Miriam Margolyes declines to shun JKR.

The actress who played Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films has offered sympathy to JK Rowling over accusations of transphobia.

…

Younger Potter stars including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, the three principals, all distanced themselves from Rowling after she expressed her views on the importance of biological sex.

Being the clueless ungrateful young toads they are.

“There isn’t one answer to all these trans questions,” [MM] told Radio Times. “We all know people who are slightly pansy or a bit butch or whatever you call it. But I think the vituperation that JK Rowling has received is misplaced. I don’t know her at all. I admire her as a human being. She’s a generous woman, she’s a brilliant writer.”

Margolyes, 80, responded to the suggestion that she could broker an understanding between Rowling and Watson: “I would if anybody asked me.”

Rowling, who denies being transphobic, was not selected for an official Platinum Jubilee reading list announced on Sunday despite being Britain’s most successful living author.

Well, to be fair, “successful” [in terms of sales] really isn’t the only relevant criterion for an author.

Margolyes, who published her memoir This Much is True in September, also spoke out against Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, who has announced cuts for the BBC and a plan to privatise Channel 4. “It’s inconceivable to me that a woman of limited intelligence can be given such a vital role,” Margolyes said. “She doesn’t know anything about anything.”

I like her.

You’d think people in India would have had enough of communal [aka religious] violence during Partition, but apparently not.

The procession had begun peacefully. Marching through the streets of Delhi’s Jahangirpuri district on Saturday, the devotees had gathered to celebrate the Hindu festival of Hanuman Jayanti. But the peace did not last long. As the evening drew in, an unauthorised parade began to gather. This time, men clad in saffron, the signature colour of Hindu nationalism, filled the streets brandishing swords and pistols, and started to shout provocative communal slogans.

Previous agreements between Hindu and Muslim residents for the procession to avoid passing by a local mosque, which was holding evening prayers, were ignored.

“A Hindu mob smashed beer bottles inside the mosque, put up saffron flags there and chanted Jai Shri Ram [Hail Lord Ram],” said Tabreez Khan, 39, a witness. “A caretaker of the mosque started resisting them, leading to a brawl. It was only after they started to desecrate the mosque that Muslims got angry and clashes started and stones were thrown.”

Good old religion, inspiring people to kill each other. What would we do without it.

The events in Jahangirpuri were far from isolated. Over the weekend, almost 140 people were arrested in connection with incidents of communal violence and rioting between Hindus and Muslims in the states of Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka during celebrations of Hanuman Jayanti.

Can’t they just fight over football instead?

The surge in communal violence has sparked concern among many in India who fear the country is becoming more polarised than ever along Hindu-Muslim lines. For many, the blame has been directed at the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi. The BJP is accused of overseeing a religiously divisive agenda and emboldening hostility towards India’s 200m Muslims, relegating them to second-class citizens. Meanwhile, Hindu vigilante groups such as VHP have been allowed to operate freely and have increasingly begun to take the law into their own hands.

Don’t elect theocrats to run countries. Ever.

“There is a strong case to be made that we are passing through the most difficult phase for Muslims in independent India,” said Asim Ali, a political researcher at the Centre for Policy Research thinktank, writing in the Telegraph, an Indian newspaper. “Being in the crosshairs of the dominant party of the country is a bad place to be for a community, and the Hindu nationalist stance towards Muslims seems to be becoming more hostile with time.”

Of course deciding Muslims or Hindus make a “community” is part of the problem in the first place. You can make anything a community, or you can make nothing a community. The word and the concept can tip over into bullying in a heartbeat. Community and identity are two of the most destructive words in the language (and the other languages).

Activists and academics have pointed to increasingly violent rhetoric against Muslims seeping into India’s mainstream, stirring up communal tensions to dangerous levels. In December 2021, a religious assembly of Hindu holy figures was held in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, during which the speakers called for a genocide against Muslims. Last week, police arrested Bajrang Muni Das, a Hindu priest accused of threatening mass rape against Muslim women during a speech two weeks ago in presence of officers.

How spiritual.

