Ah yes, very good, the world melts and fries and burns thanks to global warming so the thing to do is keep building bigger cruise ships.

The world’s largest cruise ship is set to begin its maiden voyage Saturday as it gets underway from the Port of Miami.

Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, which runs nearly 1,200 feet from bow to stern, is leaving South Florida for its first seven-day island-hopping voyage through the tropics.

Great. Fabulous. It’s definitely worth speeding up warming that little bit for the sake of taking tourists “island-hopping” for a week.

“Icon of the Seas is the culmination of more than 50 years of dreaming, innovating and living our mission – to deliver the world’s best vacation experiences responsibly,” Royal Caribbean Group President and CEO Jason Liberty said earlier this week.

Responsibly? Where’s the responsibly in this situation?

The Icon of the Seas is divided into eight neighborhoods across 20 decks. The ship includes six waterslides, seven swimming pools, an ice-skating rink, a theater and more than 40 restaurants, bars and lounges. The ship can carry up to 7,600 passengers at maximum capacity, along with 2,350 crew members.

How much fuel does it use? How much carbon does it add?

Cruising is surging in popularity. Last year, passenger volume outpaced pre-pandemic numbers, and this year is expected to hit a new high of 36 million as spending on experiences has climbed 65% since 2019.

People enthusiastically eliminating their children’s futures.

Law boffins say Trump’s showy rudeness in court probably influenced the jury to give him a sharp shock.

A federal jury saddled former President Donald Trump with a hefty $83.3 million decision in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against him on Friday, closing the curtain on a raucous week-and-a-half of acrimonious legal proceedings.

The jury deliberated for under three hours before delivering their verdict, which included $18.8 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages for Carroll.

The significant sum comes after Trump displayed a brazen lack of legal decorum throughout the duration of the trial, repeatedly railing against Carroll online and going head-to-head with US District Judge Lewis Kaplan during his much-anticipated but ultimately brief testimony.

Dialing the rudeness up to a million has worked for him in way too many ways, but not in this one. It failed to persuade the jury to minimize the payout.

Trump and his legal team’s behavior made what was already a difficult defense nearly impossible for the former president, John Jones, a former federal judge in Pennsylvania, told Business Insider.

That’s former federal judge John Jones who ruled in the Kitzmiller v Dover case back in 2005. He’s a star.

“When lawyers and litigants run roughshod over a judge or disregard his admonitions, juries don’t like that,” said Jones, who is now the president of Dickinson College.

Juries tend to grow attached to their presiding trial judge, Jones said, adding that they often come to see the judge as a protector of sorts. Thus, Trump and Habba’s apparent disregard for Kaplan during the trial likely didn’t go unnoticed by the jury.

And likely didn’t endear the vicious shouty toad to the jury.

Legal experts said the $83.3 million total in damages will be a significant hit to the former president’s finances — and Trump is almost certainly on the hook to pay all or most of it.

Let’s hope so.

Et tu National Secular Society?

Seriously? All Lives Matter on Holocaust Memorial Day?

The name “Holocaust” is specific to the genocide of six million Jews.

It’s not a good look to hide the genocide of six million Jews on Holocaust Memorial Day.

88 million bucks.

A jury awarded $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll on Friday in a stinging and expensive rebuke to former President Donald Trump for his continued social media attacks against the longtime advice columnist over her claims that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store.

The award, when coupled with a $5 million sexual assault and defamation verdict last year from another jury in a case brought by Carroll, raised to $88.3 million what Trump must pay her. Protesting vigorously, he said he would appeal.

“Vigorously” is one word for it. I can think of others.

Carroll’s attorneys had requested $24 million in compensatory damages and “an unusually high punitive award.” The jury awarded $18.3 million in compensatory damages and another $65 million in punitive damages — meant to deter future behavior.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, urged jurors in her closing argument Friday to punish Trump enough that he would stop a steady stream of public statements smearing Carroll as a liar and a “whack job.”

Will he stop? I really doubt it.

Remember the recent outrage about Munroe Bergdorf’s appointment as a UN Women UK champion?

