The New Scientist last week:

Men who played rugby union at an international level are more than twice as likely to develop dementia as the general population and three times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease https://t.co/PqnMxoDx6U

— New Scientist (@newscientist) October 9, 2022

New Scientist today:

Among people who menstruate, the length of their menstrual cycle may vary according to their ethnicity. https://t.co/PLviWf625w

— New Scientist (@newscientist) October 17, 2022

… Read the rest

Willful, determined stupidity from David Futrelle:

Does J.K. Rowling believe that trans people — or at least trans women — don’t deserve the presumption of innocence? That seems to be the clear implication of an op-ed she wrote for the Times (UK) today. But she is cagey enough in her wording that she can and probably will figure out a way to say, my goodness, I wasn’t saying anything of the kind.

Or to put it another way, she’s precise enough in her wording that she is in fact not saying anything of the kind.

Before we get to her wording – presumption of innocence isn’t a magic talisman that applies to everyone on all occasions in all … Read the rest

Jennifer Rubin says don’t go thinking forced birthism isn’t part of Trumpism:

Pundits and politicians tend to observe a bright distinction between the Donald Trump MAGA movement’s assault on democracy and the right-wing evisceration of women’s reproductive rights.

Do they? I hadn’t noticed. I don’t. I suppose if asked I would say I think any opposition to abortion Trump claims is basically opportunistic, but then that’s true of nearly everything Trump says. I’m sure he’s quite happy to stick it to the bitches along with sticking it to the feminists and lefties and Democrats and yadda yadda, but I doubt he has a systematic worked-out plan as opposed to a determination to do whatever he feels like doing in the … Read the rest

We must not keep males out of women’s sports unless a male actually smashes a girl to the ground leaving her concussed.

“A wise legislature does not go out looking for social issues to tap,” said [North Carolina] Republican House leader Tim Moore when he declined to put the Save Women’s Sports Act up for a vote last year. Moore said the House would not consider legislation prohibiting biological males from competing against girls in school sports without examples.

Now the House has its example (but it said examples – how many does it need?).

During a girls’ tournament last month, a Highlands High volleyball player pelted a Hiwassee Dam High player in the forehead with the ball during a

When the cops are criminalish themselves:

Metropolitan [London] police officers suspected of serious criminal offences including sexual assault and domestic abuse have been allowed to escape justice, a damning review has found, with the force’s leader admitting that hundreds of racist, women-hating and corrupt officers have been left in the ranks.

Not really what you want in a police force. Cops who hate women aren’t the ideal people to call if you’re a woman reporting a rape.

Massive failings in how Britain’s biggest force roots out wrongdoing were exposed in a report by Louise Casey, which found “systemic” racism in the Met, and misogyny.

One officer faced 11 claims including sexual assault, harassment and domestic abuse, but remains in

Originally a comment by Sastra on It’s a war on multiple fronts.

The identity theft of an entire sex (both of them) could never have been pulled off without guilt: guilt over the way we for so long refused to accept homosexuality as a perfectly normal and natural orientation; guilt over the way we for so long put women and men into restrictive “boxes” of attitude and behavior; and guilt over the way we for so long allowed children to be mercilessly bullied on the supposition that it made them “toughen up.” By “we,” I mean modern Western society. We ought to have known better. We should have been heroes.

And so we — some of us, that is … Read the rest

Leicester Police issue a Statement on a previous Statement (or collection of tweets) about Hate Crime:

Temporary Chief Constable Rob Nixon said: “Over the past week, a number of social media posts were issued on our Leicestershire Police Stay Safe account aiming to raise awareness of hate crime. This was as part of National Hate Crime Awareness Week.”

Twitter, that is. He means “our Leicestershire Police Stay Safe Twitter account” but forgot to say so. “Social media” isn’t just another word for Twitter. It includes Twitter but it isn’t limited to Twitter.

“While we recognise that people have strong and often conflicting views regarding this issue, we should not forget the seriousness of hate crime and the devastating crimes that

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on It’s about an innate sense of self.

You may ask how anyone can assess the authenticity of somebody else’s “innate sense of self”. I haven’t a clue.

No one has a clue, because it’s inherently meaningless and impossible. Trans ideology is wholly dependent on the worship of a magical Self, but only for some people. Feminist women don’t get to claim any kind of magical self; we’re just a kind of donkey, or system of pulleys.

Nobody has direct, unmediated access to what is going on inside anyone’s head. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about people’s self image and self understanding. People suffering from anorexia. Rachel Dolezal. … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Cluecat on Six out of ten.

As is mentioned in the other posts, this is a huge problem with industrial livestock raising all over the world.

There are a few antibiotic agents designated as the absolute “last line of defence” – to only ever be used in human treatment when literally nothing else has had any effect, and to never ever be routinely prescribed because of that critical designation.

These medications treat bugs that are resistant to every other antibiotic on the market, infections that cause horrible, drawn-out death. These meds are the reason we no longer have Sepsis Wards in healthcare settings in Western countries – although it looks like we might be … Read the rest

Originally a comment by iknklast on They’re gone.

I remember even as recently as 15 years ago my husband and I would sit on the porch watching fireflies. They were abundant. Bullfrogs croaking in the distance, and crickets chirping somewhere unseen…and we live in the city. A small city, to be sure, but a city. Now what I see is squirrels, domesticated pets, and the roar of automobiles.

