All entries by this author

Why not indeed?

Aug 13th, 2025 7:38 am | By

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

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



In which several pastors say

Aug 13th, 2025 6:38 am | By

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



The hidden dissenters

Aug 12th, 2025 4:58 pm | By

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

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After staff complained

Aug 12th, 2025 4:12 pm | By

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

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Frankly it was her fault

Aug 12th, 2025 11:54 am | By

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

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Idaho

Aug 12th, 2025 10:59 am | By

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

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Treat in the offing

Aug 12th, 2025 9:44 am | By

Hoooo boy I cannot wait to read this.

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Getting rid

Aug 12th, 2025 9:35 am | By

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?

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Alongside shyness

Aug 12th, 2025 3:21 am | By
Alongside shyness

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



Tell them to go soak their heads

Aug 11th, 2025 4:58 pm | By

Tantrums win again.

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

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Regional

Aug 11th, 2025 11:36 am | By

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

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As part of a deal

Aug 11th, 2025 10:18 am | By

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

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Forfeit

Aug 11th, 2025 8:33 am | By

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!

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Put the Joint Chiefs on parking duty

Aug 11th, 2025 4:22 am | By

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

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Scrub up

Aug 11th, 2025 3:50 am | By

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

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Once a dramatic feature

Aug 10th, 2025 10:00 am | By

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

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Are you able to speak to the disinformation?

Aug 10th, 2025 8:27 am | By

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

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A manifestation

Aug 10th, 2025 8:00 am | By

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

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Relentless bullying for dinner

Aug 9th, 2025 4:34 pm | By

The Times July 19 2020:

John Boyne has expressed gratitude after a comedian apologised publicly for the “relentless harassment” that caused the novelist great distress.

In a statement published on Twitter last week, Aidan Comerford issued an apology and retraction for suggesting Boyne “has engaged in transphobia [and] implying that he is transphobic, on a number of occasions”.

Comerford, the author of Corn Flakes for Dinner, a comedy about family life, said he had wrongly tweeted that no transgender person would appear with Boyne on an RTE radio interview with Ryan Tubridy in 2019. “I have been informed that, in fact, no transgender person was invited to appear; therefore, I retract and apologise,” he said.

Comerford also admitted

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Perpetuating harmful tropes

Aug 9th, 2025 10:07 am | By

Oh good, another fuss. There can never be enough fussing.

The Polari Prize, the UK’s literary award celebrating LGBTQ+ writing, has come under fire following the release of its 2025 longlist, with critics accusing the organisers of platforming a writer labelled by some as a “TERF”.

The horror!!

The controversy centres around the inclusion of John Boyne, author of Earth, on the main Polari Book Prize longlist. Boyne has previously faced criticism for his portrayal of trans characters, particularly in his 2019 novel My Brother’s Name is Jessica.

And mere criticism is not enough, there must be shunning.

The novel, which follows a cisgender boy struggling to accept his sibling’s transition, was widely condemned by

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