This might be true if the Olympics were exclusively classifying the 23rd chromosomes, and nothing but.
Leave aside the fact that very few of us here have actually tested our 23rd chromosome. Historically, the Olympics have not been (and are not) strictly chromosomal. The 2023 testosterone suppression decision requirements has exclusively impacted cis women, for one example.
Humans are biologically dimorphic in the same way winters are usually cold and summers are usually hot.
I would say that humans are sexually dimorphic in the same way that humans are bipeds. if you attempted to make a serious argument that limb agenesis implies that we’re a variable-limbed species it would be obfuscating rather than illuminating.
No, that is not a good analogy at all. It's so poor an analogy that it's challenging to interpret this comment generously. I think you might be arguing facetiously to make a different rhetoric point than the literal content of your post, bot I will respond to your text literally.
Humans have a wide variety of biological variation in metrics we think of as linked to "biological sex" and those metrics are accessibly mutable. Even within the Olympics, the natural variation of these metrics within cis women is a famous topic of debate (Imane Khelif, Caster Semenya, etc.)
Bipedalism is something which varies very rarely and is especially not accessibly mutable.
> What is the total prevalence of all conditions medically recognized as intersex?
Not all biological variation is classified as intersex.
> What is that even supposed to mean?
You can change a lot of your 'secondary sex characteristics' intentionally. This is much easier than removing a limb, and even easier than adding a limb.
No, I am specifically talking about biological variation in sex characteristics. This is common, and it's not surprising if someone is within the range of "the opposite sex" for one or several sex characteristics.
There are men under 5'4", women taller than 5'9", women with high testosterone, men with low testosterone, men with breast tissue, etc.
So? It would apply to sex chromosomes and only sex chromosomes, which is just one observed sex characteristic.
We are talking about sexual dimorphism and secondary sex characteristics.
Humans were understood to be sexually dimorphic before we discovered sex chromosomes in 1905, and we usually label our babies with a biological sex without the aid of consumer genetic testing.
I have a lot of sympathy for Imane Khelif and Caster Semenya, as they were assigned female at birth and raised as girls, and they want to compete with women. But I don't know if there's a case to be made that they're biologically female.
They have XY chromosomes, internal testes, a male testosterone level, and male muscle development. They have the SRY gene that the IOC is testing for, and are not one of the exceptions. Regardless of the fact that their DSD (5-ARD) results in no penis.
To be clear, I'm not saying they should start living life as men. But describing their situation as the natural variation of cis women is simplistic and not accurate.
For starters, I can't find any credible source saying they have XY chromosomes or internal testes.
Further, they are women, and therefore their testosterone levels and muscle development are female.
This just gets to a ludicrous place. These are women who are simply identifiable as so. Anyone throughout history would have identified them as so. Their biological metrics are within the variation of cis women, because they are cis women.
This is fair, I didn't know about this, but this doesn't appear to be the case for Imane Khelif.
Either way, my point still stands. These women are women, would have been recognized as such by anyone throughout history, and it's simply the case that some women are born with XY chromosomes and testes.
> this doesn't appear to be the case for Imane Khelif.
It absolutely does appear to be the case, but Imane is very vague about it in interviews.
> These women are women, would have been recognized as such by anyone throughout history
I disagree. They are males with a genital deformity (no penis). Whether that translates to "woman" is not universal across cultures.
I agree we should refer to them as women, because that's how they were raised their entire lives.
> it's simply the case that some women are born with XY chromosomes and testes.
Yes, women with CAIS. But individuals with 5-ARD are not always going to have the "woman" label applied to them. And it is not fair they they compete against women in sporting events.
That’s a very fun way to think about it, but it’s far more effective in a semantic debate than a serious one. I also don’t for a minute believe that the goal here is some broader reform of how the world talks about statistical distributions.
It was intended in good faith, to make the point that rarity alone is not a good metric for salience. In my experience, most trans people have no problem with the statement "humans are sexually dimorphic" in a biology context. They (and I) have issue with it when its used in a debate to say "Humans are sexually dimorphic (and therefore trans and intersex people are irrelevant/shouldn't be accommodated/don't exist)". In the context of sports, it is definitely relevant that there are many edge cases and substantial overlap in the distribution of phenotypes between AFAB and AMAB people.
