Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Strange man.

“I believe, in the next couple of decades, there will be millions of people living in space. That’s how fast this is going to accelerate,” he said.

There’s a small problem with this. We don’t know how to live in space. I believe it was from someone posting here on B&W that I learned of the book A City on Mars by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith. Their conclusion? Not soon, not likely. The problem? It’s not only the Rocket Science, it’s the Us Science.

A short list of things we don’t know about (not all from the book, and in no particular order):

Part 1) Rocket science

How to build Really Big Things in space.

How to build Really Big Things that Spin in space.

How to build Really Big Things on moons and planets.

How to build large scale, long term closed loop systems.

How to mine and process materials in space

Part 2) Us science

Sex in space.

Conception, gestation and birth in space.

Growth and maturation in space.

How to grow lots of food in space (see “closed loop system” above).

How to build a community/society/polity in space.

What happens when the Company Town controls the air you breathe?

Etc.

According to Google, the most people launched into space on one flight was 8; and the largest number ofhumans in space at one time up to now has been 19. Millions in 20 years? No. Do we really want that many rockets built* and launched in that period of time? Fuck no.

And what exactly are a million people going to do in space? Is there a need for that many people to go into space? Fragile space stations, and Lunar or Martian colonies are never going to be insurance policies against human extinction (let alone biospheric extinction). As far as we’re concerned, Earth is it. The chances of self-sustaining, off-Earth human settlements are remote. They will always be more vulnerable than Earth. If planetary disaster did strike, rendering Earth uninhabitable, such colonies would be, at best, lifeboats with no one to rescue them.

Questions of time frame and material feasability aside, do we really want corporations or individuals claiming for themselves a Manifest Destiny in space, claiming territories to which they have no right, squandering resources they can buy, but which the planet cannot afford? Are the communitis/societies/polities they dream of spawning going to be bastions of freedom and liberty, when there’s always going to be someone able to pull the plug, or vent the atmosphere? How do we live off the Earth when we haven’t learned (or have forgotten how) to live in it and on it?

*Sure, some will be reusable, or partly so, but you’re going to need a huge fleet, which will be a huge drain on resources, and a huge source of pollution from both construction and launch. Musk’s Starship, which will supposedly carry up to 100 people at once, would require 10,000 launches to loft 1,000,000 people into space. Since 1957, in the total history of space flight, the total number of orbital launches of all kinds, by all nations and companies has been about 7,300. The number of space launches with humans aboard (which also includes suborbital flights)? About 400.

Trump seems to think tariffs are like spankings or being sent to your room without dessert.

Trump has said he is increasing tariffs on goods imported from Canada after the province of Ontario aired an anti-tariff advertisement featuring former President Ronald Reagan. In a post on social media on Saturday, Trump called the advert a “fraud” and lashed out at Canadian officials for not removing it ahead of the World Series baseball championship.

“Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now,” he wrote.

But that’s not what tariffs are for. They’re not punishments for being naughty. They’re really not punishments for irritating the bossy guy.

The advert, which was sponsored by the Ontario government, quotes former US President Ronald Reagan, a Republican and icon of US conservatism, saying tariffs “hurt every American”. The video takes excerpts from a 1987 national radio address that focused on foreign trade.

The Ronald Reagan Foundation, which is charged with preserving the former president’s legacy, had criticised the advert for using “selective” audio and video and said it misrepresented Reagan’s address. It also said the Ontario government had not sought permission to use it.

Does it need permission? Is the address not public domain? If not why not?

Fiyaz Mughal on the disaster of communniny thinking:

Over half a decade of working with the Home Office on countering extremism, I saw it for myself, time and time again: a civil service culture that instinctively resists scrutiny of anything involving religion or ethnicity.

The moment you even suggest that the ethnicity or faith of perpetrators might be one factor among many worth examining, certain civil servants recoil. They tell you that looking into it might “inflame community tensions”, or “increase hate crimes against Muslims” or “cause policing issues”.

