Miscellany Room 15
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160 responses to “Miscellany Room 15”
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Lovely picture. It looks like one of the lakes I used to frequent in Oklahoma, but I imagine it isn’t.
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It’s dear Lake Washington on the east side of Seattle. It is indeed extremely beautiful, and there’s a lot of it.
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Thank you. I didn’t even know these filled-up.
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‘Who’s this fool?’ asks Ophelia about Kylie Cheung, the journo who’s attacking Sophie Cunningham for the latter’s sex realist views.
https://x.com/OpheliaBenson/status/2079882017001619932#m
I can answer. Cheung is a journalist who used write for Jezebel and Salon, and a strong TRA.
Cheung is also behind the ‘Dark Woke’ movement, where Democrats post cringe comments about things like clogging MAGA supporters’ toilets online.
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We went to dinner tonight with the kids in a trendy part of DC. Good pan-Mediterranean food (even if no one can get patatas bravas right these days), a nice Lebanese Grenache, friendly if spotty service.
Anyway, there were four toilets. One for men, with three urinals and a sit-down toilet, and three (including an accessible one) for both sexes. I didn’t go into any of those, but I assume they were single occupancy. But even so, that leaves four outlets exclusively for men, and three that women have to share. Maddening.
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Good post by Mary Jane Murphy about speaking to a loved one stuck in the TRA ideology, ‘How to talk to someone who is still inside the Spell’.
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That sounds like appropriate tactics for deconverting someone from any religion.
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Amnesty International backs down, because apparently “all bullies are cowards really, stand up to them” is more than a platitude.
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/latest/an-apology-a-growing-threat-briefing-published-on-8-july-2026/
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I had to look up some background, but apparently the New York Times is getting into trouble because they recently published articles that are not following the “trans” playbook, and some activists are calling for a boycott of everything NYT, including the games and the recipes. Ken Jennings, the host of Jeopardy, has been supportive of gender identity ideology, but apparently not strongly enough. He made social media posts about some NYT games, and got yelled at for daring to have a subscription, so he made a joke about getting express permission from the trans community to maintain his subscription. That got him in more hot water from activists.
Apologies in advance for the NY Post link, but that’s where I saw the story.
Ken Jennings triggers outrage after joke about trans protest of NY Times word games
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Good grief.
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In 2021, Capital One gave notice to close over 300 Trump-related accounts, based on Anti Money Laundering analysis (AML). This was not an accusation, but due diligence. Capital One kept it private.
In 2025, the Trump Organization and Eric Trump sued Capital One for debanking them illegally for political reasons.
Friday, Capital One defended itself by citing their AML analysis in court. Something like a Streisand Effect, backfiring on the Trumps.
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Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve on the subject of transwomen in women’s sport, in response to Sophie Cunningham’s own opinion on the subject:
“The issue isn’t as big as the issues that we have in women’s sports,” she said. “Whether it’s, you know, cisgender men that have held us down for years in spaces like being able to have access to facilities and uniforms in locker rooms. These young girls that are sitting at games with anti-trans signs, do they understand actually what the real problems are and what they’re how they’re being marginalized? We’re still not in a space where we have equality.”
Such whataboutism doesn’t mean those not wanting males in female sport are ignorant of the past, and this amounts to trying to change the subject and ridicule the other side while doing it. It’s bullshit. Here’s another more lengthy quote:
“I come from a space of inclusion and the narrative that I think that is problematic is to suggest that, number one, that transgender athletes are the biggest problem in women’s sports,” Reeve said. “And I think this is what’s bothersome is that there’s a faction of people in our country that are making this a massive issue.”
She added: “We need to protect trans kids. Every kid. To me, it’s a human rights issue. Every kid has a right to sports, regardless of gender-diverse, transgender. Every kid has the right to access. What gets nuanced is, you know, when you’re beyond puberty. When you’re in an Olympic sport. When you have scholarships at stake and that sort of thing. That’s where I say that common sense people get together, and you find common ground to find a way to be inclusive.”
She also criticized “the innuendo there that, somehow, transgender women are predators of some kind in the locker room.”
Golly it’s not like many haven’t spent time and effort exploring the nuances of male physical advantage in elite sport and trying to find common ground, only to be told they’re transphobes and shutupshutupshutup by insinuating they’re just making false accusations about transwomen in locker rooms. Sheesh, as if we don’t have norms about males undressing with females in locker rooms!
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She can’t even figure out that “every kid should have access to sports” does not mean that every kid should have access to the opposite sex sport?
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Journalist Rod Liddle passed away recently.
Liddle had a history of making crass and offensive comments about women, Black people, and disabled people.
So why is Kathleen Stock not only praising a vicious misogynist, but also sneering at the ‘online sisterhood’ who found Liddle’s behaviour objectionable?
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And just in case you think I’m over-reacting, here’s a Liddle article where he said he couldn’t be a schoolteacher because he’d want to ‘shag’ the female pupils (YUCK!) :
Again: why is Kathleen Stock praising this revolting man?
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Are you asking me? I don’t know. I don’t keep track of all the disagreements among feminists, because apart from any other reason it would take up all of my time and I would still never catch up.
At any rate – I think admitting to hypothetically wanting to shag the girls is not terrible. Wanting to torture them to death would be terrible, but wanting to shag them is just kind of normal. Wanting to shag them isn’t the same as shagging them.
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Thought I’d check what Kathleen Stock had said on twitter and found her account has been suspended. Seems like someone working at twitter has it in for her because as far as I can tell she’s said nothing that warrants a suspension. I’m sure Stock will keep writing though, so maybe she will have more to say about it later.
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Ophelia: Rod Liddle didn’t write in that “Spectator” piece that he found 18-year old schoolgirls attractive.
He explicitly wrote in it that he wouldn’t be able to be a teacher, because :
I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids. It seemed to me to be virtually impossible not to, and I was convinced that I’d be right in there, on day one. We’re talking secondary school level here, by the way – and even then I don’t think I’d have dabbled much below year ten, as it is now called.
“Year Ten”, in the UK, is the year for girls aged 15 and 14.
https://www.bcpcouncil.gov.uk/schools-and-learning/school-admissions/school-year-group-table
Pass the sick bag.
So Liddle was saying he couldn’t be an educator because – poor, helpless, male that he was – he would be compelled to have sex with 14-year old girls. If that paragraph is meant to be funny, I can’t see the humour, and if it’s meant to be a serious argument, I can’t see the seriousness.
I do wonder what all the women (and men) who were sexually abused as minors by teachers, thought of Mr. Liddle’s little screed.
As for Kathleen Stock: even if she doesn’t know about that particular Liddle piece, she surely knew that Liddle had a history of insulting women in his columns, such as Harriet Harman. Yet she expresses pride in appearing on his show, praises his support for her, and sneers at the “online sisterhood” who found Liddle’s behaviour towards women objectionable.
I know it’s a dispute between feminists, and I know Jane Clare Jones is somewhat controversial even among the sex realist crowd.
But I’m on Jones’ side here. Rod Liddle is currently being lauded by the Times, the Telegraph, and Nigel Farage. I believe Jones is correct in criticizing Stock for acting like “stanning for the man is edgy”.
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Well, but consider the context. He’s saying this is why he DIDN’T go into teaching. He’s offering a hypothetical. He’s confessing to being a goat.
I’m just not as outraged by it as you are.
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A little light relief. Ellen / Elliot Page appeared on a ‘TransLash’ podcast to have a rather confused rant about school biology lessons being ‘weaponised’ against the trans, among other things. But the highlight had to be this pearl of wisdom:
Human beings are the only species that are ridiculous enough to seem to have a huge problem with trans folks.
Gee, I wonder why that might be.
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Eeeeeeeesh
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Ophelia – a few years ago, Suzanne Moore protested when she heard that Rod Liddle was being offered the editorship of the London “Independent” newspaper.
She said this was why:
My credentials were simply that I loved that paper and did not want it edited by a racist misogynist, which is how I then perceived Liddle.
The common assault on his pregnant girlfriend, for which he accepted a police caution but later denied, was public knowledge.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/17/rod-liddle-spectator-race
So add that behaviour to a misogynistic list of actions that includes the revolting sexist comments Liddle made about Harriet Harman, Mary Beard, female soccer players, and other women.
Interesting that Moore hasn’t joined Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel and Rosie Duffield in the “Rod was such a talented writer! And he was so *nice* to me!” chorus.
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I’m not defending Liddle. I just said I’m not that outraged by a man’s admitting he would want to shag young girls if he spent time around them. That’s it; that’s all; it’s a very specific and limited remark. It’s not a secret that men can get turned on by female people even when they don’t want or choose to, is it?
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Bash Back replying to Mary-Ann Stephenson.
“Nice office you got there. Be a shame if something happened to it…again”.
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Here’s something nice: a fascinating article about morning sickness, and the scientific quest to identify its cause and find a cure. Refreshingly, not once does the author refer to “pregnant people” — it’s pregnant women and mothers all the way down, even when she brings up Elliot Page’s titular character in the teen-pregnancy comedy-drama film Juno.
(Well, there’s one sentence, “People resist epidurals because they want to be present when they usher in a new life,” that could just as well have swapped “women” for “people”, but I think that was just a slip.)
And the piece appears in the preposterously trans-addled New Yorker, no less. Perhaps their editorial stance has relaxed a bit…
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Wow!
