Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on How DO we put up with it?

Most murdered? Come off it. One look at official homicide statistics should put that to rest, but activists are actively hostile to data. Just as with the religious, statistics and math and facts are not how they came by their beliefs in the first place. Remember, “If your original Hebrew disagrees with my original King James — your original Hebrew is wrong. If your original Hebrew agrees with my original King James, your original Hebrew is right.”

They’ve heard the idea that trans people are being murdered and denied basic rights at a terrifying rate. They’ve heard it a lot. As Daniel Kahneman … Read the rest

John Cleese is on a tear at the moment.

I've been disappointed for many years that some people
don't entirely agree with me about everything

Frankly, I don't know how I put up with it https://t.co/sAc0XAGjWt

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) September 28, 2020

This is not the way I see it

A lot of woke behaviours seem to me posturing ; striking attitudes that allow them to experience the lovely, warm glow of moral superiority, while justifying their own aggression by using denial-and-projection defences https://t.co/UdBT9FijWC

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) September 28, 2020

Oh, I didn't know that she supported hating vulnerable people.

I'll check it out with her

But the rest of your rambling suggests you are a bit 'vulnerable'

… Read the rest

It’s infuriating but it’s also depressing. The Trump campaign and Cambridge Analytica persuaded black voters in swing states that Trump would be preferable to Clinton. That’s worked out well.

Donald Trump’s 2016 US presidential election campaign has been accused of actively seeking to deter 3.5 million black Americans in battleground states from voting by deliberately targeting them with negative Hillary Clinton ads on Facebook.

By “negative Hillary Clinton ads” they mean “dishonest disparaging” Clinton ads.

According to the investigation, the Trump campaign’s goal was to dissuade them from backing the Democrat entirely, by targeting them with “dark adverts” on their Facebook feeds, which heavily attacked Clinton and, in some cases, argued she lacked sympathy with African Americans.

Unlike Trump, … Read the rest

Bookstores have to be safe spaces!

Don’t they? Isn’t that the whole point of them? Or have I misundertood?

Rabble Books thinks they do.

An Australian bookstore will no longer stock J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, in order to make the shop a “safer space” for customers.

It’s a sad fact about the Harry Potter books that they tend to burst into flames after you’ve read a few pages. No, that’s not it, they’re laced with arsenic. No, wait, they’re contaminated with plutonium. No, I know, there are tigers and rattlesnakes between the pages.

Rabble Books and Games located in Maylands, a suburb of Perth, made the announcement on Facebook this week, saying that it would no longer

… Read the rest

Oh jeez.

That got sketchy fast. We followed the senior home bus out and #ShadyFire spotted probably more than mile ahead of flames on ridge. Fire on both sides of Highway 12. Bus did not stop and we made it through. Evacuated to Vet Auditorium. @sfchronicle pic.twitter.com/qBgq2xhLdv

— Matthias Gafni (@mgafni) September 28, 2020

Spoke to city bus driver who drove through the fire and embers to get the seniors to safety. She didn’t want to use her name or be photographed.

“I was just so happy to help.”#ShadyFire pic.twitter.com/ogttcptM2u

— Matthias Gafni (@mgafni) September 28, 2020

… Read the rest

Uh oh, it seems that billionaire Don hasn’t been paying a huge amount of income tax. You’d think the tariff on the income from all those billions would be quite a high figure, but…

Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed billionaire, paid only $750 in federal income taxes in the year he was elected US president, according to a stunning New York Times investigation that could shake up the presidential election.

My goodness. That’s a very small figure.

The president “paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency”, the paper reported, adding that “in his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

“He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the

… Read the rest

No, that’s you.

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1310168171157106688

I know GC people believe that people are gifted with some kind of magic, unmeasurable, immutable sexed soul at conception, but there’s just no evidence for that mate

That’s so gaslighty. That is not what gender critical people believe, that is the exact, precise opposite of what gender critical people believe. That’s the whole point. We don’t believe the fairy tale of the magic gender that belies the body, it’s uncritical trans ideology that believes and promotes that silly idea. All we believe is the tautology that a female body is a female body, and there’s nothing magic or unmeasurable about it. We call people who have female bodies “women” and we don’t call people who … Read the rest

There’s an open letter supporting JK Rowling in the Sunday Times:

JK Rowling has been subjected to an onslaught of abuse that highlights an insidious, authoritarian and misogynistic trend in social media.

Rowling has consistently shown herself to be an honourable and compassionate person, and the appalling hashtag #RIPJKRowling is just the latest example of hate speech directed against her and other women that Twitter and other platforms enable and implicitly endorse.

We are signing this letter in the hope that, if more people stand up against the targeting of women online, we might at least make it less acceptable to engage in it or profit from it.

We wish JK Rowling well and stand in solidarity with her.

Signed … Read the rest

I never can figure out how this is supposed to work, this claim that a senator’s or justice’s religion makes no difference to what the senator or justice will do.

Much has been made of Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic faith following her nomination for the supreme court. Some have speculated it may affect her rulings on matters such as abortion and LGBT rights, while others have expressed disquiet about her membership of the secretive People of Praise group.

Why is it “speculation” to think that “Catholic faith” will influence how Barrett rules on abortion? The “Catholic faith” is fanatically opposed to abortion, and correspondingly indifferent to the rights and needs of women, so if you hold “Catholic … Read the rest

Sure, why not?

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law on Saturday requiring California to house transgender inmates in prisons based on their gender identity — but only if the state does not have “management or security concerns.”

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation houses men and women in separate facilities. Transgender inmates are often housed based on their sex assigned at birth. Advocates say this is dangerous, particularly for transgender women housed in facilities for men.

