Jupiter from the James Webb telescope September 12, 2019.

See comments for correction.

No racism here folks, move along.

Hours before a failed effort by Democrats to pass a voting rights bill in the Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was asked in a news conference on Wednesday for his message to voters worried about access to the polls during the midterm elections.

Mr. McConnell described those worries as a ginned-up controversy, and misleadingly cited data on voter turnout.

“Well, the concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” he responded.

Note that he thinks African Americans are not Americans.

Leaving that aside however – come on. The issue is future elections, not past ones. The Republicans have been busily making it harder for African Americans to vote ever since the Shelby ruling and especially ever since Trump. There are new obstacles that won’t be in the statistics yet.

[H]igh voter turnout and perceptions that voting was easy in past elections do not prove that concerns about voting access in future elections are “misplaced,” as Mr. McConnell suggested. At least 19 states passed laws in 2021 restricting voting access. Georgia’s efforts in particular may have an outsize impact on Black voters.

What I’m saying. There are new restrictions. McConnell is a very bad man.

Today I learned there’s a thing called Pop ‘n’ Olly, which bills itself as “LGBT+ and Equality ‘Edutainment’ for children and young people”…without of course saying anything about what qualifies it to educate children and young people (or for that matter to edutain them).

It showed us…this.

It is – surprise surprise – absolutely dire. It starts by “explaining” how infants are “assigned” a sex and then says gender is different…without bothering to say what “gender” is. “A person’s gender is who they feel that they are,” it says in a smarmy voice, but of course that’s not what they mean at all, they just mean the usual gender bullshit. Here’s an interesting thing: there’s more to “who people are” than their sex or gender. Little children aren’t going to hear “who they feel that they are” and think girl or boy and nothing else.

Smarmy voice continues with “examples,” such as female, male, both, or neither, and then immediately proceeds to “Gender is usually something a person just knows about themselves.” The whole world of “who people are” is boiled down to female or male in an instant. It’s about as educational as a bowl of sick.

Also, by the way, what sex children are is not something they “just know” about themselves; they get told it. They get told it as they get told everything, as part of their development. Adults don’t remember being told it, so the gender fanatics among them jump to the conclusion that we “just know” it, which is a measure of how deeply stupid the whole ideology is.

I can’t watch past the first minute right now because it’s too nauseating.

The police can’t cope.

Scotland’s national police force has warned that it cannot comply fully with the demands of new hate crime laws until next year, as officers struggle to cope with a surge in reported offences caused by Twitter rows.

In its quarterly report Police Scotland said there were “hurdles to overcome” if officers were to carry out their duties within the Hate Crime and Public Order Act, passed nine months ago, with training and guidance still to be addressed, along with a requirement for new IT systems.

They want to postpone because they’re having trouble keeping up with people who call the police because they’re OfFended by something on Twitter.

A 76 per cent rise in reported crimes in which transgender issues was the aggravating factor contrasted with 6.1 per cent growth in all hate crime reports, and reflected the impact of online rows about trans rights and gender identity, according to the Scottish Police Federation.

And we know which side of those rows is calling the cops. It’s not the side that defends the rights of women, it’s the side that is outraged to be told it can’t trample all over the rights of women.

A Scottish government spokesperson said: “Work in conjunction with justice partners is underway to ensure effective implementation of the Hate Crime Act so that, once in force, it offers greater protections to those targeted by hatred and prejudice.”

Spokesperson has the tedious bureaucratic jargon down pat, at least.

“Whilst the rise in hate crimes recorded by the police including a trangender identity aggravation may be attributed to a greater frequency of crimes occurring, it may also be attributed to an increased confidence in the reporting of instances of hate crime to the police – something that is to be encouraged.

“However, these figures are a reminder to redouble our efforts to tackle hate and confront prejudice towards our LGBTI communities.”

But not toward women of course. God no. Who gives a fuck about women?

Parody or serious effort to delete the word “women” from the language? It can be hard to tell.

