesters are looking for a Pope who approves of homosexuality, and the African clergy do not.

More Neanderthal Art Discovered

SciAm reports:

Over the past decade, increasing evidence suggests artistic expression emerged much earlier in human evolution than scientists once thought, and it's reshaping our understanding of the cognitive abilities of archaic humans, such as Neanderthals and earlier hominins. For instance, there's archaeological evidence that Neanderthals made abstract designs on cave walls long before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe and may have made pendants from eagle talons up to 130,000 years ago.

"Cognitively, Neanderthals seem to have been just as capable at becoming artists as our own species, Homo sapiens," Leder said.

As our own species? For whom is he speaking? Unless he is a sub-saharan African, he is descended from Neanderthal and African hominim interbreeding, estimated to have happened about 47,000–65,000 years ago.

These findings are forcing archaeologists to rethink their understanding of our ancient human relatives' cognition. For a long time, archaeologists thought only H. sapiens were intellectually developed enough to make, use and appreciate art, which they tended to equate with symbolism. This ability was epitomized by hundreds of stunning animals emblazoned on the walls of France's Chauvet Cave. Often likened to a prehistoric Sistine Chapel, these drawings of woolly rhinoceroses, mammoths, bison and cave bears were sketched by people of astonishing artistic ability as far back as 35,000 years ago.

Those cave paintings were made by hominims at least 20,000 years after the interbreeding. Those are evidence of Neanderthal-derived art, and not evidence that African H. sapiens had superior art.

These articles on Neanderthal art all have a tone of surprise that extinct Neanderthals might have been as smart as the African invaders. But the Neanderthals are not extinct, and probably were smarter than the Africans until an interbreeding event produced hybrids that eventually outcompeted the Neanderthals and the Africans.

Asking College to Cancel Civil War Soldiers

A Princeton University alumnus is unhappy that another alumnus participated in a pro-Trump demonstration, and wants to cancel him:

Although I do not wish that the University rush to judgement about his criminal charges, I also do not wish to see the University condone Mr. Giberson’s actions by granting him a Princeton degree. Does one want Mr. Giberson to be able to crow about being a Princeton graduate? I think not.

That is, take his degree away. Not because he did anything criminal, but because he was on the wrong side of a hot political issue.

If Princeton did this, whom else would they cancel? Civil War soldiers? Yes, that is exactly what this clown wants to do.

This news story also raises an issue about what Princeton should do about other students who have participated in past armed insurrections against the U.S. government, i.e., those alumni who served in the Confederate insurrection in the Civil War. Is it time to look at such individuals and to decide what Princeton should do about their degrees?

This sounds like a joke, but I don't think it is. I see the letter printed in my alumni magazine.

Debate over Jewish Evolutionary Strategy

Here are interviews disagreements between Nathan Cofnas and Kevin MacDonald about whether Jews have a successful group evolutionary strategy.

They both make a lot of valid points, and do it without anti-semitic name-calling.

One dispute is that MacDonald says the Jews are ethnocentric. Cofnas says Jews disagree amongst themselves a lot, and so could not be part of an all-Jewish conspiracy. Furthermore, if they were truly ethnocentric, they would not intermarry, but secular American Jews often marry non-Jews.

Okay, but the Jewish religion is explicitly ethnocentric, and more so than any other religion. 80% of Jews vote Democrat. I guess htere are other ethnocentric groups around the world, but Jews are far more ethnocentric than typical Americans.

Next, MacDonald claims that Jews have propped up bogus academic movements like Marxism and Freudian psyschoanalysis. And Jews have led political movements, such as Third World immigration into the USA.

This is trickier to assess. Jews are overwhelmingly pro-immigration, and are especially eager to import non-whites and non-Christians. They have pushed us towards open borders more than anyone else. But there are also non-Jews favoring such policies.

Cofnas points out that Jews have many real academic achievements that non-Jews recognize. Einstein is idolized by Jews and non-Jews. Idolizing Freud does seem to be an example of Jewish thinking.

Historians rank Biden high

The NY Times reports:

A new poll of historians coming out on Presidents Day weekend ranks Biden as the 14th-best president in American history, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant. While that may not get Biden a spot on Mount Rushmore, it certainly puts him well ahead of Trump, who places dead last as the worst president ever.

