Oh come ON.

It’s not a hoax, it’s right there on their “Pride” page.

We want all colleagues to bring their full self to work, and to support our colleagues, particularly from the non-binary or transgender community, we have pronoun badges available for all our colleagues in store, sites and head office to wear with pride.

The option to display your pronoun is open to any in the LGBT+ community, as well as allies wanting to support colleagues by creating an environment where the display and discussion of pronouns is the norm.

That is, supporting the very few colleagues who subscribe to gender ideology, while bullying the much larger number who know that men are not women. Imagine not wearing the idiot badge in that environment!

Thank goodness Elon Musk is not at all impulsive or flakey, given all the powers Trump handed him.

Billionaire Elon Musk has said he regrets some of the posts he made about US President Donald Trump during their war of words on social media. “They went too far,” he wrote on his social media platform X.

How is that possible? Surely Musk, with so many serious responsibilities, would not impulsively blow up a whole row of bridges in a tantrum?

His post comes after Trump said he was open to the possibility of reconciliation in an interview with the New York Post on Wednesday. The president said he was a “little disappointed” about the fallout, but there were “no hard feelings”.

Aww sweet, do we get to watch them burst into tears and do a huge bro hug?

Hahahahaha science! Science I tell you!!!

Totalitariantrump wants to control everyone and everything.

The Smithsonian Institution has rebuffed Donald Trump’s attempt to fire the director of its National Portrait Gallery, with the museum’s governing board asserting its independence in a direct challenge to the president.

In a statement issued after an emergency meeting Monday, the Smithsonian’s board of regents declared that “all personnel decisions are made by and subject to the direction of the secretary, with oversight by the board” – turning away Trump’s claim of authority over the institution’s staffing.

The standoff centers on Kim Sajet, whom Trump announced he had fired on 30 May, calling her “highly partisan and a strong supporter of DEI” – or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives – on social media. Sajet has continued reporting to work, creating a direct confrontation between the White House and the US’s flagship cultural institution that has a 178-year-old governance structure built against political interference.

Trump is the last person on the planet who should be meddling with any cultural institution.

This is just plain lying. The BBC telling whoppers right out in the open – whoppers that damage women and delight men who pretend to be women and take all our stuff.

Greens expel ex-spokesperson after LGBTQ+ comment row

You already know what the lie is, of course. It’s not an “LGBTQ+” comment.

The Green Party of England and Wales has expelled its former health spokesperson eight months after an investigation was launched into her comments on LGBTQ+ hate crimes.

Documents seen by the BBC show the Greens expelled Dr Pallavi Devulapalli for breaking party rules by attending a party event while under investigation for calling reports of rising LGBTQ+ hate crimes “mischievous”.

…

Green Party documents show Dr Devulapalli was originally placed on an emergency suspension pending a code of conduct investigation last September. The councillor, who sits on West Norfolk Council, was at the time one of the Green’s most high-profile figures and stood for the party at last year’s general election in South West Norfolk, against former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss.

During the election she spoke at a hustings event hosted by Friends of the Earth, where she was asked to respond to reports on rising LGBTQ+ hate crime, as well as her opinion on single-sex spaces and where the Green party stood on that issue. She told the meeting: “I’ve yet to meet anyone that actually says somebody should not have the right to be addressed as they please, and to dress as they please.

“I really think there is something mischievous in the air – to make those out to be an issue.” Following the hustings Dr Devulapalli clarified her comments, telling the BBC “there is no trans-hate in society in general”.

This one simple trick: pretend a truth claim about trans people is a truth claim about LGBTQ+ people. Boom: job done: your target stands accused of bashing lesbians and gay men and bisexuals when that is not the case.

This is his idea of heaven.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has sent thousands more troops to Los Angeles on a fourth day of chaotic protests against immigration raids, as the unrest spread to other US cities. Some 700 US Marines have been deployed to the LA area and the contingent of National Guard troops mobilised to help quell the disorder has been doubled to 4,000.

