The kids are all wrong

Aug 16th, 2020 4:11 pm | By

They’re so confident, so dogmatic, so lecturey with the bullshit. The hand goes up and down, the vowels are crisp, the voice is shouty.

“This includes transgender women,” purple hoody with glasses tells us forcefully, “because they are women – being transgender does not eliminate, whatsoever, their identity as a woman.”

Well that’s us told!

But it’s bullshit. Purple hoody can gesture at us all she likes, she can over-enunciate her words all she likes, it doesn’t make the bullshit true. Yes being a transgender man does eliminate his “identity as a woman” – whatever that might be. A man is a man even if he fantasizes that he’s a woman every hour of every day. Nobody, nobody at all, is required to join him in his fantasy, or assure him that it’s true. And lesbians for damn sure don’t have to pretend that yer man really is a woman and that they would just love to have sex with him.

And then on comes orange hair and wo mama, she’s worse than purple hoody. She’s a nightmare.

“What we’re saying, is that your ‘preferences’ [finger hooks in the air here] are based in transphobic dogma that’s been spread by society for centuries.”

That sounds oddly familiar. It sounds oddly like “You don’t really prefer your own sex, you’re just confused/screwed-up/brainwashed by those confused screwed up kids you hang out with.” It sounds and is oddly and exactly like “you will let this man fuck you or else.” And it’s a woman saying it, and she’s saying it with all the venom of an angry Baptist preacher.

Via Morty.



First pour no Drano

Aug 16th, 2020 2:15 pm | By

From the Independent:

[warning – it’s gruesome]

A woman who fantasised about being blind claims to have arranged to have drain cleaner poured in her eyes to live the way she was “supposed to be born”, it has been reported.

Jewel Shuping, from North Carolina, said she was diagnosed with Body Integrity Identity Disorder, a psychological condition where healthy people believe they are meant to be disabled.

I would suggest wearing eye patches rather than pouring Drano into the eyes.

The 30-year-old’s desire to be blind reportedly began in early childhood. At the age of six she would spend hours staring at the sun after being told it could damage her eyes, she told Barcroft Media.

If that were true surely it would have worked. Hours??? Not credible.

BIID, a disorder coined by Dr Michael First, affects a small percentage of the population and is typically associated with the desire to have a specific body part amputated. Suffers often become envious of people who have the disability they crave.

A theory as to the disorder’s cause is that “the brain is not able to provide an accurate plan of the body” causing it to see the offending body part as “foreign and not actually part of the person, thus the desire to have it removed,” according to Biid.org.

Which does nothing to explain wanting to be blind, or thinking you want to be blind.



Trump says there’s nothing on teevee

Aug 16th, 2020 11:22 am | By

Trump’s brother died in the hospital yesterday. Trump played golf.

It’s getting to him today though.



What will they gain?

Aug 16th, 2020 11:06 am | By

Leo Igwe asks:

What will Islam/Muslims in Kano gain by executing a person who sang a song that was critical of Muhammad…….????

More:

From Vanguard

The Muslim Lawyers’ Association (MULAN), Kano State branch has on Saturday okayed the death sentence judgment against one Sharrif Yahaya for blaspheming the holy prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.).

This was also as it called on the Governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje to ensure strict compliance to the Judgement. The Muslim Lawyers’ in a statement signed by it Chairman, Muhammad Sani Garba Esq and made available to newsmen in the state. Garba said the judgment was the right thing as the convict deserves the death punishment.

“This is because the supreme court has decided in the case of Abubakar Shalla Vs State (2007) 12 MJSC at page 52-53 paragraph G-B that the position of the Law under Shariah is that any sane and adult Muslim, who insults, defames, or utter words or acts which are capable of bringing into disrepute, odium, contempt of the holy prophet (peace be upon him) such a person has committed a serious crime which is punishable by death.”

What did he do? He said some stuff.

The Prosecutor, Inspector Yargoje in a First Information Report, FIR said Sharif was charged to court for insulting religious Creed contrary to section 382 (6) of Kano State Shariah Penal Code Law 2000.

“That you, Sharrif Yahaya, resident of Sharif quarters, Kano on 28/02/2020 between the hours of 20:00hrs to 23:00hrs with the intention to hurt the feelings of Muslim faithful made a post via WhatsApp group named “Gidan Umma Abiha” some abusive and degrading audio statements in which you called Prophet Muhammad PBUH a theist (Mushrik) who propagate Shrik and whose position is lower than that of INYASS in the hereafter.”

