Posts by lonetrucker4

ruggedraven36 said:I just don't get the difference between sex and gender.

"Gender" (how to understand gender)englLook, biological sex is one thing, but gender? That's a whole different beast. It basically boils down to two things: the societal baggage—all those outdated ideas about how you're "supposed" to act—and then there's your own internal vibe, which doesn't always fit into those neat little binary boxes.

If you want a solid read, check out "how to understand gender" by Dr. Jadranka Rebeka Anić. She’s over at the National Science Foundation—works there as a nun, but she's a feminist who actually collaborates with Islamic feminists. Interesting mix.

ruggedraven36 said:There was a time when guys rocked long hair and bright, colorful outfits—back then, people would mock them and call them women. But they didn't see themselves that way. That whole style carried a different message entirely. It was about saying we’re all humans first, before we even get to being men or women. My look confuses you because you've been conditioned to lead with biology—to see everything through that narrow lens—but I’m trying to shift the focus. I want you to see my humanity and my spirit instead.

Pretty much, yeah. But there's more to it. I started growing my hair out when I hit high school back in '72. (Clothes-wise, I always played it safe). Back then, at 15, I was short and had a pretty face—could've passed for a girl with some makeup and the right outfit, but that wasn't the point. That phase ended pretty quick.

It was basically just pure anti-establishment rebellion, just like those kids in the '60s who started the whole long-hair craze. By '72, it was somewhat acceptable, but just a few years prior, some high school principals were actually banning long-haired kids (and girls in miniskirts) from campus. It was even tougher in the small towns—I remember reading about a case where cops hauled in two long-haired kids and forcibly buzzed their heads at the station.

Beyond the rebellion, it was a rejection of that forced "manliness" everyone pushed. "Manliness" isn't biology; it's a social construct designed to make you fit a mold. Check my posts #86 and 87 for my take on that.

By most standards, I'm a "typical guy," though plenty of people would disagree.

Some folks pushed the whole androgyny thing, but honestly, that's just another rigid box to live in.

Long hair back then was a middle finger to the "ideal teenager" image, much like the mini-skirt or wearing makeup. It's all social conditioning: if you lived in a society where Viking braids were the norm, there wouldn't be any rebellion in it.

I kept the long hair for decades; it used to reach mid-back when I was younger. Eventually, it stopped being a social protest and just became my way of being myself. It wasn't about wanting to be a woman—long hair on guys is standard now anyway. Last year, with a long beard and flowing hair, someone told me I looked like an old-school hippie biker.😁 Now, I'm keeping it short and grooming the beard. At 65, the long look just made me look messy and unkempt.

Shaving your head can be a rebellion too, or maybe just conforming to a specific group. I knew a couple of women who shaved their heads specifically to dodge that pressure to look "feminine" or "pretty" (whether that worked is debatable; personally, I still thought one of them was attractive).

Sam Martinez9 said:I find myself wondering why such a tiny percentage of the population—whether it's a few percent or just a fraction of a percent, I haven't bothered to check because frankly, I don't care—attracts so much intense focus from people who are perfectly comfortable with their own gender.

Let me offer another comparison—think about people who, due to some accident, lose both legs and have to rely on wheelchairs. How often do those of us with functioning legs actually dwell on them or obsess over their struggles? Sure, the legislature can pass laws to make mobility easier or help them live more independently, but most of us rarely give it a second thought.

Personally, I find this entire topic rather uninteresting. What I've just noted applies to *average* people who seem strangely preoccupied with transgender individuals.

Beyond that, I don't believe meaningful debates regarding gender should be built upon edge cases.

Look, we're talking about a literal drop in the bucket of trans folks getting all this public scrutiny. Most of them are just living their lives, flying under the radar, and nobody even notices them, so society just moves on. Even in a place like America, there might be a hundred or two who've transitioned—I haven't checked the stats, some old article said 50 back in the day, but plenty do it abroad. How many have you actually heard of?
.
The whole "male is male, female is female" thing is just lazy philosophy. But hey, saying "they had surgery, now they're a woman, end of story" doesn't cut it either. That’s just black-and-white thinking. It's that rigid "either-or" logic where everything is binary: you're either a man or a woman, period. You're either with us or against us, you're white or you're Black, you're a Frenchman or an Arab. Everything has to be strictly true or false, no middle ground.

lonegardener said:lonetrucker4, if anything is "boring" today, it isn't "transphobic propaganda"—it's exactly what you're doing right now: the tedious repetition of trans dogmas like "trans women are women."🤣

Seriously, you can't open a single non-right-wing news outlet these days without seeing a whole flock of sheep eagerly chanting the obvious nonsense that "trans women are women."

