The AP isn’t altogether happy about the bombing that demolished an office block almost on their heads.

An Israeli airstrike destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets on Saturday. All AP employees and freelancers evacuated the building safely.

Al Jazeera was another tenant.

AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt has released the following statement:

We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there. We received a warning that the building would be hit.

We are seeking information from the Israeli government and are engaged with the U.S. State Department to try to learn more.

This is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life. A dozen AP journalists and freelancers were inside the building and thankfully we were able to evacuate them in time.

The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today.

The upper floors were residential, so that’s a lot of people with nowhere to go – if they all got out.

Don’t you know there’s a war on?!

No, wait, not a war, a closing of pubs. Same thing though! All must do their duty.

Pubs and bars will be allowed to serve customers indoors from Monday (17th May) after a long third lockdown which has seen many pubs struggle to survive.

According to the latest estimates some 2,500 pubs have already shut during lockdown, with many others facing an uphill battle to recoup losses as the economy opens up.

Campaigners have produced a ‘Your Local Pub Needs You’ poster urging revellers to get their hands in their pockets to save the UK’s 40,000 boozers.

In other words, pour more alcohol down your throats, it’s a public good!

They are calling on Brits to sup 124 pints to give the industry the £25.66 billion cash boost it needs to get back to pre-pandemic income levels.

It highlights the scale of the plight facing Britain’s bars following lockdown.

A poster released to support the campaign states: “The average pub will need each customer to spend an additional £382 this year to combat the impact that Covid has had on the sector.

“Thank you for doing your bit!’’

Yes thank you for growing potatoes joining the Home Guard saving paper drinking gallons of beer!

This is moronic. Alcohol isn’t a necessity of life, and in fact it can be quite unhealthy for the consumer and for the consumer’s dependents. There are more pressing needs than the need to save all the pubs by swallowing oceans of beer.

Student being investigated for stating basic facts.

A law student who said that women have vaginas and are not as physically strong as men is being investigated by her university.

Investigated why? For doing what? What is there to investigate?

Disciplinary action is being taken against Lisa Keogh, 29, over “offensive” and “discriminatory” comments that she made during lectures at Abertay University, Dundee.

The mature student was reported by younger classmates after she said women were born with female genitals and that “the difference in physical strength of men versus women is a fact”. The complaints have prompted a formal investigation into her conduct.

Why? Why have the complaints prompted a formal investigation? Where the fuck are the grownups?

Keogh, a final-year student, fears that any sanction could end her dream of becoming a human rights lawyer. Her case is being backed by Joanna Cherry QC, the SNP MP for Edinburgh South West and deputy chairwoman of the Lords and Commons joint committee on human rights, who described the situation as farcical.

Who is more likely to do a good job of being a human rights lawyer, a woman who knows that women have vaginas and are not as physically strong as men or people who think those two statements are reportable and punishable offenses?

The university’s definition of misconduct includes “using offensive language” or “discriminating against gender reassignment”. Punishment can be as harsh as expulsion.

What is “discriminating against gender reassignment”? What can that mean?

Keogh, a mother of two, fears for her future. “I don’t come from a legal background and have worked incredibly hard to get to where I am,” she said.

Yes but being a cis woman cancels all that out.

Cleanup on aisle 7:

The Biden administration on Friday revoked a Trump-era restriction on migrants who enter the country without health coverage and rolled back six executive orders intended to stoke anger over street protests and attacks on Confederate monuments in 2020.

The actions, while hardly unexpected, represented a broad repudiation of former President Donald J. Trump, and his practice of using executive orders to advance his political agenda.

To advance his political and spiteful agenda. He’s got to be the most spiteful human being on the planet.

The restriction on migrants was blocked by a judge soon after Trump issued it.

The others rolled back on Friday were a grab-bag of Trump pronouncements and initiatives that now seem like a time capsule of his tempestuous, news-cycle-driven presidency, including a proposed sculpture garden to honor the “great figures of America’s history,” first proposed on July 3, 2020, at a rally at Mt. Rushmore. It was never funded.

A week earlier, Mr. Trump had also signed an executive order to protect federal monuments against the attacks of protesters, at a time when statues of rebel generals and racist politicians were being defaced by protesters and removed by local governments.

