I posted the following images on Facebook with no words other than “A walk to the bookstore in Brookline, Massachusetts..” (neglected to include a third period for the ellipsis)
The results were far more dramatic than I had expected. Let’s look at only the comments on a single photo:
Don Hopkins, a software engineer old enough to have worked at Sun Microsystems, kicked off the thread:
(I don’t know anything about Lulu DeParis. I think that she lives in Maskachusetts, but this may not be her real name. And, in fact, I don’t know with any certainty that Lulu DeParis is a she, other than the inference from the name “LuLu”.)
The thread continued despite nobody having any idea why “LuLu” had reacted to the photo (maybe it was a mistake?).
The software expert says “obviously she wanted…”:
I unwisely offer an explanation of why pictures relating to Rainbow Flagism are interested (“Never complain, never explain”, said the pre-Islamic British, and how right they were!):
Don Hopkins then trots out a hero/heroine of transgenderism from the world of nerds. Seth Gordon, a Maskachusetts-based software engineer (his/her/zir/their profile says “Studied Women’s Studies Minor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)”), chimes in with the assumption that the residents of Maskachusetts are, indeed, as intelligent as they claim to be:
I point out that folks in MA set up COVID-tagged death rate as the measure of a group’s intelligence and, by that metric, the residents of MA are not intelligent. The reference to a transistor nerd, of any gender ID, gives me an opening to cite William Shockley:
Don Hopkins doesn’t seem to read the “Classically” part of my statement as referring to the dark past and also “a person” as applying to 100 percent of those who are gender-confused:
Don produces some pictures from the late 1970s when VLSI design rules were fat (3000 nm (“3 microns”) vs. 3 nm today) and electrical engineers were thin:
What is the opposite of being a “hateful bully”? Going back to all of someone’s recent Facebook posts and asking “do you hate gay people as much as you hate trans people? Why or why not?”:
He posted the same question as a comment on this post, which is literally about the weather:
(My response: “I certainly hate whoever was responsible for the steady rain and high-30s temps that afflicted me during my April visit to Boston!”)
I’m sure that Don Hopkins’s opinions of me are substantially correct, but I do find it interesting that pictures, without comment, of the righteous lifestyle are so upsetting to the righteous. You’d think that they’d be proud of their Rainbow-/mask-enhanced streetscapes.
Tonight, an event to which I was invited by email:
Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County warmly invites you to the Inaugural Community-Wide Pride Shabbat, a joyous celebration of Jewish values.
Here’s the page header:
In order to dispel any rumors that children are the targets of Pride events, kids 10 and younger are encouraged to attend via a fee waiver.
Let’s circle back to “a joyous celebration of Jewish values”. Unless End-stage American Judaism is Rainbow Flagism, what is the “Jewish value” within the World of Pride?
See also “The Bible on Homosexual Behavior”, 2015, by a Catholic scholar, on Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. And here’s Google AI on the intersection between Jewcraft and transgenderism:
In Orthodox Judaism, gender reassignment surgery is generally not permitted, as it is interpreted to be a violation of the laws against castration and alteration of the body. Leviticus 22:24, which prohibits offering sacrifices with “anything which is mauled, crushed, torn or cut,” is extended to cover human castration. Additionally, Leviticus 19:28 prohibits making “gashes in your flesh for the dead or incise any marks on yourselves,” which is interpreted as a prohibition against altering the body.
(Leviticus is generally understood by Jews to forbid tattoos, e.g., the noble Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s full set of not-in-any-way-linked-to-MS-13 hand and arm tattoos.)
Today is the big day for the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County:
Here’s the organization’s “Inclusivity Statement”:
Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County embraces a culture of diversity and inclusivity in accordance with our Jewish values. We celebrate the uniqueness of our community members, lay partners and staff as varied perspectives enrich our learning and reinforce our commitment to making the world a better place. We aim to create an accessible environment that accommodates individual needs and welcomes the full participation of our community. Learn more at jewishpb.org/inclusivity.
I’m wondering why attending a Pride parade is a specifically Jewish activity, especially in light of Leviticus 20:13. My conclusion is that the Sacred Rainbow Flag is to modern-day Jews (at least the non-Deplorables) what the Golden Calf was to ancient Israelites.
— Palm Beach Schools Police Department (@PBSchoolsPD) March 30, 2025
Here’s a T-shirt from the “Jewish Dems” and, apparently, the trans-enhanced rainbow flag is something everyone at the intersection of Judaism and the Democratic Party could agree on back in 2023:
Got my @USJewishDems swag just in time for the Palm Beach County Pride Parade this weekend! I’m sure I’ll see many other Jewish Dems there. Make sure to say hi! pic.twitter.com/5kjDYcvyxu
Happy International Women’s Day to those who celebrate.