Mr Menno does.

Well if you decide you dislike someone and want to make sure she isn’t allowed to speak, the thing to do is just tell one brazen lie after another. That’ll fix it.

Hi Jacqui,

Let’s shut up those pesky women by telling a stream of lies about them.

Love ya,

Rodney Croome

From the NY Times live reporting of the Carroll-Trump matter:

Carroll’s brand before 2019 was that of a respected columnist, Crowley says. Let’s talk about [the] Trump brand, she tells the jury: “What could be more on brand for Donald Trump than malice?”

This is what I’m saying.

I for one can’t think of anything else like it. People with mean streaks sure; people who play dirty, who are ruthless, who do damage, yes, but not people who are constantly energetically noisily mean and rude and sadistic and insulting. People who have nothing but venom and contempt toward everyone but the Self. People who are never embarrassed or ashamed to carry on that way in public. And this is the guy who is so popular with The People that he’s all too likely to return to destroy what’s left.

From NY Times live coverage of the Trump defamation trial:

Michael Madaio, Trump’s lawyer, objects when Crowley [Carrol’s lawyer] accuses Trump of defaming her. Judge Kaplan asks why. “Defamatory,” Madaio says, objecting to the use of the word even though a jury in May found she had been defamed. Judge Kaplan overrules him.

That’s bold. Trump lawyer says it’s defamtory to say that Trump is defamatory even though a jury found he was defamatory just a few months ago.

In addition to that, of course, one could make a good case that defamatory is what Trump is – not just what he does now and then, but what he is. He’s a dedicated full-time defamer; he defames people any time his mouth is not full of cheeseburger. Defaming people is his life, his talent, his raison d’être. He loves talking shit about people; he loves it the way a dog loves chasing the ball. He’s a mean bastard all the way down.

Cozying up to Erdoğan:

The Turkish government paid for the wife of the First Minister to attend a summit in Istanbul, according to the Scottish Government’s latest list of ministers’ interests.

Nadia El-Nakla and an SNP press officer attended Emine Erdoğan’s “United for Peace in Palestine” conference on November 15, following an invitation from the Turkish consulate in Edinburgh.

…

Earlier this month it emerged that Turkey had given Mr Yousaf’s in-laws short-term refugee status to help them escape Gaza.

Last week, The Herald revealed that the First Minister had invited Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Scotland when the two men met at COP28 in December.

What’s next? A camping trip with Putin?

Sigh.

It’s not a “belief.” It’s a fact. An ordinary humdrum fact. Nobody has to waste any energy “believing” it; it’s just there. Of course humans “exist in two sexes.” If they didn’t there would be no Stephen Whittle saying they don’t.

What is “acting on your belief” that there are two sexes? What does that mean at all? Does Whittle mean we’re not allowed to say men are not women? Is that the subtle thought?

Even the Telegraph reports on this subject using the terms of the cheaters instead of the non-cheater, reality-based ones. It makes their reporting worthless, because it’s not reporting to keep repeating a blatant lie.

Thomas’s triumph in the 500-yard freestyle event in Atlanta, Georgia, almost two years ago made global headlines and sparked a major furore in the United States and beyond over her participation in women’s races.

Her landmark victory came less than three years after she began transitioning – she had previously been ranked just 65th over the same distance in the division’s male category – and led to protests from rival swimmers.

The ugly fallout, which continues to this day, has included accusations Thomas had been allowed to use women’s locker rooms during events, thereby exposing other competitors to her “male genitalia”.

Her her, she she, and then “the ugly fallout” – why ugly? Why are the people who object to the cheating ugly while William Thomas is poor sad fragile she-her?

A growing number of sports governing bodies have been bringing in similar policies amid mounting pressure from athletes, campaigners and politicians to prioritise fairness and safety over inclusion, which a victory for Thomas would leave open to further legal challenges.

That “inclusion” is not really inclusion, because it excludes women from winning for the benefit of men. Women don’t have to be “inclusive” of men in all circumstances; the idea that we do have to is extremely rapey as well as a grotesque injustice. You might as well rule that women have to give birth on live tv with the camera aimed straight between their legs.