It’s his dream – he gets to play sojers with REAL SOJERS. He gets to send the tough guys in to rough up the nasty brown people Trump doesn’t like.

The state is suing the president for sending in troops without the governor’s permission. It is highly unusual for the American military to have any domestic law enforcement role.

But Trump of course thinks that’s just everybody but him being stupid and chickenshit. Of course the military should be roughing up the peasants! People who don’t have solid gold golf resorts deserve roughing up.

Trump also sent a direct warning to protesters who confronted police and federal forces. He wrote on social media: “IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!”

He can’t wait. He wants to see them hit.

It’s funny how he didn’t talk this way about the rioters who attacked cops on January 6.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on More than a second.

That nurse Sofia should not have lied to Juno Dawson. He does not have a lovely new vagina. As a famous surgeon in Casablanca once put it, “I don’t change men into women. I transform male genitals into genitals that have a female aspect. All the rest is in the patient’s mind.”

And it’s my understanding that — from what my transsexual British friend told me after he had the procedure — a prerequisite to vaginoplasty surgery in the UK is signing a waiver that explicitly states that the patient is not going to come up from the anesthesia with an actual vagina between his legs.

That Moroccan sex change surgeon’s remark was acute, if a smidge off the bullseye. It’s all in the mind, but it’s not all in the patient’s mind — it’s in the collective consciousness. It’s in the culture. The problem with the trans movement is that it requires total obedience to the mantra “trans women are women” from everyone, or the whole thing falls apart. Like theocracy.

And once the rest of society stops playing along, endlessly humouring these men that their cosmetic surgeries opened a metaphysical portal to womanhood, the ugly truth becomes apparent: they’re just scarred genitals, and ones that require burdensome daily maintenance for life, that are prone to infection, that often require corrective surgeries to fix serious complications, that most of the time can’t even be used for intercourse because it’s too painful, and which the vast majority of “straight” guys don’t want to have intercourse with anyways.

Graham Linehan aptly pointed to Peter Pan, when the audience must clap to demostrate their belief in Tinker Bell to keep her alive. The trans movement thought it could force all of society to keep clapping forever and ever to keep their fantasy of womanhood alive.

If anything, I’m amazed that the charade has lasted this long. How could anyone have been hoodwinked into signing up for an exhausting game of pretend that’s supposed to carry on ’til the end of time?

The minute the novelty wears off, the minute the exciting veneer of newness fades from the sight of crossdressers and preferred pronouns, the moral righteousness of the whole project will fade with it. What’s left will be the banal reality of the human condition. Sex was always binary; preferences around sexuality and gender expression were always diverse; the latter did not change the former.

Once we all get back to normal, there’s going to be hell to pay. The world will suffocate under mountains of regret.

We must shut down USAID to save money but when it comes to siccing the police* on protesters money is no object.

Deploying National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles will cost at least $134 million and last at least the next 60 days, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a senior defense official told lawmakers Tuesday.

“We stated very publicly that it’s 60 days because we want to ensure that those rioters, looters and thugs on the other side assaulting our police officers know that we’re not going anywhere,” Hegseth told members of the House appropriations defense subcommittee.

Hegseth was repeatedly asked by members of Congress about the cost of the deployment, then conferred with his acting comptroller, Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, who provided the figure and said it was “largely just the cost of travel, housing and food.”

For a display of Trump’s power and indifference to norms. Not worth a dime, let alone $134 million.

California has filed an emergency request for a court order that would prevent President Trump and the Department of Defense from expanding the current mission of federalized National Guard members and Marines. The request is part of a lawsuit over the federalization of the California National Guard, which is usually deployed by the governor at the request of local authorities.

On account of how that’s what it’s for.