A January 7, 2025 post from the suburb of Boston where we used to live:
History was made today in Lincoln. Town Clerk Valerie Fox swore in Sergeant Jennifer McNaught as the newest member of the department. Sgt. McNaught becomes the first woman supervisor in the department’s history.
More than 60 years after second wave feminism made it through the United States, the righteous progressive town finally appoints a female to a position of responsibility. Why admit being this late to the feminism party? (Also, if the town has been working for years on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, & Anti-Racism (“IDEA”, not the discredited “DEI”) why are both of the employees in the photo white? They wanted to hire some non-white people, but couldn’t find anyone qualified?)
Massachusetts progressives love to talk about how stupid, racist, and sexist folks in Alabama are, for example, yet Birmingham, Alabama appointed Annetta Nunn captain in 1995 (CBS) and police chief for the whole city in 2003. If we assume the “captain” job in Alabama is comparable to the “supervisor” job in Maskachusetts, it took the progressives of Lincoln, MA 30 years to catch up to the people whom they enjoy characterizing as primitive and prejudiced.
Closing out February with a reminder that this month is host to Valentine’s Day….
From our local “5th Grade Gifted Science Teacher” (Florida state law requires that public school systems offer gifted education beginning in 2nd grade):
I am writing to all parents to remind you that our class is having a Valentine Exchange this Friday. I sent home a bright pink flyer 2 weeks ago with the information and class list needed if your child wanted to participate. It is optional. I am writing because I have seen many of my students who did not show you the flyer as it is still in their yellow folder. If your child chooses to participate, he/she is required to bring one for each child in the class. Your child can also bring Valentines for friends in other classes if they choose.
Additionally, our class is having a Valentine Box Design contest. The child with the most creative box will win prizes that I have purchased. There will be a first, second and third place winner. Again, it is optional, and those children who opt out will receive a bag to place their Valentine’s. You can send in a class treat if you would like. After we pass out the Valentines, we will be watching a movie.
Please ask for the pink flyer if you have not seen it yet. Thank you.
From a high school administrator in the Washington, DC area:
Join us February 14th for a fun Valentines event, hosted by the LGBTQ+ Allies Club. We’ll play some mini games and introduce you to the mission of the club.
Circling back to Florida, the Valentine Exchange is more 2SLGBTQQIA+-oriented than what we had growing up in Bethesda, Maryland. Kids here in Florida are required, if they want to participate at all, to bring a card for every other member of the class, regardless of gender ID, and are forbidden from writing anything personal in any card. A boy, therefore, must present other boys with cards if he is to present any girls with cards. In 1970s Bethesda, we chose which other members of the class to give cards to and wrote whatever we wanted. Each card always went to a member of the opposite sex, as far as I can remember (there were no “gender IDs” back then so “opposite sex” was a defined term).
An elite Californian posted with satisfaction a state-sponsored NPR story about how stupid people in Louisiana were, especially with respect to the mpox vaccine. I decided to see if ChatGPT had advice regarding avoiding mpox (not to be conflated with the racist “monkeypox virus”, which is the cause).
Prompt 1: Is there any lifestyle change that I could adopt to minimize my risk of catching mpox?
ChatGPT gives a one-page answer and the only reference to sex is “Use condoms and consider other barrier methods during sexual activity”.
Prompt 2: You mention “sexual activity”. Is there any particular kind of sexual activity that is more likely to result in contracting mpox?
ChatGPT gives a one-page answer that doesn’t hint at the type of person or group that might be infected.
Prompt 3: You say “If you are in a community experiencing an mpox outbreak or belong to a group at higher risk”. What would be an example of a “group at higher risk”?
ChatGPT gives a 1.5-page answer, buried within which is the phrase “Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM)”
Prompt 4: If a person is a man who has sex with men and wants to avoid mpox, should he stop having sex with men?
ChatGPT gives a 1.5-page answer that can be summarized as “no”, but does note that “Reducing the number of sexual partners can lower the risk of exposure.”
Prompt 5: Would it make sense for public health officials to ban group sex activities by men who have sex with men in order to minimize mpox spread?
ChatGPT responds that this would not be “ethical” (but it is ethical to close schools to minimize viral spread?).
Prompt 6: You say that men who have sex with men should “Limit the Number of Partners”. Would 365 partners per year be a sensible limit?
ChatGPT gives a rambling response that includes “Quality Over Quantity: Engaging with partners you know and trust may reduce risk.” and “Regular screening is essential but becomes logistically challenging with such a high partner count.”
