Category: Notes and Comment Blog

This guy.

That’s the summary. The word for word is worse.

Reporter: Mr President, why wait for Congress to release the Epstein files, why not just do it now?

Trump: You know, it’s not the question that I mind, it’s yer attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions, you start off with a man who’s highly respected, asking him a harrible and insubordinate and and just a terrible question and you could even ask that same exact question nicely – yer all psyched uh somebody psychs you over at ABC they’re gunna [grimaces] psycha – [long pause while he rears back trying to shake loose a thought] – yer a terrible person and a terrible reporter – uh – as far as the Epstein files is – I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein, I threw him out of my club many years ago cuz I thought he was a sick pervert –

[skipping some dull ranting]

…and yer not after the radical left cuz yer a radical left network, and I think the way you ask a question, [his face distorts with rage] with the anger and the meanness – is terrible, yawta go backn learn how da bea reporter – [jabs finger] no more questions from you.

The thing is…

Why is the BBC determined to share exponential insults to women?

Well it’s about goddam time.

Lime scooters in Seattle will soon be equipped with artificial intelligence and cameras that, it’s hoped, will shame people into not riding on the sidewalk.

The technology has been tested in town in recent months leading up to the rollout, and it’s coming to Seattle before any other cities, said Parker Dawson, who runs regional government relations for Lime.

Lime Vision will be installed on half the scooter fleet, about 3,500 vehicles, by June 1 and all of the fleet by year’s end. New and retrofitted scooters with the technology will begin showing up in mid-April.

Without sharing many details, Dawson said the technology was developed by Lime specifically to deter sidewalk scooter riding, which by city law is barred but certainly not adhered to. Dawson wouldn’t say why the scooters won’t just slow down when on the sidewalk, as they do on the waterfront, where geofencing limits speeds to 8 mph down from the typical 15 mph.

They’re a god damn menace and the rule against riding on the sidewalk should have been enforced from the outset.

While Lime has faced criticism for safety concerns, notably the danger of riding a scooter without a helmet, many people can attest to the annoyance of being “buzzed” by a scooter while simply walking on a sidewalk, Scholes said later in an interview.

Yeah no it’s not a mere annoyance, it’s terror. It’s the awareness that you could at any moment veer from a straight line just as one of those scooters or a bike or any other heavy swift mode of transport is zipping up behind you. You can’t hear them. They’re not like cars; they don’t make a noise; you could accidentally walk right in front of one because you’re on the sidewalk, which is where people walk. You’d be dead or horribly smashed up. It would not be fun.

“The person riding on the sidewalk and ringing their bell to get out of their way. That’s really rich,” Scholes said. “It’s become a constant nuisance and it’s more than a nuisance, it’s a safety issue.”

Scholes pointed to the number of visitors the city gets, and the urban senior living facilities in the city core, as reason enough for the technology.

“We all have to uphold and protect the great walkability we have here because it’s such a fundamental asset,” he said. But, he added, Lime felt pressure to respond to criticism in Seattle and get off the sidewalk because the city is one of its biggest markets in North America.

How about because the damn scooters and bikes are dangerous?

Some of the blame for sidewalk scofflaws rests with the city, Dawson said, noting that people often ride on sidewalks when they don’t feel safe riding in the street.

Yeah now think about how we peasants who use our feet to get places feel. We don’t feel safe walking on the sidewalk, and that makes sense, because we’re not.

Every time you think you can’t despise the BBC any more profoundly, they step up to say hold my beer.

“on the basis of her academic work” – but it’s not “her” academic work you evil shits. And no we don’t believe he was the only sociologist who has done academic work on the subject of the social theory of masculinity.

And he didn’t share “her academic expertise,” he shared his academic expertise, which is the very issue we’re yelling about. Repeating the same stupid insulting lie over and over and over again is not going to persuade us, it’s only going to make us hate you more.

How is it possible for you to ignore the obvious fact that a man’s experience of, take on, opinion about misogyny is not going to be the same as women’s because of the existential differences between them? Men are not vulnerable to male hatred and contempt the way women are because men are stronger. This is a lifelong fact about the two sexes. It’s a fact that does make a difference. Pretending there’s some need to bring men in to chat about it for the sake of variety is just one more calculated insult.

