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.

Just four months in and already they’re going for military takeover.

US national guard troops began to deploy in downtown Los Angeles after an immigration crackdown saw police use teargas on protesters in a move that has sent shockwaves though American politics.

Local television station ABC7 reported that national guard troops had started to arrive in downtown Los Angeles. It broadcast video of military trucks and troops with the helmeted soldiers wearing green camouflage uniforms, carrying assault rifles and handing out riot shields.

The troops paused at City Hall and drove through the Paramount neighborhood where protests had happened. The initial deployment represented about 300 troops at three different locations out of a total expected of 2,000. “There are approximately 300 California National Guard in Los Angeles currently,” Izzy Gardon, director of communications for California governor, Gavin Newsom, told CNN.

Protests. Not riots, not street fighting, not guerilla warfare, but protests. We are in fact allowed to protest.

The order to deploy the soldiers came from Donald Trump late on Saturday night and marks a stunning escalation in a broad crackdown on immigrants in the United States following raids across the country which have triggered protests.

Trump’s federalization of the guard troops is the first time an American president has used such power since the 1992 LA riots. At that time widespread violence broke out in reaction to the acquittal of four white police officers for brutally beating Black motorist Rodney King.

But that was then. Now we don’t wait for widespread violence, we just send the troops in because people are talking back.

Trump’s move has been followed by the threat of even more escalation. Earlier Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s controversial and hardline defense secretary, had raised the possibility of deploying US marines onto the streets of the Democrat-run state amid the protests that had erupted in the wake of raids from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) authorities in the state.

“Under President Trump, violence & destruction against federal agents & federal facilities will NOT be tolerated. It’s COMMON SENSE,” Hegseth wrote on social media.

“If violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized – they are on high alert,” Hegseth said.

The Marines.

This is how military coups begin.

Musk and Trump may squabble but they’re united on the important stuff.

As it happens, Trump and Musk’s dueling criticisms are each, in their own ways, at least partially valid. The bill is an abomination, although not because it’s “pork-filled.” And much of Musk’s wealth does come from the federal government, which he has spent the past few months trying to dismantle while preserving his own subsidies. According to Axios, among other things, Musk was angry that the bill cuts the electric-vehicle tax credit, which will hurt the bottom line of his electric-car company, Tesla.

But neither billionaire—one the president of the United States and the other a major financial benefactor to the president’s party—opposes the bill for what makes it a monstrosity: that it redistributes taxpayer dollars to the richest people in the country by slashing benefits for the middle class, the poor, and everyone in between. The ability of a few wealthy people to manipulate the system to this extent—leaving two tycoons who possess the emotional register of toddlers with the power to impoverish most of the country, to their own benefit, speaks ill of the health of American democracy, regardless of the outcome.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would make the largest cuts to food assistance for the poor in history, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, eliminating $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program at a time when inflation is still straining family budgets.

That’s what’s so beautiful about it.

Hostility to women continues to thrive.

Public sector workers and trade unions are widely refusing to accept the Supreme Court’s judgment on what a woman is, a think tank has warned.

A new study by Policy Exchange shows that dozens of organisations across the public, private and charitable sectors have continued to question the legal meaning of “a woman”, despite the ruling.

…

Policy Exchange’s report, the fifth edition of its “Biology Matters Compendium”, compiles examples of organisations refusing to acknowledge the legal force of the court’s judgment.

Kind of like segregationists refusing to acknowledge the legal force of Brown v Board of Education. Well no…not kind of like; exactly like. No we will not respect women’s rights and you can’t make us.

The report notes that at least seven major trade unions have appeared to question the ruling in recent months.

Unison, one of the UK’s largest unions, and the University and Colleges Union, which represents academic and support staff in further and higher education institutions, have warned of the judgment’s “harmful implications”.

The Fire Brigades’ Union has said in response to the ruling that “the law is not always on the right side of history”.

The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (Aslef) released a statement on social media saying that it “recognises the distress and uncertainty that the Supreme Court’s ruling about the definition of sex in the Equality Act 2010 has caused to trans and non-binary communities.”

The union declared: “We have a proud history of championing the rights of our trans and non-binary members and we continue to stand in solidarity with them.”

And as for women, fuck them. We stand in solidarity with men who nullify women’s rights, not with bitchy women who try to hang on to their rights.

A collection of unions, including Unite, the civil service union PCS, the RMT and the BFAWU, a food industry union, have staged marches against the Supreme Court’s decision, with one leading figure declaring that “the trade union movement will protect and stand with trans people, whether the law cares or not.”

Unions proudly declare their hatred of women. Solidarity forever, except solidarity with women.

The British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, branded the Supreme Court’s decision “scientifically illiterate”. Meanwhile, the National Police Chiefs’ Council said it would “not rush” to change rules on strip-searching in order to fall in with the court’s decision.

We can’t just rush into this crazy new thing of admitting women have rights.

Originally a comment by iknklast on Some other workable plan.