Prompt 7: What’s your best guess as to a sensible number of partners, assuming that the partners are screened for mpox and that these are high quality partners (people that the man who has sex with men knows and trusts)?
The full response below says that 50-100 sex partners per year is a sensible lifestyle when trying to avoid mpox infection and obtain “meaningful connections” with those sex partners.
The “sensible” number of sexual partners is subjective and depends on individual circumstances, preferences, and the quality of risk-reduction practices. If partners are screened for mpox, and relationships are built on trust and open communication, a more moderate number of partners would generally balance health and personal satisfaction while minimizing risks.
Factors to Consider
Screening and Trust:
Regular screening for mpox and other infections reduces risk significantly.
Knowing and trusting partners helps ensure mutual openness about symptoms, exposure risks, and health status.
Frequency of Contact:
The number of partners should align with your ability to maintain safe practices (e.g., vaccination, symptom monitoring) and your emotional and physical capacity.
Public Health Context:
During active mpox outbreaks, even with high-quality partners, limiting the number of partners reduces overall exposure.
A Sensible Number
A reasonable estimate might range from 1 to 2 partners per week, translating to 50–100 partners per year under optimal conditions (e.g., vaccination, trust, and symptom screening). Here’s why:
This frequency allows for meaningful connections and sufficient time to assess and manage any health risks.
It strikes a balance between an active sex life and maintaining lower cumulative risk.
Key Takeaways
The number itself is less important than the quality of interactions and the consistency of risk-reduction practices:
Stay vaccinated against mpox and other preventable infections.
Monitor for symptoms regularly.
Communicate openly about health and risks with partners.
By prioritizing safety and communication, individuals can maintain an active sex life while minimizing health risks.
I wonder if anyone told the happy couples in the article that “have children” is a process that, with the best current technology, can be rushed only to a certain extent.
Here’s a choice portion of the article:
They are one of many gay couples in recent weeks who are rushing to get married, start fertility treatments and take other measures out of fear that some of their rights might be rescinded during a second Trump administration.
The Party of Science believes that there is an effective “fertility treatment” for when Ben and Adam are trying to have a baby together?
If Oshkosh is a typical Wisconsin city, we can infer from the signage at the local office of the Democrats that Rainbow Flagism is their #1 concern. Photos from July:
What else did we find downtown? A person reduced to sleeping in a doorway:
I’m wondering if this is evidence for my theory that expressing support for 2SLGBTQQIA+ is popular because one need not reduce one’s personal standard of living in order to assist the purportedly unfortunate. See Is LGBTQIA the most popular social justice cause because it does not require giving money? (In point of fact, we did not hear anyone expressing an anti-2SLGBTQQIA+ point of view during the entire week that we were in Oshkosh.)
This is one of the many luxuries of being a Democrat, I think. One can consider oneself an advocate for the unfortunate while walking past a homeless person on the way to the rainbow flag store.
Separately, here’s an article on the new passion among young educated Democrats in Wisconsin:
Students at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee joined the wave of protests occurring at campuses across the United States to support Palestinian liberation, speak out against Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 30,000 people and to urge their universities to cut ties with Israel.
Dahlia Saba, a member of UW-Madison’s Students for Justice in Palestine and a first-year graduate student at UW-Madison, said the protest aims to clearly communicate student demands to UW-Madison administrators. Those demands, posted on Instagram, include divestment from Israel, disclosing all investments by the UW Foundation and cutting ties with Israeli institutions.
Saba, who is Palestinian-American, said that she has been paying attention to the “huge injustices perpetrated against the Palestinian people” for much of her life. She said that she has family members who were recently evacuated from Gaza.
Samer Alatout, UW-Madison associate professor, said he was at the protest to support students and celebrate student movements. He said the actions represent a “sea change” and students were claiming a right to have a role in managing and governing the university, including its ethics.
Although both of these women were awarded Iron Crosses by Adolf Hitler, only Hanna was an enthusiastic supporter of National Socialism. The aeronautical engineer and disciplined test pilot Melitta survived until just three weeks before the end of the war so we’ll never know what she would have accomplished in the world of civilian aviation. Much of her work was on instruments and systems for flying at night and in bad weather, so she likely would have done valuable work in the Jet Age.
During the war, Hanna had lost her nerve only once. This was during a morale-boosting visit to the Russian Front:
No sooner had she reached the first German ack-ack position than the Russians started a heavy bombardment. ‘Automatically everyone vanished into the ground, while all around us the air whistled and shuddered and crashed,’ she wrote. After their own guns had pounded out their reply, a formation of enemy planes began to bomb the Wehrmacht position. ‘I felt, in my terror, as though I wanted to creep right in on myself,’ Hanna continued. ‘When finally to this inferno were added the most horrible sounds of all, the yells of the wounded, I felt certain that not one of us would emerge alive. Cowering in a hole in the ground, it was in vain that I tried to stop the persistent knocking of my knees.’
