One of the Canadians on that Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed:

The Carleton community is shocked and devastated to learn of the death of Prof. Pius Adesanmi, who was among the 18 Canadians killed in today’s crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet at the Addis Ababa airport.

Global Affairs Canada has confirmed that Adesanmi is among the victims.

“Pius Adesanmi was a towering figure in African and post-colonial scholarship and his sudden loss is a tragedy,” said Benoit-Antoine Bacon, president and vice-chancellor. “Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and all those who knew and loved him, and with everyone who suffered loss in the tragic crash in Ethiopia.”

“The contributions of Pius Adesanmi to Carleton are immeasurable,” said

Originally a comment by tiggerthewing on When did it begin?

For me, it was recognising the pattern of Cluster B abuse from when it happened in my favourite Asperger’s/autism forum, although I didn’t have a name for it until fellow commenters, here and on Facebook, joined the dots for themselves with regard to transactivism, and so educated me.

**********

It even happened the same way (Cluster B behaviour seems to go by the book):

Firstly:

Someone points out how unfair it is to expect every member to have a full, official diagnosis of Asperger’s [dysphoria]. They request that self-identifying should be enough.

• Reason 1: Official diagnosis is expensive; and difficult and convoluted to obtain.

• Reason 2: A … Read the rest

Sarah Sanders gives her first press briefing since the invention of Post-it notes.

The first White House briefing in six weeks has begun as Sarah Sanders returns to podium in the White House briefing room with Russ Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.

That’s ok, they’re busy, it’s not as if they have any obligation to keep the populace informed about what they’re doing to us.

Sanders says that Democrats should denounce Ilhan Omar’s anti-semitic comments in the same that Republicans denounced Steve King’s comments in support of white supremacy. President Donald Trump has yet to denounce King though.

Good people on both sides, both sides.

The national emergency was Trump’s patriotic duty.… Read the rest

Surprise surprise, one of Fox News’s more famous talking heads is contemptuous of women. Who could ever have guessed that?

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, many years ago, would regularly call in and chat with the host of the Bubba the Love Sponge radio show. The idea, as it is with any shock-jock program, was to stir up a buzz by discussing some controversial topics.

Carlson didn’t disappoint.

One of those topics, according to the Media Matters website, focused on Warren Jeffs, who was on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list for his role in arranging illegal marriages between adults and underage girls.

Carlson said criminal charges against Jeffs were “bullshit” because “arranging a marriage between a

Originally a comment by latsot on Overt rather than clandestine.

Breaking things can be useful, if by breaking them you are able to reassemble them in a new way that improves them

In theory, yes. In practice it hardly ever happens, with even the best will in the world.

It certainly doesn’t happen much in the software business even though we have whole swathes of theory about how to do it in software design and development practice, much of it very good.

It works like this:

1. The boss says “build me a system, don’t worry about the budget, we can sort that out later, just bring me a design”.

2. The boss sees the design, her eyes pop … Read the rest

Pliny’s T shirt for International Women’s Day:

… Read the rest

If you’re looking for an adventure, I wouldn’t advise looking for it in Saudi Arabia, at least not if you’re a woman. (Or a dissident man.)

At first, Saudi Arabia was an adventure for Bethany Vierra.

An American from Washington State, she taught at a women’s university, started a company, married a Saudi businessman and gave birth to a curly-haired daughter, Zaina.

And couldn’t go anywhere without his permission, right? And had to wear an abaya any time she left home, right? Not all that adventurey.

But since the marriage went sour and she sought a divorce, she has been trapped. Because of the kingdom’s so-called guardianship laws, which give men great power over women, she is unable to

People say (and apparently think) the most ridiculous things about “rights.”

Case in point:

pic.twitter.com/c7Jk1fnD5f

— Deborah C (@deborahmacnz) March 9, 2019

I don’t agree with the t-shirt but I understand how someone could be driven to wear it. I wouldn’t wear it, but it’s her right to express herself. Just like it’s your right to disagree.

— Deborah C (@deborahmacnz) March 10, 2019

There’s no such thing as a “right” to express oneself by carrying banners or wearing T shirts that say “KILL THE ___”.