Coming back around to the olympics: I agree that humans are bipedal, but that has no bearing on the fact that the Olympic committee should take great care to create rules and categories for paralympic athletes. I think there's a lot of room for reasonable people to disagree without dismissing the complexity that comes from organizing across 8 billion people.
> They (and I) have issue with it when its used in a debate to say "Humans are sexually dimorphic (and therefore trans and intersex people are irrelevant/shouldn't be accommodated/don't exist)".
But that is not being said here, just as in every other time the discussion of sex segregation in sports comes up; and just as in every other time, people simply pretend in bad faith that such things are being asserted.
> I agree that humans are bipedal, but that has no bearing on the fact that the Olympic committee should take great care to create rules and categories for paralympic athletes.
Sure. Which is why they do, and nobody has a problem with it.
Go take a survey of the people opposed to transgender women competing in women's Olympic sports, and see what they think of having a separate category for transgender athletes. Or even separate categories for transgender men and transgender women. I'd wager the large majority have no problem with that. (They might at most be concerned about disproportionate airtime being given to sport events that relatively few people qualify for and relatively few people are especially interested in.)
Speaking for myself I believe that trans people and non-binary people should be accommodated, but there’s a contextual limit. When it comes to equal protection, employment, healthcare, medical access, bathrooms and a dozen other issues it’s a no-brainer in favor of accommodating people.
Ironically the sports divide is probably the single area where having some physical advantages isn’t a bonus. It’s also near and dear to the hearts of billions, and such a terrible hill to die on. Ideally the solution would be a league like the Paralympic competitions, but high level athletes are rare, trans people are relatively rare, and two overlapping are incredibly rare. To make such a league would be a farce that couldn’t hope to succeed.
In the Olympics, it appears trans athletes are still a minority among the group of athletes who are excluded because of sex characteristics. Most of the athletes impacted by the ever-stricter testosterone limits in the Olympics are cis women. Such a league would include cisgender former Olympic athletes who had to undergo forms of HRT in order to qualify.
When discussing trans people in sports, the most salient contexts aren't elite sports championships like the Olympics. "Sports" is also done recreationally and is often considered a normal part of ones childhood upbringing. On the topic of trans people, the question "can my child play this sport with their friends"?
Is anyone worth listening to seriously suggesting that informal childhood sports are somehow equivalent to programs that can define academic or professional careers?
Edit I’d add that T screening in sports exists primarily to find dopers, not people trying to pass.
I don't see how your question follows from the rest of the discussion, or in what specific ways you are suggesting people argue to be equivalent. Both K-12 sports and Olympic sports are understood to be sports.
To restate myself, sports during childhood are much more important than elite world championships. Almost everyone I know did a sport with peers during our formative years, myself included. Meanwhile, nobody I know was ever close to qualifying to be an Olympic athlete, and I feel certain the same is true for most of the people in this thread.
The problem is that decisions at the olympic level tend to trickle down to lower competitions. There are plenty of sports where the gap between "college kid having fun" and "Olympics" isn't very wide.
Fortunately there's a big gap between "College kids" and "Kids", and by the time you're in college it's not just about having fun anymore. Sports in college, whether we like it or not, are a large source of upward mobility for a lot of people, sometimes whole families and communities. College sports can determine access to college through the system of scholarships, and of course they can lead directly to pro careers.
Generally speaking when people talk about "kids sports" they specifically mean pre-collegiate, not in the least because colloquialism aside, college students are adults.
To add to this, I want to stress on the point of rarity. Variations within sex metrics are not the uncommon fringe case people make it out to be, they're actually common and expected.
Within biology, we'd see a number of metrics (like height) which would usually appear bimodal (like two bell curves added together). We might identify at least two latent variables here: A real-number 'age' (which can be observed) and a binary 'sex' (not directly observed). But it's worth stressing that these implied underlying curves overlap, and any given metric is not strictly correlated with the others. (Commonly, one might be on the lower end of some distributions and the higher ends of others. Someone can be 5'3" tall, have red hair, and a high body-fat percentage while also having testicles, XY chromosomes, and dying at the age of 62.) (We should also note that the 23rd chromosome just another observed variable, starting after ~1900.)