He doesn’t in fact actually mean religion or ethnicity as such, he means specifically that one religion, the one he names. I don’t think UK civil servants freak out much when the subject is Anglicanism.

These arguments become a convenient way to close down honest discussion. That’s the exact approach that now appears to be dominating the Government’s inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal, and I worry it means that the state will never truly tackle the underlying issues.

Purported “Islamophobia” is right up there with purported “transphobia” for ignoring and silencing dissenters.

I’ve spent much of my working life engaging various government departments on issues of hate crime, community cohesion and extremism. In 2012 I set up Tell Mama, an organisation which monitors anti-Muslim hate and supports victims.

This meant countless meetings with the Home Office to highlight groups whose values and world view were at direct odds with the values of our nation; groups who were willing to inflame division and tensions through their actions.

In other words groups who were motivating “Islamophobia” rather than preventing it.

I was alarmed to discover that Prevent coordinators, the people tasked with countering extremism, were regularly engaging with what I saw as extremist groups.

On countless occasions I put it to the civil servants in charge of counter-extremism that it seemed deeply antithetical to the cause of counter-extremism to engage with groups who believed in Sharia marriage [and] polygamy and openly attacked Muslims who engaged with Jews…

When I raised it, though, the response was a wall of polite obstruction. Each local authority, I was told, makes its own decisions. There might be legal risks in naming these organisations. Some civil servants insisted these were simply “legitimate Muslim groups” who should be included in community engagement, as though their form of Islamic interpretations were “normative” Islam.

It was a masterclass in bureaucratic resistance. And behind every excuse was an ideology: a belief that acknowledging the problem might undermine social cohesion. 

Which is so interesting, because what about the fact that not acknowledging the problem might undermine soshul koheezhun? Why is social cohesion based on nodding happily at energetic subordination of women while ignoring the misery of those subordinated women? It’s frat-boy social cohesion, not the kind that sees women and girls as actual people.

The problem as I see it goes all the way back to Gordon Brown’s government. That period, post-Blair, was when the themes of social cohesion and community harmony became dominant within government. The old Department for Communities and Local Government (now MHCLG) grew out of that thinking, and over time it embedded a particular type of civil servant – people whose entire careers have been shaped by what I call “kumbaya politics”. By that I mean the kind of world view where everyone sits around holding hands, pretending that the world is fine and that we must never look too closely at uncomfortable realities for fear of upsetting someone.

Nowhere is that more entrenched than in the MHCLG. Within that department, there’s a powerful narrative that says: anything which risks making one community look bad must be resisted.

But, again, some communninies more than others. Much more than others. In particular, of course, the massive communiny that is female people is never as coddled and protected and defended as the Moosslimm communinny, and of course the atheist communniny and the Jewish communniny are also disdained.

And it’s not just ideology – it’s also groupthink. Over the years, a small circle of advisers from within Muslim communities have come to dominate this space. Many are closely aligned with the Labour Party, and they sing the same tune: that Islamophobia is the overriding issue facing Muslims, that Islamism should not be discussed, and that grooming has nothing whatsoever to do with culture or faith. I have worked for 25 years fighting anti-Muslim hatred and measuring its rise – I know the reality of that threat, but I also know that this narrow narrative has suffocated all other perspectives.

The problem here is that it’s of the nature of religions to be groupthink. That’s what religions are.

So bright.

Jeff Bezos says the future is so bright, he “doesn’t see how anybody can be discouraged who is alive right now.” Speaking at Italian Tech Week 2025 earlier this month with Ferrari and Stellantis chair John Elkann, the Amazon and Blue Origin founder laid out a plan to launch humanity into orbit — literally.

I wonder if being a billionaire makes it difficult for him to see how other people can be discouraged. Several of those people are not billionaires. Several people have no money at all. Several people have health issues. Several people have problems of various kinds, which can lead to being discouraged.

The conversation started on Earth but didn’t stay there long. Bezos dove headfirst into space — predicting colonies, building data centers off-world, and using the moon as a gas station. “I believe, in the next couple of decades, there will be millions of people living in space. That’s how fast this is going to accelerate,” he said.

