Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on We left “normal” behind years ago.

We left “normal” behind years ago, and the worst we have ever seen so far may soon be as good as it ever gets.

To quote a Bruce Cockburn song, “the trouble with normal is it always gets worse.”*

I’m no climatologist, but my understanding is that one of the effects of anthropogenic climate change is instability. So things won’t just change or shift, they’ll keep changing and shifting. So long as we keep pumping out more CO2, there is no “normal” to stabilize to. After Titanic struck the iceberg, it did not reach its “new normal” until it hit the floor of … Read the rest

The first thing I wonder is why on earth the CBC published this:

I shouldn’t have to ‘look’ non-binary for my identity to be respected

I’m serious about the wondering. The piece is bad – it’s stupid, trivial, self-absorbed, entitled, badly written, extremely badly reasoned, childish, fatuous, did I mention self-obsessed? There’s literally nothing of value in it. Why would a grownup national broadcaster publish such a thing?

I never know which is worse about the trans craze, the narcissism or the stupidity. I guess I don’t have to make a choice, but it kind of nags at me sometimes.

So anyway, I’ll show you what I mean.

Last year, I attended a conference where everyone wore name tags. I

More news on Storm Hans:

A dam in Norway has partly collapsed as the country battles record high river levels, flooding and landslides after a fatal storm.

…

All main roads between Oslo and Trondheim were closed on Wednesday.

Pål Erik Teigen, chief of staff at Innlandet police district, said his force had been monitoring the Braskereidfoss dam and working with power plant owner, Hafslund Eco. “On the south-west side the water is starting to go through … it’s going slowly. This is the best thing now,” he told the Guardian.

They had been considering staging a controlled explosion but once the water started coming through the side, they decided the best solution was to leave it.

“It’s a

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Storm Hans.

I’m still here even though it’s been a while. About a year ago I commented on how last summer was the driest on record in South-Eastern Norway. To hydropower companies, such as the one I work for, the drought made it a serious challenge to keep our powerplants running. To the end consumers the consequence was economy-breaking energy prices and a real danger of energy rationing during the winter. In the end what saved us (for the time being..) was heavy rainfall in late September/early October and lots of snow in January.

Well, this year is the polar opposite. In (what used to be) a “normal” year, the reservoirs would … Read the rest

Question of the day: is Mhairi Black a Karen?

Speaking with journalist Graham Spiers this week, Black suggested that gender-critical commentators were “bad actors” and “50-year-old Karens”. She also compared the gender-critical school of thought to historic white supremacy and intellectuals “who made these big prolific statements about how race was a key factor”. 

[God only knows what she meant by “prolific” there.]

When challenged by a member of the audience, who asked if someone could be perfectly decent and simply disagree with her on gender ideology, Black replied “If you keep it to yourself, aye.” So her message to those of us concerned about our hard-won sex-based rights might be summed up as: shut up woman. 

It’s not exactly

The NY Times broke the secret memo story and has the details.

The memo had been a missing piece in the public record of how Mr. Trump’s allies developed their strategy to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory. In mid-December, the false Trump electors could go through the motions of voting as if they had the authority to do so. Then, on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally count those slates of votes, rather than the official and certified ones for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Step one, create some fake electoral votes. Step two, put Mike Pence alone in a room so that he can count the fake ones. Success!

While that basic plan itself was already known, the

There’s a secret memo.

An internal Trump campaign memo by Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer allied with Donald Trump, reveals new details about how the former president and his team initiated the plan to interfere with the electoral college process and install fake GOP electors in multiple states after losing the 2020 presidential election.

The 6 December 2020 memo, made public on Tuesday by the New York Times, shows how Chesebro laid out the plan to put forth slates of Republican electors in seven key swing states that Trump had lost.

The document, which federal prosecutors described as a “fraudulent elector memo”, revealed that Chesebro proposed the appointment of fake electors, and detailed a “messaging” strategy to portray them as

In weather/climate news:

A powerful storm has brought destruction to Norway, causing landslides and leaving an entire town stranded, as meteorologists warned of the strongest rainfall in a quarter of a century.

