Oh look, it’s me! I found out a few years ago that I have De La Chapelle syndrome. I’m actually a trans woman though and not a guy, so I consider it a bonus rather than a downside since it made me have very little testosterone growing up.
Gender being a social construct makes defining it very wonky. This question the right is always asking to ‘‘define what a woman is’’ is really easy to fuck up. Is it chromozones? There is FAR more than two chromosomal makeups, in advanced lab classes that learn to test for chromosomal makeup, students are forbidden to test themselves, any classmate, and any family, because it’s almost certain that one of those people will not be XX or XY, it’s not that uncommon. So chromosomal sexing necessitates more than one gender, or rather fluid gender identity. It’s it the sex organs? Oh no, you won’t like this one, is it functioning sex organs or just any? What do we do with intersex people? They can’t fit into one category by definition, then there’s men who have kids, who think of themselves as men, who find out they have a uterus! And its mentrating! What to do what to do. There’s a lot of men with half testicle half ovary sex organs, are they men? Well not if we go by sex organs now you need a bigger section of category because sex organs don’t fit into two columns, it’s far more complicated. So what do we do! general anatomy? Modern human biologists have a lot of data saying there’s such a thing as a male typical brain, and a female typical brain, how fun! Maybe that will work, sure, but now you have to accept there literally are women trapped in male bodies and vis versa. So again, you need to be fluid with your gender definitions.
Every single metric biological data can provide all point to the same truth, there are not two simple columns where humans can be neatly placed that won’t cause a lot of people to be miserable, misunderstood, or maligned for not fitting either concept.
Basic biology is clear. We are a VERY complicated species.
So let’s just look at anthropology. Did any human civilizations NOT have two genders? Yeah A LOT of them. And even today we have examples. Anciently, Hebrews had 9 genders I think? Jesus mentions 5 genders. He dosen’t seem to have any problem with them existing either. Well… it looks like we’re not the first people to find out that binary gender isn’t the only option.
Last time I looked there wasn’t anything particularly associated with being queer, but the sample set of people who both have this and know that they do is pretty small so who knows! Could be, and we could just be missing the data. Or they could both be correlated with some other factor
I found out because I was doing genetic work to test for Ehlers Danlos and I’d gotten my entire genome sequenced, so I figured I’d look for other stuff as well. I’ve suspected for a few years now that I’ve got some sort of intersex condition for a while because of very low testosterone and a weirdly fast transition, but finally got the confirmation earlier this week and wow my genetics are kinda a mess. Tbh I’m amazed that my code actually compiled XD
Yeah, as I commented elsewhere, I’m damn impressed my code managed to compile and run. I guess life has a pretty fault-tolerant compiler at times, or maybe I was just super lucky to not have the errors be in spots that’d completely screw me over.
That would be the laryngeal nerve. It’s been with us vertebrates for a long time.
I take your, “for zero reason,” to indicate that it’s silly that it’s so long in a giraffe. And it is, because it connects the larynx and the brain, two bits that aren’t very far apart. You’d never design it that way from scratch.
But the laryngeal nerve’s length has a reason: it loops around the heart and it developed in our fish-like ancestors. At that time, it wasn’t silly for the nerve to wrap around the heart, because fish don’t have necks and thus the nerve was about the same length whether it wrapped around the heart or not. As necks developed, evolution found it easier to lengthen the nerve than to reroute it. So here we and giraffes both exist, having much longer laryngeal nerves than you’d engineer if you were making us from scratch.
Also interesting in that regard Androgen insensitivity syndrome: Despite different root causes, it is something of the opposite of Chapelle syndrome. People who possess XY chromosomes, but possess female genitalia.
I really feel for the inevitable handful of trans men with Androgen Insensitivity syndrome. Imagine how bad it’d be if you were born with the wrong body, and couldn’t change it through hormones - it’d be an actual nightmare.
real wasabi root is a bitch to farm, so if you buy wasabi paste and it’s not expensive, or if someone serves you more than a tiny dollop of it, it’s probably actually horseradish paste with wasabi root extract.
not that it matters, clearly people enjoy the horseradish paste.
