First things first: Many apologies. I have been sprinting through the days since the weekend. My main freelance client moves into red-zone mode around this time, and I’ve been workin’, friends. Plus, the primary election is next week, and I’m set to be a poll worker again. So a few minutes here feels precious, although it’s not really. Today will be chill. I slept in and plan to hit the gym in a bit. But first: A blog.
Did I mention I was trying to break out of my NPR bubble? A few months back, I started making more of an effort to seek out what I consider alternative media, i.e. conservative media, just to see what I was missing. I set radio dials to two AM talk stations, roughly divided, content-wise, along the fault lines of the current GOP. Which is to say, one is stupid and the other, crazy. I spend most of my car time listening to the stupid one, because the crazy one has a signal that goes in and out. Plus, very poor station identification. I can’t even tell you what the call letters are. But I can recognize an also-ran, D-list station by its lineup: Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Scott Jennings. Dead giveaways.
The stupid station is all local during the day, although that makes it boring as hell, too. Nothing like a live remote broadcast from a charity golf tournament to make you change back to NPR.
Anyway, back to content: Yesterday I was on my way to the grocery (another neglected duty) when I heard Linda McMahon, yes our secretary of education, on the stupid station, talking about a policy in Ann Arbor public schools, to not inform parents when a child starts asking to be addressed by another name, and shows signs of gender transition. This policy is wrong, vile and should be illegal, the former pro-wrestling executive said.
What’s the world coming to? was the gist of the questioning and caller response. Parents have a right to know!
Reader, I have changed my thinking on this issue: No, they don’t. If a child is keeping this from their parents, they have a good reason.
First of all, kids, especially teenagers, are crazy. They try on new identities like T-shirts. These range from small things — changing the spelling of their name, experimenting with being the kind of girl who dots their I’s with little bubbles, hitting the bathroom first thing to apply truly heinous eyeliner that will be rubbed off at the end of the day — to more serious matters that may or may not have anything to do with gender dysphoria. I went to school with a girl with a very unfortunate name — Melva. She was a little gawky, and in the hands of the mean girls, this moniker inevitably became Melba, then Melba Toast. One day she told all her teachers that forever after, she wished to be addressed as Mike. The new name didn’t last long — once a Melva, always a Melva — but I can only imagine the shrieking at her home if this change had been shared with her parents. So there’s that.
Also, and this is more serious: As you all know, I worked as a census enumerator in 2020, calling on addresses that didn’t do the form online. One day I knocked at a house in Detroit, and it was answered by a rather obviously transitioning teen (M to F). She told me it was a group home for kids like her, and to come back later to speak to the person in charge. You know what happens to kids like her when they tell their parents they think they were born in the wrong body? The lucky ones — the lucky ones — get kicked out of the house and end up in a safe place like a group home. The unluckier ones are kicked out and end up on the street, and selling sex is the easiest way to survive. (You’d think the people always fretting about child sex trafficking would be aware of this.) Others may stay at home, with parents who call them “mentally insane” and badger them into running away or hanging themselves.
So if your kid is gender dysphoric and doesn’t want you to know? Check yourself. It’s never too late to transition to being a better parent.
OK, that rant over, it’s time to tend to myself a little. I’m way behind on this issue, but two items of note in bloggage:
A really good piece about the stupidity of the MOAR TESTOSTERONE attitude raging through Pete Hegseth’s Department of WAAAARRRRR:
As a urologist, I’ve witnessed the mythology around testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) growing for years. Some of it is warranted. TRT can genuinely help appropriately selected hypogonadal men — those with consistently low morning testosterone levels and signs or symptoms of testosterone deficiency, such as fatigue, erectile dysfunction, and low libido. It can improve sexual function. It can strengthen bone density. It can cure anemia and increase lean body mass.
But it can’t make them brave. Some studies show small, highly context-dependent effects of TRT on risk-taking and competitive behaviors. In many analyses it doesn’t change behavior meaningfully above baseline at all.
