All entries by this author

He wanted to use an electric rod

Oct 25th, 2024 12:02 pm | By

Meanwhile across the pond –

He didn’t mean it, you see.

A 22-year-old transgender woman, accused of threatening to kill or cause serious harm to a fellow inmate and a prison officer at Limerick Prison, has been found not guilty on all charges.

Barbie Kardashian had denied three charges and told gardaí that she never intended to carry out the threats.

But he was accused … Read the rest



Yoohoo remember democracy dies in darkness?

Oct 25th, 2024 11:33 am | By

The former (now retired) editor of the Washington Post:

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Wholly owned subsidiary

Oct 25th, 2024 11:19 am | By

The fix is in.

The Washington Post said Friday that it will not endorse a candidate in the presidential election this year, breaking decades of tradition, and sparking immediate criticism of the decision.

The newspaper also Friday published an article by two staff reporters saying that editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the election.

“The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,” The Post reported, citing two sources briefed on the events.

We are owned by right-wing billionaire bros.

The announcement came days after the head of The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board resigned in protest after that paper’s owner Patrick Soon-Shiong

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Bribery not ok?

Oct 25th, 2024 9:20 am | By

Musk learns that it’s illegal to bribe voters in the US.

After receiving a warning from the Justice Department, Elon Musk has stopped his $1 million giveaway to swing voters from his super PAC.

The tech CEO pledged Saturday to give away the hefty sum each day to one registered voter in a battleground state who signed America PAC’s pro–First and Second Amendment pledge. Every day since then, a winner has been announced: three Pennsylvania voters and one North Carolina voter.

Trouble is it’s a federal crime to pay people to register to vote.

Then the DOJ sent a warning letter to America PAC Wednesday, and there hasn’t been a giveaway since. Musk has also been uncharacteristically quiet

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Body autonomy for all men

Oct 25th, 2024 8:32 am | By

The way to persuade women to embrace men who say they are women is to…er…threaten them. Yeah that’s it, threaten them and grin happily while doing it. And be a state senator.

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Guest post: It’s about career continuity, not quality of thought

Oct 24th, 2024 5:21 pm | By

Originally a comment by Rob on Quick, hide the data.

There are days when I just wish I could tell someone to hand over their science card. There’s always been bad science (especially in medicine and social ‘sciences’ frankly), but the neoliberal trashing of universities, research institutions, and education to make nearly all science demonstrate a commercial applicability or to have regular output has been especially corrosive. Now, if you don’t publish on the regular you’re toast. If you publish negative or ambiguous results, you’re toast. If your work is interesting, but doesn’t have a commercial application, you’re toast.

It’s resulted in not just fraudulent work, but a massive rise in sloppy, poorly thought out work designed to deliver … Read the rest



Determining the research results at the outset

Oct 24th, 2024 11:35 am | By

Eliza Mondegreen at Unherd on the hiding of the research:

In today’s New York Times, reporter Azeen Ghorayshi investigated a leading gender clinician’s decision not to publish the results of a study into the effects of puberty suppression on the mental health of patients with gender dysphoria.

At the outset of the National Institutes of Health study, principal investigator Johanna Olson-Kennedy, one of the most vocal advocates of “gender-affirming care” in the United States, expected that young patients put on puberty blockers would experience “decreased symptoms of depression, anxiety, trauma symptoms, self-injury, and suicidality” and “increased body esteem and quality of life over time”. But that’s apparently not what the evidence showed. Rather than revise her hypotheses and

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The finding might be weaponized

Oct 24th, 2024 11:01 am | By

Much discussion today of the NYTimes article about puberty blockers and the possibility that they…er…don’t achieve the desired goal.

The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care.

In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one

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Marxist indoctrination at Annapolis

Oct 24th, 2024 9:43 am | By

The Heritage people get to decide who hears what.

You could hear the spittle fly as the Heritage Foundation shouted out its latest intellectual assault on the Naval Academy. All over Ruth Ben-Ghiat and a lecture the midshipmen likely will never hear.

She’s a New York University historian with a book on what happens to the military when authoritarians take power. She shows up as a commentator on MSNBC, connecting former President Donald Trump to some of the dictators she’s studied.

The academy’s history department invited her to speak about her work at the annual Bancroft Memorial Lecture. Then she was disinvited. Her politics were the problem, not her lecture.

Deep within Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 925-page

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Women have consistently told us

Oct 24th, 2024 9:18 am | By

Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis ends membership of Rape Crisis Scotland

“This is not a decision we have taken lightly. We have done so to hold fast to our principles and to best serve the women and girls that need our support.

“We were created to provide support by and for women. We believe, and women have consistently told us, that single-sex services delivered by an all-female workforce are crucial to help them heal from sexual trauma. This approach remains our priority but is at odds with RCS’.”

Glasgow is the biggest city in Scotland and the 5th biggest in the UK.

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Family values

Oct 24th, 2024 8:37 am | By

Disgusting and creepy beyond your wildest dreams.

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Sharply critical

Oct 24th, 2024 8:32 am | By

Oliver Brown in the Telegraph:

Lord Triesman, the former chairman of the Football Association, has said he is “deeply concerned” that the governing body he used to lead is “not providing women and girls with fair, safe sport” because of its policy of allowing biological males to compete in the female category.

