Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • An absurd dualist claim

    Another conversation with Humanists UK:

    This went on for another round or two.
    Answer came there none.

  • Be precise in your terms

    Forced teaming creates yet another mess.

    There are no “LGBTQ+” people. It’s an impossibility. No one can be lesbian and gay male and bisexual and trans and “queer” and +. (And what does “+” mean anyway?)

    Humanists UK can’t explain.

    Again: there’s no such thing as being LGBT. The issue is that believing you’re in the wrong body is a delusion, comparable to the delusion that you have something called a “soul.” Humanists UK of course will not admit that no matter how hard they are pressed.

    There is no such thing as “LGBT”.

    L stands for lesbians. These are women who are sexually attracted to other women. That is not a mental illness and only certain religious extremists make that absurd and offensive argument.

    G stands for gay men. These are men who are sexually attracted to other men. That is not a mental illness and only certain religious extremists make that absurd and offensive argument.

    B stands for bisexuals. These are people who are attracted to both men and women. That is not a mental illness and only certain religious extremists make that absurd and offensive argument.

    T stands for trans. According to Stonewall’s glossary, this is a very large collection of different kinds of people including transgender, transsexual, genderqueer (GQ), genderfluid, non-binary, gender-variant, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, bigender, trans man, trans woman, trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois. Until last summer it also included cross-dressers. The definition is a bit fluid…

    Some of these people believe they are the opposite sex. That is a denial of reality. Some of them (neutrois) want to have their genitals removed entirely to have a smooth exterior. It is perfectly valid to suggest that some of these people suffer from mental illness. In fact, denying it is quite cruel, since it may deter them from seeking help.

    Your thoughtless statements are adding to the existing stigma attached to mental illness. They are ignorant and profoundly unhelpful.

    And not all that humanistish.

  • Kids today

    Hm. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say don’t do this.

    The pink hair ribs-deficient person is male.

  • Guest post: The science of climate change is important

    Originally a comment by Coel on Brought to you by.

    Since climate change matters and since the science of climate change is important:

    Whenever there is a cold snap or a snow storm some will inevitably quip “so much for global warming” and use one weather event as an excuse to ignore the settled opinion about climate change. They are very wrong to do so.

    It is equally wrong to point to a drought event, a drought-caused fire, or indeed a hurricane, and suggest that it is due to climate change, or even to suggest that climate change has made those events much more likely. We don’t know enough to know that. After all, California is a semi-desert and prolonged droughts are normal for California (Bristlecone pines show this over eons).

    Now, climate models do suggest that the likelihood of a severe Californian drought should have increased, owing to AGW, but only by about 30 percent or so. And this is a really hard thing to model. At this level of prediction, such models are not really verified by data. The model uncertainties are about at the same level as the predicted effects.

    Such models also predict that hurricane frequency and intensity should be increasing (global warming => more energy in the system). The problem is that the data don’t show this. So that means that there is a lot that we don’t understand about the formation of hurricanes (which is not a surprise, we know that we don’t know).

    So is climate change increasing drought likelihood in California? Well, maybe, but we really don’t know that. We don’t have a good-enough record of data to answer that directly, and we need to bear in mind the limitations of the models; it is wrong to overclaim.

    Note that uncertainties in whether climate change is increasing drought likelihood in California is a very different matter from whether climate change is happening globally (that is settled, yes it is). That’s because it is way easier to model the global response to things like CO2 and the global climate as a whole than it is to then reliably predict local fluctuations in one small part of the system (such as Californian droughts).

    As I said, understanding the science of climate change does matter and it’s important to avoid overclaiming (and hence: “this drought is caused by climate change” is as dubious as “this cold snap refutes global warming”).

  • Clocking dysphoria

    I was reading someone burbling about trans women menstruating and blah blah blah and a thought suddenly occurred to me (weirdly late, I think) – we’ve heard a lot about gender dysphoria, and especially a lot about men who have it, but what about other kinds of dysphoria? Specifically what about gay men who have to tell people they’re gay? You know what I mean? Gay men who appear straight – not necessarily football playerish, not necessarily muscular or domineering or anything else in particular, but just not clockable as gay.