(The above suggests that Israel could have brought the Gaza fighting to a swift conclusion if it had used 155mm artillery to attack Hamas-held positions rather than high-tech drones and other precision munitions that have convinced Palestinians that war with the IDF is a manageable lifestyle (in a June 2024 poll, the majority of Palestinians wanted to continue fighting against Israel (Reuters)). The initial death toll among civilians would have been higher, but the long-term death toll might have been lower if the IDF fought intensively enough to motivate Gazans to surrender, release their hostages, and rat out Hamas members.)
Hanna had friends with direct knowledge of the German death camp system and had seen photographs, taken by Russians, of the Majdanek extermination camp (captured in July 1944). The reports and the photos, however, did not change her views regarding the overall merits of the Nazi system. Regarding the concentration camps, the book covers another “breaking the glass ceiling” angle:
Buchenwald covered an immense site, but its hundreds of barracks were overflowing with thousands of starving prisoners. The camp was ‘indescribably filthy’, one Stauffenberg cousin noted, and ‘there was always an air of abject misery and cruelty’. Female SS guards carried sticks and whips with which they frequently beat prisoners, especially if orders – given solely in German – were not obeyed immediately.
While the concentration and extermination camps were being overrun, Hanna was one of the last Germans to spend time with Hitler, flying into Berlin in April 1945 and landing a Fieseler Storch right next to the bunker.
In that instant Hanna decided that, if Greim stayed, she would also ask Hitler for the ultimate privilege of remaining with him. Some accounts even have her grasping Hitler’s hands and begging to be allowed to stay so that her sacrifice might help redeem the honour of the Luftwaffe, tarnished by Göring’s betrayal, and even ‘guarantee’ the honour of her country in the eyes of the world.49 But Hanna may have been motivated by more than blind honour. She had worked hard to support the Nazi regime through propaganda as well as her test work for the Luftwaffe, and there is no doubt that both she and Greim identified with Hitler’s anti-Semitic world view and supported his aggressive, expansionist policies. Hanna ‘adored Hitler unconditionally, without reservations’, Traudl Junge, one of the female secretaries in the bunker, later wrote. ‘She sparkled with her fanatical, obsessive readiness to die for the Führer and his ideals.’
In another example of how the Israelis might have defeated Hamas, the author notes that even a German-built underground bunker isn’t a practical refuge against sustained shelling.
Over the next few days, the Soviet army pushed through Berlin until they were within artillery range of the Chancellery. Hanna spent much of her time in Greim’s sickroom. Sometimes she dozed on the stretcher that had carried him in, but essentially she was a full-time nurse, washing and disinfecting his wound every hour, and shifting his weight to help reduce the pain. Any sustained sleep was now impossible as the bunker shook, lights flickered and even on the lower floor, fifty feet below ground, mortar fell from the eighteen-inch-thick walls.
Hanna escaped at the end of April 1945, flying as a passenger with Robert Ritter von Greim and his personal pilot. Hanna was captured by the Allies and interrogated by Eric Brown, a British pilot, and Americans interested in Germany’s advanced weapons.
‘Although she was reluctant to admit this,’ [Eric Brown] later wrote, it soon became evident that Hanna had never flown the plane under power, but only ‘to make production test flights from towed glides’.
To Eric it was clear that Hanna’s ‘devotion for Hitler was total devotion’. ‘He represented the Germany that I love,’ she told him. Hanna also denied the Holocaust. When Eric told her that he had been at the liberation of Belsen, and had seen the starving inmates and piles of the dead for himself, ‘she pooh-poohed all this. She didn’t believe it … She didn’t want to believe any of it.’ Such denial was painful for them both, but Eric found that ‘nothing could convince her that the Holocaust took place’. Hanna was, he concluded, a ‘fanatical aviator, fervent German nationalist and ardent Nazi’. Above all, he later wrote, ‘the fanaticism she displayed in her attitude to Hitler, made my blood run cold’.
When the Americans organized a press conference for her to publicly repeat her denunciation of Hitler’s military and strategic leadership, she instead defiantly asserted that she had willingly supported him, and claimed she would do the same again.