*The police and then the National Guard and the Marines

Well that was a hellish night/morning. I was just about to publish a post late last night when bang the electricity went out. It happens a lot in this nabe, I guess because it’s old so the infrastructure is prone to failure. Starvation because of not opening the fridge. Hot and smoggy outside. Hours and hours pass then finally pop on it comes – just a little under the 12 hours or so it took last time, which was only a year ago (or perhaps two).

Dodged one bullet anyway – before the outage laptop ordered me to update so I proceeded to update, heeding the stern order NOT to shut down during the update because that would ruin EVERYTHING. The electrics going pop waited until the update completed. Thanks, electrics.

Oh grow up ffs.

I had gender reassignment surgery – then the Supreme Court said I wasn’t a woman

Because you’re not. You could have had rabbit ears surgically attached to your head; you wouldn’t be a rabbit. You could have had feathers painstakingly inserted into your skin; you wouldn’t have been a bird. You could have worn a Marilyn Monroe mask; you wouldn’t have been Marilyn Monroe. Forget about being a woman; try being an adult for a change. Adults understand that cosmetic tweaks are not magic and can’t make us something we’re not.

 I’m not trying to make a statement about what a woman is, I just want to be one, writes Juno Dawson.

But you can’t. You can’t be a coffee pot or Delaware or Euripides. The list of things you can’t be no matter how much you want to is infinite. It’s childish to whine about it, let alone claiming you can do it.

On 16 April this year, I held my phone in one hand as a kindly nurse, Sofia, removed my surgical dressings.

“Huh,” I said. “The Supreme Court has just ruled that I’m a man, apparently.”

“Well, you have a lovely new vagina,” Sofia replied.

And all the angels clapped and then we went home for tea.

Why on earth would I share something so personal? It seems that politely asking for a dignified life has fallen on deaf ears, so I’ll be undignified for a second.

Pretending to be a woman and expecting the rest of the world to agree is not even close to “politely asking for a dignified life.” It’s not polite and it’s embarrassingly childish.

If one uses the word “fascism”, people accuse you of hysteria – but isn’t this precisely what fascism looks like?

Uh, no. Not even close.

My view is that despite the law being very clear, actually, a few very determined transphobes have crawled their way to the heart of the law like maggots in an apple.

And there we go: he wants to be a woman and actual women are maggots. I wonder why we don’t cheerfully welcome him into the club.

The coup continues step by step.

The U.S. military will temporarily deploy about 700 Marines to Los Angeles until more National Guard troops can arrive, marking another escalation in President Donald Trump’s response to street protests over his aggressive immigration policies.

The U.S. Northern Command said a battalion would be sent to help protect federal property and personnel until more National Guard troops could reach the scene. For now, the Trump administration was not invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow troops to directly participate in civilian law enforcement, according to a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity.

For now. One step at a time.

Trump said on Monday he felt he had no choice but to order the deployment to prevent acts of violence from spiraling out of control.

He supported a suggestion by his border czar that California Governor Gavin Newsom be arrested, after the Democrat said California was suing to block deployment of the National Guard.

…

U.S. Marines have been deployed domestically for major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the September 11, 2001, attacks. They are known for being “first in, last out” in U.S. military interventions abroad, but it is extremely rare for U.S. military troops to be used for domestic policing matters.

So naturally Trump does it. He thinks he knows better than everyone.

Federal law allows the president to deploy the Guard if the nation is invaded, if there is “rebellion or danger of rebellion,” or the president is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” California’s suit accuses Trump of exceeding his authority under the statute and asks a court to declare his actions as unlawful.

He does it because it’s unlawful. He’s determined to break every law he can, the way dogs are determined to piss on every tree and bush and rock they can. He wants to own us.

More on Kennedy’s campaign to make America sick again:

Kennedy said the committee members had too many conflicts of interest. Currently, committee members are required to declare any potential such conflicts, as well as business interests, that arise during their tenure. They also must disclose any possible conflicts at the start of each public meeting.

But Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Kennedy’s actions were based on false conflict-of-interest claims and set “a dangerous and unprecedented action that makes our families less safe” by potentially reducing vaccine access for millions of people.

