Originally a comment by Francis Boyle on The situation evolved rapidly.

Terrible as this is it’s almost the best case scenario. The worst case scenario would be that the planet warms more or less uniformly with the tropics slowly becoming uninhabitable while the industrialised world looks on with much hand-wringing but precious little useful action. This way everyone is on notice that it’s their life or at least their property that is on the line.

Now, I’m not pretending that anyone is voluntarily going to give up their lives of consumption-for-the-sake-of-consumption. The sense of entitlement is too deeply engrained in the wealthy and the wannabee wealthy. But we have an opportunity to make the worst of the destructive behaviours … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on More threats.

It’s an easy, and lazy, argument to make that chess is played with the brain, not the genitals or the muscles therefore saying there is a need for a separate women’s category is demeaning to women. It relies on the trope of men’s brains and ladyeez brains and assumes women’s intellect is inferior to men’s.

Susan Polgar – Hall of Famer, the Winner of 4 Women’s World Chess Championships,12 Olympic Medals (5 Gold, 4 Silver, 3 Bronze), and the first woman in history to break the gender barrier in chess would like to disagree.

“Why is there a need for Girl’s or Women’s tournaments?”

This is probably one of

… Read the rest

It’s never not weird that Giuliani started out as a scourge of mobsters and then turned into one. Maureen Dowd writes:

Giuliani went from cleaning up corruption to ginning up corruption, from crimebuster to criminal defendant in Georgia and unindicted “Co-Conspirator 1” in D.C. Rudy, the prosecutor who made his reputation aggressively pursuing RICO cases, is now Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, a defendant in the Georgia RICO case about the deranged plot to steal the election.

We have seen many cases of mobsters turning state’s evidence for prosecutors. But now we have the rare experience of seeing a prosecutor turn into a mobster.

After all those years spent prosecuting the Five Families in New York, Giuliani surrendered himself to

… Read the rest

The passive-aggressive self-flattery is off the charts.

https://twitter.com/robinince/status/1692850557088678288

We get it – you want everyone to think you’re very very very very kind, you’re all about kindness, you put kindness first on all occasions, you’re a kind kind kind man. We get it; we get that you think that. We get that you think you’re massively kind and we’re cruel bitches. We get it.

But you’re not. You’re not, for instance, “kind” to women. Being “kind” to men who claim to be women entails being very unkind to women, and that’s what you’re doing.

We get that you think the default for kind people is to heap flattery on men who call themselves women while ignoring all the … Read the rest

Life on a cooking planet:

About 15,000 households have been ordered to evacuate in Canada’s British Columbia, as firefighters battle raging wildfires that have set homes ablaze. Officials said a “significant” number of buildings caught fire in West Kelowna, a city of 36,000 people, and more than 2,400 homes were evacuated. A state of emergency has been declared for the entire province, where hundreds of separate fires are burning.

Meanwhile there are only about a thousand people left in Yellowknife.

In British Columbia, evacuation orders grew from covering 4,000 homes on Friday afternoon to about 15,000 in the space of an hour. Another 20,000 homes are under alert. Premier of the province, David Eby, said that evening that the

… Read the rest

Blah blah blah women must not be allowed to have anything for themselves blah blah trans blah blah blah.

The International Chess Federation (FIDE) says it is temporarily banning transgender women from competing in its women’s events. The FIDE said individual cases would require “further analysis” and that a decision could take up to two years. The move has been criticised by some players and enthusiasts.

…

Yosha Iglesias, a trans woman professional chess player with the FIDE rank of chess master, said the policy would lead to “unnecessary harm” for trans players and women. “This appalling situation will lead to depression and suicide attempts,” Iglesias said.

See? That’s all he’s got. Men must be allowed to take what belongs … Read the rest

Another shipment of pestilent bullshit:

Please read Almut Gadow's crowdfunder statement. It is jaw-dropping.

She is bringing a case against the Open University for unfair dismissal. She was dismissed for questioning gender ideology.

The details are horrifying.https://t.co/OAcJHVc7LZ pic.twitter.com/e1FEzspw1f

— Professor Alice Sullivan (@ProfAliceS) August 18, 2023

I am reading it and it is indeed horrifying. The case:

My name is Almut Gadow. For almost 10 years, I taught law at the Open University. I was dismissed for questioning new requirements to indoctrinate students in gender identity theory, in ways which, I felt, distorted equality law and normalised child sexual exploitation.

I am bringing an employment tribunal claim arguing that I was harassed, discriminated against, and unfairly dismissed because

… Read the rest

The BBC’s AntiSocial on “queering” museums.

The debate sparked by reviewing historic collections through a queer or LGBT lens. A “queering the collection” blogpost from the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth was criticised for making what some saw as tenuous links between historic objects from the ship and the experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. Supporters of “queering” museums and galleries say it’s needed to redress a traditional approach to history that has often ignored non-heterosexual people or stories. But it’s led to controversy and criticism that some institutions have gone too far by focusing on the LGBT angle at the expense of others or imposing a modern interpretation that wouldn’t have made sense at the

… Read the rest

Interesting.

Do you ever see signs like this on the mens washroom? pic.twitter.com/gVutx6uRYC

— Buck Angel® Transsexual (@BuckAngel) August 18, 2023

The * in trans* leads to a clarification at the bottom of the poster: “In this case, trans refers to people who identify as transgender, transsexual, two-spirit, non-binary, genderqueer, or gender diverse.” In other words, anything and everything. Any guy who feels like going right on into the women’s washroom [rest room, toilet, bathroom, WC, etc] is welcome to; all he has to do is say he’s gender diverse. Who’s going to challenge him on that? Who even knows what the fuck it’s supposed to mean? So come on in, bros, fill the place up, make it so bro-friendly … Read the rest