Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on “I don’t think there is an issue”.

An intractable problem (as I see it) is that the formation of stereotypes and norms is a natural and automatic process. Linguistic innovation, for example, spreads because people tend to mimic each other. As mimicry spreads, behavior becomes (statistically) normal. When things are normal for long enough, which really isn’t very long at all, they become (normatively) normal as people begin to see deviation as wrong or indicative of potential danger. A pet example of this is how quickly it became a red flag for potential employers and romantic interests that someone didn’t have a social media presence. Another is how using punctuation and … Read the rest

He had a list.

The man suspected of shooting and killing a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband as well as shooting and wounding a second lawmaker and his wife “stalked his victims like prey” and “shot them in cold blood,” acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph Thompson said.

“His crimes are the stuff of nightmares,” Thompson said at a news conference as he outlined the “chilling” details.

…

Boelter, who was arrested overnight near his farm in Green Isle, Minnesota, is facing federal charges including stalking and firearms charges and state charges including first-degree murder, officials said.

Boelter allegedly surveilled his victims’ homes and took notes, Thompson said. He allegedly had firearms and a list of

There’s a UK organization called ELECT HER.

What do they do?

We work to motivate, support and equip women in all their diversity to stand for political office in Britain.

Good stuff.

Do you include trans women in your work?

Yes. We are a fully inclusive organisation. All women are welcome to register to access our activities. We acknowledge that non-binary people do not fit into the binary categories of women and men, but we recognise that some non-binary people’s experiences or identities intersect with women’s and if you feel you would benefit from accessing a women-centred space, we want to welcome you.

Oh. So it’s not for women in all their diversity, it’s for women and men who … Read the rest

Guest post by Mike Haubrich.

I’m really only an “Out” atheist because religious people keep on assuming that they are the only ones who matter in the public square. (Not all religious people.) I don’t care about other people’s religions, they “neither pick my pocket nor break my leg.”

I realize that there are atheists who are insulting towards the religious, so no need to point that out, either.

In a thread from a state party google group, a religous person related his grief about the assassinations and attempted assassination in Minnesota yesterday. It was a heartfelt post, but he ended it by telling people to pray for the State Senator’s recovery, and then added “even my hardcore atheist … Read the rest

Yup uhuh that’s not a deranged thing to say at all. Keep it up Jonathan: show everyone how batshit you are.

The moral high ground?

The right to be left alone by a rich bored bully! https://t.co/vTNdexD9Uk

— Boy George (@BoyGeorge) June 14, 2025

Hmm. Remind us who and what Boy George is?

JK Rowling has highlighted Boy George’s conviction for beating a male escort with a chain after the singer criticised her campaign to protect women-only spaces such as prisons.

It’s a tough one. On the one hand a guy who handcuffs a male escort to a bed and then beats him with a chain, on the other hand a woman who says men are not women and should not invade women’s spaces. Which to choose, which to choose.

The author of the Harry Potter books was called a

This is very safe and healthy and multicultural. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

A male school bus driver in Ontario, Canada, was confronted by parents after wearing a pink "school girl" outfit while on the job and allegedly calling his bus "the lolita line."

Reduxx can confirm the video was taken at St. Michael the Archangel Elementary in Woodbridge. pic.twitter.com/HmF8Vevaqn

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) June 13, 2025

The “schoolgirl” outfit is of course no such thing. … Read the rest

Dude is furious that some pesky woman who is too short and not-thin for his liking told him he can’t go into the women’s toilets. The Guardian is passionately sympathetic.

I was visiting family in London when the British supreme court handed down its unexpected ruling: under the Equality Act, sex was now considered “binary” in law, which meant transgender people could be banned from single-sex spaces of their gender identity.

Circular enough? What he means is: men could be banned from women’s spaces. Well no shit, Sherlee.

It was my last night in London before returning to Australia. I was in full makeup and a dress when my female friends took me out dancing at

Did any of yez do any No Kings partying? I didn’t. No doubt I should have, but I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm. We couldn’t keep him out 6 months ago so what’s the point of protests now? We’re fucked, and pouring into the streets isn’t going to change that. But maybe I should have anyway. But I didn’t.

Others did.

Hundreds of protests against President Donald Trump have taken place in towns and cities across the US, organised by a group called “No Kings”.

The demonstrations coincided with a rare military parade hosted by Trump in Washington DC, and came after days of protests in Los Angeles and elsewhere over his immigration policies.

Lawmakers, union leaders and activists gave

Dreaming the glorious dream.

Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber’s trans daughter, Kai, always had a vision for her future.

“I want to be a supermodel. Period,” Kai, 16, said in a Q&A with Interview Magazine published Wednesday when asked to share her dream career.

Ahhhh isn’t that lovely? Right up there with wanting to find cures for lethal diseases and ending poverty and lawyering for justice. He wants to be stared at. Kids today have such lofty ambitions!

“I’ve been practising my walks in the kitchen for years; my mum can show you all the videos I forced her to film,” she continued. “Struggling with gender identity from a young age most likely had something to do with it.” The teenager

Living in a sewer chapter eleventy billion.

Donald Trump is trying to justify federal agents handcuffing California Senator Alex Padilla by suggesting that he “looked like an illegal,” his leading biographer has revealed.