According to two former competitors, players with vaginas received extra underwear on the latest season of “Survivor,” which aired in 2021. 

…

Wallace said it “makes sense” to give players with vaginas more than one pair of underwear because “we got stuff going on own there” and they have different needs than those with penises. 

…

Insider has reported that wearing the same underwear and clothes for an extended period of time can have potentially life-threatening consequences, with the health risks, such as severe urinary tract infections, being higher for people with vaginas. 

According to Wallace, shortly after she and her tribemates voiced their concerns, showrunners gave players with vaginas extra underwear. 

“They decided, yes, it makes sense to give people that have a vagina two pairs of underwear,” Wallace said. “That was something cool that I think is going to continue.” 

It’s unclear if players with penises also received extra underwear. 

Has to be parody, right?

This would be just one more example of a man who identifies as a woman verbally abusing feminist women, but this one is “Lead therapist for” GenderGP.

Trans people are human, but feminist women are animals. Hm.

Oh gee what do you know it turns out all those Christmas lights use a lot of electricity. I thought there had to be a special dispensation from someone that made them magically not part of our brisk destruction of our own ecosystem, but no.

With the world moving towards cleaner energy and looking to reduce emissions, there are questions to be asked about the heavy usage of Christmas lights.

Yes like why the fuck don’t people just stop doing it, seeing as how we’re racing toward disaster as it is.

I bet a lot of people think it’s “for the kids,” but if so that’s sad because guess who is going to be dealing with much worse effects of climate change than we adults are.

A 2008 study from the US Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) found festive lights accounted for 6.6 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity consumption every year in the US.

That may have just been 0.2% of the country’s total electricity usage, but that amount of energy could be enough to run 14 million refrigerators, according to the study.

And it’s completely optional and unnecessary. There’s no law that says you have to stick lightbulbs on your house in December. People are mostly inside watching Don’t Look Up after dark anyway, not outside gaping at your lightbulbs. The fact that it’s “only” 0.2% (which is actually a hell of a lot if you think about it) doesn’t make it ok to make the problem worse for no real reason. The need to stay warm in winter is one thing, the need to be able to read outside at midnight is another.

The people in my neighborhood are getting worse about it instead of better, too. More lights than ever, and left up apparently forever. The people across the alley from me – who have them all over a very large roof & deck & porch & god knows what else on the far side where I mercifully can’t see them – still haven’t taken theirs down, 26 days after Christmas, and they’re not the only ones.

It would also have been enough to provide electricity for the whole of El Salvador, where the Central American country’s consumption was 5.9 billion kWh in 2016.

What I’m saying. 0.2% of US consumption is not “only.”

To the surprise of absolutely no one:

Former Pope Benedict XVI failed to act over four child abuse cases when he was archbishop of Munich, a German probe into the Catholic Church has alleged.

Of course he did. That’s what the church did for generations until it finally got caught. What matters to the Catholic church is the Catholic church. Not people, just the church (and its clergy – those people matter).

[A] new report into historical abuse allegations carried out by a German law firm incriminated the former pontiff. Abuse continued under his tenure, it is alleged, and the accused priests remained active in church roles.

Because that’s what always happened. The church always put the church first.

In one instance, it is alleged he knew about a priest accused of abusing boys who was transferred to his diocese, but who then continued to work in pastoral care roles – this often involves visiting and supporting people within the community.

And sexually abusing children within the community. The kindly priest comes along to visit and support people, and molests children when no adults are looking. How supportive.

Oh isn’t that sweet – Princess Ivanka handing out apples to The Poor.

For sure. She’s not the crook child of a crook father, she’s not the corrupt daughter who gave herself a nepotistic job in the White House when her corrupt daddy was pretend-president, she’s not the object of an investigation by the New York DA, she’s a sweet dainty young girl who carries big boxes around in a snowy landscape and then tells us about it on social media. Arwa Mahdawi has a good laugh.

Ever since her father lost his job as president and she lost her job as special advisor to the president, Ivanka has been keeping a low profile in Miami and largely staying off social media.