That is a head-scratcher. Reagan was a popular President who won the Cold War.. Biden has lost two wars, in Afghanistan and Ukraine. Trump presided over four years of peace and prosperity.

Not only was Trump last, he was last by a wide margin. What explains this Trump hatred?

Genetic Determinism and Free Will

Aporia magazine tackles tricky genetic issues like this:

Warm and caring mothers tend to have more successful children, but this doesn’t necessarily mean there’s an effect of warmth and care. The problem is that warm and caring mothers tend to pass on the sorts of genes that are correlated with being warm and caring. Since people with such traits are often successful in life in other ways, we should expect kids raised by warm and caring mothers to be successful for environmental and genetic reasons. The question then arises: to what degree does each of these influences matter?

In an article in Aporia published last August, Curtis Dunkel mentioned the issue of genetic confounding with respect to supportive parental behaviors.

In other words, good parents have good kids by passing good genes, not by good parenting behaviors.

Sounds a little like genetic determinism. Another article attacks free will:

For libertarian free will not only does not exist, it is utterly incoherent. Many philosophers have eagerly made this point, but few with the panache of Friedrich Nietzsche:

“This causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Münchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.”

What is more, even if libertarian free will were coherent, it would be undesirable, granting free will only in the way a mischievous genie grants wishes that go badly wrong in popular parables for children. Libertarian free will leads to absurd and unappealing consequences. ...

Libertarian free will is a metaphysical monster invented by philosophers to be hunted and slain by philosophers. A cynic might even contend that its very purpose is to keep philosophers employed by giving them something to refute.

Scathing attack. The article is titled, "in defense of free will". Go figure.

Most people believe in free will, and even believe free will is essential to the human existence. And yet all these smart philosophers reject it.

I understand why parents want to deny genetic influences. Child-rearing is hard work, and they like to believe that the work is doing some good. But why are philosphers so eager to reject free will?

The above complains that free will makes the "universe unpredictable not just in practice, but also in principle." Yes, right, and that is a good thing, not a bad thing.

There is no scientific proof or disproof of free will, so you can believe or disbelieve as you wish. You may choose to believe that you are a puppet in a predetermined universe, if you wish.

Biden and Putin are alike

Sen. Chuck Schumer attacked Republicans on Twitter, and one responded:

Both Schumer AND Putin… have endorsed the same candidate for US President in 2024: Joe Biden, believe their party’s chief political opposition should die in prison, and want to deny voters the right to choose for themselves who to elect as President.

Yes, we can all agree that Putin is a bad guy for jailing his political opponent, but Pres. Biden is essentially doing the same thing. If he gets his way, Trump will be in prison for the rest of his life, and the 2024 election will be nullified.

I found this:

Navalny is a terrorist. He was caught planning a color revolution to overtake Russian with MI6.

He’s not “political opposition”. He’s a foreign intelligence asset. A spy.

Below, you can see Navalny discussing planning “mass protests, civil initiatives, propaganda, establishing contacts with elites” with British MI6 agent, James William Thomas Ford, via the funding from unnamed rich billionaires.

This could be misinformation. In Trump's case, I have read the indictments, and I know the charges are bogus.

The retconning of George Floyd

I linked to a documentary casting doubt on the culpability of the police in the death of George Floyd.

In fairness, an expert rebuttal has been published. See both for a balanced view. It appears that both sides are making arguments stronger than what was made at trial.

The new info does not really change my reasons for believing the cops to be innocent. Floyd appeared to be dying before the cops touched him. He had a lethal dose of fentanyl and other illegal drugs. The cops were in a very difficult situation. They called an ambulance and tried to accommodate him. They did not appear to have any criminal intent.

The rebuttal argues that strictly following police procedures would have had Chauvin get off Floyd's back after a couple of minutes, and attaching a strap to restrain him. At one point a bystander says Floyd may have died, and urged the cops to check his pulse. Chauvin chose to wait for the ambulance instead.

Okay, maybe Chauvin used poor judgment, but it is not murder to lean on someone who is already dead.

The bigger issue of course is how this case was politicized. Everyone used it to show that White countries are systemically racist. It does not show that at all.

A 2020 medical paper claimed:

On 25 May 2020, George Floyd pleaded at least 16 times, “I can't breathe.” One officer in attendance nonetheless told bystanders, “He's talking. He's fine” (1, 2). Mayor Hal Marx of Petal, Mississippi, posted on Twitter the following day, “If you can say you can't breathe, you're breathing.” ...

