Takes the breath away.

Update: We just talked to Lauren Boebert about what the pin represents. She immediately threw away the pin and shook her head “no” when I said we hope you can take action on gun violence prevention. https://t.co/51amIYJiUx pic.twitter.com/Yh4lboUr8t

— sarah fishkind (@sarahefishkind) July 18, 2023

… Read the rest

When in doubt, find some women to torture.

A video showing two women being paraded naked by a mob in the north-eastern state of Manipur, hit by violent ethnic clashes, has sparked outrage in India. The police say they have opened a case of gang rape and arrested a man, adding that others will be held soon.

…

Deadly violence has plunged Manipur, a scenic Indian state bordering Myanmar, into turmoil for more than two months. Clashes between members of the majority Meitei and the Kuki tribal communities have resulted in their complete segregation. At least 130 people have died and 60,000 have been displaced. The two women, who are Kukis, were assaulted by men of the Meitei group.

Maybe Willoughby is a secret agent undermining trans ideology from within.

This just in.

Transgender activist Sarah Jane Baker appeared in court today and was remanded in custody at a men's prison. Baker allegedly told a crowd at the Trans+ Pride rally in Westminster: 'If you see a TERF, punch them in the f****** face.' pic.twitter.com/scNSbTc57P

— CourtNewsUK (@CourtNewsUK) July 20, 2023

Allegedly, on video.… Read the rest

The rest of that section of the paper:

Freeman (2015) argues that contemporary pregnancy, in particular, has become a site of epistemic injustice through processes of medical professionals and technologies assuming power and epistemic authority over pregnancy and pregnant people, often denying or superseding the epistemic privilege, knowledge, and control that a pregnant person has over their own body and embodied pregnancy experience. Similarly, both MacKendrick (2018) and Waggoner (2017) clearly demonstrate how responsibilities for ensuring the health and well-being of embryos, fetuses, children, and families are forms of gendered precautionary labor in which “safety first” approaches result in additional social control over women and their everyday lives, often despite equivocal empirical evidence supporting the benefits of such precautions.

The mind reels.

This new paper arguing that "precautionary" and "safety first" approaches during pregnancy to prevent developmental conditions in the fetus is "eugenicist" and "inscribe binarized notions of sex" needs to be seen to be believed. It's truly demented.https://t.co/zBviGme9VB pic.twitter.com/oHQOCyZwLM

— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) July 18, 2023

So…it’s bad to make efforts to have a healthy (or “fit”) baby, because doing so may reflect eugenicist and biomedical moralist underpinnings.

What, I wondered, is biomedical moralism? Is it a label in common use? Not according to Google, which has never heard of it. I’m guessing it’s a label for thinking it’s better to have a healthy baby than a sick or weak or underweight one, and that it’s better … Read the rest

NPR on the Women’s World Cup:

The U.S. will be looking to snag their third straight World Cup title — and its fifth overall.

The U.S. women’s national team (USWNT) has held the No. 1 spot in FIFA’s rankings for years, and is the odds-on favorite to win once again. But this year’s tournament is considered fairly wide open, with several teams having a decent shot at the title.

…

This time around, the U.S. squad is, on average, less experienced at the international level than it has been at previous tournaments. Several veterans whose experience had been counted on were left off the roster due to injuries, including Becky Sauerbrunn, Mallory Swanson, Samantha Mewis and Christen Press.

Is Arts Council Wales sniffing glue?

Gendered pronouns will be purged from official documentation by the Welsh government’s primary arts body, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

The Arts Council of Wales, the taxpayer-funded body responsible for supporting the arts on behalf of the devolved government, is set to purge male and female pronouns like “he/him” and “she/her” from the body’s official documentation, the Telegraph understands.

In place of gendered pronouns, the Arts Council will use gender-neutral pronouns “they/them”.

So no more “gendered” pronouns in the language of the Arts Council at all? Surely that’s insane? (And don’t call me Shirley.)

News of the policy arts comes after the Welsh government this year rolled out an LGBTQ+ Action Plan for

Yeah sure kid.

Marx would totally agree.… Read the rest

Headline:

‘We are dying’: Houston workers protest new state law removing water break requirements

House Bill 2127, which takes effect on Sept. 1, will do away with local rules that require water breaks for construction workers. The cities of Austin and Dallas, for example, require 10-minute breaks every four hours. San Antonio officials had been considering a similar ordinance.

