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Meet the medbeds

Jill Lepore has a good essay in the New Yorker on living in trumpworld.

Peer into the dark. Earlier this fall, Trump reposted on Truth Social a four-minute news clip generated by A.I. The clip purported to be a segment from Lara Trump’s Fox News show, reporting on Trump’s announcement of the launch of “medbeds . . . designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength” at special hospitals about to open all over the country. Medbeds, which can cure all ailments and reverse aging, appear regularly in science fiction. (Think of the “biobeds” in the “Star Trek” sick bay.) They began featuring in online conspiracy theories in the early twenty-twenties; QAnoners claim that medbeds exist, and have existed for

… Read the rest

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Meet the medbeds
By Ophelia Benson, December 4, 2025

Jill Lepore has a good essay in the New Yorker on living in trumpworld.

Peer into the dark. Earlier this fall, Trump reposted on Truth Social a four-minute news clip generated by A.I. The clip purported to be a segment from Lara Trump’s Fox News show, reporting on Trump’s announcement of the launch of “medbeds . . . designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength” at special hospitals about to open all over the country. Medbeds, which can cure all ailments and reverse aging, appear regularly in science fiction. (Think of the “biobeds” in the “Star Trek” sick bay.) They began featuring in online conspiracy theories in the early twenty-twenties; QAnoners claim that medbeds exist, and have existed for

… Read the rest

Archives
Bad Moves
Articles
Flashback
In Focus
Latest News
Letters
Notes and Comment Blog

Meet the medbeds 

Jill Lepore has a good essay in the New Yorker on living in trumpworld.

Peer into the dark. Earlier this fall, Trump reposted on Truth Social a four-minute news clip generated by A.I. The clip purported to be a segment from Lara Trump’s Fox News show, reporting on Trump’s announcement of the launch of “medbeds . . . designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength” at special hospitals about to open all over the country. Medbeds, which can cure all ailments and reverse aging, appear regularly in science fiction. (Think of the “biobeds” in the “Star Trek” sick bay.) They began featuring in online conspiracy theories in the early twenty-twenties; QAnoners claim that medbeds exist, and have existed for

… Read the rest
A male soccer player is a male soccer player 

Ugh.

… Read the rest

Ephemera 

This is indeed magic.

… Read the rest

Booted 

OJ is very sarcastic about women’s rights.

Boys booted out of Girlguiding – I’m not seeing the problem. Girlguiding is for girls. There are organizations for children and adolescents of both sexes, and there are organizations for one or the other sex. That’s ok; we can do that.

We probably ought to do that. It’s just a fact that humans are sexually dimorphic and that … Read the rest

The right to silence 

She “thinks” in slogans and blurts.

Ooooh deep – until you think about it for one second. What are trans rights? Kindly spell them out.

Is there a “right” to change sex? No, just as there is no “right” to fly like a bird or live underwater or run faster than a cheetah. It’s absurd to blather about rights to do the impossible.

Trans people have human rights. Nobody says they don’t. Trans people don’t have a right to force us all to agree with their fictions. It’s pretty simple.… Read the rest

Guest post: The women’s branch 

Originally a comment by maddog on Utmost regret and sadness.

Never mind that WI can celebrate and fawn over the completely ignored part of the “transgender communinny,” the transgender people who are actually women, i.e., the “trans men.”

They wail and gnash their teeth about how tragic and unfair it is to make them exclude “trans women,” who are men, and pretend that the new landscape forces them to discriminate against the “trans communinny,” as if there weren’t an existing component of the “trans communinny” who actually belong in the Women’s Institute: the women who so deeply feel the oppression of women that they seek to escape it by pretending to be men.

The Women’s Institute can be incloosive … Read the rest

What a difference these spaces make to girls What a difference these spaces make to girls 

Ashley Louise James is resigning as Girlguiding ambassador.

Yes, these spaces make a difference to girls. What about these spaces makes a difference to girls? The fact that they don’t include boys. Boys can bully or intimidate or out-compete girls in ways that are generally out of reach to girls. That means girls need to be away from boys at times in order to do their best work.

