Arwa Mahdawi on the malign influence of Peter Thiel:

He, along with a group of other venture capitalists, is currently deploying part of his vast fortune to help bankroll a pro-drugs version of the Olympics called the Enhanced Games. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a sporting competition in which participants are encouraged to take as many performance-enhancing substances as they can get their steroid-enlarged hands on. All in the name of science and innovation, naturally.

Much science! Peak innovaty! Artificial enhancements are good at artificial enhancement. Who knew?!

Honestly? It sounds amazing. I would 100% watch. It’s a real shame Thiel, who currently runs spy tech firm Palantir, doesn’t spend all his resources on reality TV

A feel-good story from Paris:

A French policeman who called a female sexual assault complainant a “whore” has been let off by a police court.

The incident happened in February 2022 when the woman filed her complaint at a Paris police station. The officer later rang her and left a voicemail message about paperwork but his insults were accidentally recorded after he thought he had hung up…

During the hearing, the court was to asked consider that the officer made the insults to himself or to his colleagues, and that they were not aimed directly at the woman…A female judge ruled that the comments had not amounted to a sexist insult and acquitted the officer.

Well, sure, it’s not … Read the rest

Just a straight-up lie. Many people have lined up to point out that there are no such front pages. No newspapers are glorifying the children who killed Brianna Ghey. (It would be extremely odd if there were. What would that even look like?)

The NY Times has plucked up the courage to run a piece on detransitioners.

Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy.

Well, no, she didn’t discover “she could be a boy.” She discovered she could claim to be a boy, identify as a boy, pretend to be a boy. Let’s be careful about how we word things, ok?

Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out of therapy.

“I felt so detached from my body, and the way it

Oh hey, the queer rivers book is published by my neighbors at the University of Washington.

A snip at $30 for the paperback.

Rivers host vibrant multispecies communities in their waters and along their banks, and, according to queer-trans-feminist river scientist Cleo Wölfle Hazard, their future vitality requires centering the values of justice, sovereignty, and dynamism. At the intersection of river sciences, queer and trans theory, and environmental justice, Underflows explores river cultures and politics at five sites of water conflict and restoration in California, Oregon, and Washington.

What intersection is that exactly? In what way do river sciences and trans theory intersect? For that matter what is “trans theory”?

The politics of rivers in the west is in … Read the rest

Heads up! It’s time – long past time, actually – to learn about queer river justice.

Sure sure sure, you can totally see it. Rivers are queer as fuck. They’re long, they can wind, they flow, they’re deep (except when they’re not), they have indigenous names, they’re special, they have souls – the list is endless.

Rivers matter for queer trans lives. Rivers have long been places of encounter for those outside of straight settler propriety; they are brown in the way that José Esteban Muñoz describes, “the way in which they suffer and strive together, but also the commonality of their ability to flourish under duress and pressure…they smoulder with life and persistence.”

That’s so beautiful, and so … Read the rest

Filia reports:

On 29th January I attended an event organised by the local council and billed as one of a series, with the aim of ‘hearing your ideas’ to ‘create the positive change you would like to see’ in Brighton & Hove.

This particular evening, the focus was supposedly on making the city safer for Women and Girls, which is why I was there. I’m the co-founder and CEO of a Feminist charity called FiLiA. Many of our team members are survivors of male violence, and we work to amplify the voices of Women, particularly those less often heard or purposefully silenced. What I witnessed during the course of the two-hour workshop left me shocked; silencing, intimidation

How dare she.

Many Muslim women choose to wear the hijab, reflecting their personal religious beliefs.

Hijab-wearing women often face discrimination and heightened Islamophobia for their visible Muslim identity.

On #WorldHijabDay show them your support! pic.twitter.com/pD8Gsly9Dh

— Naz Shah (@NazShahBfd) February 1, 2024

Women and girls are whipped, beaten up, imprisoned, killed for not wearing that loathsome snuffer. What is the purpose of it? To keep men from getting erections because a woman has hair on her head. How about forcing men to wear iron underpants instead of forcing women to wrap blankets around their heads?… Read the rest

And so we arrive at full circle: contempt for and mockery of lesbians by The Most Oppressed of Them All.

'Lesbians are dying out' portrays lesbianism as a fear of penises, rather than a sexual orientation. pic.twitter.com/E63uZhQU2W

— Scottish Lesbians (@ScotLesbians) February 1, 2024

I’m gobsmacked by that, I must say. The new contempt for lesbians just like the old contempt for lesbians. Don’t worry: just be sure to mock and dismiss women and you’ll always be on the right track.… Read the rest

That Tweet is providing cover.

The fact that this tweet has already amassed thousands of quote-retweets — far more than replies, even, & virtually all of them are positive — shows how many people want to speak up, but feel they can only do so when they've got an authority like @richarddawkins backing them. https://t.co/C5NkUu5Dfl

— Arty Morty (@artymortyarty) February 1, 2024

Dawkins is now a human shield!… Read the rest

Bloomberg on the cruise ship question:

When Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas embarks on its first official voyage on Jan. 27, the journey is sure to make waves. The world’s largest cruise ship, the Icon is over 1,000 feet long (360 meters) and weighs in around 250,000 gross registered tons. It boasts 20 different decks; 40 restaurants, bars and lounges; seven pools; six waterslides and a 55-foot waterfall. Royal Caribbean says its boat will usher in “a new era of vacations.”