The Washington Post has a piece on something called Libs of TikTok, apparently a Very Influential Twitter account of the angry right-wing variety. It’s somewhat interesting, as such things are, but the writing is terrible – don’t their editors edit?

The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching. Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers. Its tweets reach millions, with influence spreading far beyond its more than 648,000 Twitter followers. Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.

What the reporter, Taylor Lorenz, means is of course as usual the T “community.”

Throughout its increasingly popular posts and despite numerous media appearances, the account has remained anonymous. But the identity of the operator of Libs of TikTok is traceable through a complex online history and reveals someone who has been plugged into right-wing discourse for two years and is now helping to drive it.

You see what I mean about the crappy writing.

Chaya Raichik had been working as a real estate salesperson in Brooklyn when, in early November 2020, she created the account that would eventually become Libs of TikTok.

It went through several names before settling on that one.

In January 2021, Raichik started talking about traveling to D.C. to support Trump on Jan. 6 at the Stop the Steal rally. When violence broke out at the Capitol that day, she tweeted a play-by-play account claiming to be on the ground. “They were rubber bullets from law enforcement. 1 hit right next to me,” she said. She posted videos from the crowd and spoke of tear gas being deployed nearby. After saying she left the riot, she used Twitter to downplay the event, claiming that it was peaceful compared to a “BLM protest.”

…

Just four months after getting started, Libs of TikTok got its big break: Joe Rogan started promoting the account to the millions of listeners of his hit podcast. He mentioned it several times on the show in August, then again in late September. “Libs of TikTok is one of the greatest f—ing accounts of all time,” he said. With his seal of approval, Raichik’s following skyrocketed.

I like a rags to riches story.

I very often think accusations of virtue-signaling are unfair, even when I do think the accused is being fatuous or censorious or worse. Even then I generally think there’s some intention of doing good. Other times, though, it’s just unmistakably “Look at me I have ascended to the highest level.”

Like this:

Too funny. Please be assured that I have told the organisers to make sure all the other people they invite are not white women like me and that they are trans not like me. Behold my saintly generosity.

This farking idiot.

Former president Donald Trump voiced regret Wednesday over not marching to the U.S. Capitol the day his supporters stormed the building, and he defended his long silence during the attack by claiming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others were responsible for ending the deadly violence.

“I thought it was a shame, and I kept asking why isn’t she doing something about it? Why isn’t Nancy Pelosi doing something about it? And the mayor of D.C. also. The mayor of D.C. and Nancy Pelosi are in charge,” Trump said of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in a 45-minute interview with The Washington Post. “I hated seeing it. I hated seeing it. And I said, ‘It’s got to be taken care of,’ and I assumed they were taking care of it.”

Pelosi and the rest of Congress and their staffs were in hiding from the violent lunatics Trump had unleashed on them. They were trying not to get killed. Trump was sitting on his fat ass in the White House watching it happen on tv, loving every second of it.

During the attack, Trump watched television, criticized then-Vice President Mike Pence and made calls pushing lawmakers to overturn the election as the violent mob of his supporters ransacked the Capitol. He was eventually persuaded by lawmakers, family members and others to release a video asking his supporters to go home — 187 minutes after he urged them to march to the Capitol during a rally near the White House. He was described by advisers as excited about the event.

Of course he was.

The former president praised organizers of the rally, some of whom have now received subpoenas from federal authorities, and repeatedly bragged about the size of the crowd on the Ellipse, when questioned about the events of Jan. 6.

“The crowd was far bigger than I even thought. I believe it was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to. I don’t know what that means, but you see very few pictures. They don’t want to show pictures, the fake news doesn’t want to show pictures,” he said. “But this was a tremendous crowd.”

I can’t stand the stupidity. I know that’s far from the worst thing about him, but I can’t stand it.

Trump also delved into foreign policy, lashing into NATO for not doing more to help Ukraine — Trump has repeatedly lampooned the organization — and said he’d threatened NATO leaders during a 2018 meeting in Brussels, a notion his advisers denied vigorously at the time.