The order, written with the partisan bombast of a Trump campaign speech, blasted “rioters, arsonists, and left-wing extremists” and called upon federal law enforcement agencies to punish anyone caught defacing public property to the fullest extent of the law.

His “you kids get offa my lawn” order is null and void.

See the reporter get it wrong in the very first paragraph (and thus also the headline).

Neuroscience Professor Removed From APA Discussion After Saying There Are Only Two Genders

Wrong. He said two sexes.

A neuroscience professor was ousted from the American Psychological Association’s (APA) email discussion group by vote after suggesting that there are only two genders as well as past concerns over his posts, the College Fix reported Friday.

Wrong. He said two sexes.

Psychology and neuroscience professor John Staddon at Duke University was removed from the APA’s Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology (SBNCP) Division 6 listserv and was notified via email by the group’s presidential trio who said use of the forum was a “privilege,” in the statements republished by the National Association of Scholars (NAS) on April 30.

The NAS is a conservative organization, but they’re a good watchdog on this stuff.

“It is sad that an audience of supposed scientists is unable to take any dissenting view, such as the suggestion that there really are only two sexes,” Staddon said in reply to the notification of his removal from the division’s group before allowing NAS to publish the email exchange. “Incredible! I don’t mind having one less distraction, but I think you should really be concerned at Div 6’s unwillingness to tolerate divergent views.”

His post that “tipped the scale,” according to Staddon, was titled “Hmm… Binary view of sex false? What is the evidence? Is there a Z chromosome?” Staddon told Newsweek he created the post on April 15.

“Science, real science, can and should be isolated from politics. Science has values, to be sure—curiosity, honesty, openness to debate, adherence to empirical facts, and so on—but they are not, and should not be, political,” he wrote to Newsweek. “Most of my comments have been devoted to that fact. I might add that a sense of humor would help.”

Science should be isolated especially from politics of the “men are women if they say they are” type. That’s not so much politics as childish fantasy-enforcement.

One tiny ray of light:

Women must have the right to question transgender identity without being abused, stigmatised or risking losing their job, the new head of Britain’s equalities watchdog has warned.

In her first interview since taking office, the incoming chairwoman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission said it was “entirely reasonable” for people to challenge the biological status of women who were born as men.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine added it was a “freedom of belief” the commission was determined to protect.

“Someone can believe that people who self identify as a different sex are not the different sex that they self identify,” she said. “A lot of people would find this an entirely reasonable belief.”

And a lot of people would find the opposing belief, that people who self identify as a different sex are the different sex that they self identify, not a reasonable belief at all, but rather a childish absurdity.

Falkner said she was concerned that current levels of abuse were making it difficult for people to exercise their fundamental rights — protected by the EHRC — such as freedom of speech and belief.

“There is too much self censorship going on — certainly in terms of gender critical theory,” she said. “And what happens to women who raise that does seem to be an effect on them of abuse and stigmatisation.

“We ought to be able to have a debate about it, even when we disagree with them, without them feeling so isolated.”

Abuse and stigmatisation and ostracism and punishment and demotion and job loss.

The Times (the London one) reports:

Academics at Edinburgh University claim they are teaching in a climate of fear with some lecturers allegedly “hunted down” because of their failure to comply with the “unchallengeable orthodoxy” of gender identity theory.

Contributors from Edinburgh to a new internet forum have complained of bullying and repeated personal attacks on social media if they are open about their opinions while others fear students are being indoctrinated “with fixed mindsets on gender identity”.

No surprise there.

Scores of academics, many claiming to be from the Russell Group of leading universities, shared their anonymised experiences on GC Academia. One part-time lecturer at Edinburgh said a sense of intellectual freedom had been supplanted by a culture of fear.

The lecturer wrote: “It is as though academic colleagues believe there are some trans/trans ally students who are monstrous toddlers, ready to throw a strop if they should hear anything that invalidates their ‘true self’ and report the offending tutor. The effect is that the extreme version of gender identity theory has to be taught as though it’s an unchallengeable orthodoxy.”

In other words it’s Pharyngula writ large, Twitter but more expensive.

One critic of the university wrote scathingly of the “authoritarian bullies of the Staff Pride Network,” adding: “The postmodern thought and language police are very active in my subject area.”

