The Mother of Swimmer video is back up.

At 3:45 she talks about calling the ACLU to ask about the obvious conflict here between women’s rights and…whatever this other thing is. She tried to be respectful, she tried to use the Approved Words.

I made clear that I didn’t want to offend, but pleaded that it seemed there was an obvious conflict here, for women who already have so much less opportunity in sports, to now have to give spaces away to individuals who identify as women. I was met with the single most stunning response I’ve ever received on any issue. [deep breath] I was told that the words “biological” and “genetic” have no business being in a discussion

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Fox & Putin & Carlson:

Hours before Putin ordered his forces into Ukraine, Fox News’ biggest star was still praising the Russian president.

Putin’s bellicose threats towards Ukraine and assembling of up to 190,000 troops on the country’s border, was, Carlson said, a mere “border dispute”. Carlson, who played into Kremlin talking points by declaring that Ukraine was “not a democracy”, launched an apparent attempt to humanize Putin.

“Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia?” Carlson said as he then recited a rightwing tip sheet of pet causes.

Putin has never called me a racist either, … Read the rest

It seems Tucker Carlson that’s TUCKER CARLSON of Fox News is indignant that people are saying he sides with Russia. Oh?

Tucker Carlson just said "it’s an awful thing" that people are saying he supported Russia and wondered, "Why are they saying it? It doesn’t make sense."

Felt like a good time to combine these clips from @Acyn from the past few weeks. Never forget it. pic.twitter.com/4PNKIu0vQ1

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) March 1, 2022

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Salon:

Why pregnant people were left behind while vaccines moved at “warp speed” to help the masses

One way to leave pregnant women behind is to refuse to mention them, the way Salon did in the headline.

Clinical trials of COVID vaccines excluded pregnant people, which left many wondering whether to get vaccinated

And in the subhead.

A year ago, there was little to no vaccine safety data for pregnant people like Slade, because they had been excluded from clinical trials run by Pfizer, Moderna, and other vaccine makers.

The Slade in question is of course a woman. Salon knows she’s a woman.

Lacking data, health experts were unsure and divided about how to advise expectant parents. Although U.S.

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Better hide those mega-yachts…

Russian oligarchs move yachts as U.S. moves to 'hunt down' and freeze assets https://t.co/2BHyg9F8bt

— CNBC (@CNBC) February 28, 2022

Data reviewed by CNBC from @MarineTraffic shows at least four massive yachts owned by Russian business leaders moving toward Montenegro and the Maldives since sanctions were announced by leaders from around the world @schwartzbCNBC https://t.co/QOxtgFudPM

— Ted Kemp (@TedWKemp) February 28, 2022

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Oops!

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Even now the ACLU is promoting its stupid all-trans all the time babble on Facebook. They’re obsessed. I’ll never understand why. Maybe because they missed out on the earlier struggles and want to experience something like them? But it’s a hiding to nothing, because the trans issue isn’t like Civil Rights or feminism or lesbian and gay rights or the peace movement. They want it to be but it isn’t. One it’s a tiny fraction of any population, and two it’s fictitious, and three it’s unavoidably narcissistic. People who aren’t narcissists don’t consider their personal discomforts worth a political campaign, let alone one that destroys the rights of women and lesbians and gays. It just doesn’t work to try … Read the rest

Jon Pike flagged this up as a must listen and boy is he right.

This, and nothing else, is what you need to listen to, in the next couple of hours. Please. Make a pot of tea, and take a few deep breaths.https://t.co/Vnb3PXUcJs

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) February 28, 2022

I took the deep breaths during more than before, but I made it through.

I might make “mother of swimmer” a new swear.… Read the rest

Not playing games any more.

Climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly, many of the impacts will be more severe than predicted and there is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said.

And, one more item, does it look as if anyone is doing enough to avoid its worst ravages? Hell no.

Even at current levels, human actions in heating the climate are causing dangerous and widespread disruption, threatening devastation to swathes of the natural world and rendering many areas unliveable, according to the landmark report published on Monday.

As we keep noting – it’s already happening. Not soon, but now.

In what some scientists termed “the

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Not only are we cooking the planet, we’re also funding Putin’s war on Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine should encourage the world to accelerate the switch to renewable energy, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said.

…

A quarter of the European Union’s petroleum oil imports come from Russia, along with almost half its gas.

The irony that European nations are effectively paying for the war in Ukraine has not been lost on the continent’s leaders.

The panic that Putin’s actions caused in energy markets has only increased the profits Russia makes by driving up the price we all pay for energy – which is one reason we are already seeing a dramatic pivot to alternative supplies.

Maybe he’s … Read the rest

Quack demands Fauci debate him, complains when Fauci fails to take him up on the attractive opportunity.

