Originally a comment by KB Player on In the wake.

I absolutely don’t get this. In our imperial days (British variety) we were known as perfidious Albion for betraying our allies (actually we were no more perfidious than France, the Habsburgs, Russia, or any of our rivals) but we were polite to them before stabbing them in the back. It’s sheer prudence to be so, just in case perfidiousness is no longer in your interest. This blatant rudeness serves no purpose at all.

If you have vassals – and we in Britain have been a servile vassal to our imperial overlord – there’s no point in humiliating them unnecessarily. Humiliate them in deed if it serves your purposes, but … Read the rest

From the NY Times Ethicist column, currently provided by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah:

44 year old woman has been unable to conceive.

After three years of trying and multiple I.V.F. attempts (fortunately covered by insurance), my doctors have said that, at 44, I won’t be able to get pregnant with my own eggs. My husband and I have decided to pursue egg donation, which, unlike adoption, is covered by our insurance.

Ah right – they want to go the cheaper route.

I’d like the donation process to be as open as possible, ideally knowing our donor so our child could have a relationship with her. Most clinics, however, still use anonymous donation. Private donor-egg agencies that facilitate communication are

Europe just isn’t one of the cool kids any more.

The European Union is, in many ways, the antithesis of the principles that Mr. Trump and his colleagues are championing. The bloc is built around an embrace of international trade based on rules. It has been at the forefront of climate-related regulation and social media user protections.

Well rules are for peons. The best people do whatever they want all the time, because they’re the best people. Regulation and protections are horrible things, because they hinder the best people for the sake of peons.

If the relationship between the United States and Europe were merely transactional, it would be relatively easy for Europeans to just spend more on the

Let’s zoom in on that 37 second chat with former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, now the Secretary of Defense in the Trump regime. The reporter asks him about the grotesque security breach (or rather annihilation) and he reacts with a smirk and a chuckle and

You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called “journalist” who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again, to include the, I don’t know, the hoaxes of Russia Russia Russia, or the fine people on both sides hoax, or the suckers and losers hoax – this is a guy that peddles in garbage [sic], it’s what he does.

What. a. scumbag.

He’s asked about a massive security breach in his department … Read the rest

The plaudits are rolling in.

From an operational security perspective, this is the highest level of fuckup imaginable. These people cannot keep America safe. https://t.co/xhYuJXAenx

— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) March 24, 2025

Oh for God's sake, the administration has already confirmed the authenticity of the message. https://t.co/AxQGqqyux3

— Brit Hume (@brithume) March 24, 2025

And speaking of “so-called journalists” – what qualifies Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense?… Read the rest

Oopsie.

(“But her emails…”) https://t.co/yTwT8PkEsD

— emily m (@maitlis) March 24, 2025

Nope, not kidding.

Pete Hegseth texting out war plans like invites to a frat party. https://t.co/vPqblS7znv

— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) March 24, 2025

This is a DEI hire, by the way. pic.twitter.com/0Us0t25xUV

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) March 24, 2025

Nooo, it’s snappy dresser hire, a looks the part hire, a sir yes sir hire. Trump picks people based on how they look on tv.

The fact that a reporter was inadvertently given access to this in real time shows that Pete Hegseth & the rest of this crew are bumbling incompetents who are going to get a lot of intelligence officials and others killed at some point.

Well I’ll say one thing about Trump: there is no insult too petty for him to make.

For more than 100 years, people in Stanstead, Quebec have been able to walk into Derby Line, Vermont to enter the border-straddling Haskell Free Library and Opera House – no passport required.

But municipal and library officials said on Friday that U.S. authorities have unilaterally decided to end the century-old unwritten agreement. Coming at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries, the decision is prompting an outpouring of emotion in communities on both sides of the border, which in places has been marked simply by flower pots.

Throw out those sissy flower pots and install some guys with machine guns instead. … Read the rest

The charm offensive isn’t working.

Over the past 24 hours, the Greenlandic government has dropped its previous posture of being shy and vague in the face of Mr. Trump’s pushiness. Instead, it has blasted him as “aggressive” and asked Europe for backup. And the planned visit may only strengthen the bonds between Greenland — an ice-covered land three times the size of Texas — and Denmark.

Better the colonial power you know than…Donald Trump.

Even the dogsled race has reacted coolly. The organizers of the race — the Avannaata Qimussersua, Greenland’s Super Bowl of dogsled races — said on Sunday of Ms. Vance and her son, “We did not invite them,” but added that the event was open to

Greenland says we didn’t invite them, we don’t want them, we’re not going to party with them, we think they’re rude to show up uninvited, we wish they would take a hint.

Greenland’s politicians have condemned plans for high-profile US visits, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s threats to take over the island.

Second Lady Usha Vance will make a cultural visit this week, and a separate trip is expected from Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

Outgoing Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede described the plan as aggressive, and said the duo had not been invited for meetings. Meanwhile, the island’s likely next leader accused the US of showing a lack of respect.

What’s a “cultural visit”? Especially one … Read the rest

Ugh.

Today:

Exactly.

My son, Xavier, died. He was killed by the woke mind virus.

Now, the woke mind virus will die.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2025

I thought it was true for a few minutes, until I looked for more sources.

Nobody died. It’s the old “he’s dead to me.” His kid fell for the gender idiocy, and that’s a terrible thing, but it’s also a terrible thing – it’s a worse thing – to tell the world your kid is dead when what you mean is he went in a direction you can’t stand.