People treated with testosterone may show a preference toward status seeking, which could be beneficial in a hierarchical military context. It may increase amygdala activation, a part of the brain that processes intense emotions, such as fear and rage, and decrease communication between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, the neural seat of impulse regulation. If TRT does result in a slight increase in reactivity, a tendency toward higher threat recognition, and lower inhibition, I’m not sure it would be an improvement for our military, either on the battlefield or the base.
And finally, a years-old, but still fantastic, This American Life episode on testosterone. I remember hearing this way back in 2004, on a long drive. I so wanted to hear the whole episode that when it started to fade, I pulled into a rest stop for the last 10 minutes. It is fascinating, and they reposted it when the Hegseth story broke. I highly, highly recommend it.
OK, then. Once more unto the breach, and I should come out in one piece after the weekend. Fingers crossed.
john (not mccain) said on July 29, 2026 at 9:47 am
To this day I cannot imagine what the parents of my classmate named Anis were thinking. Fortunately she was pretty and smart. She did always seem a little annoyed though.
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alex said on July 29, 2026 at 10:01 am
So if your kid is gender dysphoric and doesn’t want you to know? Check yourself. It’s never too late to transition to being a better parent.
That caps one of the best vignettes I’ve read in a long time.
Be sure to read Roy Edroso today. He asks rhetorically how people like Ross Douchehat get high-paid jobs in the prestige media rather than vastly superior talents like our very own hostess with the mostest.
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Charlie (she/her) said on July 29, 2026 at 11:09 am
Thanks for talking about this, Nancy; a few states now have these parental notification laws and the fallout from them has been pretty nasty.
Something that might not be obvious: just a tiny bit of that nonsense is enough to make kids feel unsafe talking to school counselors. A 15-year-old is not going to be able to work out exactly what hits the threshold, but they’ve heard the law exists and they know it means it might be risky to be open with their teachers.
And when they don’t feel safe with their teachers, where do they go for help? I hate to tell you, but the answer is The Internet. Sometimes it’s ME, and honestly I am very unhappy about this! I’m an engineer, I am not remotely qualified to do crisis intervention! But I’m in a few trans spaces online; and *every trans space* right now has to deal with the young people who can’t think of anywhere else to turn.
Every so often some poor kid at the end of their rope reaches out and if I‘m the adult who happens to see it first, I’m the one who has to talk them off the ledge and try to get them to actual counseling. It’s no fun and I’m not very good at it! But it’s what happens when they’re scared to go to the actual authority figures in their lives.
This is not a new story (and yes, we’re leaning on the generation before mine to figure out how to shore up the old networks) but it’s gotten a lot worse very quickly.
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Sherri said on July 29, 2026 at 1:37 pm
Children are human beings, not property.
I have a friend whose child transitioned in early adulthood. She told her mother that she wishes she had transitioned much earlier, but was afraid. Her mother is (and would have been) totally supportive, but even with the best support from parents, it’s a difficult path.
I know another parent whose child did transition as a child. Even as she was supportive and made it possible, she was constantly questioning herself about whether she was doing the right thing, especially as it cost relationships with other family members.
Being a parent should take you out of your comfort zone, should make you reexamine yourself and why what your child is experiencing is making you uncomfortable. Sadly, too many people don’t want to face discomfort, about anything, and try to control their children and other people in the world to eliminate their own discomfort.
Your comfort is not worth anyone’s life.
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Sherri said on July 29, 2026 at 2:47 pm
While I’m on the topic, let me say something about transgender athletes and the bans that are proliferating. I’ve been clear that I think such bans are wrong, that transgender female athletes should be allowed to compete as women.
But even from normally liberal people, I’ve found that it’s become impossible to discuss this. Nobody is interested in the history of transgender athletes in sport, nor in the problematic history of gender testing in sport, and why the IOC dropped it a quarter century ago. I just get stories about Lia Thomas dwarfing poor little Riley Gaines on the podium and boxers in the Olympics, never mind that the boxers in question weren’t transgender athletes. One person lost her mind in a discussion because I referred to her as cisgender. I’m told sports are different, and that I’m clueless about sports (really, from someone who actually knows me!)
