Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • The public unraveling

    Ok this is just plain hilarious.

    The alliance between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk spectacularly imploded Thursday as the world’s most prominent bromance collapsed into mutual public trolling.

    …

    The public unraveling began in the Oval Office, where Trump spoke to reporters at the start of a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

    “Elon and I had a great relationship,” he said. “I don’t know if we will anymore.”

    Oh I know. Did you hear what Sally said to Lucy about it? It’s like all over the school.

    The quarrel escalated rapidly from there, with the two men blasting out angry posts on their respective social media platforms.

    Which I cannot help laughing at. We knew how childish they are but still – it is hilarious that they’re that helpless at ass-covering. I think we have a good chance of seeing them pulling each other’s hair and screaming on live tv.

    By late afternoon, Musk was writing on X that he agreed Trump should be impeached and replaced with Vice President JD Vance. 

    That sentence caused me to laugh loudly enough to wake all the neighborhood dogs – genuine unforced shriek of laughter.

    He further signaled his estrangement from Trump’s orbit by “unfollowing” Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s top aides, whose wife has been working for Musk.

    Er ner, nert ernferlering!! The ultimate tragic end of a beautiful friendship.

    Musk volleyed back, declaring it was “time to drop the really big bomb” that Trump “is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day DJT!”

    When dickheads fall out.

    The unraveling “happened faster than I thought,” said one Musk ally, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject. “What Elon really wanted is to be president, I think.”

    Hahahahahaha yes that is quite a hasty unraveling.

    Was Elon thinking Trump would make him president?

    Tesla investors braced themselves as they watched Musk’s relationship with the president go up in flames. “Can someone please take the phone away from him! wtf! tesla is getting destroyed,” investor Ross Gerber, a onetime Musk booster, posted on X.

    Oops! Bad business move was it? How sad oh well never mind.

    H/t What a Maroon

  • Not their problem

    Trump is fine with women dying rather than having emergency abortions.

    The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would revoke guidance to the nation’s hospitals that directed them to provide emergency abortions for women when they are necessary to stabilize their medical condition.

    Easy for him. He’s not going to die of septicemia because the hospital refuses to meddle with his pregnancy.

    That guidance was issued to hospitals in 2022, weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upended national abortion rights in the U.S. It was an effort by the Biden administration to preserve abortion access for extreme cases in which women were experiencing medical emergencies and needed an abortion to prevent organ loss or severe hemorrhaging, among other serious complications.

    Serious complications that cause death.

    The move prompted concerns from some doctors and abortion rights advocates that women will not get emergency abortions in states with strict bans.

    “The Trump Administration would rather women die in emergency rooms than receive life-saving abortions,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “In pulling back guidance, this administration is feeding the fear and confusion that already exists at hospitals in every state where abortion is banned. Hospitals need more guidance, not less, to stop them from turning away patients experiencing pregnancy crises.”

    But that takes much of the fun out of it. These people want to see women die of pregnancy crises.

  • Open acrimony

    Aw gee, their great love lasted only three months.

    President Trump and Elon Musk’s alliance dissolved into open acrimony on Thursday, as the two men hurled personal attacks at each other after the billionaire had unleashed broadsides against the president’s signature domestic policy bill.

    While meeting with Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new chancellor, in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump broke days of uncharacteristic silence and unloaded on Mr. Musk, who until last week was a top presidential adviser.

    “I’m very disappointed in Elon,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve helped Elon a lot.”

    As the president criticized Mr. Musk, the billionaire responded in real time on X, the social media platform he owns.

    “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Mr. Musk wrote.

    “Such ingratitude,” he added, taking credit for Mr. Trump’s election in a way that he never has before.

    How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless Donald.

    Mr. Musk had been careful in recent days to train his ire on Republicans in Congress, not Mr. Trump himself. But he discarded that caution on Thursday, ridiculing the president in a pattern familiar to the many previous Trump advisers who have fallen by the wayside.

