Happy Festivus from Pettson and Findus, via Sven Nordqvist.

Best known for his series about the old farmer Pettson and his talented cat Findus, Sven Otto Rickard Nordqvist originally wanted to be an illustrator but was rejected by several art schools. Instead he studied architecture at Lund Institute of Technology, and worked for a time there as a lecturer in architecture. At the same time he continued to look for work as an illustrator working on advertisements, posters and picture books. In 1983 he won first prize in a children’s book competition and since then has worked exclusively as an author and illustrator of children’s books.

H/t Jeffrey… Read the rest

Common Dreams says it’s very bad in Australia.

The fires in Australia’s southeastern state of New South Wales (NSW) were at the “catastrophic” level on Saturday, according to the BBC. 

“These fires are likely to continue to spread well past Christmas,” said NSW Rural Fire Services Inspector Ben Shepherd.

Photos shared on social media showed hazy skies around the country. 

“Everything is burning,” said one Twitter user. 

A few minutes ago, no filter. Everything is burning pic.twitter.com/9TDtimjt0L

— shorewife does not have a picture with lev parnas (@Shorewife) December 21, 2019

As Common Dreams reported Thursday, Australia just endured a heat wave that broke records for temperature in consecutive days. 

“I think this is the single loudest alarm

Gee, who knew Bill Cosby even still had a publicist? One wonders what the point is. Is he expecting to revive his acting career?

Bill Cosby's publicist calls Eddie Murphy a "Hollywood slave" after #SNL jab https://t.co/CVURK0Q2jG pic.twitter.com/wWxgFXFLM5

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) December 23, 2019

I guess Cosby “used comedy to humanize all genders” in his spare time from assaulting women.… Read the rest

There’s another thing Jolyon Maugham said a couple of days ago…

It's pretty dreadful on both sides. Pretending it's one way aligns you with those promoting extremists.

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) December 21, 2019

That’s not it (I’m getting to it), but I’ll just say I haven’t seen anything like that from the gender critical side. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but on the other hand, I think if it did exist we would be buried in screen shots of it. I doubt that it does exist. I think Maugham is equating skepticism about Magic Gender with calling women ugly hearted cunts. I think they are very different.

But that wasn’t it; this is it.

Deliberate misgendering of

Oh hey, Jolyon Maugham has finally grasped the point.

Every bit as revolting as we have come to expect from The Spectator: embrace NewTruth or lose your job. https://t.co/cIk5rHDPr0

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) December 23, 2019

Hahaha nah just kidding, he’s talking about something else. New Truth about this subject bad, New Truth about that other subject good.… Read the rest

In actual evil…

For more than nine months, María, 23, has been waiting in an immigration detention center in Arizona hoping to reunite with the six-year-old niece she raised as a daughter. When the two asked for asylum at the border last March because they feared for their lives in Guatemala, border officials detained María in the Eloy detention center and sent the girl to foster care in New York, 2400 miles away.

The Guardian first reported on the ongoing separation of this family in October. As the story spread, lawmakers and more than 200 clergy asked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to grant María parole so she can leave detention and reunite with the girl. A woman

Now why would we ever think even for a second that there’s any misogyny involved…

Id like to personally welcome everyone on board the J. K. Rowling is a cunt train.
Pleasure to have you with us

— Connor McWhinnie (@LankyKingNaebdy) December 21, 2019

JK Rowling going full transphobe is honestly the definition of "disappointed, but not surprised"

Anyway watch Little Witch Academia on Netflix, it's like Harry Potter if it wasn't written by an utter cunt pic.twitter.com/I0Hp6C0bqP

— Lexiiii (@lexi_dot_gaypeg) December 19, 2019

On a twitter timeout for calling JK Rowling a misinformed stupid person.

No regrets. Apart from I should have called her a massive syphalitic cunt.

Trans rights are people’s rights.

— Rachel "Libtard Marxist" Horwitz (@horwitzpolitics)

Andrew Sullivan wonders what the point was.

I read with some interest Peggy Orenstein’s long essay on what’s wrong with boys. An in-depth study of a hundred boys, analyzing their problems and issues, seeing what makes them tick, seeing how the culture has changed them: It’s a fascinating topic. I kept reading and reading in the hope of discovering the point. I’ve now reread it and still can’t figure it out.