“A lot of people are a little bit surprised, I think they’re very impressed with Ukraine, but they’re not impressed with what NATO is doing, because a lot of people think NATO could be doing more,” Trump said, speaking in general terms.

You know, Trump’s good friend Alotta Peeple, who always thinks exactly what Trump thinks.

When asked whether he had changed his mind on Ukraine, a country he regularly criticized as president, he began speaking about his impeachment trial that was launched after he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden’s son Hunter Biden and find an email server.

“I liked Zelensky from the beginning for one reason. When we had the impeachment hoax, based on a perfect phone call, he totally backed me up, and I didn’t ask him to do that. They asked him, and he said, he absolutely did nothing wrong,” Trump said. “He said there was no quid pro quo. He didn’t even know what his people were talking about. He thought they were crazy. … So I gained great respect for him there.”

Jesus christ. The Post asked him about Ukraine and the war going on there, and he answers with what Zelensky did for him. He should be glued to the floor and beaten to death with ugly neckties.

But I believe when you see massive election fraud, I can’t imagine that somebody who won the election based on fraud, that something doesn’t happen? How has it not happened? If you are a bank robber, or you’re a jewelry store robber, and you go into Tiffany’s and you steal their diamonds and get caught, you have to give the diamonds back,” he said.

Trump’s stolen a lot of money over the years. Some of it he stole from workers and contractors he refused to pay for work done.

Glued to the floor, I tell you. Get the neckties ready.

Via Old London Photographs:

Absolutely hideous.

Sigh. Laurie Penny pretends not to know that some autistic people can’t function independently in order to defend people who trans autistic children and adolescents.

Watching lifts open and close for hours on end isn’t being “interested in lifts.” LP is despicable.

Julie Bindel on That Lunch:

I have been in contact with Jo Rowling for two or three years. She got in touch with me on Twitter having seen the abuse that I had been receiving at the hands of misogynists since 2004. I don’t know when she picked up on what was happening to me, but she was clearly concerned about women’s rights and safety.

…

We have talked regularly ever since and I soon learnt what an amazing person she is. She has a wonderful sense of humour, in fact, she is one of the funniest women I have known, and has an enormous amount of integrity and generosity.

…

This lunch has now become infamous, but contrary to the idea held by some on Twitter, there was no plotting, we didn’t sit around coming up with an evil plan. I’ve never heard Jo say one anti-trans thing, I’ve never even heard her say one anti-trans word. She is pro-women’s rights, and to some people that is somehow the same thing when clearly that is nonsense.

Misogyny has managed to become more acceptable through the guise of trans rights but some of us have been in the movement for decades and we have fought with our blood, sweat and tears for the single-sex spaces and refugees that have been built.

We would happily fight beside trans people for their own safe spaces, we don’t want anyone to be vulnerable to male violence and we have the skills to help. We just don’t want them to be taken from women in the process.

There will be more meetings, more lunches, more gatherings. This movement is growing and we are fighting against misogyny, not against trans people.

The tide has turned. The ordinary person in the street, who once might have thought this argument was just the product of the mad rantings of two loony groups, has now seen it for what it is: deeply unfair.

Onward!

The singing fanatics story originates in a Facebook post by an evangelist named Jack Jensz Jr. “Worshipping our King Jesus 30,000 feet in the air!” he exclaims, not mentioning “Intruding on unwilling passengers 30,000 feet in the air!”

There are some “Yay Jesus!” comments and some very hostile ones.

Alex Jones is trying to get out of paying.

Companies owned by US radio host Alex Jones, including his right-wing website InfoWars, have filed for bankruptcy.

The move comes as he fights defamation suits brought by families of those killed in a 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school.

Mr Jones, who falsely claimed the shooting was a hoax, has been ordered to pay damages in the lawsuits.

So he’s declaring bankruptcy instead.

In the US, declaring bankruptcy provides a route for companies to remain in operation and negotiate their debts, with settlements overseen by the court. It puts a hold on other litigation.

Troubles for the radio host and conspiracy theorist stem from his false claims about the 2012 shooting in Connecticut, one of the worst school shootings in US history.