I have search and continue to search for any evidence backing up the assertion that transgender women who went through puberty as male have an inherent advantage over cisgender women, after hormone treatment. I have found no studies that show any consistent advantage. The difficulty with studies is there aren’t many transgender athletes to study.
What the bans really accomplish is discovering and banning intersex women, who often don’t even know they are intersex until testing. They also accomplish “othering” female athletes who look too muscular, too tall, too advanced.
Look, I get it: we want a level playing field, regardless that that’s never possible. But losing to a transgender woman doesn’t mean that she had an inherent advantage that’s out of the realm of normal variation among cisgender women.
I’m pretty competitive at a national level for my age and weight in powerlifting. However, I’m moving down a weight class, and I already know that there’s a woman my age in that weight class who lifts much heavier than I do. My best total is 337.5 kg; she totals 400 kg. No matter how hard I work, I’m unlikely to catch her. She’s just better than I am, for whatever reason.
There seems to be some idea that a transgender woman should be in the same position relative to other women as they were when male. That is, if pre-transition, they were the 150th ranked male, after transition they should be the 150th ranked female, and if they’re better than that, it’s evidence of inherent advantage. It’s not; it’s evident of a different population base, one that’s not as large in most sports. Look at the whole distribution: are these athletes outliers, outside the normal distribution?
Yes, Lia Thomas probably did have an advantage over Riley Gaines, because taller swimmers seem to have advantages. Maybe Lia Thomas would have only been 5’5” like Gaines had she not gone through puberty male, instead of the 6’1” that she is. But 6’ isn’t that unusual among female athletes. Katie Ledecky, at 6’, would also have towered over Gaines, except Katie Ledecky wouldn’t have been standing next to Gaines because she wouldn’t have finished tied for 5th.
If people really want to save women’s sports, then do something about the abuse of athletes we’ve seen repeated over and over again. Transgender and internet athletes just aren’t the threat.
And banning them is putting your discomfort ahead of their lives.
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Julie Robinson said on July 29, 2026 at 3:33 pm
For years I’ve talked about testosterone poisoning, now it’s being codified.
I know three families where transitioning didn’t happen until way after puberty for all the reasons mentioned above. One decided Florida wasn’t safe and moved to Ireland, another is attempting Irish citizenship.
I sure don’t have the answers, only that it’s nothing I should be sticking my nose into. Let all people be who they are supposed to be. For the politicians and blowhards making hay from it, I have only contempt. We have actual problems that need their attention.
On a happier note, it’s my mom’s 94th birthday, and we just came home from getting her birthday wish meal, pork tenderloin. Yes, the one where they pound it out, bread it, and fry it. It’s the nastiest thing to me but she was literally in hog heaven. And luckily there were other choices available.
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Jeff Gill said on July 29, 2026 at 7:02 pm
Charlie, thank you for what you’re doing.
I’ve said it before here in different forms, and had long arguments about it with my state reps & county prosecutor, but I will strongly assert: all public policy has to take into account the reality, the hard irreducible absolute reality, that a minimum of 40% of all parents/guardians of high school age kids (but if it were provable, I’d bet my York peppermint patty on more like 50%) do not care in the least what’s going on in their kids’ lives. Once past about age 14, a strong minority of all parents are done, can’t be bothered, don’t want to know. They won’t take their kids to court ordered counseling (a truly shocking subset of that 40+% won’t even show up for court hearings), and they are not keeping up with medical check-ups regardless of insurance status or prescribed medications.
And if you notified them of pronoun or name or identity issues, they may just shrug and go “eh” if the juvenile is lucky, but the word from the school is as likely to create a scene & temper tantrums as anything. My biggest shock in pastoral ministry, let alone when I ended up working in juvenile justice, was how many actual biological parents would not just say but act on letting their kids know once they turned 18, they were out of the house. In the middle of their senior year? “Yeah, so what? I didn’t graduate from high school, but if they want to, they know what to do.”
But there are plenty not that garishly indifferent, who don’t set their kid’s luggage outside the door the day after their eighteenth, who are still indifferent and unwilling to take any role whatsoever in how their child is doing, who say once the kid is in ninth grade or past 14 or 15, “that’s not my problem anymore.” A quarter even in the “nice” towns. Higher elsewhere.
