The Independent on our new overlord:

Musk’s latest post – “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci” – follows a streak of messages from the world’s wealthiest person on his newly acquired platform that increasingly has amplified far-right and conspiratorial content.

The early morning post – hinting at support for Covid-19 conspiracy theories while offending transgender and nonbinary people – was met approvingly by far-right members of Congress, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Andy Biggs, who indicated that the incoming Republican-controlled House of Representatives will investigate Dr Fauci.

For…? Benghazi was it? Emails? Communists in Hollywood? Jews under the bed?

At the onset of the pandemic, Musk relied on the platform to downplay the magnitude of the crisis. He also wrongful

Sigh. I remember the good old days when I didn’t have to spend any time paying attention to Elon Musk. I took full advantage of the luxury and paid him no mind at all. Those days are over. The guy’s dangerous.

My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022

… Read the rest

The Times runs another generic “they’re going after the trans folx!!” piece, disguised in the usual way as being about the LGBTQ.

Since far-right social media activists began attacking Boston Children’s Hospital over the summer for providing care for transgender children, the hospital has received repeated bomb threats.

No, the issue wasn’t “providing care.” That’s worded to make it sound as if Nazis protested a hospital’s treating children for Covid or pneumonia or other diseases. Boston Children’s was (and I assume is) providing “gender-affirming surgery” and bragging about being the first to do so.

Doctors across the country who do similar work have been harassed. 

Doctors who cut off children’s and teenagers’ breasts or penises have been “harassed”? … Read the rest

This could be something to look forward to:

Rupert Murdoch rarely has to answer for the alternative realities presented by his hugely profitable US cable network, Fox News.

Its conspiratorial claims of a parade of cover ups from the 2012 Benghazi attack to the climate crisis and Covid-19 have been lapped up by Fox viewers and scorned by much of the rest of America, and then the world moved on.

Well…the world moved on but with more people believing Fox lies about Benghazi and the climate crisis and the pandemic. It’s not “Fox tells lies and then we move on and nothing bad happened”; it’s Fox tells lies and people believe them and this is why we can’t have … Read the rest

Originally a comment by YNnB (yes, again) on Elon Musk does not have imposter syndrome.

Then there’s working on shit to make it livable… solving that problem would also be useful making Terra more habitable even as it undergoes massive ecological shifts.

Maybe I’m just a “glass half empty” kinda guy, but I’m not so sure that it would work this way. Those “massive ecological shifts” are our fault. We already know that much of what we’re doing to the Earth shouldn’t be done, yet we do it anyway. A Mars colony will be a distant, isolated luxury bubble where everyone knows they have to be careful lest they do something stupid that kills everyone. We’re already living … Read the rest

Jennifer Bilek talks about gender ideology as corporate fiction:

The creation of this corporate fiction is one step toward attempting to overlay a virtual reality onto the natural world and to construct a religion out of technology.  Elites at the highest levels of our technocracy have been speaking about technologies so advanced that they provide us with god-like qualities for at least fifty years, probably longer. 

Ring a bell? Sound like Elon Musk at all with his cheery plans to move humans to Mars?

The current iteration of this ideology, established by the technocracy we live in, is meant to ensconce us in a virtual or cyber world to which the natural world is subjugated. With its massive

Originally a comment by Sastra on They are appalled.

I just watched the film. It’s mostly just talking heads with a few sometimes awkward special effects thrown in, but still worth seeing. It’s worth seeing even if you believe TWAW, so you understand the concerns. I’ve read enough of the other side to guess what they’d object to, and why.

… it endangers trans* people on campus and beyond, erasing their identities and encouraging the spread of hateful portrayals.

Sometimes hyperbole like this makes it harder to maintain my natural sympathy and respect for trans people because it diminishes their stature. Instead of ordinary human beings struggling with difficult problems and searching for meaning and happiness, they start … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on What does bullshit mean?

And there’s no obligation to “trust” that anyone is “who they tell you they are.” Do banks and government institutions do this when you’re filling out forms? No. They require proof of identity; that is “identity” as in being the individual human being you purport to be, not the “identity as inner sense of self=personality.”

Being compelled to believe what people tell you to believe is not a thing, unless you’re living in a dictatorship. Even then, in your heart of hearts, you have the right to doubt, the right to say “no.” Whether you can say so out loud is a test of your freedom.

As … Read the rest

Yet another FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYONE burble, this time from The Irish Examiner.

When I discuss feminism with my students, I stress that feminism is for everyone. It is a social and political ideology intended for all human beings. Feminism is about equality, regardless of gender, sexuality, race, or creed.

No, it is not. Of course it’s not. Look at the “fem” part. Take as long as you need.

In a way, all rights struggles and equality struggles are about everyone. The core ideas of equality, fairness, rights, justice are for and about everyone. Human rights benefit all humans, yes. But the reality is that rights and equality struggles are struggles: they have to be struggles because we … Read the rest

The UN should not be saying nonsensical harmful dreck like this:

What does transgender mean? Everyone has an internal sense of their own gender – a gender identity. Being transgender means having a gender identity different from the sex you were assigned at birth. If someone tells you they are #trans, it’s likely a sign of great trust! pic.twitter.com/Q7VaqUmtH3

— UN Free & Equal (@free_equal) December 9, 2022

The first reason the UN shouldn’t say things like this is because they’re not true. Everyone does not “have an internal sense of their own gender.” That’s a lie foisted on us by gender ideology, and like all lies, it’s not true. We call lies “lies” because they’re not true. … Read the rest

Weird (and long) headline.

