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.”

To be “cis” is to be nothing.

This is being taught to primary school students in the UK.

It is subtle indoctrination that gives children the message that to be ‘cis’ and comfortable in their own body is to be boring or uncool.

This is abusive. pic.twitter.com/f4yv2BqqGb

— James Esses (@JamesEsses) July 14, 2023

YOU get a pretty colorful flag and YOU get one and YOU get one…but you dreary boring neutral straight people and “cis” people are just blanks.

Also, why the fuck do “asexual” people need a flag? Or for that matter a label? And why are they grouped with trans people and lesbians and the rest?

Link: https://t.co/0Zv63efdGN

— James Esses (@JamesEsses) July 14, 2023

There’s no … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Papito on Iss biggitree an prejjudiss.

This is the way the racket works: Willie can get the nurses and doctors fired if they don’t lie to him, so they lie to him.

Establishing “misgendering” as some sort of unforgivable prejudice means that he can force them to lie by threatening their livelihoods. So of course they lie; they need their jobs.

Martina Navratilova doesn’t have to lie to him, he can’t force her to lie to him with threats to her livelihood, so she doesn’t.

If gender critical belief were protected to the extent that it should be, then no doctor or nurse could be forced to lie to creeps like Willie. Consequently, many of … Read the rest

Trump has big plans to make himself (and future presidents, but what are the chances he’s taking that into account?) dictator.

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have

The Willoughby Diaries:

You ok with this Philip Bernie??? You condoning this Philip Bernie???

Philip Bernie is the Head of BBC Sport Content, so I guess Willoughby wants him to banish Martina from BBC sport content, or Twitter, or the planet, or something.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Athel Cornish-Bowden on Robin might be described as….

Last week I was invited to referee a paper by an editor of a journal that I was associated with (as author, editor of three special issues, member of the Editorial Board) for more than 40 years. The paper was relevant to my expertise, so I said yes. However, when I tried to download the PDF file I was faced with a demand (not optional) to answer a “diversity questionnaire”.

I should have said right away that it was none of Elsevier’s business what I “identify as”, or what sort of person I spend my nights with. Foolishly, however, I answered their silly questionnaire, in which the … Read the rest

Cartoon biology for cartoon people.