They cannot be serious.

New pronoun guidance (“Inclusive Language Tips”) from @nyctaxi, the city’s regulator. pic.twitter.com/8AN4RgbqFT

— Matthew Chayes (@chayesmatthew) December 12, 2019

Using someone’s preferred pronoun is a simple way to show respect…so the driver should say “Where do them want to go?”

Ask the passenger what their pronoun is. Do not assume someone’s pronoun because of their appearance or name on the app. If you do not want to ask, you can ask what they prefer to be called –

So if you do not want to ask, ask. Mkay.

Introduce yourself and share your pronouns.

What planet are these people on? A taxi trip isn’t a long-term relationship, it’s a transaction in which A drives B … Read the rest

She really doesn’t care.

Her cause is anti-bullying, which is making the first lady’s silence deafening.

Melania Trump has yet to speak out in the wake of President Donald Trump’s mocking tweet directed at 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, in which he told the teenager to “work on her anger management” and “chill” out.

This is 72-year-old millionaire president of the US using his Twitter account to jeer at a teenage girl. It doesn’t get much more “bully” than that.

Just last Wednesday, Melania Trump tweeted a defense of her own child, whose name was referenced in a pun by an impeachment inquiry witness.

“A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics.

At least we know whose fault it is that the Tories won.

I'd like to thank all the dipshit TERFs who helped make this happen because they'd rather see their country burn than share it with trans people

Give yourself a pat on the back Graham, you earned it https://t.co/IJOUpFUzzq

— Arthur Chu (@arthur_affect) December 12, 2019

It was the Jews the Communists the Masons the feminists!!… Read the rest

I BEG you pardon?

I'll be on @seanhannity 2nite @FoxNews at 9pm ET and will explain how @realDonaldTrump will be eligible for a 3rd term due to the illegal attempts by Comey, Dems, and media , et al attempting to oust him as @POTUS so that's why I was named to head up the 2024 re-election.

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) December 12, 2019

For an encore how about he “explains” how he’ll pluck the moon out of the sky and use it for a lawn ornament.

Also note that “will be eligible.” Not so fast, sonny. It doesn’t become true just because you use the future tense.

Also note that ludicrous “eligible” as if he’s talking about some … Read the rest

No thank you. No really, that’s ok, we’ve got this.

Empowered Trans Woman:

I think it’s super important for trans gals to learn about the feminist movement. Here’s Jude reminding us of the First Wave — the women’s suffrage movement. The Women’s Suffrage movement flourished concurrently in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Thanks to the efforts of such courageous women, the 19th Amendment, giving women the vote, passed in the U.S. in 1919, and got ratified in 1920.

Ah Princess Ivanka – she’s so sneaky.

It's not just that Trump's unqualified daughter is running important US policy on the taxpayer dime, it's that she is championing affirmatively bad policy like trying to convince us that borrowing from our own social security is "paid family leave." Nepotism breeds incompetence. https://t.co/SzuWJeX4ip

— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) December 12, 2019

If your family leave is paid for by your own Social Security then it’s not paid family leave. That’s not how we use the word “paid.” Paying for it ourselves isn’t “paid.” A job we pay ourselves for isn’t a paid job, and family leave we pay for from our Social Security isn’t paid leave.

These are really important issues that affect

Another episode of Trump Behaving Badly:

In the days following the release of a viral video showing world leaders at the NATO meeting in London making fun of him, Donald Trump shot back at his counterparts. The famously sensitive American president lashed out during a closed-door meeting at the White House with more than a dozen ambassadors to the United Nations present, according to three sources with knowledge of the gathering.

Oh he’s not famously “sensitive.” He’s famously touchy, famously quick to go nuclear at any insult to him while freely insulting anyone and everyone else whenever he feels the urge. That’s quite another thing. “Sensitive” would include other people’s feelings as well as his own. Trump never, … Read the rest

Trump’s Twitter is an explosion this morning, not surprisingly – he must have 20 people or so assigned to posting Republican talking points, or screaming points rather.

But his personal sneer at Greta Thunberg stands out.

So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill! https://t.co/M8ZtS8okzE

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2019

Yes how dare she be named Time’s person of the year instead of Trump.

The Guardian live comments:

As we await the impeachment hearing that starts at 9am ET today, the president has had a manic morning on Twitter so far.

Most of it does not need national and international

Stone the crows. Green Party Women on Facebook:

On the day before a general election, Green Party Women are shocked and deeply saddened at the investigation by Fair Play for Women that discloses several Green Party prospective parliamentary candidates using a misogynist slur on public platforms.

Our campaign launch, to ‘Make Misogyny a Hate Crime’, feels very hollow when we cannot set an example within our own party.

This reprehensible behaviour by a handful of candidates does not represent the values of the wider Green Party membership, nor the Party’s core values, and is completely unacceptable. Green Party Women are raising formal complaints against all party members involved.

We will never convince others to reach consensus in the fight

The bit of Twitter that I see is not impressed with Owen Jones this morning.

