Greens Leader, MP for Melbourne, calls himself a “dad” in his Twitter profile.

As leaders we have a duty to do the right thing despite the culture warrior tabloids.

“Birthing parent” includes LGBTQ+ people. It does not exclude anyone.

I strongly encourage @billshortenmp to consult widely and reconsider this intervention.

— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) July 22, 2022

Of course “birthing parent” excludes anyone. It excludes mothers, which is a word that applies only to women, so it excludes women. It excludes half of humanity, which is not a small or trivial exclusion.

It never stops taking my breath away to see how comfortable men are excluding and erasing women.… Read the rest

Here’s the clip that shows Trump discussing the Speech to the Seditionists before giving it. It doesn’t reveal any hitherto concealed intelligence or eloquence or rational thought or awareness of moral obligation.

here's raw footage of Trump recording his January 7 video message, getting mad and lashing out, and not wanting to say "the election is over" pic.twitter.com/jIJ2hbO901

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 22, 2022

… Read the rest

The January 6 hearing was lively yesterday.

The committee used Thursday’s hearing to show how Trump not only failed to act, but chose not to as he watched the violent assault on the US Capitol unfold.

Several witnesses with first-hand knowledge of what was happening inside the White House on January 6 told the committee that Trump did not place a single call to any of his law enforcement or national security officials as the Capitol attack was unfolding, according to previously unseen video testimony played during Thursday’s hearing.

The panel said it “confirmed in numerous interviews with senior law enforcement and military leaders, Vice President Mike Pence’s staff, and DC government officials: None of them — not one

The Women’s March…Their Twitter profile proclaims

Five years of resistance, five years of training, five years of building power. Together we will take the power back.

Take the power back. Somehow I don’t think so…

Stay mad . pic.twitter.com/D0b9V6gONY

— Women's March (@womensmarch) July 21, 2022

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Papito on Blowback for booking.

I horrified some tween girls (among whom, my daughter) the other day by saying just that: “There is no LGBTQIA+ community.”

They were stunned. They had never heard anybody say that before. They kept asking me if I’m an ally. I kept asking them what that means. And I told them that none of my gay friends want me to call myself an “ally,” because they think the word is stupid. They’re gay. I’m not. They’re my friends. That doesn’t make me special in any way. I don’t need a word for that.

The other parents with me backed me up. They’re old enough to remember history too. They pointed … Read the rest

It was Humanists UK who originally reported on the falsified statement:

A UK Government-organised multinational statement committing to the fundamental rights of women and girls has been amended to remove references to ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’. The statement was issued by the UK as part of an intergovernmental conference it hosted in London on 5-6 July. A total of 22 countries signed the joint statement before it was amended. One – anti-abortion Malta – has first signed since. Humanists UK has expressed serious alarm at the changes. It is asking the UK Government for a full explanation, and if possible, a reversal.

That’s extremely shifty behavior. They got the signatures and then they … Read the rest

Now there’s a headline:

Government quietly removes commitments to women’s rights after summit on freedom of beliefs

References to ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ and ‘bodily autonomy’ have been removed from the FCDO statement

References to repealing discriminatory laws that threaten women’s “sexual and reproductive health and rights” and “bodily autonomy” have been removed from a statement published on the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) website.

…

Lisa Hallgarten​, head of policy and public affairs at Brook, which specialises in sexual health for younger people, told i: “The whole point of the original statement is to recognise the need to support the right to religious belief and practice, but ensure it is not at the expense of

Brave woman:

A female journalist says she was forced to publicly retract some of her reports about Afghanistan after being threatened with prison by the Taliban.

Lynne O’Donnell, an Australian columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, alleges that she was detained, abused and forced to post a series of tweets stating her articles were false.

She has since left Afghanistan.

The Taliban confirmed they had detained Ms O’Donnell and claimed she had falsified reports.

The Taliban confirmed, so the BBC could have skipped that “alleges.” The Taliban confirmed, so she didn’t allege, she said.

Afghanistan has become an increasingly hostile place for journalists, with the current regime cracking down on press freedoms, Human Rights Watch says.

Plus the … Read the rest

The Community is Offended.

Comedian Dave Chappelle’s show at a Minneapolis venue on Wednesday was canceled hours before he was set to take the stage because of backlash from staff and the community over his recent jokes about transgender people.

Because jokes about trans people aren’t jokes, they’re blasphemy.

The venue had faced blowback for booking the legendary comedian for a surprise, sold-out performance in the months that followed his 2021 Netflix special, “The Closer,” in which Chappelle doubled down on jokes about the LGBTQ community after past accusations of homophobia and transphobia.

There’s no such thing as “the LGBTQ community.” The T doesn’t belong. The T is a wrong turn, which should fade away.

The storied venue, which

A tale of two news items:

First, Citrus County [Florida] Chronicle:

Inverness woman arrested for having inappropriate relationships with minors

An Inverness woman was jailed for allegedly having inappropriate relationships with several minors she also sent explicit images to.

Citrus County Sheriff’s Office authorities arrested Diana Elizabeth Guevara July 13 on a warrant charging the 33-year-old with transmitting harmful materials to minors, having unlawful sexual activity with minors, and four counts of lewd and lascivious battery.

…

A second victim, a teenage boy, told investigators Guevara performed a sex act on him in June while he was at her home, and a third teenage boy told Ricci that Guevara had sexual contact with him four separate times.

Both teens

Someone said what?

There’s a reddit post being shared at the moment, regarding someone’s outrage at a lesbian walking group being for lesbians only. Lesbians, apparently, ‘ought to know better’! pic.twitter.com/NA60KvS1DU

— Scottish Lesbians (@ScotLesbians) July 21, 2022

The intersection of Twitter and Reddit begets monsters, or something.

