The climate emergency in progress:

The province of Alberta, Canada, home to more than four million people, is under a state of emergency, as nearly 100 wildfires burn, dozens of them out of control. Since the first local state of emergency was declared on 4 May, over 782,000 hectares of land – 1.9 million American football fields or more than 3,000 square miles – have burned, local officials said.

Thousands of firefighters and support staff from across Canada and the US have descended upon the area to fight the ceaseless flames. Still, there are 93 active wildfires in Alberta as of 12:00 EST (17:00 BST) on Friday, and experts say the end is nowhere in sight.

Wild fires are … Read the rest

Nobody disinvites the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

LA Pride has pulled out of an annual Pride Night hosted by the Dodgers after the team disinvited a non-profit drag group from the event.

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Dodgers rescinded an invitation to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a well-known San Francisco order of queer and trans ‘nuns’ that has existed since the 1970s, amid opposition from conservative Catholics. The group, which does does charitable and protest work in addition to its street drag show performances, was set to receive an award during a ceremony before a 16 June game against the San Francisco Giants.

Conservative Catholics can go soak their heads. The Catholic church is an evil institution … Read the rest

Willoughby. Such a nice guy.

The Guardian on Jankowicz v Fox part 2:

Her aim she said was partly to show that individuals could also confront the powerful, not just businesses like Dominion and Smartmatic. “These companies have venture capital firms behind them, they can afford fancy lawyers and years-long trials to hold Fox to account. For individuals like me, it’s much harder – and I don’t believe that is something that our system can sustain.”

By bringing the lawsuit, she runs the risk of potentially opening herself up to a renewed wave of criticism that she is attempting to limit free speech protected under the first amendment. The Guardian asked her whether suing for defamation was the best way to counter Fox’s alleged

Oddly familiar.

Nina Jankowicz sued Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for allegedly damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. The lawsuit was lodged in a Delaware state court exactly a year after she resigned as executive director of a new Department of Homeland Security unit combatting online disinformation.

The Disinformation Governance Board was abruptly shut down in the wake of a storm of virulent rightwing criticism, allegedly fueled by Fox News. Jankowicz and the new DHS division she led were attacked as being part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by Joe Biden.

Shutting down disinformation is translated to stifling politically incorrect opinion. We’ve been seeing that translation around … Read the rest

Is that steam?

Temperatures in the world’s oceans have broken fresh records, testing new highs for more than a month in an “unprecedented” run that has led to scientists stating the Earth has reached “uncharted territory” in the climate crisis.

The rapid acceleration of ocean temperatures in the last month is an anomaly that scientists have yet to explain. Data collated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), known as the Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) series, gathered by satellites and buoys, has shown temperatures higher than in any previous year, in a series stretching back to 1981, continuously over the past 42 days.

…

Prof Mike Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey said: “This has

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on All the rivers.

Quite honestly, the most frightening aspect is that the heating is affecting access to resources, especially water. Flooding does have its benefits when it’s part of a natural cycle, as in the Red River Valley of the North, or the Nile Delta, where the floods leave behind nutrients on agricultural land that would otherwise be overused and end up not being arable. But the floods, such as in Italy, in Pakistan last year, and in England before that, do not do much to restore the natural water table as the water rushes down towards the sea. And the water that’s flooding there is not falling in places that also … Read the rest

More inclusive inclusiony huggy kissy embracey inclusion (but not for you though):

Kinetic has made its commitment to diversity and inclusion spectacularly clear with one of its iconic SkyBus red double decker buses transformed with a rainbow-coloured design.

Ooooooh has it??? It painted a bus in colors??????? That’s the most diverse and inclusiony thing I’ve ever heard of!! I can hardly breathe from the diversity and inclusion.

The ‘Pride Bus’ will adorn freeways and arterial roads connecting SkyBus passengers between the city centre and Melbourne’s two major airports at Tullamarine and Avalon. 

It will adorn them? So it won’t go to and fro carrying passengers in the usual way of buses, but instead it will adorn freeways and arterial roads? … Read the rest

Different moves, different grooves. Stands to reason, don’t it.

Here, @laurahelmuth, the editor-in-chief of @sciam is claiming that different behaviours (aggressive v nurturing) equals different sexes.

Seriously. She’s arguing that an aggressive male sparrow is a different sex to a nurturing male sparrow. https://t.co/hPnXrtGf8S

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) May 17, 2023

White-throated sparrows have four chromosomally distinct sexes that pair up in fascinating ways
P.S. Nature is amazing
P.P.S. Sex is not binary https://t.co/NJhQI6uC0q via @audubonsociety

— Laura Helmuth (@laurahelmuth) May 17, 2023

Once again, ideology distorts science: the editor-in-chief of Scientific American flubs big time, wrongly asserting that sparrows have four sexes. https://t.co/J3HddoJFjA

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) May 18, 2023

… Read the rest

Planned Parenthood tells women to be quiet.

Say it louder for people in the back. 📢

Today on International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, we stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community.#IDAHOTB

🎨: @susdraws pic.twitter.com/t2MqWj9691

— Planned Parenthood (@PPFA) May 17, 2023

… Read the rest

Climate crisis in Italy:

More than 20 rivers have burst their banks in Italy, leaving 13 people dead and forcing thousands from their homes after six months’ rainfall fell in a day and a half.

More bodies were found on Thursday after almost every river flooded between Bologna and the north-east coast 115km (70 miles) away. Some 280 landslides have taken place.