Less than a month before World Aquatics introduced its own policy in June of that year, Thomas said in an interview with Good Morning America: “It’s been a goal of mine to swim at Olympic trials for a very long time, and I would love to see that through.”

So what??? Lots of people would love to swim at Olympic trials; that doesn’t make it ok for them to cheat to get there. Spare us prattle of William’s hopes n dreams.

Thomas’s lawyer, Carlos Sayao, himself a former competitive swimmer, branded World Aquatics’ rules a “trans ban”, saying it was “discriminatory” and caused “profound harm to trans women”.

“Trans women are particularly vulnerable in society and they suffer from higher rates of violence, abuse and harassment than cis women,” he added.

William Thomas is not more vulnerable than women, you misogynist pig.

Lia Thomas is suing.

The US swimmer Lia Thomas, who rose to global prominence by becoming the first transgender athlete to win a NCAA college title, is taking legal action in a bid to compete again in elite female sport – including the Olympics.

Or, to put it more clearly and accurately, the male US swimmer William “Lia” Thomas, who rose to global prominence by pretending to be a woman and thus winning women’s races, is taking legal action in hopes of cheating women that way again.

Thomas has always denied transitioning to get ahead. “The biggest misconception, I think, is the reason I transitioned,” Thomas said in 2022. “People will say: ‘Oh, she just transitioned so she would have an advantage, so she could win.’ I transitioned to be happy, to be true to myself.”

Well he would say that, wouldn’t he. He’s not going to say “Yes, I pretended to be a woman so that I could win.” But that’s what he did all the same.

And guess what, if he really had “transitioned” to be happy and true to himself then he never would have done the cheating part. Why? Because that wasn’t the goal so why do it? Why invite all the grief? Why not just settle down in blissful womanyhood while not making a whole lot of women detest him?

Susanna Rustin in the Guardian:

I can clearly remember the moment I found out that Maya Forstater, the NGO researcher who lost her job in 2018 because of her gender-critical beliefs, had lost her employment tribunal. This was in December 2019, and it chilled me because I share Forstater’s view about the importance of biological sex. In a verdict that was later overturned, Judge James Tayler ruled that her opinions were “not worthy of respect in a democratic society”, and thus not protected under the Equality Act or the articles of the European convention on human rights concerned with freedom of thought and expression.

The “opinion” that men are not women is not worthy of respect. Old news, I know, and yet it still surprises.

Whatever their views on sex and gender, liberals should be curious about why women are being ostracised and punished for their conviction that sex differences are important. So should trade unionists, whose job it is to protect people’s rights at work….Outside courtrooms as well as within them, gender-critical women will continue to seek accountability for what has gone on. Yes, there are other problems in the world to worry about. But we won’t forget the 18 months during which our long-held feminist beliefs about sex were officially deemed “not worthy of respect in a democratic society” – or stop being grateful for the courage of women such as Jo Phoenix and Rachel Meade.

Never forget and never surrender.

Brendan O’Neill points out that the phrase “her penis” is not strictly accurate.

‘Her penis’ is back. Just when you thought the weirdos had put it away, here it is again, flopped all over the newspapers. A ‘trans woman’ allegedly ‘played with her penis’ in front of two young girls, reported the Daily Echo this week. ‘She’ allegedly ‘loved’ exposing ‘her penis’ to minors, says Portsmouth News. This ‘56-year-old charity shop worker’ is charged with ‘exposing her penis’ to horrified kids, says Talk TV. ‘Her penis’, they all say, over and over, like members of a lunatic cult, with no clue as to how unhinged they sound to those of us who know that the only possessive pronoun that should ever appear before the words penis, dick, todger and knob is his.

And note that these are ostensibly news outlets. Not story-tellers, not songwriters, not cartoonists, but news organizations. They’re supposed to get basic facts right.

They’re reporting on the case of Samantha Norris, who is a bloke. We know he’s a bloke because he has a cock. Mr Norris – yes, Mr – is accused of exposing his penis – yes, his – to two 11-year-old girls. He’s on trial at Southampton Crown Court. Even worse than the media’s slavish, post-truth flattery of Mr Norris’s deluded belief that he is a woman is the court’s indulgence of such anti-social insanity.