That’s so interesting, because you know what’s even more dangerous? Housing women in facilities for men. Which is a pity, because that’s exactly what California is doing here. Women who identify as trans aren’t going to ask to be housed with men, are … Read the rest

The US health department is throwing away $300 million on a Don’t Worry Be Happy campaign due to run in the weeks leading up to (purely coincidentally) the election. Or to put it slightly less combatively:

The health department is moving quickly on a highly unusual advertising campaign to “defeat despair” about the coronavirus, a $300 million-plus effort that was shaped by a political appointee close to President Donald Trump and executed in part by close allies of the official, using taxpayer funds.

The ad blitz, described in some budget documents as the “Covid-19 immediate surge public advertising and awareness campaign,” is expected to lean heavily on video interviews between administration officials and celebrities…

Because what is more urgent and … Read the rest

The suspect confirms the motive.

A man suspected of stabbing two people with a meat cleaver in Paris has admitted to deliberately targeting the former offices of the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine, French media report.

The man, an 18-year-old born in Pakistan, reportedly linked his actions to the magazine’s recent republication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

I never can understand why religious fanatics don’t just let their god deal with it. Their god is supposed to be all-powerful and perfect, so why does it need their help?

Thinking their god needs human help to eliminate enemies betrays a certain feebleness in the belief department, if you ask me. The goddy murderers might as well be atheists.

The suspect,

… Read the rest

Disquieting.

President Donald Trump this week said he wants to immediately fill the new Supreme Court vacancy because he expects the panel to decide the 2020 presidential election. 

Which is bizarre all by itself because normally the election does that. But wait, there’s more.

On Friday, multiple news outlets reported that Trump intends to nominate Amy Coney Barrett, who would be the third justice on the court to have worked for Republicans directly on the Bush v. Gore case that handed the 2000 election to the GOP. She would be the second installed on the court by Trump.

And working “for Republicans directly on the Bush v. Gore case that handed the 2000 election to the GOP” means working … Read the rest

But nobody ever claimed that. Not ever. We were solemnly assured of it only yesterday. Nobody ever said trans people were “born in the wrong body.”

From the age of two and a half, Sasha has insisted she’ll grow up a girl. She was born in a boy’s body. In his tender observational documentary, film-maker Sébastien Lifshitz’s (Les Invisibles, Bambi, Adolescentes) spends a year following seven-year-old Sasha and her family as they struggle to navigate her gender dysphoria in their provincial French home town.

Maybe it’s a French thing? Everybody knows how zany the French are.

Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume captures Sasha in widescreen, his camera watchful as she pads delicately across the room in ballet

… Read the rest

Uh oh uh oh The Graun has fallen behind the trend.

Little Girl review – tender film about a girl born in a boy’s body https://t.co/BiXBDs2VO5

— The Guardian (@guardian) September 26, 2020

… Read the rest

Trump’s pick to fill RBG’s seat is a religious fanatic. Awesome.

A current Notre Dame law school professor, 48-year-old Barrett is a devout Catholic and mother of seven children, two of whom were adopted from Haiti and one who is a child with Down syndrome—all attributes that conservatives see as evidence that she will help overturn Roe v. Wade if confirmed. But Barrett brings another resume entry to the table that, while possibly enhancing her appeal to evangelicals, makes her an unusual candidate for the job.

She’s a member of People of Praise, a charismatic covenant community in South Bend, Indiana, that has been criticized by former members for being a religious cult. Though most of its members are

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Barr seems eager.

Old conventional wisdom: Biden needs to win the popular vote by ~ 3 points to avoid an Electoral College loss

New conventional wisdom: Biden needs to win the popular vote by ~ 5-6 points to avoid it being close enough for Trump to steal.

Welcome to America, everyone. The shining city on a hill. (gag) A beacon of democracy. (eye roll)

On a related note, David Frum had a good Twitter thread recently where he called out the utter nonsense that gets babbled every Inauguration Day, when television talking heads marvel at the “peaceful transfer of power” that occurs, even between rival political factions. Such a uniquely American tradition! … Read the rest

It all boils down to the Senate. Trump and Republican legislators are openly planning ways to steal the election.

So now a dark question arises. What will the US’s increasingly progressive majority do if Republican state officials reinstall Trump in the White House, in defiance of the voters? What will they do if that 6-3 court overturns Roe v Wade and bans abortion across the entire country?

Think for a second how that latter situation will have arisen: it is because the Senate picks the judges, and the Senate enshrines minority rule. With two senators per state, tiny Wyoming (population: 600,000) has the same representation as gargantuan California (40 million). On current trends, 70% of Americans will soon

… Read the rest

A week ago.

https://twitter.com/OkBiology/status/1306635799765676032

Bev Jackson: Now there are people who believe that they were born in the wrong body. We personally don’t believe that anybody can be born in the wrong body –

Benjamin Butterworth: Hunhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Bev Jackson: ……You find that shocking – but we don’t believe that someone can –

Benjamin Butterworth: I find that bigotry!

Today:

https://twitter.com/AdrianHarrop/status/1309461546528104449

Hunhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! … Read the rest

Charlie Hebdo again:

Two people have been stabbed and seriously hurt in Paris near the former offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Two suspects have been arrested. One of them was seized in the nearby Bastille area with blood on his clothing, police told the BBC.

…

A blade – described as a machete or a meat cleaver – was recovered at the scene of the attack near the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

The people stabbed worked at a tv company in the area.

“Two colleagues were smoking a cigarette outside the building, in the street. I heard shouting. I went to the window and saw one of my colleagues, covered in blood, being chased by a man with a

… Read the rest