“Make no mistake: Politicizing the ACIP as Secretary Kennedy is doing will undermine public trust under the guise of improving it,” he said in a statement. “We’ll look back at this as a grave mistake that sacrificed decades of scientific rigor, undermined public trust, and opened the door for fringe theories rather than facts.”

We already look at it that way.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called Kennedy’s mass ouster “a coup.”

“It’s not how democracies work. It’s not good for the health of the nation,” Benjamin told The Associated Press.

Benjamin said the move raises real concerns about whether future committee members will be viewed as impartial. He added that Kennedy is going against what he told lawmakers and the public, and the public health association plans to watch Kennedy “like a hawk.”

“He is breaking a promise,” Benjamin said. “He said he wasn’t going to do this.”

Yeah well. He’s a liar. Big surprise.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who had expressed reservations about Kennedy’s nomination but voted to install him as the nation’s health secretary nonetheless, said he had spoken with Kennedy moments after the announcement.

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Cassidy said in a social media post. “I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

In your dreams. He’ll do whatever he wants.

Wannabe dictator rehearsing:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that he has been told President Donald Trump “is deploying another 2,000” National Guard troops to Los Angeles.

Newsom tweeted that news hours after about 700 U.S. Marines were mobilized Monday to support the California National Guard to protect federal personnel and property in Los Angeles during protests there.

…

Earlier Monday, Trump said he would support arresting California Gov. Gavin Newsom for purportedly obstructing federal immigration enforcement actions in Los Angeles.

…

Trump’s comment came shortly before Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta said they would sue Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for deploying the initial tranche of 2,000 National Guard troops to deal with protests over those enforcement actions.

The suit will ask a judge to rule that Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard was unlawful and to set aside the president’s order.

The civil complaint will argue that Trump’s action violates the U.S. Constitution and exceed his authority under federal law related to the National Guard because it occurred without Newsom’s consent or input, and because it was not warranted, Bonta said.

Trump’s action was the first time a president had activated a state’s National Guard since 1965 without a request from a governor.

60 years.

These people are so enraging.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday said he is “retiring” all 17 members of a crucial government panel of vaccine advisors, a shocking step that could help to sow doubts about immunizations in the U.S.

He has no professional training in this field whatsover. He’s an outsider, an amateur, a crank, a hobbyist, a fraud. He’s not qualified to clean the toilets at the agency he runs, let alone firing panels of advisors.

It is not a good idea to put ignorant obstinate conceited amateurs in charge of technical bodies that oversee public health.

Kennedy is removing all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The group reviews vaccine data and makes recommendations that determine who is eligible for shots and whether insurers should cover them, among other efforts.

ACIP members are independent medical and public experts who make recommendations based on rigorous scientific review and evidence. The CDC director has to sign off on those recommendations for them to become official policy.

Kennedy, in sharp contrast, is not a medical expert. He’s a brainless crank who would be working at an Arby’s if he were an O’Reilly instead of a Kennedy.

Kennedy said Monday HHS will put “the restoration of public trust above any pro- or antivaccine agenda.”

The agenda, you conceited fucking fool, is preventing mass deaths from epidemics. Your agenda is showing off and throwing your ignorant weight around.

Kennedy claimed that the panel has been “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”

But all HHS agencies and their advisory panels have had rigorous policies for conflicts of interest, and there have been no related issues for years. All members of federal vaccine advisory committees are already required to comply with regulations around disclosing potential conflicts of interest.

Kennedy has a conflict of interest: he’s more interested in throwing his weight around than protecting public health.

Another expulsion.

The BBC reported last September:

The Green Party of England and Wales has suspended its health spokesperson on the eve its largest-ever conference for calling reports of rising LGBT+ hate crimes “mischievous”.

At a general election hustings in June, Pallavi Devulapalli said she had “yet to meet anyone” who denieda person’s right to “dress” and “be addressed as they please”.