The only woman among the leaders awaiting trial, she was soon particularly close to Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, the regime’s former finance minister. Having enjoyed long conversations ‘about everything’, she told him she could ‘feel your thoughts steadily in me, stronger than any words’. When she learnt that her brother Kurt had survived the war, she proudly wrote to him that for many months she had been ‘sitting behind barbed wire, surrounded by the most worthy German men, leaders in so many fields. The enemy have no idea what riches they are giving me.’
The Americans seemed unsure how to classify Hanna. In December 1945 they had recorded that she was ‘not an ardent Nazi, nor even a Party member’. Other memos listed her optimistically as a potential goodwill ambassador or even ‘possible espionage worker’. Hanna’s celebrity, and close connections with former Luftwaffe staff and others once high up in Nazi circles, made her a potentially valuable asset ‘with the power to influence thousands’. But her stated desire to promote ‘the truth’ was never translated into action. Eventually they decided to keep her under surveillance in an intelligence operation code-named ‘Skylark’. The hope was that she might inadvertently lead them to former members of the Luftwaffe still wanted for trial. Hanna started receiving her ‘highly nationalistic and idealistic’ friends as soon as she was released. To pre-empt criticism, she cast herself as a victim. She ‘had a worse time [in US captivity] than the people in concentration camps!’ the pilot Rudi Storck wrote in a letter that was intercepted.
Hanna knew about this surveillance and even asked US intelligence to give her a new car when her Fiat sports car broke down (we did give her the car!). It’s a little unfair to blame Hanna for thinking that the main thing that the Nazis did wrong was to lose the war:
Among the national surveys that followed in West Germany, one from 1951 found that only 5 per cent of respondents admitted any feeling of guilt concerning the Jews, and only one in three was positive about the assassination plot.
How effective are trained psychologists?
Although acquitted in 1947, [SS officer] Skorzeny had been kept at Darmstadt internment camp to go through what he called ‘the denazification mill’.52 Hanna had been the first person he visited while on parole. Skorzeny escaped the following summer, eventually arriving in Madrid where he founded a Spanish neo-Nazi group.
Hanna’s two-month visit to India in 1959:
She loved the warmth of her reception, gave frequent talks on the spiritual experience of silent flight, and developed proposals for glider training with the Indian air force. She was also thrilled with what she called ‘the lively interest in Hitler and his achievements’ that she claimed to receive ‘all over India’.68 The cherry on the cake came when the ‘wise Indian Prime Minister’, Jawaharlal Nehru, requested she take him soaring. Hanna and Nehru stayed airborne for over two hours, Nehru at times taking the controls. It was a huge PR coup, widely reported across the Indian press. The next morning Hanna received an invitation to lunch with Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi.
She was also warmly received in the U.S.:
In 1961 Hanna returned to the USA at the suggestion of her old friend, the aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun, who was now working at NASA. She often claimed to have refused post-war work with the American aeronautics programme on the basis that it would have been the ultimate betrayal of her country.† Braun felt differently, and occasionally tried to persuade Hanna to change her mind. ‘We live in times of worldwide problems,’ he had written to her in 1947. ‘If one does not wish to remain on the outside, looking in, one has to take a stand – even if sentimental reasons may stand in the way of coming clean. Do give it some thought!’
While in the States, Hanna also took the opportunity to join glider pilots soaring over the Sierra Nevada, and to meet the ‘Whirly Girls’, an international association of female helicopter pilots. As the first woman to fly such a machine, she found she had the honour of being ‘Whirly Girl Number One’. It was with the Whirly Girls that Hanna was invited to the White House, meeting President Kennedy in the Oval Office. A group photo on the lawn shows her in an enveloping cream coat with matching hat and clutch, standing slightly in front of her taller peers. Her smile is once again dazzling; she felt validated. In interviews she revealed that Kennedy had told her she was a ‘paradigm’, and should ‘never give up on bringing flying closer to people’.
She came back to the U.S. in the 1970s:
She tactfully did not attend the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, and does not seem to have commented on the murder of the eleven Israeli athletes. The highlight of that year for her was a return to America, where she was honoured in Arizona, and installed as the first female member of the prestigious international Society of Experimental Test Pilots. She could hardly have been happier, sitting in a hall of 2,000 people, discussing a possible new ‘Hanna Reitsch Cup’ with Baron Hilton. Back in Germany, she was now receiving hundreds of letters and parcels from schoolchildren as well as veterans, and even became an ambassador for the German section of Amnesty International. ‘There are millions in Germany who love me,’ she claimed, before adding, ‘it is only the German press which has been told to hate me. It is propaganda helped by the government … They are afraid I might say something good about Adolf Hitler. But why not?’
What’s Amnesty International up to lately? Since October 7, 2023, at least, tweeting out a continuous stream of support for one side in the Gaza fighting. Example:
