Science News on the Thwaites Glacier ice shelf:

The demise of a West Antarctic glacier poses the world’s biggest threat to raise sea levels before 2100 — and an ice shelf that’s holding it back from the sea could collapse within three to five years, scientists reported December 13 at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in New Orleans.

Thwaites Glacier is “one of the largest, highest glaciers in Antarctica — it’s huge,” Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the Boulder, Colo.–based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, told reporters. Spanning 120 kilometers across, the glacier is roughly the size of Florida, and were the whole thing to fall into the ocean, it would raise sea levels by 65

Workers are expendable.

Why did eight workers at a Kentucky candle factory and six workers at an Illinois Amazon warehouse die this week? They were killed when a powerful tornado destroyed their workplaces, but it wasn’t really the storm that killed them, any more than a sailor forced to walk the plank is killed only by the waves. They were not random victims. They were sacrificed. We here in the most advanced nation on earth offered them up to the gods that we actually worship.

Why did they die? They died because they were inside their workplaces in the path of the storm. They died because they did not leave work before disaster struck. And they did not leave

Some parents of Penn swimmers have written a letter.

Parents of the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team are demanding the NCAA change rules that have permitted transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to dominate the competition, declaring ‘at stake here is the integrity of women’s sports,’ DailyMail.com has learned.

The parents of about 10 swimmers sent a letter last week to the NCAA and forwarded it to the Ivy League and University of Pennsylvania officials.’

At stake here is the integrity of women’s sports,’ they wrote in the letter obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com. ‘The precedent being set – one in which women do not have a protected and equitable space to compete – is a direct threat to female athletes

Oh and by the way it’s speeding up.

Planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels and other human activities has already raised global temperatures more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). But the effects are particularly profound at the poles, where rising temperatures have seriously undermined regions once locked in ice.

In research presented this week at the world’s biggest earth science conference, Pettit showed that the Thwaites ice shelf could collapse within the next three to five years, unleashing a river of ice that could dramatically raise sea levels. Aerial surveys document how warmer conditions have allowed beavers to invade the Arctic tundra, flooding the landscape with their dams. Large commercial ships are increasingly infiltrating formerly frozen

But that won’t work either.

It's heartbreaking, but women are going to have to start all over again with everything we have built. I genuinely fear so, the capture has been so profound https://t.co/2OOlBZIvLC

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) December 15, 2021

How can we start over again when the “trans women” and their deranged allies will just grab whatever we build?

The trans cult is destroying everything women have built up since the late 60s, so how would we prevent them from destroying anything we build anew in 2022 and beyond? It’s not as if they’re going to say “Okay, fair enough, we’ll take all your stuff that exists to date and you can have whatever you make starting now.” … Read the rest

Brendan O’Neill on Scotland’s Privilege the Rapist policy:

The actual police, the people responsible for recording crime, will acquiesce to a male rapist’s desire to be referred to as female. The consequences of this deranged, hyper-relativist policy will be dire. Crime stats will become a joke, with numerous rapes being falsely attributed to women. Female prisons could be swarmed by male rapists. And complainants in rape cases could face the prospect of having to use female pronouns in court when addressing the man who brutalised them.

Could? Will. This is all too obvious. It’s already happened in the assault case in which the judge ordered the victim, Maria MacLachlan, to call the man who assaulted her “she.”

How long

Now they’re erasing Rowling from her own damn work.

JK Rowling’s name has been downgraded in a trailer promoting the latest film of her Fantastic Beasts series amid a row over her views on trans identification.

Unlike previous adverts for the franchise, Rowling’s name barely features in the two-and-a-half-minute trailer for the third instalment, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, which is out next year.

The new trailer opens with the caption “Warner Bros invites you” while the 2018 film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald said “JK Rowling invites you” and credited her with writing and producing the film.

It is only at the end of the new trailer that a small publishing rights note bearing Rowling’s name

New guidance:

The armed forces are to be given new guidance on “inclusive language” after the Defence Secretary said he is “unhappy” with the current advice.

Inclusive of what? Inclusive how? Speaking of guidance on language, how about not using the word “inclusive” in this vague but threatening way?

The MoD said its Inclusive Language Guide 2021 was a “practical toolkit” to help servicemen and women understand why “certain words or use of language is hurtful or non-inclusive”.

But words and language don’t have to be “inclusive” of everything at all times – if they did they couldn’t do their jobs as words and language. If words are to mean anything they have to be non-inclusive, because if they … Read the rest

Another item from the Journal of Lesbian Studies –

I really won't miss this stuff. pic.twitter.com/5yvUMR4vlv

— Kathleen Stock (@Docstockk) December 15, 2021

But don’t go thinking other women who are branded with the scarlet letters of TERF are innocent of wrongdoing. No no no no no no don’t think that for a second – that would be very wrong, in fact it would make you a TERF.

Does violence against trans people occur with depressing regularity? Is there a citation for that? (No, there is not.) Are trans people murdered at a grossly disproportionate rate? Is there a citation for that? (No, there is not.) Is there a “cultural panic” about “transness”? Well, that one depends on who is … Read the rest

Of course he did.

Billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk lashed out at Senator Elizabeth Warren on Twitter, calling the Massachusetts Democrat a “Karen” after she accused him of “freeloading” by not paying his fair share of taxes.

But Karen is definitely not a substitute for “bitch,” no no no not at all. It’s about the haircut.

Musk engaged in the Twitter spat with Warren on Tuesday, one day after the senator shared an article about the billionaire being named Time magazine’s person of the year. Warren tweeted that the “rigged tax code” should be changed “so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.”

But he’s Good for the Economy.