Ms Devulapalli told the BBC “there is no trans-hate in society in general”.

Ah but you see if you define trans hate as knowing that men are not women, then trans hate becomes ubiquitous, and everyone must be expelled or fired or punished.

Cade Hatton, co-chair of the LGBTQIA+ Greens group, said Ms Devulapalli’s comments at the hustings were “just the most recent thing in a long list of things that have made people uncomfortable”. Mr Hatton said he believed Ms Devulapalli was trying to have a debate about trans rights but had “not gone about it in the right way”.

He added that Ms Devulapalli’s suspension was an example of the Green Party’s disciplinary system “working a little more efficiently”. The party’s rights and responsibilities policy states “trans men are men, trans women are women, and that non-binary identities exist and are valid”.

So the party has an official policy that rests on two absurd lies. Good to know it’s working “a little more efficiently” though.

Embrace the label.

Darlington nurse Karen Danson has accused the NHS Trust of “abandoning” its female workers after their landmark legal victory against the hospital.

The Darlington Nurses won their legal case against their employer after raising concerns about a biological male, who identifies as a woman named Rose, being allowed to use the female staff changing room.

…

Defending their legal fight against the trust, Danson declared that the nurses are simply “fighting for what’s right”, and are “not terfs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists)” for doing so.

She stated: “There’s been lots of positivity out there for us, there’s loads of positive comments, and I’m not a bigot, I’m not a terf, I’m just fighting for what’s right.”

Hey now. Stop that. There’s nothing wrong with being a terf, in fact not being a terf is the moral mistake. Terfs are not “bigots” just as you are not a bigot for not wanting a man in your changing room.

Maybe you’re thinking terfs are “bigots” because we don’t stop at individual cases but dispute the foundational dogma of trans ideology? But we have to. Of course we do. The ideology is what prompts and justifies and protects the individual cases of men bouncing into women’s spaces and refusing to leave. It doesn’t work to accept the ideology and reject just this one action based on the ideology because it affects you. Trans ideology says men really are women if they say they are, so what right do you have to keep them out of your changing room?

“I want to feel safe when I get changed. What’s happened to me could have happened to other people, and I want to be a voice for them to stand up and come forward and say this is not acceptable.”

Other women, you mean. It’s not the same for men. It’s not the same kind of threat for men.

You can’t talk about this subject without addressing the basic lie. It’s not “bigotry” to address it.

Trump has been wanting to do this for at least 9 years.

During his first term, Trump mused on several occasions about deploying US troops on domestic soil, either to crush protests or tamp down on crime. Aides at the time talked Trump out of the move, which would amount to a dramatic step without recent precedent.

Now, however, the president is less encumbered by aides who seek to restrain his more extreme impulses. And after a campaign during which Trump promised crackdowns on crime and illegal immigration, he appears eager to demonstrate a willingness to use maximalist actions to follow through on his pledges.

Well. He appears eager to do what dictators and fascists do. It’s not about his pledges, it’s about wanting to be another Hitler or Putin.

One senior law enforcement source involved in responding to the unrest said they saw the deployment of the National Guard as an overreaction that may backfire and only provoke additional agitators.

That source noted that potentially violent demonstrators observed by law enforcement around Los Angeles as of early Saturday evening numbered in the dozens and law enforcement officers were actively working to bring them under control.

Ok but it’s more fun to make it a real fight.

Do people even understand their own words?

Incredible enough?

“We are a proudly inclusive and respectful space for all people”

Except, of course, you, because we don’t like your thinking.

“regardless of gender identity, background, or beliefs.”

Except, of course, your beliefs. We’re wonderful people, hugely kind and welcoming, except when you walk in to get a haircut.

“We believe in equal rights, dignity, and safety for everyone”

Except, of course, for you. We passionately disbelieve in your rights and your dignity, and we want you not to have any safety.

Men are women if they say they are. You are evil. Have a nice day.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Troops with assault rifles.

