Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • There there

    Heh.

    I don’t know who the artist is Barry Blitt.

  • Any fule kno

    Ah. Well. If they know instinctively, that settles it.

    We don’t have evidence, but we know instinctively, and that instinct is in no way connected to our political affiliations or our choice of outcome. You can take that to the bank.

  • By protesters

    When in doubt, cancel.

    An Oxford University professor has been forced to cancel lectures following abuse from pro-trans activists.

    Dr Michael Foran, 32, an associate professor of law at the university, was interrupted by protesters at two separate talks discussing gender law in recent weeks.

    Footage obtained by The Telegraph showed activists standing in front of his lectern and telling the audience he was a “bigot” and “transphobic”.

    It’s not “bigotry” to know that sex is not swappable. It’s not phobic to know that men can’t be women.

    The academic, who is an expert on gender law, confirmed on Sunday that he had cancelled his remaining two lectures because of the “escalating disruptive protests”.

    “This is deeply lamentable, but the disruption has undermined the academic nature of this series,” he said in a post on X. “Students shouldn’t face bullying or harassment when attending academic events.”

    And that’s so especially true when the bullying comes from people who are factually wrong and also morally wrong.

    I mean, I’ll be honest and admit that if an academic were doing talks on why we should genocide all the [insert despised group here] I would think such talks should be canceled. Genocides do in fact start with incitement, and they do happen, and that’s why I’m not an absolutist about free speech.

    But this obviously is not that.

    At his first lecture on May 29, as he stood at the lectern preparing to begin, two activists walked to the front of the lecture hall and started addressing the audience. They are both believed to be students at the university.

    In a video taken by an audience member, one of them, reading from his phone, claimed that Dr Foran “masks his transphobia behind a thin veneer of academia”. He added: “If you are here in a critical capacity to challenge his ideas… that is not the same as refusing to platform him. He will not be convinced by your arguments. Please join me in walking out and refusing to platform this bigot.”

    Audience members could be heard urging the protesters to leave, while Dr Foran said: “I’d really appreciate if you don’t disrupt this event.”

    At the next lecture on June 5, the same two protesters again addressed the audience at the start of the lecture. In the footage, their voices can hardly be heard as audience members shouted at them to leave and drowned them out with chanting.

    And, oddly enough, that’s not how Michael Foran wants to give his lectures.

    Kate Barker, the chief executive of LGB Alliance, said: “We’re saddened that the people of Oxford have been deprived of Michael’s expertise, especially at a time when clarity and expertise on the law is so sorely needed. “

    She added: “We would urge these intolerant activists to apply a little critical thinking, and engage with people and arguments, even when they feel uncomfortable.”

    Or failing that, at least sit still and shut tf up.

  • Which twin is the silliest?

    Good old 5 Pillars.

    The full image:

    Right. A woman who wears the full burqa is of course going to be hanging out with that nice lesbian next door and going to a party with all the nice everybody welcome here people the nice lesbian next door is friends with. They have everything in common, they just happen to have different tastes in fashion.

  • A constitutional framework

    United Humanists on Facebook:

    The U.S. Supreme Court upheld West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act — a law banning transgender girls and women from competing in female sports categories in public schools and universities. The 6-3 ruling found that biological sex could be used as the basis for sports categorisation without violating the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a forceful dissent joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, wrote that the majority had endorsed a constitutional framework that treats trans women as categorically different from other women — not on the basis of athletic performance data, but on identity alone.

    Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…yes? Because they are? Categorically different is exactly what they are? Thank you for putting it so clearly. Too bad you don’t understand your own words.

    Of course trans women are categorically different from women, on account of how trans women are men. You can’t be a trans woman without being a man. And yes of course on the basis of identity alone, because that’s what the claim is – a delusional or manipulative claim to have the identity of a woman despite in fact being a man.

    The ruling creates a constitutional framework in which states may distinguish between trans and non-trans women in contexts where the distinction can be framed as serving a governmental interest.

