From a Fresh Air conversation via J.A. at Miscellany Room:

By the time they enter kindergarten, most American children believe that being “thin” makes them more valuable to society, writes journalist Virginia Sole-Smith. By middle school, Sole-Smith says, more than a quarter of kids in the U.S. will have been put on a diet.

Sole-Smith produces the newsletter and podcast Burnt Toast, where she explores fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. In her new book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, she argues that efforts to fight childhood obesity have caused kids to absorb an onslaught of body-shaming messages.

And also, no doubt, to do a lot of bullying of kids who are fat … Read the rest

The Oxford University LGBTQ Society has a passionate Statement on Facebook denouncing the L part of itself.

Our statement on Kathleen Stock’s speaking event at the union. Watch this space for updates regarding our next steps.

Steps? Like what? Kicking her?

The Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society is dismayed and appalled that the Oxford Union decided to platform the transphobic and trans exclusionary speaker Kathleen Stock.

Stock has been campaigning against trans rights, labelling them as dangerous to women, calling for the exclusion of trans people from the LGBTQ+ movement, supporting conversion therapy, and supporting hate groups such as the LGB Alliance and Lesbian Project.

Once again, the Union is disregarding the welfare of its LGBTQ+ members under the guise of

It’s almost funny. Almost. The Oxford LGBTQ+ Society celebrates Lesbian Visibility Week with one breath and libels Kathleen Stock with a pack of lies in the next. Lesbian Visibility no not that kind!!!

Happy lesbian visibility week! Here are some of the lesbian people and lesbian stories that inspire us (1/10) pic.twitter.com/L1E4jdFiGb

— Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society (@OULGBTQ) April 24, 2023

(10/10) pic.twitter.com/R11qIP8YjA

— Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society (@OULGBTQ) April 24, 2023

Immediately below that –

Proud of our @OULGBTQ Society for being such a resilient, strong queer community, and for standing for the right of Oxford trans students to exist in peace. We will prevail.
https://t.co/RXylsau5xT

— Addi Haran (@AddiHD02) April 24, 2023

… Read the rest

This is bad and sad news. Tarek Fatah is gone.

Renowned Pakistan-born Canadian columnist and famous television personality Tarek Fatah died on Monday, April 24 at the age of 73. The author, based in Canada, died after a long-drawn battle with cancer. His daughter Natasha Fatah confirmed the news of his death in a Twitter post.

Lion of Punjab.
Son of Hindustan.
Lover of Canada.
Speaker of truth.
Fighter for justice.
Voice of the down-trodden, underdogs, and the oppressed.@TarekFatah has passed the baton on… his revolution will continue with all who knew and loved him.

Will you join us?

1949-2023 pic.twitter.com/j0wIi7cOBF

— Natasha Fatah (@NatashaFatah) April 24, 2023

NDTV goes on:

Tarek Fatah was born on November 20,

“Freda” Wallace complains that there are hundreds of hours of video of Kathleen Stock talking.

“Are you calling me a misogynist? I’m a woman!”

Stephanie Davies-Arai and Freda Wallace clash over Kathleen Stock being removed from a university's debating society due to accusations of transphobia.@cwknews | @iancollinsuk | #TalkTV pic.twitter.com/9y4fCxFoxl

— Talk (@TalkTV) April 25, 2023

“I’ve watched endless hours of Kathleen Stock on YouTube talking to other academics, there’s no shortage of Kathleen Stock talking.”

So classic. So male. A woman talking! Can you imagine?!

“There are hundreds of hours of Kathleen Stock talking, she doesn’t need -“

At that point the presenter interrupted.

Who knew there was a limit or quota? Is it smaller for women … Read the rest

Funny thing: the Oxford LTGTBTQT+T+ guy already doxxed himself. I don’t think you get to call it doxxing when you’ve taken a Twitter bow for your services to public fanaticism and censorship.

Proud of our @OULGBTQ Society for being such a resilient, strong queer community, and for standing for the right of Oxford trans students to exist in peace. We will prevail.
https://t.co/RXylsau5xT

— Addi Haran (@AddiHD02) April 24, 2023

Gotta pick one, dude. Self-promotion or complaint of doxxing; you can’t have both.… Read the rest

Outrage! No platform! How very dare?!

The Telegraph:

Oxford University students have called for the gender-critical feminist Kathleen Stock to be no-platformed in “solidarity with the trans community”.

The university’s LGBTQ+ society has urged the Oxford Union to rescind its “misguided” invitation to the academic, who is scheduled to speak about her views on gender identity theory at the end of May.

In a statement posted on social media, the LGBTQ+ society said it was “dismayed and appalled” that the historic debating society had “decided to platform the transphobic and trans exclusionary speaker Kathleen Stock”.

It accused the union of “disregarding the welfare of its LGBTQ+ members under the guise of free speech”.

So it’s bad for the … Read the rest

What’s next for Angry Cable Guy? It’s tricky finding a new home that’s angry enough for him.

Among Carlson’s most passionately pursued topics was the idea – contrary to all able evidence – that white people were being persecuted in the US.

Across his tenure at Fox News, Carlson pushed the concept of the great replacement theory – which states that a range of liberals, Democrats and Jewish people are working to replace white voters in western countries with people of color, in an effort to achieve political aims – in more than 400 of his shows, a New York Times analysis found.

Because that’s how it works, right? Either white people vote – or everyone else votes – it … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on From today they re-group.

Well, Possums

Bill Shorten, a government minister, is urging the city of Moonee Ponds (Dame Edna’s home) to erect a brass statue of the Dame.