And that’s a reason not to be discouraged???

Living in space would be horrible.

And seriously. Twenty years from now there will be millions of people living in space?

Come on.

Graham Linehan talks to Julie Bindel:

When I ask if he has any regrets about any of it, he says: “People often ask me this, and to be honest, not really. Some of my tweets are angry, and invective.

“But I genuinely do hate this evil, misogynistic, homophobic movement. And I want to destroy it.”

When people criticise his conduct or tone, he thinks, “Well, they nailed dead rats to the doors of rape crisis centres”.

And if, one day, the trans rights movement ends and it has anything to do with this “big stubborn Irishman”, he will feel “as much satisfaction as from having written Father Ted. It’s a noble endeavour that I’m involved in. I’m like a half-buried rock in the road that they can’t get rid of”.

For that matter we don’t really have to wait for a total end of the movement: Glinner has already had anything to do with a lot of people changing their minds and/or feeling defiant enough to say what they’ve thought all along. We all have, in our own ways, and both Julie and Glinner have done a lot.

But as events finally start to prove him right, he says: “It’s not as sweet as it should be because it has destroyed my faith in society. If someone can be so stupid as to allow men into women’s spaces, what else might they do?

“We always expect people in positions of power to be somewhat competent. And now we know that they can be subject to the most extraordinarily stupid ideas.”

True. Bitterly, frustratingly true.

Oops no food for you next month, sorry, start saving those bread crusts now.

The US Department of Agriculture says it will not tap into its $6 billion contingency fund to cover food stamp benefits next month, according to an agency memo obtained by CNN. That means that roughly 42 million Americans will not receive critical food assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in November, unless the agency shifts its position.

Never mind. It’s only a month.

The loss of the critical safety net program ramps up pressure on Congress to end the federal government shutdown, which began on October 1, by agreeing to a federal spending package. Democrats have said they will not support a short-term spending bill unless it includes an extension of the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.

Stick it to the non-plutocrats one way or another. That’s the beauty of Trump and trumpism: steal from the poor and give it to the rich.

About one in eight Americans receive help buying food through SNAP. A key pillar of the nation’s safety net, the program provides enrollees with an average monthly benefit of $188 per person, as of May.

The food stamp program is the second nutrition assistance lifeline at risk of running out of money amid the ongoing standoff on Capitol Hill.

Never mind. It’s good for the character.

Another extinction:

Elkhorn and staghorn corals used to carpet Florida’s reef system, rising like antlers from the seabed — but not anymore. These crucial coral species are now “functionally extinct” in the region after record-breaking ocean temperatures, according to a study published Thursday.

The corals, which have been dominant reef builders in Florida for the past 10,000 years, were already critically endangered due to a host of factors including disease, pollution, hurricanes and ocean warming. But an unprecedented marine heat wave may have delivered a fatal blow.

In the summer of 2023, Florida’s water temperatures peaked at more than 90 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest recorded in the region for at least 150 years.

…

The heat wave marks the “functional extinction” of the colonies, the report found, a term marking the stage that often precedes the complete disappearance of a species.

While some elkhorn and staghorn corals remain, they are “no longer in densities high enough to carry out their ecological role — in this case, building and maintaining the reef structure,” said Ross Cunning, a research biologist at Shedd Aquarium and a study author.

…

The loss of these corals sets off “cascading impacts,” Cunning told CNN. “Reef growth slows, habitat complexity declines, and fish and invertebrates lose shelter and resources they depend on,” he said. It also leaves coastlines more exposed to storms and erosion.

The report’s findings are “a stark warning for the future of coral reefs worldwide,” the authors wrote in a statement accompanying their research.

A recent study from the University of Exeter found the planet’s warm water coral reefs have already been pushed passed a tipping point by climate change, and reefs on any meaningful scale will be lost unless global warming is reversed.

Is global warming being reversed? No. Is it being slowed? No. Are we doing anything to attempt to slow it? No.

Trump has tantrum chapter eleventy million.