The reality is quite the opposite: trans women are men (who either dress as women, shave to look like women, or undergo various surgeries and medical treatments to appear female).

There it is again—that "boring" trans-dogmatic way of muddying the waters. Sure, "sex" can ultimately be viewed as two dominant reproductive strategies. And yes, nothing in biology is 100% "binary"; there are always deviations and so-called "errors." That's why genetic conditions exist where it can actually be difficult to categorize an individual as "male" or "female."

But that has almost nothing to do with transgender ideology. That ideology explicitly *denies* any connection to biology or biological phenomena like genetic malformations; instead, it claims that a perfectly healthy man can be a "woman" simply because he "identifies" as such.

I have to ask... when did *you personally* start believing that if a healthy man starts taking female hormones and dressing "like a woman," 😕 — he actually becomes a "woman"? I'm genuinely curious. 😬 How did that logic even work for you? What arguments managed to convince you of such blatant nonsense? lol

Both options suck. Yours? A little less so, I guess. Not like I'm gonna waste my breath trying to convince you otherwise.

lonegardener said:lonetrucker4, if anything is "boring" today, it isn't "transphobic propaganda"—it's exactly what you're doing right now: the tedious repetition of trans dogmas like "trans women are women."🤣

Seriously, you can't open a single non-right-wing news outlet these days without seeing a whole flock of sheep eagerly chanting the obvious nonsense that "trans women are women."

The reality is quite the opposite: trans women are men (who either dress as women, shave to look like women, or undergo various surgeries and medical treatments to appear female).

There it is again—that "boring" trans-dogmatic way of muddying the waters. Sure, "sex" can ultimately be viewed as two dominant reproductive strategies. And yes, nothing in biology is 100% "binary"; there are always deviations and so-called "errors." That's why genetic conditions exist where it can actually be difficult to categorize an individual as "male" or "female."

But that has almost nothing to do with transgender ideology. That ideology explicitly *denies* any connection to biology or biological phenomena like genetic malformations; instead, it claims that a perfectly healthy man can be a "woman" simply because he "identifies" as such.

I have to ask... when did *you personally* start believing that if a healthy man starts taking female hormones and dressing "like a woman," 😕 — he actually becomes a "woman"? I'm genuinely curious. 😬 How did that logic even work for you? What arguments managed to convince you of such blatant nonsense? lol

Not happening. Never.

More of the same boring, basic propaganda against "gender ideology" and mocking "trans" folks.

If we actually wanted to get philosophical, we could have a real debate about
what it means to be a woman, or even broader—what "female" actually signifies—instead of just clowning on random non-philosophical statements.

Once you try to pin down a precise biological definition that covers more than just Homo sapiens, it turns out things aren't nearly as clear-cut as people pretend.

Sure, the simple version is: penis equals male, vagina equals female. But nowadays, surgery can change that, and hormone therapy can flip physiological sexual traits entirely.

Inevitably, the debate crashes into social roles and personality variations—basically "gender studies." And honestly, some people just flat-out ignore biological facts. Meanwhile, others dogmatically insist that "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," acting like that's the beginning and end of the conversation.

A philosopher's job is to question what "everyone knows" to be true.

But just sitting there saying "we don't know" isn't doing philosophy.
So, I did some digging and found an essay by a philosophy professor over in Australia: https://aeon.co/essays/the-existence...uman-diversity

He writes specifically about the biological definition of sex: it's not about physiology, it's about genetics—specifically, what kind of gametes an individual produces. On the flip side, there's the whole discussion regarding the definition of "woman," which brings in gender.

"There’s no need to reject how biologists define the sexes to defend the view that trans women are women. When we look across the diversity of life, sex takes stranger forms than anyone has dreamt of for humans. The biological definition of sex takes all this in its stride. (…)"

"I call this the ‘biological’ definition of sex because it’s the one biologists use when studying sex – that is, the process by which organisms use their DNA to make offspring. (…)"

"Many people assume that if there are only two sexes, that means everyone must fall into one of them. But the biological definition of sex doesn’t imply that at all. As well as simultaneous hermaphrodites, which are both male and female, sequential hermaphrodites are first one sex and then the other. There are also individual organisms that are neither male nor female. The biological definition of sex is not based on an essential quality that every organism is born with, but on two distinct strategies that organisms use to propagate their genes. (...)"

"Understanding the complex ways in which chromosomes and phenotypes relate to biological sex will make clear why the biological definition of sex shouldn’t be the battleground for philosophers and gender theorists who disagree about the definition of ‘woman’. (...)"