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Suzanne said on July 30, 2026 at 8:20 am
Jeff, I observed this when my kids were in school. I tried not to be a helicopter parent and think I did ok, but it surprised me how many parents at my kids’ small rural school had no idea what their kids were doing in school or elsewhere. In conversation with other parents at school events, I would mention big projects the class had coming up, or some future testing days, or a book they were required to read and frequently was met with a blank stare. Mostly, they had no idea what their kids were doing on a daily basis. Parents generally, though, knew the sports schedule very well because that was more important to them than academics.
All that said, growing up, my parent were utterly clueless about what I was doing in school. Didn’t know and didn’t care.
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David C said on July 30, 2026 at 9:03 am
I recall hearing that only 50% of adults read above 6th grade level. I wonder if parents check out because after a certain grade level, their children’s school work becomes incomprehensible to them.
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Julie Robinson said on July 30, 2026 at 10:42 am
Welp, this adult couldn’t help her kids with math from about 5th grade on. I only made it through high school math with tutoring from big sis,and when she went off to college I stopped taking higher math. Dad stepped up, just as I had assisted when reading came hard for kid #1.
The rest of what Jeff says? Terrifying. But the author of Paper Girl, Beth Macy, might agree. She grew up in Urbana, Ohio, escaped and became a reporter. She started wondering how kids today better themselves so went back home for a deep dive.
Spoiler alert: it’s practically impossible, because the programs she used have been eviscerated. And many of those parents have the same attitude about jobs, with high absenteeism common. A very depressing read.
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nancy said on July 30, 2026 at 11:19 am
Jeff, I am connected with a guy on FB whose father was a nightmare — a con man, multiply married, just a toxic piece of shit. He was one of those who came home from school on his 18th birthday to find his stuff piled on the lawn. He writes about this *often* on Facebook, both to let people know his story of how he survived, but also (this is just my opinion) as self-therapy. He started a business, was successful, has a family, educated his children through college, and today runs a one-man charity, driving around the city dropping “survival packs” to homeless people; as you can guess, he spent time sleeping rough himself. The fact he seems to feel the need to talk about his trauma so often is a reminder of how traumatizing it really was.
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Dave said on July 30, 2026 at 12:05 pm
My brother worked with a man who put his kids out once they graduated from high school. I thought it so cruel but I didn’t know this man, for all I know, it may have been a blessing to get away from him. Our daughter lived at home until she got married, although she talked of moving out, she never did. Our sons both left home after college, although the youngest son came back a couple of times for brief periods of in-betweeness (for lack of a better word).
I saw an article the other day that said young single adult children are leaving later and later, at an average age of 27. Come to think of it, our daughter was 27 when she got married but 17 years later, with two children, they’re very stable.
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Sherri said on July 30, 2026 at 12:41 pm
Close friends of mine took in one of their son’s friends when his family kicked him out at 18. They really made him a part of their family, got him graduated from high school, supported him while he tried out various options, and finally paid for his college education. They also helped out his girlfriend, did their best to get both of them into stable situations. Sadly, it all blew up a few years ago when they found out he was being abusive to his girlfriend. I don’t know where he is now.
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Julie Robinson said on July 30, 2026 at 5:08 pm
What are the numbers on unplanned pregnancies, something like 40%? Perhaps that explains indifference toward children. I dunno, I don’t get it. Childbirth flipped a switch in me and I understood my most important task to be caring for my kiddos, as well as caring for others.
Our home has always been open to them coming back and bringing others. Jobs for this generation, with rare exceptions, don’t have the pay, benefits, or stability that ours did. They’ve each rebounded a couple of times, and our daughter will probably always live with us. Her pastor job pays diddly squat and we consider it part of our contribution. She does a lot of cooking and most of the meal planning, she pays some of the expenses and often runs to the grocery store, as well as helping me with caretaking for grandma. She’ll probably be our caretaker too. Besides, she’s a delight to be around. It feels win/win to us.
