All entries by this author
May 31st, 2025 3:56 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Ouch. Sports journalist Steve Bunce is getting ferociously chastised for pretending he never did fall for the Imane Khelif bullshit when in fact…
Some of us did, but it seems he did that other thing.
https://twitter.com/SoniaRGallego/status/1928544182450160015
Well um errr
https://twitter.com/JammersMinde/status/1928568993092092104
The wheels of justice grind slowly but they grind exceeding fine.
… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
1 Comment »
May 30th, 2025 4:14 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Thieves fall out.
Donald Trump unleashed a furious screed lamenting his recent legal loss on tariffs, and pointed the finger at “sleazebag” conservative billionaire Leonard Leo, the ex-chairman of the Federalist Society.
In a post on Truth Social Thursday night, Trump railed against the U.S. Court of International Trade’s ruling the previous day, which found that the president had exceeded his legal authority by imposing sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, based on vague claims of “national emergencies.”
Oh dear, he’s a sleazebag? According to Donald Trump, the sleaziest sleaze bag most of us have ever seen?
On Thursday, the Trump administration was granted a temporary stay of the little-known federal court’s ruling while the government appeals—but that
…
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
May 30th, 2025 10:45 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Khelif told “no” at last.
Imane Khelif, the boxer at the heart of the gender controversy at the Olympics, has been barred from making a competitive comeback next week.
World Boxing have confirmed that they will introduce mandatory sex testing and that they have written to the Algerian Boxing Federation to inform them that Khelif will not be able to compete at the Eindhoven Box Cup.
The amateur boxing federation said that Khelif would have to undergo sex testing before she could compete at any of their events.
HE. Don’t call him “she” in the very act of reporting on his cheating ffs.
In a statement, the governing body, which has taken on running amateur boxing and did not
…
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
3 comments
May 30th, 2025 10:19 am |
By Ophelia Benson
This is just dumb. Really dumb.
Gay and lesbian adults identify more with straight and bisexual individuals, nearly doubling in percentage compared to what they have in common with transgender individuals, according to a new survey.
…
About half of gay and lesbian adults said they have a great deal or a fair amount in common with bisexual people (50 percent) and straight people (51 percent), compared to 28 percent who said they have a lot in common with transgender people.
But it’s a stupid question. It’s like asking people if they have more in common with farmers or Santa Claus. Pretending to be the opposite sex is radically different from being attracted to either sex. Attraction is one thing … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments
May 30th, 2025 8:27 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The Catholic church is evil chapter eleventy billion.
Washington’s Catholic leaders sued state leaders and county prosecutors Thursday, alleging that a controversial new law requiring priests to break the confessional seal to report suspected child abuse is “a brazen act of religious discrimination.”
Oh piss off you evil theocratic shits. Your “confessional seal” has protected who knows how many child rapists and torturers.
The new law adds clergy to a list of other professions, such as health care workers and school personnel, who are mandatory reporters of abuse. But the church’s lawsuit pushes back on a provision of the law that does not allow carve-outs for things said during confession, and exposes priests to potential arrest.
Long overdue. … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
7 comments
May 30th, 2025 6:45 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Fake fake fake fake.
A US government report on children’s health cited “totally fabricated” studies to back up its findings, academics wrongly listed as the authors of those studies have said.
First released on 22 May, the report detailed causes of a “chronic disease crisis” among children in the US. An amended version was issued on 29 May after digital outlet NOTUS found it had used seven non-existent sources.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said there were “formatting issues” and the report would be updated, but it did “not negate the substance of the report”.
Uh, no, citing sources that don’t exist is not a “formatting issue” – and citing sources that don’t exist very much does negate … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments
May 29th, 2025 4:59 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Guest post by Ryan Richter
At this point I hope we have all imagined the possibility of a future with economic prosperity and without fossil carbon-based motor fuels. You can use electricity and renewable sources for most things. OK, but what about everything else? Motor fuels and fossil carbon electricity generation aren’t the whole story by a long shot. There’s steel and aliminum, oh and also cement. And then there’s organic chemistry more generally – can’t you do that without burning the oil? Well, no, not today you can’t. This is what I want to take the knife to. We have the tools, but I don’t hear many people talking about how to really use them to full effect.
I’m … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
6 comments
May 29th, 2025 11:45 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Paul Krugman is verklempt.