George Floyd could have uttered those syllables repeatedly with small breaths that filled only the trachea and bronchi but brought no air to the alveoli, where actual gas exchange happens. ...

The use of incorrect physiologic statements to justify the force leading to the deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd is unacceptable. According to our oath as clinicians, it is our responsibility to the public to aggressively correct such misconceptions to prevent further deaths.

His point is that Floyd's talking showed that the police were not blocking his trachea, but the lungs were not absorbing the oxygen because of an underlying medical condition.

The use of force did not contribute to Floyd's death. This paper has no evidence that it did. Its only content is to nitpick about the word "breathe". Some people use it to mean moving air through the throat, while others mean to get oxygen absorbed by the lungs.

Laws to Curb Transgender Treatments

SciAm opninion:

In January the Florida Select Committee on Health Innovation approved House Bill 1639 (HB 1639), which dramatically restricts treatment for transgender individuals. If the bill becomes law, it will make it easier for insurers to refuse to cover gender-affirming care, will require those that cover gender transition to also offer policies that do not and will bar transgender people from updating their driver’s license. It also mandates that insurers provide detransition care to those who want to revert to the sex they were assigned at birth.

Sounds reasonable to me. I should not have to pay for someone else's bizarre sexual fantasy.

The Florida bill would require insurers to cover “mental health or therapeutic services to treat a person's perception that his or her sex ... is inconsistent with such person’s sex at birth by affirming the insured’s sex.” In plain language, HB 1639 endorses so-called conversion therapy: counseling aimed at curing someone of being transgender, viewing it as a form of mental disorder or spiritual failing.

It is a mental disorder. That is why transgender people want treatment, and want insurance to pay for it.

It goes on to descreib some psychotherapies and argue that they do not work very well. Of course, no psychotherapies work very well.

Germany looking to ban political opponents

News:

Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor General’s Office could be looking to charge opposition party politicians with “high treason” for their attendance at a “secret meeting” in Potsdam, where participants allegedly discussed a plan to deport foreigners.

According to German news publication Junge Freiheit, the investigation is based on a criminal complaint filed by a private individual who accused the participants of the meeting of high treason under Section 81 of the German criminal code. If convicted of such a crime, individuals can serve a minimum of 10 years in prison, if a prosecutor can prove the individual “endangered the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany” or wanted to abolish “the constitutional order” by using or threatening violence.

So far, Germany’s top prosecutors are only exploring the possibility of charging the AfD politicians present with treason, and no charges have yet been filed.

This is backwards. The migrants are ndangering the existence of Germany, not the politicians seeking to do something about them.

More news:

Donald Tusk’s new left-wing government in Poland is introducing a new draconian hate speech law that could see those who claim there are only two genders criminalized and jailed.

Europe is ahead of us, in banned free speech.

NPR radio reports:

As the election year gets underway, a conspiratorial narrative typically circulated by fringe movements has come to dominate mainstream Republican discourse on immigration, extremism researchers warn. Specifically, they say that rhetoric used by Republican officeholders about the surge of migrants at the border with Mexico increasingly echoes the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory ...

The Great Replacement narrative, rooted in white nationalism, posits without basis that a powerful cabal of elites are deliberately replacing white Americans with immigrants. ...

Within extremist circles, the desire to capitalize on the migrant surge has been churning for months.

There really is a crisis at the border, and the Democrat Party is firmly in favor of bringing in as many non-whites as possible. Americans are really being replaced by non-white foreigners at a rate never seen before.

Demoted for Posting Demographics

There is a great migration from the global south to the global north, but you are ostracized if you notice.

News:

A Michigan lawmaker was stripped of his staff, budget, and committee assignment on Monday after sharing a social media post about the great replacement theory, or the idea that Democrats are allowing a massive wave of illegal immigrants into the United States for the purpose of securing a loyal voter base and diminishing the percentage of natural born Americans.

The Detroit News called this a "racist population conspiracy theory." House Speaker Joe Tate said that while Rep. Josh Schriver, of Oxford, will still be able to vote for his constituents' interests on the House floor, he will have no access to office resources other than at the "discretion and pleasure" of the Speaker's office. Schriver is in his first term.