Some causes of variation that we know about are fraternal birth order, or endocrine-disrupting chemicals like PFAS, conditions like PCOS, etc.
Case in point are all the cis women who are impacted by the ever-stricter testosterone guidelines in the Olympics. Further is the effect of fraternal birth order, or the endocrine-disrupting chemicals like PFAS, or the intentional introduction of hormones and hormone blockers. (If certain industries are to be believed, soy milk has a similar effect.) These are all variations and things which impact what we understand as "biological sex".
Folk gender theorists tend to consider sexuality, identity, biology, and expression as orthogonal axes. But these are clearly also correlated among people. (Stretching the definition of "correlated" to include qualitative metrics like 'expression' using the usual methods.)
An information-theoretic framework would inform well an "optimal" way to talk about this, using a one-bit string for most people and increasingly more bits when more information is needed. This is roughly how people already talk.
If it were possible for us to exist (and thus consider the question) in the absence of the other atoms, and if those other atoms overwhelmingly (somehow) had a number of nucleons between 1 and 2, then the analogy might plausibly make sense.
More often than you'd think! You can easily go your entire life without knowing. It is not uncommon for the first hint to be that a couple is having trouble conceiving.
> You can easily go your entire life without knowing.
Sure, since we already established that the tests are usually not done at all.
An overwhelming majority of people (at least among those who have a basic understanding of the underlying science) could, however, guess correctly about themselves.
The combined prevalence of all intersex conditions is simply not that high.
Python's interactive interpreter makes it pretty useful as a shell, for iterative development, and crucially useful in a Jupyter notebook. I've also found CircuitPython's interpreter to be bonkers useful in prototyping embedded projects. (This, on top of the nice datascience, ML, and NN libraries).
Swift just wasn't doing the same things. And even if it did, Swift would compete with other languages that were understood as "a better Python", like Julia. Even then, Swift only came to Linux in 2016, Windows in 2020, and FreeBSD less than a year ago with WWDC 2025.
I think it doesn't help that the mid 2010s saw a burst of Cool and New languages announced or go mainstream. Go, Julia, Rust, TypeScript, Solidity, etc. along with Swift. I think most of us only have space to pick up one or two of these cool-and-new languages every few years.
Personally, I gave Apple many thousands of dollars, and then I had updates forced on me by Apple which made every Apple device I own worse.
One can be angry about things which directly and immediately make their life worse while also being angry about the other evils in the world.
This is surely not a trend, I am sure humans around the world throughout history have been able to criticize one thing even while something far worse is happening.
The space allocated for "Apple has lost their way" has been maxed out for decades, so it bears stressing that this time is different. This Liquid Glass debacle has disillusioned everyone from hardcore Apple fans to normal people who otherwise don't follow tech.
Once the dust settles, this will be a case study for decades to come. Apple threw their hard-won reputational gains off a cliff for _nothing_.
My non-techie friends either barely notice Liquid Glass or go "ooo this is nice!". It has annoyed me on occasion, but I barely notice it any more. Much ado about nothing.
My non techie friends all hate it. I don’t think there is a single Apple user I talk to regularly that hasn’t complained about it, or ask me why it is that way (being the resident tech person for some).
And besides a few odd posts on x, I haven’t heard anyone techy speak positively about it.
Maybe I’m the one in a bubble, but I’m seriously considering switching from Apple as a lifelong Apple user, largely because of the UI changes (Liquid Glass et al), so I don’t think the complaints about it are overblown.
I do think the glass effects do look great in certain areas, like pulling down Notification Center. But I find LG for the most part to be change for the sake of it. Small things like replacing the Cancel & Confirm/Done prompts with larger X or checkmark icons bother me. They take up more space on screen, and honestly they don't always translate well. There are some cases where a checkmark has taken the place of "Done" and I have felt genuine confusion on how to get out of the editing mode or options screen.
> I do think the glass effects do look great in certain areas, like pulling down Notification Center
This is one of many things that really bother me in iOS 26, after just having updated from iOS 18. It just looks wrong that it's fully transparent until you fully pulled it down, and then suddenly everything flies away. Very strange effect.