I don’t even mind an occasional “people” when it’s just ordinary variety of wording. If there are plenty of “women”s the odd “people” is fine. I’ll leave it to science to figure out what the exact ratio should be.
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I half-suspect it was a small but deliberate provocation when the author, Anna Russell, brought up Elliot Page and thrice referred to her pregnant character as a her or a she.
I can imagine there was a lot of back-and-forth between Russell and her editor before this article came out…
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A male basketball player has announced he will enter the Women’s National Basketball League in protest of the policy letting trans women in, and in support of Sophie Cunningham’s opposition to it.
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The. President. Of. The. United. States. Had. His. Bank. Accounts. Closed. Due. To. Concerns. Over. Possible. Money. Laundering.
And this story is barely making the news!
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The. President. Of. The. United. States. Had. His. Bank. Accounts. Closed. Due. To. Concerns. Over. Possible. Money. Laundering.
This must be a first in our history (I refer only to the US, because I don’t know enough of the history of other countries to know all their scandals).
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“Sunday Times” article about detransitioners in the United States, who say they were rushed into “gender reassignment surgery” without being told of the full consequences:
I feel really sorry for these people. They were sold a lie of the Magic Gender Surgery that would solve all their problems and make them happy.
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More miscellany, and also more good news:
Currently I’m transit-nerding out on YouTube, googling random subway stuff, as I do when I’m bored. (I love me some urban planning and infrastructure!) I looked up a video of the Tehran subway, just to see what it’s like. Did you know that it’s the largest metro system in the Middle East? I could regale you with more nerdy facts about it, but what’s far more interesting is the people in the footage I’m watching, which was taken two years ago. It shows ordinary, everyday Tehranis (Tehranites? Tehranians? Tehrantonians?) going about their day-to-day business.
And it can’t not be noticed, almost instantly. It’s shocking:
The women are not wearing hijab!
Not just one or two daredevils. I’m talking, like, virtually every woman under 50.
Just straight-up nope-ing the headscarf. Young women, nonchalantly chewing gum, idly scrolling on their phones, shoulders relaxed. No scarves. Dozens and dozens and dozens of women, out in public.
The vast majority of younger women in the video are scarfless. (Well, many still have scarves, but slumped around their shoulders, demoted to a mere accessory — at the ready, as it were. But they ain’t really wearin’ ’em. And some women don’t appear to have brought one at all, not even just in case.) Interestingly, virtually all women about middle-aged and older still do wear scarves. Maybe it’s an ingrained habit; maybe it’s cultural; I dunno. It’s interesting, in any case. I don’t think I saw a single woman over 50 without one. And under 50, only a small minority had one on. An acute divide.
I had no idea that this had happened! Or I guess, I didn’t quite process its significance. I’m pretty sure I’d heard about the death of Mahsa Amini at some point, and the wave of protests that ensued. (If anything, I probably read about it here at B&W.)
But it’s one of those things where the headlines don’t hit the story home like the images do. To read something about, say, how some women have become increasingly defiant about the hijab in Tehran following a high-profile flashpoint involving the death of a young woman… That seems like a pleasingly optimistic headline, a little tick of the dial in the right direction. A nugget of good news.
But to see actual footage of what has taken place, what has changed — the sheer scope of it, it knocks your socks off.
(Or your scarf! hurr! Sorry, sorry…)
For some reason I have extra fondness for the young woman in the footage who’s wearing the baseball cap. Like, she’s got something covering her hair, yes, but it’s entirely of her choosing, and it has nothing to do with the morality police. She’s free to decide what she does or doesn’t wear on her head.
It’s also telling: a tiny moment near the beginning, when a woman realizes she’s being filmed and, for a brief second, hesitatingly reaches for her scarf, only to release it just as quickly and regain her composure. There’s a huge amount of human story compressed into that fraction of a second alone…
Here’s the video of the subway:
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Interesting! I’m not seeing quite what you’re seeing though. Lots and lots wearing them. But still, yes, since I thought the hijab-police terrorized all the naked heads, it is good to see so many.
I might have to join you in the watching subway videos habit.
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As long as Iran is the topic:
Sunk Costs & Diminishing Returns of Iran’s Nuclear Program w/ Farzan Sabet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFEvHChPGlA
BTW the interviewer lives in Toronto.
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Right now, one of NASA’s three WB-57 high altitude research aircraft is flying a racetrack pattern at 50,000 feet to collect data on the total eclipse of the Sun today.
They are something like a U-2 spy plane, but with thicker wings to carry a heavier load of equipment.
This link should work to open a browser window centered on the plane flying live, then you should be able to zoom out and see the plane is flying over the Greenland Iceland gap.
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@Ophelia,
Yeah, upon second viewing, I think my initial assessment was coloured by my genuine surprise at having seen really any women unscarved in public at all in Tehran. But it wasn’t really “the overwhelming majority”; that was, I can see now, heat-of-the-moment excitement. Still, it’s an optimistic development for the women and girls in Iran, certainly a piece of good news amid so much bad stuff.
And yeah, urban transit videos are generally a great source of light, pleasant, optimistic infotainment. Who doesn’t love to see the tangible results of people coming together to improve the place they live, the fruits of collective civic effort that will benefit generations to come.
This kind of wholesome content is what YouTube does best, if you ask me.
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And I’m a huge fan of urban transportation myself, and use Seattle’s hundreds of bus routes to explore every inch of it.
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Ah, that’s lovely!
One great benefit of buses over subways is that, being aboveground, they give us wonderful streetscapes to behold. I do love me the Toronto Subway and the London Underground — two transit systems I’m practically married to — but the cities’ overground networks — Toronto’s streetcars and London’s double-decker buses — are much more fun to ride, because of course you get to see so much city life out the window.
I’m proud to say I’ve never driven a car in my life, and that’s only possible because as an adult I’ve only ever lived in urban environments where public transit is supported: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, London.
And yet, Toronto is also home to Highway 401, by far the busiest highway in North America and one of the widest on the planet.
Toronto is two cities that overlap***: the transit city and the car one, and they’re always bickering.
Whatever hassles that public transit has — it’s not perfect — they’re nothing compared to the tedium of car traffic, especially in this town. And transit is cheaper and better for the air and the planet, to boot.
Urban transportation for the win!
***Really, in Toronto it’s kinda three or four overlapping city networks: there’s also a so-so bike-lane infrastructure, and — unique in North America — the ravines, like deep gashes that slash across the city grid here and there, forming a sort-of below-grade network of dense forest channels that can serve as on-foot passages between various city districts, if you’re willing to brave these shaded, slightly eerie, shaded, wild and unpaved running paths, where raccoons, bunny rabbits, coyotes, and the occasional family of deer quietly reside, mere tens of metres down and away from major urban arteries above…)
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Really, Toronto is more like The Borg …
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@chigau
The Condo Borg!
Resistance is Futile!
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Artymorty
At least in TorontoBorg you won’t be attacked by a bear. Unlike VancouverBorg. In CalgaryBorg the closest I’ve ever come was a Canada Goose.
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Seattle too is heavily endowed with ravines. There’s at least one whole entire park that’s really just a ravine – and masses of what are called green belts, which are really slopes too steep to be worth building on.
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Surroggacy in the news again . Short version: couple in California contracts with woman to use her body to carry their baby. Baby is found at twenty weeks to have heart defect that requires multiple surgeries. Pregnant woman alleges that couple wants her to abort; she flees to Texas and delivers baby. Court orders that baby must receive life-saving care; couple claims they never wanted to deny it.
There’s a lot to unpack here; I certainly don’t trust the motives of Ken Paxton in taking advantage of the case. But what I find most egregious (if the allegation is true) is the idea that a couple who’s rented the use of a women’s body can force her to have an abortion. Surely pro-choice means just that; forced abortion is as evil as forced birth.
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We’re in Bilbao for the week. We had unseasonably clear weather yesterday, and a great view of the eclipse from above the city (though we were right on the edge, so totality lasted for only about half a minute).
It’s been hot here, and dry. Not as bad as other parts of Europe but Bilbainos aren’t used to this. Being near the sea helps and hurts—nice breezes, but also high humidity.
My suegra is 90-something and lives alone (with some help). I don’t know how she stands it—she’s won’t turn on the fan and is too housebound to sit in the park, and there’s no convincing her to move to an old folks’ home.
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Urban transportation for the win!
Hey Arty, do busses run to the airport (YYZ!) on Sundays yet? I think it was 1998 for a Flyers game (last season for the Garden now that I recall) we had to cross highway ramps to get there from the bus “stop” because it was Sunday. Entered the terminal through a kind of a back door from a grass field instead of the main entrance.
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Since 5Pillarsuk seems to be trending, here is a piece by Pakistani-British activist Sara Khan criticizing the organization for advocating violence and for supporting a Caliphate:
https://www.sarakhan.co.uk/blog/5pillars-uk-what-are-british-islamists-thinking/
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Unfortunately the two items in that link that look like they should run the video Sara Khan refers to, don’t run any video. (At least on my computer)
Perhaps 5pillars decided to remove an embarrassing video
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The piece is dated 2017, so stale links may be inevitable.
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Jason Arday, the man at the centre of the Cambridge plagiarism scandal, has been found dead.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1j1ye6n30no
A tragic conclusion to this series of events.