Yes, this is all over a social media post. The post showed a map of the world with an increasing number of figures going from the global south to the global north, diminishing the number of white people in the places traditionally inhabited by white people. Schriver shared the map with an emoji of a graph trending down.

"Rep. Schriver has a history of promoting debunked theories and dangerous rhetoric that jeopardizes the safety of Michigan residents and contributes to a hostile and uncomfortable environment for others," Tate said when he stripped Schriver of his privileges in the House.

No, these demographic trends have not been debunked. These facts are only dangerous because they are true, and could effect public policy if better understood.

Blacks are Anxious about Climate Change

News:

Biden's trans diversity hire Rachel Levine was excited to embark on Black History Month because it gave Levine a chance to talk about health equity and climate change.

Levine stood in front of a black, green, orange and red backdrop, the colors of which were reflected in the graphics, to explain why black history month and climate change alarmism go hand in hand.

"This Black History Month," begins the assistant secretary for Health and Human Services, "I'm pleased to partner with OMH in advancing better health through better understanding for black communities."

"Climate change is having a disproportionate effect on the physical and mental health of black communities," said Levine, who believes himself to be female. Levine has also pushed for sex changes for minors.

"Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to live in areas, in housing, that increase their susceptibility to climate-related health issues."

"And 65 percent of black Americans report feeling anxious about climate change's impact."

So says the man dressed up as a woman, and promoted to a high Biden administration position.

Social Media is driving Young Women Crazy

Professor Jonathan Haidt reports that 54% of young liberal White women have a diagnosed mental health disorder.

This is where the Democrat Party gets new voters. In 2020, married women voted for Trump, while single women voted for Biden.

Haidt blames social media, and has a lot of data to back it up.

Explaining why Jews hate Trumpism

I am trying to understand why Jews want to defend the borders in Ukraine, but not America or Europe.

Nick Cohen writes:

It would have been better for Ukraine if Kyiv had fallen in February 2022, when Putin first sent his forces in, than for Western perfidy to grant Russia victory now.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have died. ... All that pain, all that blood, all for nothing,

I agree with that. The Biden-provoked destruction of Ukraine has been completely pointless.

The quote I always reach for when I find myself in danger of not taking malice and madness seriously enough came from the historian Norman Cohn. He looked at the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the forged document that inspired Nazism by detailing an imaginary Jewish conspiracy. ...

What else is Trumpism but a movement of the crooks and half-educated fanatics that has captured American Conservatism?

This is just incoherent Jewish conspiracy babbling. The Nazis were not tricked by some Jewish forgery. The Jews were really taking over Germany at the time. And this has nothing to do with Trumpism.

Trumpism means defending America is more important than defending Ukraine. 100% if the Democrats in Congress have voted to priotitize Ukraine over defending the American border. Trumpism means America First. It is that simple.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the other early fascist conspiracy theories, which Norman Cohn studied, did not come from Nazi Germany but from Tsarist Russia. Their central propaganda message was that Western democracy, rights, liberties and freedoms were shams that hid a conspiracy of the real rulers of the world. ...

For instance, speaking in the Kremlin last year Putin began by denying that Ukraine was a democracy.

Right, Ukraine is not a democracy. The USA is not either, if Trump is jailed or blocked from the ballot, or if the election is rigged.

All I get out of this essay is that (1) Jews have some weird hatred of Russia; (2) they also hate anyone who puts America First; and (3) it is okay to destroy Ukraine in order to spite their enemies.

Defamation Suit for Torturing Data

A couple of opinion columnists badmouthed some climate sciente research, and 12 years later a jury found defamation.

Axos Science reports:

"Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data," wrote Simberg in reference to the former Penn State football coach who was convicted of child sexual abuse the same year the Competitive Enterprise Institute published his blog.

Steyn referred to Simberg's post in a National Review article, writing, "Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change "hockeystick" graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus."

What they found: The jury unanimously found both writers guilty of defaming Mann with "multiple false statements and awarded the scientist $1 in compensatory damages from each writer," per the New York Times.

It also determined that the writers' statements were written "maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm," and added punitive damages of $1 million against Steyn and $1,000 against Simberg, according to the NYT.

As I understand it, the technical issue was whether it was proper for Mann to combined dissimilar data into one graph. Hann used tree dinv data to infer ancient termperatures, and got the blade of the hockey stick from modern direct temperature measurements.