Insulting religious Creed. Saying things about a guy who died 14 centuries ago. The death penalty for that.



Able swimmers

Aug 16th, 2020 10:26 am | By

Boar!

Boar!

Run!

The Indy has details:

Beachgoers in northern Germany were shocked by the sight of a wild boar approaching them from the Baltic Sea.

Well, you don’t expect it, do you. You expect humans, and maybe crabs, and an occasional otter, but not wild boars. The snout! The ears!

Footage from the scene shows the swine swimming for the shore with its snout and ears poking above the water.

It would make me rethink my leisure habits, for sure.

Wild boar are known to be able swimmers. There were reports last year of a herd of boar swimming several miles across the Malacca Strait from Indonesia to Malaysia and terrorising farmers upon arrival.

Be careful out there.



We are cranky

Aug 16th, 2020 9:24 am | By

Not much surprise there.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to a marked deterioration in Americans’ mental health, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study made public on Thursday. That study, which surveyed 5,412 Americans, found that “40.9% of respondents reported at least one adverse mental or behavioral health condition.”

The only surprise is that the number is that low.

According to the new study, 31 percent of respondents were suffering from symptoms of anxiety or depression; 26 percent experienced symptoms of traumatic disorder; 13 percent were using drugs or alcohol more heavily, or for the first time, to cope with the pandemic; and 11 percent had seriously contemplated suicide.

Some are mourning a loss, some are dealing with unemployment, eviction, young children with no school to go to, older children with education plans disrupted, and on and on.

Significantly, more than 90 percent said they were not being treated for anxiety, depression or posttraumatic stress disorder before the pandemic struck, meaning that their symptoms arrived with the coronavirus and its attendant social disruptions.

As one would expect. It would be bizarre if 300 whatever million people met all this with unruffled equanimity.

Just how the nation will emerge from that pit remains unclear. Trump has promised a vaccine before the end of the year, but that time frame has been widely described as overly optimistic. Most experts believe that the current state of affairs will continue well into 2021.

So that’s awesome.



Criteria

Aug 15th, 2020 5:48 pm | By

Listen, if you don’t believe that people can change sex, you can’t work for the police. It’s just that simple.

In emails seen by this newspaper, Norfolk ­Constabulary told a woman inquiring about a role in the force that the job “would not be ­suitable” for her ­because of her “gender critical” views.

After the candidate made clear that she did not think a person could ­physically transition to the opposite sex, another force in the South East said her views did not constitute “the behaviours expected” and an application “would be not successful”.

Belief that gender is as changeable as nationality or political party is mandatory now. You might be able to get a job cleaning toilets, but don’t bank on it.

The revelation came after a serving police officer of 16 years anonymously emailed internal recruitment teams at 26 forces that were advertising for ­future constables.

The female officer asked if her “gender critical” views would be “a barrier to my application?”

“I must point out that I am gender critical, which means that whilst I am firmly against abuse and discrimination to trans people, I do not believe you can change your biological sex,” she wrote.

She heard back from 14 forces, two of which told her the “Nope not you” thing.

After Norfolk Police advised that her views would “not be something we could ­uphold within the constabulary”, the woman challenged the response.

“My views on this topic do not mean I would act with intolerance or abuse, just as an atheist would be no less likely to be able to be respectful towards a person of religion,” she wrote. “If there were serving officers with these views (as I know that there are), would their ­employment be under threat?

A recruitment adviser invited her to hand over “details and any evidence” of officers who may share her views so they could be “investigated”.

And punished and fired and sent into exile.

Chief Constable Ian Hopkins, the ­National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for diversity and equality said: “The entire police service is bound by and must ­adhere to the Equality Act and the ­police Code of Ethics.”

The Equality Act says people are not allowed to believe that sex can’t be changed?



The plan

Aug 15th, 2020 5:24 pm | By

Trump tells us how he’ll steal the election.

Asshole.

Boats. There are boats.



Another cancellation

Aug 15th, 2020 4:41 pm | By

This happened last week:

At KNKX, we value high-quality, factual information in our news programming and we aim to present an array of voices that reflect our region.

KNKX is an NPR station in Tacoma. It used to belong to Pacific Lutheran University but then

On November 12, 2015, Pacific Lutheran University announced its intention to sell the station to the University of Washington, owner of KUOW.[4] The planned sale to UW triggered “public outcry” from KPLU’s listener base, who feared KPLU’s unique programming would be sacrificed if it became a sister station to KUOW. On November 23, the KPLU advisory board voted unanimously to oppose the sale.[5] The board sought to negotiate with a community-based non-profit group, Friends of 88.5, to raise $7,000,000 to buy the radio station and its network of translators and rebroadcasters from the university, keeping it independent.