He repeatedly claimed the massacre, in which twenty children and six adults were killed. was a ploy to push gun control, staged by actors and the mainstream media.

Which is a remarkably disgusting thing to do. He had zero reason to think that was true, and saying it was obviously sadistic toward the survivors.

In three separate lawsuits, families of those killed at Sandy Hook have said his lies enriched his business, including InfoWars, while leading to their harassment by his followers.

He should get a job digging out septic tanks.

What I’m saying. We can’t stop. We refuse to stop. We keep driving straight at the edge, accelerator to the floor.

Three members of the Just Stop Oil campaign held on remand by Warwickshire police were taken to Coventry magistrates court on Monday morning.

Katheryn Dowds, 28, Jake Handling, 27, and Josh Smith, 29, pleaded guilty to aggravated trespass at the Kingsbury oil terminal after their solicitor did not appear to advise them, according to a campaign source.

Dowds was fined £327, and Handling and Smith were fined £150 each. All were then released, only to be immediately rearrested and held again by police for breaching a high court injunction banning protests at the Kingsbury site, Just Stop Oil said.

We refuse to apply the brakes, and we punish people who try to persuade us to apply the brakes.

Just Stop Oil has been staging direct actions, including mass trespasses, tunnelling and blockades, at oil terminals and in locations around the Midlands and the south-east of England since 1 April in an effort to disrupt the supply of fossil fuels. They have vowed to continue until the government agrees to a moratorium on new fossil fuel projects.

We can’t stop. We’ll never stop. Don’t look up.

Good thing it’s a very level-headed, reasonable, thoughtful, careful, fair movement for social justice. Good thing it stays strictly away from hyperbolic claims about ideological rivals being genociders. Good thing it doesn’t pretend knowing what a woman is=systematic murder of millions of people.

This is unbelievably obnoxious and intrusive and aggressive.

It’s a captive “audience,” extremely tightly confined, with no escape possible. Standing up and making a lot of noise of any kind is grossly rude, and making a lot of religious noise is an outright insult.

Now Ilhan Omar is on the naughty stool because she asked what people would think if Muslims did it. Of course, in Islamist countries, Muslims do do it, but she’s not wrong to hint that no one should do it.

More treason in Congress.

The Times reports:

For weeks in late 2020, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, cheered on President Donald J. Trump’s effort to fight his election defeat, privately offering up “a group of ready and loyal advocates who will go to bat for him.”

In text messages to Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, Mr. Lee encouraged the Trump campaign to embrace Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump lawyer whom the senator described as a “straight shooter,” and said the president should “hire the right legal team and set them loose immediately.”

But when Ms. Powell put forth wild claims of foreign rigging of election machines at a widely derided news conference in November, Mr. Lee was chagrined and quietly began to question what Mr. Trump was up to.

Mr. Trump was up to what it was obvious he was up to: trying to steal the election.

[The texts] provide a window into the eagerness of Republicans — even some who ended up voting on Jan. 6 to confirm Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory — to believe Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud and their willingness to go to great lengths, including attempts at exploiting the nation’s election laws, to keep him in power. They also illustrate how rapidly those efforts spiraled out of control, and they show a keen awareness on the part of at least some Republicans involved that the endeavor had become untenable to the point of being dangerous.

They were out of control and dangerous from the beginning. Who and what did they think Trump was? He’d spent five years showing us what a worthless but dangerous criminal monstrosity he is, so what was there to “spiral”?

“Me me me me me make it about me talk about me make the thing you’re talking about be about me.”

She doesn’t suspect any such thing.

The usual: calling attention to herself, and trashing feminists in the process.

Well, punk, are ya?

I’ll start. No, and I don’t want to be, and I’ve never wanted to be. (So I must be trans, right? No.)

No, I forget “daintiness” at all times. What a revolting word.

There is nothing I can wear and still be girlish, nor do I want to. I don’t wear slacks or shorts, I wear jeans or (inside) sweat pants. I don’t wear them girlishly, I just wear them.