    Well thank fucking fuck for that. States need to distinguish between trans women and women, and we all need states to do so. The fact that men who claim to be women don’t like it is just too god damn bad. Stand up for women why don’t you.

  • One could apply your trenchant analysis

    Ok, frivolous but hilarious so I’m gonna be frivolous.

    Hugh Laurie gets diagnosis wrong again. Gets threatened with being fired. Patient nearly dies again.

    Hugh Laurie has last minute leftfield idea. Gets diagnosis right. Doesn’t get fired.

    Eight seasons of this?

  • How to celebrate the anniv

    Will a lawsuit save the day?

    A federal lawsuit seeks to halt the upcoming UFC fight card on the White House South Lawn in a mixed martial arts show timed for President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and part of the celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.

    The filing Saturday by the Public Integrity Project on behalf of two Virginia residents contends the Trump administration’s authorization of the June 14 event was unlawful. The lawsuit says such approval violated National Park Service regulations prohibiting sporting events on federal parklands, Congress did not consent to the towering arch overlooking the event space and no environmental review was conducted before the construction.

    Other than that, Mr Lincoln, how did you like the play?

    Crews are erecting an octagon-shaped cage on the South Lawn. Trump has said the finished UFC project will feature “a 5,000-seat arena right outside the front door of the White House.” 

    And that’s a problem.

    H/t Josh Larios

  • Only the best

    Talk about a revolving door…

    A couple of weeks ago, the public learned about a Jan. 6 rioter who was arrested on a gun charge in Texas more than a year after receiving a presidential pardon from Donald Trump. Just days earlier, law enforcement officials in Florida announced a prostitution, human trafficking and child predator sting, which led to the arrest of two more Jan. 6 participants who had also received pardons from the incumbent president.

    Two weeks before that, a pardoned Jan. 6 rioter reached a plea agreement with prosecutors over charges of sexual exploitation of a minor and possessing sexually explicit images of children. Those developments come three weeks after a different Jan. 6 rioter who received a presidential pardon was sentenced to four years in prison on child pornography charges. Earlier in the month, a different Jan. 6 rioter, who was also rescued by Trump, was sentenced to life in prison for molesting two children.

    Well at least they’re victimless crimes…

    It’s hard not to wonder: Just how many pardoned Jan. 6 rioters have run into fresh trouble with the law after receiving clemency from Trump? As it turns out, an answer has come into focus: Lawfare, a nonprofit legal issues publication, published a study this week that found at least 97 people who were charged with crimes in connection with the assault on the Capitol and who have been accused of new crimes. The New York Times noted that the total is “larger than previously known.”

    Jeezus.

    On the upside, some of them were hired by the Trump regime before they got around to committing new crimes.

    Last summer, for example, Trump’s Justice Department hired Jared Wise, a former FBI agent who participated in the Jan. 6 riot and was filmed urging his fellow insurrectionists to “kill” police officers. This week, The Washington Post also reported on a rioter named Elias Irizarry, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to 14 days in jail in 2023 and who was recently hired for a sensitive counterterrorism job in a Pentagon office “that manages highly classified military operations.”

    Seems like a wise move.

    That said, the Pentagon again made no effort to deny the accuracy of the reporting, and a spokesperson for the department described Irizarry as “a qualified, patriotic young professional,” adding that the Defense Department is “proud to have him as a political appointee.”

    The Pentagon’s pride notwithstanding, the Post’s report noted the position that Irizarry now holds requires a top-secret security clearance, and he’s part of a team that handles some of “the most delicate” work the Pentagon performs.

    The timing of these developments could have been better: When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth once again intervened this week in a military branch’s promotion list, disproportionately targeting women and minority officers, a Pentagon spokesperson said personnel decisions are entirely “merit based.”

    Mm. Get the women and brown people out, replace them with convicted felons. Yay progress.

  • A thumb

    I’m twelve minutes into this –

    And what I’m thinking is…even if you think 60 Minutes is bad or too old or boring or whatever, what is the point of being aggressively rude and dismissive toward the people behind it? What is that for? What purpose does it serve?