And they succeeded, which was kind of exciting. I preferred it to KUOW until I quit listening to NPR altogether. But now they’ve done this –

We turn to our regular commentators for their expertise and points-of-view when it comes to sports, food and the weather. But if a commentator, even on his own independent platform, delivers rhetoric that is offensive and inaccurate, we cannot support it.

By which they mean they immediately fire the commentator, and of course they are the ones who determine what is offensive.

This is the case today with Cliff Mass. His post on his personal blog compares recent events in Seattle to Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom carried out by Nazi Germany, and draws distorted, offensive parallels between protesters and Nazi Brownshirts. We abhor the comparison and find it sensationalized and misleading — it does not reflect who we are and what we stand for at KNKX.

The segment Weather with Cliff Mass will no longer air on KNKX.

Here’s the thing: Cliff Mass is really good at the commentator bit. He has an excellent radio voice, resonant without being pompous, and he explains what’s going on up in the air, and he’s interesting and gemütlich. And he says it’s KNKX who distorted.

Last week I wrote a blog post–Seattle, A City in Fear Can Be Restored–criticizing violent individuals who have brought repeated destruction to downtown Seattle and attacked and injured numerous people (including reporters and dozens of police officers).  I also criticized the irresponsible and reckless actions of members of the Seattle City Council, who allowed the violence to continue, tried to cripple and defund the Seattle Police Department, and who have persecuted Chief Carmen Best.

It’s tricky about protests, at least I find it tricky. It’s hard to know if reported violence is genuine protesters getting worked up and out of control, or just people taking advantage of protests to smash stuff and grab some goodies – or some of both. If I’d written about the protests (I didn’t, because of that tricky aspect – I didn’t know enough about what happened and didn’t feel confident about the reporting) I don’t think I would have compared them to Kristallnacht, but I also don’t think doing so is a reason to fire someone, especially someone so good at the job in question.

The next day I received a call from KNKX station manager Joey Cohn and program manager Matt Martinez, saying that I was being ejected from the station because of my blog post.  They were not open to discussion on the matter; I was off the air and my weather segment, one of the most popular segments on the station, was discontinued immediately.

That seems ridiculous to me. Ridiculous, unjust, destructive, stupid.

Their reason for my expulsion, provided in a statement released by the station, was both false and misleading.  For example, it stated that my blog “draws distorted, offensive parallels between protesters and Nazi Brownshirts.”  

This is totally false. I NEVER suggested that peaceful protestors are like brownshirts, I was ONLY talking about violent individuals. 

Criticizing violent protesters shouldn’t be a firing offense even if you disagree – which now that I type it looks so absurdly obvious I feel silly for having to type it.

Just to be completely clear I am a strong supporter of peaceful protests and assemblies.  It is an essential aspect of our democracy and protected in the U.S. Constitution.  Peaceful protests have played a critical role in many positive social movements, such as woman suffrage, ending the Vietnam war, and in promoting civil rights.  I have participated in peaceful protests myself.  But violence—destroying business and hurting people—is a different story.   It is not only illegal, and destructive, but it undermines civil society and democracy, and usually hurts the least advantaged among us the most.  That is what I was speaking out against.

It also undermines the protests themselves, and harms the cause for which they’re protesting. Violent protests aren’t good trouble, they’re the bad kind.

I made it clear to both Joey Cohn and Matt Martinez on the call that my remarks were limited to violent individuals and they still chose to send out the deceptive statement.  For the leadership of a major media group to do so is extraordinarily concerning and disappointing.

A major news media group. They’re a local NPR station.

I don’t know that I agree with Cliff Mass about everything; I probably don’t; but that’s not supposed to be the criterion, is it?

So I signed a petition.



Pups, Furries & Kinksters

Aug 15th, 2020 3:27 pm | By

Is your Pride event inclusive of furries? Well IS it?

Is that what the + means? Furries? What the survey calls “kink and fetish”?

I’m not seeing the connection, myself. I mean yeah, I get that it can all be filed under “not what Mr and Mrs Normal get up to in bed,” but I would think a lot of lesbians and gay men don’t particularly want to be filed that way, on account of how it’s not all there is to it.



Trump wowing

Aug 15th, 2020 12:30 pm | By

Trump is doing his bit to cripple the election again today.