Feminism & Socialism 2019. pic.twitter.com/NAMHGbfcla

— Janice Turner (@VictoriaPeckham) December 12, 2019

Why the @guardian is ok with being associated with this man is beyond me https://t.co/ajMULNXXGo

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) December 12, 2019

Just two of many.

OJ’s tweet:

The Washington Post makes an important point:

Our research finds that Trump has attracted a disproportionate (and unprecedented) number of ‘low-information voters’ to his campaign. Furthermore, these voters are more likely to respond to emotional appeals — whether about the economy, immigration, Muslims, racial relations, sexism, and even hostility to the first African American U.S. president, Barack Obama. They are the ideal constituency for a candidate like Trump.

We define low-information voters as those who do not know certain basic facts about government and lack what psychologists call a ‘need for cognition.’ Those with a high need for cognition have a positive attitude toward tasks that require reasoning and effortful thinking and are, therefore, more likely to invest the

More on the AA Doesn’t Work story:

Wood was working as a registered nurse on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside when he was diagnosed with substance use disorder after a psychotic break in the fall of 2013.

His professional college was informed, along with his union and Vancouver Coastal Health, his employer at the time.

He was referred to a doctor specializing in addictions, who created a plan that Wood would need to follow if he wanted to return to work. AA was a mandatory component.

As an atheist, Wood suggested alternatives to the 12-step program, including secular support groups like SMART Recovery and LifeRing Secular Recovery, but his doctor rejected them, according to emails Wood provided to CBC News.

He … Read the rest

Boris Johnson did what now?

Labour has accused Boris Johnson’s campaign of “lying and cheating” to try to distract attention from the prime minister’s insensitive reaction to a sick four-year-old boy forced to sleep on a hospital floor.

With just days to go until polling day, the Tories suffered one of their worst days of the campaign as Johnson refused on camera to look at a picture of the poorly child and pocketed the phone of the reporter who tried to show it to him.

But wait, there’s more.

oh my fucking god pic.twitter.com/K2oUWtY19y

— a a dril (@demarionunn) December 10, 2019

Bots sending out identically-worded fake tweets saying the photo of the child on the floor was FAKE NEWS.… Read the rest

Religious programs intended to cure or manage addiction should never be forced on anyone, because they are religious (and religion should never be forced on anyone). One small step in that direction:

Health-care professionals who work in Vancouver-area hospitals and medical clinics will no longer be required to attend 12-step programs if they want to keep their jobs after being diagnosed with addiction.

The change comes as a result of a settlement between public health authority Vancouver Coastal Health and former nurse Byron Wood, who filed a human rights complaint alleging he was discriminated against as an atheist when he was fired for quitting Alcoholics Anonymous.

The settlement doesn’t allow him to talk about all the details.

But he

Local tv news station – not the Sinclair one – reports on the outburst of stupid over the WoLF event at the library.

The not at all tendentious or well-poisoning headline:

Event at Seattle Public Library causes firestorm, group accused of being ‘hate group’

Aka Trans activists lose their shit because feminists meet to discuss what we mean by “gender.” The event isn’t causing any firestorm, stupid angry unreasonable people are creating a firestorm out of nothing. Group is accused of being a hate group by stupid angry unreasonable people who are stupid and unreasonable. Group is not a hate group. People protesting group are much more like a hate group than group is.

An event is causing backlash at

Trump breaking yet more new ground in Repulsion Farm:

Not long after Donald Trump took to the stage at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday night, the president launched into one of his biggest crowd-pleasers: pillorying the “deep state,” particularly by performing fan-fic-style dialogue between the “FBI lovers” Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.

It’s a routine that he’s been honing on the re-election campaign trail for months, perhaps most famously during an October campaign event in Minneapolis, where he appeared to make orgasmic, panting noises—much to the audience’s delight—while doing a mock-dialogue between the two “lovers” about how much they “love” each other and hate that “son of a bitch” Trump.

And that, in turn, … Read the rest

Trump and Lavrov had a reunion.

Donald Trump held a closed-door meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, at the White House on Tuesday, but the two men gave diverging accounts of what was discussed, on a day articles of impeachment were announced against the US president.

Maddow pointed out the scorching ironies of having a closed-door meeting with Lavrov of all people on the day articles of impeachment were announced. Last time Trump met privately with Lavrov was that time he blabbed top security secrets to Lavrov and Kisliyak. The secrets were so top and Trump’s blabbing them was so horrifying that the US intel people were forced to extract their best source from Russia. What does … Read the rest

Life in Sydney right now:

I can’t breathe. They say something like 100 bush and grass fires are raging across the state. The city I live in feels like a scene from Blade Runner 2049 come to life in 2019. There is no other way to see it: our dead future is here.

The mornings are smoky and grey. The afternoons distinctly eerie with the sun a shrunken disc that is by turns eggishly sick, bright pink, or burning orange in the seemingly permanent haze.

Seattle was like that for a couple of weeks in August 2018. We had, literally, the worst air in the world for a few days. It was forest fires rather than bush fires, but … Read the rest