DeadlyMuffin posted:

I agree you can't abandon it. I think if we do they just move onto the next thing, it isn't about sports at all.

When I was first coming out and dealing with arguments against trans people, I noticed that many of them don't actually make sense unless you take as a starting assumption that trans women aren't *really* women, and trans men aren't *really* men. I think that's true in the case of sports as well. Humans are not all biologically identical, but with the notable exception of weight classes in some sports, and gender, we don't try to further sort out people in sports to make the playing field more fair. We don't have a different volleyball division for people with long arms or high jumps, or a different basketball league for people over 6'6". If you remember when Michael Phelps was collecting gold medals in swimming there were articles talking about what a biological advantage he had in his body shape, arm length, etc. Not one of those articles talked about how it wasn't fair and he should be competing with other people like him.

The differences between trans and cis women when it comes to sports if any, is small, and we don't split the things up for tiny differences, so why do people get hung up on trans women in sports? Because we *do* segregate sports by gender, and they don't see trans women as *real* women. That's it.

Craig K posted:

like desantis is literally "trump on the social issues, if not louder, without the indictments", and if he's sitting at 30%

quote:

Consumer price growth cooled again in May to the lowest level since March 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.

On an annual basis, price growth fell to 4%. Price growth climbed just 0.1% month-over-month.

The reading was slightly better than economists' forecast of 4.1% — and down significantly from 4.9% rate in April. On a monthly basis, the forecast was for a 0.1% increase, lower than April's 0.4% reading.

The data shows that inflation — and the high prices that result from it — is finally starting to meaningfully come down.

Especially notable was lower growth in the price of services, like medical services and air travel. This is a key category the Federal Reserve has been watching because it's been the slowest to come down. For May, the "core" services category, excluding housing costs, fell from 5.1% to 4.6% year over year.

Declines were seen across the board — but food price growth continues to accelerate faster than other categories, climbing 6.7% overall year on year. Food-at-home prices rose 5.8% while prices for food away from home climbed 8.3%.

Nearly one year after inflation peaked at a 40-year high of more than 9%, analysts are now debating just how fast inflation will continue to fall.

In a note to clients Monday, economists at Citibank said workers' pay increases continue to be substantial at about 6% since March 2022. It's a pace, they say, that is "consistent with underlying price inflation stably around 4.5% to 5%."

Groceries are also continuing to see rapid increases. Prices for food ordered online climbed 8.2% over the past 12 months in May, according to data from the Adobe Digital Price Index, a separate reading unrelated to the inflation data published by the U.S. Labor Department.

While that metric is down from the 14.3% high last September, consumers are increasingly buying more of their groceries online, according to the Adobe data. As a result, the category has generally moved in lock step with the official Consumer Price Index.

Food prices are influenced by the same forces as other sectors, including higher wage costs, said Jayson Lusk, a professor and head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. In an interview, Lusk noted wages in the food service industry have jumped more than 20% for food and beverage retailers compared with pre-pandemic levels.

"The cost of agriculture relative to other costs for food is small; it's mainly labor, transportation, and real estate," Lusk said. "So if you're looking at causes, it's probably in those spaces."

Central bankers make their move next

The Federal Reserve is still hoping to cool the overall inflation rate to 2%. On Wednesday, it will announce its latest interest rate policy, and is expected to hold the key federal funds rate at about 5% following 10 consecutive rate hikes since March last year.

By making it more expensive to borrow and invest, the Fed hopes to reduce demand for goods and services in the economy.

Though mindful of the consumer impact of price increases, the Fed tends to discount changes in food and gas prices, which are usually volatile.

Instead, it is now focused on price increases in services like the cost of travel, which includes airfare and hotel expenses. Those continue to surge, which is likely to keep inflation elevated.

“[The] magnitude of [service] price increase has failed to slow enough to be comfortable that inflation is firmly on a path to 2%,” Joe Davis, chief global economist at Vanguard, and Andrew Patterson, a senior international economist at Vanguard, said in a statement. They pointed to ongoing increases in wages as one reason this measure has proven sticky.