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Jason Arday’s plagiarism was wrong. But it seems also that he had mental health issues, and he should have been getting treatment for those issues instead of an academy position.
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Opps, I had missed Mostly’s comment above stating the same fact. I follow this thread via its RSS feed, and my feed reader hadn’t caught up.
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Thank both of you.
What a mess in all directions.
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What a terrible shame. Arday’s errors were not so egregious to justify his demise. He was human as are we all.
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UK PM Andy Burnham has now commented on this tragedy:
“It’s a tragedy on so many levels, but particularly just for everybody who knew Jason, his family obviously, his friends. We think of think of them today.
“It’s not a moment for any rushing to judgment. It’s a moment for reflection, I would say, reflecting on how things came to this.”
“A really sad, sad and sorry state of affairs and I think we all today think of Jason, his contribution, and his family and friends.”
https://www.itv.com/news/2026-08-15/burnham-calls-jason-ardays-death-a-tragedy-on-so-many-levels
A compassionate and sensible response to a tragedy.
Quite unlike the behaviour of a certain other Anglosphere world leader that I won’t mention.
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I frequently silently ask myself, “What if Obama did it?” about Trump’s idiocy and corruption, but this one ranks right near the top of that very, very long list of such items:
“The Trumps’ Crypto Project Just Got One Step Closer to Becoming a Bank” https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/donald-trump-world-liberty-regulatory-approval/
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Should all Trump assets be considered stolen goods and confiscated?
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Along with Elon Musk. Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars stolen.
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J. K. Rowling speaks out about the Jason Arday affair:
I have some personal experience of becoming a dehumanised online punchbag. It takes a lot of psychological strength not to go under.
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Nathan Cofnas, the American academic and “race realist” who made plagiarism allegations against Jason Arday before the latter died, has now been suspended by a Belgian university.
Reminder that Cofnas joked about becoming “the head of the Department of eugenics and race science at Harvard.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-real-meaning-of-the-jason-arday-scandal
Cofnas doesn’t seem like a nice person at all.
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I have a pen-pal in federal prison. We’ve been corresponding for years and we’ve become friends. Recently he let loose with a bit of a rant about some of his neighbors, which I thought the B&W comunniny would enjoy reading also. Copied with his permission:
Regarding the transgender inmates…
They used to sell makeup and women’s things like bras (bros?) in the Commissary, and Laundry issued them “dresses” (which look like potato sacks with holes cut out). When Trump issued the executive order all that went away but after the lawsuit they brought back the dresses. [On the first day of Trump’s second term he issued an order that TiM inmates in federal prisons would be confined only in men’s facilities and would no longer be receive “gender-confirming medical care”; this was overturned by court order — PN] I have a few issues with all of that.
1) This is a men’s prison and we are all required to wear a uniform. I’d much rather wear jeans and nice t-shirt, but the uniform is a khaki (button down) shirt and slacks. It isn’t a matter of functionality, and in fact inmates in women’s prisons (you know, actual females), they wear a version of the same uniform as the men (i.e., no dresses).
2) It is expressly against the rules to alter your appearance (it’s considered escape-related), so makeup shouldn’t be allowed — and none of that affects a persons “rights”. [Apparently cosmetics are available to transwomen inmates in male prison commissaries — PN]
So, the transgender inmates have made it their whole thing to be a thorn in the ass of the Bureau of Prisons — filing paperwork on everything under the sun to gain “rights”, when actually it’s just a ploy to be so annoying that they get whatever they want, just to shut them up. My point has always been that transgenderism is a mental illness, a form of body dismorphia akin to anorexia… It’s a subjective experience that has no bearing on the real world (AKA the objective reality we all share). If I claim to “identify” as a free person the Bureau of Prisons is under no obligation to let me go! If I claim to “identify” as a millionaire nobody is under any obligation to give me a million dollars. It’s all nonsense, and when you cater to people who act like spoiled children it shouldn’t surprise anyone when they act like entitled brats (entitled is a word they love to throw around… they claim to be “entitled” to wear dresses, etc.).
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Very interesting; thank you.
(I must remember to stay out of prison; the clothes mandates would drive me nuts. I never wear woven shirts next to the skin because I hate the feeling; it has to be the soft knitted texture of T shirts and turtlenecks.)
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Apparently one of the WNBA teams has adopted a “nonbinary” mascot with the purpose of taunting Sophie Cunningham. As if her comments about keeping males out of female sports has anything to do with mascots or with people declaring themselves “nonbinary”. The NYPost article is pretty decent, stating what she actually said and noting that the vast majority of people agree, but stopping short of pointing out the absurdity and irrelevance of “trans” identified mascots.
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@Peter
Oh wow, that’s amazing. I wonder if your pen pal would share more with us about the transgender thing, from the prison vantage? Please convey to him that his writing is very much appreciated, his observations are valued, and that we agree with him! (By we, well, I mean me for one, but surely others here, too.)
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Arty — I will convey your comments to my pen-pal, and I’m sure it will mean a lot to him! Would you like to correspond with him directly? He’s an interesting fellow — I first got to know him as one of the vanishingly rare atheists in prison, and we’ve been corresponding for years. It’s done via a special email system at no cost to us outsiders (and there’s always snail-mail as well). What’s the best way for me to connect with you directly? Maybe Ophelia, who has my email address, can forward it to you. [And I really don’t mind divulging my email address here — and if I do, the rest of you are welcome to get in touch also!]
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I can certainly forward your address to Arty.
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X /Twitter has sent a cease and desist letter to the open source project Nitter for alleged scraping :
Since a few of us GCs use Nitter, this is not good news for us.
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Colin Wright posted about a new report from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) showing links between transgender ideology and support for left-wing violence. The report is a product of an ongoing research collaboration between HHS, NCRI, Rutgers University, and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (where Wright works).
New Research on Gender Ideology and Left-Wing Authoritarianism
Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? is a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services examining the psychology behind strong support for radical gender ideology and left-wing authoritarianism.
Researchers surveyed over 1,200 U.S. adults using a new measurement tool built from “gender-affirming” guidance issued by major medical and psychological associations. The study found that people who scored higher on this measure (i.e., those who are more likely to agree with the guidance) were also more likely to hold left-wing authoritarian views — and more likely to say political violence could be justified in certain cases, even after accounting for political party alone.
The authors conclude that support for “gender-affirming” norms is strongly associated with broader authoritarian attitudes, not just political identity, and predicts support for political violence.
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How very interesting. And unsurprising. Authoritarian thinking—>more authoritarian thinking.
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Mostly Cloudy, I remember when Nitter came back after the attempt to shut it down by technical means in 2024, but this time seems different and I will miss it. Not going to join ex though as I have developed an allergy to having my personal data collected by assholes like Musk. For now then I just google twitter feeds and see the latest tweets of those I’ve followed on twitter.
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A brief update from my prison pen-pal:
“In other news it looks like one of the bad actor transgender inmates is going to be shipped. It’s been much quieter without him around.”
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Senator Blumenthal has released a whistleblower letter regarding USPS’s attempt to implement Trump’s executive order on mail in voting. This tracks with what I’ve heard from someone I know who’s working (reluctantly) on the project. Bottom line: it’s a shit show, and probably won’t work. But if it does, it will effectively eliminate voting by mail as an option. Just one example of how it does that:
Not only is this system astonishingly untested, USPS has simultaneously implemented an impracticable zero percent failure rate. When ballots are submitted to USPS in large-volume batches, if any one ballot in the batch cannot be verified against the Portal, all ballots in that batch will be rejected. For example, if a state election official brings a batch of 10,000 ballots to USPS and USPS is unable to match just one of those ballots against the Portal – because, for example, someone has recently changed their name after marriage or they’ve moved – then USPS would refuse to mail the remaining 9,999 ballots as well. As the whistleblower notes, “USPS expects the state to take back the entire batch to cure the issue with the single ballot…” Should the slapdash Portal mistakenly mark a ballot as unverified, there is no clear process by which state election officials or voters themselves can challenge the rejection. The Rule simply vaguely states that they “will be informed of the escalation procedures should they decide to challenge a rejection.” Voters intending to cast ballots by mail may not even be aware that their ballots have been rejected, or were part of a rejected batch, until it is too late to secure an alternative ballot or vote in person. Expecting a well-built, thoughtful Portal to return an accurate result 100 percent of the time is already a stretch—expecting a “rushed,” “risky and haphazard”Portal to do the same is a recipe for disaster.
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Looks like game over if they succeed.
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My takeaway: if at all possible, don’t vote by mail.
Which I realize doesn’t help in the state of Washington.
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Seriously.
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I have only voted by mail once in my life, when I lived in Oklahoma and went to school in Texas. I’m never sure I trust the voting machines, but we use paper ballots here, and the elderly ladies who run the polling station are wonderful. I think I’ll stick with that, even though the school where we vote can be formidable for my husband to access with his difficulty walking. Now that you told me that, I definitely will stick to it, even if I have to rent a wheelchair to get him in. (One of the reasons it’s so hard to access is that they are ADA compliant, which is good for wheelchairs, but not so good for canes. And their handicapped parking is set up for the front entrance, quite a distance from the entrance for voting.)
