All entries by this author

Guest post: How to bonsai a personality

May 22nd, 2023 10:01 am | By

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Lipstick=target of death threats.

I despise these platitudes.

“I can predict the future, and you’re going to be okay.”

Unless you’re not, in which case you’ll be dead and unable to point out how full of crap I was.

“Maybe all you need to know is you are great, just as you are now!”

Maybe all you need to know is that you are not great, just as you are now. Maybe, you kind of suck and need to take some time to make the effort to not suck. Maybe you need to consider that there is a whole world out there full of things you don’t know or understand, and rather … Read the rest



Moving boxes

May 22nd, 2023 8:43 am | By

Is there a Stupidity Defense? Trump could use one.

Federal prosecutors have evidence Donald Trump was put on notice that he could not retain any classified documents after he was subpoenaed for their return last year, as they examine whether the subsequent failure to fully comply with the subpoena was a deliberate act of obstruction by the former president.

The previously unreported warning conveyed to Trump by his lawyer Evan Corcoran could be significant in the criminal investigation surrounding Trump’s handling of classified materials given it shows he knew about his subpoena obligations.

Well this is where the stupidity defense comes into play. Telling Trump things doesn’t equal Trump knowing things. First, he has to listen. Second, no, seriously, … Read the rest



Lipstick=target of death threats

May 21st, 2023 5:03 pm | By

Rolling Stone is making googoo eyes at Jeffrey Marsh.

YOU DON’T HAVE to tell Jeffrey Marsh they make a certain portion of the internet upset. They’re well aware— they just won’t let it stop them from helping people. 

Politics and idenniny aside, the “they” affectation is just bad writing. It makes extra work for the reader. It’s confusing and distracting both at once. That makes it irritating, so that’s three things that get between the reader and the writing.

Long before trans star Dylan Mulvaney‘s collaboration with Bud Light lit a portion of the right’s brains on fire, Marsh was making videos about love. Part pun, part dance, part affirmations, their videos directly address the viewers, encouraging them

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Actually do something?

May 21st, 2023 12:31 pm | By

Disturbing. Really disturbing. The whole and only point is to frighten people, to make them terrified and upset and even bereft (the one where he grabs a woman’s small dog and dashes off with it). The whole and only point is to make people miserable, and this vile man giggles like a loon the entire time.

There are sadists in the world; did I not know that? I did know it. I guess it’s the social media thing – now there are sadists in the world who share their sadism on TikTok. Yay human progress.

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What was that about sending a harmful message?

May 21st, 2023 10:19 am | By

Every word of this ridiculous piece is wrong. It’s just one bonehead error after another. It’s a man saying why it’s good for men to take over women’s sports.

As our understanding of gender identity continues to evolve, so too does the conversation around trans athletes in competitive sports.

“Gender identity” is a stupid new religion, and the “understanding” of people like Anthony Bernardi is not evolving but decaying.

Trans women, in particular, have become the focus of heated debate when it comes to their participation in women’s sports.

Duh. That’s because they’re men, so their “participation” in women’s sports is cheating and bad. Women in men’s sports don’t have the same power to cheat. Trans “women” are intrudingRead the rest



Laws of physics not cool

May 21st, 2023 9:25 am | By

It drives me crazy how normalized dangerous driving is.

Road safety campaigners have accused the UK home secretary of trying to downplay the dangers of speeding after she reportedly requested a private speed awareness course after being caught driving over the speed limit.

Bad writing. You have to read the whole piece to understand that she requested a private course instead of a group one. She didn’t ask for a speed awareness course because she wanted to improve her awareness, she asked for a private one instead of a group one because she wanted to be sneaky.

Within the last year, two of Braverman’s ministers at the Home Office were banned from driving for six months. The immigration minister,

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Build those milk ducts

May 21st, 2023 9:07 am | By

Never mind about the health of the baby, if the man wants to “participate” in breastfeeding the baby by taking a cocktail of drugs and hormones here’s the list. Women, meanwhile, must not drink so much as a glass of wine.

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Pronounial termination

May 21st, 2023 7:14 am | By

What a stupid thing to lose a job over – curated pronouns ffs.

A New York Christian university terminated two employees for putting pronouns in their respective email signatures, these former workers allege, according to reports.

Where are all the secular universities here? The idea that pronouns are magic is more theocratic than secular; the secular universities absolutely need to resist that idea too.

Raegan Zelaya and Shua Wilmot, who were residence hall directors at Houghton University, said that administrators told them to take the words “she/her” and “he/him” off of their email signatures.

Apart from anything else, customized pronouns in email are utterly stupid because nobody is going to be using their pronouns in email in the first place. … Read the rest



Boy takes 2d in the girls’

May 21st, 2023 6:56 am | By

Another girl loses another opportunity to a boy in a girls’ sport.

It’s the girls 1600m so the boy shouldn’t have been there at all. It’s not fair. It’s obviously not fair.

This damn fool doesn’t understand “fair.”

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Hawt

May 21st, 2023 5:24 am | By

The kids today, you know? How does anybody think anybody wants to watch a clip of “Watch me squirming to music in the front seat of a car”?