Let’s tease out the meaning.

Well, there’s a lesbian walking group (advertised on meetup.com) near me and I really want to go out and meet other dykes so I decided to sign up…

‘this group is for LESBIANS ONLY. Lesbian is defined as same-sex attracted biological woman.’

WHY DO PEOPLE EVEN DO THIS. The absolute nastiness of a group of lesbians, who ought to know better, saying, in essence, ‘haha we’re

Girl Guides is “inclusive.”

We want every member of Girlguiding to feel like they belong.

Well that makes sense. There wouldn’t be much point in having members you make feel as if they don’t belong.

It’s why we have an Equality and diversity policy, training for volunteers on how to include everyone, and why we love to share stories from all our members on what it means to feel included. We hope it helps you as volunteers feel empowered to welcome everyone to our organisation.

Well they can’t welcome everyone to their organization, surely. It’s Girl Guides – so they can’t welcome adults or boys. Right?

We’re sharing the true story of Rainbow (all names have been changed), a

Be sure to report all this in a cheerful optimistic manner:

About 100 million Americans from California to New England were sweating through heat advisories and warnings from the National Weather Service on Wednesday, with a brutal heat wave across the central part of the country showing no signs of letting up.

Oh that sounds harsh. Let’s not say brutal heat wave, let’s say misunderstood heat wave.

Heat warnings and advisories were in place for parts or all of 28 states. People in the Southeast and the Southern Plains faced the most oppressive temperatures, with triple digits forecast for Wednesday and beyond across parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, said Andrew Orrison, a Weather Service meteorologist.

Oklahoma

A clip from Don’t Look Up, and then a real TV interview that just happened pic.twitter.com/CokQ5eb3sO

— Ben Phillips (@benphillips76) July 20, 2022

So – John – I want us to be happy about the weather and everything is – I don’t know whether something has happened to meteorologists to make you all a little bit fatalistic and and [giggle[ harbingers of doom.

Gee I can’t imagine what it might be.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Papito on Can’t a guy get a sunburn in peace?

I see three things going on here:

Sound familiar? I definitely hear echoes of that old, regressive belief that sinister people are responsible for weird weather in today’s attempt to pin heatwaves on the rich or on coal-mining or on motorists. Environmentalism has rehabilitated in pseudo-scientific form the age-old instinct to find the witch or the sinner who is to blame for society’s misfortunes.

One part is just sticking his thumb in the liberals’ eye. This is a big part of why we got Trump in the US and you got Brexit in England. There’s no real calculation among these followers, just spite. I thought of … Read the rest

Brendan O’Neill’s empty formulaic “Look at the lefties making a big fuss about climate change which everyone knows isn’t a thing” piece:

Is anyone else tiring of all this green hysteria over the heatwave? There is something medieval about it. There is something creepily pre-modern in the idea that sinful mankind has brought heat and fire and floods upon himself with his wicked, hubristic behaviour. What next – plagues of locusts as a punishment for our failure to recycle?

Cute, but beside the point. Literary criticism isn’t the right tool for doing away with global warming. It really doesn’t matter whether or not Brendan O’Neill is bored by talk of climate change, what matters is that it’s happening and … Read the rest

That one weird trick of saying something self-involved and ridiculous, and then answering all questions with variations on “Why would you ask that?”

The thing about woke rainbow-haired queer neurodivergent genderwoo overeducated rootless anxious precarious chronically ill and/or cat-owning and/or geeky weirdo social justice snowflakes is that, well-

There are quite a lot of us.

And we matter, just as much as anyone else.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) July 19, 2022

“Overeducated.” Really? Any evidence for that? I’d have said under.

What makes you ask?

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) July 19, 2022

He asked in response to your absurd tweet!

No. What a strange thing to say. Why would I?

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) July 19, 2022

Because you’re not… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room 8.

We as a species are now taking part in a real life version of a particularly fiendish iteration of the “trolley problem,” in which we are pondering whether or not to throw the switch, riding in the trolley, and tied to the tracks all at the same time. We are the dinosaurs and the asteroid. Our current situation is an unprecedented superposition of disasters and catastrophes reinforcing each other and reverberating around the globe. The greatest threat to our way of life comes from our way of life. Climate, biodiversity, water, food, resources, war. The people who are in the position to control the situation (to the … Read the rest

Sure, kids, go play with the chainsaw, just wear a sunhat and you’ll be fine.

It was with some trepidation that I set off into the hills of Pyrenees Orientales on Saturday. The temperature was forecast to rise to 37°C by the afternoon – a level that is lethal, according to British news sites, even if you are sitting around in the garden. Apparently, today and tomorrow’s heatwave is going to kill thousands of Britons. 

Haw haw, aren’t people stupid for understanding that excessive heat kills.

Was I going to end up being recorded in the local French newspapers as the foolish Englishman who perished after going out in the midday sun? I needn’t have worried. I didn’t see

Researchers are investigating how humans deal with extreme heat.

One thing is for sure, scientists say: The heat waves of the past two decades are not good predictors of the risks that will confront us in the decades to come. Already, the link between greenhouse-gas emissions and sweltering temperatures is so clear that some researchers say there may soon no longer be any point trying to determine whether today’s most extreme heat waves could have happened two centuries ago, before humans started warming the planet. None of them could have.

…

When the mercury is high, we aren’t as effective at work. Our thinking and motor functions are impaired. Excessive heat is also associated with greater crime, anxiety,