    I wonder why that is. It’s very puzzling. Let’s put our thinking caps on. Hmm…could it be…is it possibly because he is exactly what he appears to be but these fools refuse to get it until he does it to them?

    What started as simply a fight over the domestic policy bill sharply escalated in just a few hours. Within minutes of one another, Mr. Trump was making fun of Mr. Musk’s unwillingness to wear makeup to cover a recent black eye, and Mr. Musk was raising questions about Mr. Trump’s competency as president.

    Gee, Elon, it would have been great if you had grasped this obvious point BEFORE YOU HELPED HIM WIN THE ELECTION AND SET ABOUT DESTROYING THE WORLD.

  • Why do they

    Yes why do these silly people get so angry about the tank driven through women’s rights, the children and teenagers with ruined bodies, the fanatical belief in a nonsensical creed, the endless ferocious bullying – what is there that’s even slightly annoying about any of that? Who can possibly figure it out?

  • Who is the most more?

    Peak majority/minority who is the most minorityized confusion achieved.

    The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled in favor of a straight woman who twice lost positions to gay workers, saying an appeals court had been wrong to require her to meet a heightened burden in seeking to prove workplace discrimination because she was a member of a majority group.

    Because what? Because she was a member of what?

    News flash: women are not the dominant aka preferred aka privileged sex. Women are the sex seen as weak and stupid and not as good as the alternative sex. It’s not about majority or minority, it’s about being perceived as inferior. The two are not the same, and people in a “majority” can be perceived as inferior. Slaves were very often the majority on plantations, but that didn’t make them more powerful or privileged or rewarded, now did it.

    The decision came two years after the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions programs in higher education and amid the Trump administration’s fierce efforts to root out programs that promote diversity and could make it easier for white people, men and other members of majority groups to pursue claims of employment discrimination.

    What mean “other members of majority groups”? Men aren’t members of majority groups, men are roughly half. The power differential between women and men isn’t about more v fewer, it’s about which sex can punch harder. It’s also about a lot more than that – who gestates, for a start – but my point is that the issue here is that journalism should stop using “majority” as a synonym for “dominant” or similar. It just confuses things.

    Ms. Ames sued under a federal civil rights law that forbids employment discrimination based on, among other characteristics, sex. (The Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that discrimination based on sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination for purposes of the civil rights law.)

    The text of the law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, does not draw distinctions based on whether the person claiming discrimination is a member of a majority group. But some courts have required plaintiffs from majority groups to prove an additional element if they lack direct evidence of discrimination: “background circumstances that support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”

    But it’s not unusual. It’s not unusual for employers to discriminate against women. “Majority” is not what you mean here! If even Supreme Court rulings can’t get it right what hope is there? And it’s not just a picky word-freak item, either, because it obviously matters. It seems to be the very subject of the ruling, and yet nobody can say so.

    Lower courts ruled against Ms. Ames on those grounds. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, said she could have satisfied the “background circumstances” requirement by showing that decisions about her employment were made by “a member of the relevant minority group (here, gay people)” or with statistical evidence. But the appeals court said Ms. Ames had provided neither kind of proof.

    So it has to be a literal minority group in this one case? So which sex is the minority sex? Please inform.

  • Global distrust

    Wait who did the tampering?

  • Start over

    Dang. That’s so the opposite of an accurate definition. It’s like saying flying is crawling through mud, or a daffodil is a mound of bear shit, or India Willoughby is thoughtful and reasonable.

    Rules about where the different sexes go to pee are human inventions, and thus the very opposite of instinctive.

    Oddly enough, this also applies to the word “Ladies.” It also applies to the women’s section in the shop.

    I suppose she means automatically, or without having to think about it, as a result of habit. But that’s not the same thing. At all.

    She’s really not sharp, is she.

  • Mandrake, have you ever wondered?

    No reason. Just because.

  • Who tampered with what?

    Does the BBC hire its reporters from kindergartens these days?

