Originally a comment by Artymorty on Why not indeed?

I don’t think we’re really seeing a wave of trans suicides in Scotland. But it’s plausible that some people with trans identities may commit suicide as they reckon with the new reality, which is that their invented identities are not going to be accepted across society and law.

People with transgender identities are typically already in very poor mental health, and the suicide rate has always been high with that group. I have a lot of sympathy for such troubled people, especially the ones who were misled into doing irreversible damage to their bodies. Some of them surely will end up dead. I’m obviously far less sympathetic to the chancers — … Read the rest

The Guardian claims:

Caz Coronel was standing in the queue for the ladies’ at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank when she registered a male voice shouting across the vestibule: “The men’s toilets are on this side!”

At first the composer and producer paid little attention, until the man – whom Coronel describes as tall and in his late 60s – approached and touched her shoulder. He continued to challenge her about being in the wrong queue until she asked him bluntly: “Do you want to see my tits?”

Really? Did that really happen?

It doesn’t sound very plausible. Two queues outside the rooms where the toilets are, and a guy shouts from one queue to the … Read the rest

Peak academic authoritative credible evidence-based verificationality. Five stars.

And as I was hearing last week numerous trans people in Scotland have killed themselves aided by the toxicity of this debate.

— Gerry Hassan (@GerryHassan) August 13, 2025

Why not deal with the substance? I was speaking to an expert in Scottish health who made the comment to me.

— Gerry Hassan (@GerryHassan) August 13, 2025

Deal with the substance, damn you! I was speaking to an expert!! Who made!!! The comment!!!! To me!!!!!!… Read the rest

So it was Pete Hegseth who put that loony Idaho women-are-cattle god-pest in the spotlight.

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, recently shared a video in which several pastors say women should no longer be allowed to vote, prompting one progressive evangelical organization to express concern.

Hegseth reposted a CNN segment on X on Thursday that focuses on pastor Doug Wilson, a Christian nationalist who co-founded the Idaho-based Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), In the segment, he raises the idea of women not voting.

“I would like to see this nation being a Christian nation, and I would like this world to be a Christian world,” Wilson said.

And by “Christian” he means women-subordinating. He would like to … Read the rest

Performative virtue-signaling has become a threat to higher ed

On today’s college campuses, students are not maturing — they’re managing. Beneath a facade of progressive slogans and institutional virtue-signaling lies a quiet psychological crisis, driven by the demands of ideological conformity.

Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. We were not studying politics — we were studying development. Our question was clinical, not political: “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?”

Now that is an interesting question. My bet is that nothing good happens.

We asked: Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or

Yet again the people who should know better collapse like melting butter because the teenagers might pitch a fit.

Scotland’s national library banned a book about feminists’ fight against Nicola Sturgeon’s gender self-ID law after staff complained its contents were “hate speech” comparable to racism.

The National Library of Scotland (NLS) has been accused of a “shameful” capitulation to censorship after it emerged that The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, a collection of essays by gender-critical women, had been cut from a major exhibition celebrating the institution’s centenary.

Yay centenary no not you.

Members of the public had been asked by the library, which promotes itself as a national forum for “ideas, debate and discussion”, to nominate books which had

Hmmmm, which team was it who made the debate toxic?

Nicola Sturgeon has reignited her feud with JK Rowling by blaming the author for creating a toxic debate over trans rights and stoking “vile” attacks which left her fearing for her physical safety.

So Sturgeon is saying Rowling created the debate “over trans rights”?

But that’s absurd, because Sturgeon had already staked out a position on “trans rights” long before Rowling said a word about the subject.

In her memoir Frankly, the former first minister claims the Harry Potter writer wearing a T-shirt branding her a “destroyer of women’s rights” was a turning point in which “rational debate” on the trans issue became “impossible” and “any hope of

Ah yes, convicted rapist Trump is the hero of the women-hating evangelicals.

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, recently shared a video in which several pastors say women should no longer be allowed to vote, prompting one progressive evangelical organization to express concern.

Hegseth reposted a CNN segment on X on Thursday that focuses on pastor Doug Wilson, a Christian nationalist who co-founded the Idaho-based Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), In the segment, he raises the idea of women not voting.

Another pastor interview by CNN for its segment, Toby Sumpter, said: “In my ideal society, we would vote as households. I would ordinarily be the one to cast the vote, but I would cast the vote

Hoooo boy I cannot wait to read this.

Annotating as I read to review. Might auction my scribbled-on copy, proceeds to go to @ForWomenScot.

NB: nobody who’s offended by swearing should bid. pic.twitter.com/sOQOR3uYR8

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 12, 2025

… Read the rest

Trump does a particularly showy version of the “Now I know this is not politically correct” move in his Monday briefing about the DC takeover.

“It’s becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness, and we’re getting rid of the slums, too. We have slums here,” Trump added, without providing details. “I know it’s not politically correct. You’ll say, ‘Oh, so terrible.’ No, we’re getting rid of the slums where they live.”

Ah. So not not politically correct, but entirely politically correct, because we’re getting rid of where they live. What could be more politically correct than that?