On Tuesday, however, the former first daughter posted on Instagram and Twitter for the first time in eight months, showing off photos of herself distributing free food boxes to families upstate New York.

Not that that’s why she went there, you understand. Not that the whole point was the photo op. No no no no no, she does that kind of thing regularly. At least once a year. By the way is there anything in that big box she’s schlepping? She’s certainly carrying it as if it’s weightless. Maybe there are a few napkins in it.

Why would she stage a photo op right when the New York DA announces she’s being investigated? Gee, that’s a puzzler.

(Remember that story from a high school friend who recommended Richard Russo’s Empire Falls to Princess Ivanka and got told off for thinking the Princess might want to read a book about “fucking poor people”? That too is upstate New York. Funny coincidence.)

In short, you can see why Ivanka – who has always managed her personal brand a lot more carefully than her blowhard brothers have – might decide now would be a good time to post photos online of her benevolently helping the poor.

Because she’s stupid. If she weren’t stupid, she would realize what such a photo op at such a time would look like, and realize it was too late. She’s so stupid she thinks a photo op on the very day the DA announces the investigation is a wise move.

There aren’t enough eye roll emojis in the world.

The National Women’s Law Center is no longer about women’s law. Chalk up another win for institutional capture!

It tells us:

On January 19, 2022, the National Women’s Law Center, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., and 20 additional organizations committed to gender justice and LGBTQ rights submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Brandt v. Rutledge. We filed our brief in support of Dylan Brandt, Brooke Dennis, Sabrina Jennen, and Parker Saxton, transgender young people with gender dysphoria who the state of Arkansas has tried to bar from receiving gender-affirming health care, as well as their parents and two doctors.

What does that have to do with women’s law? Apart from eroding women’s rights?

For adolescents with gender dysphoria, gender-affirming care can dramatically reduce depression and suicidal thoughts; for some, it is life-saving health care.

It can also dramatically reduce long-term happiness and self-acceptance; for some, it is life-damaging malpractice. The NWLC is completely, and recklessly, ignoring the second potential outcome.

We also counter harmful and erroneous arguments raised by supporters of this law, who claim that banning gender-affirming care is necessary to protect transgender adolescents—they’re wrong, it harms them—and that protecting transgender individuals from discrimination will somehow undermine women’s rights—they’re wrong, it bolsters protections for all women and girls. 

No you’re wrong, it doesn’t. And “all women and girls” doesn’t include men and boys, even men and boys who insist that they are women.

At NWLC, we have long defended the rights of all patients to access health care free from sex discrimination, including LGBTQ patients and patients seeking reproductive health care.

Then why call yourself NWLC? Why not drop the W now that you no longer mean it?

This is…so American.

Ask them what they think the federal minimum wage is.

And that’s why we have the terrible, ludicrous politics we have, including the massive gap between rich and poor.

Even NPR reporters are bad at it.

Institutional capture:

Canadian Bar Association Demands “No Exception” To Male Transfers to Women’s prisons

Well, that’s women decisively thrown under the wheels of the runaway locomotive.

The Canadian Bar Association had issued a series of recommendations and directives to the Correctional Service of Canada demanding violent male criminals be accommodated in women’s prisons, and to ensure their biological sex is never recorded.

In a letter dated December 4, 2020 the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) denounced a draft proposal by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) that they claim was not lax enough in its treatment and transfer of trans-identified prisoners. The CSC Commissioner’s Directive currently takes into consideration operative status and any overriding safety concerns for staff and other inmates in the movement of trans-identified inmates, but the CBA claimed those policies were discriminatory.

“In our view, [Commissioner’s Directive 100] is based on the incorrect assumption that people are fundamentally men or women (or intersex) based on biology at birth,” the CBA writes, “we recommend that the policy be based on the assumption that people have the right to be placed in institutions that reflect their gender identity if that is their choice.”

