Blog
Will SCOTUS let parents and doctors support trans kids?
The case over youth gender-affirming care: United States vs. Skrmetti. Tennessee still claims science backs its position when demonstrably it doesn’t. The ACLU & Biden admin say this is discrimination against trans people.
Once again, it’s not about sports
Why trans allies objected to Seth Moulton’s comments last month. This ‘idea’ is not fully baked because it’s not consistent even about whether it would regulate adults or children. This is not about sports.
Too much ‘noo’ in the sphere (all spin, no facts)
Steve Bannon describes MAGA narrative in terms of Teilhard’s ‘noosphere’. Bannons says that liberals get sucked into fact-checking while Trump’s followers don’t let themselves be distracted by questions of truth.
The feeling of knowing
Steven Connor’s 2019 book ‘The Madness of Knowledge’. ‘Epistemopathy’ means the feeling of knowing. We have pleasant and unpleasant feelings associated with knowing. That’s part of why knowledge matters to us.
Turtles all the way down
Finding truth in emptiness. When we acknowledge there is no final turtle, we open ourselves to discover and live more. The turtle on which we are standing is never the last one.
We can’t prepare for this moment
‘Opening to Darkness’ by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. What to make of this political and ecological moment, this chaos that arrives with no instructions? We can “see, collectively, in the dark.”
‘Do I want it? Life, that is.’
‘On Not Knowing‘ by Emily Ogden. What is there to hope for? Should we hope? We can work in the field, making bales of hay, but the work of the soul “never will be cut and dried.”
‘Agnotology’: The study of ignorance
Our ways of knowing can be corrupted. “We’re going to have to rethink our metaphors,” Proctor said, on persuading people away from science-denial. “We’ve got to think much more creatively.”
We knew it before we were quizzed
That truth remains valuable. We existed. We went to school and forgot ourselves for a while. Then we remembered who we are. We had this knowledge with us the whole time.