Is the heat really such a problem? Who needs fish and plants anyway?

The UK’s hottest June on record caused unprecedented deaths of fish in rivers and disturbed insects and plants, environment groups have warned. Nature is being “pounded by extreme weather without a chance to recover”, the Wildlife Trusts said.

…

“The reports of the number of fish death incidents in rivers for this time of year has been unprecedented. I would normally expect rivers to be affected later in the summer when it’s hotter and drier,” Mark Owen, from the Angling Trust, told BBC News. In one case, sea trout were found dead on the River Wear in north-east England, he said.

The deaths are partly caused by

Hottest so far.

The UK had the hottest June on record, the Met Office has confirmed. The average monthly temperature of 15.8C (60.4F) exceeded the previous highest average June temperature, recorded in 1940 and 1976, by 0.9C.

Climate change made the chance of surpassing the previous joint record at least twice as likely, scientists also said.

…

“It’s officially the hottest June on record for the UK, for mean temperature as well as average maximum and minimum temperature,” said Met Office’s Climate Science Manager Mark McCarthy.

“An increase of 0.9C may not seem a huge amount, but it’s really significant because it has taken the average daytime and the night time temperature for the whole of the UK,” Paul

A pusher of the dogma tells us how to push the dogma, which is to say, Helen Webberley says

Saving trans lives is simple:

Believe them.

Yes, that is simple, but it can’t be a general rule, for reasons that ought to be obvious if you think about it at all.

It can’t be a general rule that you must believe X brand of people, because people can be mistaken and people can lie.

Webberley is using the fact that, socially speaking, we generally do believe what people tell us if there’s no obvious reason not to. If we ask a stranger where the nearest grocery store is, we assume she’ll tell us the truth, because why wouldn’t she? … Read the rest

So can men breastfeed infants or no?? Some say yes; some even say yes of course they can and you’re a bigot for saying no.

Suzanne Moore says

Stunningly obvious that ‘lived experience’ matters. Many women here are talking about babies/breastfeeding and how difficult it can be. Then a load of ideologues telling us that men can breastfeed who clearly have never done it or ever looked after a baby? Latch on. To reality.

James Esses says

The NHS actually has official guidance on ‘Dads and breastfeeding’.

You know what it says? “Some men really like the changes in their partner’s breasts during breastfeeding”.

You know what it doesn’t say? “Men can breastfeed”.

Why?

Because they can’t.

Michael Eric Dyson writes:

This is the face of a man who climbed the ladder of affirmative action to his present perch of power only to help destroy the very ladder on which he ascended. This is not only the mark of deep ingratitude & disavowal of history, but a withering betrayal of justice & democracy.

The face belongs to Clarence Thomas.

To be fair, I think you can accept a benefit while thinking the benefit is a bad idea, without necessarily being a hypocrite. I also think you can accept a benefit and then over several decades develop views on why the benefit is a bad idea without being a hypocrite.

But I also think Dyson has a … Read the rest

The Chronicle of Higher Education looks closely at the DEI orthodoxy-sniffing at UCLA:

Yoel Inbar, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, was up for a job at the University of California at Los Angeles. But the psychology department there decided not to proceed after more than 60 graduate students in the department signed an open letter urging the university not to hire him.

At issue, the students wrote, were Inbar’s comments on his podcast expressing skepticism about the use of diversity statements in hiring, as well as about other efforts intended to make the academy more inclusive.

But his skepticism wasn’t (and isn’t) about the value of diversity, it was simply about the efficacy of diversity statements. … Read the rest

Now people who know that men are not women are having their bank accounts closed.

Wings Over Scotland:

Well well. The head of “financial tracking” at HSBC, the bank that just closed all my accounts for no reason, isn’t just a transwoman, but he and his transman partner are the top two names on the list of Patrons of controversial under-investigation trans “charity” Mermaids.

We’re done.

The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing to set more ambitious goals despite months of record-breaking heat on land and sea.

As envoys gathered in Bonn in early June to prepare for this year’s annual climate talks in November, average global surface air temperatures were more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for several days, the EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.

These “climate talks” are a weird charade when we can all see that nothing is being done and nothing will be done.

Though mean temperatures had temporarily breached the 1.5C threshold before, this was the first time they

Still refusing to report the subject accurately:

A woman who lost out on a job after tweeting gender-critical views is to get a £100,000 payout after a decision from an employment tribunal.

She didn’t “lose out on” a job; she lost the job she had. She lost her job.

Ms Forstater, the founder of campaign group Sex Matters, believes biological sex is immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity.

She doesn’t “believe” sex is immutable, she knows it is. Knowing that people can’t change sex isn’t a “belief”; it’s just awareness of a reality. [Yes, philosophically speaking knowledge is justified true belief, but the BBC isn’t speaking philosophically, to put it mildly.]

Casting it as “belief” isn’t … Read the rest

But this never happens and never will happen.

A boy has been arrested by police investigating reports of serious sexual assaults in a gender neutral toilet at a school. Essex Police said it was working closely with the school and local authorities while inquiries continued.

The boy, under the age of 16, has been bailed with conditions. Essex County Council confirmed it was working with police and relevant authorities on a “safeguarding matter” at a school.

No, on a series of sexual assaults. The kind which never happen.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by James Garnett on It’s not about being a disruptor.