    National Trust covers artwork referencing JK Rowling after tampering

    [Too many ings for one headline, Beeb. Clumsy. Work on your aesthetics.]

    The National Trust has covered up a piece of art featuring the name of author JK Rowling, after it was tampered with by a member of the public.

    Between April and November 2024 visitors to Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire were invited to stitch names of women they felt should be celebrated on to a textile display called Virtuous Woman. During this time, a participant stitched over the Harry Potter author’s name. Last week, this covering was removed by feminist campaigner Jean Hatchet.

    So here’s the problem: which “tampered with” are you talking about?

    I guess we have to come down on the side of the removal. Note the language. The person who stitched over JKR’s name is “a participant” while Jean Hatchet is “feminist campaigner” – so we’re nudged to conclude that the stitching over was all part of the fun while undoing the stitching over was disgusting feminist campaigning.

    But what about the “participant” who stitched in Rowling in the first place? Why is it participation to cross that out but naughty feminism to restore it?

    The National Trust, who manage the property, said: “The artwork was open to contributions for eight months and closed in November when the piece was finished and put on public display.”

    “We ask visitors not to tamper with any art on display,” they added. “The piece has been taken off display while we investigate the damage caused and consider next steps.”

    The damage caused ffs. What about the damage caused by the stitching over in the first place?

    The snide little piece ends with the snide remark that JKR declined to comment.

  • Large confident bully

    The man “Lilly” Tino has been filming himself in women’s toilets, sometimes including actual women in his filming without visibly asking their permission.

    If it’s true that no one looked at him weird, that’s a great pity. Women should have looked at him very weird indeed, along with telling him to gtf OUT.

  • We hear people saying

    Helen Webberley aka Gender GP lets us know how profoundly confused (aka stupid) she is. Just in case we didn’t already know.

    Every time this topic comes up, the conversation sounds painfully familiar. We hear people saying that it’s not fair for trans women to compete in women’s sport. That’s the sentence that gets all the airtime, but what’s missing from that conversation is just as important, if not more so.

    We almost never hear people ask whether it’s fair for cis men to compete against trans men. 

    Yes she actually typed that, and hasn’t yet deleted it.

  • Policies

    What could possibly go wrong?

    Mental health hospitals responsible for violent criminals have policies which allow biologically male patients to “self identify” as women, an audit has revealed.

    Campaigners warned that NHS trusts are “playing Russian roulette with women’s safety” by placing transgender women — who were born male — on female wards.

    Why don’t NHS trusts know that without being told? How is it not blindingly obvious?

    In some cases, hospitals acknowledged that some trans patients may pose a “risk to a particular gender” or be “sexually disinhibited” and “very distressing for other patients on a single-sex ward”.

    Lying obfuscating sneaky toads. They mean male patients obviously pose a risk to women. How dare they lie about it and obfuscate it with burble about “a particular gender” and “other patients”?

    The lying and obfuscation make it entirely clear that they know what the problem is and are carefully trying to hide it. It’s not that they don’t realize males are a danger to females, it’s that they’re lying about it. For what? For the glorious cause of letting violent men have access to helpless confined women.

    One trust, South West London and St George’s, suggested that it may sometimes be appropriate to put forensic trans patients on a ward in line with their biological sex “while they are acutely unwell” due to being a possible “risk to a particular gender”. The policy document added: “Once they have recovered and have regained capacity it would be essential to reassess the risk … and if safe and appropriate, to arrange a move to a ward in accordance with their correct gender.”

    Sometimes? It only “sometimes” “might be” “appropriate” to put male criminals in a male ward? It’s always absolutely imperative to put male criminals in a male ward.

    As Helen Joyce put it:

    “These NHS trusts are missing the point: no male patient should ever be allowed in female accommodation under any circumstances. If health care managers cannot understand why this matters so much in mental health services, then they are not fit to run NHS trusts or to have female patients in their care.”