The fact that boys are every bit as bright, joyful and deserving as any other child is beside the point. The point is that boys are not every bit as strong as girls: they are stronger.

It’s not entirely true that boys who claim to be trans girls, and their families, … Read the rest

Little girls love to 

Thank heaven for little girls, yeah?

… Read the rest

Differences 

The Telegraph on the WI ructions:

The Women’s Institute (WI) has banned transgender women from becoming members.

The National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI), the WI’s umbrella organisation, revealed on Wednesday that, in light of a Supreme Court judgment on gender, it could not legally offer formal membership to biological males from April 2026.

Pathetic that they want to offer membership to males. It’s not the Men’s Institute.

The announcement by the WI – the UK’s largest women’s membership organisation – has prompted calls for public bodies to also comply with the Supreme Court ruling. Many have refused to change their policies and prevent trans women from using women’s facilities, such as toilets and changing rooms.

They have said

… Read the rest
Utmost regret and sadness 

Even more weeping and wailing about no longer being able to let men into organizations for women. The Graun:

The Women’s Institute will no longer accept transgender women as members from April following the UK supreme court ruling on the legal definition of a woman, the Guardian can reveal.

Melissa Green, the chief executive of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, said the organisation had taken the decision with the “utmost regret and sadness”, adding it had “no choice” but to exclude trans women from its membership.

“Incredibly sadly, we will have to restrict our membership on the basis of biological sex from April next year,” Green said. “But the message we really want to get across is that

… Read the rest
Include the inclusion 

The Guardian version:

Trans girls will no longer be able to join Girlguiding, the organisation has announced, saying it has made the decision after seeking legal advice as a result of the supreme court ruling on gender earlier this year.

Blahblah. The question is why were boys allowed to join in the first place? What’s the point of having Girl Guides if you let boys join? This business of boys joining relies on the presence of girls, after all. If all the girls leave then what are they left with? Another thing for boys. Don’t they have enough yet?

The statement from the top people

added that Girlguiding “believed strongly in inclusion” and would continue to support young people and

… Read the rest
Dude is furious Dude is furious 

Ew. Yet another horrible man I didn’t know about.

It’s a bit late to stop buying Harry Potter.

More seriously, what horseshit. No we’re not “wealthy.” No this is not plutocrats grinding the faces of the poor. What an idiotic thing to say. Trans ideology is not progressive or socialist or socialist-adjacent or leftwing in any other way. It’s an absurdity adopted by a lot of gullible wannabe radicals who don’t know their ass from their elbow.

“some isolated billionaire”? Meaning JKR? Jeez, we should all be so isolated. More centrally, we’re not talking about “a little girl” here, we’re talking about boys who pretend to be girls and want to invade Girlguides. It’s not sheer, pointless cruelty to tell … Read the rest

Shibboleths and euphemisms 

She’s right.

From the start, a key tactic of the gender identitarians has been linguistic prescription, and it’s proved shockingly successful. Trans activists’ shibboleths and euphemisms have been allowed to penetrate the upper echelons of our culture with devastating consequences to freedom of speech and belief. Huge swathes of liberal media, the arts, academia and publishing have thrown themselves with gusto into the defence of a quasi-religious belief causing

… Read the rest

New policy to move towards accuracy 

Brilliant title.

BBC shift towards accuracy angers the gender identity faithful

Oh no, not a shift towards accuracy!!

The BBC has ‘given way to transphobic rhetoric’, according to US activist Erin Reed. Erstwhile celebrity India Willoughby says a new editorial policy is ‘dehumanising’ trans people. Their indignation is reflected across gender activist social media.

Erin and India, in their current iteration at the BBC, are ‘biological males who identify as women’. Earlier this year they would have been trans women. Last year they would have been women.

This in a nutshell is the reason for the anger. Perhaps next year Erin and India will simply be he/hims in BBC copy.