    I have to admit I don’t watch it myself. I used to occasionally, but I did get tired of it. It started to seem a tad self-important, so I wonder if that’s how it struck the New Bosses too. To put it another way maybe they really do have reasonable ideas about how it could be improved. But even if they do and it could, why be assholes about it? Especially since it was in fact highly popular?

    I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe it’s just sadism plus trumpism.

  • A thumb for Trump

    Jayzuz.

    “Renee Good’s car – you need to describe her as driving toward the officer.”

    Even though the clip doesn’t show that. It’s never been clear to me exactly what the clip does show, because it all happened in a second or two and because the vantage point just doesn’t show everything, but one has to consider the probabilities. She was there basically as a tourist. They were taking a look on the way home, and their sympathies were with the people being arrested by Trump’s Gestapo. It does not follow that she therefore thought it would be a good idea to hit a cop with her SUV. Bari Weiss ordering a journalist to pretend otherwise is nauseating.

  • His presence was not missed

    Hegseth not all that welcome in Normandy.

    US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday travelled to Normandy to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of the World War II D-Day landings.

    But after making a speech at the American military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, he conspicuously skipped afternoon’s main international ceremony marking the anniversary of the Allied landings, which helped herald the end of World War II.

    His presence was not missed by some residents of the village hosting the ceremony, Langrune-sur-Mer, who said the US official was not welcome there.

    Why not? Because he’s on the other team, that’s why not. Trump is Team Hitler, and so is Hegseth. They’re not quite as actively genocidal, yet, but they certainly could and would be if the opportunity arose. Killing people in small boats is step one on the road to Auschwitz.

    His presence was not missed by some residents of the village hosting the ceremony, Langrune-sur-Mer, who said the US official was not welcome there.

    “He has very warlike views and it seems to us that this man does not share our democratic values,” Sylvie Lamy Thepaut, a member of the municipal association Langrune en commun, told BFM TV.

    A message on the association’s website called for Hegseth’s visit to be cancelled on the grounds that the Pentagon chief “espouses values contrary to democracy, human rights and peace” and had made “numerous anti-European remarks”, “warlike statements” and “American supremacist pronouncements”.

    And he’s part of an administration that has murdered people in full public view.

    In his earlier speech at the American military cemetery, Hegseth utilised dehumanising anti-immigrant rhetoric, urging Europe to counter what he termed an “invasion” of its coastline by migrants.

    Just like the way the Jews “invaded” Germany am I right?

  • Guest post: One at a time please

    Originally a comment by Sackbut on The cuppa accords.

    If Muslim homophobia is just a result of never having shared tea with a gay person, that would be even more ridiculous than being homophobic because a non-existent god spoke to a deluded ‘prophet’ back in the days when no one had indoor plumbing…or religious freedom.

    Indeed. There are plenty of people, some of whom I’ve known, who make homophobic comments, or make racially insensitive statements, or express sexist views, despite having a family member or close friend or spouse who is a member of the maligned group. Certainly plenty of married men disparage women.

    I think part of the issue was well captured by an old Doonsebury comic about Ronald Reagan, in which Reagan was decrying “welfare queens”. An aide described a woman in a difficult situation who needed help, and Reagan said to go find this woman and help her. The aide said it wasn’t a specific woman, but a general class of people, and Reagan went back to complaining about the “welfare queens” again.

    That is, there is a difference between how people deal with one individual and how they deal with a whole class of people. It may be possible for this hypothetical Muslim man to sympathize with this one gay man over coffee/tea, but not necessarily to extend that to the general idea of gay men. The “cuppa” only goes so far.

  • Party time for the Heggies

    Meanwhile in even more Hegseth:

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to bring six of his children on an official trip to France that began Friday is putting added strain on his personal protective detail amid heightened threats stemming from the Iran war, one current and two former employees of the agency responsible for his security said.

    Hegseth, whose wife, Jennifer Hegseth, also joined the trip, is in France to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of D-Day and honor the tens of thousands of American troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

    So why not make it a party? It’s such a jolly, festive occasion, right?

