Putin responds:

The past few hours have seen wave after wave of explosions, not just here in Kyiv, but all across this vast country, from Lviv in the west to Kharkiv in the east and Odesa in the south.

For those of us who were here when Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February, there’s an element of déjà vu. We’ve been told to spend as much time as we can in the basement, as further attacks, using missiles and drones, are expected.

But this is also different. The explosions here in Kyiv are much closer to the centre. Not distant thumps from the suburbs, but loud reverberations close to streets and locations we’ve come to know well in the

Eva Kurilova at Reduxx tells us:

In their push to destroy female sports, gender activists have dropped any veneer of concern about keeping sporting competitions fair and safe for female athletes.

On September 26, Biathlon Canada introduced a new policy on gender inclusion that allows men unrestricted access to the female category on the basis of self-declared gender identity. In other words, all a man has to do is say he is a woman, and he’s allowed to cheat his way to a female athlete’s spot on the podium.

According to the Biathlon Canada website, the policy was passed with the unanimous approval of the board of directors and is intended to outline “how the organization will create respectful

What Ian did:

Hurricane Ian has shown just what Florida is up against in a world where global warming is, as climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe described recently, “putting hurricanes on steroids.” Ian blew ashore with winds of 150 miles per hour, and pushed storm surges of 12 to 18 feet before moving across central Florida, where it caused extensive inland flooding. 

Ian splintered and washed away homes, broke bridges, toppled trees, tossed boats, submerged roads and fell power lines in communities like Fort Myers, Sanibel Island, Naples and the Orlando area. It caused $45 billion to $55 billion in property damage, according to a preliminary estimate from Moody’s Analytics. There are now fears that Ian will make the state’s

Florida public radio told us last February that the state made a lot of star appearances in the latest IPCC report:

Climate change has already changed places like Florida permanently and irreversibly — affecting coral reefs, leading to higher property values and increasing inequality for vulnerable populations in the state, according to a new global report from the world’s top scientists.

The nearly 2,000-page report had a global focus, but Florida was repeatedly used as an example of a place where the impacts of climate change were already being felt, both economically and environmentally.

Which is unsurprising seeing as how it’s a narrow peninsula in a rising sea.

The report specifically mentions Florida multiple times, including:

• Tidal flooding worsened by

An excerpt from William Shatner’s new book Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder is doing the rounds, for good reason. It’s written “with” Joshua Brandon, so the quality of the writing may be due to him.

We got out of our harnesses and began to float around. The other folks went straight into somersaults and enjoying all the effects of weightlessness. I wanted no part in that. I wanted, needed to get to the window as quickly as possible to see what was out there.

I looked down and I could see the hole that our spaceship had punched in the thin, blue-tinged layer of oxygen around Earth. It was as if there was a wake

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Its vital helpline???

And, as always, I wonder if the ‘abuse’ suffered is just more people stating truth about reality. They have a very low threshold for abuse.

We are supposed to accept that stating Reality is hateful, and that we should just shut up and stop mentioning it. Fuck that shit. I propose that we should turn things around, and point out things that are actually hateful, and in some instances, actually violent. I’ll start.

Telling children that they are “born in the wrong body” is hateful.

Saying that so-called “puberty blockers” are harmless and reversible is hateful.

Mutilating children and calling it “gender affirming” or “lifesaving” care … Read the rest

Trump tried to use the documents he’d stolen to get the documents he’d failed to steal.

Late last year, as the National Archives ratcheted up the pressure on former President Donald J. Trump to return boxes of records he had taken from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago club, he came up with an idea to resolve the looming showdown: cut a deal.

Mr. Trump, still determined to show he had been wronged by the F.B.I. investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia, was angry with the National Archives and Records Administration for its unwillingness to hand over a batch of sensitive documents that he thought proved his claims.

In exchange for those documents, Mr. Trump told advisers, he

Florida. Floods. Insurance.

Homeowners insurance policies typically don’t cover flood damage, and most people living in Ian’s path across Florida didn’t have a separate flood insurance policy. Inland areas that experienced historic rainfall and catastrophic floodwaters were especially unprepared, according to a CNN analysis of FEMA flood insurance data.

Because usually the catastrophic flooding happens on the coasts, not inland.

In Seminole County, northeast of Orlando, more than 5,200 residential buildings have been damaged by the storm, primarily due to flooding, according to a county spokesperson. “We’ve never had anything to this nature,” said Jay Zembower, a Seminole County commissioner, calling the flooding “a 500-plus-year event of quick rainfall in a short window of time.”

But “a 500-plus-year event” doesn’t … Read the rest

The Daily Mail picked up the University of Southern Maine story.

A group of students at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine are calling for their professor to be fired after she said in class only two sexes exist. 

Christy Hammer, a professor of education, allegedly made the statement during a heated debate about gender identity in her  ‘Creating a Positive Learning Environment’ class, causing an uproar among the graduate students.

Only one student agreed with the educator. The rest maintained both biological sexes and social genders are on a spectrum.

…

The class is a requirement to complete the graduate-level Extended Teacher Education Program and become a certified teacher in Maine. 

So, as we know, the … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba replying to the question “Why did a guy who seemingly wanted to diddle kids join an organization that wanted to mutilate them?” on Wearing the mask.

I’d say it’s because sexuality is inextricable from the transgender package. A transgender person is a sexual being, and so a transgender child is a sexual child. Narcissistic AGPs use the concept of the trans kid to validate their own fantasies by making their fetish an intrinsic, unalterable character trait. Pedophiles, on the other hand, use the sexuality of rainbow subculture to sexualize children.