Real wasabi paste sounds like a poor value, wasabi doesn’t age too gracefully when grated and you’d presumably pay a markup for the packaging and grating
For those who live in areas with good Japanese grocery stores, I highly recommend looking for some rhizomes and grating it at home. Super easy, less than $10 for several servings, and lasts a couple weeks. If anyone is interested but doesn’t wanna Google it, feel free to reply or DM me and I can send my grater/process.
There are a lot of foods that aren’t quite as good out of their home country, but American grown wasabi is excellent. I’ve had someone tried to gatekeep me but like, I coincidentally am very into sushi and am reasonably friendly with a couple ***/Tabelog gold sushi chefs that I visit when in town, some of the best in the world with access to the highest quality ingredients. I’m not eating the wasabi directly but I can’t tell a difference between theirs and the American one from half moon bay. It’s definitely worth trying if it’s available in your area, you aren’t missing anything by doing it yourself and it takes minutes.
Fresh wasabi is available at one of the stores near me very occasionally and it's always been $99.99/lb.
I buy it every time it's available. You only buy a little, so it usually works out to something like eight or ten bucks for a good few servings. Not really expensive at all.
Yeah that’s exactly the price of mine too! A lot of people talk about how expensive it is, but it’s definitely cheaper than high quality fish which can cost as much or per pound, and you need a lot more than just a small rhizome.
Well yeah, but you can get cheap fish for less than the wasabi. I meant more like, if you’re gonna spend some money on higher quality ingredients, may as well spend $8 for wasabi.
Most of the seasoning for sushi can be had for cheap and would still taste good, thankfully. Wasabi is more an undertone anyway
Not to mention that those tryhards going full weeboo on gatekeeping are ignoring various other “heretical” facts of sushi’s founding people, like: it’s fine to add just about anything you feel like to it. Oh, is krab™ in poor taste? What about ice cream? Snack chips? I mean, FFS, the Japanese have built a global reputation for taking a concept and improving on its efficiency or efficacy or both, all the while these scrote-bearded trogs are pinching their puds to dreams of katanas and isekai redemption. 🤪
Yep. I’m a little too deep into sushi and it’s pretty funny that people will gatekeep ingredients.
The ingredients that Edomae chefs now use are extremely traditional. Essentially every single one was for food safety, not taste. Vinegar, wasabi, and sake in nikiri are all meant to prevent food-borne illness. The red rice vinegar used at high end restaurants was originally used because it was cheap. Fish is obviously readily available. Edomae chefs now use them because they prefer the taste— which I’ll agree with, I make it the same way— not because it’s sacrilege not to. Every one of the top chefs can tell you the history of sushi as a stall food meant to be accessible.
Even crotchety Jiro, who might chastise you for using soy sauce, deviates from tradition by using exclusively white vinegar and adding sugar. Yet the same gatekeepers love that guy (until you reach the super gatekeepers who are too cool for him because he got famous).
Sushi superiority is truly insane to me. I wonder if some assholes back then looked down on the “peasants” for trying to extend the shelf life of their food.
Sorry this comment is so long, I’m way too deep into this. It’s funny, two chefs I know are top five in Japan (thus, some would say, the world), respected beyond belief, and on my first visits they stayed well after close to talk to the dumb foreigner who wanted to improve his at home sushi. One doesn’t speak English and has one of his apprentices translate between us. I guess when you get far enough into sushi, you feel the need to ramble about it.
Yes. This looks like how I start my minecraft houses as a stock functional 4-walls-rooms and then start doing many smaller additions or removals to make them fit the flow of the environment or at least not look like a modern apartment block.
Yup. Prime option to put out a little terrace or a roof window where you can ground yourself with the roof in peripheral vision while looking at a nice vista.
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