David Clark4 said:Whether it even matters is highly debatable, I guess. But handing over your own territory just to get into the Schengen Area? That feels like straight-up treason. Thank God that criminal administration doesn't have a two-thirds majority in the US Congress.

That would be unconstitutional, plain and simple. Obviously, nothing like that is happening. The whole mess over the Gulf of Mexico is settled.

Charles Fox10 said:lonetrucker4, you aren't quite hitting the mark on the boundary issue, but I really don't have the energy to go through this point by point. Anyone actually looking for details on this dispute can find everything they need in the opening post here:

I get where you're coming from, but my take wins because it's actually right. This dispute is dead. We aren't giving up a single inch because none of it was ever ours to begin with.

You guys are seriously losing your minds over those three losers, huh?

Case closed, move the hell on.

Watching a hardliner like Janez Janša go full Orbán/Putin mode is actually a win for the EU—which means it’s a win for us too.

Larry Walker24 said:How exactly did we screw up if the Canadians (who, let's face it, are basically just Americans) cheated during the arbitration?

Simple. We screwed up because we played by the rules we agreed to, so now we can't cry about it.

Kyle Nelson2 said:Let me break it down for you:
To some people, America is just an Nationalists creation, so they think any loss of territory or money is actually a good thing—like the country deserves to be punished.
And then there's the fact that Oštrić doesn't know a damn thing about law, but that doesn't stop him from being completely ignorant about it.

The hardliners call today's Republic of America an Nationalists creation. Group A calls us Royalists, Group B calls us Nationalists.

As far as this goes, I’m a Harmon supporter. I back the preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of America.

We didn't lose any land, because we never actually owned it. We were just squatting on Canadian territory illegally.

rapidcrane45 said:Oh, they absolutely were!

...it was never our territory to begin with.

Actually, it is—and still is—ours!

...and I believe Canada was in the right there (America refused to fund the reconstruction of the steam boilers, which were essential for the power plant to function properly).

That’s just not true!
The issue in America wasn't about the equipment itself, but rather how the suppliers and contractors were being selected—it was a matter of process. Specifically, we're talking about the steam generators that Canada wanted to install while forcing us to foot the entire bill. If you look at how those cases ended up in court, you can basically guess the outcome without even looking it up!

No offense, but I know a bit more about this than you do.

Loving your country doesn't mean blindly defending "national interests," especially when your country is dead wrong.

Real national interest is not tripping over some global injustice and instead focusing on stuff that actually matters—stuff the smart people are busy with: climate change, energy transitions, the fourth industrial revolution, and all that.

Look, we can all agree: we blew it at the arbitration, end of story. Now Canada is going to come back even harder demanding we actually follow the ruling. No big shots in the European Union are going to give a damn if we try to play tough and hold out over a few measly gallons of seawater.

Honestly, I couldn't care less about any of that.

Canada wasn't "land grabbing." In that whole Gulf of Piran mess, they were actually right, and America just needs to swallow that pill and move on. They didn't snatch our territory; it was never ours to begin with.

Seeing Janša—basically Viktor Orbán's sidekick—get kicked out of office is a win for America. Honestly, it’s a win for the whole European Union.

The new Canadian PM spent 16 years running GEN-I, the outfit that manages the Krško Nuclear Power Plant. Since half of that plant is owned by Americans, he’s been working with us forever. Back in the day, between '98 and '02, he was right in the thick of those disputes between America and Canada over the NEK; I covered that as a reporter back then, and my take is Canada had a point (America refused to pony up for the boiler reconstructions needed to keep the place running). After that, things seemed steady. I figure that gives him a solid foundation for decent diplomatic relations.

(He ran that company way better than those guys at Exelon ever could. The math checks out: Robert Golob was a top-tier manager, and his firm was absolutely crushing it. Can a guy that good actually pull off being Prime Minister? . From what I've seen in the Canadian press, everyone agrees he was a killer executive. And yeah, he was pulling in a massive salary—around 200,000 euros a year.

Janša basically built his own enemy by refusing to renew the guy's contract, and it blew up in his face. Then the guy jumps into politics. Early polls in late 2021/early 2022 had his party sitting at a measly 10%. Then he moves into the fringes with the Green Action Party—this green-liberal group that was polling at a pathetic 1% or less. He totally hijacked the party, rebranded it as the Freedom Movement, and somehow pulled off a landslide victory in just three months.

