Also, no he wasn’t.
He wasn’t there. He was in Manhattan, but he was not down there at the bottom of the island where the towers were. He was uptown. Nobody had to schlep him anywhere.
Category: Notes and Comment Blog
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Marlowe today
Trump spent Sunday posting pictures of himself nuking the planet from a space station, guarded by giant robots, over a caption announcing that the United States now owns the moon. He did this for thirteen hours.
Between 9:10 in the morning and 10:35 at night, Donald Trump fired off more than sixty posts. Memes, rants, endorsements, personal attacks, and a steady stream of AI-generated pictures of himself. He announced he wants to rename New Mexico.
Stating that it is “one of the great vote cheating states of all time,” a casual proposition by the President of the U.S.A. to rename a state that has existed since 1912 and call it “New America” was accompanied by a video of him dancing to Y.M.C.A.
He posted himself as Hulk Hogan. He posted himself in a Space Force uniform that critics pointed out looks like the outfit the villains wear in Star Wars. He posted himself palling around with George Washington, drawn by the same software that cannot reliably render a hand.
He bragged about making billions trading stocks, while under scrutiny for exactly that, and added that the billions were “for the U.S.A., not myself,” which is what a man says when both halves of the sentence are for him.
Somewhere in the thirteen hours he found the time and audacity to mock congresswoman Debbie Dingell for weeping over her dead husband, calling her a “third rate loser.”
Why this is hell, nor are we out of it.
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Separate but
An investigation has been launched in France after female staff at the Eiffel Tower were replaced by male colleagues for the visit of a Hindu religious group.
A delegation of around 100 people linked to the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) group visited the iconic landmark in Paris on Saturday.
People? I think they must mean men. If women were allowed to be in the delegation they would surely be allowed to be in the Tour Eiffel staff.
“Women were asked to leave their places of work” and felt “humiliated”, staff union representative Diane Davoine said. The tower closed on Monday as staff went on strike to show their outrage.
Damn right. Allons enfants.
BAPS – a movement whose beliefs originate in the 18th Century – strictly separates men and women, including in temple activities and building entrances.
No, that’s wrong. That’s a prettification. BAPS excludes women. Separation is one thing and exclusion is another. The women were excluded from the visit to the tower.
In a statement reported by AFP news agency, staff at the monument said that during Saturday’s visit, female employees were also “instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present”.
Because women are filth, you see. Women are filth who deliberately make men think about sex instead of holy whatever.
In a statement on X, BAPS said the trip was “arranged in conjunction with the Eiffel Tower team at the start of normal opening hours to avoid disrupting or inconveniencing others”.
It apologised “for any pain or inconvenience caused”, adding “we believe in the universal values of mutual respect and service”.
No you don’t. You exclude women; that’s not mutual respect. Fuck off.
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Sir not a good look sir
You’d think even he would be able to figure out that pretending to be a sojer when you were not ever a sojer is a really dumb and insulting thing to do. Mr Bone Spurs is a civilian.
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Urban glamor
A 17-year-old boy died in a shooting in Belltown late Sunday, and a 21-year-old man suffered serious injuries from a gunshot, according to Seattle police.
It marked seventh person shot in the Belltown neighborhood in three separate incidents over 24 hours on Labor Day weekend. Three have died.
Seven people shot in 24 hours, 3 of them fatally. Belltown is at the bottom of the hill where I live, so I traverse it most days because the bus route is through Belltown. At the west end it’s next to Seattle Center/the Space Needle, and at the east end it traverses a kind of ground zero for addicts. There’s one stop where people sell stolen goods all day – there are tables and chairs, and a boombox, and rows of random items for the discerning shopper to choose from. It’s very bizarre – everyone knows the goods are stolen, but nobody does anything about it. The city government policy is hands off – let the addicts slowly kill themselves on the street, and let the people who shoplift random merch sell it on the sidewalk right next to a brand new posh skyscraper that appears to be standing empty gee I wonder why.
A couple of blocks west, closer to the Needle, there’s a small grocery store that appears to have zero clientele other than the addicts who spend the day slumped outside it. I always wonder how that works – how does it not go bankrupt? I have no idea.And Belltown isn’t even the worst. 12th and Jackson in Little Saigon is notoriously the worst. The police do a sweep now and then, and hours later the addicts are back.