The “incorrect” “assumption” that men are not women. It’s not incorrect and it’s not an assumption. What’s the alternative? That sex is like weight or hair length or muscle definition – changeable by the owner. Nope – that’s what’s incorrect, not the awareness that sex is not changeable by the owner. It’s not “incorrect” to understand that men are not women.

The CBA goes on to suggest that almost no health or safety concerns be taken into consideration in most cases, including in transfers and double-bunking. On page 4 of the letter, the CBA writes that transfers should be made “without exception.”

“We recommend that CSC implement a policy of gender identity placement if that is the preference, without exception. In practice, the application of this exception has led to some trans women being denied placement at women’s prisons based on risk speculation.”

What about the preference of women though? What about the preference of women not to be locked up in prison with men, especially violent men? Why doesn’t that matter? Why is it only trans people whose preferences are sacred?

Pakistan is such a hellhole.

A court in Pakistan has sentenced a woman to death over allegedly blasphemous messages sent over WhatsApp and Facebook.

Aneeqa Ateeq, 26, was found guilty and given a death sentence by a court in Rawalpindi on Wednesday after a complaint was registered against her under Pakistan’s draconian cybercrime and blasphemy laws

Why not just let Allah deal with the problem? Why not concentrate on being good people themselves instead of handing out death sentences for private chats?

Pakistan is an Islamic state and has some of the harshest blasphemy laws in the world, regularly handing down death sentences. In practice executions are not carried out and the accused spend their lives in jail.

Pakistan is an Islamist theocracy, and it’s a pit of hatred and revenge.

The issue of blasphemy remains highly sensitive in Pakistan. Last month a Sri Lankan national working in a factory in Pakistan was beaten to death and his body was set alight by a mob of hundreds of people after he was accused of committing blasphemy by removing religious posters from the factory walls.

A pit of hatred and revenge.

Stewart Rhodes was arrested last week.

From Day One of the Jan. 6 investigation, the FBI was after Person One — the Justice Department’s legal term for Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, a Yale-educated military veteran who founded the extremist group Oath Keepers.

He was not among the hundreds charged in the year after the attack with crimes ranging from assaulting a police officer to unlawfully entering the Capitol.

But he made frequent appearances in prosecutors’ court filings, which said that “Person One” was in regular contact with those who allegedly attacked Congress, pushing his disciples to prepare for an apocalyptic confrontation with those who would acknowledge Joe Biden’s presidential victory and the end of Donald Trump’s time in office.

In other words he wasn’t messing around.

On Thursday, a year and a week after the riot that rocked the U.S. Capitol, FBI agents in Texas arrested Rhodes, based on a newly unsealed indictment accusing him of the rare crime of seditious conspiracy.

…

Another newly charged Oath Keeper, Edward Vallejo of Phoenix, appeared briefly before a federal magistrate judge in Arizona, who ordered that he, too, should be held in custody until a detention hearing next week.

…

The last successful federal sedition prosecution came 26 years ago, when Omar Abdel Rahman, also known as the “blind sheikh,” and nine others were convicted of plotting to blow up the United Nations, the FBI building in Manhattan, and bridges and tunnels between New Jersey and New York.

Not excited amateurs with horns on their heads but serious conspirators.

A good watch:

Andy tells us (which I didn’t know) that Aaron Rabinowitz writes regularly for The Skeptic, not the Shermer one but the UK one. Comes as a bit of a shock after his performance in that letter exchange.

This one is funny, in the usual “but horrifying” way Trump things are funny.

Heh heh heh. In 2015 his apartment was 30 thousand square feet, in 2017 it was 11 thousand square feet. Did it shrink in the laundry or what?

Nothing says Land of the Free like mandatory patriotism.

FORT MYERS, Fla. – A proposed law would require all professional sports teams to play the National Anthem before the start of every sporting event. 

A law requiring pro sports to play The Patriotic Song before doing the pro sports thing. Observers are pointing out how like North Korea this is.

What the hell is the point of forced patriotic display anyway? If it’s forced, you don’t know if it’s genuine or not, so what do you gain? Besides the thrill of forcing people to do what you think is good – which I guess answers the question. You will sing the song and you will like it, or out comes the whip.