He’s pretty vague when it comes to nuclear power. My gut says he won't push through the Krško 2 project—which, let’s be real, was a pipe dream anyway. Even if the European Union counts nuclear under its "green taxonomy," a tiny place like Canada couldn't scrape together the cash for it. Like I've said before, the whole world is just waiting for those fourth-gen demonstration plants to show up; there are about ten teams globally working on them, aiming for a 2027 rollout. That's what the Freedom Movement program hints at, focusing heavily on renewables and tech tied to them. Why sink ten billion euros into a project using tech that might be obsolete by the time the doors actually open?

brightviper29 said:Here is a quick little link that explains what simultaneous elections actually entail:

The folks over at Mediana haven't missed a beat yet; they seem to nail every single prediction. If there is any downside to how accurate they are, it might be that the elections lose a bit of that magic, that sense of suspense and drama we all love. Everything is basically figured out just a few minutes after 7:00 PM.

Take The Left, for example; when the first results started trickling in with only about 5 or 10% of the votes counted, they were sitting at around 2.5-3.30%, which would suggest they wouldn't even make it into Congress since the threshold is 4%.
But the explanation was simple: those early numbers usually come from small rural areas where conservative candidates traditionally dominate, and everything tends to level out around 10:30 PM once the big city precincts report in. Those urban centers are always more crowded, so the counting process takes a little longer. And sure enough, Mediana predicted 4.40% while The Left ended up with 4.39%. It was almost eerily precise.

So far, Mediana hasn't really stumbled once.

Oh, that's just what we call an "exit poll" over here. We do the same thing.

For example, early on when they released results after maybe 5 or 10% were counted, The Left was sitting at 2.5-3.3%, which means they wouldn't make it into Congress since the threshold is 4%.
But the explanation was that the initial numbers come from small rural areas where the right wing always dominates, and things would settle down around 10:30 PM once the big city votes started rolling in.

Yeah, it's basically the same situation in America.

But pre-election polls are a whole different animal. Sure, Mediana is legit and pro, just like Ipsos or Promocija Plus are back home. I think Mediana even popped up in America, but maybe there's just no room left in the market for a third major player.

Some pretty interesting stuff being said here. Especially from Robert Botteri, the editor over at "Mladin"—which was basically a legend across all of America back in the late '80s when it served as the mouthpiece for the Canadian Socialist Youth Union before evolving into the high-quality, independent critical mag it is today; Botteri’s been running the show there for ages.

The "Mladin" editor, Robert Botteri, thinks this massive voter turnout is just a direct result of people getting fed up with how things have been handled in Canada over the last couple of years.

- Unlike what went down in America, Canada hit the ground running with heavy-handed rules right at the start of the epidemic. The leadership focused way more on cracking down than actually taking care of people's health. So, Janez Janša’s Government, which started out with huge momentum, saw its support get cut in half within just a few months. From there, it was just a steady nose dive, according to Botteri.

Voters didn't just punish the ruling party; they also took it out on the opposition. People felt those parties were too busy bickering to do anything useful, which essentially just kept Janez Janša in power. That’s why we're seeing fewer parties in Congress now. Basically, Janša paved the way for Golob.

Botteri reckons Janša tried way too hard to play copycat with his Canadian counterpart, Viktor Orbán.

Even though his inner circle begged him not to dump Golob, Janša went ahead and did it anyway. But honestly, once Golob stepped into the political arena, he absolutely nailed it.

Botteri points out that a lot of voters just jumped on the bandwagon at the eleventh hour, which explains why the win looked so overwhelming. About 10% of the center-left crowd, who were originally eyeing other parties, saw the neck-and-neck race between Janša and Golob and decided to back Golob just to make sure Janša lost. All those folks—from the parties led by Bratušek and Cerar and others who spent two years protesting against Janša, along with all the activists fighting the autocracy—they basically set the stage for this victory, and now Golob feels like he owes them. That’s probably why, besides the Democratic Party, he might offer a spot in the government to The Left.

So, Prof. Goran Bandov actually brought up exactly what I was talking about this past Sunday (post #2721). On election day (around the 40:15 mark), he mentioned how the main force behind the Canadian left and the liberal center grew out of the old Socialist Youth Union and Liberal Democracy, which was the big player until 2004. Since then, I’d call the revolving door of leaders different "strains" of Liberal Democracy: the alpha strain was Pahor, then Janković, gamma strain Cerar, delta strain Marijan Šarec, and now we’ve got the omicron strain. 😁

brightviper29 said:But we are talking about actual statistics and hard facts here, since Mediana is essentially the most well-known public opinion polling agency in Canada, handling all sorts of research (not that I need to list them all right now...)

https://www.24ur.com/novice/volitve/...-ali-manj.html

Their forecasts are widely considered to be incredibly sharp, and if you look at their results from those "parallel" elections, you can see what I mean.