The storm – named Storm Hans – has killed two people, ripped off roofs and caused widespread disruption across northern Europe in a summer that started with wildfires across much of the region.

…

Strong winds and rain continued across the region, also causing disruption, cancelling ferries, delaying flights, uprooting trees, flooding streets and also causing outages across Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden.

…

The Swedish meteorological and hydrological institute issued a red warning for Halland and parts of Småland for Tuesday and Wednesday. The

Joan Smith has thoughts on the unabashed misogyny of Mhairi Black.

Does the SNP approve of abusing women? Opponents of the party’s extreme views on transgender rights have long highlighted the poor quality of debate in Scotland, but remarks by a leading SNP politician provide dramatic evidence of a hostile climate towards outspoken women. Mhairi Black, Deputy Leader of the party at Westminster, has dismissed women who disagree with her views on transgender rights as “50-year-old Karens”. 

Maybe she thinks women should be terminated at age 40, or perhaps 35. She’s 28…I wonder if it’s ever crossed her mind that she will eventually be 50.

Some observers might think it is a bit rich for a party represented by

Always worse than predicted.

It is “virtually certain” that future extreme events in Antarctica will be worse than the extraordinary changes already observed, according to a new scientific warning that stresses the case for immediate and drastic action to limit global heating.

A new review draws together evidence on the vulnerability of Antarctic systems, highlighting recent extremes such as record low sea ice levels, the collapse of ice shelves, and surface temperatures up to 38.5C above average over East Antarctica in 2022 – the world’s largest ever recorded heatwave.

…

The rate of ice sheet loss from Antarctica “matches the IPCC worst case” for predicted ice loss under high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, Hogg said. “The observations show

If you don’t think men can be women you’re like WHITE SUPREMACISTS. Don’t try to deny it.

Gender-critical campaigners are comparable to white supremacists, the SNP’s deputy Westminster leader has claimed.

Mhairi Black said that “bad actors” and “50-year-old Karens” were responsible for the debate over transgender rights and suggested those who vocally disagreed with her views on such issues could not be “decent” people.

Ah yes those pesky women who are rude and evil and white supremacist enough to stop being 30, they should all be locked up. How dare a woman be 50?! You’ll never see Mhairi Black being 50, because she’s far too enlightened and perfect for that sort of thing.

Progressives today, honestly – going … Read the rest

Well now that’s just silly. Why would God build a cathedral upside-down and buried in the ground?

No national treasure is grander than the Grand Canyon.

The first time I saw it, the phrase came to mind: "God’s Cathedral."

And today, I’m proud to use my authority to protect nearly a million acres of public lands around Grand Canyon National Park as a new National Monument. pic.twitter.com/B7uN5QUDs2

— President Biden (@POTUS) August 8, 2023

(Not knocking the protecting public and indigenous lands part. Just saying a big hole in the ground doesn’t have to be “God”‘s doing. Shout out to the Colorado River here; peace be upon it, or what’s left of it.)… Read the rest

Originally a comment by What a Maroon on Intern runs amok.

This does sound like fun! Let’s dog the Mary Rose collection.

Dogging the Mary Rose collection:

Octagonal mirror: an octagon has eight sides, twice the number of paws of a dog. As social beings, dogs like to be around at least another dog, so the number 8 has special significance. (And did you know that if you turn the 8 sideways, you get the symbol for infinity?! How cool is that! We love our dogs to infinity!) As for the mirror itself, dogs don’t recognize their own reflection, so they may see the dog in the mirror as a rival, perhaps causing anxiety. On the other hand, they … Read the rest

Oh look, hours of fun for the whole family: Queering the Mary Rose’s Collection.

How can we understand The Mary Rose’s collection of personal objects through a Queer lens?

This blog does not attempt to identify the sexuality or gender identity of crew members, which would be an impossible task. Instead, we will use ‘Queerness as an interpretative tool’ to represent LGBTQ+ stories.