Dylan Mulvaney Gives Tampons to People Who Need Them. Transphobes Are Mad

In a video posted to TikTok on Thursday as part of her popular “Days of Girlhood” video diary, Mulvaney explained she was “so tired over sticking up for myself for something that was so pure intention,” referring to her carrying a tampon around in case someone else needs it.

…

“The bigger problem,” Mulvaney went on, “is that you feel me carrying a tampon around is a threat to you and your womanhood. How is someone doing something nice so repulsive to you?”

Where to begin.

I guess with “something nice.” It’s not something nice. It’s creepy and intrusive at best.

That’s not … Read the rest

This isn’t the students, this is the adults – the academic staff. This is the adults talking silly childish jargon and pulling their hair out in clumps because someone says men are not women.

https://t.co/h4ELdAjjUf pic.twitter.com/M6V5UMNJrB

— UCU Edinburgh (@ucuedinburgh) December 9, 2022

… Read the rest

Man is expert on feminism again.

Perhaps that's because you aren't a feminist and you fail to understand feminism. https://t.co/W117t0rrRv

— I am fab U loud (@GregoryWhitta13) December 9, 2022

The abstract of Feminism will be trans-inclusive or it will not be: Why do two cis-hetero woman educators support transfeminism? :

As two cis-hetero woman feminist educators, we provide an educator’s perspective on trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) discourses.

The stupid starts with zero delay. “Cis-hetero” is stupid. Cis and hetero are two different things so what’s the point of treating them as one thing? Of course “cis” is also not a real thing, which makes the mashup doubly stupid.

 We begin by discussing the heterosexual matrix and the gender violence

Mike has another excellent post:

I could understand why there are kids who want to avoid puberty, especially if they are gender non-conforming. The whole masculine – feminine gender expectation thing is very hard to navigate. It is for everyone, because it’s hard to understand exactly what is going on when it comes to gender. Kids are taught through examples of their family, external socializing and through all of the media they have access to, that boys and girls are different. They learn not only the physical differences, such as the external genitals, but the toys they have available to them and the choices in dress they are presented. They learn that girls wear bows and boys wear caps.

“Everyone” doesn’t need access to abortion.

It’s interesting that the ACLU shows us a photo that’s all women but doesn’t say the word.

It matters that it’s women who need abortion rights. It matters to say it. Women are the sex that’s shoved out of the spotlight all too often. Women are the sex that have to fight for equal rights with men. Women are the sex subject to forced gestation and childbirth. It matters that women exist and have rights and are deprived of those rights in all too many places and situations.… Read the rest

Fresh Air did an entertaining and informative discussion of Elon Musk’s bull in a china shop approach to Twitter yesterday with tech journalist Casey Newton.

Terry Gross: SpaceX and Tesla have been considered such big success stories, and credit has gone to Elon Musk. Twitter is showing a different side of him – indecisive, making decisions then retracting them. Twitter is losing money and advertisers under his leadership. He’s making decisions that are driving away Twitter users. Are you surprised by what kind of leader he’s turned out to be as the owner of Twitter?

Newton: You know, I really am. I had not paid a lot of attention to what Musk was doing at Tesla and SpaceX, but as

So they’ve noticed.

UK ministers have called on Nicola Sturgeon to scrap plans to let Scottish people “self-declare” as the opposite sex over fears it could lead to “legal chaos” and undermine women’s rights in England. 

Of course it “could undermine women’s rights in England.” Of course it can and does and will continue to undermine women’s rights everywhere. It renders them nonsensical. If men can become women by saying so then what are women? Nothing; just another word for “people.” They don’t need women’s rights because they have people’s rights. Rape, childbirth, child care, differences in size and strength, are all irrelevant, because everyone is a person. Giving away women’s rights slightly more gradually than Scotland is still … Read the rest

Serial suitcase guy who works for the government:

An energy department official is accused of stealing luggage from Harry Reid International Airport, the 8 News Now Investigators learned Thursday.

A felony warrant was issued for Sam Brinton, a deputy assistant secretary, sources said. The charge is for grand larceny with a value between $1,200 and $5,000, records showed.

Brinton is a deputy assistant secretary of the office of spent fuel and waste disposition, according to the Office of Nuclear Energy’s website.

Brinton faces charges for a similar incident at the Minneapolis airport. He was on leave after charges were filed in connection with that incident, an energy department spokesman said in November.

Brinton is a non-binerrreeee lifter of other … Read the rest

She Identifies As an independent.

Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced Friday that she now has registered as an independent…

But she was elected as a Democrat. Wouldn’t it be more fair to the voters to wait to go all mavericky up in there until her next election?

In a video explaining her decision, she said: “Registering as an independent and showing up to work with the title of independent is a reflection of who I’ve always been. … Nothing’s going to change for me.”

Then why did she run and get elected as a Democrat?… Read the rest

I found myself thinking about topsoil and the west so I went to the search engine. Nebraska Public Media has a piece from last April:

A few years ago, Isaac Larsen attended a wedding at a pioneer church in Minnesota. After the ceremony, he wandered around a cemetery by the church.

He noticed the cemetery, which had never been tilled, was at least a foot higher than a corn field just on the other side of a fence.

Tilling erodes soil.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst geosciences professor and his co-researchers have released a new study that found topsoil in the Midwest is eroding at an average rate of 1.9 millimeters per year. They measured elevation differences between native