A point of no return passed?

The Amazon rainforest experienced its worst drought on record in 2023. Many villages became unreachable by river, wildfires raged and wildlife died. Some scientists worry events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is fast approaching a point of no return.

And no doubt other scientists worry that events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is slowly but not all that slowly approaching a point of no return. In short, droughts in the Amazon rainforest are a very bad sign as well as a very bad thing.

Bom Jesus de Igapo Grande is a community of 40 families in the middle of the forest and has been

The BBC taking care to annoy gay men by using a familiar slur for “gay men.”

Noël Coward grew up in poverty and left school at 9. He was queer in a very straight world. At 30 he was the highest-paid writer in the world and a star. This is his inspirational story.

Watch Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story, Boxing Day on BBC Two & @BBCiPlayer. pic.twitter.com/DCFCIRDi4Y

— BBC Arts (@bbcarts) December 26, 2023

Replies are fierce.

You will repeat the lie or you will be punished.

Queen’s University orders every single person on campus to comply with transgender names and pronouns or face punishment

Queen’s University Belfast has toughened up its code of conduct so that refusing to recognise someone’s self-declared gender is now a “zero tolerance” disciplinary matter. Specifically, the university’s new code demands that both staff and students use whatever name and pronouns an individual demands. Failure to do so is now treated as bullying and / or harassment.

It also applies to anyone who makes “derogatory” jokes about transgenderism.

All jokes are derogatory. There shall be no joking.

This new code covers not just staff and students but anybody who sets foot on

What is a “life coach”?

I’ve suddenly noticed that there are people who go around calling themselves “life coaches,” which seems like quite a presumptuous thing to call oneself. So I consulted Google to confirm what I suspected: it’s a way to charge people for advice without having to get any professional qualifications. Anybody can put up a shingle saying “Life Coach” and charge whatever fees they like.

Some sources consider this an exciting advantage – for the life coaches, that is.

Modern lifestyles are fast paced, highly competitive and come with the added pressure of meeting (often unrealistic) expectations. Many people find it difficult to juggle personal & professional responsibilities and do justice to both. Against this backdrop, a

Trump’s Xmas message:

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on The course is taught from an Ethnic Studies perspective.

And why is “Identity” the first item in the list? Why is it on the list at all?

Once you rule out the trivial meanings of “identity” (i.e. x=x, people are whatever they happen to be etc.), what’s left is practically synonymous with “ingroup vs. outgroup” or “us vs. them” thinking, the very things the old “Left” was trying to get away from. I’m under no illusion that “who I am” has not to a significant degree been shaped by growing up Norwegian, white, male (in the biological sex sense, not the “gender identity” sense) etc. But that’s a stupid and evil bug … Read the rest

We hear a lot about Gaza, not so much about Khartoum.

The conflict between the [Rapid Support Forces] and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has now raged for eight months with no end in sight, killing thousands of people and creating what the United Nations says is the world’s largest human displacement crisis.

Beyond trapping civilians and destroying infrastructure in a country that already struggles with high rates of poverty, international observers have accused both sides of committing war crimes.

That is, international observers have accused both sides of committing war crimes along with trapping civilians and destroying infrastructure.

Evidence is also emerging that the RSF and their allies have massacred members of an African ethnic group in

Originally a comment by VanitysFiend on Brave New World had the “feelies.”

@Bjarte Foshaug

Of course the creators of The Matrix both identify as women and supposedly meant the whole movie as a parable for transition in the first place (in case you wonder: the people who think Eddie Izzard is a woman are the ones who have taken the red pill, had their eyes opened, and see the world as it really is. It’s the rest of us who are living a lie).

The character of Switch was originally intended to be one sex in the matrix and a different sex out of the matrix, the result of a coding error by the machines. That’s as good an explanation … Read the rest

Trump being all festive n shit.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

2024 WILL GO DOWN AS THE YEAR OF GREAT AND FULLY COORDINATED ILLEGAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE BY CROOKED JOE BIDEN, THE WORST AND MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, THE DOJ, FBI, A.G.’s, & D.A.’s THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY, BUT DESPITE IT ALL, IN THE END, THERE WILL BE A BIG AND GLORIOUS VICTORY FOR THOSE BRAVE AND VALIANT PATRIOTS WHO WANT TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!!

Also, less than an hour later:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

It’s hard to have a truly great Christmas when you have a Crooked and Incompetent President who wants to put his Political Opponent in jail, and who … Read the rest

And now a feel-good story in honor of the solstice.

If you were strolling by a lake in the dead of winter and saw a duck trapped under the ice, you might search for a stick to poke a hole, or maybe throw a heavy rock, to create a break in the surface.

That is one very trapped duck!

