Fun choice:

Donald Trump has confirmed he will address the Republican convention next week from the White House, a controversial choice.

It’s not just “controversial,” it’s unethical and revolting.

But it’s worse than that: the racist couple who pointed guns at protesters are scheduled to speak at the Republican convention.

In a racially charged incident in late June, Patricia and Mark McCloskey, who are white, were pictured outside their mansion in St Louis, pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters heading for the mayor’s house nearby.

Mark McCloskey held an assault rifle, Patricia McCloskey a handgun. The couple, both lawyers, said they feared for their own safety and were defending their home.

And the Republican party said booya, we … Read the rest

Sad.

How to be absolutely 100% rock-solid completely positive you're on the wrong side of history.

[via @ChuckWendig and @MattNegrin] pic.twitter.com/KhLuO9U8Ys

— Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) June 7, 2020

The epistemology is obviously a joke, but the allegiance underlying the joke is for real. His allegiance is to team men are women if they say they are, and his hostility is to team men are not women just because they say they are.

I would have thought that verification by “because I say so” would be anathema to scientists. I especially would have thought that when the issue is an obvious material fact which is being denied on the basis of an internal subjective mental state. That doesn’t … Read the rest

Trump is bragging about…New Zealand?

Donald Trump has called out New Zealand for its recent Covid-19 outbreak, saying the places the world hailed as a success story is now facing a “big surge” in cases.

“The places they were using to hold up now they’re having a big surge … they were holding up names of countries and now they’re saying ‘whoops!’.

“Do you see what’s happening in New Zealand? They beat it, they beat it, it was like front-page news because they wanted to show me something,” the US president said at a campaign rally in Mankato, Minnesota.

That’s why they did it?

Of course the US has a lot more people. New Zealand has 4.8 million, the … Read the rest

The demonic shit is pushing ahead with his plan to destroy the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. No matter how busy one is golfing and watching Fox News and tweeting sexist insults, there’s always time to destroy irreplaceable wilderness.

The Trump administration is pushing ahead with plans to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The first leases to drill for oil and gas in the area could be sold by the end of 2020, Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt said as his agency formally announced its leasing program on Monday.

We need more oil so that people can sit in their cars with the engines running for hours playing with their phones. It’s a basic human right.

Environmental

Now Trump is promoting a poison to “treat” the virus.

President Donald Trump and Mike Lindell, the creator of MyPillow and an avowed supporter, participated in a July meeting at the White House regarding the use of oleandrin as a potential therapeutic for coronavirus, Lindell confirmed to CNN.

What other meetings are they having? Meetings regarding being run over by tanks as a potential therapeutic for coronavirus? Meetings regarding being sliced up by swords as a potential therapeutic for coronavirus? Meetings regarding jumping out of planes without a parachute as a potential therapeutic for coronavirus?

Oleandrin is an extract from the plant Nerium oleander. The raw oleander plant is highly toxic, and consumption of it can be fatal.

So … Read the rest

Sean Coughlan at the BBC explains now what:

The next part of the A-level U-turn jigsaw is that the government is allowing universities in England to add more places – to meet the extra demand from young people who have had their results upgraded.

…

To increase capacity, the government in England will lift the “student number controls” which would have capped places.

Which means universities can add more students but

But that still depends on it being possible – they will still need to have enough spare space, teaching staff and accommodation, along with the pressures of Covid-19 social distancing measures.

Which doesn’t just magically pop into being because it’s needed.

A later update (the BBC doesn’t provide links … Read the rest

That’s a bit of good news for a change – or just the undoing of a bit of bad news, as so often, but we take what we can get. They’ve said “Sorry, we’ll reverse the whole thing, sorry” about the exams-evaluations-algorithm mess. I was reading a lot of desperately sad tweets yesterday by parents of kids at state schools who’d earned a place reading engineering at Cambridge and then had it snatched away by the algorithm.

Gavin Williamson and Ofqual have apologised to students and their parents, as they announced that all A-level and GCSE results in England will be based on teacher-assessed grades.

In a spectacular U-turn, the education secretary announced the government would scrap the controversial standardisation

Graham Linehan hosts a scorching retort by Victoria Smith to Rebecca Solnit’s smug glib mess of a Guardian open letter, starting from an essay of Solnit’s about male violence.

On this, you are totally right. Male violence is a global outrage. Why, then, have you written a piece which dismisses women’s fears as “really weird”, writes off actual occurrences of male violence as “lurid what-ifs”, euphemistically characterises sexual assault as “unpleasantness”, tells women which male people they’re allowed to be wary of (the ones who aren’t your mates) and accuses women of “posing a threat” if they are insufficiently accommodating? Do you have any idea what you sound like?

But of course, Victoria goes on, Solnit would say she’s … Read the rest

Remember when Trump gave Rush Limbaugh the “medal of freedom”? Obama gave it to John Lewis; Trump gave it to Limbaugh. So about Limbaugh –

RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): I have two stories about Kamala Harris. One’s from The Spectator, and one is — one of the — one of the oddball sports websites. The NBA has fired a freelance photographer because he insulted Kamala Harris. His name is Bill Baptist.

…

He’s ”a freelance photographer he’d been working for the NBA inside its bubble at the Disney World complex in Orlando” — as the NBA goes through its supposed season here. He’s an independent contractor, had the deal terminated by the league after he posted a “sexist Facebook post referencing

Iowa got clobbered a few days ago. Really clobbered. Nobody is paying attention.

On Monday, Iowa was leveled by what amounted to a level-two hurricane. But you wouldn’t know that from reading, listening to or watching the news.

…

Gusts of 112 mph were recorded in Linn County. As I drove through the town of Cedar Rapids on Monday, I saw billboards bent in half, whole buildings collapsed, trees smashed through roofs and windows. The scope and breadth of the disaster is still being calculated, but by some estimates, more than 10 million acres, or 43 percent, of the state’s soybean and corn crops have been damaged.

A quarter of a million Iowans are still without power.

Donny’s found a new doctor buddy.

President Donald Trump has found a new doctor for his coronavirus task force — and this time there’s no daylight between them.

It’s gonna disappear, like things that disappear. It’s because of testing that we have so many cases. They were all old anyway. You can fix it by injecting a little bleach. We’re doing GREAT. Let’s watch some football.

Trump last week announced that Dr. Scott Atlas, a frequent guest on Fox News Channel, has joined the White House as a pandemic adviser. Atlas, the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and a fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, has no expertise in public health or infectious diseases.

Fabulous pairing.… Read the rest

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, … Read the rest

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 … Read the rest

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

It’s getting to him today though.

.@FoxNews is not watchable during weekend afternoons. It is worse than Fake News @CNN. I strongly suggest turning your dial to @OANN. They do a really “Fair & Balanced” job!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2020

… Read the rest

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

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.… Read the rest

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 … Read the rest

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 … Read the rest

Trump tells us how he’ll steal the election.

Trump says this like it's a mission statement: "You're not gonna know [the election results] for months or for years. Because these [mail] ballots are all gonna lost, they're gonna be gone. pic.twitter.com/lpke3FlaDF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 15, 2020

Asshole.

REPORTER: Will you say Kamala Harris is eligible to run and be vice president based on the fact she was born in Oakland?

TRUMP: "So, I have nothing to do with that. I read something about it … it's not something that bothers me." pic.twitter.com/Oq3CCluSvn

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 15, 2020

Boats. There are boats.

TRUMP: "We have a silent majority the likes of which nobody has seen. I just