I’ve been talking about this a long time. People want to focus solely on global warming, and I’ve had this argument – what good is a world where we’ve solved global warming and there are no animals left? We need to focus on the big picture, but we are not good … Read the rest

OJ has a gotcha.

The attacks on Eddie Izzard really blows apart ‘Gender Critical’ claims not to be transphobic.

Izzard hasn’t been particularly vocal on trans issues. She’s not competing on an All Women’s Shortlist.

She’s literally just a trans person standing for public office. That’s it.

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) October 16, 2022

He’s literally a man running for public office while claiming to be a woman. That’s it. That “it” is not nothing. Imagine a white man running against Raphael Warnock while claiming to be black – imagine how well that would go over. Consider why that would not go over well. Now apply that to a man running for public office while claiming to be a woman. … Read the rest

Say goodbye to wetlands?

On Oct. 3 — the first day of its new term — the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a case that could dramatically reduce the number of wetlands and other waters across the United States that are protected under the landmark Clean Water Act.

And the court being what it is, it seems very likely to be team Sackett and not the EPA that wins.

The Sacketts started their dispute with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2007, after purchasing a parcel of land that was subject to Clean Water Act protections. The parcel — which included sensitive wetlands a stone’s throw from Priest Lake, one of the

The transports continue.

The Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, plans to continue flying undocumented migrants to Democratic strongholds, his spokeswoman said on Saturday, a day after released records showed the state paid nearly $1m to arrange two sets of flights to Delaware and Illinois.

But worth every penny, to make a point and torment the migrants.

The flights would be a follow-up to 14 September flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, that carried 49 mostly Venezuelan migrants to the island where the former president Barack Obama owns a home. Local officials were not told in advance that the migrants were coming.

DeSantis claimed responsibility for the flights as part of a campaign to focus attention on

More precision or less precision? It depends on who is talking.

A transgender science teacher has become the subject of criticism after a video of him insisting it was important to “clean up” language, like “women produce eggs” and “males are more likely to be colorblind,” in order to be more “accurate” and “precise,” resurfaced from a webinar series held earlier this year.

Sam Long, an activist for “gender-inclusive” policies and “trans/non-binary” educators, teaches science at Denver South High School, part of the Denver Public Schools (DPS) system. Long, along with other science teachers, has previously spent time establishing “gender-inclusive biology” curriculum resources, which he promotes to educators across the country.

Science teachers teaching magical nonsense.

During an April webinar

Bill McKibben writes:

A vast new study finds there are 70 percent fewer wild animals sharing the earth with us than there were in 1970.

Ouch.

I notice a lot of missing wild animals even here in big city Seattle. It used to be commonplace to see mergansers and coots and buffleheads on lakes and ponds here, lots of them, and now I walk along Lake Washington and see none at all. None at all. Sometimes I see one or two, but not often. And swallows. Swallows used to come back in the spring, and you’d see a lot of them. Now? Zip. None. Very occasionally one lone pair, but that’s all. They’re just gone.… Read the rest

We must burn the house down to save it.

Eco-activists have doused UK supermarket aisles with milk – including Harrods, Fortnum & Mason and Waitrose, with Animal Rebellion spokesperson Robert Gordon telling LBC “we don’t have a choice”.

The co-ordinated protests from Animal Rebellion activists were staged across the UK, pouring milk down aisles and dousing displays in what they dubbed ‘Milk Pours’.

We must waste food in order to [something goes here].

Here they are in action. It’s quite unpleasant to watch, all that milk wasted, not to mention the mess they won’t be cleaning up.

Milk Pours are currently happening across the UK. All are concerned individuals calling on the government to give us a livable future,

JKR on Nicola Sturgeon:

Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, believes the protesters outside parliament on October 6 have nothing to complain about. The woman who calls herself a “real feminist” said to the BBC that her proposed new Gender Recognition Act “doesn’t give any additional rights to trans people nor does it take any rights away from women”.

That just shows she has her whole fists stuck in her ears, aka she’s not listening.

If Sturgeon’s new act passes into law, a person will be able to change their legal gender as long as they’ve lived in their acquired gender for three months, and made a statutory declaration that they intend to keep doing so. Remarkably, nobody

BBC India correspondent Soutik Biswas reports:

At the 1,000-bed not-for-profit Kasturba Hospital in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, doctors are grappling with a rash of antibiotic-resistant “superbug infections”.

This happens when bacteria change over time and become resistant to drugs that are supposed to defeat them and cure the infections they cause.

To be a little more precise, it happens when natural selection does what it does: selects the bacteria that because of a favorable mutation are able to resist the antibiotic. The more the antibiotic is used, the more of those bacteria there are.

Such resistance directly caused 1.27 million deaths worldwide in 2019, according to The Lancet, a medical journal. Antibiotics – which are considered to

Nothing can be for women any more. Nothing nothing nothing. Every single thing has to be taken away and made for men too.

Never heard of antibiotic resistance then?

Patients will be able to obtain antibiotics from pharmacies without seeing a doctor under new plans aimed at reducing the need for GP appointments.

Thérèse Coffey, the health secretary, has pushed to make antibiotics more freely available and has said that she has previously handed out her own supplies of the medicines to friends and family who were feeling unwell.

She what???

One, she shouldn’t have “supplies” of antibiotics – you have to take the whole prescription. Two, you’re not supposed to give them away like after dinner mints! Three, they’re not for “feeling unwell”! Four, there are different antibiotics, they’re not interchangeable or random or all-purpose. Five, antibiotic resistance is a crisis the … Read the rest