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Tennessee’s Republican supermajority is making its high schools observe “Victims of Communism Day” where students will have to spend 45 minutes learning about the harms of Communism:
What sort of critics of Communism will be cited in these classes? I doubt the students will learn about Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus or Bertrand Russell’s objections to Communism in these sessions. It’ll probably be all print-outs of Fox News and Breitbart propaganda pieces.
Also, why aren’t those schools also observing “Victims of Fascism Day?” Far more Americans were killed by the fascist Axis soldiers in WWII ( 214,938 deaths in combat) then were killed by Communist soldiers in the Korean (33,686 deaths in combat) and Vietnam (47,434 deaths in combat).
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If you aren’t aware of it yet, Gloria Steinem has died.
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I know. I don’t love doing obits.
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This is revolting.
Robin Morgan, the feminist activist, has sadly passed away.
This is how Osama bin Laden fan Gretchen Felker-Martin responded to Morgan’s death:
Morgan was a lifelong TERF/SWERF who cared more about enforcing hierarchy and brutalizing her perceived inferiors than she did about creating a just and dignified world. Rot in Hell, creep. 1/2
With the second wave starting to die off, modern feminists have a choice between whitewashing their deeply ugly bigotry and choosing to uproot that same bigotry from our own hearts and renounce it forever. We can deny, or we can learn and change. 2/2
https://bsky.app/profile/scumbelievable.bsky.social
“Deeply ugly bigotry?” The projection here is off the charts. Off the charts, through the ship’s window and into the sea.
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FWIW, I only know about Robin Morgan’s work because my aunt was an active feminist in the 1970s and 1980s and told me she admired Morgan’s writings. But Morgan seems like a good person who helped people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/us/robin-morgan-dead.html
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That is indeed revolting.
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Interesting interview in the Daily Telegraph with veteran Scottish rock band the Proclaimers:
That, though, wasn’t the primary reason that, in May’s Scottish parliamentary elections, Craig didn’t vote SNP for the first time since 1983. That reason was “the anger that I still feel that they passed a self ID bill which was so badly [formulated]”. He’s talking about the 2022 Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill that makes it easier for individuals to change their legal gender. “It’s so badly done that it inevitably led to violent men, including convicted rapists, being sent to women’s prison. For me, that is unforgivable.”…
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Aside from everything else, Trump is clearly desperate. Last night at his “convention” he asked his followers to take this pledge:
I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way – I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do.
I endorse the “can’t even breathe” part.
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I wish he couldn’t breathe.
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@Mostly Cloudy
” [U]proot that same bigotry from our own hearts and renounce it forever.” In other words – repent.
Increasingly, they’re not even trying to hide that theirs is a religious movement.
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@What a Maroon
It’s only a matter of time before he has the Senate declare him a god.
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Francis Boyle: I’m genuinely OK with genderism being a religion, or for that matter, Trumpism. If it’s a religion then they’re free to follow it and I’m free to not follow it.
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@Francis Boyle,
Apparently they showed a treacly video at Trumpapollooza all about how God created Trump back in the forties because he knew he’d need him some day to, I dunno, build golf courses and swimming pools in DC? (As Michelle Shocked once sang, apparently God is a real estate developer.)
Anyway, I couldn’t watch more than about ten seconds of it, but I suppose it’s easily found if you’re in desperate need of an emetic.
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lol at the Michelle Shocked reference. I saw that. I see you! I get the reference! Bravo/Brava.
(Bravx?)
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Aw, thanks, Arty.
And I use the pronouns. Actually, I use all the pronouns as appropriate, depending on the context. As far as I know, though, most people use masculine pronouns when referring to me in the third person.
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I use *they* pronouns. (Else the joke doesn’t work.)
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J. K. Rowling versus TIM Lilly Wachowski. It is ON:
https://ew.com/j-k-rowling-responds-lilly-wachowski-funding-trans-genocide-exclusive-12116263
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About the Wachowskis, one thing that’s annoying is how they’ve tried to retcon The Matrix as a transgender flick, which it wasn’t. I’m not surprised they found transing to their liking though, given their obsession with identity.
BTW, thanks M.C. for the tip about the alternative to Nitter. It works!
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J.A.
As I have mentioned a few times earlier, I think Inception* is a much better allegory for transgenderism, although not in the way the Wachowski brothers have in mind. I just know all that stuff about planting destructive ideas in people’s heads that come to completely dominate their lives, the danger of losing track of reality etc. reminds me of something. Let’s see, what was it again? And of course one member of the cast famously got lost in trans limbo herself. Ariadne should have made herself a better totem…
* Often mentioned in the same breath as The Matrix because of the virtual reality link despite having very little else in common.
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Interesting piece on Umar Kremlev, the Russian oligarch who reported funded Donald Trump Jr’s wedding, including his association with the ultranationalist biker gang the Night Wolves:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/15/who-is-umar-kremlev-russian-oligarch-donald-trump-jr
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J. A., I saw Matrix with a friend; he attempted to explain how it was all about Jesus. (Probably not nearly as convoluted an explanation as the transing).
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@J. A.,
I don’t think it’s a retcon to classify The Matrix a trans flick. Underneath the cool graphics and the fight sequences and the S&M-suggestive leather and PVC costumes, that film is just raw trans allegory, through and through, right from the get-go.
This has been established now for quite some time. My personal transsexual friend who committed suicide shortly after getting a vaginoplasty in the 2010s, the man who probably motivated me more than anyone except Ophelia Benson herself to step up and call out the madness of what I was seeing around trans discourse: The Matrix was his all-time favourite film, and he was obsessed with it, for reasons that became obvious to me only after his death.
About the film:
By 1999, when The Matrix came out, the writer-director brothers (Larry and Andy) had already begun showing clear signs of autogynephilic obsession. They had already made a film “positively soaked in male-gaze lesbian-fetish BDSM imagery” as ChatGPT replied to me when I asked it if their previous film — 1996’s Bound — had lesbian or fetish connotations. (AI added: “there’s something almost Playboy-editorial about portions of Bound“, and although AI tried to play up the independence of the female characters as if to bolster a feminist take on the film — ChatGPT always tries so hard to come off even-handed — even it had to concede, unprompted, that “it doesn’t somehow erase the voyeuristic apparatus.”)
So… well before The Matrix hit screens, the directors, a pair of kinky brothers, had already established that they were fixated on themes close to trans-identifying men’s hearts: fetish, lesbian pornographic imagery, kinky sexuality, and decidedly male-gaze interpretations of these things.
As for The Matrix itself: the auteurs had fully intended for the gender-bending aspects to be much more prominent, and this is documented. The character “Switch”, who in the final film ended up depicted as a tough, butch woman, was in the screenplay simultaneously both male and female (hence the character name): in the domain that the film refers to as the Matrix (what us flesh-and-blood film-watchers would call “the real, material world we actually inhabit”) she was female, but she was a male in the film’s idea of the actual real world, which, somewhat psychedelically, is actually a post-apocalyptic future in which robots control us and keep us living in a virtual reality that they control.
But that there — the “ingenious”, trippy concept that made the film such a smash hit, the inversion, the idea that our actual real world is a make-believe fiction “assigned to us at birth” while there’s an even “realer” real world that we can access if we just concentrate hard enough on what our lower brains are telling us they believe — that’s an autogynephile’s charter, written into a supernatural fantasy. And when you think about it: duh! The whole magic of this “realer-real level of real” was to say that these guys fantasize about being women but in the boring old “LEVEL ONE” level of reality they’re clearly male. BUT WHAT IF THERE WERE DEEPER LEVELS?! On Level X I can be “truly female”…
et cetera, et cetera.
The film was a post-modernist’s fantasy, and a rationalist’s nightmare: it glamourized the idea that material reality itself “just might be” a conspiracy designed to keep us down. A kind of X-Files conspiracy theory that “just maybe” could be true: and it left the door open just enough for these autogynephile brothers, Larry and Andy, to promote the idea that their fantasies of being “really” female might be, on some abstract plane of reality not-yet revealed to the masses, “literally” true.
The trans/Matrix connection was well-known for a long time, but it was Helen Joyce, former editor at The Economist, who really put all the pieces together and did the most thorough dissection of the connection. She dedicated an entire chapter of her book, Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality to it.
My friend Buck Angel, a female transsexual, has a connection to this mess, too: Buck is an L.A. native. 20 years ago, Buck’s then-wife was working as a dominatrix in a sex club in LA when Larry Wachowski became a client. Shortly after they met — Buck’s wife and Larry, that is — Buck was handed a divorce and Larry ran off with the dominatrix to SF.
The rest, as they say, is history…
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Artymorty,
I did know about the “Switch” character and its backstory, but that was changed in the movie so for me that’s a what if that never was. I’m not surprised the Wachowski’s have asserted The Matrix was a trans movie based on that original character but I don’t buy it. Why? Because the movie uses the old SF trope of a “brain in a vat” but makes it the whole body in a pod, and it’s exactly the same body when it comes out of the pod and into the meat-verse. Obviously, they did this because they didn’t want to hire multiple actors to play the same part, which would have also been pretty confusing for the audience, not to mention that when you pay Keanu Reeves to act in your movie, you’re not going to substitute another actor for him!
I will confess that I have a pet peeve about changing the past, which does figure into transgenderism with its insistence that the past of someone who transes is now dead and can never be mentioned, even to the point of altering birth certificates, which I frankly think is wrong to do. I don’t care so much about things like driver’s licenses using a “gender” rather than a “sex” identifier though, but on a birth certificate it does matter that the sex is accurately recorded because it is a basic fact about human beings that matters.