Sort of a side-note, but: it’s practically a truism among those of us who are involved in dangerous activities that it’s “never the gear that fails”. That is, it’s human miscalculations that lead to accidents and death. It’s not snapped ropes or slipped gear or failed parachutes, it’s almost always a bad decision somewhere along the line. Of course, yes, sometimes it’s failed gear, but it happens so rarely in our highly regulated and tested worlds that the exceptions just serve to prove the rule. There’s an entire publication dedicated to analysis of climbing accidents in North America that is published each year, “Accidents in North … Read the rest

Here’s why Elon’s cunning plan is so stupid:

Twitter has applied a temporary limit to the number of tweets users can read in a day, owner Elon Musk has said.

In a tweet of his own, Mr Musk said unverified accounts are now limited to reading 600 posts a day.

If you don’t use Twitter that might sound reasonable, like the Guardian and the Washington Post and similar saying you can read X number of articles for X price. (They don’t do that, but they could.) But Twitter doesn’t work like a newspaper, because what you see is what Twitter decides to show you. It mostly works because what Twitter decides to show you is shaped by what … Read the rest

The New Yorker has an in-depth piece on the recklessness of the amateur Let’s Make a Submersible guy. It’s like reading an in-depth piece on why the Challenger exploded. Spoiler: he was determined to go ahead, safety be damned.

Until June 18th, a manned deep-ocean submersible had never imploded. But, to McCallum, Lahey, and other experts, the OceanGate disaster did not come as a surprise—they had been warning of the submersible’s design flaws for more than five years, filing complaints to the U.S. government and to OceanGate itself, and pleading with Rush to abandon his aspirations. As they mourned Nargeolet and the other passengers, they decided to reveal OceanGate’s history of knowingly shoddy design and construction. “You can’t cut

But who says that’s even a thing?

A controversial policy change that bars teachers from using a student’s preferred pronouns without parental permission will soon go into effect in New Brunswick despite pushback. It has caused political turmoil in the Canadian province.

See the way that’s worded suggests that “preferred pronouns” are the normal everyday established form of pronouns when in fact they’re the invention of crazed magic-gender ideologues. There’s no such thing as “preferred pronouns.” That idea is a new and stupid invention. Teachers shouldn’t be paying any attention to them at all, and neither should students.

In May, under Premier Blaine Higgs, New Brunswick announced that a policy to create a safe space for students who identify as

Don’t miss Jesse Singal’s piece on the grotesquerie at UCLA when a handful of fanatics decided Yoel Inbar is not Perfected enough to be on the faculty.

There was a little bit of weirdness when, during one meeting with a small diversity committee now enmeshed in the UC hiring process, Inbar was told that it had been brought to their attention that (four and a half years prior) on Two Psychologists Four Beers, he’d expressed skepticism of the mandatory diversity statements the University of California system had adopted around that time for anyone seeking to get hired as faculty. Inbar is a political liberal and very much favors making campuses inclusive; he just thinks diversity statements are unlikely to

For those who can still see tweets…

Also please see my statement https://t.co/N9NlRT4IGy

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) June 30, 2023

Maya’s statement is way better than Center for Global Development’s.

[Updating to add summary:

CGD basically just says here’s our statement, with a link.

Maya replies with “Here’s mine” with her image from the deck of cards, and text saying CGD was ordered to pay etc.

Maya’s basically saying neener neener haha; it’s quite droll.]

The CGD statement:

London – Today, The Center for Global Development (CGD) released the following statement, in relation to the Employment Tribunal judgment in the case brought by Maya Forstater against CGD:

“Following the Employment Tribunal’s remedy judgment, the case brought against CGD, its

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on One law for the rich and.

When ProPublica asked Alito questions, he instead responded with a defensive, pre-emptive op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

Does this mean if someone asks me an embarrassing question, I get to not respond by writing an opinion piece in a compliant publication? Cushy!

Boss: Did you remember to lock the door before you left?

Me: Read my latest in the Globe and Mail; that should explain everything.

Boss: What happened to the $2000 that was in the cash register?

Me: Check out my op-ed in the Free Press.

Boss: Why are you carrying a suitcase?

Me: See my column in tomorrow’s Star. Gotta run!… Read the rest

I have received the "remedy" judgement in my case. @cgdev has been ordered to pay over £100k in compensation for loss of earnings, injury to feelings and aggravated damages for their high-handed conduct.

Thank-you to everyone who supported my casehttps://t.co/N9NlRT5gw6

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) June 30, 2023

… Read the rest

The serfs must continue to be serfs.

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down President Biden’s plan for federal student loan forgiveness. Millions of federal borrowers will not see their debts decreased or erased.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the “disappointing and cruel” ruling “shows the callousness of the MAGA Republican-controlled Supreme Court.”

“The hypocrisy is clear: as justices accept lavish, six-figure gifts, they don’t dare to help Americans saddled with student loan debt, instead siding with the powerful, big-monied interests,” he said, referencing the court’s recent string of ethics scandals.

The rich get richer and the poor get…ever-increasing debt.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez similarly homed in on the controversies surrounding the justices, specifically Justice

Nice cartoon.

pic.twitter.com/joQfqL4itw

— Alan Henness (@zeno001) June 29, 2023

… Read the rest