Sir that was 85 years ago.

It’s worth watching all 7 plus minutes of his slobbery crazed babble. Notice the contrast with Vance, who is evil but not bereft of a brain.

This is…alarming. He has the brain power of a wet sponge.

Note the terrified laughter when he says he wants to hug it. They’re trying to pretend he was joking instead of babbling like a two-year-old.

The NY Times published a guest essay yesterday titled We Study Mass Shooters. Something Terrifying Is Happening Online.

Until recently, if asked to profile a typical mass shooter, we would have described a middle-aged man who was socially isolated and in despair. He was not in the grip of a political ideology, nor did he have a mental health condition such as schizophrenia. Rather, he was deeply despondent about a life crisis, perhaps a divorce or a job loss. In attacking a workplace or a group of people he blamed for his problems, he was both exacting vengeance and effectively or literally committing suicide.

Over the past several years, something has changed. We are witnessing the emergence of a different paradigm: a mass shooter no less despairing about life’s hardships but younger, highly connected to online social networks and seemingly convinced that in acting violently he or she is carrying out the only meaningful act possible in a world otherwise devoid of meaning. This shift is highly significant for our understanding of the online-fueled pathologies that afflict our society and for the policies that could help prevent such tragedies.

Consider a recent example. Last month in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, an 18-year-old killed her mother and half brother at home, then opened fire at a secondary school she had attended, killing five students and an educator. In the aftermath of the shooting, amid the expected evidence of the shooter’s despair, there emerged an alarming trail of online activity: On Roblox, a game platform, the shooter had created a game simulating a mass shooting; her TikTok account reportedly featured reposted videos of a mass shooter; she belonged to a gore forum where users can post uncensored videos of violence, which has been frequented by other mass killers; and she had visited the online profile of a 15-year-old girl who killed two people at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., in 2024.

But. There’s a catch. You know what it is, of course. That “she” is not a she. The guest essay starts with a major, repeated lie about the very subject the authors are writing about. They tell us We Study Mass Shooters but what’s the point if they then systematically lie about the sex of at least one of their subjects?

I looked for more information and found that Wikipedia does the same thing.

On February 10, 2026, a mass shooting occurred in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada. Jesse Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at their home before going to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where she killed six people and injured twenty-seven others before killing herself. Van Rootselaar was a former student of the school.

No footnote, no brackets, no warning, no explanation – just the big lie.

My signpost to this outrage was, as so often, Helen Lewis.

Once more for those waaaaaaaaay the hell in the back…

Knowing and/or saying that trans women are men is not in any way immoral or ugly or socially reprehensible. Trans women are men; that’s why the “trans” part is there. Women are women; trans women are not women. A table is not a trans chair; the two are different things. Different things are different. A carrot is not an orange, despite the similar color; the two are different things. A bicycle is not a car even though both have wheels; the two are different things. A man is not a woman even though both are human; the two are different things.

Also, check your spelling ffs.

Now there’s a piece of good news.

A federal judge on Tuesday nullified nearly all actions that the Trump administration took to shutter Voice of America, a federally funded news organization that broadcast to countries with limited press protections, including Iran, China and Russia.

Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered more than 1,000 full-time journalists and support staff at the news group to return to work by March 23 and to resume broadcasting operations. The judge’s decision excludes contracted employees.

Judge Lamberth wrote that Congress passed clear laws funding V.O.A. and directing the administration to maintain news operations “in each significant region of the world” that present “a variety of opinions and voices.” But the Trump administration, Judge Lamberth said, flagrantly disregarded the rules in seeking to shutter the news service and its parent agency.

The Trump administration and evil Elon.

The journalists and support staff members at V.O.A. who sued the Trump administration said they want to rebuild the news agency’s reach.

“We are eager to begin repairing the damage Kari Lake has inflicted on our agency,” Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat and Kate Neeper, three of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “We hope the American people will continue to support our mission to produce journalism, not propaganda.”