I don’t blame Musk for hating the direction, and I don’t blame him for being furious about the gender idiocy. I do … Read the rest

Men who pretend to be women are not examples of “female leaders.” Ever. They’re the negation of female leaders. They’re men who shove their way into women’s everything and thus shove women out. Flattering and rewarding them for doing so is just another notch on the Comprehensive Attack on Women belt.

ITV News has run a nine minute interview with one of the 'ten female leaders' in the history of Medway in Kent. This particular 'female' is a man who talks about being 'transgender' for the entire interview https://t.co/3lz8IcqNOS pic.twitter.com/82oNAlr20F

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) March 23, 2025

… Read the rest

What credentials does Sam he/him have? What credentials are there? What is the body of specialized knowledge that qualifies people to talk about the alphabet people?

Remember, @ProfAliceS has no credentials that qualify her to comment on LGBTQIA+ people.

She is just a homophobe and a transphobe who was hired by the far right to write far right propaganda.

— Sam (he/him) (@mushycrouton) March 22, 2025

… Read the rest

Sarah Ditum reviews a book by one of the tame feminist crowd:

The Guilty Feminist started in 2015 as a place for [Deborah] Frances-White to share lightweight material for women who liked the idea of the “feminist” label but weren’t sure about the detail. When Donald Trump arrived, though, Frances-White’s audience — and her self-perceived importance — ballooned.

…

You could argue that in the 2010s progressives began behaving like a cult: obsessed with internal obedience, utterly dislocated from the outside world.

Many people have made that observation about the left before now. What’s surprising about Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have is that Frances-White has joined them (she knows a thing or two about cults, having spent her adolescence

The stats are all every which way.

From a GP agreeing to change the documented identity of a baby because its mother was raising it in the “gender” of her choice to male sex offenders being recorded by the police as “women”, data and official statistics have been “corrupted” by extreme gender ideology, a report found this week.

The government-commissioned investigation by Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology and research specialist at University College London, revealed that public bodies – including the NHS, the police and even the military – have been collecting information on gender identity rather than biological sex since 2015. As a consequence “robust and accurate data” have been lost.

The NHS, for instance, … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Shared realities.

The book in question is called Open Play: The Case for Feminist Sport, by Sheree Bekker and Stephen Mumford. One of the blurbs quoted on its Amazon page says:

“Sport has been in desperate need of a fresh, nuanced approach to gender, one which has women, nonbinary, and trans people at its core. Open Play challenges the patriarchal system that has dictated women’s participation in sport around the world. Its philosophy is simple yet revolutionary amongst the status quo of so-called ‘feminist’ approaches to sport. This book is not just a must-read, it should become foundational in the future of women’s sport from the grassroots to professional

Are we sleepwalking?

Eviscerating the federal government and subjugating Congress; defying court orders and delegitimising judges; deporting immigrants and arresting protesters without due process; chilling free speech at universities and cultural institutions; cowing news outlets with divide-and-rule. Add a rightwing media ecosystem manufacturing consent and obeyance in advance, along with a weak and divided opposition offering feeble resistance. Join all the dots, critics say, and America is sleepwalking into authoritarianism.

I don’t think sleepwalking is the right word, on account of how we’re not asleep. It’s more that we’re helpless. We would stop him if we could, but we can’t.

The 45th and 47th president has wasted no time in launching a concerted effort to consolidate executive power, undermine

What I’m saying.

We cannot discuss sex and gender identity unless we agree on shared realities, such as the unarguable fact that men hold an intrinsic competitive advantage over women in sports. This is not a question that can even be debated in good faith. It is a fact, period. https://t.co/P4zZRa8DFL

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 21, 2025

What I’m saying. It’s not a “belief” or an idea or a claim, it’s just basic reality, without which we wouldn’t even exist. It’s a shared reality that women and men exist, and another shared reality that there are physical differences between them. … Read the rest

What is belief, what are views, what is a concept?

From The Times:

As a scientist at Porton Down developing technology to secure Britain’s defences, Peter Wilkins never imagined he would be considered a threat because of a belief in biology.

But when he stated his gender-critical views and support for the concept of immutable sex, Wilkins was reported for his “ideology” and labelled by colleagues as transphobic, “sad and pathetic” and “a rubbish employee”.

It’s all so weird. What is a “belief in biology”?

Knowing that men are not women is not a belief, it’s just awareness of an obvious and ubiquitous reality. Humans come in two sexes; one of each is required for the manufacture of all … Read the rest

Erm…

This looks wholesome. pic.twitter.com/GGwYwfZY5p

— Kellie-Jay Keen (@ThePosieParker) March 22, 2025

As a few thousand people are pointing out, it’s not really a brilliant idea to send babies and toddlers and young children off to a swim night that’s “inclusive” of adults. It looks more like procurement than like jolly splashy fun with your friends.

Waaaaaa Columbia wouldn’t give him $400 million waaaaaa it’s not fair.

Columbia needed to expand, which is tricky in Manhattan. Trump wanted Columbia to buy a patch he had more than two miles away. He wanted Columbia to pay $400 million for it.

As the discussions dragged on, many people from Columbia grew frustrated with their dealings with Mr. Trump. Still, the two sides set up a meeting in a Midtown Manhattan conference room with the intention of moving a transaction forward.

A few trustees and administrators arrived with a report prepared on their behalf by a real estate team at Goldman Sachs, which attended every meeting between Columbia officials and representatives of the Trump Organization. It outlined what the