    The NHS says it’s thinking about it, sort of, maybe.

  • A go-to salon

    I missed this a couple of weeks ago: Arty Morty started a post on his blog with a lavish torrent of compliments about this very place including yous guys. Skipping the first couple of sentences, I’ll share the part that’s about the whole thing, i.e. yous guys.

    In case you haven’t noticed by now, Benson’s blog, Butterflies and Wheels, is my go-to salon — a digital Algonquin Round Table where clever commentary and thoughtful debate reflect the values of liberalism, feminism, humanism, and rational inquiry. For more than a decade, it’s been the first site I check in the morning and the last at night, a daily ritual marked by an embarrassing number of midday refreshes — which tells you everything you need to know about what this intellectual gathering place means to me.

    (It has early gender critical cred, too: the late Magdalen Berns was a guest author there in 2016!)

    Y’all are a digital Algonquin Round Table. I love that.

  • You know you did wrong, he said

    Bromance over.

    Elon Musk on Tuesday tore into the massive tax-and-spending-cut bill backed by President Donald Trump, calling it a “disgusting abomination” that will explode federal budget deficits.

    “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote in a post on his social media site X.

    Is he though? Is he sorry?

    “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” added the Tesla and SpaceX CEO.

    “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

    I can think of some things Musk did wrong – like taking an axe to USAID for instance.

    The White House quickly shrugged off the criticism from Musk, a vocal Trump supporter who spent over $250 million backing Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

    “Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said when asked about the post. “It doesn’t change the President’s opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill, and he’s sticking to it,” she said.

    Yep. Just keep repeating “one big, beautiful bill” and reality will fall into line.

  • RFK & PP

    Goddam Guardian:

    Advocates for pregnant people said they are alarmed by Robert F Kennedy Jr’s unprecedented and unilateral decision to remove Covid-19 booster shots from the recommended immunization schedule.

    WOMEN. Women women women. Pregnant women. No men get pregnant. “Women” is not a dirty word: use it. Erasing women is peak misogyny.

    A vaccine’s inclusion on the schedule is important for patient access, because many private health insurance plans determine which vaccines to cover based on the schedule.

    Bad Kennedy is happy to endanger pregnant women for the sake of his crank suspicions.

    “Kennedy’s unilateral decision to change the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule for Covid-19 vaccines demonstrates once again why he is completely unqualified to be the HHS secretary,” said Dr Robert Steinbrook, research director at consumer rights group Public Citizen, said in a statement. “In Congressional testimony on May 14, Kennedy said, ‘I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.’ Yet two weeks later he is making arbitrary public health decisions, defying norms, and with no accountability.”

    He’s a very bad man. Egotism that kills is very bad indeed.

    Meanwhile the Guardian is adamant about erasing women.

    Despite the known risks of contracting Covid-19 while pregnant, public health authorities have struggled to get pregnant people vaccinated. CDC data shows only about 14% of pregnant people received the most recently updated Covid-19 vaccine.

    “Women” is not a dirty word.

  • Singled out

    Why?

    The president of World Boxing has apologized after Olympic champion Imane Khelif was singled out in the governing body’s announcement to make sex testing mandatory.

    Algerian boxer Khelif, who won gold at the Paris Games last summer amid scrutiny over her eligibility, was specifically mentioned when World Boxing released its new policy last Friday.

    And? What’s the problem? He’s not shy, and he beat up a woman, and he cheated. I don’t think he’s an innocent victim here.

    On Monday, its president Boris van der Vorst contacted the Algerian Boxing Federation to acknowledge that was wrong.

    “I am writing to you all personally to offer a formal and sincere apology for this and acknowledge that her privacy should have been protected,” he wrote in a letter seen by The Associated Press.

    Why? The Olympics are not private. Also why “her”? Why not “Khelif’s” if you’re not willing to say “his”?

    We have to fight over every inch. It’s so tedious.