Especially not Trump propaganda.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Try shutting up.

… trying to force the unachievable on the unwilling….

That’s as good a summary of the whole outrage as I have ever heard.

There’s something about that logic which bothers me. Why the baked in assumptions that the third space must be trans only, rather than inclusive, willing and knowingly participating? It could have been packed with trans women, genderqueers, inclusive feminists and all the so called allies.

Because they wanted to be seen as women, period. Not going into women’s spaces breaks that narrative, and rubs their noses in the mad impossibility of their quest. In their minds, being women “by choice” or “through effort” makes them better women than those lazy, ungrateful women who have femaleness handed to them on a silver platter at conception. Everyone should be rooting for them, the underdogs. They’re oppressed by so-called “cis-women”, who are barring their trans “sisters” from their rightful place in all female spaces. Everyone loves a good rags-to-sequins and glitter story, right, and if they don’t, they’ll be made to like it. Not to mention that it is fueled by classic male entitlement in lipstick and heels.

“Allyship” is a one way street, and is only useful to the extent that it gets them what they want, just like forced teaming. Share the cost, appropriate all the rewards. Do they want to be stuck in the same facilities as all those other wierdos? Fuck no. They DEMAND access to women’s toilets BECAUSE THEY ARE WOMEN! Anything less is hateful bigotry. “Logic” has very little to do with it. Who needs logic when you can just bully your way to your goals? Bulldozers don’t explain, argue, or debate. They just push forward, destroying all obstacles and obstructions.

What a crappy thing to do.

A 40-year-old man is behind bars after causing catastrophic damage to a famed Seattle glass museum located on the grounds of Seattle Center.

On Monday night, just after 11 p.m., the man was arrested for assault and causing over $240,000 worth of damage to the Chihuly Garden and Glass.

Why we can’t have nice things.

Bro has been watching too much tv.

Markwayne Mullin, the Oklahoma senator chosen by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Homeland Security who will be considered by the Senate on Wednesday, has never served in the US military, but he routinely speaks as if he did in interviews.

Two days after the US attacked Iran, for instance, Mullin told Fox News: “War is ugly. It smells bad. And if anybody has ever been there and been able to smell the war that’s happening around you and taste it, and feel it in your nostrils, and hear it, it’s something you’ll never forget. And it’s ugly.”

He knows this from the movies. No I know he can’t actually smell it from the movies, but he can watch actors pretending they can smell it in the movies. And it’s ugly.

Mullin did not serve in any branch of the US armed forces, but inherited a plumbing company and took part in a handful of mixed martial arts fights, so it is unclear what experience he describes in interviews. According to Axios, which spoke with people who have heard the conversations, the senator has privately hinted to colleagues that he was involved in dangerous private security work in Middle East war zones before running for Congress in 2012.

And that’s smelly stuff. Seriously smelly. Falafel for instance – you can smell that from feet away.

In response to questioning from Democratic senator Gary Peters of Michigan, Mullin said he has never traveled to a foreign country outside of vacation or mission work.

But the day after he spoke of the smell and taste of war, Mullin was asked for his thoughts on Iran by Buck Sexton, a conservative radio host and former CIA officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. “You are a veteran, you understand war,” Sexton said in a phone interview with Mullin. “What do you make of what we’re seeing so far?”

“Well, first of all, let me clarify: I did special assignments outside of DoD, now DoW,” Mullin said, referring to the Department of Defense, newly rebranded the Department of War. “I never wore the uniform or the flag on my shoulder. Might’ve been in the same area … but the guys that signed the contract, I got to work alongside of those guys and they’re phenomenal individuals.”

And smelly.

This month was not the first time that Mullin has spoken as if he has been through combat when, in fact, he has not.

In an interview with Fox News on 7 January 2021, the day after he had tried to help Capitol police officers defend the House chamber from pro-Trump rioters, Mullin said: “Some people there got nervous, there’s a lot of members that was in that chamber that never dealt with a situation like that, and I’ll tell you, I’ve never dealt with a situation like that on US soil.”

