4 ms·

The rate of homosexuality is relatively constant with time and location. I doubt the same is true for that specific fungus. The gay uncle hypothesis is more c

The rate of homosexuality is relatively constant with time and location. I doubt the same is true for that specific fungus. The gay uncle hypothesis is more compelling.

jansan 5y ago
THat is a bold claim. The share of people in the US identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender has risen from 3.5% in 2012 to 5.6% in 2020. Not very constant if you ask me. Sauce: https://www.statista.com/statistics/719674/american-adults-who-identify-as-homosexual-bisexual-or-transgender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/719674/american-adults-w...
- notahacker 5y ago
  I think this growth is more plausibly explained by changes in public tolerance of homosexuality making people more comfortable declaring something than a commensurate increase in mould in food...
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    People can also choose for themselves within the constraints of their biological predilection. Society becoming tolerant then becomes subject to sexuality fads, and the percentage of people is identifying openly with sexuality of any stripe will fluctuate around a baseline. The percentage of people who are genetically, intrinsically, unchangeably bound to a particular identity will reveal itself over time so long as culture remains tolerant. To correct for fads and fashion, we'll probably need a few centuries. Absent sufficient data, confounding factors will make any assertions about external factors affecting sexuality impossible to falsify. We'll have reverse engineered the brain, and genetic influence on behavior and personality, long before we've collected enough data to empirically correlate sexuality accurately enough to validate hypotheses like "mold is making people hay."
  - b112 5y ago
    Thing is, we literally have no idea. There was the "hide this" aspect, truly and surely. But we have never, even today, had an accurate, truthful rendering of numbers. So the numbers could have risen, fallen, been the same. One thing I will say, stating it's always been the same over all human history seems flawed. Even if it's genetic, genes change in populations over time.
    - willis936 5y ago
      "Relatively constant" doesn't mean "5.0%". It means it's always been present (which is true as far as we can tell, it's even present in other mammals), and it's always been a small minority.
      - notahacker 5y ago
        More important still, regardless of what the actual level is, we haven't seen any evidence of sudden outbreaks of homosexuality in populations reliant on a particular contaminated source of food, or apparent decline in homosexuality following stricter controls on food storage, or any of the sorts of things you'd expect if homosexual attraction was generally cause by exposure to particular foodstuffs (cf the leaded gasoline and criminality hypothesis, which sounds pretty speculative but gets more plausible when people start modelling data on regional levels and controlling for other causal factors)
        b112 5y ago
        To be fair, studying homosexuality from the perspective of "it's not natural/genetic" can end a career. Seriously.
        notahacker 5y ago
        It can, but there are a lot of people studying causes of homosexuality nevertheless. And even if there weren't, if the back-of-the-envelope evidence points in the opposite direction (if there's any correlation at all between homosexuality and fungi in foods, it's that we're observing more people declare themselves to be homosexual in populations eating commercially produced and processed food screened for zearalenone which is the opposite of the expected result if zearalenone is the causal factor, and "outbreaks" of homosexuality amongst groups with shared diets simply aren't observed) it's not a theory with much in its favour.
- yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago
  I know a lot of people feel more comfortable coming out now which is a good thing, but to add some anecdata to this...I know, and have heard of, a large number of people who claim to be gay or bi and by every indication are not. Not that their sexuality is my concern, but a few of them are obviously just posturing or something. I don't know if they've attached virtue to certain sexualities, or maybe they need to feel like they're a minority so they aren't "oppressors" (they're all whites, of the concerned variety), or if they got invested in gay culture and feel like they belong to it, or if they fetishized it or whatever but it's weird. I literally had one woman tell me, who proclaims her bisexuality every chance she gets and paints her nails rainbow colors on pride day, say that sex with women was gross...sorry lady, but I don't think you're a bisexual... Is there a word for this? It's like the label of something has taken on more importance in their minds than the meaning behind it.
verisimi 5y ago
"Biological warfare Mass casualties occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s when Fusarium-contaminated wheat flour was baked into bread, causing alimentary toxic aleukia with a 60% mortality rate. Symptoms began with abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and prostration, and within days, fever, chills, myalgias and bone marrow depression with granulocytopenia and secondary sepsis occurred. Further symptoms included pharyngeal or laryngeal ulceration and diffuse bleeding into the skin (petechiae and ecchymoses), melena, bloody diarrhea, hematuria, hematemesis, epistaxis, vaginal bleeding, pancytopenia and gastrointestinal ulceration. Fusarium sporotrichoides contamination was found in affected grain in 1932, spurring research for medical purposes and for use in biological warfare. The active ingredient was found to be trichothecene T-2 mycotoxin, and it was produced in quantity and weaponized prior to the passage of the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972. The Soviets were accused of using the agent, dubbed "yellow rain", to cause 6,300 deaths in Laos, Kampuchea, and Afghanistan between 1975 and 1981.[16][17] The "biological warfare agent" was later purported to be merely bee feces,[18][19] but the issue remains disputed." "wheat flour" "Since fungi are well-known as producers of mycotoxins, it has been reasonable to attribute these changes to. the increased growth of fungi. In an earlier study the authors were able to show that blueberries from artificially fertilized forest land make hens infertile in that after eating these berries they laid eggs without shells or with defective shells. In large doses the blueberries were so toxic that all the hens died." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusarium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusarium "General description 3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol is a trichothecene mycotoxin, secreted by Fusarium species. It stimulates the activation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK)/ p38 mitogen-activated protein kinases and prevents protein synthesis. 3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol is a weak inducer of apoptosis. Application 3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol has been used in a study to compare the ability of two fungi to improve wheat growth, decrease root colonization of Fusarium, and withstand mycotoxins. 3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol has also been used to induce and study anorexia in mice." wheat - again, anorexia https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/GB/en/product/sigma/a6166 https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/GB/en/product/sigma/a6166 did someone say this stuff is used in packaging?