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David C said on July 30, 2026 at 5:35 pm
I lived at my parents’ house until I got married when I was 27. I’m sure it never occurred to them to kick me out. Both my parents grew up in three generation homes. I think that was normal in farm country back then, so it felt familiar to them. I’m glad for that. I stumbled out of the gate after high school. If I was tossed into the world at that time, I don’t know what would have become of me.
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Colleen said on July 30, 2026 at 7:26 pm
In all the talk about how unfair it is that Trans female athletes may have a size and strength advantage over cis females, no one ever talks about the unfairness of boys who have gone through puberty competing with boys who have not. Around 7th and 8th grade, the difference can be stark….men playing with and against boys. But no one sees that as a problem….because it’s not about fairness or “protecting” the cis athletes. It’s because of the discomfort people, especially men,have surrounding Trans females.
I was about 23 when I moved out of my parents’ house….I have a little trouble finding my first “big girl job”. When I did move out, I moved to western Kansas. For 13k a year. Which wasn’t much, even back then. My parents never would have kicked me out. I’m a gen xer, so they weren’t helicopter parents,but they did keep tabs on me in that they knew where I was and basically what was going on in my life.
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Deborah said on July 30, 2026 at 8:43 pm
Julie Robinson your experience with your daughter is similar to ours, but it’s LB’s health issues that are the reason. We’re totally happy with the arrangements, it’s working all around. I never gave it a thought otherwise it’s just natural to us.
I left home when I graduated from college that felt natural too. I got married right out of college, that was a mistake unfortunately but I wouldn’t have been happy going home after college so I did what I did and didn’t give it enough thought. But I ended up with a great life after all, so I lucked out. Unfortunately a lot of people aren’t as lucky so I feel obligated to do what I can to make up for that. Obligated is probably not the right word, it’s not a chore.
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basset said on July 30, 2026 at 8:44 pm
I was a sophomore, maybe a junior, at IU before my parents got around to asking me what kind of classes I was taking up there. “Radio and TV,” I told em, that being what the major was called at the time… changed to Telecommunications before I left, now it’s Videogame Studies or something.
Anyway, not long after that exchange they mentioned that a neighbor’s TV was acting up, and could I take a look at it? Well, sorry, no, don’t know about that stuff, I didn’t mean radio and tv repair…
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Sherri said on July 30, 2026 at 9:35 pm
I’ve been generally pretty negative about the current AI boom, so it’s only fair that I share a positive experience.
We got the pathology report from my husband’s biopsy today, and rather than going through the laborious process of looking up each piece of jargon I didn’t understand, I pasted the entire result into Google. Gemini, the Google AI model, did a good job of summarizing and explaining the report, with links to its sources. I read the source material, and continued to use Gemini to dig down deeper, and it continued to be helpful, with pointers to scientific papers on places like PubMed.
I’m pretty good at searching, and I probably would have gotten to those papers eventually without the AI assistance, but unquestionably AI made the process easier and quicker.
From my reading, my husband doesn’t have the usual kidney cancer, renal cell carcinoma. Instead he has a neuroendocrine tumor, which is very rarely primary in the kidney. We’ll see how good a job I did at parsing the report when we talk to the doctor tomorrow.
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David C said on July 31, 2026 at 6:37 am
I’m using ChatGPT for a project at work, and I’d say it’s helpful, but there were errors that were so easy to catch that you would think would be easy to eliminate beforehand. I’m comparing US and European standards for automotive seats. What I get from AI has paragraph references which is helpful in checking. But I’ll read a paragraph in the specs and it doesn’t match the AI. So I ask the AI where the thing I’m looking for is in that paragraph. It comes back and tells me it isn’t there. OK, cool. Somewhere in the bowels of the data center, it knew. But it doesn’t give me a whole lot of confidence, right now.
Then again, there’s this.
“A US government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attenders who took screenshots and posted them online.
Reuters viewed a video of the presentation given at the Aids 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, which shows the errant map displayed halfway during a presentation about the state department’s new health agreements.