Another thing is the border effect on the icons and widgets. I wish there was a way to turn those off completely, but either you get the motion effect or you have permanent borders.
Personally I’m not a fan of the glass effect, but yeah what bothers me more are all the changes around it. The terrible jelly nav bars, the text distortion, the massive buttons with overly rounded corners, the awful switches and sliders, not to mention the design inconsistency through any given OS, let alone across them.
Personally I bundle it all up into “Liquid Glass et al”, but the glass effects are the least of the issues for me. I could maybe get over an ugly design; design is subjective after all. But iOS 26 is just disfunctionally bad design (imho)
Like I'm not a fan but the ecosystem is convenient if you can afford it and liquid glass is fine? I haven't heard a single person complain about it IRL It's not a big design that I got hyped for like iOS 6 but it's fine
I have the vision pro, mbp m4, ip15 pro max, apple watch ultra 2, studio display (2026), 2 official keyboards, 2 magic trackpads, ipad (4th gen), 3 homepod 2, 5 homepod mini, airpod pro 3 (I keep buying new airpod pros every time they come out because the improvements are really good).
I'm fine liquid glass and I use their products like.. 20 hours a day?
My personal experiences are the opposite of this. I have people in my life who are gen Z, millenials, and gen X who are befuddled by it.
We also have data to show people dislike this. Google Trends shows the largest spikes ever for "how to switch to android", "iphone revert update", "iphone fix battery", and "iphone slow", all only after the release of Liquid Glass (and particularly the increased tactics to get people to update starting in September).
I held off on upgrading because I heard how much people hated it. I bought the new XDR display last week and finally had to upgrade for it to work properly and... it's totally fine? I'm not sure what the big deal is. It's way more annoying on iOS than it is on macOS.
Yeah I couldn't care less for liquid glass but it's not as horrible as people make it out to be. The amount of hate is irrational. New Coke vibes if you heard of new coke.
I don't understand the fuss around liquid glass. I've been using Apple stuff since before OS X and this just feels like another redesign; I understand that there are some accessibility issues (that I thought Apple had at least partially addressed) but I don't have any problems using it. In fact, I kinda like it. It feels like many people latched onto an extremely negative narrative early on, and can't let go of it.
I have much more of a problem with the terrible window management on the mac and ipad OSs. Not being able to snap and resize windows to the edges of the screen, like every other standard window manager that exists, is insane (I know they added some version of this recently, but unsurprisingly it sucks). And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky. They completely ruined the cmd-space search in their most recent major release. They need to get their house in order.
If you're going to say Apple's reputational hit from Tahoe, and Tahoe's many problems, are merely narrative-driven, you need to at least provide support for that. For example:
- why the added transparency effects don't present accessibility/usability issues, despite what users report
- why the corner radius change (among other UI changes), including its absurd size and broken handle detection actually aren't a big deal (even though every other window toolkit NOT swiftui has to be updated for it)
- why it's okay that they added useless icons to menus that add visual clutter and violate of their own design standards
- why Rosetta is going away, even though so many things still depend on it
The bigger issue is that Tahoe was a frivolous cosmetic update with only a few actual improvements, despite all of macOS's bugs that haven't been fixed over the years. That's a long list, from broken keyboard shortcuts in most their newer apps (and System Settings) to persistent Airplay compatibility problems.
Why is Apple's hardware getting objective better over the years while the possible software gains are squandered year after year?
I am talking about "liquid glass", which I understand to refer to the recent design language updates that include the much-bemoaned transparent/translucent design elements. I will repeat that I simply have not experienced myself having a negative reaction to these changes, even if you include corner radius changes and what you call "visual clutter" under the umbrella of "liquid glass"; I hardly noticed the former and didn't notice the latter at all. As for accessibility issues, I explicitly called them out in my comment.
Re: the rest of your comment, it seems like a real stretch to suggest that any of the following (quoting you) are within the scope of "liquid glass":
* Dropping Rosetta.
* Broken keyboard shortcuts in most their newer apps (and System Settings).
* Persistent Airplay compatibility problems.
* Other bugs that haven't been fixed over the years.
* Possible software gains being squandered year after year.