"An easing in labor market pressures will be key in lowering this component," they wrote.

In a follow-up phone interview, Patterson noted employment in leisure and hospitality still has not reached pre-pandemic levels, which is causing pay in lower-wage industries to rise.

"It's taking longer than anticipated to resupply the workforce," Patterson said.

He added that if these workers continue to experience higher household inflation, they are more likely to demand higher wages.

"That dynamic will take time to change," Patterson said.

Barrel Cactaur posted:

The trans sports issue is bait to get older moderate women to go feels over reals. By equating women's sports with women's issues in general they hope that exaggerating the effect trans athletes have will trigger both a protect the kids and protect women's rights reaction from people who don't understand the issues.

celadon posted:

It’s also dumb that the baseline assumption is that trans women are better at sports at all and not significantly worse at sports. If they are 1% of the population and fall along a similar bell curve of skill and there are literally tens of thousands of competitive high school events a year across different sports you’d expect there to be hundreds of trans women getting first place all the time. And yet only like five stories show up, cogito ergo proxy, they actually are worse than one expects by chance. Issue resolved.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

GlyphGryph posted:

How does the (commercial) real estate collapse that is just getting going figure into all of this, I wonder?

quote:

Two Kelowna moms are speaking out after their 9-year-old daughter was verbally assaulted at a track and field event on Thursday at Kelowna's Apple Bowl.

The mothers, who choose not to identify their daughter, say she was competing in a shot-put event when a grandfather of one of the other participants started yelling at her.

"She went to step up to compete for the grade four shot-put final, and right before she went to throw, a grandfather of a student said, 'Hey, this is supposed to be a girls' event, and why are you letting boys compete.' My daughter is cisgender, born female, uses she/her pronouns. She has a pixie haircut," said mom Heidi Star.

Star says the man then carried on to demand certification to prove that her daughter was born female.

"He stopped the entire event. He also pointed at another girl who also had short hair. He then piped in and said, 'Well, if she is not a boy, then she is obviously trans.'"

Star said the man's wife then started calling her "a genital mutilator, a groomer, and a pedophile."

Central Okanagan School District superintendent Kevin Kaardal confirmed with Castanet that steps are being taken to ban the man from all school-related events.

"Staff intervened and actually moved the shot-put away from where he was. The gentleman was not a part of our school district. We are taking steps to ensure he is not able to be on our school property or attend events in the future."

Kaardal said the incident was "totally unacceptable."

"Adults need to govern themselves and behave appropriately," he added.

Kari Starr, the girl's other mother, says Thursday's events have rocked their daughter's confidence.

"This has destroyed our beautiful daughter's confidence, and she was inconsolably crying during this whole event and continued once it was over and we were leaving. Not to mention, she was unable to concentrate on her track and field finals and the shot-put throw for which she had qualified," Kari said.

The parents posted a photo and identity of the man on local Facebook groups, but Castanet is not publishing that information because the man's identity has not been confirmed by the school district.

Fister Roboto posted:

I think a lot of the sports "issue" has a lot to do with the extremely toxic, hyper-competitive way our society treats sports in general. It's not just a fun pastime or hobby, it's a whole dang career, and we basically teach kids that if they're not the best players and they don't get that scholarship then they're basically worthless losers. Given that environment, it makes "sense" to be concerned about even the slimmest advantage, but it's absolutely insane if you think that sports should just be fun.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

- The long-term economic outlook is still uncertain, but the rapid "V-shaped recovery" and major recession scenarios both seem very unlikely to happen now. It now looks like the U.S. economy will muddle along about where it is now with some mild improvement (barring some unforeseen catastrophic events) over the next year.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

That seems to be mixed news for both sides on the 2024 election. The economy is likely to continue to improve and avoid recession, but Americans generally feel bad about the economy, so will small improvements be enough to make them feel different?

marshmonkey posted:

Girl, 9, accused of being trans at Kelowna track meet

Mellow Seas posted:

Banned from school sports events? Fuckin’ bullshit. Canada doesn’t have a first amendment equivalent as far as I know, isn’t this something somebody could be arrested for? Holy poo poo.

zoux posted:

Please tell me this is not about the loving cat

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Good question, but nobody really seems to know for sure.