    (I don’t think it works the same way with lesbians. Lots are not clockable. Let me know if I’m wrong.)

    I wonder if that can cause a form of dysphoria.

    I had a co-worker like that years ago when I worked at the zoo – we worked with the elephants. We had some entertaining conversations about his non-clockability. It didn’t perturb him at all, but I wonder if it does others. If so I wonder how that relates to gender dysphoria and what it feels like. A mismatch between the outside and the inside.

    It interests me because maybe if we had a better understanding of gender dysphoria we could figure out better ways to deal with it – ways that don’t trample all over women’s rights and safety and the like.

  • Guest post: Hire a PR agency to call itself an institute

    Originally a comment by Francis Boyle on Making everything worse.

    The climate catastrophe deniers have long given up on any attempt to argue a case. They tried that long and hard but there’s only so many times you can use sleight of hand* as an argumentative technique. The Trump technique of more or less random abuse of anyone perceived to be less than 100% supportive of your grift is just so much more effective so everyone is doing it now.

    *Favourite sleight of hand techniques that I have personally encountered, in most cases multiple times:

    1. cite a scientific paper as demonstrating your point when the paper does no such thing. Indeed in many cases the paper is only tenuously related to the subject under the discussion – the important thing is that the title suggests that it might do what you say since the sucker is not actually intended to follow the link let alone do any reading

    2. If 1. seems too much like hard work just make up a title and give it a non-working link to a reputable scientific publication. If someone bothers to follow the link they will hopefully just put it down to link rot or some sort of screw-up.

    3. If you’re cashed up hire a PR agency to call itself an institute and have it put out a “report” saying whatever you want them to.

    4. Lord Monckton. Just bloody Lord Monckton.

  • Rachel Who?

    News from Sussex:

    A mental health nurse has been struck off after asking a Polish colleague whether he was “some sort of Nazi” while out on a Christmas do.

    Rachel Hole was also accused of using the N-word while out with work colleagues amid a string of racist incidents spanning a number of years while working as a ward manager on The Hazel Ward, a Low Secure Mental Health Ward at The Chichester Centre in Chichester.

    Ms Hole also scared a BAME colleague by putting a white sheet over her head in a Halloween prank but later defended herself by saying she was “hardly one of the Ku Klux Klan”.

    And so on and so on – it continues for 22 paragraphs like that without ever mentioning that “Ms Hole” is a man or that “Hole” is a name he bestowed on himself for reasons we’re all too familiar with.

  • Relevant

  • Brought to you by

    The libbruls are burning down Los Angeles, it seems.

    …mismanages forests and brush, and fires firefighters for refusing an experimental vaccine?”

    President Musk steps right up.

    Aren’t they just hilarious?

  • Making everything worse

    From the Guardian’s live updating:

    [A]mid nightmarish images eerily evocative of Cormac McCarthy’s dark post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, a political firestorm has sparked from Donald Trump and his supporters that seems as scorched earth in its characteristics as the blazes ravaging neighborhoods across Los Angeles.

    Far from calling a temporary truce, the president-elect and his Maga (make America great again) acolytes have used the fires to attack the Democratic political ruling establishment in Los Angeles and California – possibly foretelling power struggles ahead over a range of issues after Trump assumes office this month.

    The attacks have used disinformation, wild claims, conspiracy theories and extremist culture war tropes. But absent from their critique has been any acknowledgement that climate change has played any role in igniting the catastrophic fires – despite a consensus among experts that they have been caused by exceptional environmental conditions, including near hurricane-strength winds, low rainfall and unseasonably high temperatures.

    The Republicans have instead blamed Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, for supposedly failing to ensure enough water was available to douse the infernos – along with his fellow Democrat, Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, who drew flak for not returning from a pre-planned trip to Ghana until after the fires began. Also targeted has been the head of LA’s fire department, Kristin Crowley, derided as a “DEI [diversity, equity and inclusiveness] hire” in reference to her being the first openly gay woman to hold the position.