The world’s

Unusually stupid.

jim finch, not a rich man, woke up and decided to spend time and money to go feed people in need in kentucky.

jk rowling, a billionaire, woke up and decided to attack the most vulnerable population in the world right now.

it's always the shittiest people who have the most money

— Just Regular Imani Gandy (@AngryBlackLady) December 13, 2021

How did Rowling attack “the most vulnerable population in the world”?

War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.https://t.co/SyxFnnboM1

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 12, 2021

So…rapists who identify as women are the most vulnerable population in the world? No, I don’t think that can be … Read the rest

Sean Ingle notes that the discussion has changed.

The Guardian has obtained a letter, written in 2003 by Dr Richard Budgett, in which he discusses the consequences of trans women competing in women’s sport. Responding to a government inquiry, Budgett, then at the British Olympic Association, states: “The effect of allowing male transsexuals to compete as women would be to make competition unfair and potentially dangerous in some sports and would undermine women’s sports.”

Ya think? It’s still weird that anyone would have to say that, let alone that he would “evolve” to stop saying it.

Society has shifted. Language has changed. Budgett is now medical and scientific director at the International Olympic Committee. And his views, according to

Joan Smith on Rowling and the loonies who long to CanCel her:

Gender extremists hate Rowling not just because she is famous and has a platform, but because her barbs hit home. She uses language precisely, avoiding ad feminam abuse and hyperbole, while they — how can I put this politely? — do not.

It’s about this business of ratifying men as women on a mere assertion. If a man says he’s a woman then he’s a woman, says the Scottish government, and if he’s a woman why then if he blots his copybook he gets imprisoned with his fellow women.

Police Scotland admitted as much in a response to a question from a former SNP justice minister, Kenny MacAskill,

Erm what?

Via Katie Herzog:

Has “the rise of transphobia” made “lesbian identity” obsolete? One “form of marginalization equates lesbianism with transphobia.” The true, traditional, correct, acceptable, approved lesbian identity is “political, nonessentialist, intersectional, and community grounded.” You were probably thinking it was to do with women loving women, but that’s obsolete. The new improved lesbianism is “inclusive of trans, nonbinary, and cis women.” Obviously “cis women” are last in the list because really, who gives a shit about women? Men who call themselves women are so much more fascinating and enlightened and – let’s face it – sexy than boring old dreary tedious women. If we understand lesbianism as “grounded in politics of inclusion” i.e. dominated by men … Read the rest

Yesterday at the hearing:

Prior to a unanimous vote to refer Mark Meadows for contempt of Congress charges, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the ranking Republican on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, read a series of text messages she said Meadows received during the Capitol attack.

In the messages, several figures, including Donald Trump Jr. and Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, urge Meadows to get then-President Donald Trump to tell his supporters to leave the Capitol.

Cheney said Meadows, who was Trump’s White House chief of staff during the siege, turned over the materials before he stopped cooperating with the panel.

Cheney says Meadows is refusing to testify about text messages “that … Read the rest

One of those “Sir I am the world’s greatest neurosurgeon” moments.

Actually they don’t, because my thread was entirely clear on that point and you are a transphobic troll refusing to read the very thread you are commenting on with sanctimonious words about the “ethical duty to learn”

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) December 13, 2021

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

Hey Meth, did you want your buttocks in separate containers or all in one?

— DaveDavidDaveDavid (@davecoviddave) December 13, 2021

… Read the rest

He mad.

Let me be crystal clear: no part of the TERF position on this has *anything* to do with protecting women. It has to do with erasing the existence of trans people. Women are being used as rhetorical human shields by misogynistic bigots and it’s f****** backward and embarrassing.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) December 13, 2021

EXACTLY

And that's because you f****** TERFs don’t understand how criminal arrests, criminal investigations, criminal prosecutions, criminal evidence, or criminal trials work in Scotland or any other goddamned place

JFC how much do you desperately just want all trans women dead

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) December 13, 2021

No, it's that you’re so f****** stupid that you didn’t realize the very first goddamned

What an extraordinary title:

J K Rowling keeps tweeting and we keep wondering why

Given how easy and humdrum and normal it is for people to “keep tweeting,” that amounts to saying JK Rowling keeps talking and we (who’s we?) keep wondering why. A man wondering why a woman keeps talking, and calling himself “we” to boot – it doesn’t get much more smugly contemptuous of women than that.

The bonus is that the man is Noah Berlatsky, who is a [cough] controversial sort of fella himself.

Harry Potter author J K Rowling responded in strong terms today to comments by Police Scotland about their approach to gender identity. Police Scotland said that the police would respect the gender self-identification

The Times on Naughty Rowling:

JK Rowling has reopened the row on gender after characterising as “Orwellian” a police policy in which a rape can be recorded as being committed by a woman if the attacker “identifies as a female”.

She hasn’t “reopened” anything because that row was never closed. It’s been raging along quite loudly for years now. What she has done is added her massive fame on the right side of the row again.

Her intervention came as Police Scotland confirmed they would log rapes by offenders with male genitalia as being carried out by a woman if the accused identified as female, regardless of whether they had legally changed gender.

I really couldn’t care less whether … Read the rest

Not all conservatives are damn fool anti-vaxxers.

Seems the best option is

1) Keep encouraging vaccines and boosters;

2) Impose vaccine mandates where it can be done;

3) Otherwise return to normal as fully as we can, especially the schools; and

4) Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last

— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 12, 2021

Cue shocked intake of breath – “He wants us all dead!!”

If, at this point, you are still unvaccinated, you are not a victim. You are a cause of the victimization of vulnerable others

— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 12, 2021

"The control of infectious disease, by its very nature, requires collective and coordinated action. … Societies that were good