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Corrections

May 20th, 2023 4:43 pm | By
Corrections

Well let’s face it, wims, your bodies just are ugly. We know it, you know it, the whole world knows it. We try to be polite about it but when we want to show off our fabulous new swimsuits it would be stupid to get lumpy bulgy clumsy women to do it. It takes a man to model a women’s swimsuit.

Adidas has come under fire for advertising a female-style swimming costume using a model with a penis.

That’s the small polite kind of bulge. Not like those sloppy bobbly breast things, let alone those giant buttocks.

See how beautiful???? Who would dream of replacing that with a woman?

The move has prompted criticism from campaigners for women’s equality

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Threatening, abusive, insulting, or obscene

May 20th, 2023 10:55 am | By

Interesting. This cop tells Billboard Chris that if his sign says something “offensive” to anyone that’s “where you fall short.” He says it’s the law, and he says it more than once. Chris reasonably points out that that would mean anything at all could fit that description and the cop agrees that it could. But the cop is wrong.

The bit where the cop says it:

The bit where he’s wrong:

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Contact

May 20th, 2023 9:56 am | By

He said to them, quite honestly, no.

They told him he could do coaching or reffing, but no, he said, if he did that it would mean he was accepting “that trans women can’t play this sport.”

No it wouldn’t. That’s a lie. The usual lie. It would mean he was accepting that men (including men who identify as trans) can’t play women’s rugby. Not the whole sport, just the women’s sport. So, he’s … Read the rest



Too scalded by the sense of injustice

May 20th, 2023 6:39 am | By

Oliver Brown at the Telegraph talked to cyclist Hannah Arensman about being forced to compete against a man. Her passion for cycling

was a passion she channelled with distinction, wearing the colours of her country, winning national medals, even nurturing a dream of representing the United States at next summer’s Paris Olympics. And yet last December, at the age of 24, she simply walked away. The immediate trigger for that decision was not injury or dwindling form, but the fact that in her final race, at the US cyclocross championships in Connecticut, she lost out on a podium place to a biological male. “There are,” she says, “a million different levels where it hurts.”

Arensman was fourth on that Hartford

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Alberta burns

May 20th, 2023 4:56 am | By

The climate emergency in progress:

The province of Alberta, Canada, home to more than four million people, is under a state of emergency, as nearly 100 wildfires burn, dozens of them out of control. Since the first local state of emergency was declared on 4 May, over 782,000 hectares of land – 1.9 million American football fields or more than 3,000 square miles – have burned, local officials said.

Thousands of firefighters and support staff from across Canada and the US have descended upon the area to fight the ceaseless flames. Still, there are 93 active wildfires in Alberta as of 12:00 EST (17:00 BST) on Friday, and experts say the end is nowhere in sight.

Wild fires are … Read the rest



Dodgers v perpetual indulgence

May 20th, 2023 4:43 am | By

Nobody disinvites the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

LA Pride has pulled out of an annual Pride Night hosted by the Dodgers after the team disinvited a non-profit drag group from the event.

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Dodgers rescinded an invitation to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a well-known San Francisco order of queer and trans ‘nuns’ that has existed since the 1970s, amid opposition from conservative Catholics. The group, which does does charitable and protest work in addition to its street drag show performances, was set to receive an award during a ceremony before a 16 June game against the San Francisco Giants.

Conservative Catholics can go soak their heads. The Catholic church is an evil institution … Read the rest



A nice spikey barbed wire fence

May 19th, 2023 5:16 pm | By

Willoughby. Such a nice guy.

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Fox’s alleged disinformation

May 19th, 2023 10:29 am | By

The Guardian on Jankowicz v Fox part 2:

Her aim she said was partly to show that individuals could also confront the powerful, not just businesses like Dominion and Smartmatic. “These companies have venture capital firms behind them, they can afford fancy lawyers and years-long trials to hold Fox to account. For individuals like me, it’s much harder – and I don’t believe that is something that our system can sustain.”

By bringing the lawsuit, she runs the risk of potentially opening herself up to a renewed wave of criticism that she is attempting to limit free speech protected under the first amendment. The Guardian asked her whether suing for defamation was the best way to counter Fox’s alleged

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The rule of disinformation

May 19th, 2023 9:03 am | By

Oddly familiar.

Nina Jankowicz sued Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for allegedly damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. The lawsuit was lodged in a Delaware state court exactly a year after she resigned as executive director of a new Department of Homeland Security unit combatting online disinformation.

The Disinformation Governance Board was abruptly shut down in the wake of a storm of virulent rightwing criticism, allegedly fueled by Fox News. Jankowicz and the new DHS division she led were attacked as being part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by Joe Biden.

Shutting down disinformation is translated to stifling politically incorrect opinion. We’ve been seeing that translation around … Read the rest



New highs

May 19th, 2023 8:38 am | By

Is that steam?

Temperatures in the world’s oceans have broken fresh records, testing new highs for more than a month in an “unprecedented” run that has led to scientists stating the Earth has reached “uncharted territory” in the climate crisis.

The rapid acceleration of ocean temperatures in the last month is an anomaly that scientists have yet to explain. Data collated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), known as the Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) series, gathered by satellites and buoys, has shown temperatures higher than in any previous year, in a series stretching back to 1981, continuously over the past 42 days.

Prof Mike Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey said: “This has

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