What does “dressing for an evening date” mean? What are “mannish suits”?

I don’t think about white gloves or white collars at all.

No. I hate perfume and have no jewelry.

No. I sprawl whenever I feel like it.

No. I stride like a fucking kangaroo.

No. I use my voice to argue pugnaciously or to sing “Bad Moon Rising.” Deal with it.

If you’ve been thinking “At least cactus will flourish,” think again.

[E]ven these prickly survivors may be reaching their limits as the planet grows hotter and drier over the coming decades, according to research published on Thursday. The study estimates that, by midcentury, global warming could put 60 percent of cactus species at greater risk of extinction.

There’s nothing surprising in that really. Being adapted to the climate of Arizona doesn’t mean you’re adapted to the climate of a furnace.

Most cactus species “are in some way adapted to the climates and the environments that they live in,” said Michiel Pillet, a doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who led the new study, which was published in the journal Nature Plants. “Even a slight change may be too much for them to adapt over shorter time scales.”

Adaptation can be fussy that way. “I didn’t say any old amount of heat, I said this heat right here.”

“It’s a popular image of cacti,” said David G. Williams, a professor of botany at the University of Wyoming who was not involved in the new research. “‘Ah, we don’t have to worry about cacti. Look at them, they’ve got spines, they grow in this terrible environment.’” But cactuses, like most plants, exist in delicate balance with the ecosystems around them, he said. “There are a lot of these tipping points and thresholds and interactions that are very fragile and responsive to changes in the environment, land use and climate change.”

…

Brazil is a hot spot for cactus diversity. As the country’s northeastern drylands experience hotter temperatures, more intense droughts and desertification, that plant wealth is in jeopardy, said Arnóbio de Mendonça, a climate and biodiversity researcher at the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil who did not work on the new study.

“Species either adapt or they will go extinct,” he said. “As adaptation is a slow process and current climate change is occurring rapidly, it is likely that many species will be lost.”

Don’t look up.

Trump issues insults and taunts in observation of Giant Rabbit Day.

And carrots to the Rabbit, too.

“Cis” man singles out feminist woman for opprobrium again.

Of course the headline doesn’t say “I am being silenced” – it says “women won’t be silenced.” She’s not talking about herself, she’s talking about women. Maugham wouldn’t understand.

As if there aren’t “loads of powerful white men” on his side.

Stonewall “training” at Bristol University:

Women may not truly know they are women unless they have their chromosomes tested, Stonewall has told university staff in its latest diversity training.

Lucky lucky staff, getting trained by the best.

In a handout after the session, staff were given a series of tips for creating an inclusive environment. One stated: “Remove gendered language from key policies and support LGBT people to navigate policies which might exclude them including parental leave policies.”

Oh sure, just remove “gendered language” from everything, that’s a good idea. That way women won’t be able to talk back. Sit down, Karen!

The Stonewall handout, seen by The Telegraph, added that staff should “avoid gendered language such as girlfriend, boyfriend and normalise the introduction of pronouns”.

The introduction of pronouns? We’ve already been introduced. Pronouns are part of normal language acquisition. What Stonewall means is that staff should try to “normalise” telling everyone to use the wrong pronouns for people who claim to be the opposite sex.

Bristol staff were also encouraged to “keep things gender-neutral until you’ve been told someone’s pronouns or the gender of someone they’re referring to”.

No, don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t “keep things gender-neutral.” We live in the real world, where nothing is gender-neutral, so we need to have the words to talk about it.

Dr Sarah-Louise Dietz, an HR worker at Bristol, told The Telegraph she had to write a letter of apology after trans activists on a staff equality committee walked out last year over her defence of the word “maternity” in university policies.

While the word ultimately stayed, she said she was subject to a three-month informal probe when staff complained about the “problematic” and “exclusionary” term and said she had been offensive by stating only biological women can give birth.

“There is a culture of fear on campus. Female professor friends and I are scared to even talk about women’s rights in public spaces near the university,” she said. “We speak in hushed tones looking over our shoulders.”