They added: “Their latest is an instruction to check our course materials for ‘cis-normative’ [a gender identity which matches their biological sex] assumptions and monitor ourselves, our students and each other for ‘micro-invalidations’.”

This was a reference to guidance published by the university to help staff recognise and counteract “microaggressions against trans and/or nonbinary people”.

It urges staff to refrain from using phrases such as “all women hate their periods” and “all people think about being the opposite gender sometimes”.

But what if you think it’s likely that all people do think about being the opposite gender sometimes? And you think it’s relevant and of interest? Do the people of gender get to declare a monopoly on the word “gender” now? Why would that be?

Ah there it is, the whole point – force other people to pay attention to precious One, and force them to do extra things and make extra efforts, all for precious One.

London North Eastern Railway (LNER) has said its conductors will be warned to not use the greeting “ladies and gentlemen” following a complaint from a non-binary passenger.

LNER said train managers should not use the phrase to avoid offending passengers who might identify as neither male nor female.

Passengers might identify as a potato, too, but that doesn’t mean they are one. Nobody is neither male nor female. They can ask their friends to call them non-binary if they like, but the world at large has better things to do.

It comes after a complaint from a passenger on social media, the Telegraph reports.

In a Twitter post directed to LNER, the passenger wrote: “Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls…” As a non-binary person this announcement doesn’t actually apply to me, so I won’t listen.”

I’ve seen some tweets about this over the past couple of days and in fact the complainer isn’t a passenger but an employee. The complaint wasn’t spontaneous but a plan.

LNER replied to the complainant, agreeing that train managers “should not be using language like this”.

Because they should be keeping the needy narcissists in mind at all times yeah?

LNER is the latest company to ditch the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” in favour of more inclusive language.

More “inclusive” because a phrase that includes all adults isn’t “inclusive” enough. “Ladies, gentlemen, and fantasists”?

The phrase was discarded from announcements on the Tube in 2017, in a bid to make them gender-neutral.

Bosses at Transport for London told staff to use terms such as “good morning everyone” to ensure all passengers feel welcome.

LGBTQ+ campaigners have fought for gender-neutral language, explaining that phrases such as “ladies and gentlemen” exclude people who do not identify as male or female.

But “not identifying as male or female” is meaningless. Humans just are one or the other, including the small minority that’s intersex. People can decide they don’t identify as mammals, too, but that doesn’t make them reptiles. Thoughts in the head are just thoughts in the head, and most of them are of no interest to anyone except the owner of the head.

How the trick works.

“The more typically male propensity to defy illegitimate authority” – how sweetly self-flattering that is, and how indifferent to the realities.

Males in the abstract represent illegitimate authority. Males are the beneficiaries of that stupid mistake that goes “the bigger and stronger get to rule.” Decent males not in the abstract of course don’t endorse that social law, but I doubt that any of us can escape its influence entirely.

That stupid mistake pervades all of life and has for all of history, yet a man still flatters himself that his war against masking is thanks to a more typically male propensity to defy illegitimate authority as opposed to a more typically angry-conservative propensity to see public health measures as “illegitimate authority.”

Women have plenty of propensity to defy illegitimate authority, only in our case it may be the guy at the dinner table or the work meeting. We have plenty of propensity but we also know that many men are quick to resort to violence. Men don’t have that particular brake on their propensities, which probably frees them up to put their defiance on display, no matter how stupid and anti-social it is.

It’s almost as if Marjorie Taylor Greene shouldn’t be there at all.

Congress needs a good bartender/bouncer.

Good. Well done Rep. Swalwell.

MTG should be expelled from the House. The move to do exactly that failed, but try again. She should be out of there. She’s another Preston Brooks just waiting to happen.

Vigilance! Eternal vigilance! You can’t ever have enough of it, and the object can’t ever be too many connections away. If you know someone who has a friend who has a neighbor who has a colleague who approved of someone who committed wrongthought once ten years ago or so, you are a legitimate object of vigilance, censure, and ostracism.

What?

Slow down, Captain Vigilance. Why they what? Why they follow an account, that has a pinned link, to an online shop, that includes in its merchandise a banner?