Thanks, fentanyl.
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Worse every day
This one is charming, especially when you play it.
Hit the play button. It’s no good ignoring these things.
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Wossinna name?
Well why not just speed things up and rename every state, every city, every town, every river, every lake, every mountain, every forest “America”?
The tinfoil king would love to.
Trump appeared to suggest on Sunday that New Mexico should be renamed “New America,” prompting swift backlash from the state’s Democratic leaders over his latest effort to put an American stamp on geographic names.
Sir, America is already the name of the whole country. Naming everything “America” would be like naming everything “Trump”. It would look silly. You don’t want to look silly do you? Vulgar, yes, a bully, yes, but silly? What would your uncle who taught engineering at MIT say?
On social media, Mr. Trump shared an image of a map of New Mexico with the word “Mexico” crossed out with a red X and replaced with “America.” The White House re-shared the image shortly after on its official X account.
The president posted again several hours later, with what appeared to be an A.I. video of him placing a label with the word “America” over “Mexico” on a “Welcome to New Mexico” road sign.
Mr. Trump has no legal authority to rename any state, which in New Mexico’s case is written into its Constitution. Any proposed change would have to originate within the state, a prospect that New Mexico’s Democratic leaders rejected forcefully on Sunday.
The words “Trump has no legal authority” don’t mean anything to Trump. They might as well be in Urdu.
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Oh go on, why not
An ongoing lawsuit against Correctional Service Canada (CSC) has forced the federal government to admit that female inmates have been raped by at least two trans-identified male transfers since the implementation of a gender identity housing policy in 2017. Despite the official admission, the Attorney General of Canada claims, in a statement of defense, that housing violent male convicts in women’s prisons “does not infringe the rights guaranteed to cisgender women inmates.”
Very true, unless you think that women have a right to avoid potential rapists. I for one do think women have that right.
In 2017, Correctional Service Canada (CSC) adopted an interim policy (Bulletin 584: Bill C-16) which allowed male inmates to be housed according to their “gender identity” rather than according to their biological sex.
Which is a very very very stupid thing to do. Female vulnerability to the strength and sexual equipment of men is not a matter of “identity” but of brute physical facts.
Five years later, in 2022, the CSC finalized its approach and formally enacted the policy titled Commissioner’s Directive 100: Gender Diverse Offenders. The guidelines detail the CSC’s “commitment to meeting the needs of its gender diverse offender population in ways that respect their human rights and ensure their safety and dignity.”
And disrespect women’s human rights and ensure their loss of safety and dignity.
Why? Why do that? Why make things easier for the sex with much greater strength and an external sexual organ at the expense of the sex with much lower strength and an internal sexual organ?
I await explanations which will never arrive.
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Bad man says what?
So progressive.
We’ve encountered Mr Felker-Martin before. He really does not like women.
H/t Mostly Cloudy
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Heretics not allowed
So now we’re throwing people out of public places because we don’t like what we think they think?
Is that legal?
I think it might not be.So we went to the Sports Bra in Portland so we could watch the Thorns game and after buying food and drinks we were told we needed to leave because another customer complained about our shirts.
We had not interacted with anyone but our own group.
Do press the play button to witness the very polite and intelligent explanation they get from the staffer. Her explanation would also have applied to the Woolworths Four back in the day.
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Discipline and ice cream
Da’Shaun L. Harrison at Socialism 2026 argues that the policing of “Black fat flesh” is foundational to broader “entire systems of governance.”
“Without a population to discipline, there would be no BMI, no obesity epidemic, and no medical or scientific institutions organized around managing fatness,” Harrison says.
Well yes. Without a population there would be no human anything. That’s a tautology. He’s doing a Foucault, as have so many before him.
It’s true that human things are human, and that without humans there are no human things. But this is now, and it’s not without humans, so the insight is otiose.
Harrison argues that diet culture trains “obedience,” “self-denial,” and “discipline,” before expanding the framework into what Harrison calls “body fascism.”
That dude needs to have a conversation with his organs. They could tell him why obesity is not a mere social construct.
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Check your T
Pete Hegseth rivals his boss in the stupid sweepstakes. He is one not bright guy.