    Ah yes, a “DEI hire.” I guess that’s a popular sneer in Trump world these days – it certainly annoyed the hell out of me the other day when it was applied to Kamala Harris, as if she has zero value apart from the DEI type.

  • But the sports fans

    Sports matter; women do not matter.

    England’s men’s cricket team should play against Afghanistan in the Champions Trophy, despite calls for a boycott in response to the Taliban regime’s assault on women’s rights, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy says.

    Female participation in sport has effectively been outlawed since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.

    A cross-party letter, signed by nearly 200 UK politicians, has been sent to the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) calling for England to refuse to play in the Champions Trophy match in Lahore on 26 February.

    But Nandy thinks the match should go ahead, because sports.

    “I am instinctively very cautious about boycotts in sport, partly because I think they are counterproductive. I think they deny sports fans the opportunity they love and they can very much penalise the athletes and sportspeople who work very, very hard to reach the top of their game and are then denied the opportunities to compete.”

    That’s the point. A boycott is useless if it doesn’t hurt anything. Yes of course it’s unfair to the athletes, but so is the Taliban’s termination of women’s sports.

    International Cricket Council (ICC) regulations state full membership is conditional upon having women’s cricket teams and pathway structures in place. However, Afghanistan’s men’s team have been allowed to participate in ICC tournaments seemingly without any sanctions.

    Which is a damn good reason to boycott the whole thing.

    Sir Keir Starmer was asked directly about the matter at Prime Minister’s Questions earlier this week by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, who authored the cross-party letter addressed to the ECB.

    The prime minister said “the suppression of freedom” should be “condemned in the strongest terms” and said the government was speaking with international counterparts on the issue.

    But it’s not some abstract “suppression of freedom,” it’s the very concrete suppression of women and their freedom and rights and ability to participate in public life.

  • Felon in chief

    I’m so tired of this filth.

    The Supreme Court didn’t help Donald Trump … this time. The court’s 5-4 decision Thursday to deny the president-elect’s last-minute effort to delay sentencing in his New York hush money case sets up a stunning moment – a Friday court date just 10 days before Trump is sworn in for a second term.

    Judge Juan Merchan has already said he won’t impose a jail term. But the sentencing hearing will nevertheless mean that Trump will be the first president to take office with a criminal conviction written into his official record.

    Isn’t that just fabulous? Behold: President Convicted Felon.

    Behold the US, a failed state.

    The proximity of the sentencing to Trump’s inauguration will create a stunning juxtaposition. He will be a defendant subject to the authority of a judge and a jury verdict who will within days assume the vast powers of the presidency and become the ultimate guardian of the nation’s laws and the Constitution.

    Thus covering all of us in filth that we can’t get off.

  • Mulholland’s cunning plan

  • Reaping the literal whirlwind

    Be careful what you wish for and campaign for and talk nonsense for, eh James Woods?

    God at Letters from God has the details:

    James Woods, a man who hath spent his years spouting MAGA rhetoric and raging against reality, a man who blocked God back when it was still Twitter, now tragically reaps the literal whirlwind of his own climate change denial.

    His house burned up. It’s gone.

    It’s a very pretty clip. He pans north to take in the sunset.

    God continues:

    His house is no more, consumed by a climate change-boosted wildfire. It wasn’t a deep state plot. There were no Democrat-controlled weather machines and no space lasers.

    And yet, instead of reflecting on climate change or the insane winds that caused this wildfire, he immediately chose to lash out at Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass, and—of course—”empty water reservoirs.”

    But lo, the truth cometh: the reservoirs weren’t empty before the fires started. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power filled them in preparation for the fire season. The problem wasn’t the liberal boogeymen James rails against—it was the sheer scale of the firefighting effort, which drained the reservoirs faster than they could be replenished. Not that James cares for such details; he’s too busy raging to care about the facts.

    I’m gobsmacked by all these people astonished that the water ran out. Do they think it’s magic? There’s only so much water that can be stored, so when there are multiple enormous raging fires dotted all over a neighborhood the water is going to run out. It’s not a plot, it’s not Democrats, it’s not Biden, it’s not even Trump, it’s just the nature of the disaster.