The rate of homosexuality is relatively constant with time and location. I doubt the same is true for that specific fungus. The gay uncle hypothesis is more compelling.

jansan 5y ago

THat is a bold claim. The share of people in the US identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender has risen from 3.5% in 2012 to 5.6% in 2020. Not very constant if you ask me. Sauce: https://www.statista.com/statistics/719674/american-adults-who-identify-as-homosexual-bisexual-or-transgender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/719674/american-adults-w...

notahacker 5y ago
I think this growth is more plausibly explained by changes in public tolerance of homosexuality making people more comfortable declaring something than a commensurate increase in mould in food...
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  People can also choose for themselves within the constraints of their biological predilection. Society becoming tolerant then becomes subject to sexuality fads, and the percentage of people is identifying openly with sexuality of any stripe will fluctuate around a baseline. The percentage of people who are genetically, intrinsically, unchangeably bound to a particular identity will reveal itself over time so long as culture remains tolerant. To correct for fads and fashion, we'll probably need a few centuries. Absent sufficient data, confounding factors will make any assertions about external factors affecting sexuality impossible to falsify. We'll have reverse engineered the brain, and genetic influence on behavior and personality, long before we've collected enough data to empirically correlate sexuality accurately enough to validate hypotheses like "mold is making people hay."
- b112 5y ago
  Thing is, we literally have no idea. There was the "hide this" aspect, truly and surely. But we have never, even today, had an accurate, truthful rendering of numbers. So the numbers could have risen, fallen, been the same. One thing I will say, stating it's always been the same over all human history seems flawed. Even if it's genetic, genes change in populations over time.
  - willis936 5y ago
    "Relatively constant" doesn't mean "5.0%". It means it's always been present (which is true as far as we can tell, it's even present in other mammals), and it's always been a small minority.
    - notahacker 5y ago
      More important still, regardless of what the actual level is, we haven't seen any evidence of sudden outbreaks of homosexuality in populations reliant on a particular contaminated source of food, or apparent decline in homosexuality following stricter controls on food storage, or any of the sorts of things you'd expect if homosexual attraction was generally cause by exposure to particular foodstuffs (cf the leaded gasoline and criminality hypothesis, which sounds pretty speculative but gets more plausible when people start modelling data on regional levels and controlling for other causal factors)
      - b112 5y ago
        To be fair, studying homosexuality from the perspective of "it's not natural/genetic" can end a career. Seriously.
        notahacker 5y ago
        It can, but there are a lot of people studying causes of homosexuality nevertheless. And even if there weren't, if the back-of-the-envelope evidence points in the opposite direction (if there's any correlation at all between homosexuality and fungi in foods, it's that we're observing more people declare themselves to be homosexual in populations eating commercially produced and processed food screened for zearalenone which is the opposite of the expected result if zearalenone is the causal factor, and "outbreaks" of homosexuality amongst groups with shared diets simply aren't observed) it's not a theory with much in its favour.
yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago
I know a lot of people feel more comfortable coming out now which is a good thing, but to add some anecdata to this...I know, and have heard of, a large number of people who claim to be gay or bi and by every indication are not. Not that their sexuality is my concern, but a few of them are obviously just posturing or something. I don't know if they've attached virtue to certain sexualities, or maybe they need to feel like they're a minority so they aren't "oppressors" (they're all whites, of the concerned variety), or if they got invested in gay culture and feel like they belong to it, or if they fetishized it or whatever but it's weird. I literally had one woman tell me, who proclaims her bisexuality every chance she gets and paints her nails rainbow colors on pride day, say that sex with women was gross...sorry lady, but I don't think you're a bisexual... Is there a word for this? It's like the label of something has taken on more importance in their minds than the meaning behind it.

verisimi 5y ago

"Biological warfare Mass casualties occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s when Fusarium-contaminated wheat flour was baked into bread, causing alimentary toxic aleukia with a 60% mortality rate. Symptoms began with abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and prostration, and within days, fever, chills, myalgias and bone marrow depression with granulocytopenia and secondary sepsis occurred. Further symptoms included pharyngeal or laryngeal ulceration and diffuse bleeding into the skin (petechiae and ecchymoses), melena, bloody diarrhea, hematuria, hematemesis, epistaxis, vaginal bleeding, pancytopenia and gastrointestinal ulceration. Fusarium sporotrichoides contamination was found in affected grain in 1932, spurring research for medical purposes and for use in biological warfare. The active ingredient was found to be trichothecene T-2 mycotoxin, and it was produced in quantity and weaponized prior to the passage of the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972. The Soviets were accused of using the agent, dubbed "yellow rain", to cause 6,300 deaths in Laos, Kampuchea, and Afghanistan between 1975 and 1981.[16][17] The "biological warfare agent" was later purported to be merely bee feces,[18][19] but the issue remains disputed." "wheat flour" "Since fungi are well-known as producers of mycotoxins, it has been reasonable to attribute these changes to. the increased growth of fungi. In an earlier study the authors were able to show that blueberries from artificially fertilized forest land make hens infertile in that after eating these berries they laid eggs without shells or with defective shells. In large doses the blueberries were so toxic that all the hens died." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusarium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusarium "General description 3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol is a trichothecene mycotoxin, secreted by Fusarium species. It stimulates the activation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK)/ p38 mitogen-activated protein kinases and prevents protein synthesis. 3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol is a weak inducer of apoptosis. Application 3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol has been used in a study to compare the ability of two fungi to improve wheat growth, decrease root colonization of Fusarium, and withstand mycotoxins. 3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol has also been used to induce and study anorexia in mice." wheat - again, anorexia https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/GB/en/product/sigma/a6166 https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/GB/en/product/sigma/a6166 did someone say this stuff is used in packaging?