    “I’ve never, ever seen anything like that with a whole family going,” said one former official with the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division, or CID, the agency responsible for securing the defense secretary’s movements at home and abroad. Like others interviewed for this report, this person spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

    A spokesman for Hegseth said the defense secretary is covering the cost of his family’s travel but did not specify whether that includes the additional security personnel needed to protect his family.

    Nor does it deal with the whole jolly outing for the whole fam aspect. D-Day was not what you’d call festive. It was welcome, it was desperately needed, but it was not festive.

    A current Army official said that the increased costs stemming from Hegseth’s security needs have taken a toll on the agency and that, as a result, CID has struggled to provide adequate training for its agents and Army criminal investigations have been curtailed in some instances.

    “As a taxpayer, I’m concerned about it,” the official said. “But as a professional who always has to claw for money to do just basic missions, I just look at that cost and think, how much more of X, Y and Z could we have bought if not for that?”

    The Hegseths have taken their children on official trips in the past, as well, including one in October that included a stop in Hawaii. At the time, the Pentagon would not say whether the secretary reimbursed the government for the cost of having his family accompany him.

    Which means he didn’t.

  • Piggy man deletes all the women

    TV personality kicks all women off promotions list.

    After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cut nine Navy officers, including all the women, from a promotion list, several female officers say they see the unusual intervention as a sign that their careers now have a ceiling and worry for the future generation of female military leaders.

    The Navy had selected 31 sailors to promote from the rank of captain to one-star admiral, but Hegseth recently intervened to strike nine people from the list, including three women and two Black men, according to a defense official…

    As a result, the Navy is not promoting a single woman to the one-star admiral rank this year even though women make up about one-quarter of all Navy officers and nearly one-third of the sea service’s midgrade ranks, according to military data from 2024.

    Well give him time, he’ll kick all of them out.

    Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, said on social media this week that “military promotions are given to those who have earned them” and that the Pentagon “will never consider the color of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor in promotions.” The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request seeking further comment.

    The Navy’s process for choosing which officers to promote to the one-star rank has been relatively constant and transparent over the years. The service convenes a group of officers, called a promotion board, that examines the records of eligible officers and chooses the most qualified.

    The board that selected the initial slate of 31 officers for promotion was directed by then-Navy Secretary John Phelan, an appointee of President Donald Trump, to “recommend for promotion the best qualified officers within their respective competitive category.”

    Whatever. Hegseth is in charge and he considers women inferior, so there’s no more to be said.

    The full list of 31 people to be promoted was approved by Phelan, other Navy leaders and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, before it reached Hegseth, who chose to make the changes, the defense official said.

    While Hegseth is within his rights to intervene in the list, “it’s just not the norm” and its “a break from tradition” said Katherine Kuzminski, a researcher specializing in military recruiting and retention at the Center for New American Security think tank. She said that promotions historically have been seen “the services’ business.”

    I’m guessing that’s because they’ll know a lot more about it than the political appointee who perches on top of the department.

    Kuzminski noted that “this is a decision that’s not being made by the U.S. Navy — it’s being made by the secretary of defense” and said Hegseth’s growing interference in operational aspects of the military services such as promotions is creating “tension” about what “normal” will look like going forward.

    Because what normal will look like going forward is grim.

    In addition to pulling the recent promotions of three women to admiral, Hegseth shortly after he took office fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the service’s top officer and the first woman to hold the job. He never explained his rationale.

    Since then, he also has fired two other female three-star admirals without explanation.

    The explanation is very simple. He thinks women are inferior.

  • Eyes off the oceans

    Hide the information; that will solve the problem.

    The Trump administration has announced it will dismantle a $368 million deep-ocean monitoring system that provides critical data on the world’s oceans. The decision is sparking alarm among experts that US is taking eyes off the oceans at a dangerous time of record-breaking sea temperatures, an imminent super El Niño and fears a critical system of ocean currents could collapse, ushering in global chaos.