… Read the rest

Who on EARTH is dumb enough to say this in public? To, in fact, put it in writing, in a BOOK?

Who wrote that?

I rather think it was Nicola Sturgeon in her memoir.

It’s hilarious that she thinks it might make her sound “daft” as opposed to grandiose and narcissistic beyond belief.… Read the rest

Tantrums win again.

So, @PolariPrize has promised to 'review its processes' according to @thebookseller. If this is true, then the Prize has failed to stand by its longlist decisions. To promise a review is to suggest that something might be wrong, that perhaps @JohnBoyneBooks was a mistake. pic.twitter.com/DOVZPhXvQn

— Jonny Best (@JonnyWorst) August 11, 2025

To promise a review is also to give in to petulant demanding bedwetters.

The Guardian:

Ten authors nominated for this year’s Polari prizes, a set of UK awards celebrating LGBTQ+ literature, have withdrawn from the awards over the longlisting of John Boyne, who has described himself as a “Terf” – the acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

Two judges have also withdrawn from

While Trump is busy harassing cities like New York and Washington, let’s read up on murder stats in states like Mississippi and Alabama.

House Republicans held three field hearings on violent crime last year in New York City, Chicago, and Washington DC. These hearings should have been held in the murder-plagued states of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. In 2023, Speaker Johnson’s hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana had a murder rate 8 times higher (41.1) than Minority Leader Jeffries’ hometown of Brooklyn, New York (5.0), 6 times higher than Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco, California (6.6), and more than 7 times higher than the national average (5.5). Our 2023 report in the Red

What happens when a child is head of state.

During the news conference, Trump spoke at length about his upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

He says he finds it “very respectful” that the Russian president is meeting him on US soil, and he thinks the pair will have “constructive conversations” on Friday.

By finding it very respectful he of course means flattering to him personally. Not the transactional courtesy of international diplomacy but dude to dude flattery and submission. He thinks Putin is kneeling to him as opposed to dragging him around by the balls. That’s how stupid he is.

But his comments on a possible “land swap” with Ukraine might not please President Volodymyr Zelensky, who

Well whaddya know – it turns out you can forfeit the right to be the gender of your choice. No less an authority than Nicola Sturgeon says so!

Sturgeon apparently thinks there is a 'right' to be the gender of your choice. How does that 'right' exist and how can it be enforced on other people? What a vacuous woman. https://t.co/nDQPnKrc6d

— Joan Smith (@polblonde) August 11, 2025

… Read the rest

He’s going completely batshit. He’s demoting the entire FBI to beat cops. Sir, sir, that’s not what they’re there for.

The FBI has begun dispatching agents in overnight shifts to help local law enforcement prevent carjackings and violent crime in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter, as President Donald Trump threatens a federal takeover of the nation’s capital and considers calling up the National Guard.

…

Trump on Sunday compared forthcoming action against D.C. crime to his administration’s aggressive crackdown against illegal immigration at the southern border, saying that he plans to “immediately clear out the city’s homeless population and take swift action against crime.”

“Be prepared! There will be no ‘MR. NICE GUY.’ We want

Impulsive golfer threatens mass arrests and deportations:

In a social media post on Sunday, Donald Trump has demanded homeless residents of Washington DC leave the country’s capital or face eviction, and again promised to use federal officers to jail criminals, even though violent crime in the city was at a 30-year low when he took office in January.

“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Sunday morning, shortly after being driven from the White House to his golf club in Virginia. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”

The post was illustrated with four photographs, all apparently taken from the president’s motorcade along the route from the

Yes, he’s reckless and ignorant and corrupt and greedy, but on the other hand he’s also spiteful and malicious and destructive.

Once a dramatic feature of the White House entryway, the official portrait of former President Barack Obama has been moved to a decidedly less prominent position, underscoring the yearslong tensions between the 44th and 47th presidents.

Portraits of other recent predecessors with whom President Donald Trump has a contentious relationship, former President George W. Bush and his father, George H. W. Bush, have also been moved.

Trump directed staff to move the Obama portrait to the top of the Grand Staircase, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN, where it will now be out of view from

Oddly enough, people who work at the CDC are not best pleased.

The day after a lone gunman opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, killing a police officer and shattering windows across the agency’s campus, employees were reeling from shock, fear and rage.

“We’re mad this has happened,” Dr. Debra Houry, the C.D.C.’s chief medical officer, said in a large group call Saturday morning with Susan Monarez, the agency’s newly confirmed director, who tried to reassure them. Another employee on the call, a recording of which was obtained by The New York Times, asked Dr. Monarez: “Are you able to speak to the misinformation, the disinformation that caused this issue? And what your plan forward

Lies and bullshit have consequences.

A shooting at the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention killed a police officer and rattled the community of public health workers, who said the attack was a manifestation of rampant misinformation surrounding vaccines.

A 30-year-old man who believed the Covid-19 vaccine had made him ill opened fire at C.D.C. buildings on Friday, according to the police. A young DeKalb County police officer was killed in the attack, and the gunman also died. On Saturday, investigators from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies were working to piece together the details and the circumstances that precipitated the attack.

The shooting came after years of conspiracy theories about vaccines and escalating