Donald Trump has announced an immediate end to “all trade negotiations” with Canada over a television advertisement opposing US tariffs that quoted the former US president Ronald Reagan.

The ad, which was paid for by the government of the Canadian province of Ontario, uses excerpts of a 1987 speech where Reagan says “trade barriers hurt every American worker”.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Canada had “fraudulently used an advertisment[sic]”, which he called “FAKE”, and accused the country of trying to interfere with US court decisions on the levies. “Based on their egregious behavior, all trade negotiations with Canada are hereby terminated,” he wrote.

He doesn’t even know the difference between Ontario and Canada? Ontario is a huge province, but it’s still not Canada. Texas is a huge state, but it’s not the US. See how that works?

Whatever, bro. You’re still a man.

A tiny bit callous maybe?

Ah well, no surprise there, “Marianne” Oakes is a man.

Jail time for saying that men are not women.

A man in Switzerland is facing 10 days in prison after refusing to pay a fine for an “offensive” social media post. Emanuel Brünisholz, a wind instrument repairman from Burgdorf, was convicted under anti-discrimination laws for making [a] statement emphasizing skeletal evidence of binary sex.

It’s a crime in Switzerland to say that there are skeletal differences between women and men. The popes had their inquisitions and now the gender popes have theirs.

Brünisholz’s ordeal began in December of 2022 when he responded to a Facebook post by Swiss National Council member Andreas Glarner. In his comment, Brünisholz wrote: “If you dig up LGBTQI people after 200 years, you’ll only find men and women based on their skeletons. Everything else is a mental illness promoted through the curriculum.” 

The reply, which highlighted the immutable nature of biological sex and played on a popular meme, quickly drew complaints from activists who filed reports with local police, alleging it constituted public incitement to hatred under Article 261bis of the Swiss Criminal Code.

Reality is a crime.

The Bernese judiciary determined that “through his comment published on Facebook, [Brünisholz] has publicly belittled the group of LGBT(Q)I people based on their sexual orientation and in a way that violates human dignity.”

Forced teaming strikes again. It’s not about sexual orientation, and the violation of human dignity is pretending that humans can change sex.

The ruling has ignited a firestorm on social media, with critics decrying it as a chilling example of “woke authoritarianism” infiltrating Swiss jurisprudence.

Daniel Stricker, a prominent commentator, highlighted the irony in a viral X post: “And the Swiss mainstream media whines about free speech restrictions in far-off America… Total silence on this case.”

Frying pan meets fire.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on For rejecting an ideology.

So glad you highlighted this. It can’t be said often enough. Graham is a deeply compassionate, and passionate man. The Glinner we see in his exquisite writing — every single side-splitting joke in every single episode of The IT Crowd was penned by him alone, against all odds and deadlines and budget constraints, and all the other challenges that are faced by a sole showrunner who is also the sole director who is also the sole creator and who is also the sole writer of a hit comedy series that runs for years — is the same Glinner I have the privilege to know in person: he’s a deeply principled and loyal man with a very fast-paced brain, who’s been both pushed and drawn into the gender mess because of his intuitive sense that something’s amiss, that it runs counter to society’s higher ideals and objectives.

It’s been excruciating, seeing such a decent man put through the wringer. Every day of this mess I tell myself, we’re getting closer to “the end” of it, whatever that means. But to me “the end” will be the day I finally see movies that tell the stories of the victims. Women in prisons. Sandie Peggie. Magdalen Berns. Rosie Duffield. So, so many more. And Graham Linehan is a victim, too. I want to see his story, his terrible struggle, acknowledged on the big screen, along with the other victims of this godawful mess.

He’s a deeply human human being, despite his world-famous celebrity. I can’t bear to live in a world where that’s treated like a character flaw instead of a cherished asset.

I’ll just say this – it’s going to look ridiculous. It’s way out of scale, so it looks like a damn warehouse.

That huge box on the right side: that’s the stupid ballroom. The entire population of Queens could fit in there.