We’re left wondering what soil he has dealt with it on. Norway soil? Tibet? Paraguay?

Mullin has made similarly cryptic comments in other interviews. In 2023, he told a podcast produced by the Senate Republican conference: “I had to go do something overseas one time, there’s another side of my bio that I’ll never talk about nor will I, but I had to go do something overseas and when I went over there I always let my beard grow out. I’d start letting him grow before I went.”

“When I do these trips, I always come back and shave my beard,” he added.

This guy is truly hilarious.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on It is not what it is.

Professors are being hounded for acknowledging biological sex. Carole Hooven is an EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST who taught AT FUCKING HARVARD no less, and she was hounded out of her job over her plain, simple assertion of the FACT that sex is binary.

I’ll have no fucking truck with this coy playacting that phrasing like “people with wombs” isn’t directly connected to the ugly tribal reaction against the facts of biology that has taken hold among young people.

The primary purpose of such language as “people with wombs” is to appease the ravenous kids who’ve been conditioned to go feral and become outraged at any acknowledgement of biological sex. That’s it. It’s nothing to do with being nice to some hypothetical pregnant butches or whatever. The Venn diagram of, in one circle, females who are willingly and knowingly pregnant, and in the other circle, females who are dysphoric and so deathly incapable of facing the fact that they’re female… that diagram consists of two circles that not only don’t touch, but there’s a football field’s worth of gap between them.

You can tell by the way she describes the whole thing that Annie Lockhart thinks she’s putting her meagre little chips down on the side of the good. In reality, she’s siding with the mob against women’s rights.

Yet again. The madness of crowds warps everyone’s thinking. I see a world of cowards, everywhere I go. No one wants to challenge their tribe…

A vox pop moment.

From a public post on Facebook:

Wut? Terms like ‘people with wombs’ are being sometimes used in medical literature in conversations that are specifically about data connected to people with wombs and that’s how we know the term is not being used as a placeholder for “women”?

This ideology is not good for people’s thinking processes.

Well…

It’s not exactly a slur, true, but it is nevertheless highly objectionable, and not just to the person being called it. It assumes matters not in evidence – it assumes that there are “cis” people and “trans people” when in fact there are only people. Cis would not mean anything without the existence of the word “trans” but the word “trans” names something that doesn’t exist. We don’t need the word “cis” because it’s just the equivalent of real or actual or non-fake. Trans women are real, actual, non-fake men. Trans men are real, actual, non-fake women. It’s simpler to just ignore the fakes and go on knowing which people are which sex the way we always have.

“Cis” is not exactly a slur, but it is a specialty word that exists to legitimize the war on women that trans ideology is. No I’m not going to “try this” when the “this” is pretending there are two kinds of women, fake and real.

Here is the Woman’s Hour segment in case you’re interested. I could only manage a couple of minutes because the guy has nothing to say and he says it excruciatingly slowly and mumblingly in a silly Minny Mouse voice. A car-crash on all criteria.

Why do they do this?

I suppose I shouldn’t even ask. I suppose they do it for the obvious reason: to insult and harm women. But then why not call it some other kind of hour? Misogynist Hour would fit.

The usual stupid mistake in the title – not Trans Sociologist but Trans Woman aka Man.

Moving on – why do they do this?

They should just admit: because it makes you bitches furious and that makes us laugh. See you tomorrow.

Of course he said that.

That’s Trump in a nutshell. You don’t need to talk to other people, you’re the boss, you decide everything all by yourself, you don’t need a team, you don’t need information, you don’t need advice, you don’t need understanding, you don’t need a range of views, you don’t need to think – you just do the Big Boy Pants thing, end of story.

A bump in the road for Bad Kennedy:

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked federal health officials from cutting the number of vaccines recommended for every child, and said U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likely violated federal procedures in revamping a key vaccine advisory committee.

The decision halted an order by Kennedy — announced in January — to end broad recommendations for all children to be vaccinated against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis and RSV.

On the one hand you have your medically trained people and on the other hand you have a stupid conceited hack who thinks he knows better than everyone despite having zero medical training or education. Wattyagonna do.