There may be a legal right in some jurisdictions to do that, but it’s thin ice. But more to the point, legal rights aren’t the only kind, and it’s pretty clear the tweeter was … Read the rest

Jonathan Chait looks at the question of why our minds boggle so stubbornly when we’re presented with the truth about Trump’s captivity to Russia.

The cause of this incredulity, I have come to suspect, lies in the vast distance the mind must travel between the normal patterns of American politics and the fantastical crimes being alleged. The Russia scandal seems to hint at a reality of fiction or paranoia, a baroque conspiracy in which the leader of the free world has been compromised by a mafiocracy with an economy smaller than South Korea’s.

The flaw lies in the assumption about what constitutes “normal.” In this case, the baseline should not be previous American elections, but other foreign elections in which

Jeezus, Beeb, work on your headlines.

Oh well in that case maybe we care.

They must have thought again (or someone yelled at them), because if you click on the headline you get the story with a less narcissistic version…but the first one still appears in Top Stories.

Go back to headline school.… Read the rest

Speaking of women…

Congressional Democrats introduced legislation on Thursday that would classify reproductive rights as human rights and require the U.S. State Department to include access to reproductive health care in its annual human rights report, a practice that ended when President Trump took office.

The “Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights Act” was introduced by Democratic caucus vice chair Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA) and announced at a press conference Thursday along with Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and U.S. Senate co-sponsors Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). The bill is similar to a bill by the same name introduced by Clark last year in response to the State Department’s sudden decision to drop the sections on reproductive rights from

I saw this

https://twitter.com/glosswitch/status/1104344845257199616

so I looked at the source, authors Lyric Thompson and Rachel Clement. There are some odd things.

The degree to which Sweden’s practice lives up to its policy has been critiqued. On rights, it has been criticized for a binary focus on women rather than gender. The policy largely ignores the rights and needs of LGBTQ individuals, with the exception of LGBTQ sexual reproductive health and rights being noted in the health component of the agenda. Positioning LGBTQ people as a key population in health interventions, rather than as part of their broad rights-based agenda is overly limiting and a missed opportunity for a feminist approach.

That looks like the all too familiar move from … Read the rest

And there’s the “never let this woman speak anywhere ever again because we say so” thing.

Transgender advocacy groups and supporters have demanded that Leeds Lit Festival ban Dame Jenni Murray from speaking amid accusations of transphobia.

An open letter, signed by TransLeeds, Non-binary Leeds, Yorkshire Mesmac and 13 other groups, says Dame Jenni is ‘an active transphobe’ and that ‘there is no debate as to whether trans women are women’.

Oh but there is debate, it’s just that the narcissistic wing of trans activism wants to wipe it off the map. Saying “there is no debate” is an attempt to enforce the absence of debate by demanding that all dissenters be forcibly prevented from dissenting where anyone can … Read the rest

Some photos from yesterday’s International Women’s Day rally in Melbourne:

Poster held by a guy with shaved head and beard; very appropriate at a feminist event. About like white people at a racial justice event holding posters saying SHUT UP AND PICK SOME COTTON.

Someone in front of Real Jobs guy has a poster saying, I surmise, “SOME WOMEN HAVE PENISES GET OVER IT”.

… Read the rest

News from Pakistan:

Afzal Kohistani had warned for years his life was in danger after he brought public attention to the apparent killing of women seen clapping and singing in a video of men dancing.

…

Mr Kohistani was shot dead on Wednesday in the city of Abbottabad, in north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He first emerged into the public eye in 2012 by calling for justice in a case involving his family in remote Kohistan district.

Two of his younger brothers were seen dancing in a wedding video that also showed four women singing and clapping. The four women, along with a fifth, were later killed for “breaching the honour” of their family, it is alleged.

Such “honour killings”

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka “Tommy Robinson” takes his right-wing provocations to a new level by harassing journalist Mike Stuchbery in the middle of the night:

For the last few months, I have written about the methods used by “Tommy Robinson” to intimidate and harass those who dare to criticise him. I do this because he’s the most visible figure in a surging UK far right, feted by politicians and media figures alike.

Tonight he paid me a visit. Twice.

Stuchbery had tweeted that Yaxley-Lennon was about to be served papers for defamation.

The first we knew of it was a loud, frantic rapping on my door at around quarter to 11. The shouted voice that accompanied it was