But a fella named Langøien Karl didn’t mess around with rocks, he threw himself in.

The 36-year-old Norwegian native was already dressed for swimming, as he takes part in a (somewhat insane) hobby of “ice bathing,” which involves going for winter dips. When he spotted the duck, he dropped his towel and wasted no time jumping to the rescue.

Karl went

Here is Chief Sealth School’s guide to social studies courses including the one that teaches women can have penises.

Ethnic Studies World History 3
Credits: 0.5 credit
Grade(s): 10
Length of Course: One Semester
Prerequisite: World History I, II
Graduation Requirement Satisfied: World History 3

This course provides the opportunity for students to examine current world problems and their historical and systemic causes.  The course is taught from an Ethnic Studies perspective and includes the structure of the 5 themes including Identity, Power and Oppression, Resistance and Liberation, reflection and Acton and Indigeneity. Students come to understand themselves in relation to systems of power and develop a sense of themselves as potential changemakers. The specific content varies from year to

The source is conservative talk radio, but if the facts are true as reported then that’s what they are.

An activist history teacher failed a Seattle student on a quiz for saying only women can get pregnant and that only men have penises.

A 10th grade Ethnic Studies World History teacher at Chief Sealth International High School in Seattle gave students a quiz titled, “Understanding Gender vs. Sex.” The quiz provided a series of statements to label true or false, or questions with multiple choices.

Many of the questions focused on personal pronoun use (When someone uses ‘they/them’ pronouns, what does that mean about their gender identity?”) or assumptions one may make around gender identity (“True/false: Transgender people are

Dude get over it.

Anti-Trans Swimmer Slammed After Causing Trans Teen To Lose Volleyball Scholarship https://t.co/3D39g1oDgK

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) December 23, 2023

Anti-Trans Swimmer Slammed After Causing Trans Teen To Lose Volleyball Scholarship https://t.co/AlvUCwMoy5

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) December 25, 2023

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Vanitys Fiend on The disembodied avatar worlds of the internet.

One thing that gets me about this is that Science Fiction, and probably a fair number of fairy tales and myths, have been exploring and warning about this kind of disembodiment from reality for decades now. The original pilot for Star Trek featured a race that became so detached from reality over time that they no longer knew how to maintain the advanced technology of their ancestors. Neuromancer has “The Matrix” before The Matrix did and even that film has time to explore the idea of whether it matters if you’re living in an illusion or reality, and it come down on the side of … Read the rest

Merry krissmiss!!

This is GLORIOUS.

Well at least one lawyer agrees that it’s grotesque to claim that presidents can crime with impunity because they were in theWhiteHouse at the time of the criming.

A pre-Christmas filing by Donald Trump‘s lawyers asking a federal appeals court to throw out the election subversion case against him is “ridiculous,” according to a Florida state attorney.

State Attorney for Palm Beach County Dave Aronberg said the filing arguing that Trump is immune from prosecution for actions that fell within his official presidential duties was about “delay.”

…

The former president has appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review [whether] he is immune from allegations [that] he tried to overturn the

Here again is that weird circularity.

Donald Trump's lawyers asked an appeals court to toss a federal indictment accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that he was immune to the charges because they arose from actions he had taken while he was in the White House. https://t.co/1fMhNT4FYi

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 24, 2023

He took the actions in the White House, therefore you can’t touch him, therefore he gets to try to return to the White House, despite having done his best to force his way in with violent sedition last time. Which you can’t touch him for doing, because he was in the White House at the time. It’s so very … Read the rest

This is so progressive.

I guess enjoy those forced births you ladies will be having after you help conservatives take over the US. Oh wait….most of you are miserable old hags with nothing better to do than to fan the flames of trans hatred. Nevermind!

— Paul Akahana (@Paul40655594) December 23, 2023

“Hahaha you can’t get abortions any more and you’re miserable old hags.”

I just can’t figure out why feminist women say no to this glorious revolution.… Read the rest

How to help kids be healthy:

Iowa will not participate this summer in a federal program that gives $40 per month to each child in a low-income family to help with food costs while school is out, state officials have announced.

The state has notified the U.S. Department of Agriculture that it will not participate in the 2024 Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children — or Summer EBT — program, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Education said in a Friday news release.

“Federal COVID-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don’t provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families. An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time

Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to set up a system in which the top boss can never be held to account because the top boss is the top boss. Why? Because even the top boss is just another human, and humans can do bad things. We need to be able to hold them to account, for our own protection. We can’t just assume they won’t exploit the top job to rob us blind and get away with it.

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump have asked a federal appeals court to throw out a case alleging interference in the 2020 election, arguing that he is immune from prosecution.

Like that. There shouldn’t be such a thing. People shouldn’t … Read the rest