Euan McColm in the Scottish Daily Mail on Graham Linehan and the deranged ideology that trashed his life:

By rights, Mr Linehan should be revered, just as contemporaries such as Ricky Gervais and Simpsons creator Matt Groening are, as a visionary in his field. Instead, his career has been destroyed and his personal life upturned after years of relentless harassment by trans activists.

For rejecting an ideology –still hugely fashionable in the showbiz world from which Mr Linehan is now an outcast – he saw projects cancelled and friends turn on him. A long-planned musical based on Father Ted, the hit show Mr Linehan created alongside his one-time writing partner Arthur Matthews, was called-off while former colleagues denounced him as a bigot.

The nature of the campaign against Mr Linehan is disturbing, indeed. What makes it doubly so is the fact the police have been complicit in his harassment.

Complicit and downright helpful.

On Monday it emerged that not only had the Metropolitan Police decided no crime had been committed but that the force would no longer investigate so called ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHI). This was good news not only for Mr Linehan – who plans to sue the Met for wrongful arrest – but for anyone who cares about freedom of speech in these increasingly censorious times.

Graham Linehan’s recent arrest is understood to have followed complaints from members of a network of trans activists who have been allowed to weaponise police forces across the UK by making spurious criminal reports against those who reject the mantra that ‘trans-women are women’.

Spurious is putting it politely. It’s completely deranged. “Arrest that witch, she says there is no god!!”

If these complaints are rejected, activists then demand judicial reviews which often result in the reinstatement of charges not because the decision is justified but because chief constables are shamefully cowed by activist networks in their forces.

There are activist trans networks in police forces? I did not know that.

The Met’s announcement that it will no longer waste precious time indulging in the pointless, performatory investigation of non-crimes must be followed by a similar statement from Police Scotland Chief Constable Jo Farrell. Her force has allowed itself to be used as a private security force by activists for quite long enough. The Tory MSP Murdo Fraser has spent almost two years locked in a legal battle with Police Scotland over its handling of a complaint against him.

Mr Fraser committed the crime of refusing to take trans activists seriously by posting on X that ‘choosing to identify as ‘non-binary’ is as valid as choosing to identify as a cat.

Now you could make an argument that in fact choosing to idennify as a cat is either more or less valid than choosing to idennify as non-binary, but that’s an argument, not a police matter.

What misery these activists wish to inflict and what energy they possess. Not only do they recklessly encourage confused young people towards unnecessary medical pathways which will leave their bodies disfigured, they seek to destroy anyone who speaks up about the dangers of their ideology.

Plus, they’re boring and they don’t know how to think.

Clever people who know Mr Linehan is right cannot bring themselves to be seen in the same room as him lest they be infected. Like that other great hate figure of the trans movement, JK Rowling, Mr Linehan has done nothing but bring joy to others throughout his professional career.

As in the case of Ms Rowling, there is no incongruity between the warmth of his work and the position he takes on trans issues. Graham Linehan’s opposition to the demands of activists is not, as his critics claim, cruel. It is profoundly compassionate and, given the number of public figures who have run scared on this issue, impressively brave.

And so say all of us.

Wait, who was unreasonable here?

Sandie Peggie’s legal team says it is seriously concerned about the content of secret briefings for SNP ministers prepared by NHS Fife and uncovered by The Herald.

Confidential correspondence between the board and the Scottish Government, obtained through freedom of information, contains unredacted details about the nurse, including references to her occupational health appointments and other internal employment matters.

The documents outline NHS Fife’s account of events surrounding the employment tribunal and seek to reassure ministers that the board acted appropriately throughout.

In them, the board suggest Ms Peggie’s “personal circumstances” may have “contributed to the incident” and that the nurse should have had the “skills and knowledge to de-escalate or remove herself from this situation”.

Excuse me? Why is it on her to have “skills and knowledge” to de-escalate the presence of an enormous man in the room where she needs to take off her bloodstained clothes? She was not the aggressor here; he was. Just think: if he had had the skills and knowledge to take his ass out of that room the instant she asked or told him too, this whole tribunal would have been unnecessary.