Orenstein reports the following facts drawn from her meticulous research: Boys brag to each other about whom they’ve had sex with and compete for girls, they boast about how they screw around on girls, they tend to admire jocks and athletes and mock those less active in sports, they

Going to girly-school:

Trans woman Nicole Thornbur goes to specialist studios to learn how to become more feminine.

But if trans women are women, why does any trans woman need to learn how to become “more feminine”?

Or, more precisely…if trans women are women because they have an internal feeling that they are women, an internal feeling that is absolutely reliable and truth-determining and ungainsayable, an internal feeling that it is evil and criminal to question or doubt, then what possible need can there be to “learn how to be more feminine”? Trans women are women, so whatever they are is feminine enough, because they are women being it.

From that point of view it all seems superfluous. From … Read the rest

Uh oh. Is Nike a TERF?

A transgender former Nike contractor is seeking $1.1 million in damages from the sporting goods giant for allegedly allowing gender identity-based harassment. 

According to a civil lawsuit filed this week, Nike and Mainz Brady Group, a staffing firm that hired workers for Nike, discriminated against computer engineer Jazz Lyles, who identifies as transmasculine and prefers the pronouns they/them/their. The complaint was filed with Multnomah Circuit Court in Oregon. 

What does “transmasculine” mean? How is it different from trans male? Is a trans man “transmasculine”? Is that just another way of saying Jazz Lyles identifies as male? Or is it different? Does they merely prefer the pronouns they/them/their, or does they require them? It sounds … Read the rest

So they admit it. Only in private, but there they admit it.

One of Donald Trump’s top re-election advisers told influential Republicans in swing state Wisconsin that the party has “traditionally” relied on voter suppression to compete in battleground states, according to an audio recording of a private event. The adviser said later that his remarks referred to frequent and false accusations that Republicans employ such tactics.

But the report emerged just days after news that a conservative group is forcing Wisconsin to purge upwards of 230,000 people from state voter rolls more than a year earlier than planned, a move that would disproportionately affect Democrats before the 2020 election

…

Justin Clark, a senior political adviser and

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on That turning of the tide has been slow.

To me the most memorable and useful concept from 1984 was Doublethink (I believe the closest You get to a synonym in Oldspeak is “compartmetalization”):

DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of DOUBLETHINK he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or

For some reason this stupid banality from Laurie Penny, similar or identical to millions of others, has gotten on my nerves.

If someone tells you they would prefer to be addressed by different pronouns, or that they’ve changed their name, it’s basic good manners to respect that. You’re entitled to your personal philosophy of sex and gender, but you don’t get to tell anyone else how to identify.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) December 20, 2019

It’s banal, we’ve seen it a billion times, but all the same, it’s infuriating – because it’s so stupid. It’s not “basic good manners” at all, it’s a new and clunky and sometimes totalitarian bit of etiquette, which if pushed to the extreme becomes … Read the rest

Jane Clare Jones’s analysis of Judge Tayler’s ruling is mammoth (in a good way!) so I’ll take small bites.

Judge Tayler’s operating ontology surfaces in his refusal to recognise that for women to adequately express their political critique of trans activist demands it is necessary to point to sex and sometimes, even, to the sex of specific individuals – a refusal which effectively corresponds to an easy dismissal of the political stakes for women, and a blunt lack of respect for our specific political interests. The half-explicit denial of sex is also central to Tayler’s refusal of Maya’s claim that the GRA creates a legal fiction, a refusal that makes sense only on the basis of denying that there is 

From the other direction…

I refuse to be defined as a woman solely by my reproductive biology. Being ‘female’ is not what makes me a woman. Nor does being a mother.

— Rayya Ghul (@RayyaGhul) December 20, 2019

It is though. Being female, aka having a female body, is what makes her a woman. It’s what follows from that that is a choice, and that should be a free choice.

It opens up the notion of ‘the weaker sex’, of the unsuitability of women’s bodies for certain jobs, of the right of others to police our bodies. This is why the ultra right conservatives have also latched on to biology for their anti-trans arguments creating an unholy alliance.

— Rayya