Pedophiles get their jollies from this even if they never once meet a trans kid. They get vicarious thrills by setting … Read the rest

Nicola Sturgeon says JK Rowling isn’t a feminist, she (Sturgeon) is.

Like hell.

Nicola Sturgeon has suggested that JK Rowling is not a “real feminist” as she lashed out at the Harry Potter author’s accusation that she is a “destroyer of women’s rights” over her plan to allow people to self-identify their legal gender.

Lash out all you want but if you take women’s rights away you’re not a feminist.

In a rebuke to Ms Rowling, Ms Sturgeon said that “real feminists as I consider myself to be” focus on the “real” threats to women posed by abusive men and “lawmakers who want to take away our rights”.

Trans women are abusive men. What they’re currently doing to women … Read the rest

Oh good, YET ANOTHER man explaining what a woman is and how wrong we’ve all been to think we knew.

What is a woman? It’s a question that’s suddenly everywhere, and it turns out the answer is complicated. Jon breaks down the gender binary and gender spectrum in this week’s episode. Stream the free episode now on Apple TV+. pic.twitter.com/n9RfjAhu7p

— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) October 8, 2022

… Read the rest

Sally Hines as FGEN issued a “statement” (aka a blog post) last March:

FGEN is an international network of feminist academics and others whose aims are wholly political in that we seek to oppose transphobia wherever it becomes apparent – whether in a university in Central London or on the prairies of the midwestern United States. 

So, the F shouldn’t be there at all. It’s not a feminist network, it’s an anti-“transphobia” network, i.e. a network dedicated to insisting that men are women if they say they are and no one is allowed to disagree. No feminism in sight.

We aim to promote the human rights of trans and gender diverse people worldwide to end the exclusion of trans

Sally Hines founded a thing called the Feminist Gender Equality Network, aka FGEN.

Tell us more:

The Feminist Gender Equality Network (FGEN) is a cross-sector, interdisciplinary international organisation that adopts an intersectional feminist framework in order to:

1. advance the understanding of gender and sex as fluid categories

What’s feminist about that though? If gender and sex are fluid categories, how can feminism exist? What does it mean? What is it for?

2. protect the rights and needs of people of all (or no) gender

Then why call it feminism? Why not call it peopleism? If it’s for people of all or no gender (what that means is a question for another paragraph, or another day) then why … Read the rest

Reduxx has further detail on the Jacob Breslow question – Jacob Breslow Associate Professor at the London School of Economics, that is.

The academic who recently resigned from a charity that promotes the medical transitioning of children had for years been writing blog entries related to pro-pedophilia activism and “minor attraction.”

Activism around sex with children, that is.

“Activism” forsooth – as if the common understanding that it’s extremely wrong to force sex on children were just another outdated unexamined prejudice like the one that says women are stupid and inferior or the one that says non-white people are stupid and inferior.

It’s not. Sex is not good for children. Adults forcing or coaxing or tricking them into sex … Read the rest

Oops there goes the Kerch bridge:

Ukraine is exploding with excitement this morning.

Videos of the damaged Crimean bridge have spread like wildfire on social media; this is already being compared to the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva in April.

“The guided missile cruiser Moskva and the Kerch bridge – two notorious symbols of Russian power in Ukrainian Crimea – have gone down,” tweeted Ukraine’s ministry of defence.

“What’s next in line, Russkies?” it went on.

Ukraine has a brilliant sense of humor.

Ukraine’s inventive social media activists are gleefully pumping out memes to celebrate the occasion.

And Ukraine’s second largest bank, Monobank, says it has already issued a new debit card design featuring the collapsed

There’s a petition we can sign in support of the University of Southern Maine professor under attack for saying there are only two sexes. I just signed it.

There’s a conversation about the effort to get her fired at Why Evolution is True.… Read the rest

It hasn’t sunk in yet, has it.

Trans youth charity #Mermaids forced to close its vital helpline because of “intolerable abuse”. Even if you disagree with ⁦@Mermaids_Gender⁩ (which I don’t), this harassment is so wrong & prevents trans youth & parents accessing life-saving help https://t.co/AZjUL60P33

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) October 7, 2022

WHAT “vital helpline”???

Mermaids isn’t helping, it’s harming. Puberty blockers are harmful. Cutting off breasts or penises is harmful. Telling children they’re in the wrong body and can change that with drugs and surgeries is harmful. Mermaids doesn’t help; instead of helping Mermaids gives children terrible, dangerous advice.

The brutal recklessness of these ideologues is a sight to behold.… Read the rest

Meet “Critical Childhood Studies”:

Critical Childhood Studies (CCS) is an emerging academic field that has developed over the past two decades. The field belongs in the same ballpark as Critical Race Theory or former Women’s Studies (now Gender or Queer Studies). Established to examine the histories and provide cultural context for people oppressed on the basis of race and sex, these fields have morphed.

Rather than helping oppressed communities, critical scholars often promote ideological views on race and “gender” that ultimately do the exact opposite: further fuel racism and sexism. Critical Childhood Studies (CCS) has fallen into the same trap — deconstructing childhood to a degree that, if applied outside of an academic setting, would put children in danger.

Too bad girls in Iran can’t identify their way out of being killed by the security police.

Reports are emerging of the death of another teenage girl at the hands of security forces in Iran, as protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini looked set to enter their third week.

Sarina Esmailzadeh, a 16-year-old who posted popular vlogs on YouTube, was killed when the security forces beat her with batons at a protest in Gohardasht in Alborz province on 23 September, according to Amnesty International.

This isn’t random or chance. A harsh punitive control of women is the core of Islamist theocracy. Islam sees women as nothing but walking temptations to men, who have to be bagged up and … Read the rest