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

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Their stories have upended his assumptions.

…and any attention they got reinforced to the public the false impression that transgender people were incapable of making sound decisions about their treatment.

Guess what? The impression is not a false one. Deciding to pursue a course of medical treatment that promises something it’s not possible to do is the definition of a decision that is unsound. The falseness is in the claims of those offering such “treatments,” not in the correct perception that a course leading to sterilization and lifelong medical experimentation on your own flesh is not a good or healthy one.

It’s like getting on board a burning plane that … Read the rest

It’s like being tangled in a net that just pulls tighter the more you struggle.

Reuters has a special report on detransitioners.

For years, Dr Kinnon MacKinnon, like many people in the transgender community, considered the word “regret” to be taboo.

MacKinnon, a 37-year-old transgender man and assistant professor of social work at York University here, thought it was offensive to talk about people who transitioned, later regretted their decision, and detransitioned. They were too few in number, he figured, and any attention they got reinforced to the public the false impression that transgender people were incapable of making sound decisions about their treatment.

But what if it’s not a false impression? What if it’s not high quality thinking … Read the rest

I’m reading a piece about Jazz Jennings’s “affirmation” surgery. Had to take a break for a minute to cope with the revulsion. They didn’t know what they were doing but they did it anyway – how progressive.

Jazz Jennings has had a tougher transition than her doctors expected. In the last two years, the teen reality star and LGBTQ+ activist has undergone multiple gender confirmation surgeries, and her doctors are now revealing more details about what went wrong in the new season of TLC’s I Am Jazz, People reported.

Why did the doctors expect a not so tough transition? Why would that be easy? It turns out there was no reason for them to think that other than the … Read the rest

Oh honestly. Easy for some. King Choss says words about The Poor:

King Charles has highlighted the cost of living crisis and the “great anxiety and hardship” of many struggling to “pay their bills and keep their families fed and warm” in his first Christmas broadcast.

Isn’t that just so kind and loving of him?

Until you remember how much money he gets for his important job of being a tourist attraction. He’s ordered a slap-up coronation, no expense spared:

King Charles III is reportedly in favour of a “glorious” coronation with pomp and pageantry to promote the best image of the UK amid the cost-of-living crisis.

It was speculated that Buckingham Palace might opt for a cut-price

It’s the human imperative to fight over something. We can’t get out of bed in the morning unless there’s a fight to inspire us. India chooses communalism.

Tensions are rising in India over prime minister Narendra Modi’s push to make Hindi the country’s dominant language.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janaya party (BJP) government has been accused of an agenda of “Hindi imposition” and “Hindi imperialism” and non-Hindi speaking states in south and east India have been fighting back.

Of course with Modi and the BJP it’s not just Hindi, it’s also Hindu – it’s not just the language, it’s also the religion and all the baggage that goes with it.

Modi’s speeches are given exclusively in Hindi and over 70% of

We are Inclusive, so we are excluding you. Have a nice day!

I applied for a studio space in @denmarkfarm. They refused to rent BC of my lack of belief in gender identity
Do they also discriminate against people who don't believe in God, or in Santa.
Is reputational damage more important than the law?@SexMattersOrg @peter_daly @anyabike pic.twitter.com/IT0tQ30Cmh

— Wild Womyn Workshop (@Wild_Womyn) December 25, 2022

You couldn’t make it up. “We have recently written and adopted an Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Policy for our charity…This policy clearly states that we must be inclusive as an organisation.” Therefore we are excluding you.

Also the bit about yeah yeah we support feminism and women’s rights BUT we support … Read the rest

Golly gee who knew Louisa May Alcott was butch? Besides everyone?

Louisa May Alcott balked when her editor asked her to write a book for girls. “Never liked girls or knew many,” she journaled, “except my sisters.”

…

To family and friends, she was Lou, Lu, or Louy. She wrote of herself as the “papa” or “father” of her young nephews. Her father, Bronson, once called Alcott his “only son.” In letters to close friend Alfie Whitman, Alcott called herself “a man of all work” and “a gentleman at large.”

Gasp – could this mean………………………..?

All this leads me to wonder: Is Alcott best understood as a trans man?

No. Why? Well, for one thing, because she’s not particularly hard … Read the rest

Stella Creasy now:

clarksons words contribute to an environment where if women don’t do what you like, being violent or abusive is an acceptable way to show it and their freedom to be who they are is shaped accordingly. Let’s change that and give women equal protection from hate under our laws. pic.twitter.com/eIsqp2Mdno

— stellacreasy (@stellacreasy) December 20, 2022

Stella Creasy last May:

Stella Creasy is clarifying her position on the word ‘woman’. “Do I think some women were born with penises? Yes”, she declares. “But they are now women and I respect that.”

…

Surely, as a fellow feminist, she and JK Rowling aren’t too far apart on the issue? “No, I don’t agree with her and I’m