People in Adelaide, remembering how hard Humphries worked to save Her Majesty’s Theatre from destruction are calling for it to be renamed The Barry.

And Gladioli growers are hastening to develop a new flower to be called Edna.

Meanwhile, an actual, proven friend of paedophiles, former Governor-General of Australia and former Anglican Bishop of Brisbane, has been found “fit for ministry” as long as he apologises to two sex abuse victims he failed. This is the “Bishop of Christ” who appeared on … Read the rest

Hey @TuckerCarlson, you can always question more with @RT_com

— RT (@RT_com) April 24, 2023

Adding, via Rev David Brindley; do hit play.

So many lies, so little time. In memoriam of Tucker Carlson & Fox News, 2009-2023. pic.twitter.com/7CCXFCVbRt

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) April 24, 2023

… Read the rest

Joan Walsh at The Nation on Tucker Carlson calling her a cunt.

…nine years ago, Carlson called me the C-word to a Salon intern, multiple times, and told the young man I needed to get “fucked.” I remember it because of the firestorm it caused in our small office.

The intern, Ethan Sherwood Strauss, remembers it too, telling Washington Post media reporter Erik Wemple that he’d called to ask Carlson to do an opinion piece about President Obama (I don’t remember that detail, and, assuming it’s true, I apologize for our news judgment), when, out of nowhere, Carlson began calling me the C-word and sharing his views on my sex life. Strauss, understandably, was shocked, and told his supervisor

Also Don Lemon, I guess to even the numbers or something.

CNN anchor Don Lemon has hit out at the network over his firing months after being accused of misogyny over remarks about top Republican Nikki Hayley.

No he didn’t “hit out at” the network. Don’t be so silly. He objected to his firing – he complained, he fumed, he griped – but he didn’t hit anything.

“I am stunned,” Mr Lemon wrote on Twitter, saying he was told by his agent he had been let go.

He wasn’t “let go”; he was fired. One minute it’s a crude exaggeration and the next it’s a crude euphemism. I do wish journalists would use real words.

Was it because … Read the rest

Melbourne International Comedy Festival has a hell of a nerve.

This is what @micomfestival did to him. pic.twitter.com/ThBXqX7o0o

— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) April 24, 2023

… Read the rest

Tucker Carlson fired fired fired fired.

Fox News said Monday that it was parting ways with Tucker Carlson, its most popular prime time host who was also the source of repeated controversies and headaches for the network because of his statements on everything from race relations to L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

The network made the announcement less than a week after it agreed to pay $787.5 million in a defamation lawsuit in which Mr. Carlson’s show, one of the highest rated on Fox, figured prominently for its role in spreading misinformation after the 2020 election.

So we’re supposed to think Fox News wasn’t behind Carlson’s “misinformation” aka lies? Ha, yeah, sure, that’s hilarious. But anyway: GOOD.

Mr. Carlson is also facing 

Special guest: Kyle Rittenhouse.

Republicans in Idaho have been criticized for “glorifying political violence” after the party hosted Kyle Rittenhouse, the American who shot and killed two people at an anti-racism protest and injured another, as a celebrity guest at a fundraiser.

The 20-year-old was the guest of honor at a Bonneville county Republican party event, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, on 15 April, where an AR-15 style rifle signed by Rittenhouse was auctioned off as part of a fundraiser and people could buy tickets to “Trigger time”: a Rittenhouse-hosted shooting event at a gun range.

Ah that’s so attractive, so public-spirited, so benevolent.

The event, amid a prolonged spate of mass shootings – many conducted with AR-15s –

Human progress is a sight to behold. Never mind about AI; we now have batteries for girls.

‘Batteries for girls – They’re 50p more but we made them pink’#pointlesslygendered #everydaysexism pic.twitter.com/GmTUMGTVe6

— S J Watson (@SJ_Watson) April 24, 2023

50p? Pikers! Here they’re a whole entire dollar more.

Some Victorian Greens are not entirely ecstatic about the new and more sweeping definitions of “transphobia.”

A newly expanded definition of transphobia is threatening to reopen divisions within the Victorian Greens after a senior member accused the party’s leadership of stifling free speech with its revamped code of conduct.

Others have welcomed the updated policy, which was passed by the party’s state council late last week, arguing the Greens now have the strongest anti-discrimination safeguards of any political party in Victoria for transgender members.

But not the strongest anti-discrimination safeguards for women or feminists or people who understand what words mean.

The Victorian Greens now define transphobia as the vilification of trans people; intentionally misgendering people individually or as a

I approve this elegant and polite mating ritual.

AI gonna eat our lunch yeah?

[Google boss] Sundar Pichai told the CBS programme 60 Minutes this month that AI could be “very harmful” if deployed wrongly, and was developing fast. “So does that keep me up at night? Absolutely,” he said.

…

So how much of a danger is posed by unrestrained AI development? Musk is one of thousands of signatories to a letter published by the Future of Life Institute, a thinktank, that called for a six-month moratorium on the creation of “giant” AIs more powerful than GPT-4, the system that underpins ChatGPT and the chatbot integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The risks cited by the letter include “loss of control of our civilization”.

…

An

Glinner on Barry Humphries:

My acquaintance with him was about as fleeting as it was possible to get and yet I feel all those qualities manifested in the single email I received from him. A couple of years ago, Stella O’Malley and I wrote a letter defending JK Rowling from the death and rape threats sent to her by trans rights activists. I thought it would be an easy and safe way for comedians to stand up against the rising authoritarianism of the hysterical, misogynist Left. But hardly a single comedian of my acquaintance signed it.

Barry signed it, though. And he sent me this.