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@J.A.,
Fair enough. For me the things that stand out are contextual: the brothers seemed to be already investing into the trans narrative when the film came out, even if they didn’t quite consciously know it yet. There’s an open question as to how conscious they were that The Matrix had trans-allegorical elements up the yazoo as they were writing it. That’s a fair and reasonable question. Did they write it as an action story and only later backfill the coincidences it had with trans psychology? But to me this seems like a pretty rote history-of-art thing: in retrospect they were already circling into trans identities, and it is very apparent in the artistic and career choices they made. Even if they hadn’t quite realized yet that they both were gonna “go trans”, their art was years ahead of their consciousness, spilling the beans all over the silver screen.
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The transhumanism to transgenderism pipeline has been well documented. If you don’t believe the physical world, and the physical body, is real or that it’s not important but simultaneously view the world from a fetishistic mindset (where physical desire becomes something fundamentally not physical) you’re probably going to end up where the Wachowskis are now.
I don’t believe that the Wachowskis were great or even good artists. The Matrix is cobbled together from the bits and pieces I’ve been watching and reading my entire life. The only thing that felt groundbreaking were the special effects but they were there at the right time to bring my geeky interests to the masses. And, of course, once you were there at the right time, you have to struggle to stay there, by embracing the perceived zeitgeist which is to say the Wachowskis fate is prettily heavily over-constrained just not, perhaps, by their early artistic intentions.
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I don’t believe that the Wachowskis were great or even good artists. The Matrix is cobbled together from the bits and pieces I’ve been watching and reading my entire life.
A successful Hollywood SF film, like “The Matrix” or “Avatar” is often inspired by other SF works that blockbuster audiences have never heard of. Certainly “The Matrix” is indebted to Japanese anime films like “Akira” and “Ghost in the Shell” that would have been cult fare with small followings, back in the 1990s.
Speaking of which, many TIMs in Western societies also seem to have an unusually strong interest in anime and manga. I’m not sure why, but it’s almost become a cliche to point out that TIMs use anime avatars when posting online:
https://mashable.com/article/trans-people-are-turning-to-virtual-reality-as-society-fails-them
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British politician Kemi Badenoch has reported adult film star Bonnie Blue to Social Services.
This was after Blue appeared in an adverstiment for pornography with a baby on her lap, while being surrounded by masked men.
We’re living in a dystopia, aren’t we? Who on earth thought such an advertisement could be remotely acceptable?
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Good article on NPR on why putting an arch near an already complicated and over-stressed airway might not be a great idea.
I appreciate the convenience of DCA, but there really should be a lot fewer flights. (And no more potential obstacles, please.)
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@Mostly Cloudy
In which case you probably won’t appreciate my views on James Cameron. (The first two Terminators were pretty good movies.)
My problem with ‘The Matrix” is the fans who laud it as a great and visionary work of art rather than the pretty good mainstream movie it is.
For the authentic “the world is not real” experience read “The Tunnel under the World” by Frederik Pohl and try to imagine what that must have felt like in 1955.
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…or Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (~375 BC).
Interesting for sure, but hardly cutting edge…
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Francis Boyle:
Yes, I remember TTUTW! I’m pleased to find another Pohl fan on B&W!
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Re. my comment from 15.09.2006 7:59 AM:
Inception as a GC allegory
(Disclaimer: Inception may very well have the most complicated plot of any movie ever made (since so many of the different story lines are happening on different “dream levels”), so I won’t even try to provide a synopsis. Those who have seen the movie will hopefully get it. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a much better movie, and although I’m under no illusion that my interpretation is intended by Christopher Nolan, I think it works far better as an allegory for transgenderism than the Matrix.)
Dominic (“Dom”) Cobb [Deadname: Mallory (“Mal”)],
motherbirthing parent of James and Phillipa, is a trans man. Through over-exposure to postmodernist philosophy and gender ideology, Mal was getting increasingly detatched from reality (represented in the movie by the various layers of dreams within dreams within dreams etc.). In order to keep track of what’s real Mal, came up with the idea of a “totem” (a physically impossible object that could only exist in the dream world), in her case a spinning top that never stopped spinning in the dream world, but eventually toppled over in the real world. This worked well enough for a while, but after getting too far down the trans rabbit hole (represented in the movie by the idea of “Limbo”), Mal’s fictitious alter ego Dom (a manifestation of her own psyche) managed to convince* her that her world (in which there was such a thing as biological sexes, and she herself was a woman) wasn’t real, and that she needed to kill herself in order to return to the “real” world (in which she was actually a man). Mal’s death is Dom’s real birth.Still, even after “transitioning”, Dom can’t stop the ghost of Mal from constantly bursting into his psyche and threatening to shatter the illusion he has created for himself. Dom tries to overcome his own cognitive dissonance by converting Robert Fisher, heir to a vast industrial empire, to a new “identity” as well (cf. “If someone like that can fall for the same trick, how can anyone blame me?”). This seems to do the trick, and Dom’s transition seems to be complete when the ghost of Mal appears to “find peace” for good. Appears. The movie famously ends with an exemplary case of “Inception”: The spinning top keeps spinning for a suspiciously long time (with maybe some hint that it’s starting to wobble before cutting to the credits), thus planting the idea that Cobb’s new reality may not be so “real”** after all.
* The title Inception refers to the idea of planting an idea in somebody else’s mind in such a way that they think they came up with it themselves.
** This was always one of my issues with the Matrix: How do we know that the supposedly “real” world (with the Nebuchadnezzar, the sentinels, Zion etc.) is any more real than the one Neo just left behind? If your perceptions can be that wrong once, how can you trust it to tell you the truth about anything?
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@Mostly Cloudy
Not sure I can really count myself a fan on the basis of holding one story in high esteem. I tend to cherry pick based on reputation and in particular, recommendations. I’ve found reading by author to often be disappointing. For example, I love “Dover Beach” but can’t read any of Matthew Arnold’s other work, but at least with poetry there is a relatively small time commitment. That said, “The Space Merchants” is high on my list of books I’d like to read but almost certainly will never get around to.
@Bjarte
I did consider mentioning how “The Matrix” is direct from Descartes with just a minor detour through modern brain in a vat though experiments but decided I’d already made the point well enough. The Cave Allegory is there in the background, of course, but I think it belongs to a slightly different tradition. Not the world isn’t real, but the world doesn’t matter because there’s another “realer” world which constitutes some sort of ultimate self-verifying truth. That’s, of course, a fundamentally religious position. I’m not sure it’s in “The Matrix”, though it might shed light on your problem. (The world is real because you can see it’s really it’s. . .well, gritty.) It’s in trans ideology in spades, obviously. (I’m pink therefore I’m trans!)
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My wife and I went to a presentation and concert sponsored by conservation group Ontario Nature, the final stop in the “Together for Nature” Tour, which visited Ottawa, Toronto, Kitchener and my home town of London.
The first part of the evening was given over to a number of First Nations speakers from Northern Ontario whose land and way of life are threatened by the provincial government’s drive to “develop” an extensive belt of mineral deposits that has been dubbed the “Ring of Fire,”. We also heard from a member of the legal team that has been working on their behalf.
One of the things that struck me about these speakers, both young (early to mid twenties) and old ( 50’s or so) was how un-angry they were. In fact one of the older speakers, a member of Friends of the Attawapiskat River said he felt badly for having spoken “too aggressively” at an earlier venue. I would have found it hard to not be angry, given what they’re facing, what has happened, and what they stand to have taken from them, all in the name of “progress” and “development”, but really, on the altar of greed and limitless, heedless growth in appeasement to the gods of the market. The younger speakers in particular were very moving and inspirational, despite their relative inexperience to public speaking.
They told their stories and asked for our help, to follow their posts on social media (links below, for those who want to look further into this), saying that no effort or gesture was too small, that every bit helps. I got the t-shirt for the event, and the hoodie emblazoned with the logo of the legal team. (To start with, I decided that I would write a letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, about more of which below.)
The speakers were from:
Friends of the Attawawapiskat River
LAND (Legal Advocates for Nature’s Defence)
The second part of the evening was a performance by Inuit singer Susan Aglukark, who, between songs told stories of her parents living through the 1953 action by the Canadian government to remove the Inuit from their traditional, nomadic life on the land and place them in fixed, permanent “settled” communities, and her own search for her family’s past. She ended the night with her 1995 hit O Siem, which brought me to tears, and Hina Na Ho, which brought me to my feet to join the circle dance that wove its way around the concert space. Altogether a very powerful evening, which opened my eyes and heart.
So, as part of my “every little thing helps,” I’ve written a letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford. But in keeping with the spirit of the Indigenous speaker who regretted having come across as aggressive, I removed my more usual tone of snark, anger and sarcasm in favour of something more open and concilliatory. I don’t pull any punches, but I’m leaving out the venom and vitriole, despite my initial thought to compare Ford’s use of s0o-called “Special Economic Zones” to Trump’s opening of huge protected areas to “resource development.” It’s still me, but my writing is wearing a virtual suit and tie, rather than throwing rhetorical Molotov cocktails. Know your audience. Framing is important!