It will take me a while to digest this:
Quoting from the NY Times article then commenting:
A panel of federal judges on Wednesday blocked President Trump from imposing some of his steepest tariffs on China and other U.S. trading partners, finding in two cases that he vastly overstepped his ability to issue those expansive duties under federal law.
The ruling, by the U.S. Court of International Trade, delivered an early yet significant setback to Mr. Trump in his campaign to strike a series of agreements that reorient the nation’s trading relationships, setting up a legal fight that could soon reach the Supreme Court.
The cases centered on the president’s use of a 1977 federal
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
May 29th, 2025 9:27 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Who gets to define an emergency? Why, Donald Trump, of course. No one understands emergencies the way Donald Trump understands emergencies.
The Trump administration blamed “activist judges” on Thursday for blocking Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs as it looks to overturn a major legal blow to the president’s signature economic policy.
On Wednesday a US trade court ruled Trump’s tariffs regime was illegal, in a dramatic twist that could block the US president’s controversial global trade policy.
The ruling by a three-judge panel at the New York-based court of international trade came after several lawsuits argued Trump had exceeded his authority, leaving US trade policy dependent on the president’s whims and unleashing economic chaos around the world.
Tariffs typically need to
…
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5 comments
May 29th, 2025 7:15 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Some men refuse to take no for an answer.
Imane Khelif is preparing to return to competitive women’s boxing in Eindhoven next month, threatening another major international controversy in a sport still reeling from the Algerian’s gold medal at the Paris Olympics.
Promoting this year’s Eindhoven Box Cup, Dutch organisers have released a poster declaring: “Proud that Imane Khelif is there again to defend her title.”
Don’t be. Enabling a man to cheat his way into a women’s match is not something to be proud of. And it’s his title he’s “defending” aka stealing.
While Khelif has made dramatic legal threats against Elon Musk and JK Rowling, accusing them of “cyberbullying” for their comments on the gender row,
…
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments
May 28th, 2025 5:32 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The Telegraph informs us:
Kate Nash has taken an apparent swipe at JK Rowling in a new pro-trans single. Germ, a spoken word track, consists of a repeated declaration that an unnamed “girl” is “exclusionary, regressive, misogynist” for raising concerns about transgender issues.
Nash has said it is transphobic to exclude trans women from female-only lavatories and sports, and declared in the track that she had “never felt threatened by a trans person”.
And as we all know, if one person has never felt threatened by X, that is irrefutable proof that X is safe for everyone on the planet. There’s a bear racing toward you looking hungry, but don’t worry, I don’t feel threatened by that bear, … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
17 comments
May 28th, 2025 11:31 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump fires all the historians.
An advisory committee of diverse historians helps ensure that the record of America’s history — especially classified and covert actions — remains unbiased, transparent and thorough.
President Donald Trump just fired all of the members of the committee.
These advisers help oversee the exhaustive publication series called the Foreign Relations of the United States — or the FRUS, as insiders call it — and lawmakers rely on it daily. It is available to the public in major libraries and online.
The volume began in 1861, when Congress demanded a full account of Lincoln’s foreign policy during the Civil War. More than 450 volumes have been printed since.
Later accusations that the documentation was partisan
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9 comments
May 28th, 2025 10:37 am |
By Ophelia Benson
When it becomes too obvious that climate change is real, the thing to do is say we can’t do anything about it.
The world is facing a new form of climate denial – not the dismissal of climate science, but a concerted attack on the idea that the economy can be reorganised to fight the crisis, the president of global climate talks has warned.
André Corrêa do Lago, the veteran Brazilian diplomat who will direct this year’s UN summit, Cop30, believes his biggest job will be to counter the attempt from some vested interests to prevent climate policies aimed at shifting the global economy to a low-carbon footing.
Sort of the way you want to prevent firefighters from … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
9 comments
May 28th, 2025 10:19 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Bad Kennedy informs us that all the scientific journals are “corrupt” and it’s only the fake ones that are any good, so he’ll be the all-fake boss of Medicare and the rest of it.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday that he may bar government scientists from publishing in the world’s leading medical journals, instead proposing the creation of “in-house” publications by his agency —the latest in the Trump administration’s attacks on scientific institutions.
“We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and those other journals because they’re all corrupt,” Kennedy said during an appearance on the “Ultimate Human” podcast. He also described the journals as being under
…
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3 comments