Who’s “we”?

Turns out it’s Hannah.

Queering The Mary Rose’s Collection by Hannah (Collections & Curatorial Intern)

I wonder if the non-intern staff are regretting having an intern, especially one with no last name.

How can we understand The Mary Rose’s collection of personal objects through a Queer lens?

This interpretation of historical objects

The Times offers detail on the protective order:

The first miniskirmish in the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election involves a step that is taken in the early phases of many prominent criminal cases: a proposal to impose rules on how the voluminous discovery evidence in the matter should be handled.

The disagreement started on Friday, when prosecutors in the office of the special counsel asked the judge who is overseeing the case for what is known as a protective order governing the disclosure of discovery material to Mr. Trump’s lawyers. The entreaty was routine, although in making their request, the prosecutors took what could be considered an extra

Oh wait, Swansea University West Ham Society is on board. This changes everything!!!

(What do you mean “who?”? SWANSEA UNIVERSITY WEST HAM SOCIETY. It’s a society. At Swansea University. Devoted to West Ham. The football club. 36 people follow it on Twitter. It’s kind of a big deal.)

Recently, @SwanseaUni has approved an event called “On the front line of the war against women” for the 31st August at Taliesin. This is the second transphobic event held there in the past year, and comes 6 months after celebrating being a Stonewall Gold Inclusive Employer (1)

— Swansea University West Ham Society (@SUWHUFC) August 8, 2023

We will be wholeheartedly supporting a protest on the same day outside Taliesin, and supporting

Hanan Razek at the BBC reports:

A hidden world of sex abuse and exploitation by men working as “spiritual healers” has been uncovered by BBC Arabic.

Spiritual healing, also known as “Quranic healing”, is a popular practice in the Arab and Muslim world. It is mostly women who visit healers – believing that they can solve problems and cure illness by expelling evil spirits known as “jinn”.

Naturally. Women are ferociously subordinated in the Arab and Muslim world, which makes them unlikely to have much education, which renders them credulous about scams like “Quranic healing.”

Testimonies gathered by the BBC from 85 women, over a period of more than a year, named 65 so-called healers in Morocco and Sudan

The ACLU rejoices that girls will be forced to take their clothes off in front of boys.

This decision follows last week’s federal court ruling in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed that trans students must have access to bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender.

No student should have to fear discrimination in school.

— ACLU (@ACLU) August 7, 2023

Trans students must have access to bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender, but there is zero need for girls to have access to bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their sex. Why is that exactly?… Read the rest

Peter Tatchell tries to LGBT+ a Jewish lesbian who escaped the Nazis.

Never forget Sharley McLean, a Jewish lesbian survivor of Nazi fascism

Sharley fled from the Nazis to Britain, aged 16, on one of the last #kindertransports of children leaving Germany

She became a LGBT+ activist & humanisthttps://t.co/Zx5zGlvgrT@Humanists_UK @andrewcopson

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) August 7, 2023

She did not become an “LGBT+” activist. She was a lesbian activist.

David Semple in The Guardian November 5, 2013:

My friend Sharley McLean, the lesbian activist, has died aged 90. She was born Lotte Reyersbach in Oldenburg, north Germany, and escaped to Britain on the Kindertransport in 1939. Her father, Franz, a socialist, and her Jewish mother, Grete, were

What fresh hell is this?

This is what our children are being taught in schools.

That liking “girly” or “boyish” things determines whether you are male, female or ‘non-binary’.

Regressive and abusive. pic.twitter.com/bZET8bqkoF

— James Esses (@JamesEsses) August 7, 2023

“PLANET GIRL” is pink – “PLANET BOY” is blue – now there’s progressive for ya!

“Which planet were you sent to as a baby?”

I beg your fucking pardon?

Why is “NON-BINARY PLANET” much bigger than PLANET GIRL and PLANET BOY and also the original or parent planet that the inferior two are sprouting out of?

The people from PLANET IDIOT need to go away and stop messing with children.… Read the rest