Erin’s piece last week, and India’s latest car protest video,

… Read the rest
The crime of safeguarding 

From The Critic nearly four years ago:

Police are investigating a woman for raising safeguarding concerns about Girl Guide commissioner Monica Sulley

We’re in UpsideDownLand again.

A teacher and mother-of-three has been questioned under caution by Merseyside Police for sending a letter to Girlguiding UK raising safeguarding concerns.

Her story begins in November 2021 when it emerged that Girlguiding UK had appointed a local commissioner called Monica Sulley, a role that involves overseeing Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Rangers in Southwell, Nottinghamshire. 

Social media reports showed that Sulley, a trans woman, had posted pictures of herself on Instagram wearing dominatrix clothing, one of which was captioned “Now behave yourselves or Mistress will have to punish you #mistress.” She had

… Read the rest
Lost guides 

Girl Guides have put out an absolutely disgusting apologetic misogynistic statement.

Denise Wilson (Chair of Trustees), Felicity Oswald (CEO) and Tracy Foster (Chief Guide)

02 December 2025

Following April’s Supreme Court decision relating to sex and gender, many organisations across the country have been facing complex decisions about what it means for girls and women and for the wider communities affected.

Complex shmomplex. It’s not complex at all. Boys are not girls: get out.

Girlguiding’s governing charity documents set out that the membership and people who benefit from our organisation are girls and women. The Supreme Court ruled that girls and women are defined in the Equality Act 2010 by their biological sex at birth.

Because what the fuck … Read the rest

Anyone else get that? 

Oh dear. She’s “trans nonbinareee” she tells us, but do we by any chance know why she has pain from these surgical scars here after her elective double mastectomy? Not that she doesn’t love her mastectomy, no no no, but there is the hurty part. Also, she loves us very much.

@justjimmie

#doublemastectomy #transawareness #nonbinary #chestsurgery #surgery

♬ Ethereal – Elie & Jiafei & Makaka

She’s startin’ to have some physical limitations? But like she said [sic], she’s starting to have some physical limitations with certain movements [like moving her arms for instance], some pain in certain areas, some muscle isssssues in certain parts.

Nothing to see here.… Read the rest

About his mental acuity 

What prompted me to ask Google about “routine” MRIs was Heather Cox Richardson’s post yesterday about Trump’s mental acuity.

President Donald J. Trump’s behavior over the holiday weekend has increased concern about his mental acuity. A rant on his social media account at midnight on Thanksgiving itself threatened to strip citizenship from naturalized immigrants, called Minnesota governor Tim Walz a profoundly offensive slur, and ended: “HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for—You won’t be here for long!”

On NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday, Walz responded by calling for Trump to release the results of an MRI he told reporters he underwent in October, later saying: “I have no idea what

… Read the rest
Not like brushing your teeth 

The White House is saying Trump’s MRI was just normal routine preventative care. The trouble is, that’s not a thing. I asked Google/AI specifically: Is it true that preventative MRI scans are normal? The answer is no.

No, preventative full-body MRI scans are not considered standard or normal by major medical organizations. While they can find abnormalities, they are not recommended for the general public because they often lead to false positives, unnecessary anxiety, expensive and potentially risky follow-up procedures, and lack of proven effectiveness in improving health outcomes or lifespan. Standard MRI scans are typically used to diagnose specific symptoms or monitor a known condition, not for general, symptom-free screening.

And yet the White House swears up and down … Read the rest

Creeps at the Failing 

Trump is furious at the Times again.

The Creeps at the Failing New York Times are at it again. I won the 2024 Presidential Election in a Landslide, winning all Seven Swing States, the Popular Vote, and the Electoral College by a lot. I won our Nation’s Districts by 2750 to 550, a complete wipeout. I settled 8 Wars, have 48 New Stock Market Highs, our Economy is Great, and our Country is RESPECTED AGAIN all over the World, respected like never before. The last Administration had the Highest Inflation in history – I have already brought that down to normal, and prices, including groceries, are coming down. To do this requires a lot of Work and Energy, and

… Read the rest