Pete Hegseth wants a manly military. And he really, really wants you to know how badly he wants a manly military. In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth worried that the military risked becoming “effeminate, and apologetic”; he insisted that what liberals really want is “soft men, and a weak military,” and he scolded “Pentagon pussies” who refuse to stand up for soldiers on the battlefield.
No, dude, what liberals really want is no wars. We’re funny that way: we think mass-killing is regrettable and that we should avoid doing it if at all possible. Your problem is that you love the idea of war and you really love having the power to get people killed.
As secretary of defense, Hegseth has blocked the promotion of female military officers, removed the first woman to lead the Navy, and ordered a review of women’s “effectiveness” in ground-combat roles. He has also used the Defense Department’s social-media channels to post a steady stream of tougher-than-thou videos.
He thinks the Defense Department is the Offense Department.
The latest entry in this genre came earlier today, when Hegseth announced that he is requiring every service member over 30 to have their testosterone tested annually. He let this be known in a video posted on X captioned “The High-T Department of War.”
I give up. He parodies himself, so what’s the point of even saying
[silence falls]
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He’s not Eve, he’s Adam
Just stop. If a male suspect tells you he’s a woman, just roll your eyes, same as if he told you he didn’t do the thing you just watched him do. Some suspects lie to the police; make a note of it.
COPS are at the centre of a gender storm after calling a male-born suspect who self-identifies as female a “woman”.
Furious campaigners have blasted Police Scotland — saying it “contravenes” the force’s own stated policy.
No, saying it contravenes the force’s own policy. Skip the scare-quotes.
It follows the arrest of 30-year-old Eve Shaw — previously known as Adam Shaw — after an “unknown substance” was found on a lamppost in Edinburgh.
Cops said in a statement that a “woman” had been charged and that “she” would appear at the capital’s sheriff court.
We’ve been over this. Cops are not supposed to lie in their statements.
Trina Budge, of For Women Scotland, directly challenged the force to “explain” itself.
She added in a post on X: “This contravenes your policy to record crimes by biological sex.” Ms Budge backed this up with a photo of a Police Scotland document detailing the policy.
Plus it’s ridiculous. It’s always been ridiculous and it’s still ridiculous.
Police Scotland’s absurd lie is “trending” on social meeja.
Police Scotland arrested 30-year-old Eve Shaw, previously known as Adam Shaw, for culpable and reckless conduct after the August 20 incident in Morningside. The force’s initial statement described Shaw as a ’30-year-old woman’ and used ‘she’ pronouns, drawing criticism from For Women Scotland for clashing with the policy to record biological sex and transgender status in crime data. Campaigners argued this eroded public trust, while Police Scotland later explained it followed internal recording but avoided public details to respect privacy rights.
Wut? That last sentence is gibberish.
For Women Scotland not amused.
They don’t get to decline to comment. They get to explain why they continue to pin men’s crimes on women when the law forbids it.
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A wave
Google Maps has faced a wave of negative reviews and comments after changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” for users in the United States.
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Google began displaying “Lake America” after the Trump administration entered the name into federal geographic records. U.S. users see the new designation, Canadian users continue to see “Lake Ontario,” and users elsewhere see both names, according to Google.
The company said the update followed its long-standing practice of using names provided by official government sources.
Official how? If a fire department in Cedar Rapids, Iowa renamed the Mississippi River would Google change the map?
To be sure, the presidency is a high office, but that doesn’t mean Trump is simply a dictator. Trump saying something does not automatically create new law. It’s not at all clear to me that he gets to wake up one morning and change the name of Lake Ontario. It’s not his lake.
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Just making shit up now
No they haven’t.
Of course they haven’t. You could think that if you were 12 years old and ill-informed, but you’d be wrong.
It’s possible that there have always been people who chafed at the gender rules they had to follow – in fact it would be surprising if there hadn’t been. But people who aggressively insisted they were the sex they were not? No.
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on the streets of Germany
In other news, Euan thinks jackboots are a person. Because it’s in the name, duh.
Also not familiar with the word “throwback”. -
Outrage: women means women
Euan Weddell outraged that things reserved for women are reserved for women.
Members are advised that eligibility for seats reserved for women is determined by what sex you are: it has to be the female one. Duh.
Also, while we’re on the subject, when it’s a union for journalists basic literacy is a plus. Not saying “there bulletin” when you mean “their bulletin” would be a good, if horrifyingly basic, step.