As David Frum said, this is a dress rehearsal — and by that he means it’s a dress rehearsal for a military coup. And as California Governor Gavin Newsom warned, the federal government is looking for a spectacle — and by that he means Trump and his minions are seeking a spark to blame the upcoming Reichstag fire on.

This is how it happens, folks. Sinclair Lewis was right: it can happen here. History is repeating, as it does, no matter how much we’re forewarned.

The problem with history books is that they always look at it from hindsight. Historians have tragically failed at conveying to the public what it looks like — what it feels like — when history happens in real-time. Momentousness only exists in the rearview mirror. They mostly just feel like ordinary moments when you’re inside them. You have to imagine their momentousness, by projecting yourself into the future, looking back. That’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot of abstract thinking. Most people can’t do that.

Well, here we are. It feels not quite real, but instead muted and muffled, and not exciting enough to quicken the pulse, to make people take action. It doesn’t have the slick editing of a John Wick action movie. The lack of cinematic gloss has somehow made us unable to react appropriately to the emergency. We expect to be prompted by Hans Zimmer’s booming music cues and J.J. Abrams’s glossy lens flares. Fascism is supposed to have the vibe of a big-budget, red-band movie trailer. But it doesn’t.

For me, the moment brings to mind Don DeLillo. White Noise. I was annoyed to hell by that damned book when I read it (in the early 2000s, decades after it came out). But I think back now, and I have to concede: he nailed it. A family of neurotic, intellectual academics unable to process a real world disaster, because they’re so knotted up inside their own minds. He wrote it in the pre-Internet era, when that kind of brain-pickling was mostly limited to elite university campuses. But in the social media age, we’re all prisoners of idea-world.

When our brains are saturated by abstract ideas, we don’t know how to react when a Big Thing happens in the actual real world. We struggle to process what is real. We’re numb to it all.

Simulacra and simulation. Spectacle and hyperreality. Oh, dear god, the postmodernists actually had a fucking point, didn’t they. Maybe in this terrible universe, Foucault gets the last laugh after all.

Fuck!

Reuters reports:

President Donald Trump’s administration said it would deploy 2,000 National Guard troops on Saturday as federal agents in Los Angeles faced off against a few hundred demonstrators during a second day of protests following immigration raids.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that the Pentagon was prepared to mobilize active-duty troops “if violence continues” in Los Angeles, saying the Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton were “on high alert.”

What violence though? Reuters doesn’t report any. It could be that Reuters is just failing or refusing to report it, but it could also be that there isn’t any to report that Reuters knows about.

Federal security agents on Saturday confronted protesters in the Paramount area in southeast Los Angeles, where some demonstrators displayed Mexican flags. A second protest in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday night attracted some 60 people, who chanted slogans including “ICE out of L.A.!”

Trump signed a presidential memorandum to deploy the National Guard troops to “address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester,” the White House said in a statement. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, told Fox News that the National Guard would be deployed in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Yes but what lawlessness?

Trump has history in this area. He considers protests against anything he does festering violence, but that’s not the criterion for actual literal violence.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that if Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass can’t do their jobs “then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”

But what riots? What looters? Please specify.

“Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one half of America’s political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X late on Saturday. Senior White House aide Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner, described the protests as a “violent insurrection.”

But is it insurrection? Is it violent insurrection?

Video footage of the Paramount protest showed dozens of green-uniformed security personnel with gas masks at the Paramount protest, lined up on a road strewn with overturned shopping carts as small canisters exploded into gas clouds. Authorities began detaining some protesters, according to Reuters witnesses.

Los Angeles police posted on X that “multiple people have been detained for failing to disperse after multiple warnings were issued.” It did not give further details.

Ya see that’s failure to disperse, it’s not throwing rocks or chunks of concrete at people. Yes people are supposed to disperse when the cops tell them to, but it’s not violence if they don’t. Resistance, yes, but violence, no.