As for transporting enough stuff – no. Doing a wetland restoration, I had to transport ‘stuff’ halfway across Oklahoma…a modern state (sort of) with the ability to stop for gas and water plants, etc etc etc. More than half the plants died. It was a five hour trip (usually three, but because of the frequent stops, it took longer).

What we were transporting would be going into a similar system, where there was adequate water, nutrients, and sunlight, and once upon a time was an established system. After the transplant, about half the remaining plants died. Our success rate was low, and we didn’t really have any truly adverse circumstances.

You can’t just ‘transport plants’ or ‘transport seeds’. They need other things…water, of course. Soil. But also, fungus. Particular fungus which associates with plant roots. But you can’t take them with the fungus, because the roots have to be sterilized so a system isn’t messed up by other things invading, so you have to inject the fungus after planting. I realize they would probably say they are taking seeds, but seeds also need the fungus, which the system provides when they get to the proper stage in their development. Mars wouldn’t have that.

You would need pollinators. Humans can fill that role, but it is slow and tedious, and slow and tedious doesn’t strike me as something Musk does.

Plants also require a particular day length before they will germinate. Mars does not have the same day lengths we do. Plants can evolve to different temperatures, different soils, different water regimes, different wave lengths, but it doesn’t happen fast enough to support a colony on Mars.

We were dealing with a small system, and only a very small part of that small system. It ran far over budget, and in the end, was only marginally successful. The cost for colonizing Mars is likely to be so high you could probably save every ecosystem on Earth for the money…and have some left over. And restoring damaged ecosystem has at least some probability of success. On Mars, it is zero.

There was an instructor in my writing program who was writing a book on the future of the moon. He was going through all this high tech stuff, etc, and how we would be colonizing the moon, mining asteroids for minerals, etc. I asked him if he had talked to any scientists. Oh yes, he says. I talked to a couple of astronauts and some psychologists who work with astronauts. Really? No biologists? No physicists? No chemists? No geologists?

People like the high tech ideas of colonizing other planets/moons. The day to day work of maintaining a livable system bores them, so they brush it away. I don’t care how many spaceships we are able to get to the moon or other planets, there is a need for a lot more thought about the science before the fools rush in (though if Musk would take Trump with him, I would gladly contribute part of my taxes for the trip).

Nancy Armour at USA Today heaps praise on Simone Biles for insisting men should too so ruin women’s sports.

[Biles] also has little use for anyone who punches down on others, which is Gaines’ specialty.

Punching down? A woman saying men shouldn’t invade women sports is punching down? Is Armour aware that men are bigger and stronger than women? Not the other way around?

Gaines has used her tie for fifth place with Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, in the 200-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA championships to become a MAGA media darling. But her grifting has done real harm to the transgender community, which is already at an elevated risk for suicide and self-harm.

Her grifting? It’s grifting to object to men invading women’s sports? But it’s not grifting for men to invade women’s sports?

How do people get this stuff so backwards?

There is no scientific evidence that transgender women athletes have a physical advantage over cisgender women athletes, but that hasn’t stopped Gaines from claiming they do.

Is there scientific evidence that men have a physical advantage over women? Of course there is. Transgender women are men. They have a physical advantage.

Gaines has publicly lobbied for Biles and Caitlin Clark to support her in her hate which, again, is a laughable idea to anyone who has followed Biles’ illustrious career.

It’s not “hate” to say that men shouldn’t cheat women out of their own sports.

Gaines had inserted herself into the conversation about the Class 4A softball championship in Minnesota, claiming Champlin Park had “hijacked” the title because its star pitcher is a transgender young woman.

This Nancy Armour person is a real brat. We’re allowed to say things! Gaines wasn’t “inserting herself” any more than Nancy Armour is. Less so in fact, because Gaines is an athlete and Nancy Armour is a columnist.

One step forward and 87 steps back. I get tired of it.

Why do grown-ass people keep talking about colonizing Mars?

Albert Burneko points out how absurd the whole thing is.

Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars’s dead core? No? Well. It’s fine. I’m sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let’s discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.

OK, so you still want to talk about Mars. Fine. Let’s imagine that Mars’s lack of a magnetic field somehow is not an issue. Would you like to try to simulate what life on Mars would be like? Step one is to clear out your freezer. Step two is to lock yourself inside of it. (You can bring your phone, if you like!) When you get desperately hungry, your loved ones on the outside may deliver some food to you no sooner than nine months after you ask for it. This nine-month wait will also apply when you start banging on the inside of the freezer, begging to be let out.

Congratulations: You have now simulated—you have now died, horribly, within a day or two, while simulating—what life on Mars might be like, once you solve the problem of it not having even one gasp worth of breathable air, anywhere on the entire planet. We will never live on Mars.

Well if we pack a whole lot of suitcases full of breathable air won’t that take care of it?

Or plants? Can’t we pack a whole lot of suitcases full of plants and stick them in Mars and boom there’s our breathable air?

At this point in our discussion I must acquaint you with two dear friends of mine. Their names are The South Pole, and The Summit Of Mount Everest.