In a sharply critical letter to Debbie Hewitt and Mark Bullingham, the FA’s chair and chief executive respectively, Lord Triesman, who served as the organisation’s first independent chairman from 2008 to 2010, argues that his successors’ approach is not only compromising the integrity of women’s football but creating an atmosphere where many people feel frightened even to speak up about their concerns.

And all for the sake … Read the rest



The inquiry found

Oct 24th, 2024 3:34 am | By

A press release from Gov.UK:

Poor governance at Mermaids amounted to mismanagement, inquiry reveals

By “poor” they of course mean bad, not financially lacking. The word “bad” must always be euphemized, lest it frighten the horses.

In September 2022, the Commission opened a regulatory compliance case into the charity after complaints were made by the public, and highlighted in the media. Concerns were raised around chest-binding services and online support offered to young people, and alleged ties between the charity’s now former CEO and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. 

There follows a torrent of bureaucratic bafflegab that doesn’t tell us anything. This is the most informative bit:

The inquiry also found the purpose of the information about puberty

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Guest post: Puberty blockers as a mandatory rite of passage

Oct 23rd, 2024 5:56 pm | By

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Draw your weapons.

It’s the “two kinds of experts” problem: science-minded people, polite and overcautious to a fault with their criticism, try to rationalize puberty blockers like they’re antidepressants — they only discuss them in terms of potential mood improvement.

That’s because it’s not scientifically possible to evaluate the religious belief that our sexed bodies are profane while our “gender identities” are sacred.

The cultists who’ve taken over the gender clinics don’t even care if puberty blockers have a negative impact on the children’s mood. They don’t see puberty blockers as antidepressants, they see them the way they see all “gender medicine”: as a mandatory rite of passage to bond new recruits into … Read the rest



Draw your weapons

Oct 23rd, 2024 4:24 pm | By

Ah yes…if you don’t like the findings, bury them.

The children had good mental health, and puberty blockers didn’t make their good mental health even better. Bury that finding in the cabinet under a stack of refrigerators in the basement.

Read the rest



Quick, hide the data

Oct 23rd, 2024 3:56 pm | By

Oyyy.

https://twitter.com/LeorSapir/status/1849116908877984172

Uh, yeah, because that’s the whole point.

“Prominent torturer Fiendy Painmaker has refused to publish data from a study of torture, fearing that the results will be weaponized by critics of torture.”

Listen up, Johanna Olsen-Kennedy: the whole point of medical studies (as of course you know perfectly well) is to determine whether they are beneficial or the other thing. If a study finds out that X is the other thing, aka harmful, it’s not your job to hide the data on the grounds that critics of X will cite it in order to prevent further harm. You’re not supposed to want to keep perpetrating harm.… Read the rest



Fascist to the core

Oct 23rd, 2024 10:44 am | By

Rather late in the day, we’re having the “Trump is a genuine fascist” conversation.

(Well of course he is. It’s not as if there’s some high bar to being one. It doesn’t require erudition or physical fitness. He’s every inch a fascist, and it’s all right there on the surface where we can see it.)

John Kelly, a former four-star Marine general and former chief of staff to former President Donald Trump, hammered his old boss in a stunningly public fashion on Tuesday — just two weeks before Election Day.

Kelly, who had previously refrained from discussing his time in the White House so openly, said in expansive interviews with The New York Times that Trump’s discussion of using

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By many in the field

Oct 23rd, 2024 10:25 am | By

Another brave courageous indomitable fierce proud man invades women’s sport.

Hundreds of female golfers have complained about the participation of Scottish-born transgender player Hailey Davidson in the penultimate stage of the LPGA Tour’s qualifying competition.

Gets it wrong the way they always do. If even the Telegraph refuses to get it right what hope is there?

The issue is not that Davidson is “transgender”; the issue is that he’s a MAN.

Davidson, a 31-year-old professional originally from Ayrshire but now based in Florida, has said that the intention is “to make Scotland proud” by earning a card on the women’s premier circuit.

Second para and still doing it. “the intention” ffs – HIS intention.

Newspapers and tv and … Read the rest



Trans poppy

Oct 23rd, 2024 9:39 am | By

Pride versus Pride With Mission Creep.

But there is no “LGBTIQ+ community.” There’s only forced teaming of the LGB with the TIQ+.

No no, not allyship; forced teaming. The T is not an ally of the … Read the rest



Slow down on sharp bends

Oct 22nd, 2024 5:02 pm | By

So much lying in one little article…

Weightlifter Laurel Hubbard’s dogged fight to keep her name out of the media

His. His name. He’s a man.

Olympic weightlifting hopeful Laurel Hubbard has failed in a nine-month battle to keep her name secret over a driving charge.

Hubbard, 41, a transgender athlete who is trying to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, was charged with careless driving causing injury after her vehicle fishtailed on a sharp bend near Queenstown on October 24, 2018.

Her car hit a vehicle carrying an Australian couple in their 60s. The male driver spent nearly two weeks in Dunedin Hospital and needed major spinal surgery on returning to Australia.

His. His name, his vehicle, his car. … Read the rest