    Yeah yeah, blah blah, Trump knows what he’s doing so shut up.

    The Ocean Observatories Initiative, or OOI, was set up in 2016 and is made up of around 900 instruments in parts of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans specially designed to withstand the immense pressure and corrosive saltiness of the ocean depths. Moored equipment and underwater gliders continuously collect real-time data allowing scientists to monitor the health of the ocean, including shifts in ocean chemistry and changes to the powerful currents that shape global weather and climate.

    The initiative was supposed to operate for three decades, but on May 21, the National Science Foundation, which funds the system, announced it would be “descoping” the network. Over the next 15 months, “in-water infrastructure” will be removed from arrays off the coasts of Alaska, Washington, Oregon and North Carolina and from the North Atlantic off southeast Greenland, the NSF said in a statement.

    The decision “aligns with NSF’s wider strategy of a nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart lifecycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio,” Mike England, head of media affairs at NSF, told CNN.

    Ew. That’s not scientific language, it’s corporate-speak. Nimble, smart, portfolio – spoken like a true head of media affairs during the Trump reign.

    The announcement comes as the Trump administration undoes climate protections and attempts to dismantle and defund climate science, at the same time as it pushes to start mining the deep sea for critical minerals. Scientists have expressed deep concerns that dismantling this ocean monitoring system undermines ocean science at a critical time, reduces US scientific leadership and is abandoning taxpayer-funded equipment already paid for and installed.

    But installed without Trump’s permission, or when he wasn’t looking, or without the appropriate level of gilding. One of those.

    “I’d call this penny wise, tons foolish,” said Rick Spinrad, an oceanographer who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the Biden administration. “OOI is proving its value for a range of economic and social benefits: from fisheries management to weather forecasting, to protection from coastal flooding … Where’s the analysis of return on investment that shows that eliminating OOI is in the taxpayers’ best interest?”

    Um…oh I know, it’s in that bathroom at Mar-a-Lago – nobody is allowed to go in there any more.

    The global oceans are enduring a period of huge change — some of which remains largely unexplained. Ocean temperatures have been off the charts in some places, fueling more intense hurricanes, driving sea level rise and causing mass coral bleaching.

    Sustained ocean monitoring is “how we detect emerging risks in real time,” said Helen Findlay, a biological oceanographer at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK. “Without them, we are effectively choosing to navigate an increasingly volatile ocean with diminishing visibility.”

    But that costs money that could be spent on bullfights in the Rose Garden.

    A huge area of concern is what the loss of monitoring will mean for our understanding of a crucial network of Atlantic Ocean currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. Scientists have used data from the OOI to help try to map the AMOC’s fate.

    A growing body of research suggest the AMOC could be on course to collapse, potentially as early as this century, which would bring catastrophic consequences, including accelerated sea level rise along the US East Coast, a winter deep freeze in Europe and prolonged droughts across a swath of Africa.

    Get yourself a good strong raft. Get yourself a top quality down jacket. Stay away from Africa. Problems solved!

    Experts say the ripple effects of what is being lost will be wide. It will “create an irreparable blind spot for our country in predicting earthquakes, fishery health, storm forecasting, coastal flooding and more,” said Chris Robbins, associate director of scientific initiatives at Ocean Conservancy. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

    It makes trumpsense though.

  • Guest post: There is another possibility

    Originally a comment by The Whimster Gap on Gender-neutral childmaking.

    Yes, but maybe also no. Sorry: I’m going to play devil’s advocate again.

    Some of the drive towards gender-neutral newspeak might very well be based in a contempt for women qua women. Some might be based in a concern for the person, as separate from the body, or bare prudery about the body. This could be based in contempt for one sex or the other, but it doesn’t have to be.

    There is another possibility, though, which is less sinister: it gives the law a way to deal more easily with lesbian couples. Obviously, only one of those will be the genetic parent (at least for the time being, though who knows what gene-splicing tech will be available soon). The genetic parent will likely be the gestatrix.