NHS Fife argues that while Ms Peggie is entitled to her belief that Dr Upton is male, the way in which she confronted her colleague was unreasonable in a workplace setting, and that it was therefore reasonable she was suspended and investigated.

Right. And by the same logic, if he had assaulted her, that too would have been her fault. She’s the powerful privileged person here and huge tall burly posh man is the cowering terrified underdog. What happened to good old intersectionality? Remember when that was a thing? Peggie is the underdog on every metric and Upton is very much the overdog on every metric. How does NHS Fife get away with reversing the under/over positions?

To put it another way, why wasn’t it his presence in the women’s locker room that was “unreasonable in a workplace setting” as opposed to Peggie’s objection to his presence there?

We’ll never be told.

Teen Vogue tells us:

Suing her school was not how Evelyn Parts envisioned her final semester at Swarthmore College. Parts, 22, a distance runner and team captain of the school’s varsity cross country and track team, set big goals for senior year. The Towson, Maryland native had qualified for the 5,000 meters in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)’s Division III Centennial Conference Championship for Women’s Indoor Track & Field set for last March in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. For her, it was the biggest competition of the season.

But she was never given a chance to run. Parts, who goes by Evie, was banned from competing with her team because she is a transgender woman.

Thus Teen Vogue cheerfully admits it lies to us in the first paragraph.

It also misrepresents the issue in the usual way. Parts was banned from competing on the women’s team because he is a man. “Transgender” is beside the point (because meaningless); the point is that he’s not a woman. However fragile and dainty and girly he may think he is, he’s not a woman. A “transgender woman” is a man. Men don’t get to compete against women, especially in a championship.

“There’s so much on my mind that nobody else has to think about,” Parts tells Teen Vogue about the ordeal. “This is not fair that I’m having to think about this. Everybody else is thinking about race strategy, and I’m thinking about whether I’ll be able to race.”

Whiney jerk. Any thought for the women he’s cheating? Of course not.

Via What a Maroon, Moumen Al-Natour writes in the Washington Post of the two Gazas:

Trump’s ceasefire has split Gaza into two alternate realities on either side of the “yellow line” behind which the Israel Defense Forces have withdrawn under Phase 1 of the ceasefire deal. On one side is a Gaza that is desperate for Trump’s plan to succeed; on the other is a Gaza that is being pulled back into the abyss once again. It is impossible for these two Gazas to exist simultaneously for more than a moment in time, and soon enough one will consume the other. Fighting over the weekend underscores just how precarious the balance remains.

My Gaza, where I wish to live, exists between Israel and the yellow line. There, the war is over and change buzzes in the air. People have access to food, medicine and electricity. And other signs of normality are beginning to return, such as some children going back to school. This is the Gaza that is waiting with anticipation to work with a new civil administration and an international protection force that will keep the peace as Israel withdraws. Few there speak of Hamas with any warmth or positivity. For once they no longer have to.

…

I have been deeply involved in Gaza’s underground civil society movement for many years, much of which was spent preparing for an unknown moment where we would have a chance to be free of Hamas’s cruel domination and break the cycle of war with Israel. That moment is now here, and I am certain that this is the chance for which I spent my life protesting, organizing and suffering. It was worth the scars and the terror to see that there can be a different future here.

But on the other side of the yellow line exists another Gaza that will do anything to prevent this from happening. Over there the war continues, albeit not between Israel and Hamas but between Hamas and Gaza itself. In the nearly two weeks that have passed since Trump’s deal was signed, and in the absence of IDF soldiers, Hamas has emerged from its tunnel network and is reasserting control in the most violent manner possible, its reemergence accompanied by a terrifying bloodletting that targets any form of internal dissent, both real and imagined, past and present.

With no Israelis in their scopes, no more hostages to torment and no more leaders capable of giving them a new identity, Hamas is taking its humiliation and rage out on the Palestinians who happened to be on the wrong side of the yellow line when the war ended. Whether the militants are executing a line of shackled men on the street or engaging in firefights around hospitals, Hamas’s violence against Palestinians has now become so intense and so visceral that you would think that their true enemy was Palestinians, not Israelis.