GOP Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, more commonly known as Dr Oz, is facing backlash from the medical community after his sustained attacks on infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci in his campaign ads.

Oz got his celebrity-start by appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s show. He’s a woo-peddler. Fauci has other things to do.

Appearing on Newsmax last Thursday, Dr Oz said he wanted to debate Dr Fauci on vaccine mandates and natural immunity from coronavirus infections. “He is a petty tyrant. He got Covid wrong. He continues to get it wrong,” Dr Oz told the outlet.

In a separate tweet that he posted

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Dang, that’s insulting.

A lesbian conference next week:

The 25th Lesbian Lives Conference will take place in University College Cork, Ireland from 4th-5th March 2022. The LGBT+ Staff Network of University College Cork, in conjunction with the community organisation LINC and scholars from University College Dublin, Cambridge University, and University of Brighton Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender Research, are delighted to host the conference.  

Great! Something for women for a change. Well done University College Cork.

The theme for the 2022 Lesbian Lives Conference is Solidarity.  

The confirmed Keynote Presenters at the Lesbian Lives 2022 Conference are:  

– Professor Susan Stryker, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Institute of LGBT Studies, University of Arizona   

Oh. … Read the rest

The “who cares?” people were saying “who cares?” in response to Peter Boghossian for one. I’m not a fan of Peter Boghossian’s, but this time I’m on his team as opposed to theirs.

People across the world, with diverse political beliefs, acknowledge the moral horror of Putin’s war. This is a reason for hope and optimism. It shows that it is possible to agree on basic moral principles.

— Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) February 27, 2022

Well, it shows it’s possible to agree on some of them, some of the time – but as I mentioned, there are people being ostentatiously indifferent and scornful. But broadly speaking, yes, there are some things that very few people will celebrate or shrug off … Read the rest

I’m seeing a weird little pocket of people on Twitter bragging about how much they don’t give a shit about Ukraine and how fake it all is and how people who are talking about it are just ____ – you know, showing off, virtue signaling, following the woke herd, that kind of thing.

Well, first of all, nukes.

Second – why wouldn’t we give a shit? Why is it wrong to give a shit, and enlightened not to?

I suppose one answer could be that we can’t do anything about it, and paying attention and giving a damn is just self-indulgent or showing off or whatever. But I don’t think that’s right. I think paying attention and giving a damn … Read the rest

India Willoughby has no shame.

https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1497557363393503235… Read the rest

I read this anorexia-child celebrity story in the Guardian because anorexia interests me, and the intersection of it with women, celebrity, fashion, conformity, the pressures on women to be hot and emaciated both at once interests me a lot. So I read down and read down and – get to this ironic juxtaposition.

Gee, I wonder why so many young women are anorexic. I just can’t figure it out, can you?… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Pliny the In Between on Special Alert.

My actual earliest childhood memory is of my parents whispering to each other when they thought my brother and I were asleep. Dad consoling my mother that being as we lived only a handful of miles from the US Navy’s primary ordinance depot that building a fallout shelter was probably a waste of time. That was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I was staying at my grandma’s house the night that Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia.

I was in high school when Nixon set our strategic alert status to its highest level since the Cuban Missile Crisis in response to Soviet threats to intervene in the 1973 Arab Israeli … Read the rest

As a flying horse, I know it’s not just horses that get Streptococcus equi.

As a nonbinary person, I know it’s not just women who get endometriosis

She doesn’t know that though, because she can’t, because it’s not true. Of course it’s “just” women who get endometriosis, on account of how it’s women only who have the endometrium. Just as you can’t have a broken leg unless you have at least one leg, you can’t have endometriosis if you don’t have a uterus. Men don’t have them; women do.

Imagine going to a specialist doctor and looking around the waiting room to see everyone is a different gender to you. They’re all staring at you, wondering why you’re there.

On

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It’s all about _______

https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1497553538175614978 https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1497555294297149448 https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1497557859227348992

I do love the low carb one, I have to say.

https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1497583450097913861

Putin is allowed to do this because white privilege.

https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1497875013868867591

Bicycles forevaaaaaaaaaaaa… Read the rest

Putin has again threatened to use the nukes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to put its nuclear forces on “special alert” – the highest level of alert for Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces.

Speaking to top military officials, including Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, he said Western nations had taken “unfriendly actions” towards Russia and imposed “illegitimate sanctions”.

And what does he think he’s doing? Other than taking “unfriendly actions” toward Ukraine? And imposing “illegitimate” bombing and shooting and destroying?

But don’t worry, he’s just threatening to use them, not actually saying he’s going to.

The very public shift to high alert status is a way for Moscow to send a warning. Moving to alert status is

… Read the rest