Local residents astonished that desert basin is desert basin.

The few who live along the shores of Mono Lake are accustomed to the peculiarities of this high desert basin.

Famously strange limestone spires known as tufa towers rise from the water. The lake contains so much salt that it’s barren of fish. In the arid sands beyond, sagebrush thrives, and that’s about it.

But the alkali flats that are emerging from the lake’s surface, ghost white, aren’t just another nod to the uniqueness of this ancient place. They’re a sign of trouble. Amid a third year of drought, the sprawling lake on the remote east side of the Sierra Nevada is sharply receding, and the small towns and wildlife

So this is what it looks like when you build ever more new houses in a desert and the water dries up.

As the Southwest enters its second decade of megadrought, and the Colorado River sinks to alarmingly low levels, Rio Verde, a largely upscale community that real-estate agents bill as North Scottsdale, though it is a thirty-mile drive from Scottsdale proper, is finding itself on the front lines of the water wars. Some homeowners’ wells are drying up, while others who get water delivered have recently been told that their source will be cut off on January 1st. 

Because it’s a desert. Did anyone mention that it’s a desert before you bought new houses there? Did you look … Read the rest

Melted brains.

In the months before she started nursery, my four-year-old daughter would often say she was a boy. 

Little kids say they’re lots of things.

It came unprompted, bubbling up from somewhere pure and certain inside her.

Little kids can be certain of all kinds of things that aren’t true. Certainly is almost always a bad thing, and in a child of four it means nothing.

But the obstacles to her sense of self have started looming, ever since she started nursery in September 2021. 

After she’d been attending for a few weeks, she said to me again she was a boy. But then she looked troubled and added that her teacher told her she’s a girl, that

Another direct insult, as direct and insulting as nominating William “Lia” Thomas Woman of the Year:

The National Women’s History Museum’s current Biography page:

All three are men.… Read the rest

The pope “apologized” about the residential schools, but not really. (“About” rather than “for” is deliberate.)

Pope Francis made a public statement today to the delegations of Indigenous people who met with him this week to discuss personal experiences in residential schools or their harmful legacies.

His statement included the words “I am very sorry,” and is being reported as an apology for residential schools.

Journalism is so deferential to the popes. Why is that? The Vatican is a religious version of the Mafia; it’s not something to defer to.

There are several kinds of wrongs associated with residential schools. There were abusive and often criminal actions by individuals who worked in these institutions. Those in authority 

Yay let’s trans toddlers! What could go wrong?!

Originally a comment by Catwhisperer on Does Dwight Schrute write tweets for Tampax?

Radio 4 has a 28-part series about the menstrual cycle (28ish Days Later, if anyone wants to check it out) which I thought was an impressive amount of time to dedicate to the subject. I’m most of the way through but struggling a bit now – it started off with the interesting detailed biology stuff and then went off into New Age Moon Goddess hippy dippy territory. Anyway. The presenter explains right at the start that they will be mostly saying “women” but of course not everyone who has a menstrual cycle identifies as a woman blah blah blah but they stay reasonably on track … Read the rest

The Guardian on that stealth deletion of women’s rights from an already signed statement I mentioned the other day:

The UK government is coming under growing pressure from European countries and human rights groups to explain why commitments to abortion and sexual health rights have been removed from an official statement on gender equality.

The question shouldn’t be why so much as when are you going to put them back.

Norway and Denmark have approached the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) “to protest against the substantive changes” that were made to a paper that resulted from a UK-hosted conference on freedom of religion and belief, opened by Liz Truss earlier this month, the Guardian has learned.

More than 20

You don’t get to blow off a subpoena just because you once worked for Trump.

A federal jury has found former Trump adviser Steve Bannon guilty of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

The verdict: After nearly two days of hearing evidence and witness testimony, the jury reached a unanimous verdict on the two contempt charges in less than three hours.

Bannon smiled as the verdict was read, looking back and forth between the courtroom deputy and the foreperson. Bannon’s team did not mount a defense during the trial, and he did not take the stand. Speaking to reporters after the conviction, his attorney David Schoen said they planned

Jon Pike tweeted a link to an interesting study.

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials

Abstract

Objectives To determine whether parachutes are effective in preventing major trauma related to gravitational challenge.

Design Systematic review of randomised controlled trials.

…

Results We were unable to identify any randomised controlled trials of parachute intervention.

Conclusions As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of

I missed this one from September last year.