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Be a good sport
No, really, it’s fine for women in prison to be forced to share their space with men. Absolutely fine.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announces that the federal government has filed its Statement of Defence in an ongoing constitutional challenge to its policy permitting trans-identifying male inmates to be transferred to women’s prisons. The document reveals that trans-identifying male inmates have already faced sexual-assault charges following complaints by female inmates, even as Ottawa denies that its policy violates female inmates’ Charter right to life, liberty, and security of the person (section 7).
Well that’s because not being sexually assaulted is not any kind of right to life, liberty, and security of the person. Who do these women think they are, to think they have a right not to be raped?
Lawyers funded by the Justice Centre launched the constitutional challenge in April 2025 on behalf of Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights (CAWSBAR). The lawsuit challenges Correctional Service Canada’s Commissioner’s Directive 100: Gender Diverse Offenders, arguing that allowing trans-identifying male inmates to be housed in women’s prisons exposes female inmates to physical and psychological harm and violates their Charter rights.
But the men’s rights to access to women are far more important than women’s rights not to be accessible.
Constitutional lawyer Chris Fleury said, “The government’s own Defence shows that female inmates have made serious complaints about what has happened to them in women’s prisons, including complaints that resulted in sexual-assault charges.”
“Female inmates are being exposed to real risks and real harm. This case is about protecting their safety, dignity, and constitutional rights,” he added.
Meh. Women are always complaining.
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Guest post: The artifice
Originally a comment by Artymorty on No calls.
It’s also awfully hard to look past the fact that [Ellen/Elliot Page] is a woman pretending to be a man. She’d have to be a minor character for that not to figure in the plot. Otherwise, it’s just very, very distracting, so much so that it pulls the viewer out of the story.
Trans actors can only play major characters who are conspicuously trans — it’s got to be a stated aspect of the character — or minor characters where there’s just no time or plot necessity to address it. Or maybe they can only be cast in sci-fi/fantasy where the lines are a bit blurrier?
I can’t think of a single instance otherwise.
As for Page’s part in The Odyssey, I’m going to chalk it up to both the fantasy-adjacent milieu, and the relative smallness of the part.
Insufferable trans YouTuber Abigail Thorn was cast in House of the Dragon (the same show that cast, and then apparently dropped, our dear ally James Dreyfus), but Thorn’s transness was immediately addressed: he plays a crossdressing sailor who makes a ribald sausage joke in his first scene. There: he’s actually a man and everyone knows it. Now we can move on.
There’s a transman character in the Fallout series, but again, her transness is explicitly addressed immediately: she’s smaller than the other guys in the platoon, and shy about getting undressed, because she’s not a guy.
That’s the mold of pretty much every character played by a trans-identifying actor. Their actual sex is part of the character. They’re not cast in actual opposite-sex roles.
Cross-sex character acting was common in the past — from Ancient Greece to Shakespeare, but it’s virtually unheard of in Hollywood today. Linda Hunt played a man in The Year of Living Dangerously back in the ’80s and it was such a novelty they gave her an Oscar. Plus, she never identified as a transgender man in reality, so the Academy was free to openly celebrate her for convincingly portraying a man while not actually being one. When someone’s actually claiming to be the opposite sex in real life, you’re supposed to pretend they’re not even acting, which makes it all the more uncomfortable when you’re watching them act.
Felicity Huffman played a transwoman (a man pretending to be a woman) in Transamerica, so that’s a case of a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. (Reminds me of when Rock Hudson, a closeted gay man in real life, played a straight man pretending to be gay in order to seduce Doris Day in Pillow Talk: a gay man pretending to be a straight man pretending to be a gay man!) Huffman’s role was technically cross-sex acting. (The Academy once again went bananas for it and nominated her for an Oscar.)
Jared Leto, Hilary Swank, and Jaye Davidson all played transgender characters, and their actual sex was pivotal to the characters. (The Academy nominated all three, two of whom won the trophy.)
Hunter Schafer has been cast in the upcoming Blade Runner TV series, and we don’t know yet how his trans status will play out in the story, but already, we’re talking about a cyberpunk sci-fi future defined by artificial bodies and body parts… so it’s hard to imagine his real-life surgically-modified body won’t factor into the story.
If anything, the artifice of trans people’s identities is more apparent than ever when they’re put onscreen in fictional stories.