Well why stop there? How about passing a law requiring theaters to play “Bad Moon Rising” before the curtains open? How about one mandating the musicians to perform the storm scene from King Lear before every concert?

The bill, filed by Sen. Joe Gruters (R-Sarasota), just passed the Florida Senate Commerce and Tourism committee this week. If passed, it would require teams to play the Star-Spangled Banner before the sporting event starts, including NASCAR. 

“I stand and cross my heart, and I wish everyone would just do the same,” said Donna Maisano of Naples. 

I wish a lot of things, but I don’t confuse that with the basis of good laws.

A press release from the New York state Attorney General:

New York Attorney General Letitia James today took legal action to compel Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump to appear for sworn testimony as part of the office’s ongoing civil investigation into the Trump Organization’s financial dealings. The motion to compel filed today seeks a court order enforcing testimonial subpoenas issued to Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump, as well as the production of documents held by Donald J. Trump. As the papers filed today make clear, each of the individuals was directly involved in one or more transactions under review. Earlier this month, the Trumps filed a motion to quash these interviews, and the papers filed today by the Attorney General oppose that motion.

Since moving to compel the testimony of Eric Trump in August 2020, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has collected significant additional evidence indicating that the Trump Organization used fraudulent or misleading asset valuations to obtain a host of economic benefits, including loans, insurance coverage, and tax deductions. While OAG has not yet reached a final decision regarding whether this evidence merits legal action, the grounds for pursuing the investigation are self-evident. The OAG filed today’s motion to get necessary testimony and evidence from high-ranking corporate personnel with close involvement in the events under investigation to determine, among other things, their relevant knowledge about those events.

“For more than two years, the Trump Organization has used delay tactics and litigation in an attempt to thwart a legitimate investigation into its financial dealings,” said Attorney General James. “Thus far in our investigation, we have uncovered significant evidence that suggests Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit. The Trumps must comply with our lawful subpoenas for documents and testimony because no one in this country can pick and choose if and how the law applies to them. We will not be deterred in our efforts to continue this investigation and ensure that no one is above the law.”

You know…none of them knew they were going to be in the national and global spotlight until 2015. Before that they were just this little family of lying cheating real estate hustlers. Granted they had a lot of notoriety, thanks to Daddy’s endless sleaze and trash and vulgarity, but they didn’t have the kind that was going to have local and state and federal law enforcement peering at them through a microscope. They should have local and state scrutiny, because they were sort of notorious, or at least Daddy was, but they didn’t. The kids didn’t know their scams and cheats were going to be in the spotlight, so they just blithely cooked the books thinking they would get away with it forever. I wonder if they’re starting to wish the whole “president” thing had never happened.

Does the value of free speech mean we have to let for instance Joe Rogan tell his massive audience lies about Covid?

One said it was the vast size of his audience that made him so dangerous. Another suggested it was the fact the average age of his listeners was just 24, and hence particularly persuadable.

Another expert said he appeared to have a cult of personality. One said he had repeatedly spread misinformation about Covid, and ignored calls to stop.

These were among just some of the accusations levelled at Joe Rogan, podcaster, influencer and sometime actor, from more than 150 scientists, doctors and healthcare professionals who have said the 54-year-old was “extraordinarily dangerous”.

They sent an open letter to Spotify, which hosts Rogan’s podcast, urging it “to take action to halt the spread of false information about the coronavirus and the efficacy and safety of vaccines.”

“Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine,” wrote the experts from the US, Canada, Britain and Australia.

“He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are ‘gene therapy’, promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 (contrary to FDA warnings), and spread a number of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.”

As if it’s all a game, or entertainment.

Imogen Coe, Founding Dean of the Faculty of Science at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, claimed Rogan has not simply spread misinformation once, but kept doing so.

“Why would someone deliberately share information that is potentially damaging to the health and well being of others? That needs to be addressed and health professionals in particular have a duty of care and scientists have an ethical responsibility to speak up,” she said.