Not a fact. All people with periods are women. (Some are girls, but by some definitions once they have periods they’re women, and anyway this stupid tweet didn’t mean “Because some are girls!!”) No men have periods. We don’t need to “celebrate” the sexual “diversity” of “people who bleed.”

Also everyone bleeds – see Shylock: If you prick us, do we not bleed?

But men don’t menstruate. Men don’t gestate babies so they don’t need a place to gestate babies so they don’t need a uterus, and they also don’t need to feed gestating babies so they don’t need an endometrium so they don’t need to shed part of it once … Read the rest

Liz Cheney was talking to her fellow Republicans:

“The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies,” said Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and the committee’s vice chair. “It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family.”

Some of those people quit their Trump administration jobs on January 6.

The hearing on Thursday detailed Trump’s repeated refusal to quell the deadly mob, even when he knew that some of them were armed and that Vice President Mike Pence’s life was in danger. Cheney suggested the former President’s supporters should view

Greens Leader, MP for Melbourne, calls himself a “dad” in his Twitter profile.

As leaders we have a duty to do the right thing despite the culture warrior tabloids.

“Birthing parent” includes LGBTQ+ people. It does not exclude anyone.

I strongly encourage @billshortenmp to consult widely and reconsider this intervention.

— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) July 22, 2022

Of course “birthing parent” excludes anyone. It excludes mothers, which is a word that applies only to women, so it excludes women. It excludes half of humanity, which is not a small or trivial exclusion.

It never stops taking my breath away to see how comfortable men are excluding and erasing women.… Read the rest

Here’s the clip that shows Trump discussing the Speech to the Seditionists before giving it. It doesn’t reveal any hitherto concealed intelligence or eloquence or rational thought or awareness of moral obligation.

here's raw footage of Trump recording his January 7 video message, getting mad and lashing out, and not wanting to say "the election is over" pic.twitter.com/jIJ2hbO901

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 22, 2022

… Read the rest

The January 6 hearing was lively yesterday.

The committee used Thursday’s hearing to show how Trump not only failed to act, but chose not to as he watched the violent assault on the US Capitol unfold.

Several witnesses with first-hand knowledge of what was happening inside the White House on January 6 told the committee that Trump did not place a single call to any of his law enforcement or national security officials as the Capitol attack was unfolding, according to previously unseen video testimony played during Thursday’s hearing.

The panel said it “confirmed in numerous interviews with senior law enforcement and military leaders, Vice President Mike Pence’s staff, and DC government officials: None of them — not one

The Women’s March…Their Twitter profile proclaims

Five years of resistance, five years of training, five years of building power. Together we will take the power back.

Take the power back. Somehow I don’t think so…

Stay mad ❤️. pic.twitter.com/D0b9V6gONY

— Women's March (@womensmarch) July 21, 2022

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Papito on Blowback for booking.

I horrified some tween girls (among whom, my daughter) the other day by saying just that: “There is no LGBTQIA+ community.”

They were stunned. They had never heard anybody say that before. They kept asking me if I’m an ally. I kept asking them what that means. And I told them that none of my gay friends want me to call myself an “ally,” because they think the word is stupid. They’re gay. I’m not. They’re my friends. That doesn’t make me special in any way. I don’t need a word for that.

The other parents with me backed me up. They’re old enough to remember history too. They pointed … Read the rest

It was Humanists UK who originally reported on the falsified statement:

A UK Government-organised multinational statement committing to the fundamental rights of women and girls has been amended to remove references to ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’. The statement was issued by the UK as part of an intergovernmental conference it hosted in London on 5-6 July. A total of 22 countries signed the joint statement before it was amended. One – anti-abortion Malta – has first signed since. Humanists UK has expressed serious alarm at the changes. It is asking the UK Government for a full explanation, and if possible, a reversal.

That’s extremely shifty behavior. They got the signatures and then they … Read the rest

Now there’s a headline:

Government quietly removes commitments to women’s rights after summit on freedom of beliefs

References to ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’ have been removed from the FCDO statement

References to repealing discriminatory laws that threaten women’s “sexual and reproductive health and rights” and “bodily autonomy” have been removed from a statement published on the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) website.

…

Lisa Hallgarten​, head of policy and public affairs at Brook, which specialises in sexual health for younger people, told i: “The whole point of the original statement is to recognise the need to support the right to religious belief and practice, but ensure it is not at the expense of