All entries by this author
Jun 7th, 2025 11:15 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Why do grown-ass people keep talking about colonizing Mars?
Albert Burneko points out how absurd the whole thing is.
Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars’s dead core? No? Well. It’s fine. I’m sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let’s discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.
OK, so you still want to talk about Mars. Fine. Let’s imagine
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Jun 7th, 2025 10:44 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Now they tell us they knew all along.
But although the break between Musk and Trump only exploded into public view on Thursday, cracks in the alliance began to appear much earlier. As Musk’s “move fast and break things” bravado complicated the White House’s ambitions to remake American society, the billionaire alienated key members of the White House staff, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and quarreled with Cabinet members, physically coming to blows with one.
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Trump on Truth Social has called for public scrutiny of Musk’s government contracts, potentially imperiling his business empire. Republicans, meanwhile, are wary of how the world’s richest man could use his deep coffers to retaliate against them, especially as he floats the
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Jun 7th, 2025 10:19 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The threats have started.
President Donald Trump on Saturday said there would be “serious consequences” if tech mogul Elon Musk funds Democratic candidates to run against Republicans who vote in favor of the GOP’s sweeping budget bill.
“If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump told NBC News in a phone interview, but declined to share what those consequences would be.
“He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” he added.
Hahahahahaha that “he added” is hilarious. What they mean is he said the same thing twice, as he so often does, because his brain can’t think different thoughts without a lot of time to make the switch. He repeats himself repeats … Read the rest
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Jun 7th, 2025 9:18 am |
By Ophelia Benson
It turns out women should be helping men take over their sports.
Olympic gymnastics champion Simone Biles has called former US swimmer and activist Riley Gaines “sick” over online comments about a transgender woman softball player.
Gaines, who has regularly spoken out about transgender women athletes competing in women’s sport, mocked Minnesota State High School League for removing comments on their post about the Chaplin Park girls’ team celebrating the State Championship. Chaplin Park’s team includes a transgender woman player.
“You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser,” Biles wrote on X.
Not straight up at all. That’s the whole point. It’s not straight up for male people to be allowed … Read the rest
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4 comments
Jun 6th, 2025 3:37 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
They broke up over a guy.
President Trump was peeved.
Just minutes before he walked into the Oval Office for a televised send-off for Elon Musk, an aide had handed him a file.
The papers in that file showed that Mr. Trump’s nominee to run NASA — a close associate of Mr. Musk’s — had donated to prominent Democrats in recent years, including some who Mr. Trump was learning about for the first time.
That slut!!
Mr. Musk, who was sporting a black eye, which he blamed on a tussle with his young son, tried to explain. He said his friend Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who was set to become the next NASA administrator, cared about getting
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Jun 6th, 2025 11:25 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The rewrite team has been allowed entry at last.
NHS chiefs have been forced to rip up their pro-trans guidance after it was rendered illegal by the Supreme Court ruling.
The NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, has quietly withdrawn guidance telling hospitals that they should allow trans people to use their chosen toilets and changing rooms.
Guidance they should never have issued in the first place. I still, after all this time, cannot understand how adults managed to convince themselves to be so gullible and stupid about this issue.
The group told The Telegraph it had taken the guide down from its website because it had become “dated” since the Supreme Court judgment that the word sex in the
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Jun 6th, 2025 9:27 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Idols toppling in all directions.
Australia’s foremost gender-medicine expert and the lead author of the nation’s guidelines on gender-affirming care, Michelle Telfer, was excoriated by a Family Court judge for giving misleading evidence in support of a mother who wanted her child to be prescribed puberty blockers, in a judgment that has called into question the integrity of treatment of gender-dysphoric children.
So what exactly is a “gender-medicine expert”? Telfer sounds more like a shill than an expert.
Judge Andrew Strum, who stripped the mother of custody and effectively blocked the 12-year-old from accessing treatment, criticised the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne for failing to give the child a formal gender dysphoria diagnosis until the court proceedings had commenced, despite
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Jun 6th, 2025 8:35 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Oh hey gee what do you know, Khelif is “skipping” a match where he would be tested.