Ten minute breaks every four hours are not all that much, especially in blazing heat. (When I worked as a seasonal laborer for the Seattle Parks Department the rule was fifteen minute breaks every two hours – thanks to the union. Annoyingly, some crews liked to combine the breaks into one break first thing in the morning to go to … Read the rest

It turns out that global warming means actual global warming, as in we’re in the frying pan and the burner is on. It means we’re accidentally cooking ourselves along with everything else.

Punishing heat waves gripped three continents on Tuesday, breaking records in cities around the Northern Hemisphere less than two weeks after the Earth recorded what scientists said were likely its hottest days in modern history.

Not just a little upward bump in average temperatures but raging heat waves that kill people by the thousands.

Firefighters in Greece scrambled to put out wildfires, as parched conditions raised the risk of more blazes throughout Europe. Beijing logged another day of 95-degree heat, and people in Hangzhou, another Chinese

There’s an irony here, or a cascade of ironies that has no visible terminus.

One of the thorniest questions raised by the possibility of another indictment would be how to schedule multiple trials in a way that satisfies the need to give Trump a fair trial but permits the wheels of justice to turn at reasonable speed. 

Oh gosh, doggone it, we can’t even figure out how to fit all these trials into the time we have. Why is that? Well, because the guy is such a prolific committer of crimes. The secret to success as a criminal: do so much of it at such a fast clip that the cops and prosecutors can’t even keep up with you. … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on He’ll rename himself Anne Frank next.

Atheist blogs have long noted the existence of what we’d call “persecution porn” coming from Christian conservatives. Liberal Secularists were feverishly plotting ways to destroy Christianity and choosing the easiest and only viable method: the use of force against Christians. Laws banning Bibles and camps “reeducating” the faithful were always on the verge of being implemented or had become fact in a fictional drama about the near future. Being asked to renounce Jesus by someone holding a gun to your head was a viable possibility: prepare yourself. How will you answer?

General consensus was that there were several factors motivating this lascivious dwelling on people “coming for … Read the rest

Why would anyone think trans ideology is full of hatred of women?

Trump gets a target letter.

The fact that Trump had received yet another target letter from Jack Smith was a relatively close hold in his world. He went public after a media inquiry asking if he had received one, according to a person briefed on the matter.

…

We don’t know what charges Smith is considering bringing against Trump, but commentary from many lawyers — ranging from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 riot to outsiders writing “model prosecution memos” — have focused in particular on the possibility of the attempted corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, under Section 1512(c) of Title 18, and conspiracy to defraud the government under Section 371 of Title 18.

Pathetic.

Nope, no misogyny here.

India Willoughby having the fucking gall to frame himself as a Jew and gender skeptics as Nazi exterminators.

This is not Vichy. There are no “collaborators” because there is no Vichy and there are no Nazis. There is no “Nazi poster-girl” and no one, NO ONE AT ALL, is “coming for” Willoughby. He’s not going to be hauled off to Auschwitz to be worked to death or immediately gassed. He’s not going to be one of the six million.

This is where narcissism and obsession with one’s precious IdenTiTee takes a person.… Read the rest

Never mind the lethal temperatures, the important thing is what reporters are saying about them.

Italy is sweltering in abnormally high temperatures, but its media appear to be more interested in how the extreme heat is being reported in the foreign press than delving deeply into the effects in a country deemed to be among the most vulnerable in Europe to the climate crisis.

Over the weekend, several outlets picked up on reports on Italy’s heatwave in leading foreign news websites – including the Guardian, the Times and the BBC. They were particularly fascinated by a headline in the Times calling Rome – where temperatures are forecast to reach highs of 43C on Tuesday – the “Infernal City”,

Jennifer Lahl and Kallie Fell, president and executive director respectively of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, write at Reality’s Last Stand:

In recent years, a striking paradigm shift in medical ethics has emerged, driven by progressive political ideologies purporting to champion “Social Justice.” This shift has precipitated a surge in initiatives centered around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The resulting effects have varied considerably; they include the introduction of explicit racial bias in treatment protocols in a quest for “health equity,” and an unsettling disregard for biological sex as an important variable in both medical research and patient care. Instead, the new radical movement favors categorizing individuals based on their self-identified and medically irrelevant “gender identity.”