The new Bolt pestered me to connect to home Wi-Fi but refused to connect with whatever lower level of WPA I am using. Cell signal here is poor: topography and trees.

I just bought a 2027 Bolt. The local dealer had several in inventory, and they did not appear to be selling rapidly. Conjecture: people might be waiting for California's announced $3500 rebate program for first time EV buyers. I decided that definite availability was worth not waiting for the rebate, which by the time CARB gets through with the details, could take a while.

Purchase was straightforward, apart from being held hostage in a hot car for OnStar setup, where of course they misspelled my name, and which I don't want on a continuing basis. The Bolt specs adequate range for my needs, and is neither too long nor too wide. I considered a Kia EV6, but it's more expensive and a bit larger than I want.

Having been involved for 35 years in software updates for safety critical systems and high volume consumer products, I was worried when an OTA update announced on day 2, and then failed twice before installing. It eventually completed on the third try.

So far, so good. I have wanted an electric car since I saw the Baker described, maybe in a solar cell experiment kit that I bought around age 7. Optimistic note: a few months ago, some kid was running around making vehicle noises. I would have made race car and WW2 movie and military jet aircraft noises. He was going around making "vmmmmmm" electric motor noises.

OK the whole hormone thing is just a complete red herring. We're talking about the way to determine the sex of the individual. For which the only thing you need to know is, do they have XX chromosomes, in which case they're female, or XY, in which case they're male. That's all you need. If for whatever reason a male foetus has been exposed to very little testosterone during its development, it will probably have a lot of problems, but it will grow up to be a male with extremely undeveloped sexual characteristics. But still a male, not any non-binary nonsense. And what 'brain shape' has to do with anything, I'm still completely mystified.

Besides, as far as I can see gender dysphoria has very little to do with the amount of oestrogen/testosterone a person has. I remember recently taking a bus where the bus driver was wearing female clothes, and this was a huge, very male looking dude.

By definition, gender dysmorphia means you're one gender, but you feel like you're a different one. But if gender that you are can be determined unambiguously, and I've heard absolutely nothing that has persuaded me otherwise, that means what they're feeling is objectively different from reality, so by definition it's a delusion. A schizophrenic man sincerely and genuinely believes that the mole people from outer space are plotting to steal his memories or something. And I have absolutely no doubt that it really sucks to be this way. But you do not encourage the schizophenic's delusions.

This is starting to feel like one of those online discussions that goes around in circles and doesn't accomplish very much at all.

How long does it take it to train the thing to wash its waldos between cat box and dishwasher?

Both measures are relevant: watts for safe discharge rate, and watt hours for energy storage capacity. Given that this was from Bloomberg, the only units of measure that they grasp are dollars and time.

Noting also that 2 GW is around the combined capacity of the two reactor units at California's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

Long ago, we were on a family exploration drive somewhere outside of Houston. As kids, we were laughing at the wandering lane stripes as our dad was complaining about the generally poor road. Eventually, the dashed line painted over a smashed skunk, then dashed its way across the lane and onto the shoulder.

OK I've read all this and I'm still not seeing what these '17 types of brain' have to do with sex of the person in question.

By hormonal doses I imagine you mean testosterone and oestrogen? The production of those hormones is determined by the chromosomes of the person, i.e. by whether they're male or female. Males produce (more) testosterone, and women (more) oestrogen. Sex hormones produced by males and females will have some influence on various sexual characteristics, like male or female genitalia, ability to bear children for women (at least potentially), as well as secondary characteristics that result in sexual dimorphism. So for two women (who both have XX chromosomes, have female genitalia, can bear children etc), what does the 'shape of their brain' have to do with them being women? Maybe if you were to give a link to the study you're trying to reference it may make more sense.

That's just a complete non-sequitur. I believe I am the king of Atlantis. I desire to live in dignity and this belief is important for my sense of dignity, so for me, I'm right and everyone else should believe me. Having beliefs that are not based on reality is very dangerous. If other people insist on holding such beliefs, it's their problem but I have no intention of following them in their madness.

What does that have to do with anything? Everyone's brains are shaped differently in some way. A 'differently shaped brain' has never been seen as any kind of sexual characteristic as far as I'm aware. Even if it was, it would be very much a secondary sexual characteristic. This would be similar to claiming that being a very short man means you're in fact a woman or something else.

In that case, if you strongly feel something, even though this something is clearly objectively false, it's called a delusion. See for example the Capgras delusion where the sufferer believes that someone they know has been replaced with an identical looking impostor, or Cotard's syndrome where the affected person believes they're dead. What you do with patients suffering from delusions is you try to treat them as best you can. You do not try to convince everyone else that this delusion is in fact real.

Now, I'm not saying it was aliens, but ...

Wow, some of those look like the courses from 'Community' comedy series. Most of them though seem to be traditional courses - mainly sociology, media studies maybe, physics and mathematics with a gimmick based on some popular cultural thing. This could be one of those, maybe journalism or politics with a gimmick. Depends on what kind of constrainsts the course places on the type of content the students are allowed to generate to gain their followers.

If they do genuinely plan to teach people how to film memes and pranks, or the female students how to jiggle their boobs into the camera, then yeah this is one of the milestones in the collapse of the modern civilization.

Scientifically that's completely irrelevant. Hormones are hormones, and XX and XY are XX and XY. A very low-testosterone male is still a low-testosterone male, not a female, or whatever new gender you want to invent. Same for low oestrogen females.

I feel like the whole non-binary alphabet nonsense was borne of confusion between the biological reality of gender/sex and social/cultural idea of what a male / female is. As far as biological reality goes, it really simple, XX is female and XY is male. Social idea of what male/female is far far more messy, but historically tends towards a muscular square jawed defender/provider male and sexy caring/nurturing domestic female. That is of course influenced by typical hormonal makeup of males/females, but also there's lots of historical/political etc factors that define the social idea of what a male and a female is.

This means of course that social definition of male/female varies quite a lot between different cultures/time periods. As an example, it used to be totally socially acceptable for an Italian male to be interested in cooking and clothes while otherwise pretty closely conforming to the usual male social stereotype. There were/are cultures where dancing was/is a totally normal activity for males. OTOH there are cultures where long before the rise of feminism women in leadership positions were seen as, maybe not exactly common, but not unheard of, in contrast to other cultures where it's completely unthinkable. Also the cultures where women fighting in a war sometimes happened, one or two cultures where it was apparently even fairly commonplace, vs cultures who considered it totally inconceivable.

I have no statistics to confirm this but it feels like there are a lot more male-to female transvestites than female to male ones. I suspect one of the reasons is that for what socially would be considered non-typical women there are a lot of socially acceptable stereotypes - tomboy, one of the guys, tough career woman etc. A man with a non-typical hormonal makeup would usually be suspected of being gay, even if that's not the case.

So people are unable to understand this difference between biology and social expectations in their head. Or maybe unwilling to understand, because they want to be a typical woman rather than a non-typical man. So they instead start demanding that science and reality alter themselves to conform to their confusion. Often these are the exact same people who claim to support science in other areas, like climate change. And somehow in their head these people see no inconsistencies in their beliefs. The extent to which people can rationalise things will always amaze me.

It's a mating frenzy of giant rocks.

"Don't mention the war(s)."

I call him Dichromate Don.