The rise of WFH seems to have really damaged commercial real estate and the businesses that rely on them, but the worst predictions haven't really come true yet. It also seems to be very divided by region. NYC commercial real estate seems to have been hit disproportionately harder than any other metro area and is still the only major metro area in the U.S. that hasn't fully recovered from the pandemic. Other major metro areas, like D.C. and Seattle, seem to have problems with commercial real estate declines, but not at the level that would impact the national economy.

quote:

Goldman Sachs
CEO David Solomon said Monday that his bank will disclose markdowns on commercial real estate holdings as the industry grapples with higher interest rates.

Solomon told CNBC’s Sara Eisen the New York-based firm will post impairments on loans and equity investments tied to commercial real estate in the second quarter. Financial firms recognize loan defaults and falling valuations as write-downs that affect quarterly results.

“There’s no question that the real estate market, and in particular commercial real estate, has come under pressure,” he said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “You’ll see some impairments in the lending that would flow through our wholesale provision” this quarter.

After years of low interest rates and lofty valuations for office buildings, the industry is in the throes of a painful adjustment to higher borrowing costs and lower occupancy rates due to the shift to remote work. Some property owners have walked away from holdings rather than refinancing their loans. Defaults have just begun to show up in banks’ results. Goldman posted almost $400 million in first-quarter impairments on real estate loans, according to Solomon.

On top of Goldman’s lending activities, it also took direct stakes in real estate as it ramped up its alternative investments in the last decade, Solomon said.

“We think that we and others are marking down those investments given the environment this quarter and in the coming quarters,” Solomon said.

While the write-downs are “definitely a headwind” for the bank, they are “manageable” in the context of Goldman’s overall business, he said.

They may be less manageable for smaller banks, however. About two-thirds of the industry’s loans are originated by regional and midsize institutions, Solomon said.

“That’s just something that we’re going to have to work through,” he said. “There’ll probably be some bumps and some pain along the way for a number of participants.”

In the wide-ranging interview, Solomon said he was “surprised” by the resiliency of the U.S. economy, and he was seeing “green shoots” emerge after a period of subdued capital markets activities.

GlyphGryph posted:

How would dodging the argument help? That means they get exposed to it constantly but in a way that twists everything to make it sound worse without any pushback at all.

If its the only argument a person cares about and its driving their view on trans issues, dodging it is the absolute last thing it seems like you'd want to do.

quote:

The Federal Trade Commission sought a restraining order Monday to block Microsoft from closing its $69 billion purchase of the gaming company Activision Blizzard, the latest regulatory hurdle for the largest deal in the tech company’s history.

The agency filed the request in Northern California District Court. The move brought the federal government and Microsoft’s months-long battle over the deal to federal court; the FTC last year filed a lawsuit challenging the deal through its own internal administrative process.

The FTC argues that the deal needs to be blocked to “maintain the status quo and prevent interim harm to competition” while its administrative process proceeds. Microsoft and the FTC are currently conducting depositions. Hearings are expected to begin in August.

The filing is a gamble for antitrust enforcers, who have recently suffered a series of setbacks in the courts to their efforts to restrain the power of large technology companies. If a judge denies the FTC’s request to block the deal, it would be a blow to its arguments in the parallel administrative proceedings.

Earlier this year, a judge in Northern California ruled against the agency when it attempted to block Facebook parent company Meta from acquiring the virtual reality company Within. Apple recently scored a win as a federal appeals court ruled that Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, failed to prove that Apple’s App Store policies constituted anticompetitive conduct in violation of federal antitrust laws. And a federal appeals court in April upheld a judge’s decision to dismiss a multistate antitrust lawsuit against Meta.

Microsoft president Brad Smith said he welcomed “the opportunity to present our case in federal court.” The deal is critical to the company’s ambitions in gaming, and it would give the Xbox maker control of popular titles including “Call of Duty.”