    But the other woman will also be a parent in an entirely meaningful sense. She’d not be the father, though. Now, one might want to say that she’d be a kind of mother. But one might perfectly plausibly say that that’s not so – at least if one thinks that motherhood does have something to do with gestation. (Again, there may be disputes about that, but there is a use of the word “mother” in standard English that works that way; and one can’t easily try to proscribe that sense, or to prescribe a new one, without playing the same game as the genderloons.)

    And there might be a further reason not just to call them both mothers which doesn’t depend on that kind of position. Suppose our lesbian couple splits up, and it’s acrimonious. There’s a dispute about child custody. Here, the law might want to take into account which partner gestated the child: that might be one of its considerations, even if only as a tie-breaker.

    But why not talk about the gestational and the non-gestational mother in such cases? Well, because that doubles the work of the law. After all, straight couples sometimes split up, too; and in such cases, who is the mother and who is the father might matter when deciding what is best for the child, again, if only as a tie-breaker. So we could have one law that talks about gestating and non-gestating mothers, and another that talks about mothers and fathers. But these laws would be functionally identical. It’s therefore more efficient to cut the faff and talk about the non-gestating parent, because – bluntly – there’s really no significant difference between the non-gestating mother and the non-gestating father.

    (Well, OK: there is the genetic contribution. But it’s not clear why that carries much weight, and as I’ve noted, it might not be a watertight distinction in the near future. Or the father might be adoptive, and so be in essentially the same position as the non-gestating mother. Or whatever. There’s going to be some conceptual bleed-through whichever way we cut it.)

    So there is – arguably – a reason to distinguish in law between gestating and non-gestating parents that doesn’t rely on lunacy or misogyny. I’m not saying that that’s driving things here, but it’s still available.

  • One of the conditions

    You have got to be kidding.

    I’m so tired of constantly being shown how little women matter.

  • Guest post: Our time is not free for the taking

    Originally a hell no comment by Artymorty on He done been reflecting.

    Why are gay people the passive ones here? Are we all just sitting around waiting for someone to interact with us? Idle until someone walks up to us to “take” us for coffee? In video games, those are called NPCs — Non-Player Characters. They are the computer-generated and computer-controlled AI characters that populate the game world, which don’t have real-live human players behind them.

    An NPC is nothing more than a prop in the game’s world, whose only function is to fulfill the human players’ needs.

    Well, this is the real world, and I’m not a fucking NPC. My time is not free for the taking; I’m not just sitting around, waiting for a Muslim to approach and interrogate me about my gayness over a cuppa tea.

    In fact, I can’t stand when strangers treat me like the token gay.

    Muslims have plenty of resources to learn about homophobia and gay rights. The same as the rest of us. I’m not here to guide them through it. It’s almost as if they are the NPCs, completely lacking personal agency. Well, they can go right the fuck ahead and Here-Let-Me-Google-That-For-You their own way through it.

  • He done been reflecting

    Yes so that “Take a gay for a cuppa” thing is going really well for Harry.

    One, he’s so dim or sloppy or both that he can’t see even the most glaring typos, but more to the point, two, he’s surprised by the homophobic comments. Dude, what do you think Islam is? Just a few friendly suggestions? A close cousin to Quakerism?

    Glaring typo again, followed by idiocy. Go speek with the communnnniny, i.e. have a cup of tea with one Muslim man. Not a woman of course, Harry knows women are too stupid to talk to, plus her male relatives would throw him off a roof.

    Adam Sellers is right. Muslim bros get the cuddly treatment; uppity women are called names and banished to outer darkness.

    He’s quite the fool, this Harry.

  • The cuppa accords

    Communniny-thought at its most rigorous and powerful.

    See that? Having a cup of tea with one person=speak with the community.

    Dude, speaking with one person is speaking with one person. It’s not speaking with “the community” – whatever that is.

    One observer notes that he doesn’t give the same advice to himself when it comes to us pesky women who refuse to agree that men can be women.

    Yeah, Harry! Why don’t you invite us for a cuppa? One stubborn woman at a time?