“Trump saw these pictures and then has been on the phone saying to people, ‘Nobody’s ever heard of this guy,’” Michael Wolff, the bestselling author, said this week on The Daily Beast Podcast. “As though that’s an excuse. And then he’s gone on to say, ‘and he looks like an illegal.’”

…

Wolff said that Trump excused the assault by dismissing Padilla as an immigrant nobody. “If you are famous, that would obviously put you in a different category and ICE agents would not have

Judge “Victoria” McCloud is not best pleased.

The UK’s only judge to ever publicly say they are transgender has told the BBC she is concerned the Supreme Court’s ruling on biological sex puts lives at risk and fears “someone’s going to get killed” because of it.

Why “they” and “she” in the same sentence?

As for the lives at risk – has the judge ever worried that women will get killed because of the anti-reality ideology he’s promoting? Has he ever told the BBC he’s worried about it?

Dr Victoria McCloud is planning to take the government to the European Court of Human Rights over the April ruling, which said a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities

If only doctors could bring themselves to use the word “women”…

The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded Biden-era guidance clarifying that hospitals in states with abortion bans cannot turn away pregnant patients who are in the midst of medical emergencies – a move that comes amid multiple red-state court battles over the guidance.

The guidance deals with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala), which requires hospitals to stabilize patients facing medical emergencies. States such as Idaho and Texas have argued that the Biden administration’s guidance, which it issued in the wake of the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, interpreted Emtala incorrectly.

…

“This action sends a clear message: the lives and health of pregnant people are

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Bjarte’s The hardest lesson to swallow.

I keep coming back to this idea when I try to understand why people stay loyal to groups that clearly do harm — whether it’s cults like Scientology or gender ideology or extreme political movements like MAGA or Fascism.

It’s that tribal loyalty lives in a completely different part of the brain than rational thinking. And sometimes, the tribal part takes over.

Roughly speaking, it’s the lower brain versus the higher brain. Or if you prefer Freud, the id versus the superego. Or if you’re Homer Simpson, it’s Devil-Homer versus Angel-Homer.

The “lower brain” (or limbic system) is evolutionarily older. It handles emotion, fear, reward, … Read the rest

The BBC tells us lie after lie in its story on a man who tried to make a gun, but so does the Telegraph. How about nobody doing that?

First the Beeb:

A former police community support officer (PCSO) with an “obsession” for weapons has been found guilty of trying to make a gun using a 3D printer.

Zoe Watts, 38, of St Helen’s Avenue, Lincoln, was found with parts for a semi automatic weapon, a machete, bladed article, crossbow and bow during a raid on her home on 11 December. During her trial at Lincoln Crown Court, Watts claimed she was making a “fidget” toy gun as a Christmas present.

She is believed to be the first person

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on If.

…all his opponents thought that he was engaging in hyperbole for dramatic effect

There is certainly no shortage of normalization or “sanewashing” – not to mention delusional levels of wishful thinking – going on. I also suspect that the moderate, centrist tendency to “err on the side of least drama” has become such a reflex to a lot of people that any suggestion that things might actually be that bad sounds like obvious “alarmism” and “hysteria” and hence self-refuting.

Still “all his opponents” seems like an exaggeration to me. There are plenty of people out there who never had any illusions about Trump himself. What a lot more people seem to … Read the rest

More Bad Kennedy news:

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s overhaul of a federal immunization panel has created uncertainty around how widely vaccines will be available this fall and if they’ll be free, according tosix current and former health officials.

You want vaccines to be widely available and free, so that more people get them.

After Kennedy purged the influential committee that recommends vaccines and appointed his own picks, staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who provide the panel withresearch have now been pushed aside, according to the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. With the new advisers scheduled to meet in less than two weeks,other

NPR reports:

RFK Jr. sent Congress ‘medical disinformation’ to defend COVID vaccine schedule change

Interested as I am in Kennedy’s criminal meddling in public health, I’m also interested in a surprising fact about this NPR item: it uses the word “pregnant” seven times and – take a deep breath here – every single time the next word is “women”. Has something shifted?

On to Kennedy’s campaign to make Americans sicker.

A document the Department of Health and Human Services sent to lawmakers to support Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to change U.S. policy on COVID vaccines cites scientific studies that are unpublished or under dispute and mischaracterizes others.

One health expert called the document “willful medical disinformation” about the

They’re there to “liberate” the people from their elected representatives.

…what’s even more significant than authorities detaining a U.S. senator for asking a Cabinet secretary a question at a news conference is Noem’s ominous remark immediately prior to Padilla’s interruption.

“We are not going away,” she warned. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

They are there to liberate “the city” from its elected officials. Not the people of the city but the city. The city is a Platonic essence, a glorious concept that rises above the dross … Read the rest

Reichstag fire.

If they can handcuff a U.S. Senator for asking a question, imagine what they will do to you. pic.twitter.com/cHmK5KZIVF

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 12, 2025

If that’s what they do to a United States Senator with a question, imagine what they can do to any American that dares to speak up. We will hold this administration accountable. pic.twitter.com/ZMExvMmZfE

— Senator Alex Padilla (@SenAlexPadilla) June 12, 2025

We are marching to Senator Thune’s office. There must be accountability for the detainment of a Senator. This is not normal. pic.twitter.com/kupghLfqo1

— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) June 12, 2025

America is dying.

Trump’s agents just physically attacked a U.S. Senator.

This is how freedom dies. https://t.co/pkHuJNjvCj

— Rep. Eric Swalwell