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Premier Ford;
On the evening of September 18, my wife and I had the privilege of seeing a remarkable presentation in London by a group of people from the James Bay, Hudson Bay region of Northern Ontario. It was part of a tour sponsored in part by Ontario Nature, called Together for Nature. It featured speakers from Friends of the Attawapiskat River, Okinawak, Here We Stand, and LAND (Legal Advocates for Nature’s Defence). They had travelled to Southern Ontario in order to tell us their stories, and ask for our support in their efforts to protect the land, air, and water of their home, upon which they depend to maintain their way of life. They asked us to help them protect all their relations; the birds, fish, animals and plants with whom they live. These places and beings are threatened by development of the so-called “Ring of Fire,” the project to extract the minerals that lay under the land on which they live. They are afraid that the mining and processing of these minerals will damage or destroy their way of life. And with good reason.
The “Special Economic Zones” which “relax” rules and regulations do not sound like very good or safe ideas. I wouldn’t want to ride in a car, or fly in an airliner built in a factory where the rules and regulations have been removed or “streamlined.” Sometimes “red tape” saves lives. All this streamlining is in aid of speeding up approval. That sounds a lot like guaranteeing approval, and bypassing standards and oversight that might otherwise lead to the rightful delay or rejection of a project. Maybe, sometimes, the answer should be “No.”
We should not curtail, short-circuit, or bypass thorough, careful investigation and evaluation of projects that have a potentially large ecological footprint. All such projects need open, democratic consultation, oversight and accountability. No exceptions. Why the rush? The minerals aren’t going anywhere. They can wait; forever if necessary. The “urgency” and “criticality” in this equation is the desire of some to make lots and lots of money. That is not a good enough reason to proceed with this project in this manner, or maybe at all. Just because someone stands to make money from an idea does not automatically make that idea a good one. We can no longer afford “business as usual.” This way of thinking has brought us to the combined global crises of climate disruption, toxic contamination of air, water, and land, and the cascading loss of biodiversity that has become a human-created mass extinction event. This short-sighted attitude of spending tomorrow for the bottom line today has resulted in the Anthropocene.
We need to think in longer time frames. Our responsibilities are greater than we realize, because the decisions we make today have an impact, for good or for ill, that carries on in perpetuity. We are “deciding” for all who come after us. This calls for a longer view, a wider view, and a recalibration of both our values and our priorities.We need a reality check.
We operate within a world view that tells us that everyone and everything has its price, and that puts a price on everything. We plan and act as if all costs are strictly monetary, or mere “externalities” that can be disregarded, written off, and forgotten. We might forget, but the Earth does not. We might think we’re throwing refuse away, or that we can leave our problems for the future to solve. But our world is not infinite. It has limits. We must learn to live within them. There is no “away,” and “the future” is now. The entire world is our back yard. We all live downwind or downstream of somewhere, places where others like us, caught in the same blinkered view, are throwing things “away”, and bequeathing their troubles to generations yet to come, committing them to shoulder a burden they never asked for, and do not deserve. This cannot last.
Some things are beyond price. Some things are not for sale. And the costs of losing some things are not simply out-of-pocket expenses that can be balanced in the ledger later on. We all need air to breathe, water to drink, land to provide food. And because of the streamlining and deregulation of the “Ring of Fire” area, we are taking away these very things from the people who live there. As one of the speakers from Okiniwak said, “It was never about money.” The true bounty of this land is not under the ground. It is all the life that arises from it, the home and safety it provides. This is what is at risk. This is what they are protecting.
Again and again, these fearful, brave people, both youth and Elders, spoke of the Seventh Generation, and of stewardship. And of love: the love for and of their people, their love of the land, their love of all their relations- the animals, birds and fish that surround and sustain them. And the love of Creator, supporting and guiding them on their journey to ask for our witness, and our help. They described “legacy” as planting seeds you will never live to see bloom, of making decisions and acting on behalf of people whose faces you will never see. They spoke of leaving the world a better place for their children, and their children, in turn, leaving the world a better place for theirs. They cannot do this if we take their way of life from them, if we poison their water, air, and land.
Some might say that by opposing development of the “Ring of Fire,” these people are “standing in the way of progress.” Well, I stand with them. To me, they are the way of progress. We should listen to them and learn from them. They have asked for our help. By doing so, they are helping us. And we do need help. We are being given a chance to stop and see where we are heading, and decide if it is somewhere we want to go. We have choices to make, a path to choose. Looking around, we can see signs that our current way leads to a dead end. Theirs is a Good Path, and it is one we can all follow, together, looking Seven Generations ahead. We need to safeguard the Seventh Generation. They are not here to speak, so we must speak for them. We must choose carefully, wisely, and lovingly, so that our choices will be a blessing, not a curse.
In this province, in this country, we are all Treaty people. A broad, open-minded, and generous interpretation of the Treaties we have signed, the binding commitments our forebears made to the First Nations, is the right thing to do, so that we might truly share this land that we share already. This is the way forward. This can be our legacy. This can be the seed we plant. This is the future we can create together. We need to leave the world a better place than we found it. Better for all, not just for some. Better for the land, the air, the water. Better for the plants, the animals, the fish, the birds, the insects, and all of the other Beings amongst who we live, and upon whom we depend. Premier Ford; I ask you to visit the people and communities of the Attawapiskat River, and the James Bay lowlands. Let them show you what they showed us in their presentation. Not just projected on a screen, but with your own eyes. Listen to them. See their home through their eyes. Let them open your heart as they have opened mine.
With respect,
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The BBC have removed 11 “offensive” comedy sketches from the duo Mitchell & Webb from the IPlayer.
J. K. Rowling isn’t happy:
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/2102343211557806153
It seems one of the removed sketches featured David Mitchell wearing a burka, and another was about a “tribe” of white people living in a garden centre who dressed like Indigenous South Americans.
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Just came across this critique of a study purporting to show that the brains of trans-identified men shift towards their gender identity. I’m a few stats classes shy of what’s needed to understand all the details in the critique, but the gist makes sense. Here’s their abstract:
Kurth et al. (2022) concluded that the brain anatomy of transgender women is shifted away from their biological sex and toward their gender identity. We evaluate whether the study’s evidence supports this conclusion by focusing on its statistical methods and treatment of sexual orientation in its analyses. The principal finding relies on a very small sample, a weak justification for parametric analyses, one-tailed post hoc tests, no correction for multiple comparisons, and limited robustness testing. The study also did not properly account for sexual orientation as a potential neuroanatomical confound despite having the relevant participant data to do so. These methodological choices consistently bias the results toward smaller p-values and stronger apparent support for the authors’ stated hypothesis. The evidence presented therefore does not justify the study’s headline conclusion.
There’s also this:
Hoping to evaluate these issues more thoroughly, each of us independently requested the anonymized participant-level data from the corresponding author. The paper states that “Readers seeking access to the transgender data should contact the corresponding author.” Despite multiple independent requests spanning several months, none of us received a response. As a result, some aspects of our review are necessarily limited to the summary statistics and figures reported in the publication.
Yeah, that’s not how you do science.
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The ego must be fed. Trump wants his name on other things, and one suggestion is Ford’s Theater.
It seems almost appropriate to put his name on the place where Lincoln was killed. Lincoln was a RINO anyway.
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And one more thing: Who needs safety anyway?
President Trump didn’t want to adhere to building safety codes for his White House ballroom and fought with its original architect until he quit.
The architect quit, that is. Not, alas, Donnie.
The Washington Post reports, citing anonymous sources, that James McCrery II withdrew from the project in October after warning repeatedly that the ballroom Trump wanted didn’t have adequate emergency exit routes or fire containment measures. The president reportedly didn’t care about McCrery’s concerns, saying that building codes did not apply to anything built at the White House.
“I am the code,” Trump said.
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Censorship Horror!
A theatre in Barcelona has been banned from promoting a stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own on Instagram and Facebook because the work includes “social topics”.
When the newly reopened Teatre Raval, which seats 193 spectators, asked Meta, the parent company of the two social media sites, why its publicity had been blocked, it was told “any mention of civil rights, feminism or social reform [topics that are central to Woolf’s work] are usually classified as ‘social topics’ by our automatic system” and are filtered out.
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What a Maroon, you can have a look at the Kurth study here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8955456/
What’s particularly telling is the ‘violin’ graph plotting the three sets of results (24 each men, trans-identifying men, and women). It is clear as day that there is very little difference between the results of the men and the TIMs and almost no overlap between those two groups and the women.
The critique you quoted was being too kind.
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AoS,
My impression is that they were holding a lot back for professional reasons (I know I’ve been in a position where I’ve wanted to write “XXX (19xx) is full of shit!”, but that wouldn’t pass peer review).
What really shocked me, though, is that the original authors wouldn’t even respond when asked for the data. Professional courtesy would demand at least a pro forma denial.
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It would also be interesting to note what differences they mean. A lot of the purported differences between male and female brains disappear when you examine the data, and when you correct for things like size, socioeconomic status, and so forth.
There are differences in the brain related to reproduction, of course. Our brains must fit our bodies for producing the proper gametes, and for having the proper structures to perform the role of our sex. If that’s the case, taking cross-sex hormones could actually remove some of the differences between men and women, but obviously not all of them, maybe not even many.
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This is very nasty.
