And then there’s China-Japan.

Japanese vlogger Hayato Kato’s 1.9 million followers are used to his funny clips about exploring China, where he has been living for several years.

But on 26 July he surprised them with a sombre one.

“I just watched a movie about the Nanjing Massacre,” he said, referring to the Japanese army’s six-week rampage through Nanjing in late 1937, which, by some estimates, killed more than 300,000 civilians and Chinese soldiers. Around 20,000 women were reportedly raped.

…

For China, Japan’s brutal military campaign and occupation are among the darkest chapters of its past – and the massacre in Nanjing, then the capital, an even deeper wound.

What has made it fester is the belief that

It’s not easy being the National Library of Scotland.

Scotland’s national library has been accused of “cowardice” after removing a bestselling gender-critical book from a major exhibition following staff complaints.

The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, co-edited by Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn, features more than 30 essays from contributors including JK Rowling, former MP Joanna Cherry KC, MSP Ash Regan, and former prison governor Rhona Hotchkiss.

It charts a five-year campaign opposing Nicola Sturgeon’s bid to reform Scotland’s gender recognition laws to allow so-called self-ID law.

Well not “reform” so much as “change” – because “reform” implies improve.

The collection received four public nominations for the National Library of Scotland’s Dear Library exhibition, twice the number

It turns out the disheveled person in a T shirt who (incorrectly) told us it was not true that The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheest was censored is not a random intern or even a junior reporter at The National; she is the editor.

A lot of good publicity for The Women Who Wouldn't Wheest today – all of it based on misleading claims about book "banning".

The truth is it was one of over 200 books nominated for one exhibition at the library that didn't get selectedhttps://t.co/mNk1lMnYaa

— Laura Webster (@LauraEWebsterr) August 13, 2025

She’s the editor and she’s casual about the truth. Not a good look, even before we talk about the T shirt.… Read the rest

Remember this from…uhh…yesterday?

Scotland’s national library banned a book about feminists’ fight against Nicola Sturgeon’s gender self-ID law after staff complained its contents were “hate speech” comparable to racism.

The National Library of Scotland (NLS) has been accused of a “shameful” capitulation to censorship after it emerged that The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, a collection of essays by gender-critical women, had been cut from a major exhibition celebrating the institution’s centenary.

Now we’re told it was all lies, lies lies lies I tell you!

Check out what the slob in the T shirt has to say, because she’s remarkably annoying.

You may have heard that a gender critical book has been “banned” from an exhibition by the National

Exclusive: Medical journal rejects Kennedy’s call for retraction of vaccine study

Aug 11 (Reuters) – An influential U.S. medical journal is rejecting a call from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to retract a large Danish study that found that aluminum ingredients in vaccines do not increase health risks for children, the journal’s editor told Reuters.

That’s the US Health Secretary.

He has no medical training of any kind, nor does he have any upper level science education. He’s a random crank with a famous name. If you’re a random crank with a famous name you can set about endangering the lives of a huge population and get away with it.

Kennedy has long promoted doubts about vaccines’ safety

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Why not indeed?

I don’t think we’re really seeing a wave of trans suicides in Scotland. But it’s plausible that some people with trans identities may commit suicide as they reckon with the new reality, which is that their invented identities are not going to be accepted across society and law.

People with transgender identities are typically already in very poor mental health, and the suicide rate has always been high with that group. I have a lot of sympathy for such troubled people, especially the ones who were misled into doing irreversible damage to their bodies. Some of them surely will end up dead. I’m obviously far less sympathetic to the chancers — … Read the rest

The Guardian claims:

Caz Coronel was standing in the queue for the ladies’ at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank when she registered a male voice shouting across the vestibule: “The men’s toilets are on this side!”

At first the composer and producer paid little attention, until the man – whom Coronel describes as tall and in his late 60s – approached and touched her shoulder. He continued to challenge her about being in the wrong queue until she asked him bluntly: “Do you want to see my tits?”

Really? Did that really happen?

It doesn’t sound very plausible. Two queues outside the rooms where the toilets are, and a guy shouts from one queue to the … Read the rest

Peak academic authoritative credible evidence-based verificationality. Five stars.

And as I was hearing last week numerous trans people in Scotland have killed themselves aided by the toxicity of this debate.

— Gerry Hassan (@GerryHassan) August 13, 2025

Why not deal with the substance? I was speaking to an expert in Scottish health who made the comment to me.

— Gerry Hassan (@GerryHassan) August 13, 2025

Deal with the substance, damn you! I was speaking to an expert!! Who made!!! The comment!!!! To me!!!!!!… Read the rest

So it was Pete Hegseth who put that loony Idaho women-are-cattle god-pest in the spotlight.

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, recently shared a video in which several pastors say women should no longer be allowed to vote, prompting one progressive evangelical organization to express concern.

Hegseth reposted a CNN segment on X on Thursday that focuses on pastor Doug Wilson, a Christian nationalist who co-founded the Idaho-based Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), In the segment, he raises the idea of women not voting.

“I would like to see this nation being a Christian nation, and I would like this world to be a Christian world,” Wilson said.

And by “Christian” he means women-subordinating. He would like to … Read the rest

Performative virtue-signaling has become a threat to higher ed

On today’s college campuses, students are not maturing — they’re managing. Beneath a facade of progressive slogans and institutional virtue-signaling lies a quiet psychological crisis, driven by the demands of ideological conformity.

Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. We were not studying politics — we were studying development. Our question was clinical, not political: “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?”

Now that is an interesting question. My bet is that nothing good happens.

We asked: Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or

Yet again the people who should know better collapse like melting butter because the teenagers might pitch a fit.

Scotland’s national library banned a book about feminists’ fight against Nicola Sturgeon’s gender self-ID law after staff complained its contents were “hate speech” comparable to racism.

The National Library of Scotland (NLS) has been accused of a “shameful” capitulation to censorship after it emerged that The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, a collection of essays by gender-critical women, had been cut from a major exhibition celebrating the institution’s centenary.

Yay centenary no not you.

Members of the public had been asked by the library, which promotes itself as a national forum for “ideas, debate and discussion”, to nominate books which had

Hmmmm, which team was it who made the debate toxic?

Nicola Sturgeon has reignited her feud with JK Rowling by blaming the author for creating a toxic debate over trans rights and stoking “vile” attacks which left her fearing for her physical safety.

So Sturgeon is saying Rowling created the debate “over trans rights”?

But that’s absurd, because Sturgeon had already staked out a position on “trans rights” long before Rowling said a word about the subject.

In her memoir Frankly, the former first minister claims the Harry Potter writer wearing a T-shirt branding her a “destroyer of women’s rights” was a turning point in which “rational debate” on the trans issue became “impossible” and “any hope of

Ah yes, convicted rapist Trump is the hero of the women-hating evangelicals.

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, recently shared a video in which several pastors say women should no longer be allowed to vote, prompting one progressive evangelical organization to express concern.

Hegseth reposted a CNN segment on X on Thursday that focuses on pastor Doug Wilson, a Christian nationalist who co-founded the Idaho-based Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), In the segment, he raises the idea of women not voting.

Another pastor interview by CNN for its segment, Toby Sumpter, said: “In my ideal society, we would vote as households. I would ordinarily be the one to cast the vote, but I would cast the vote

Hoooo boy I cannot wait to read this.

Annotating as I read to review. Might auction my scribbled-on copy, proceeds to go to @ForWomenScot.

NB: nobody who’s offended by swearing should bid. pic.twitter.com/sOQOR3uYR8

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 12, 2025

… Read the rest

Trump does a particularly showy version of the “Now I know this is not politically correct” move in his Monday briefing about the DC takeover.

“It’s becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness, and we’re getting rid of the slums, too. We have slums here,” Trump added, without providing details. “I know it’s not politically correct. You’ll say, ‘Oh, so terrible.’ No, we’re getting rid of the slums where they live.”

Ah. So not not politically correct, but entirely politically correct, because we’re getting rid of where they live. What could be more politically correct than that?

… Read the rest

Who on EARTH is dumb enough to say this in public? To, in fact, put it in writing, in a BOOK?

Who wrote that?

I rather think it was Nicola Sturgeon in her memoir.

It’s hilarious that she thinks it might make her sound “daft” as opposed to grandiose and narcissistic beyond belief.… Read the rest

Tantrums win again.

So, @PolariPrize has promised to 'review its processes' according to @thebookseller. If this is true, then the Prize has failed to stand by its longlist decisions. To promise a review is to suggest that something might be wrong, that perhaps @JohnBoyneBooks was a mistake. pic.twitter.com/DOVZPhXvQn

— Jonny Best (@JonnyWorst) August 11, 2025

To promise a review is also to give in to petulant demanding bedwetters.

The Guardian:

Ten authors nominated for this year’s Polari prizes, a set of UK awards celebrating LGBTQ+ literature, have withdrawn from the awards over the longlisting of John Boyne, who has described himself as a “Terf” – the acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

Two judges have also withdrawn from

While Trump is busy harassing cities like New York and Washington, let’s read up on murder stats in states like Mississippi and Alabama.

House Republicans held three field hearings on violent crime last year in New York City, Chicago, and Washington DC. These hearings should have been held in the murder-plagued states of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. In 2023, Speaker Johnson’s hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana had a murder rate 8 times higher (41.1) than Minority Leader Jeffries’ hometown of Brooklyn, New York (5.0), 6 times higher than Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco, California (6.6), and more than 7 times higher than the national average (5.5). Our 2023 report in the Red

What happens when a child is head of state.

During the news conference, Trump spoke at length about his upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

He says he finds it “very respectful” that the Russian president is meeting him on US soil, and he thinks the pair will have “constructive conversations” on Friday.

By finding it very respectful he of course means flattering to him personally. Not the transactional courtesy of international diplomacy but dude to dude flattery and submission. He thinks Putin is kneeling to him as opposed to dragging him around by the balls. That’s how stupid he is.

But his comments on a possible “land swap” with Ukraine might not please President Volodymyr Zelensky, who

Well whaddya know – it turns out you can forfeit the right to be the gender of your choice. No less an authority than Nicola Sturgeon says so!

Sturgeon apparently thinks there is a 'right' to be the gender of your choice. How does that 'right' exist and how can it be enforced on other people? What a vacuous woman. https://t.co/nDQPnKrc6d

— Joan Smith (@polblonde) August 11, 2025

… Read the rest