I suspect that violence is one of those drugs that you have to take in ever-larger doses to get the same high. Hamas’s doses are stratospheric.

I have lost many friends to Hamas’s barbarity and have come close to losing my own life on more than one occasion. And if we refuse to stand up to Hamas when it kills Palestinians and blatantly breaches the terms of the peace agreement today, then we are showing Hamas that the world will stand by as it reclaims the rest of Gaza, extinguishing my hopes and dreams once and for all.

Such an outcome would be a tragedy not only for Palestinians but for the rest of the world as well. If Hamas retains a foothold in Gaza, it will quickly undermine and disrupt the progress we are now trying to achieve. The only solution is to force Hamas to abide by the terms of the deal, by handing over its weapons and leaving the future of Gaza to people who have been denied a voice for a generation, rather than leaving a vacuum for it to exploit. The creation and implementation of a new civil administration and international stabilization force as outlined in the plan cannot come soon enough.

Here’s hoping.

Fun fact it just occurred to me to look up to make sure it is a fact.

All of Trump’s grandparents were immigrants. All of them. One two three four.

On October 7, 1885, Friedrich Trump, a 16-year-old German barber, boarded a ship with a one-way ticket to America, escaping three years of compulsory German military service. He had been a sickly child, unsuited to hard labor, and feared the effects of the draft.

…

Trump is the son, and grandson, of immigrants: German on his father’s side, and Scottish on his mother’s. None of his grandparents, and only one of his parents, was born in the United States or spoke English as their mother tongue. (His mother’s parents, from the remote Scottish Outer Hebrides, lived in a majority Gaelic-speaking community.)

Worth keeping in mind.

Once again we see that religions have actual substantive beliefs about other people, specifically the kind of beliefs that lead to quarrels, fights, wars, genocides.

We’re supposed to pretend otherwise. We’re supposed to pretend that religions are entirely a force for good.

A pro-Gaza MP who welcomed the ban on Israeli football fans from Villa Park previously cast doubt on the atrocities committed in the Oct 7 attacks. Ayoub Khan, the independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, cast doubt on claims that women were raped during the Hamas-led massacre in 2023.

Religion! Ethnicity! History! Theocracy! Rivalry! A toxic brew. Football doesn’t improve it.

His comments have come to light as he faces a backlash for celebrating the decision to bar Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending their team’s Europa League match against Aston Villa on Nov 6.

Fans of the Israeli club were informed of the ban on Thursday following a recommendation from West Midlands Police to Birmingham’s safety advisory group.

Sir Keir Starmer has led criticism of the ban. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said MPs who celebrated it were “absolutely disgusting”.

Aww, the MPs are just defending their communniny.

Man knocks out woman in boxing ring surprise.

Olympic gender-row boxer Lin Yu-ting controversially romped to victory on her return to the ring on Tuesday night, knocking out a 19-year-old female university student in just 94 seconds.

Lin, 29, won gold in the women’s featherweight division during last year’s Paris Olympics, despite being disqualified from the 2023 World Championships for failing a gender eligibility test.

If you don’t already know that Lin is a man you wouldn’t learn it from that beginning. What is the point of obscuring the truth this way? It’s not HER return to the ring, it’s HIS. He’s a man determined to punch women and he knocked one out yesterday. That’s the story. Saying he failed a gender eligibility test is meaningless: carefully, deliberately meaningless. But it’s ok because hey it’s only women who are harmed so never mind.

Prior to Tuesday, the Taiwanese boxer had not returned to the ring at international events since winning gold in Paris, which sparked a huge gender row over disputed sex tests.

World Boxing introduced mandatory genetic sex testing for all boxers aged over 18 in August, in an effort to better determine eligibility for its competitions.

The decision has seen Lin and fellow gender row boxer Imane Khelif, who also won gold at the Paris Games in the welterweight category, undergo extended periods away from the ring.

Blah blah blah, on and on, and every word of it is evasive.