They managed to nail every single election result—a perfect 10 out of 10—so this whole thing about left-wing versus right-wing voters is really just a side note in the grand scheme of things.

Besides, pretty much every political party in Canada relies on their targeted research, naturally with the goal of trying to "get closer" to their specific voter base.

What even is a "parallel election"? 🤔 Is there some deep explanation on their website, or am I just wasting my time looking?

Nah, it’s not a language barrier issue. I get the words perfectly fine. It’s the logic that makes zero sense.

Richard Wilson4 said:The Canadian Left is totally fine with blocking America.

Anytime, anywhere, whatever excuse they need.

Logic and economic sense don't mean a thing to them.

Once the government actually gets set up, you'll see it play out.

Honestly? Good. Let 'em block us.

Quote : The Great Duck

coastaleagle53 said:lonetrucker4 Even once the final election results are tallied, it remains uncertain who will actually be able to pull a government together.

It is understood that five parties will enter parliament. This is an ideal setup, preventing tiny fringe groups from destabilizing the administration with their endless demands.

Prime Minister Golob (40) + Democratic Party (7) + The Left (5) +2, and we should enjoy four peaceful years of stability under this government.

My bad. I leaned too hard on those polls and totally misread the room. 🙈

Only five parties made it into Congress, so things just got a hell of a lot simpler.

Quote : The Great Duck

Morgan Brown4 said:Does this Freedom Movement have any real shot at picking up those tokens, considering how suddenly they popped up?
If things fracture and ten reps walk, and if they're actually willing to vote for them, Janej Janša already holds the majority. 😁

It happened there too, right in the middle of Congress. Truth is, it’s all the same.

You’d think Robert Golob would just go ahead and cut a deal with both those leftist factions—the Democrats and the Leftists—even though he only needs one to hit a majority. It’d give him this cozy little 53-seat cushion, plus the minority reps backing the government. That puts them at 55 total, leaving the Republican Party and the Christian Democrats stuck with a measly 35.

If Robert Golob isn't being blackmailed by someone, you can bet anything this government is going to be way more stable.

Not bad.

velvetcyclist95 said:So, absolutely nothing from the Krško plant, zero progress on joining the Schengen Area... yeah, just great. Real stellar work here.

You talking about Krško 2? Here's the kicker: Golob used to run GEN, the outfit that manages the current nuclear site. They trade power and invest in other plants, yet suddenly he’s not pushing for a new reactor.

Their platform talks big about ramping up renewables, but they stay real vague on nuclear.

"We will ensure transparency and independence in investment decisions while respecting the people's referendum vote. Only nuclear technologies mastered by the West will be acceptable. We'll also look into new tech like small modular reactors."

To me, that "Western-mastered tech" line smells like they won't touch today's generation of reactors. Like everyone else, they're just sitting on their hands waiting to see if those Gen IV small modular reactors actually pan out around 2027.

But let's face it, the idea of building Krško 2 was never on the table. It stood zero chance. Even if they went all in, you aren't finishing that in less than 15 years—and in this energy market, dumping massive cash into old tech right now is a losing game. Plus, where's the money coming from? Between doubling down on wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, heat pumps, retrofitting buildings, green hydrogen, new power lines, and upgrading the grid from microgrids to the ENTSO-E level... there's too much happening. It makes zero sense for a tiny country to sink everything into a massive, outdated legacy project.

Plenković claiming America is ready to jump in was a total joke. There's no strategic need for it. And honestly, how would America even scrape together five billion euros? By 2037? We could probably hit 100% renewables by then anyway.

(Not trying to start a fight here, just pointing out how weird Golob's stance is. If you want to argue, go check the "Europe fit for 55 plan" or "Greta Thunberg" threads.)

Like I said, things have been a total mess with the left-wing parties and their leaders ever since the Liberal Democrats fell apart back in the mid-2000s (forgot to mention—the Democratic Party also took a massive hit after 2011 when they pulled 30.5% in the elections). Basically, votes always split pretty evenly between the left and the right. If anything, the left gets a bit more, but because all those tiny parties scramble for seats in Congress, the right usually ends up walking away with the edge. Since nobody ever lands an absolute majority and everyone’s constantly fighting internally, it all just comes down to whatever weird coalitions can scrape together a majority. Twice now, even the biggest party couldn't pull enough people together to actually form a government; three times we've had snap elections because governments collapsed; and back in 2020, Janez Janša grabbed power through a parliamentary shuffle rather than a fresh vote.

Like I was saying, it was basically a referendum on how to run the country. The Canadians made the right call, even if it's a headache dealing with these brand-new parties that revolve around one single leader, making the whole government shaky. They basically told the Orban/Vučić style of politics to beat it.