A group of UK far-right activists, “Patriot Platform”, have begun harassing Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) members on the English coast. The RNLI is a charity run mainly by volunteers.
Because a very small number of RNLI missions have involved rescuing migrants in “small boats” in the English Channel, these xenophobes have begun harassing RNLI members. The Portsmouth RNLI office has had to close:
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We discussed the now-infamous Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago and its discussion of subjects like “managing fatness” on B&W.
Now there’s an interesting article criticizing that same conference, published by the left-wing “Damage” magazine, “Victims of Socialism:
Woke 1 lives on at Socialism 2026” :
I especially liked this bit:
[Sophie] Lewis spoke on two exhausting panels at Socialism. One of these, “Femme-inism Against Cisness: Bread, Roses, and Hormones, Too,” considered such matters as—yes—whorish artifice, transfeminist abolitionism, and the cis-sexist motherhood regime, and told attendees that “the dyad known as ‘men and women’ is a product of culture.”
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@Maroon,
The thing about these endless attempts by activsts to link trans identities to cross-sex brain patterns is that they’re completely beside the point, right outside the gate.
We can set aside the entire topic of brain differences between males and females — just ignore the brain altogether, or at least the parts of it that drive our “gendered” behaviours — because human sexes exists across our entire bodies, not just our minds. We can see who’s got a male body and who’s got a female one and it matters. Case closed.
It is technically a part of the brain which processes sensory inputs and deciphers the sex of the people we encounter, so strictly speaking, we still need to acknowledge some role of the brain in the limited case of our ability to process the data that’s fed to us by our senses, and which enables us to tell males and females apart.
But I don’t care if a female’s brain has a more typically masculine structure in certain parts that drive her behaviour — she’s still female and she’s still not welcome in my dating pool. End of story.
We don’t even need to get into the weeds on the topic of sex-related brain differences at all. We’ve no need to argue for or against the existence of sex-related brain differences, or to argue for or against the existence of outliers in each sex. It’s quite clear that males and females have on-average quite different behavioural profiles in a number of areas — same as any other mammalian species — and that we can’t chalk all of these up to nurture over nature. It is, to some degree, inborn. We know that gays and lesbians are hard-wired in utero with brain architecture that in certain regions is more typically associated with the opposite sex, and that this cross-sex wiring inclines us towards “gender atypical” behaviours beginning in infancy.
But that doesn’t mean that gays and lesbians, or gender outliers in general, are supposed to be the opposite sex. That’s the implication I hear when people talk of innate brain differences between “trans people” and “cis people”: that behavioural interests ought to determine what sex people’s bodies are categorized as. The very notion injects into the discourse by stealth the ugly idea that gay people’s bodies are innately wrong and better off surgically corrected.
Everything we do is reflected in our brain; our interests, emotions, beliefs, biases: they’re all up there in the web of neurons and grey matter, the folds and pathways that make us who we are. When we obsess over plotting a “sex” onto these structures, it’s just a proxy for assigning sex to behaviours and interests. We’re just reinforcing stereotypes with the help of an MRI.
All this focus on brain differences really just makes it harder for men and women who break sex stereotypes to live our lives without being medically pathologized.
I hate it.
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In more “trans doesn’t pay” news, a young Hollywood actress who goes by the name Jack Haven — formerly Brigette Lundy-Payne — has taken to social media to beg for work, since the roles dried up after she changed her name and pronouns and announced a transgender identity.
The only roles she’s known for post-transition are a pair of low-to-mid-budget horror films about trans youth — I Saw the TV Glow, written and directed by an insufferable enby who describes it as an allegory about the transgender experience; and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, an explicitly transgender parody of ’80s sleepaway camp slashers (starring Gillian Anderson, a blemish on her career if you ask me) which is also written and directed by an insufferable enby who describes the film as an allegory about transition. Oh, and there’s also a bit part in an indie film in the Castration Anthology series, written an directed by an unhinged autogynephile punk rocker who calls himself Louise Weard, with a plot that revolves around furry porn, prostitution, lesbian sex, masturbation, and 4Chan incels. (You can’t make this stuff up.)
Well, I hate to break it to you, Jack, but your little subculture of narcissistic gender obsessos is rather small, and it’s only getting smaller now that people are coming to understand the full extent of the damage your cult has done to its members and to the rest of liberal society. Maybe growing a ladybeard and bleating endlessly about your gender identity (it’s the sum total of your online profile) wasn’t such a good career move?
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MSNOW calls it a “authoritarian shift in modern American life” but I call it blatant unconstitutionality. Break your First Amendment right to free speech or suffer legal action. Astounding.
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Our friend Ellen /Elliot Page has gotten a photoshoot in “New York Magazine’s” Men’s Style Issue:
https://x.com/FilmUpdates/status/2104555574884999407
As a man, I can only feel enormous pity for Page and her doomed attempts to embody a 1950s ideal of masculinity.
Now I know how women feel when the fashion magazines depict Caitlyn Jenner, Munroe Bergdorf or Shon Faye as “the epitome of femininity”.
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Seriously. I’ve spent several minutes, on and off, staring at those photos and wondering what the hell she is thinking.
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What should we say? “Nice tits?”
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More letters to politicians. This time, it’s regarding federal legislation. Bill C-39 has now been tabled in the Canadian House of Commons. In it, the government proposes establishing “National Economic Zones” where regulations and standards are relaxed in order to fast-track “development” of projects (mines, energy cotrridors, etc.). This is extending the ideas behind Ontario’s “Special Economic Zones” over all of Canada. So I have written to Prime Minister Carney (online contact page character limit of 2,000 characters, pretty much used to the max) and my local MP, who is, like Carney, a Liberal. Again, as with my letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, I have tried to keep a civil tongue.
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Mr. Fragiskatos;
I have written the letter below to the Prime Minister. I wanted to include you so that you can understand my concerns regarding this legislation and raise them with your colleagues. Decisions like this have consequences that reverberate through time long after we are gone. Not just for humans, but for all the other beings with whom we share this Earth. Such decisions must be made with that in mind, and not just for the particular, short-term gain of a few.
Every project in these “National Economic Zones” will have wanted and unwanted effects. The “good” things are what are advertised: jobs, minerals, economic independence, profits. The “bad” things tend to be downplayed, disregarded or ignored: habitat destruction and deforestation of the particular place, toxic pollution of air, land, and water of the site itself, as well as the surrounding areas. Seldom are we given the chance to weigh and judge a project in its entirety, since the “side effects” are so often hidden, discounted, or written off. Too often the benefits are privatized while the costs are socialized. Shareholders get their return on investment, while all of us, including the plants and animals, live with the legacy of destruction, waste, and poison. We can no longer afford to do this. The toxic waste and environmental degradation are as much a “product” of a mine as the ore being extracted. Sweeping the unwanted side-effects under the rug does not make them go away. The rug is very small, and it is in our living room. Sometimes the price is too high. Sometimes the answer should be “No.”
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Prime Minister Carney;
I am writing to you regarding Bill C-39. The reduction of standards and regulations for “National Economic Zones”, particularly environmental safeguards, is a tell that projects proposed for these zones would not meet current standards. This is a bad idea, and a dangerous step backwards. Relaxing standards on projects entails a reduction of standards for their operation and eventual decommission. These zones will result in pressure from industry to expand their reduced standards to any and all “development” nationwide.
We don’t need less regulation but more. We have already seen the effects of destructive, extractive industrial projects, particularly on those who live in their paths, or nearby. The price for such projects seems to fall disproportionately on First Nations Peoples. Why should they be forced to give up their way of life to support ours? We should know better, and should act on that knowledge rather than in spite of it. Now we know that “nearby” encompasses the entire world, and that endless economic growth on a finite planet is a road that leads to extinction.
We need to turn away from the assumption that the Earth is a passive, inert storehouse of treasure, and a limitless repository for our waste. Earth is not our piñata. It is our home. It is a living legacy which we must protect to live in ourselves, and to pass on to our children’s children’s children and beyond. Bill C-39 goes against this duty of care for the present and the future.
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Good grief – let’s have environmental rules where they’re not really needed and Speshul Zones where they really are needed, so that we can keep being as reckless and destructive as ever while pretending we’re not.
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Important piece from Sex Matters on the UK government’s Conversion Patrice Bill.
“The draft Conversion Practices Bill would silence therapists, harm children and divide families – Sex Matters”
https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/criminalising-conversations/
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So my wife tells me that everyone working in the Executive Branch has been ordered to refer to AI as “Super Intelligence”.
It’s like we’re in a cheesy sci-fi movie where some idiot’s brain farts manifest themselves and alter reality.
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That’s because we’re in a real-life situation where one idiot’s brain farts manifest themselves and alter reality.
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So this isn’t just a nightmare? It’s reality?
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How I wish I could say otherwise.
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It is a nightmare.
It is also reality.
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Okay, so we could all use some comic relief:
The 2026 Comedy Wildlife competition.
Click on each picture to embiggen. Click again to return.
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Creeps are creeps, Man convicted of touching woman’s hair on D.C. Metro faces similar case in Arlington.
But he’s not living his dream, hard as he tries.
Betancur was previously sentenced to four months for his role in the Capitol riot before benefiting from a blanket pardon issued by President Donald Trump.