“We believe accelerating the legal process in the U.S. will ultimately bring more choice and competition to the market,” he said.

The FTC warned that if Microsoft were able to consummate the deal, it would be able to “begin altering Activision’s operations and business plans, accessing Activision’s sensitive business information, eliminating key Activision personnel, changing Activision’s game development efforts, and entering into new contractual relationships on behalf of Activision.”

The FTC has argued that the Activision deal would give Microsoft the ability to thwart competitors by withholding these games from competing game systems entirely, or by manipulating pricing and degrading game quality on rival consoles. It also has warned that it could give Microsoft an unfair advantage in the nascent field of cloud gaming, which allows gamers to stream titles to consoles, phones or other devices.

Microsoft is appealing a decision in the United Kingdom to block the deal, following similar concerns that the merger would give Microsoft an unfair upper hand in cloud gaming. The European Union, however, gave the deal a green light, after Microsoft made an agreement to license “Call of Duty” and other popular Activision games free to other cloud gaming providers.

Boris Galerkin posted:

If these assholes had any braincells then right about now would be a good time for them to band together to finally oust king rear end in a top hat by controlling the media narrative (especially in right wing circles) to push how king rear end in a top hat is a traitor.

shoeberto posted:

I really wonder how much it's projective for people who have some level of gender dysphoria that makes them deeply uncomfortable to acknowledge. It's been such a consistent thing we've seen with all of these backlashes. There's just no reason to give a poo poo unless it touches a nerve in some particular way.

marshmonkey posted:

Not America (Canada) but it might as well be:

https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/431500/Girl-9-accused-of-being-trans-at-Kelowna-track-meet

Girl, 9, accused of being trans at Kelowna track meet

quote:

Star did file a report with the RCMP but was told that since they were not called in to witness what was happening, there is nothing they can do about it.

Willa Rogers posted:

Solomon is warning of markdowns in the sector:

In other words, get ready for more bailouts/buyouts for smaller lenders.

I don't think I've heard the phrase "green shoots" used since the Obama years.

Mellow Seas posted:

Seems like a prisoner’s dilemma type of situation.

A really, really stupid one but nevertheless.

Mellow Seas posted:

Seems like a prisoner’s dilemma type of situation.

A really, really stupid one but nevertheless.

Fister Roboto posted:

I think a lot of the sports "issue" has a lot to do with the extremely toxic, hyper-competitive way our society treats sports in general. It's not just a fun pastime or hobby, it's a whole dang career, and we basically teach kids that if they're not the best players and they don't get that scholarship then they're basically worthless losers. Given that environment, it makes "sense" to be concerned about even the slimmest advantage, but it's absolutely insane if you think that sports should just be fun.

Adenoid Dan posted:

We don't need to concede that it is up for debate.

We end the discussion by saying trans people are human beings with the same rights, and the right to engage in social activity like sport is not something we are willing to concede.

We don't get into arguments that litigate what areas of life it is acceptable to block people from.

GlyphGryph posted:

Sure, you can do that, if you want to start with a losing argument, make yourself look ignorant, and possibly cast yourself in opposition to sports gender segregation on the whole, which is going to be incredibly counterproductive if your goal is actual trans acceptance. But yes, you can do that, just realize you are going to be causing harm to the actual goals of most transfolk if you do.

I don't know why you'd make that argument and create points of friction where none need to exist (reaffirming conservative rhetoric and ceding to conservative framing on the issue in the process) when you have other much more effective ones that don't do that, though.

GlyphGryph posted:

Sure, it sucks. But retreating and ceding huge swathes of ground to the conservative framing of the issues is not a good rhetorical strategy and serves no ones actual interests here, and the fact that you are arguing that we should is, frankly, confusing.

Also, denying that you're making an argument to defend your argument just reinforces the idea that you either don't know what you're talking about or something worse, which, again, not a particularly rhetorically effective approach.

Fister Roboto posted:

This is not something that can be won in the realm of polite debate. People don't change their minds because someone presented a reasonable persuasive argument, at least not in any numbers significant to effect real societal change.