That unpleasant JJ Wells guy who was so merrily abusing JK Rowling and Fred Sargeant yesterday may have taken it a little too far for his own good.

you've published defamatory statements about me and are compounding the offence by saying I'm encouraging the eradication of a group of vulnerable people. All this came about in the context of you attacking @FredSargeant, a gay rights icon, and wishing for his death. 2/3

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 29, 2022

I understand that you and your ilk feel untouchable. I understand that in your own minds you're heroes of unimpeachable righteousness, justified in slurring, defaming and threatening. You were the one who dragged his lawyer into this so, by

One subject of one of Helen Lewis’s new gurus podcast is the “race2dinner” pair Regina Jackson and Saira Rao. Remember them? I did a post on them in May 2021. They’re the ones who charge five THOUSAND dollars for you to make or order in a fancy dinner with you (a white woman) and your white women friends where they (Jackson and Rao) tell you how racist you are. Peak social justice, and a nice little earner!

So they’re still doing it, which means there are still rich white women willing to spend five THOUSAND dollars for this treat.

It’s not that I think there’s no such thing as racism, or that white people shouldn’t confront it, or that … Read the rest

I’ve been listening to this; it’s brilliant. I expect to listen to it all over again and maybe a third time.

Merry podmas! The first four episodes of The New Gurus are now available online.

Episode 1 tells the story of Steve Jobs’s personal quest for enlightenment, and how it created the smartphone age in which our new gurus thrive. https://t.co/f4AiZa8kiZ pic.twitter.com/7KMBA2T5AM

— Helen Lewis (@helenlewis) December 19, 2022

… Read the rest

It’s still 1962. Nothing has changed. White men still assault Black teenage boys for using the “whites only” pool.

A violent attack by a group of white men on two Black teenagers at a resort pool in South Africa on Christmas Day has sparked widespread outrage, reviving images from the ugly days of apartheid and serving as a stinging reminder of the country’s unresolved racial tensions.

We get that a lot here, too. Ahmaud Arbery was murdered for running in a “white neighborhood.”

Cellphone footage of the assault — which the teenagers said started when they were told the pool was for “white people only” — spread widely on social media. It showed scenes that could have been from

Originally a comment by Freemage on In our religion-deferential country.

This is the kind of thing that first started me questioning my faith. Not the existence of these assholes–I was world-wise enough to know full well that people are people, no matter what granfaloon they belong to. But it was the awful, deadening silence of the mainstream churches when confronted by the undeniable evil of, say, Westboro Baptist Church. Sure, if you mentioned WBC to a practicing Catholic or Methodist, they’d insist that the former didn’t speak for them, and were out of bounds.

But they are never willing to actively do anything about it. Imagine a world where one of those anodyne interfaith councils came out with specific … Read the rest

The FFRF says don’t gloss over the Christian Nationalist aspect of Trump’s attempted coup.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation regrets that the recently released Jan. 6 House select committee report fails to pinpoint the Christian nationalist motivations behind the Capitol attack.

The committee’s official findings do not adequately illustrate the true nature of the insurrection and its participants, asserts the national state/church watchdog. The rioters, white supremacist Nick Fuentes primary among them, frequently engaged in Christian rituals before and during the assault. The “Jericho Marches,” in which rioters walked around the Capitol in the days prior praying for the results of the election to be overturned and calling for “spiritual warfare,” the chanting of “Christ is king,” banners containing biblical

Now that is solidarity.

Astonishing scenes as a Kabul university professor destroys his diplomas on live TV in Afghanistan —

“From today I don’t need these diplomas anymore because this country is no place for an education. If my sister & my mother can’t study, then I DON’T accept this education.” pic.twitter.com/cTZrpmAuL6

— Shabnam Nasimi (@NasimiShabnam) December 27, 2022

Shabnam Nasimi is a former Policy Advisor to the Minister for Afghan Resettlement and the Minister for Refugees.… Read the rest

There are some very bad people in that movement.

Fred is Fred Sargeant and James is James Garvey.

Fred did fuck all, he’s a traitor to the cause. He’s not the reason I’m out and proud- REAL activists were.

— JJ Welles (@jjwelles_) December 28, 2022

Wow couldn't sleep and saw this. The kid is still talking to @FredSargeant. What an absolute psycho. pic.twitter.com/tzc6LVefUD

— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) December 28, 2022

Some bad bad bad people.

Updating to add:

Imagine tweeting about your desire to see a woman put to death and your wanting to have a role in it, and thinking you're one of the good guys as @josephjames94 does. Fortunately, the internet has a long memory and

Guy who enslaved women in porn arrested:

The founder of San Diego-based website GirlsDoPorn.com, who had been on the lam for the past three years while facing federal sex trafficking charges, was arrested this week in Spain, the FBI announced Friday.

Michael James Pratt, 40, was arrested Wednesday by Spanish National Police in Madrid, according to a statement from the FBI. Pratt will be held there pending extradition to San Diego.

He was on the FBI ten most wanted list.

The New Zealand native is charged in a 19-count indictment for allegedly running the now-defunct website. Charges against him include sex trafficking, production of child pornography, sex trafficking of a minor, and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments.

Prosecutors allege

Free enterprise, free speech, freedom of the press, all labored and brought forth…Fox News. Next up could be President Tucker Carlson.