According to a federal affidavit, he “is a self-professed white supremacist who has made statements to law enforcement officers that he is a member of several white supremacy organizations” and “made increased verbalizations about his desire to be a ‘lone wolf killer’” while he “continued to engage racially motivated violent extremist groups on the internet.”
All the finest people.
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Ivey sets Alabama Girls in Sports Day—and targets trans athletes
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a proclamation Monday establishing October 10, 2026, as “Alabama Girls in Sports Day.”
The proclamation begins by touting the positive impact athletic participation can have on young girls and celebrating female athletes’ achievements throughout sports history. However, it then fuels the growing antagonism toward transgender women’s participation in sports—an issue that has become a popular talking point among Republican politicians in recent years.
“Alabama recognizes that there are fundamental biological differences between males and females that create meaningful competitive and safety considerations in athletic competition, particularly in women’s and girls’ sports, and we will continue standing up for women’s opportunity to compete fairly, safely and on a level playing field,” the proclamation reads.
The document also specifies that October 10 was chosen because of its relationship to the Roman numerals “XX,” which reflect the “two X chromosomes that are characteristic of the female sex.”
In a separate statement, Ivey declared that “if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if He made you a girl, you are a girl.”
“We will continue standing up for the opportunity for girls to compete fairly and safely,” Ivey added.
I think the measure is reasonably worded. The choice of October 10 is perhaps over the top “cute”. Ivey has instigated or supported a number of reasonable measures. However, in general, she and the Alabama legislature have a terrible track record, and many measures, even reasonable ones, are clearly designed to “own the liberals” for political purposes in this deeply conservative state.
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Sackbut, I could definitely do without the ‘god made you’ rhetoric, but otherwise, it seems sensible. (FWIW, my father made me a ‘girl’ by contributing an X gene to my mother’s X gene, thereby setting in motion a sequence of events that led to the birth of a baby girl…now a petulant woman.)
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The proclamation begins by touting the positive impact athletic participation can have on young girls and celebrating female athletes’ achievements throughout sports history. However, it then fuels the growing antagonism toward transgender women’s participation in sports—an issue that has become a popular talking point among Republican politicians in recent years.
See, that’s the thing. Without Title IX, there’d be little if any women’s sports in the US. Title IX ensured funding for women’s sports at the high school and college level, and gave women a chance to compete at a high level on a fair playing ground*. Allowing boys and men to compete in women’s sports risks destroying that.
iknklast:
Sackbut, I could definitely do without the ‘god made you’ rhetoric….
And there’s the rub. It’s so maddening to see so-called progressives giving such an opportunity for religious conservatives to sound so commonsensical on an issue that everyone can relate to. As you say, it’s our fathers who made us the sex we are. No gods needed.
*It’s a big reason that US women have had so much success internationally in sports like soccer, basketball, and track.
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The Eiffel Tower chief Patrick Branco Ruivo, who was in charge during the “women removed to facilitate extremist Hindu group” scandal, has resigned :
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/world/europe/eiffel-tower-director-resigns.html
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In passing… My pen-pal was telling me about a prisoner art show in the facility where he resides — one entry was an impressive likeness of Donald Duck rendered in crochet. That got me curious about Donald Duck, so I consulted his extensive Wikipedia entry. He is described as
Donald Duck is portrayed as an impatient, immature, and arrogant duck with a pessimistic attitude and an insecure disposition. In addition, his two dominant personality traits are his fiery temper and his cynical attitude to life. Donald typically starts off every cartoon in a jolly mood until certain events happen to anger him, in part due to his antagonistic behavior, jealousy or general incompetence. His rage proves to be disadvantageous when he goes too far, though he is capable of temporarily controlling his temper, if not enough to handle his conflicts. However, he is capable of courage and perseverance, able to defeat threats of any kind and complete difficult tasks when combined with his outbursts.
Doesn’t that sound a lot like another Donald you’ve heard of? Somebody should use AI to render The Greatest President Ever’s utterances in the Donald Duck voice.
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The New York Times continues to insult women. You may remember the mass murder in British Columbia committed by a TIM a few months back. Turns out he apparently had help from a fellow TIM that he met online, who sent him money, encourage him to carry out the attack, and even tried unsuccessfully to live stream it (take note, Hegseth). The two met at a site called Omegle, which was “shut down in 2023 amid criticism that it was a haven for sexual abuse”.
Of course the Times uses she/her throughout the article to refer to both, and waits until the fourth paragraph to mention that “the suspect, who was born male and was referred to by authorities with male pronouns, identifies as female, similar to the shooter.” (How utterly transphobic of those evil authorities, n’est-ce pas?)
What makes it even more galling is the Times following its quaint custom of using title with last names and referring throughout the article to “Ms. Van Rootselaar”.
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Argh!!
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On a lighter note, years ago I saw the NY Times call Iggy Pop “Mr. Pop”.
That still amuses me, especially in light of the amazing energy in this video that Henry Rollins made about trying to top Iggy:
(NSFW, about 20 minutes long)
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More damage from Trump
I don’t *think* this can be blamed on Trump.
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Nothing fascist about this at all. Federal agents raid Rep. Omar’s home. They’re not saying why, but…
The president has spread the claim, often from right-wing circles, that Omar married her brother as part of an immigration scheme.
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Independent fact-checkers have found no documentation that Omar married her brother, and no federal law enforcement agency has produced evidence.
Typical of the radical woke left, doing fact checks and demanding “evidence”.
Postscript: The Washington Sun is an online newspaper created to fill the hole left by Bezos’s destruction of the Post. It’s funded by Robert Allbritton, the founding publisher of Politico. Worth a look.
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Argh!
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That’s the second “Argh” I’ve elicited from you in just a few days. I feel like I owe you some good news for a change.
Ukrainian strikes on Russian technology giant Yandex’s data centres have been followed by a dramatic decline in automated online activity, raising questions about whether the attacks may also have disrupted Moscow’s influence operations abroad.
The sudden drop fuelled speculation in Europe and the United States about just how much of the political debate on social media might have been driven by Russian bots.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy weighed in on Monday, saying social media platforms had become noticeably less hostile.
“When we started responding to Russia’s operation against our data centres and when our strikes reached Yandex data centres, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms,” Zelenskyy said addressing the Warsaw Security Forum.
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This makes me wonder if transgenderism might have been Putin’s idea.
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I wonder if trump will now add data centres to refineries as things that are off limits to Ukrainian attacks. (I assume he’s still OK with schools and hospitals as legitimate military targets).
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And The World Weeps (youtube) with Anat Cohen and Paquito D’Rivera.
As the world does indeed weep (at least the part of it that is not intent on killing and destroying the rest of it), we could all need a little emotional boost now and then. This one works for me.
I may have posted the link here before. The recording is from 2012.
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Last weekend my wife and I were sitting outside at our favourite local cafe. A woman sat down at the next table. On her jacket were a number of embroidered patches. One was “NO MEANS NO.” Another said “PROTECT TRANS LIVES.” Oblivious, unironic, culture civil-war in a single jacket.
Trans lives are no way in danger, but wearing this patch is supposed to make us believe they are. They’re not an endangered species, but slogans like this are just a part of the “NO DEBATE!” gambit, which is designed to protect the ideology as much as, if not more than, trans people themselves. We have more than enough instances where questions and criticism of genderism are taken as “denying trans people’s right to exist”. This patch is basically more of the same, thought-terminating transperbole. (Pointing out the relative safety of the trans demographic would make me a transphobic bigot plotting trans genocide, exactly the sort of person against whom this this baby blue, pink, and white patch is supposed to act as a shield and talisman.)
I’d spotted the “NO MEANS NO” patch first, but somehow suspected the other one (or something like it) would be there too. Trans “rights” (at least those espoused by and for TiMs) depend almost entirely upon the violation of women’s boundaries, the deliberate flouting of “No means no.” I thought she was lucky that her jacket didn’t spontaneously combust from the cognitive dissonance to which it had been subjected.
As a coda, just before we left, while my wife was using the bathroom, the first woman was joined at her table by a second. Soon after, a TiM who was a mutual friend of the two women showed up, and Ms. Jacket (after shrieking in delighted shock at Mr. Tim’s dyed blonde hair) asked me if “she” could have the empty seat my wife was no longer using. I said sure, as we were leaving soon. Mr. Tim was taller than I am, had an unremarkable, though distinctly male voice, and sported five o’clock shadow. He wore leggings that left no doubt as to the nature of his “material reality.” I wondered if this guy was part of the impetus behind the “PROTECT TRANS LIVES” badge. I wondered if he had ever broken the spirit of the other badge by entering women’s spaces under the cover of the central lie of transactivism, that men can be women? I wondered, if push came to shove, whose side Ms. Jacket would take if a woman were to object to her male friend’s use of a woman’s restroom or changing space? Sadly, I think I already know the answer. I suspect she would protect her friend’s “trans life” by letting him violate a woman’s “No.”
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Well, that didn’t last long. Zacharia couldn’t even make it through a full Scaramucci (and I just noticed the URL–someone at the Washington Sun has a sneaky sense of humor).
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This is a sweet story about a girl who is the placekicker for the high school football team in Wisconsin where I used to live. Being athletic isn’t just a guy thing!
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The province of Alberta is staying on “permanent Daylight Saving Time” and calling it “Alberta Time”.
I have no words…
actually I have plenty of words but those words usually come out as a loud howl of rage
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