Does Captain Vigilance seriously think that people examine all the tweets of person X before following person X? Does he think people examine all those tweets so minutely that they check to see what that linked online shop sells, and by “what that online shop sells” I mean every single item?

There’s also the question of why he thinks it’s any of his business anyway, but we know that already. Step one in my Flight From the Wokies was Improbable Joe on Twitter demanding why I was following Helen Lewis and Glosswitch. To this day I don’t understand why people think that’s a question they’re entitled to ask.

More on Greene’s playful harassment of Ocasio-Cortez and her staff:

During a February 2019 visit to congressional offices at the US Capitol with associates who include a man who would later enter the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection, Greene — then a conservative activist — can be seen taunting Ocasio-Cortez’s staff outside the congresswoman’s locked office by talking through a mailbox slot urging her to come out.

In the video, from a since-deleted Facebook Live of Greene’s that was saved by CNN’s KFile, Greene tells Ocasio-Cortez to “get rid of your diaper,” referring to the congresswoman’s office as a “day care.” Greene repeatedly indicates throughout her stream that security has been called on them.

“We’re going to go see, we’re going to visit, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Crazy eyes. Crazy eyes. Nutty. Cortez,” Greene says to the camera on the way to the congresswoman’s office, mispronouncing “Ocasio.”

…

“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I’m an American citizen. I pay your salary through the taxes that you collect for me through the IRS because I’m a taxpaying citizen of the United States,” Greene says, noting elsewhere in the video that members of Congress are “employees” who “work for us.”

“So you need to stop being a baby and stop locking your door and come out and face the American citizens that you serve,” she says. “If you want to be a big girl, you need to get rid of your diaper and come out and be able to talk to the American citizens. Instead of having to use a flap, a little flap. Sad.”

It’s true that legislators are paid by the citizens, but it doesn’t follow that citizens can just show up and force the legislators to chat with them face to face that very moment. If that were the case, how would legislators get anything done?

The video is from February 22, 2019 — the same day that Greene visited the Capitol and brought to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office a petition to impeach the California Democrat for treason, and suggested she should be executed or imprisoned for her “crimes.” On social media in 2018 and 2019, Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing other Democratic politicians, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, and FBI agents.

Greene also visited Rep. Maxine Waters’ office that day, where she said the California Democrat was “just as guilty” of treason as Pelosi. She also went on to visit the offices of then-freshman Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, during which she falsely claimed the first two Muslim women elected to Congress weren’t “official” because they had been sworn in on the Quran.

Ignorance and threats: ideal for a member of Congress.

With Greene at the Capitol that day was her close ally Anthony Aguero, a former El Paso congressional candidate and conservative livestreamer who was captured on camera inside the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection.

As they leave Ocasio-Cortez’s office, Greene says, “Bye. Bye. Bye, AOC. Ocasio-Cortez. Bye, bye, baby. Bye-bye, baby. Bye-bye, little baby girl. Ocasio-Cortez– she went and hid. She couldn’t take it,” said Greene, mispronouncing Ocasio-Cortez’s name again.

She’s both infantile and abusive, yet she is now actually in the House. It’s embarrassing as well as dangerous.

Greene’s disruptive visit is not the first time she’s interacted aggressively with members of Congress. As a congressional candidate in September 2020, she posted an image of herself holding a gun alongside images of Ocasio-Cortez, Omar and Tlaib and encouraged going on the “offense against these socialists.”

And by that she means “let’s you kill them.”

It turns out that Marjorie T-G has been hating on Ocasio-Cortez for a long time.

It’s very January 6-like in the giggling menace, the snickering orders and challenges and expressions of contempt.

Is this rapey enough yet?

Man talking too fast: “Quickreminder tosome cislesbians outthere that pleasestop centeringyour lesbianism around penis disgust.”

That “quick reminder” item – nobody asked for some “reminder,” slow or fast, that lesbians have to love penis. Nobody has that requirement on her to-do list or schedule or daily planner page. It’s not a requirement, so you can’t “remind” us of it as such. Also “quick reminder that please stop” is not quality speeching.

But the real point of course is fuck off. Lesbians do not have to love penis. The end.

He’s not saying that any trauma you have “around them” isn’t valid, but he is saying that it shouldn’t define your lesbianism.