Tucker Carlson, as the most-watched host of the most-watched cable news network, holds rare influence over not just Republican supporters, but politicians, too. This year Carlson has been unafraid to wield that power, across issues including war, subjugation of continents and testosterone.

That’s what we want to see – another “personality” dragging the world toward a deeper abyss.

On 22 February, Vladimir Putin’s forces were massed on the Ukraine border. As people in the eastern European country braced themselves for war, and as the Russian leader was widely condemned by the international community, Carlson used his Fox News

This guy is a psychiatrist, an assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at The University of California San Francisco.

I guess I’m a man then. Short hair, gender-noncommittal T shirts or turtlenecks instead of strappy sundresses, no necklace, no earrings, no lipstick, no perm – zap, I’m a guy.

This adult academic psychiatrist is obsessed with the dopy meaningless cartoon.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Varying beliefs.

Hamline was the first University in Minnesota, founded by the Methodists. They currently emphasize interfaith (including those with no faith) co-existence. When I was thinking of Law School I was seriously contemplating pushing for attending their Mitchell Law School since they place a high value on using the Law as a tool to fight The Man. My son graduated from a charter school sponsored by Hamline, and they emphasized intellectual freedom in education.

So, this comes as a surprise, in one sense, but then when I think about it? Perhaps not so much? I see that so many liberal institutions have taken on fear of offense as a measure of … Read the rest

Turns out it’s illegal to plot to kidnap people.

The ringleader of a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Adam Fox, 39, appeared in front of US District Court Judge Richard Jonker on Tuesday. Earlier this year he was found guilty of planning to abduct Ms Whitmer from her holiday home with other militiamen.

The group targeted the governor in 2020, after she imposed Covid rules early in the pandemic.

I wonder how many of us are alive today because of measures taken to deal with the flu pandemic in 1918.

As well as conspiring to abduct Ms Whitmer, Fox was sentenced for planning to use a weapon of mass

I have a little stack of New Yorkers from a Little Free Library (to which they’ll return once I’ve perused them), and the other day I settled down to read what looked like an interesting article by Jill Lepore about a UK writer fella. But…the longer I read the more irritated I got.

You know how there’s a popular magazine style that involves adding a lot of “color” to reporting via details about decor, clothes, food, yadda yadda, so that it’s not just a parade of facts but more like a short story? And for that matter a popular fiction style that does the same thing? And you know how unskilled people can overdo it to the point where you … Read the rest

Adjectives, how do they work?

Let’s try it with “dog.”

This is a brown dog.

This is a small dog.

This is a friendly dog.

This is a rescue dog.

This is a pretend dog.

This is a fake dog.

This is a fantasy dog.

Thus ends today’s lesson on how adjectives work.… Read the rest

The Hamline University student newspaper reports on the showing of images in an art history class a few weeks ago:

Hamline undergraduate students received an email from the Dean of Students on Nov. 7, condemning an unnamed classroom incident as “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.”

That must have been weird. “Hi students. There was a bad bad bad incident. Love, the Dean.”

The Oracle has since learned that the event in question occurred on Oct. 6, when a professor shared two depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in class, while discussing Islamic art. One was a 14th century depiction of the Prophet and the other was a 16th century depiction of the Prophet with veil and halo. 

In other words a … Read the rest

Anyway…how do they even know it is an image of Mohammed? Are they thinking all images of Mo are literally actually likenesses of him? Even though they don’t all look alike, to put it mildly?

What makes them think the image in the medieval Persian painting is of Mohammed as opposed to being the artist’s idea of Mohammed?

If I type

:)

and label it Mohammed, does that make it an image of Mohammed? What if I say it’s not that Mohammed but the lovely neighborhood UPS guy who recognizes me from a block away and waves hello?

In short what is the thinking here? If it can be called thinking? … Read the rest

Another academic pushed roughly out the door, this time for purported Islamophobia, because he included an image of Mo in a lecture on Islamic art. Professor of Islamic Art at the University of Michigan Christiane Gruber has the details:

The “Islamophobic incident” catalyzed plenty of administrative commentary and media coverage at the university. Among others, it formed the subject of a second Oracle article, which noted that a faculty member had included in their global survey of art history a session on Islamic art, which offered an optional visual analysis and discussion of a famous medieval Islamic painting of the Prophet Muhammad. A student complained about the image’s inclusion in the course and led efforts to press administrators for

Meanwhile in another part of the forest…

She will work day and night and does not need rest, boasts Noura, a housewife in Riyadh. Gesturing to the cowering Ugandan maid next to her, who is 23 according to Noura, she adds: “If she does something wrong, you just send her to her room and do not let her out.”

Noura, who clutches gold Gucci sunglasses as she bargains for a price of £3,500 for the maid, is eager for a quick deal when she talks to an undercover Times reporter. “I can take her to your home tonight,” she says. “If you are still unsure, no problem, you can rent her instead . . . But tell me now,

More from the Reuters report: Kaiser Permanente did a study that reported a very low transition rate, but the study missed some people.

Reuters found two other patients in the region covered by the study who don’t match those characteristics and whom the Kaiser researchers apparently missed. Both have been outspoken about their detransitions.

…

The other patient was Chloe Cole. According to a letter of intent to sue that her lawyers sent to Kaiser in November, Cole was 13 when a Kaiser doctor in 2018 put her on a puberty blocker, followed a few weeks later by testosterone, for her gender-affirming treatment.

At 15, Cole told Reuters, she also wanted top surgery. In an interview, she and her