    There are water towers on the tops of hills all over Seattle, and they’re big, but they’re not infinite. They can’t be infinite. Neither can the water inside them.

    When a liberal area suffers a climate change disaster, Republicans say, “God is punishing them.” When a conservative area suffers a climate change disaster, Republicans say, “Democrats control weather machines.”

    It must be hard going through life as a full-blown idiot.

    Thou shalt stop blaming everyone else and start seeing the truth: climate change is real, and it doesn’t care if you believe in it or not.

    Climate change is not divine punishment, nor is it a liberal plot. It is the result of greed, inaction, and denial. And until humans get their shit together, the planet is going to continue to be pissed off.

    Again: Los Angeles is in a desert. It’s vulnerable to drought and wild fires.

  • One less for the women

    Pink News is overjoyed.

    Awards season is well and truly here, and with it often comes the premise of historical firsts. This year, Karla Sofia Gascón has made history as the first out trans performer to be nominated at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild Awards in a solo category.

    The Spanish actress has been nominated at the SAG Awards for Best Female Actor in a Leading Role for her work in Emilia Pérez, making her the first out trans performer to be nominated in a solo category, as per Out Magazine.

    In other words, a man has won [been nominated for] an award for best female actor.

    As if women don’t have enough trouble getting work and attention and awards in the movie business, now men are stealing actual best woman prizes.

    And Pink News is reporting it as a good thing.

  • Funny as a crutch

    The world’s first humorless comedy festival. Should be a real blast.

  • Speaking of “distracted”

    Allllllll genders.

    The national police leader on child protection and abuse investigations has urged officers not to be “distracted” by media coverage of grooming gangs, emphasising it is one element of a wider threat.

    Becky Riggs, an assistant chief constable, said analysis of child sex crimes reported to police made it clear that “group-based offending occurs in various forms, in diverse settings, and across different ethnicities”.

    She urged a “balanced approach to addressing the threat in all its forms”, adding that “children are at risk from perpetrators of all races, ethnicities and genders”.

    Excuse me?

    Perps of “all genders” go after children? Really? Women sexually abuse children just as much as men do?

    There is nothing in the article that backs up her claim.

    The report, based on 2023 data, stated that there were 4,228 reported group-based crimes out of a total 115,489 child sexual exploitation and abuse crimes. Of the group-based offences, more than a quarter were familial, 9 per cent were institutional and 17 per cent were in a child sexual exploitation setting involving an imbalance of power. Nearly 40 per cent of offending did not fit a category and 9 per cent was unknown. More than 80 per cent of suspects were white, 7 per cent were Asian, 4 per cent were black and 8 per cent mixed or other.

    See? “Gender” not mentioned. Did she throw it in by accident because it’s formulaic? If you mention races and ethnicities you have to mention genders too?

  • Up is not down

    Not all that liberal…

    The Liberal Democrats have been ordered to pay £14,000 to a former parliamentary candidate who says she was driven out of the party and barred from standing as an MP over her gender-critical views.

    Natalie Bird was removed as a prospective parliamentary candidate for Wakefield after she wore a top bearing the slogan “Woman: Adult Human Female” to a party meeting.

    It’s like removing people as prospective parliamentary candidates for wearing tops that say “Rain is wet” or “Fire burns” or “Lions are not frogs” or “Jumping off a tall building is dangerous” or an infinite number of other obvious factual assertions.

    Ms Bird had been critical of the party’s policies online but Judge Jane Evans-Gordon said “there was no evidence Ms Bird’s views ever crossed the line and became transphobic or abusive”.

    What line? Who installed the line? By what right? On what grounds? Why is there any kind of “line” at all when it comes to saying what a woman is??

    And why aren’t people sniffing out misogynistic abuse? What about all the people who clearly detest women and hold us in contempt and say so every chance they get? Why is that just business as usual while there is hypervigilance about some imaginary “line” demarking transphobic and not transphobic?

    Ms Bird wore the T-shirt bearing the words “Woman: Adult Human Female” in the days after she was nominated as the Lib Dem candidate for Wakefield in December 2018.