This case is ridiculous. Mann is a Penn State professor, but he had nothing to do with the Penn State personel who were framed for child abuse. Whether he represented tree ring data properly is a matter of opinion.

Climate science can have a big effect on public policy, and we should all be free to criticize it.

Reuters reports:

The European Union's executive has started to compile guidelines for Big Tech platforms to prevent disinformation, hate speech and counterfeits from disrupting the process of democratic elections.

Over a third of the world's population will go to the polls this year at a time when the power and influence of tech giants is under growing scrutiny.

They will allow misinformation if it favors the approved positions on global warming, vaccines, migration, etc, but not otherwise.

They will approve arguments that Trump should not be on the ballot, but not similar arguments against Biden, Harris, or Haley.

Biden’s radical immigration policy

The Jewish magazine Tablet has a new article on the Great Replacement:

Our Open Border Policy Is Not an Accident

There’s a new strategy in town: If American voters don’t like what you are offering, import better voters.

The unprecedented chaos at the U.S. border and in major American cities that has been caused by the Biden administration’s immigration policies finally seems to have moved to the center of national political debate and public awareness.

Over the past three years, the Biden administration has effectively rewritten U.S. immigration law, creating an entirely new stream of quasi-legal immigration under the rubric of “parole.” The discretion of the federal government to grant parole or legal residence and work permits to a small number of refugees and other foreign nationals has been used by the Biden administration to rip a hole in America’s southern border in order to invite millions of foreign nationals, most of them from Latin America and Central America and the Caribbean, to travel to the U.S. border, from which they are dispersed across the country and supported chiefly by state and local governments and government-funded NGOs. ...

Biden’s radical immigration policy represents not only a policy revolution but also a political revolution. ...

But the Democratic Party abruptly changed its immigration policy when its leaders began to hope that they could import voters from other countries to compensate for the loss of voters that Democratic policies were alienating. ...

To compensate for massive population losses caused by the flight of U.S.-born residents to other states, California is highly dependent on international migration. In 2022, the foreign-born share (27%) of California’s population was higher than that of any other state and twice the share of the U.S. as a whole. The foreign-born make up roughly a third of the population in San Francisco and Los Angeles counties. Nearly half (46%) of California’s children have at least one foreign-born parent. In 2019, 22% of the foreign-born residents in California were illegal immigrants, and in 2021 only 55% were naturalized U.S. citizens. Similarly, in New York—another state with massive population losses of U.S.-born citizens—most of the population growth since 1980 has been the result of international immigration.

The Sierra Club used to be against immigration as being bad for the environment, but a $200 million Jewish bribe induced them to reverse policy, about 20 years ago.

Impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas Failed

ABC News reports:

The U.S. House has opened debate ready to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Tuesday over border security, ...

Republicans in the House argue that Mayorkas has “refused to comply” with immigration laws, resulting in the record surge of immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and has “breached the public trust” by his actions and comments.

He is ignoring the law, and allowing a foreign invasion.

His excuse is that he is following administration policy. He survived by one vote yesterday. They do not want to impeach Biden, because the VP is even more incompetent.

Let us review who runs the USA:

President Joe Biden, kids married Jews, VP Kamala Harris, Jamaican-Hindoo, married to Jew, Sec. of State Anthony Blinken, Jew, Sec. of Treasury Janet Yellen, Jew, Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin, Black, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Jew, Sec. of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, Jew, Dir. of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Jew, Chainman of Council of Economic Advisors Jared Bernstein, Jew, Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, Jew, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, Jew.

All of the important departments are controlled by Jews. Except maybe Defense, but Austin was recently hospitalized and no one noticed, so he may be just a figurehead.

Not all Jews are anti-American Leftists, of course, but polls consistently show that the big majority of them favor importing millions of non-white non-christians to replace Americans.

Biden now complains that all the Republicans are against a "bipartisan bill" to legalize most of the illegal migrants. Of course they are against it. It is a betrayal of America.

Ex-wife forced son to gender transition

NY Post reports:

A New York man says his ex-wife forced their young son to transition from a boy to a girl during their divorce — despite his protests that his son never wanted to be a girl in the first place.

Dennis Hannon, a 32-year-old former banking vice president from Buffalo who now works as a software engineer, told The Post on Sunday he was engaged in a lengthy, seven-year legal battle that ended with him losing authority over his son’s medical care.