  • Mainstream

    Sports Illustrated:

    Just days after World Boxing declared that female boxers must complete a mandatory gender test in order to compete, directly challenging controversial Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif’s status in the amateur boxing arena, a new bombshell report has now shed light on the Algerian boxers true gender.

    In an article published yesterday (June 1) by Alan Abrahamson of 3 Wire Sports, the leaked medical records from Khelif’s tests carried out in 2022 and 2023 ahead of the Paris Olympics have now been made public.

    “Unless someone manipulates the evidence, the result is going to be crystal clear, déjà vu all over again, because in chromosome tests given amid the International Boxing Association’s 2022 and 2023 world championships, the boxer’s DNA showed XY markers with “male” karyotypes,” Abrahamson wrote.

    Abrahamson would go on to note that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) knew this, but still allowed Khelif to compete. 

    …

    Khelif has yet to issue a statement on the report, but her status in both amateur and professional boxing is potentially in jeopardy now more than ever.

    So stop saying “her status” already.

  • It’s regressive to say a man is a man

    Get the experts in. You’re going to talk about a man who pretends to be a woman? Bring in a man who pretends to be a woman to discuss it. Let everyone see how batshit crazy the ideology is.

    I do recommend playing the clip – it’s a treat to hear “Joanne” speaking.

  • Address incel culture while not knowing what women are

    How can UN Women do anything about this when it doesn’t even know what women are?

    But who are men? Who are women? Who is doing what to which? Do we even know? Is there any way we can tell?

    Also, whoever wrote that doesn’t know what “purposefully” means. It’s not a synonym for “purposely” or “on purpose.”

  • Oooh she said what?

    Oh good, another ten minutes hate.

    Pop star Jade Thirlwall has led a crowd of thousands in an anti-J.K. Rowling chant during a music festival known for celebrating LGBTQ+ culture.

    While performing on the Main Stage at Mighty Hoopla in London Saturday evening, Thirlwall ignited the crowd when she chanted “transphobes” and the crowd responded: “Fuck you!”

    She then changed the prompt to “J.K. Rowling” to which the crowd responded with another enthusiastic “Fuck you!”

    Great. Brilliant. Woman incites crowd to scream hatred toward a woman for the crime of knowing and saying that men are not women. What pleasant times we live in.

    Rowling, author of the acclaimed Harry Potter series, has come under intense scrutiny during the last few years for her comments about women and transgender rights.

    Listen, Indy: crowds screaming “fuck you!” is not “intense scrutiny”. It’s not any kind of scrutiny, it’s mindless hatred of a kind that can incite violence.

    The author, 59, first made controversial comments about the transgender community in December 2019. Since then, she has published and retweeted numerous posts containing hateful rhetoric toward the trans and non-binary communities.

    Liars. It’s not “hateful rhetoric” to say that men are not women. I’ll tell you what “hateful rhetoric” is: it’s shouting a woman’s name to get the response “fuck you!”

    Rowling has denied being transphobic, but has previously stated that she would “happily” go to prison for misgendering a trans person rather than refer to them by their preferred pronouns.

    That’s not “phobic.” It’s not hatred to decline to refer to a man as “she”. Furthermore, it’s not ok to order women to call men “women” so how about focusing on that instead?

    She’s even gone so far as to dismiss concerns that her views on transgender people will damage her legacy. When asked in 2023 by interviewer Megan Phelps-Roper about her legacy in the podcast titled The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author said she doesn’t think about it.

    Gone so far as? How is that any kind of going far? Why shouldn’t she dismiss such pompous “concerns” that she doesn’t share and are none of anyone else’s business?

    Whoever wrote this drivel is not very good at the job.

    “I think you could not have misunderstood me more profoundly. I do not walk around my house thinking about my legacy, what a pompous way to live your life thinking about what my legacy will be. Whatever! I’ll be dead, I care about now, the living.”

    Well said – yet Indy dimwit considers it going so far.

    I can remember when it was an ok news outlet.