A Reuters analysis found the image of the map included in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that signals it was made with OpenAI tools. The company did not respond to a request for comment.”
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/07/aint-that-america-10
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Brandon said on July 31, 2026 at 2:39 pm
This must be the station: https://www.audacy.com/wwjnewsradio
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Sherri said on August 1, 2026 at 1:56 am
My understanding of the pathology report was correct. Which means that we’re still not really sure what kind of cancer my husband has; the pathology of the liver biopsy was inconsistent with the most likely culprit. The cancer pointed to by the biopsy almost never occurs in the kidney, so it’s a puzzle. They’ll do a PET scan which help determine whether we’re dealing with an extremely rare instance of this kind of cancer originating in the kidney, or two different cancers presenting. You never want to be a medical mystery, but that’s where we are.
Regardless, we’re feeling better, because at least we are making progress.
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Jeff Gill said on August 1, 2026 at 9:15 am
FYI Dorothy; I think Joyce & I are making a daytime raid on the Ohio State Fair on Monday, if weather cooperates, or Thursday if too rainy.
And I know both you & a number of others will enjoy this, which I just learned about:
While I’m not a quilter myself, I’ve had plenty of quilt-adjacent experience over the years, and I find this fascinating & delightful: I hope you will, too!
https://americanindian.si.edu/quilting/
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Deborah said on August 2, 2026 at 10:08 am
I’m putting this NYT gift link here not for the article, I haven’t even read it, but because of the photo. My husband designed that building in St. Louis, it’s the Federal Courthouse there, I think it’s the 8th circuit, can’t quite remember. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/us/missouri-police-nude-photos-settlement.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2VA.R5PC.Z_NCyvpxoCRl&smid=url-share
I’m not sure why they used a photo of the exterior of the building except the trial for the case described must be in it.
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Dorothy said on August 2, 2026 at 11:13 am
Jeff we’re succumbing to the allure of Tuesday’s “free entry for seniors day” that friends told us about. So we’ll be surrounded by fellow oldies and maybe Mike and I will look positively teenager-ish compared to many of those around us. I have a Tupperware cereal container whose lid has cracked in multiple places. I’m going to test out their lifetime guarantee by bringing it to the vendor hall and see if they’ll give me a replacement free of charge. My son is taking his kids to the fair tomorrow. It’ll be the kids’ first time. If you see Liv and Jack and Josh, tell them hello! Josh’s girlfriend Nicole will be there too, as will her sister Abby and her BF Ryan.
Some of my friends are participating in that American Indian challenge, Jeff, and in fact a couple months ago we did a swap of fabrics for people who needed something that looked like buffalos or bison. Brown shades have fallen out of fashion, but I’ve got quite a collection all over the rainbow. So even though I’m not particpating in that challenge, some of my fabrics will be in some of the quilts.
Sherri last August and September we were waiting a very long time for biopsy results for Mike’s vocal cord cancer. Ohio State docs could not agree on what type of cancer it was, so it was shared with the Cleveland Clinic. The waiting is just torture. I’m glad you are getting important information for this new life experience. In a few months Mike might be having another procedure that involves liposuction, and application of his own body fat onto the vocal cord in hopes of plumping it back up, and bringing his voice back to the way it was. I marvel every day at modern medicine.
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Deborah said on August 2, 2026 at 11:57 am
Speaking of modern medical marvels we met on Friday in Chicago with the woman Dr who’s going to be the medical director of the dementia center project we’ve been working on for years. She has 2 young children who needed to go to the dentist and her 5 year old needed a filling, she was worried how the child would cope with that then the dentist told her of a laser procedure that could be used instead of drilling some how. She hadn’t heard of that before and neither had we, that is amazing if they can use a dental technique that is less invasive as drilling which is a hideous procedure when you think about it. Have any of you heard about that before?
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Deborah said on August 2, 2026 at 6:36 pm
Does anyone listen to James Carville anymore? I mean the guy was right about the “economy stupid” regarding Clinton way back then. Since then has he ever even been anywhere near accurate about what is going on in politics? The guy is 81 years old, it’s time to hang up his spurs. Honestly call it a day man.
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