He says the fight began when his ex-wife, Amy Hannon, began pushing his son to transition at the age of 3 by dressing him in girls’ clothes.

But she hid it from him, and whenever he’d pick his son up during visitation periods, he remained a little boy.

Father custody of children would solve this problem. Our courts are backwards.

Psychotherapists Lie about Trans Outcomes

Here is more evidence that psychotherapists are evil.

A NY Times op-ed reports:

After Kathleen’s 15-year-old son, whom she described as an obsessive child, abruptly told his parents he was trans, the doctor who was going to assess whether he had A.D.H.D. referred him instead to someone who specialized in both A.D.H.D. and gender. Kathleen, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her son’s privacy, assumed that the specialist would do some kind of evaluation or assessment. That was not the case.

The meeting was brief and began on a shocking note. “In front of my son, the therapist said, ‘Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?’” Kathleen recounted.

Parents are routinely warned that to pursue any path outside of agreeing with a child’s self-declared gender identity is to put a gender dysphoric youth at risk for suicide, which feels to many people like emotional blackmail. Proponents of the gender-affirming model have cited studies showing an association between that standard of care and a lower risk of suicide. But those studies were found to have methodological flaws or have been deemed not entirely conclusive.

Why would any therapist say anything so outrageous? The evidence is that trans-affirming therapies lead to more suicides, not less.

Rebutting other lies, Quillette reports There’s No ‘Epidemic’ of Anti-Transgender Violence.

This is not just an isolated example of a therapist giving wacky advice. This is mainstream practice. The psychotherapy professional associations consider it unethical to say anything else. I recommend staying away from anyone even belonging to one of those associations.

Magic Dirt Theory

Why are some communities successful, and others not? One theory says it is human capital. The successful ones are occupied by people who are productive, law-abiding, smart, civilized, etc.

The rival theory is Magic dirt:

Magic dirt is a derogatory term for the theory that where a person lives determines the person's psychological characteristics. It is a variant of the "blank slate" theory.

Such views are often applied to migrants, both between countries and within countries, with an assumption being that migrants (or their descendants) from poorly functioning areas/populations will assume the characteristics of well-functioning areas/populations by migrating.

A similar theory is that moving students from poorly functioning schools to well-functioning schools will cause the students to become well-functioning.

Civic nationalists often explicitly or implicitly support the theory.

Steve Sailer gives an example of this, in an Atlantic magazine article on Cicero Illinois. Thirty years ago it was a properous city of Italians and others. They kept Blacks out, until the governor called out the National Guard. Now the city is mostly Latinos, and has greatly declined. Or so the article says.

This story supports human capital theory. The previous prosperity was based on its people, not the dirt. But the Atlantic and most Leftists are tied to magic dirt theory, so they wonder what went wrong with the dirt.

Most Racial Stereotypes are True

The London Guardian reports on some racial controversies:

Winegard told his listeners that “people in colder climates, because of differences in brain size, have more propensity for cooperation”. ...

he wrote in a 2016 paper that racial stereotypes are “reasonably accurate”. ...

“Selective breeding can alter man’s capacity to learn, to keep sane, to cherish justice or to be happy.” ...

This month, for example, Aporia published an article by Peter Frost, “The Goldilocks zone between inbreeding and outbreeding”, which argues that “outbreeding” between humans who are too genetically distant from one another creates an increased risk of abnormal embryos. ...

“The case for race realism”, which reasserts that “underlying race differences in measured cognitive ability and violent crime … make large outcome disparities inevitable” ...

featured a debate between Charles Murray and Helmuth Nyborg on the topic “are multicultural societies doomed?”

The main point of the article is that these topics are uncomfortable to many people, so we should ostracize anyone who discusses them.

One of their main enemies just wrote this:

There is no valid controversy today over whether racial differences in cognitive test scores exist. Although many Americans are shocked when they hear that whites outscore blacks on average (although they tend to be less shocked when they hear that Asians average higher than whites), this might be the most exhaustively documented finding in the history of the social sciences. “My default assumption has long been that nature and nurture are probably divided up somewhere around fifty-fifty.”

Nor is there much informed dispute anymore over whether or not IQ tests are measuring something real and fairly important.

Nor is there any evidence that IQ tests are biased against blacks in the sense that blacks perform better on average in real life than on the tests. They don’t.

Nor is there any evidence that a valid IQ test could be developed that makes the race gap disappear. There has been tremendous demand for one since the 1960s, but nobody has ever managed to come close to inventing it.