Olympic champion Imane Khelif is skipping the Eindhoven Box Cup in the Netherlands less than a week after World Boxing announced mandatory sex testing for all athletes.
The Algerian boxer, who won gold at the Paris Games last summer amid scrutiny over her eligibility, did not register in time for the event before applications closed on Thursday.
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The 26-year-old Khelif had intended to return to international competition at the Eindhoven tournament this weekend before World Boxing announced its new sex testing policy last Friday. The governing body specifically mentioned Khelif, saying she’d have to screened to be approved to fight at
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Jun 5th, 2025 6:45 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
A gynecologist has misgivings.
I performed my first hysterectomy for gender confirmation in 2019. I was so delighted to help out my own LGBT community. I took immense pride in being my local LGBT clinic’s official gynecologist. What greater joy is there in medicine than providing great care to a vulnerable, underserved community, all with the support of your administration? It was how the world should be.
Six years later, I wonder.
The hysterectomies went well. They were uncomplicated. Even the one patient who came back to see me for well woman care after detransitioning didn’t tell me she regretted her surgery. I hope that all those patients are still happy not to have their uteri. But in terms
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Jun 5th, 2025 6:09 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Ok this is just plain hilarious.
The alliance between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk spectacularly imploded Thursday as the world’s most prominent bromance collapsed into mutual public trolling.
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The public unraveling began in the Oval Office, where Trump spoke to reporters at the start of a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
“Elon and I had a great relationship,” he said. “I don’t know if we will anymore.”
Oh I know. Did you hear what Sally said to Lucy about it? It’s like all over the school.
The quarrel escalated rapidly from there, with the two men blasting out angry posts on their respective social media platforms.
Which I cannot help laughing at. We knew how childish … Read the rest
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5 comments
Jun 5th, 2025 11:23 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump is fine with women dying rather than having emergency abortions.
The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would revoke guidance to the nation’s hospitals that directed them to provide emergency abortions for women when they are necessary to stabilize their medical condition.
Easy for him. He’s not going to die of septicemia because the hospital refuses to meddle with his pregnancy.
That guidance was issued to hospitals in 2022, weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upended national abortion rights in the U.S. It was an effort by the Biden administration to preserve abortion access for extreme cases in which women were experiencing medical emergencies and needed an abortion to prevent organ loss or severe hemorrhaging, among other
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Jun 5th, 2025 11:05 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Aw gee, their great love lasted only three months.
President Trump and Elon Musk’s alliance dissolved into open acrimony on Thursday, as the two men hurled personal attacks at each other after the billionaire had unleashed broadsides against the president’s signature domestic policy bill.
While meeting with Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new chancellor, in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump broke days of uncharacteristic silence and unloaded on Mr. Musk, who until last week was a top presidential adviser.
“I’m very disappointed in Elon,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve helped Elon a lot.”
As the president criticized Mr. Musk, the billionaire responded in real time on X, the social media platform he owns.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election,
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Jun 5th, 2025 10:39 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Yes why do these silly people get so angry about the tank driven through women’s rights, the children and teenagers with ruined bodies, the fanatical belief in a nonsensical creed, the endless ferocious bullying – what is there that’s even slightly annoying about any of that? Who can possibly figure it out?
… Read the rest
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6 comments
Jun 5th, 2025 9:30 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Peak majority/minority who is the most minorityized confusion achieved.
The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled in favor of a straight woman who twice lost positions to gay workers, saying an appeals court had been wrong to require her to meet a heightened burden in seeking to prove workplace discrimination because she was a member of a majority group.
Because what? Because she was a member of what?
News flash: women are not the dominant aka preferred aka privileged sex. Women are the sex seen as weak and stupid and not as good as the alternative sex. It’s not about majority or minority, it’s about being perceived as inferior. The two are not the same, and people in a … Read the rest
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Jun 4th, 2025 3:31 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Dang. That’s so the opposite of an accurate definition. It’s like saying flying is crawling through mud, or a daffodil is a mound of bear shit, or India Willoughby is thoughtful and reasonable.
Rules about where the different sexes go to pee are human inventions, and thus the very opposite of instinctive.
Oddly enough, this also applies to … Read the rest
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