Followed by retweets of DEMOCRAT FRAUD claims by the Communications Director of the Republican party.



Following accusations

Aug 15th, 2020 8:33 am | By

“Oh you don’t want us to remove mail boxes just before an election in which people will have to vote by mail?”

The US Postal Service will stop taking letter collection boxes off streets in Western states following accusations the removals would further limit some voters ability to send back mail-in ballots.

“Accusations.” Yes, obstacles are obstacles – who knew?! If you remove mail boxes that means people in the area from which a box was removed will have farther to go to mail their ballots. That is called an obstacle. Ob-stuh-kl. It’s an impediment, a hindrance, an added difficulty.

The change came after CNN and others reported on Friday that the US Postal Service has started reducing post office operating hours across several states and removing letter collection boxes, according to union officials.

I didn’t know about the reduced hours.

In a statement Friday night, Rod Spurgeon — a USPS spokesperson for the service’s the Western region — told CNN that the service will stop the removal of letter collection boxes in 16 states and parts of two others until after the election.

That means, according to Spurgeon, the USPS will stop collecting the letter collection boxes only in: Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Alaska, Nebraska and small parts of Wisconsin and Missouri.

Ok what about the other 34 states? The USPS isn’t saying.

Officials say that in the last week the USPS has removed letter collection boxes in at least four states: New York, Oregon, Montana and Indiana. The USPS has also begun notifying postal workers in at least three states — West Virginia, Florida and Missouri — that they will start to reduce their retail operating hours, according to union officials.

The USPS has received intense scrutiny in recent weeks as many Americans are expected to vote by mail this presidential election due to the coronavirus pandemic. Despite assuring the public earlier this month that it would be able to handle the added volume of mail-in ballots, the postal service sent letters to multiple states warning them that slowdowns in delivery could cause ballots to show up late and not be counted.

Trump has frequently attacked the postal service, and Louis DeJoy, the newly installed postmaster general, has made sweeping changes to the public service, such as rolling back overtime, leading to service slowdowns. Union officials have consistently warned that new cost-cutting measures put into effect by DeJoy and USPS leadership could have a negative effect on the service’s ability to deliver election-related mail on time.

Could have a negative effect? You mean, would obviously kneecap.



! Manipulated media

Aug 15th, 2020 7:55 am | By

Not bad.



Guest post: Gender according to video games

Aug 15th, 2020 7:39 am | By

Originally a comment by Papito on Unironically.

Unfortunately, most self-ID’ed NBs are deep in trans country, at this point, and thus utterly unaware of how much trans ideology actually is reinforcing the NB’s social discomfort by shoring up traditional gender roles in the first place. [Freemage]

This is a great insight. NBs wouldn’t exist without the trans cult, but it seems helpful to contemplate the exact relationship. Are NBs a product of the trans cult as a sub-variety of trans people, or are they (unknowingly) implicitly rejecting the trans cult – which, while proclaiming the erasure of binaries, is one of the most binary parts of society?

I feel for kids growing up these days. Gender stereotypes are pushed so much more heavily than they were when I was a kid. Growing up in the age of “free to be…” I would never have imagined things would get worse instead. And guest makes a good point as well: kids actually get out and see other people much, much less than they used to, so their visual contact with other humans is likely to be heavily mediated by television or video games, which present more fixed and stereotypical gender roles than actual humans do.

Look at the insanely exaggerated gender characteristics presented by video game characters. They go beyond what the comic books did; Superman and Wonder Woman are realistically proportioned humans in comparison. Video game men, unencumbered by the constraints of human anatomy, present as armored hulks bulging with anatomically implausible muscles and dripping with straps, bullets, and weapons, while video game women are proportioned like Barbie dolls, in skin-tight suits or miniskirts. Thank goodness for recoilless space rifles or they could never shoot with their knees knocking together.

What if NB really just means “neither of the above” to a kid deeply inculcated in this exaggerated gender binary? The trans cult tells kids they have to be in one of two exclusive boxes and can jump from one to the other, but the boxes are fixed. NB is the trans cult’s way of recouping the dissenters: if they don’t want to be in the boxes they can be categorized as NB, but still get to belong to the cult.

Maybe kids who want to break up the trans cult can hide themselves as a fifth column by identifying as NBs. If NB gets so big as a category that basically everybody is NB, then what happens? They can’t call NBs cis, right?