    Soon afterwards she received a letter suspending her membership and notifying her there would be a formal disciplinary hearing against her for breaching the party’s code of conduct.

    So very “liberal”.

  • No possibility of bringing the fires under control

    It’s not the future any more. Big chunks of Los Angeles are on fire.

    Firefighters in Los Angeles are battling a number of blazes in city suburbs, as tens of thousands of residents are forced to flee.

    The rapidly changing situation is compounded by Santa Ana winds and extremely dry conditions. Currently authorities say there is no possibility of bringing the fires under control.

    The Palisades fire, which is closest to the coast and also the largest, has ripped through picturesque suburbs which are home to many Hollywood stars. More than 1,000 buildings have already been destroyed.

    Picturesque and very very very expensive.

    LA has always been a mistake. It’s in a desert, and it’s way too big for a desert.

    Four major fires are currently being tackled.

    The Palisades fire was first reported at 10:30 (18:30 GMT) on Tuesday, and grew in just 20 minutes from a blaze of 20 acres to more than 200 acres, then more than tenfold in a matter of a few more hours. At least 30,000 people have so far been ordered to leave their homes.

    The Eaton fire grew to cover 1,000 acres within the first six hours of breaking out. It started in Altadena in the hills above Pasadena at around 18:30 local time on Tuesday.

    The Hurst fire is located just north of San Fernando. It began burning on Tuesday at around 22:10 local time, growing to 500 acres, according to local officials. It has triggered evacuation orders in neighbouring Santa Clarita.

    The latest of the four fires is the Woodley fire, currently 75 acres in size. It broke out at approximately 06:15 local time on Wednesday.

    It’s terrifying – pow pow pow pow, in less than one day.

  • Stale as last year’s panettone

    “Sophie Molly” tries his hand at argument.

    Once again, a festival capitulates to the demands of transphobes. By hosting not one but two notable TERFs. The festival in question is the Oxford Literary Festival.

    It’s not clear what the demands are. Did the terfs demand that the Oxford Lit Fest host them? Or did the Oxford Lit Fest simply invite a couple of feminists?

    By far, the worst of them is Helen Joyce. Her book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality can only be described as anti-trans propaganda. This book and its author should not be featured at a mainstream literary festival.

    But even if it’s true that the book can only be described as anti-trans-[ideology], how is that a reason it should not be discussed at a mainstream literary festival? Trans ideology is a very new and very wobbly set of beliefs and demands, and it just is not self-evident that we must not dispute its claims. “Sophie Molly” doesn’t make his case, he just rants.

    Joyce argues that gender should be understood strictly as biological sex and dismisses the concept of self-identified gender. This undermines the identities of transgender people and invalidates their lived experiences. 

    There it is: that’s as close as he gets to arguing. He doesn’t say why “gender” shouldn’t be understood as biological sex, or why the “identities” and “lived experiences” of transgender people should matter more than, say, women’s rights. He just takes it all for granted, without noticing that he’s doing so.

    The book over-fixates on trans women having access to female spaces.

    Easy for a man to say. “Shut up, bitch, you don’t get to have somewhere to go to be safe from me.” Very persuasive, much empathetic.

    Joyce wants to shackle us all into two neat little boxes based solely on our genitals and reproductive organs. So rigid! So limiting!

    Redundant! Urgent redundancy alert! You can shackle or you can push into neat little boxes, but it’s just silly to try to do both.

    Throughout the book, she is critical of gender-affirming medical treatments, especially for minors, viewing them as harmful and potentially irreversible. This once again makes out that being trans is wrong. It tells the reader that trans people should not be trusted to have agency over their bodies. All of this strips trans people of their bodily autonomy. These are not the words of kindness and compassion. These are the words of someone who just can’t accept that trans people exist. 

    This poor guy. He hasn’t got a single thought of his own – all he has is these ultra-stale bromides. Ooh ooh “agency” – that’ll fetch’em. Along with “bodily autonomy” it’s a surefire conversation-ender, no matter how many billion times we’ve heard it before.

    Sad case.