…

Many factors contribute to flooding, but a warming atmosphere caused by climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely. Already, the world has warmed about 1.1C since the industrial era began, and temperatures will continue to rise unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.

Which they’re not going to do.… Read the rest

“We wouldn’t do this to any other community” – yes we would. Of course we would. We would and we do.

When the hell are @ShonaRobison and the rest of the cabal going to admit the plain truth that transwomen are just as much of a threat to women and girls as any other male?

pic.twitter.com/a7B84RWsHO

— Alison Weir- Deliberately defiant (@WeirAlison) May 18, 2023

Reporter: Ms Robison, do you still stand by what you said in Parliament, there’s no evidence that predatory men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive behavior – we’ve just had the case today of Andrew Miller, do you still stand by what you said last year?

Robison: Well … Read the rest

But what is “your gender identity”? What is a “gender identity”? What does that mean? How do we know? What is the impersonal evidence for it? How is it different from a “soul”?

Message to my trans friends.

Stop feeling the need to defend your position to those who demand ‘research’.

You know that it feels better when your body, mind and hormone profile matches your gender identity. Why wouldn’t it?

— Dr Helen Webberley she/her (@HelenWebberley) May 18, 2023

“You know it feels better when your body, mind and hormone profile matches your soul. Why wouldn’t it?”

Google translate from dealer:

Message to my clients.

Stop feeling the need to defend your position to those who ask questions about

Bad reporting. Really shockingly bad, inaccurate, misleading, dishonest reporting.

A woman who hopes to become the first transgender driver to compete in the British Touring Cars Championship (BTCC) has praised her “wonderful” welcome to motorsport.

Deborah Stokes, from Kettering, made her debut at Snetterton Circuit, in Norfolk, on Saturday, finishing third in a saloon series race.

The 55-year-old said she wants to encourage diversity in motorsport.

He’s not a woman. The BBC should not lie this way in a news story. It’s deliberate. The BBC chose to say “A woman who” instead of “A trans woman who” at the very beginning. It’s insulting, of course, as always, but in addition to that it’s outright deceptive and confusing. It’s not… Read the rest

Hotter.

The world is almost certain to experience new record temperatures in the next five years, and temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, scientists have warned.

The breaching of the crucial 1.5C threshold, which scientists have warned could have dire consequences, should be only temporary, according to research from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

However, it would represent a marked acceleration of human impacts on the global climate system, and send the world into “uncharted territory”, the UN agency warned.

Bad uncharted territory.

New record temperatures have been set in many areas around the world in the heatwaves of the past year, but those highs may only be the beginning, according to the

This seems ominous.

New #StateofClimate update from WMO and @MetOffice:

66% chance that annual global surface temperature will temporarily exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one of next 5 years

98% likelihood that at least one of next five years will be warmest on
record. pic.twitter.com/30KcRT9Tht

— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) May 17, 2023

Global temperatures are set to reach new records in the next five years, says new #StateofClimate update from WMO and @metoffice:
🔗https://t.co/4PpgpKo9Hd pic.twitter.com/GSn41DWphB

— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) May 17, 2023

Oh well. We can always escape the heat by taking a cruise to Alaska.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on The customer shouted negatively.

Is there a pattern here?

Non-binary social media influencer Deni Todorovic has detailed the moment a baggage issue at Melbourne airport led to an encounter with Australian Federal Police (AFP), causing them to miss their initial flight to Sydney for Australian Fashion Week.

The 34-year-old, who goes by they/them pronouns, claims they were checking in their luggage to a Jetstar flight on Monday when the weight of one of their bags triggered an alleged verbal dispute with airline staff.

Todorovic, who was accompanied by their mother at the time, said their bag was an extra 10.5kg in weight which they said came with a surcharge of $100.

A Madison, Wisconsin tv station claims there have been “anti-transgender” graffiti and stickers showing up around town, but tells us nothing more detailed about them – that is, it doesn’t tell us what they say. So how do we know they really were “anti-transgender”?

We don’t.

Were they perhaps simply the definition of “woman”?

If so, the Madison tv station should pause to think.

Anti-transgender graffiti and stickers appear to be showing up in public places across Madison, leaving many in the community frustrated and some worried for their safety.

Several members of the LGBTQ+ community on the isthmus are raising the alarm because they want people to know how pervasive the anti-trans messages have been.

But not what they … Read the rest

Ben Hunte, former LGBTQXYZ correspondent for the BBC, talks to the former Starbucks worker who screamed at a customer to GET OUT because she “misgendered” him.

Exclusive: Luna Spain lost her manager’s job after an interaction with a customer was covered by right-wing media. She told VICE News she is being treated as a criminal despite being the victim of transphobia.

Define “transphobia.”

Luna Spain said the customer called her and another trans colleague “trannies” and shouted negatively about gender in the packed Starbucks store. 

What does “shouted negatively about gender” mean?

After two years as a manager, Spain said she was fired without even having a meeting with her bosses at work. 

Police have told us they are investigating

Oooooh I saw her talking to them about those yesterday ooooooooh somebody call the authorities ooooooooooh did you ever?

People have been suspicious about writer David Baddiel's attitude to LGBTQ+ people for a while now… apparently with good reason.

He's now Liking hardcore queerphobic accounts, including JK Rowling.

Anyway, happy International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia 🏳️‍🌈 pic.twitter.com/TI5aHGSJfQ

— Bad Writing Takes 🖊️🏳️‍🌈 (@BadWritingTakes) May 17, 2023

… Read the rest