BUT ONCE YOU DO KNOW, IT SEEMS KIND OF INEVITABLE, DOESN’T IT? I didn’t know that fat acceptance was part of what Pride month is about or that New York had something it wanted to call its “activism space.”

POLITICS OVER SCIENCE: Unsealed Court Documents Show That Admiral Rachel Levine Pressured WPATH To Remove Age Guidelines From The Latest Standards Of Care.

When the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care Version 8 was released in September 2022, a very strange thing happened: WPATH removed references to minimum age requirements for various medical interventions, describing the change as a “correction” in a notice that now reads, weirdly: “This correction notice has been removed as it referred to a previous version of the article, which was published in error.” Whatever happened, exactly, it’s clear that until late in the game the document did have age minimums until, suddenly, it did not.

The SoC 8 was supposed to have been created via something called the Delphi process. As the document itself explains: “Consensus on the final recommendations was attained using the Delphi process that included all members of the guidelines committee and required that recommendation statements were approved by at least 75% of members.” Suffice it to say that making a sudden, major change so late in the game calls into question whether that process was fully adhered to.

Thanks to a rather remarkable document just unsealed as part of Boe v. Marshall, one of the many American lawsuits over youth gender medicine, we now have a potential explanation for why the age guidelines were removed: direct pressure from assistant secretary for health of the Department of Health and Human Services Admiral Rachel Levine (who is a trans woman herself) and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

There was more science behind the lobotomy craze, which this strongly resembles.

PAULA BOLYARD: The Most Important Supreme Court Case You’ve Probably Never Heard Of. “Make no mistake: Public bureaucrats are terrified that Chevron could ‘fall’ and curtail the immense power they now hold. Understand that this is all about power and who should have it.”

JIM TREACHER: “Every day in 2024, there’s an explosion of anti-Jew hatred somewhere in America. And all the people who claim to care about what happened in Charlottesville seven years ago are turning a blind eye. Because this time, it’s all on their side.”

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE’S NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP BASEBALL TEAM:

Takeaways: Tennessee baseball beats Texas A&M in Game 3 to win national championshiphttps://t.co/otnmFER5Td

— GoVols247 (@GoVols247) June 25, 2024

Congratulations @Volbaseball!!!! What a win. What a season! Go Vols!!! https://t.co/uknmi3Ld3I

— UT System President Randy Boyd (@UT_President) June 25, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

AS GOD AND ROBERT HEINLEIN INTENDED: Could we launch resources from the moon with electromagnetic railguns?

READER BOOK PLUG: From Randy Barnett A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist.

I MEAN, DO WE HAVE TO ASK?

Ask yourself whether the LAPD or the local politicians would have protected the victims here or even allowed this to occur if the victims’ ethnicity was of a more politically favored group. https://t.co/PJg5u3KAT8

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) June 24, 2024

where my family eat and shop – and brazenly terrorized Jewish Angelenos with impunity and without any consequence. 

These violent masked domestic terrorists bludgeoned Jews, vandalized synagogues, schools and stores, keyed cars, assaulted anyone who appeared Jewish …2/

— Sam Yebri (@samyebri) June 23, 2024

UPDATE:

The left destroyed Nick Sandmann’s life because he smiled at a protestor

Meanwhile, these people go unpunished https://t.co/uoJen3uYNH

— John Hasson (@SonofHas) June 24, 2024

There’s A Charlottesville Every Week, And Most Democrats Are Fine With It https://t.co/5vZlYsICfy

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) June 24, 2024

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: The Study of the Week Is A Study That Did Not Happen. “The main lessons of the cancelled RECOVER IV trial are hubris and dualities of interest. These lessons are key to understanding medical evidence.”

CDR SALAMANDER: Ethics & Ethical Failure in the Profession of Arms.

I THOUGHT WE HAD A DEAL: I Regret to Inform You That We Will All Grow Old, Infirm, and Unattractive.

But there’s a much deeper point here. Plus: “Our culture has abandoned any pretense of not worshiping youth, at this stage; go on social media and you’ll find 50-somethings lobbing insults at each other about being old, OK Boomer. There’s a complete collapse in the notion that aging is a natural and dignified thing, and a sweaty insistence on celebrating the young and instilling in them all of our hopes for renewal and justice, despite the fact that our actually-existing young people are afraid to talk to the cashier at McDonald’s. We’ve instilled our whole cultural space with the idea that to be old is shameful. So I’m not surprised that so many wander through life never contemplating the fact that, someday, they’re going to need to be taken care of again. Someday they’re going to experience “second childishness.” And people who have kids, in general and on average, are going to have a better support network than those who don’t.”

AI: There is a new clear best (non-tiny) LLM. If you want to converse with an LLM, the correct answer is Claude Sonnet 3.5.

REVIEW: The 2024 Lexus TX 500h Excels as a Classy People Mover.

AN INSTINCT FOR THE CAPILLARY: Biden Makes Gun Control a Focus of His Campaign.

ISN’T THE ORIGIN IN MYTHOLOGY: We’re (probably) wrong about origin of griffins.

I REMEMBER 2016 WHEN THE INTERNET ARCHIVE WAS USING THE FEAR OF “TRUMP CENSORSHIP” TO RAISE MONEY. NOW: Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers’ court win.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX deploys another round of Internet satellites.

HMM: Study: Brain and gut hold clues to resilient people.

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Having a Salena Zito Moment.

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FROM BOB GRABOYES: Post of Ripostes: Droll responses to comments on war, bigotry, astronomy, moonshine, and music.

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: The Day After Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow…

THE EV BUBBLE IS DEFLATING: As Fisker heads toward liquidation, creditors fight over assets: Fisker does ‘not currently anticipate being able to obtain financing.’

USA TODAY: Is Joe Biden’s bizarre behavior a GOP ‘cheap fake’? It’s up to him to prove that he’s OK. “Despite evidence that all is not well with the president, the White House is demanding the American people suspend reality and believe that Joe Biden’s decline is a GOP conspiracy.”

The same people telling us the video is fake told us the laptop was fake.

“LIBERATION” FROM PARENTS IS SUBJUGATION TO THE STATE: Children need ‘liberation’ from parents, scholar argues.