Another institution that really ought to get the facts right.

Nothing better captures the moral derangement of our times than those two words, ‘her penis’…. That such a sexist, unscientific term now falls from the gobs of so many in the elites – the press, the police, the courts – should horrify us all. For it confirms the victory of identity over truth. It confirms that everything – even science, even logic – now plays second fiddle to validating the self-delusion of the individual. 

Only some brands of identity though. Not women’s identity, for instance. Boutique identities only need apply.

There just aren’t any women, you see.

Australian surf brand Rip Curl has come under fire after featuring a transgender boarder in a campaign to promote women’s surfing. 

Male transgender boarder. It’s funny how they always leave that out. It’s implied, of course, but it damn well shouldn’t be implied, it should be spelled out. Every single time. Just combining “transgender” and “under fire” and “women’s surfing” is not good enough. Spell out the damn insult.

Sasha Lowerson, 44, featured on the Rip Curl Women Instagram page on Thursday as part of the company’s Meet The Local Heroes of Western Australia campaign.

It comes just months after Rip Curl dropped former brand ambassador Bethany Hamilton – one of the world’s most famous surfers – reportedly over her opposition to transgender people competing in women’s sport.

That’s nice. Drop a woman because she doesn’t want men in her sport, then feature another man in a campaign to promote women’s surfing. Go big or go home, yeah?

Nones are the majority.

When Americans are asked to check a box indicating their religious affiliation, 28% now check ‘none.’

A new study from Pew Research finds that the religiously unaffiliated – a group comprised of atheists, agnostic and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular” – is now the largest cohort in the U.S. They’re more prevalent among American adults than Catholics (23%) or evangelical Protestants (24%).

Back in 2007, Nones made up just 16% of Americans, but Pew’s new survey of more than 3,300 U.S. adults shows that number has now risen dramatically.

Better late than never, yeah?

Pew asked respondents what – if anything – they believe. 

Well that’s a silly way to put it. Everybody believes countless things; we couldn’t function if we didn’t. We believe the next step we take won’t plunge us into a black hole.

Most Nones believe in God or another higher power, but very few attend any kind of religious service.

If there’s a higher power, why doesn’t it do something? Take away our car keys for instance?

Wow, powerful argument.

Being used to the body you’ve always been is not an idenniny, it’s just being used to what you’ve always been.

Idenniny is much more magical and profound and meaningfulish than mere being used to what you’re used to.

He’s not kidding about the shit cartoons part.

Mermaids is doing what now?

Dennis stepped in.

Yet another one. I may find myself doing these for years to come – there’s so much of it.

[High squeaky contemptuous voice]: You suggest everyone thinks like that.

No, not everyone, because we know there are fools like you, but certainly most people, you absolute monster of a smug censorious heartless last person who should be working for a rape crisis center goon. Everyone did “think like that” until about ten years ago, and now a small but intolerable minority of people have allowed themselves to become confused about it.

Even worse, in a way, is the “we are transinclusive service and that is what we do.” Well that’s not supposed to be what you do. You’re supposed to be a service for victims of rape. Being “transinclusive” has nothing to do with that.

Is this happening everywhere? Bakeries? Public transportation? Plumbing? They’ve all stopped baking or driving buses or installing new toilets and are instead busy being transinclusive?

More.

What is “ownership of their own identity”? This fool seems to take it to mean “people are what they say they are” – which is an abjectly ridiculous claim. No people don’t “own” their idenniny in the sense that if they say they’re a mouse then they’re a mouse.

We own very little, in fact. We’re thrown into the world, as the existentialists put it. We can change, we can acquire talents, we can curl our hair, but the range is pretty narrow. That’s just reality.

Yeah it’s like chocolate – some people like it, some don’t.

So policy is to lie to raped women, to tell them they’ll be seeing a woman when in fact they’ll be seeing a man. How enlightened.

Shameless lie after shameless lie.