I clearly articulated in my comment that I have other problems with the current state of mac OS, so I'm not sure why you're implying that I'm claiming all the issues mentioned in your post are in the scope of "liquid glass" and therefore mainly narrative-driven.
It suggests to me that you didn't really read my comment before composing your reply.
> And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky.
It appears you do indeed understand the fuss around Liquid Glass :)
The way I see it, "Liquid Glass" is used as a catch-all term to refer to all the UI changes across Apple's 2026 slate of user interfaces.
For one example, the annoying Apple Watch fitness app changes are "Liquid Glass" in my book because it exists only to show off the new wobbling refracting buttons,. The loss of performance and battery life is reasonably assumed to be tied to new Liquid Glass shaders Apple aspires to run 120 times a second on the phone.
The menu icons are really annoying, especially because some apps don't have them, and everything looks off-kilter. Finder sidebar morphing as the window resizes, also annoying.
But you're right, it's still usable, unlike the window management.
Lucky for me i convinced my boss to buy me a PC about a month after they forced the Tahoe update on my old work MBP
The Apple universe seems to be
a place where sentiment is driven by tastemakers and small-group consensus, not the mass of actual customers. So it doesn’t need to be a dominant complaint to have a big effect.
The griping I read about Liquid Glass is from the unhip nerds on HN (like me). I don’t actually know what the industrial designers and graphic artists in their Soho lofts think. I asked an exec designer that I know IRL and got a shrug.
There are many things which are worse which cannot be configured. I can't get my battery life back, I can't get a version of Apple Maps which doesn't crash on launch back, I can't get my framerate back. I can't even get a refund for this $1200 phone.
I think people are using "liquid glass" as a blanket term that includes other changes in iOS 26, like completely breaking message delivery with the world's dumbest spam filter, aggressively waking some people up in the middle of the night, siri somehow getting even worse, breaking the incoming call state machine (again), bluetooth regressions, regressions to their (already poor) UI accessibility, and so on.
Those other things add up and are definitely noticed by non-tech users that don't care that things like the alarm UI are massively regressed.
Apple has gone from 68k to ppc to intel to arm. The look of their desktop has changed so much over the years that showing a screen shot instantly tells you roughly the date it was taken. A graphical change at this point isn't moving the needle significantly.
The reality is that Windows 11 continues to get worse. I was an embedded Linux dev for 15 years, and even I don't really want Linux on my desktop. Apple has better build quality, long support periods, simplified updates, and for the most part just works. My personal computer is just an appliance and a means to an ends, Apple still is the best of many bad choices.
The liquid glass debacle seems minor compared to the crappy keyboard debacle five or ten years ago and that didn't really hurt them in the long run.
I don't have a Mac but my tablet and phone are both running liquid glass and it's... fine. I lost my favorite Sudoku app (Enjoy Sudoku) when they updated and for me that's the worst thing about it.
I think on forums like this that tend to have a lot of Apple fans and haters, the impact of UI changes is overblown. Normies mostly don't care. They notice the change when it happens and then two days later they have already forgotten what the UI used to be.
I've been using Apple since 1995 on System 7.5 then through OSX to MacOS & iOS. MacOS/iOS/iPadOS 26 and Liquid Glass do not bother me one bit. I rather still enjoy using my devices running these operating systems and think that the interface is great. I also know i am not the only one.
Apple fans bemoaned the Settings menu changing from a grid to a list, or the battery getting a skeumorphic icon, but that doesn't really matter.
The Liquid Glass stuff was forced on users in ways their other OS updates weren't, and it has caused serious performance, stability, and usability problems throughout the entire OS.
I'm happy with it. My non-techie partner is happy (or more like "I don't care") with it. All my non-techie friends and family don't give a flying f*. I just think this site has recurrent issues with all redesigns and no, this time is no different.
I think this sums up the disconnect between the devotees (I’ve been on Mac since 2005 or so, just long enough to buy the last PowerPC after a decade of Windows) and any corporation. I am not a devotee of any particular OS’ church but Apple’s market cap suggests there was a whole lotta nothing they got in return. I am a firm believer in the way European football fans see their clubs as belonging to them, but the reality with any brand is their loyalty is to money, not you.