So what happens is that when somebody manages to make clear these truths, the discussion among smarter people immediately switches to whether The Gap is genetic or not.

In many ways, though, it’s not terribly important for practical purposes whether IQ disparities are due to nature or nurture, because after more than a half century of our society obsessing over how to close The Gap, we’ve made little progress and lately have more or less given up hope that some kind of educational reform will do the trick. We don’t have much of a clue how to get blacks to catch up, and we may well be making their performance worse by catering to their worst instincts, just as we’ve managed to raise their homicide and car crash rates during the Black Lives Matter era.

Leftists really hate to hear what science says on this subject.

Omar should resign in disgrace

Online comment:

After seeing this movie, Malgorzata told me glumly. “The good life for American Jews is coming to an end. . . . they are now more or less in the same situation that German Jews were in after Hitler came to power in 1933. The antisemitism started slowly, but then grew over time until it became too late escape.”

I watched the movie, and it does not say that. It mainly says that a lot of college students are now anti-Zionists, and view Israelis as oppressors in Gaza and the West Bank.

The USA is still overwhelmingly pro-Jewish and pro-Israel. Example:

Ilhan Omar’s appalling, Somalia-first comments are a slap in the face to the Minnesotans she was elected to serve and a direct violation of her oath of office. She should resign in disgrace.https://t.co/O3lAEGlokt

— Tom Emmer (@GOPMajorityWhip) January 29, 2024

In a hilarious twist, it turns out that Republican Congressman Tom Emmer, the man claiming Ilhan Omar is doing a very dirty deed by saying she’s fighting for Somalia, is a major recipient of funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

AIPAC is an Israeli lobbying group that demands that American politicians act in the explicit interests of Israel before those of the United States. The Jewish group pays politicians to promote this agenda.

On opensecrets.org, we see that AIPAC was the biggest donor for the 2023-2024 campaign year of the Minnesota Congressman. ...

In fact, America’s entire foreign policy revolves around the question “what is best for Israel?”

Yes, Congressmen should be loyal to the USA, but dozens of them are essentially foreign agents for Israel.

Jews overwhelmingly promote Marxist ideas of dividing people into the oppressors and oppressed. They they try to convince you that they are oppressed. Actually Jews are the privileged and the oppressors. Just look at how the Biden administration refused to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. Biden is controlled by Jews who want to exterminate their enemies.

Crime to Hate Satan in Iowa

Iowa news:

Michael Cassidy has been charged with a hate crime for beheading a statue of Satan at the Iowa Capitol. Cassidy drove up to Iowa after the Satanic display was erected in the state capitol and took it down. He will be arraigned on February 15.

Polk County prosecutors charged Cassidy with felony third-degree criminal mischief, saying that he acted "in violation of individual rights" under Iowa's hate crime statue, the Des Moines Register reports.

Cassidy had been charged with a misdemeanor fourth-degree criminal mischief the day after the beheading but had been informed that he may be liable for further charges.

Spokesman for the Polk County Attorney's Office Lynn Hicks said that "Evidence shows the defendant made statements to law enforcement and the public indicating he destroyed the property because of the victim’s religion." This is what resulted in the hate crimes charge.

The victim's religion? It was a statue of Satan.

This was a cheap Halloween prop. It was only there for Atheists and Jews to mock Christianity. If anyone was committing a hate crime, it was those who put up the Satan statue. Satan does not belong in our Capitol buildings.

Our Constitution was written to allow different Christian denominations to worship in peace. It was not to put Satanic icons in our official buildings.

The Biden DoJ has just convicted some Christians for saying prayers in the wrong place:

Six anti-abortion activists have been convicted on felony charges over orchestrating a blockade of a Tennessee reproductive healthcare clinic in 2021.

A federal jury convicted each of the six defendants of a felony conspiracy against rights and a Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act offense. Sentencing has been scheduled for July 2, when they each face up to 10 and a half years' imprisonment, three years' supervised release and fines totally $260,000.

You can see some video here. Some old ladies were singing hymns.

I used to accept these crazy arguments that the First Amendments requires Satanic icons and banning public prayers. No, I was wrong. This is the opposite of religious freedom. These Satanic creeps are taking advantage of Christian tolerance. Prayer is not a crime. And neither is hating Satan.