Why indeed? Rogan does it and many of his fans amplify it, because…? The cover story is “freedom” but what a stupid, piffling notion of “freedom” that is, especially from people who rely on the whole network of social connection and obligation that makes it possible for them to have their dopy podcasts in the first place.

The 21st Century Salonnière explains that there are universal conditions such as anxiety, and there are culture-bound explanations for those conditions.

It’s really easy to point this out when it happens in other cultures. Only if you live in a culture where the extreme anxiety related to becoming a cannibal is “a thing” is it possible for your own wired-in extreme anxiety to find a home in that fear.

It’s harder to point this out in our own culture, though. Only if you live in a culture where cutting yourself to express your emotional pain is “a thing” is it possible for your own emotional pain to find a home in cutting yourself. That seems less [more?] intuitive because it’s the water in which we swim. (Isn’t that “just what people do”? No, it’s not.)

I have to say it’s never been the water in which I swim. Cutting seems very odd to me, and not something it would occur to me to do as a response to emotional pain.

This might explain, for example, why there was no such thing as being “triggered” by emotionally difficult lecture material in 1975, and yet we’ve heard about it often in recent years. Our current cultural understanding is that it’s possible to have a trauma response to upsetting educational content—it’s now become a thing for us, just as the fear of becoming a cannibal is a thing in another culture—and so if a lecture is upsetting, it can (really) result in being triggered now.

Again – that’s not my current cultural understanding. I’ve heard of it of course, along with a lot of mockery of it – which is kind of my point: it hasn’t really “become a thing” for us, at least not yet, because too many people find it absurd or exaggerated. It’s a thing for some of us, but far from all.

There’s always a human universal underlying these phenomena. The human universal here is that humans sometimes have extreme responses to traumatizing events. But the specific ways they respond, and even what they consider to be trauma, change depending on time, place, culture, and context. Trauma responses are very real. But culture lays a lot of things on top of it. Culture tells you how to respond, but you’re not aware that’s happening, so the response feels like it’s coming from inside you.

Emphasis added. Yes, for a lot of people this is clearly the case.

Cultural definitions, cultural beliefs, and cultural expectations are really powerful. They influence people’s beliefs and behaviors in ways of which we ourselves are often unaware. Culture essentially tells us how to behave, and we comply without perceiving that we’re complying.

Which is one very good reason for being aware of how that works, and watching out for it, so that you can resist if it doesn’t suit you, and maybe even help others resist if it doesn’t suit them. Anorexia for instance – that doesn’t suit anyone, so it’s good to resist it. Violent porn for another instance – how about if we stop letting culture tell us that’s sexy and ok?

Culture-bound syndromes are not just for quaint, unaware people in other places. They are very much alive. Cultural beliefs exert powerful effects.

Note that no one is play-acting—no one is pretending. But people in our culture—not just other cultures—adopt sets of beliefs and behaviors without being aware of it, in response to cultural expectations, in ways that feel completely organic and genuine.

Indeed, but that’s why learning to think critically can be so useful.

So when we look at human suffering and how to address it, it can be helpful to ask ourselves: What part of this thing is a human universal? Which parts did we make up?

And now we get to it.

To hear the modern Western media tell it, transgender identity and gender dysphoria (extreme emotional distress related to aspects of your sexed body) have always existed among humans.

Uh huh, and I’ve never believed a word of it.

Not only is trans identity a human universal, the current narrative goes, but our current 21st-century response to it is the universally decent way—the only right way—to respond to someone with such an identity.

Thus, the 21st-century Western narrative calls for affirmation of everyone with a trans identity, changing the names and pronouns we use for people, providing puberty blockers and hormones, offering surgeries, changing single-sex spaces and sports to single-gender spaces and sports, and endorsing simple catechistic slogans with which every decent person is supposed to agree (e.g., “Trans women are women”). The reality is so settled that there is to be “no debate.”

And all in the space of – what – ten years? Fifteen?

What part of this thing is a human universal? Which parts did we make up? They’re important questions.