As someone who was inspired to buy their first Apple laptop by the "send all other UNIX boxes to /dev/null" ad I feel like Apple is already done and we are just catching the last remaining tail of that legacy.
Seems underlying features such as kerberos, NFS, auto mount and others are just bit rotting by now and its a matter of time before MacOS becomes Windows 8.
For starters, you're not alone in this feeling. A lot of us are very hungry for justice, and a lot of the Trump administrations current tactics are openly grappling with the reality of jailtime and restitution if they lose power. These are unusual times, and so people who are not usually inclined toward retribution are hungry for it.
That said, it's hard to reconcile that with the fact that Democrats continue to be the opposition party, and failed to even imprison Trump over four years for the things he'd done. And even in the best case scenario, we wouldn't expect Trump himself to live long enough to face much justice.
The optimism left in me hopes that this era can serve as an enduring cautionary tale for future societies.
>the fact that Democrats continue to be the opposition party, and failed to even imprison Trump over four years for the things he'd done
I'd like to point out it was NOT the Democrats who failed us, it was Republicans in congress who failed us. I'm really not sure how you can suggest Democrats failed us, when they had 2 successful impeachments against trump, but it was Senate Republicans that voted to not remove him when 60 votes were required in a Senate split 50/50. Every single Republican Senator except Mitt Romney in the first impeachment failed us. The second impeachment for insurrection got closer at 57 votes in the senate, but Republicans failed us again.
Democrats absolutely did not fail us, they were the ones trying to hold a criminal accountable. It was and always is Republicans who fail us.
I want to clarify my framing. In the same way one might say their goalie failed them, and not that the enemy who struck the ball failed them.
My phrasing that Dems "failed us" reduces politics to a "my team versus enemy team" framing, and I'd add more nuance if I were to express it in longer form. But I don't want to get in the habit of writing purely about politics here.
I understand the feeling, but I'd appreciate if my off-the-cuff feelings about the capabilities of one political party was not articulated as a bad-faith intentional rewriting of the historical record.
My correction was more for everyone else reading, and not specifically you.
Far too often the Democrats have been called out for "failing us" or other both-sides nonsense (not saying you did that here), when in reality they are the only viable choice (capable of winning elections, don't get me started on 3rd parties) to actually fix the calamity the Republicans always cause.
Describing them as "failing" is always going to trigger me. They've done a great job in every single hearing and debate at spelling out exactly how craven the Republicans are - if people just aren't listening and describe them as "failing", then that's a problem. They've done amazing work. The people that really failed us are the voters, but more specifically the people who just didn't show up to vote because they think the Democrats are losers, which is how "failing us" sounds to someone reading random comment threads.
The Democratic Party isn’t without its own corruption either. Pelosi is one of the best stock traders ever and there’s a reason why people voted for Trump. The border being open was criminal negligence and this isn’t just a conservative talking point cities like Seattle near the Canadian border were maxed out on services the could provide to migrants. Across the board our politicians are corrupt rule breakers, it doesn’t matter if one is worse than the other. Neither party can really prosecute the other fully because both need to see their leadership held to account and are terrified of that door opening.
> it doesn’t matter if one is worse than the other.
I disagree with this, I think things which are worse are worse. This is orders of magnitude worse, and it is impacting my life more..
To keep things focused on the tech industry, a lot of our security is ultimately built on trust (Google and Apple won't ship malicious apps, CAs, etc) and this corruption erodes that trust.
Mass immigration may not have effected you but it did greatly effect millions in the blue collar and service labor market and generally speaking was a human rights nightmare for millions of people who were trafficked, exploited and abused by a system of corrupt politicians, NGOs and crime organizations. What’s “worse” is irrelevant when it depends entirely on who you ask
Not applicable in this case. This was a certificate issued March 20th 2025 and which expired March 20th 2026. Also concerning are the instructions written in broken English instructing visitors to ignore all SSL warnings.
Leave aside the fact that very few of us here have actually tested our 23rd chromosome. Historically, the Olympics have not been (and are not) strictly chromosomal. The 2023 testosterone suppression decision requirements has exclusively impacted cis women, for one example.
Humans are biologically dimorphic in the same way winters are usually cold and summers are usually hot.
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