Subject: Harrible

Aug 14th, 2020 5:50 pm | By

The Trump campaign is actually sending out mailings shouting “Kamala is HARRIBLE!!!” just like Trump.

Childish enough?

He should up the stakes and fold the tent and go the fuck home.



Unironically

Aug 14th, 2020 3:09 pm | By

So pathetic.

https://twitter.com/LabelFreeBrands/status/1294274718309076993

I think loads of people are intimidated by this new generation of people that are…somehow makin up these genders.

Oh no no no honey. Not intimidated. Bored and irritated.

People hear the words non-binary and they’re like “well that doesn’t exist, that’s not a thing” – even in the LGBT community there are people who don’t think that we are real and there’s people who think that we are attention-seekers.

Well let’s tease this apart. Yes, I am like “that doesn’t exist, that’s not a thing.” That’s because it doesn’t, and it isn’t. It’s just words. On the other hand I certainly don’t think that people who call themselves non-binary are not real – it’s the word they use to describe themselves that I think names a non-reality. People can call themselves angels, gods, flying horses; they go on being real people but what they say about themselves is fictional. And finally – yes, I think people who call themselves non-binary are attention-seekers. I think they’re declaring themselves more important than mere “binary” people.

But hey, you might grow out of it.



Create obstacles

Aug 14th, 2020 2:46 pm | By

Ya that’s not good.

https://twitter.com/markdelaneysays/status/1292277950809694208

Now, this happened in my neighborhood years ago – suddenly there were a lot fewer mailboxes and one had to hike to drop something in the mail. I had to hike last week to drop my vote in the mail. I was very annoyed by it at the time, and still am, but back then it wasn’t part of a vote suppression move. Now is not a good time to be removing mail boxes, even if these were on some kind of long-term schedule for removal.

Also –

Not good.



Underground network of what now?

Aug 14th, 2020 11:29 am | By

People who love feet is it?

The what conspiracy theory?

CNN explains:

QAnon is a virtual cult that celebrates President Trump and casts Democratic politicians and other elites as evil child abusers. Aspects of the cult are downright delusional. Last year an FBI office warned that Q adherents are a domestic terrorism threat.

Plus it’s been gaining in popularity. Thousands of closed Facebook groups, with millions of members.

Numerous Republican congressional candidates “have embraced” QAnon, as CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi reported earlier this week.

At the top of the list is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is all but certain to win her House race in Georgia this fall. Trump praised Greene for winning her primary. As Stracqualursi wrote, candidates like Greene are “espousing and promoting QAnon theories and phrases as they seek political office on a major party ticket.”

It’s a cult and a story.

There are storytelling components to this virtual cult, as Adrienne LaFrance explained so thoroughly in this article for The Atlantic.

“QAnon is emblematic of modern America’s susceptibility to conspiracy theories, and its enthusiasm for them,” she wrote. “But it is also already much more than a loose collection of conspiracy-minded chat-room inhabitants. It is a movement united in mass rejection of reason, objectivity, and other Enlightenment values. And we are likely closer to the beginning of its story than the end. The group harnesses paranoia to fervent hope and a deep sense of belonging. The way it breathes life into an ancient preoccupation with end-times is also radically new. To look at QAnon is to see not just a conspiracy theory but the birth of a new religion.”

It sounds a little bit like the trans madness – not the content, but the mass rejection of reason, objectivity, and other Enlightenment values.



Pass on it

Aug 14th, 2020 10:18 am | By

How we do political persuasion now.

That’s it! That’s all it takes. Just say these four words, and tell everyone else to say them too. Paradise on earth will ensue!



Regret at all?

Aug 14th, 2020 9:28 am | By

So, Don, do you regret all the lying? Well do you?

SV Dáte had waited five long years to ask Donald Trump one question: “Mr President, after three and a half years [of Trump’s presidency], do you regret at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?”

Confronted with Dáte’s question at Thursday’s White House briefing, Trump responded with a question of his own. “All the what?” he said.

Dáte: “All the lying, all the dishonesties.”

Trump: “That who has done?”

“You have done,” said Dáte, who is the Huffington Post’s White House correspondent.

It’s hilarious – best straight man ever. “That who has done?” “YOU. You, bro, we’re talking about you, you’re the one who has done all the lying, you, you, you, you.” “The what?” “THE LYING. The lying, the dishonesty, the untruth, the mendacity, the falsehood-purveying, THE LYING.” “Uh…you there, you ask your question, yes go ahead, go ahead, ASK A QUESTION, ANY QUESTION.”

Curtain.