I bet I can figure out why he’s saying that. I bet he’s saying it because he has one and he doesn’t want those bitches having their own thoughts on the subject. They have to consult him on what thoughts they’re allowed to have. Why? I don’t know, I guess because of the pretty curls?

Gee, I didn’t know people were allowed to set up “sting” operations without any kind of legal authority.

A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations.

The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks.

See this is what I mean. That stuff is illegal if you don’t have a warrant and stuff, isn’t it? People can’t just do “sting operations” and “secret surveillance” on their own, without any kind of law enforcement authority, isn’t it? Or am I hopelessly out of touch.

The operations against the F.B.I., run by the conservative group Project Veritas, were conducted from a large home in the Georgetown section of Washington that rented for $10,000 per month. Female undercover operatives arranged dates with the F.B.I. employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Mr. Trump.

Since when is a random person spying on people with no authorization to do so an “undercover operative”?

Central to the effort, according to interviews, was Richard Seddon, a former undercover British spy who was recruited in 2016 by the security contractor Erik Prince to train Project Veritas operatives to infiltrate trade unions, Democratic congressional campaigns and other targets. He ran field operations for Project Veritas until mid-2018.

Isn’t all of that completely illegal? The government shouldn’t be doing it either, mostly, but at least when the government does it there is legal supervision and some accountability. (I say “mostly” because, you know, insurrections and stuff.)

That? That wasn’t an insurrection, that was just a few tourists visiting the Capitol.

Congressman Andrew Clyde was asked about his widely criticized comments downplaying the Capitol insurrection earlier today.

“You didn’t take what I said in context at all,” the Republican lawmaker told NBC News this morning. “So you go listen to what I said.”

Here’s exactly what he said during that committee hearing yesterday: “Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos, pictures.”

He added, “You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”

Pelosi is not amused.

The Democratic speaker mocked congressman Andrew Clyde’s comments that footage from the insurrection looked like “a normal tourist visit”.

“I don’t know a normal day around here when people are threatening to hang the vice-president of the United States or shoot the speaker in the forehead,” Pelosi said. “I don’t consider that normal. Multiple people were killed.”

She added, “It was beyond denial. It fell into the range of sick.”

We’re walking on the edge of a precipice these days.

What a good plan.

Hundreds of people experiencing poor mental health will be introduced to the natural beauty of wetlands under a “blue prescribing” scheme.

In London, this is.

There is increasing evidence of the benefits of nature for mental health and wellbeing. A recent pilot wetlands project showed that people diagnosed with anxiety or depression moved up a clinical mental health grade, from below average to average.

I swear by this. I’m not afflicted with anxiety or depression but I can testify that getting outside always elevates my mood. (Well…one exception – when the air is in the red zone.) A clear bright breezy day elevates it into the stratosphere, as does going to the Lake or the Sound or a distant viewpoint or the like.

Now a scheme will start this summer at the WWT London Wetland Centre in the UK with six-week wetlands courses co-designed by the WWT, the Mental Health Foundation and participants themselves. Activities could include birdwatching, pond dipping, nature walks and habitat protection work. Participants’ travel costs are to be funded and their progress assessed using standard medical questionnaires.

Very good plan.

Previous schemes involving activities such as wildlife volunteering noted clear improvements in mental health. YouGov polling for the Mental Health Foundation found that being near lakes, rivers and the sea – ahead of time spent in gardens, parks and the countryside – was rated the highest by people in terms of having a positive impact on their mental health.

Heh. What I just said – Lake or Sound. Seattle is really exceptional in having not one but two large bodies of water promoting our mental health.

What the wicked TERF has been doing lately.

Academic ethics…

You may think that’s just some high school kid but in fact he’s an academic. He’s been comparing gender critical feminists to Holocaust deniers for hours.

So he’s saying that the ideology that says men are women if they say they are is an authoritative ideology, and that it’s true or at least strives towards truth, while skepticism about that ideology is not true and does not even strive towards truth.

How do people get so confused?

We’re a “specimen of untruth” because we say people are what they are and not what they fantasize they are (unless the two happen to be the same).

This is a belief system where fantasies represent the truth and empirical reality is a specimen of untruth.

How did that happen?