The South Pole is around 2,800 meters above sea level, and like everywhere else on Earth around 44 million miles closer to the sun than any point on Mars. It sits deep down inside the nutritious atmosphere of a planet teeming with native life. Compared to the very most hospitable place on Mars it is an unimaginably fertile Eden. Here is a list of the plant-life that grows there: Nothing. Here is a list of all the animals that reproduce there: None.

Even with all the profound advantages the South Pole enjoys compared to Mars, even on a planet where living things have spent billions and billions of years figuring out how to adapt to and thrive within an incredibly diverse array of biomes—on a planet where giant tubeworms the size of NBA basket stanchions have colonized lightless ocean depths at which a human would be crushed like a grape under a piano—the South Pole simply cannot support complex life. It is too cold, and its relationship with sunlight too erratic, for living things to sustain themselves there. On astronomical scales it is for all practical purposes in the exact same spot as some of the most life-rich and biodiverse places in the known universe, and yet no species has established a permanent self-sustaining population there. Ever.

Well…they just didn’t want it badly enough. Humans know how to want stuff.

Life on earth writ large, the grand network of life, is a greater and more dynamic terraforming engine than any person could ever conceive. It has been operating ceaselessly for several billions of years. It has not yet terraformed the South Pole or the summit of Mount Everest. On what type of timeframe were you imagining that the shoebox of lichen you send to Mars was going to transform Frozen Airless Radioactive Desert Hell into a place where people could grow wheat?

Um…ten years maybe?

Now they tell us they knew all along.

But although the break between Musk and Trump only exploded into public view on Thursday, cracks in the alliance began to appear much earlier. As Musk’s “move fast and break things” bravado complicated the White House’s ambitions to remake American society, the billionaire alienated key members of the White House staff, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and quarreled with Cabinet members, physically coming to blows with one.

…

Trump on Truth Social has called for public scrutiny of Musk’s government contracts, potentially imperiling his business empire. Republicans, meanwhile, are wary of how the world’s richest man could use his deep coffers to retaliate against them, especially as he floats the launch of a third political party.

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The first signs of trouble emerged in February, when an email landed in inboxes throughout the government directing federal employees to describe their five accomplishments over the past week.

Cabinet officials and other agency leaders weren’t given advance notice of the memo, causing consternation at the highest levels of Trump’s administration. When officials learned the email had gone out to some federal district judges, who are not part of the executive branch, and others who handle confidential information, the feeling grew that Musk fundamentally misunderstood the federal government or did not have the dexterity to maneuver through it.

Gosh, ya think? Too bad they didn’t notice that before giving him all that power.

The threats have started.

President Donald Trump on Saturday said there would be “serious consequences” if tech mogul Elon Musk funds Democratic candidates to run against Republicans who vote in favor of the GOP’s sweeping budget bill.

“If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump told NBC News in a phone interview, but declined to share what those consequences would be.

“He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” he added.

Hahahahahaha that “he added” is hilarious. What they mean is he said the same thing twice, as he so often does, because his brain can’t think different thoughts without a lot of time to make the switch. He repeats himself repeats himself because he’s not bright not bright.

Trump said he has no plans to speak with Musk anytime soon. “I’m too busy doing other things,” he said, adding, “I have no intention of speaking to him.”

There it is again: tactful veiling of the fact that he said the same thing twice. He’s not a guy who can come up with a lot of interesting varied words at a moment’s notice. His speech patterns are exceptionally impoverished.

“That’s called ‘old news,’ that’s been old news, that has been talked about for years,” Trump said on Saturday. “Even Epstein’s lawyer said I had nothing to do with it. It’s old news.”

Sir, would you say it’s old news, or no?

Trump on Thursday also responded with his own posts on Truth Social. In one post, he wrote, “I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago,” suggesting that Musk knew what was in the bill before it was passed.

Well I can agree with that certainly. Musk should have turned against Trump months ago, well before the election. To put it clearly, he should never have turned for him.

He also wrote on Thursday, “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” referring to federal contracts with SpaceX. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

So why didn’t you do it?

It turns out women should be helping men take over their sports.

Olympic gymnastics champion Simone Biles has called former US swimmer and activist Riley Gaines “sick” over online comments about a transgender woman softball player.

Gaines, who has regularly spoken out about transgender women athletes competing in women’s sport, mocked Minnesota State High School League for removing comments on their post about the Chaplin Park girls’ team celebrating the State Championship. Chaplin Park’s team includes a transgender woman player.

“You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser,” Biles wrote on X.

Not straight up at all. That’s the whole point. It’s not straight up for male people to be allowed to compete in women’s sports, because male people possess a whole raft of physical advantages over female people.

“You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports,” continued Biles.

Why? The trans communniny does one hell of a lot of “uplifting” of itself already, so why should anyone else be helping them? Especially when what’s being “uplifted” is so counter-factual and so destructive? Why are women supposed to “uplift” the trans communniny instead of uplifting women?