Maybe so. But the Icon is also a doubling down on a negative aspect of cruising’s current era: greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2022, Bryan Comer, director of the Marine Program at the International Council on Clean

Joan Smith on Keir Starmer’s buddy relationship with the People of Gender:

[G]ender-critical women’s organisations and even some of his own MPs struggle to get a meeting with Sir Keir Starmer. 

Not so trans activists, for whom Starmer apparently has all the time in the world. This week he welcomed members of the lobby group LGBT+ Labour to a reception at Westminster and offered them everything the most dedicated trans activist could want, short of self-ID. Starmer was accompanied by a raft of frontbenchers including his deputy, Angela Rayner, and the Shadow Women and Equalities Minister, Anneliese Dodds.

“Together we’ll ban conversion therapy, strengthen hate crime laws and tackle health inequalities,” Dodds posted excitedly on X.

But the “conversion therapy” … Read the rest

Trump loses another fight. Loser.

Donald Trump’s attempt to bring a case in the UK against a former MI6 officer who compiled a salacious dossier linking him to Russia has failed. The former president had been seeking to use data protection laws to sue the company run by Christopher Steele but the High Court has thrown out the case.

Mr Steele compiled the dossier which contained unproven allegations about bribing officials and sex parties. It was leaked to the media just before Mr Trump was sworn in as president.

It was BuzzFeed that leaked it, not Steele.

Trump filed the case too late. He says that’s because he was too busy being president. Too busy tweeting is more like … Read the rest

Dawkins is prodding the gender ideologues.

The way the non-binary faithful obsess about intersexes, and about individuals who can’t produce gametes, amounts to a pathetic clutching at straws while they drown in postmodern effluent. Yes, some fish change from sperm-producing male to egg-producing female (or vice versa). That very statement relies on the gametic definition of male & female. Ditto hermaphroditic worms & snails who can produce both male & female gametes.

In any case, the existence of intersexes is irrelevant to transexualist claims, since trans people don’t claim to be intersexes. Also, as if it matters, humans are not worms, snails, or fish.

The rare tetra-amelia syndrome (babies born without limbs) does not negate the statement that Homo

More on that “trans people have worse mental health” gotcha:

Two of the study’s five authors are not scientists but activists: a ‘pride in practice manager’ at the LGBT Foundation with an anthropology BA, and an organiser for the Proud Trust (purveyor of misleading sex ed materials for schools) with an English BA. (Source: Times comment)

— Outspoken Women (@women_outspoken) February 1, 2024

https://twitter.com/Aja02537920/status/1752999165607518432

In fact there’s a large stream of people saying “Well duh of course they have more mental health issues, like for instance thinking they’re in ‘the wrong body’.”… Read the rest

The Guardian tells us:

Transgender people in England are much more likely to have a long-term mental health condition, the first study of its kind shows, with some facing a risk five times higher than cisgender people.

…

The research, led by the University of Manchester in collaboration with the Proud Trust and LGBT Foundation, was published in the Lancet Public Health journal.

“Trans, non-binary and gender-diverse people across England face widespread discrimination, leading to stressful social interactions and feelings of unacceptance, increasing the risk of poor mental health,” said Dr Luke Munford, a senior lecturer in health economics at Manchester and co-author of the paper.

Or maybe it’s the other way around? Maybe it’s bad mental health … Read the rest

Well capitalism isn’t taking all this climate change stuff lying down. It’s SUING, god damn it.

Business and agricultural groups sued California on Tuesday over the most sweeping climate disclosure mandates in the nation, arguing the policies signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year overstep on the federal government’s authority to regulate emissions nationwide.

While business and agriculture have every right to destroy what’s left of the planet so that they can keep making a profit.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, California Chamber of Commerce, American Farm Bureau Federation and other groups filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. They argue the new rules go too far in part because they apply to

Be sure to keep the causes of climate change a secret so that the causes can continue to cause.

Business and agricultural groups sued California on Tuesday over the most sweeping climate disclosure mandates in the nation, arguing the policies signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year overstep on the federal government’s authority to regulate emissions nationwide.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, California Chamber of Commerce, American Farm Bureau Federation and other groups filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. They argue the new rules go too far in part because they apply to companies headquartered outside of California as long as they do business in the state. The groups also allege the

They knew back in 1954.

The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world’s most foundational climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the so-called “Keeling curve” that has charted the upward march of the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels.

A coalition of oil and car manufacturing interests provided $13,814 (about $158,000 in today’s money) in December 1954 to fund Keeling’s earliest work in measuring CO2 levels across the western US, the documents reveal.

Keeling would go on to establish the continuous measurement of global CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This “Keeling curve” has tracked the steady increase of the atmospheric carbon

News from Australia:

Victorian MP Georgie Purcell has hit out [objected] after an edited a picture of her was shown on a commercial television bulletin last night.

The Animal Justice Party MP says an image used by 9News Melbourne to illustrate a story about her opposition to duck hunting featured enlarged breasts, while her dress was altered to become a cropped top and skirt.

Seems too conservative. Why not put her in a bikini?

Ms Purcell says it’s an example of the “ongoing, insidious” treatment of female MPs in the media. 

9News Melbourne director Hugh Nailon apologised in a statement. “As is common practice, the image was resized to fit our specs,” he said. “During that process, the automation