Guido Fawkes tells us:

Jolyon Maugham and his Good Law Project have faced yet another defeat. Earlier this year, Jolyon’s brigade attempted to overturn former Health Secretary Victoria Atkins’ ban on puberty blockers, raising a whopping £60,000 from gullible donors to fight their case. The High Court has now upheld the ban, citing a study that identified “very substantial risks and very narrow benefits” of puberty blockers. Another one bites the dust…

The Good Law Project took to X to bemoan their loss, promising they are “consulting on next steps.” This marks the second case Jolyon has managed to lose in less than a week. When will credulous donors wake up and realise that when it comes to campaigns, Jolyon

The water is going away.

Two of the largest reservoirs in America, which provide water and electricity to millions, are in danger of reaching ‘dead pool status,’ a result of the climate crisis and overconsumption of water, experts say.

Lake Mead, in Nevada and Arizona, and Lake Powell, in Utah and Arizona, experienced their lowest ever levels last year. ‘Dead pool’ status would mean the water level in the dams was so low it could no longer flow downstream and power hydroelectric power stations.

The Lake Mead reservoir, which is the largest artificial body of water in America, was created in the 1930s by the construction of the Hoover Dam, an engineering masterpiece. Lake Powell, the second largest,

For refreshment, a rescue story. I love rescue stories.

Seattle tour boat captain rescues paddleboarder in distress

“I think on three occasions, [I’ve seen] humpback whales and on about six occasions, orca whales,” said Captain John Darmody, who has been a captain with Argosy Cruises in Seattle since 2021.

While being the captain for a private charter Wednesday, Captain Darmody chose to take a different route than normal due to high winds and the wind direction. “We went out past Alki Point and down towards Lincoln Park, which we pretty much never do,” said Darmody.

That’s where he saw something much more alarming than the normal sightseeing views. “I had noticed a paddleboarder earlier in that area paddling, and then

The 40 billionth Trump didn’t mean it literally he was just being Trump.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu on Sunday dismissed Republican president nominee Donald Trump’s statement Friday telling people they “won’t have to vote anymore” if they elect him as standard Trump rhetoric.

Well yes but guess what, it’s a problem that an ex-president and hopeful future president’s standard rhetoric is totalitarian in nature. The fact that he’s happy to say that kind of thing is the problem. The fact that he constantly threatens/promises to act like a dictator is the problem. The fact that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about any moral or political norms at all is the problem.

Furthermore, the fact … Read the rest

So I read the Guardian’s story on the Tommy Robinson protest to see if it too hauled in the trans protest for no apparent reason, and I was more impressed by the Guardian’s ability to stay focused with every paragraph I read. I really thought the Graun was going to make it, but then the very last paragraph says…

The day also saw a Trans Pride march from Langham Place, near Oxford Circus, to Hyde Park Corner. The march was originally planned to start at Trafalgar Square, but organisers changed the route to avoid Robinson’s protest. Police said a ninth person was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a steward at that event.

So close, but no prizes.… Read the rest

BBC weirdness. It does a story on a huge protest in Trafalgar Square organized by Tommy Robinson…

Thousands of supporters of the far-right activist Tommy Robinson have filled Trafalgar Square in central London after a march. He claimed the event was the “biggest patriotic rally” the UK had ever seen.

A counter-protest by Stand Up To Racism and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace & Justice Project also took place in London. The Metropolitan Police said a major operation was in place to “keep the peace” between the two protests, amid fears of serious disruption.

But don’t worry – that doesn’t exhaust the full list of protests.

A Trans Pride event was also held in the capital.

Ok, got … Read the rest

Day 1, selective outrage; day 2, selective apologies.

The organisers of the Paris Olympics have apologised after a drag queen parody of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper featured in the opening ceremony.

What, did it get there because someone opened the wrong box? Was it supposed to be Vermeer’s Milkmaid or Van Gogh’s Sunflowers?

The tableau, which recreated the biblical scene of Christ and his apostles, included drag artists and a naked singer. It was heavily criticised by politicians and members of the Catholic Church.

Hang on. What does that mean? How does one “recreate” a biblical scene of anything? Paintings that illustrate bible stories are just that – illustrations. They’re not photographic records of historical events, they’re … Read the rest

Gotta have men in rape crisis centers says lunatic.

Biological men should still be able to work in rape crisis centres despite a scandal over a trans woman’s running of survivor services, a leading charity boss has claimed.

Sandy Brindley, the chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, confirmed that Mridul Wadhwa, a male who identifies as female and is chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, was not currently at work following a damning employment tribunal ruling.

Emphasis on “currently” no doubt.

Ms Brindley, who has previously championed Wadhwa as an “amazing sister”, denied that her organisation had any involvement in the appointment and declined to confirm whether the chief executive was suspended or on leave. She said she

PBS asks and answers:

Are the 2024 Paris Olympics gender equal? That depends how you measure it.

Well how about measuring it as the same number of women competing as men competing? Crazy, I know, but that’s what I understand “equal” to mean in this context.

The last time the French capital played host to the Olympic Games, 135 women competed out of the more than 3,000 athletes – a participation rate of about 4.4 percent.

A century later, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has dubbed the 2024 Paris Games the #GenderEqualOlympics, with half of the athlete spots available to men and half to women, the organization says.

Cool; do they mean the “women” part?

The reality is more

Reduxx tells us:

Two athletes competing at the Paris Olympics as “women” were previously disqualified from a women’s world championship for having “XY chromosomes.” Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan are scheduled to compete in Olympic women’s boxing next week despite past questions surrounding their biological sex.

The Women’s World Boxing Championships took place in March of 2023 and was hosted in New Delhi, India. A total of 324 boxers from 64 nations competed during the 10-day trial, marking the largest participation in any iteration of the championship ever recorded.

However, the grand event was marred by controversy after Umar Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association (IBA), announced the disqualification of multiple boxers from the

Framing.

The Associated Press:

In an unprecedented display of inclusivity, drag queens took center stage at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, showcasing the vibrant and influential role of the French LGBTQ+ community — while also attracting criticism over a tableau reminiscent of “The Last Supper.”

It’s astounding, isn’t it? Mockery of women is “inclusivity” – the only problem is bringing “the last supper” into it. One mustn’t tease religion, but jeering at women is inclusive and hilarious and edgy.

Le Filip, the recent winner of “Drag Race France,” expressed their positive “surprise” and “pride” at the ceremony’s scale and representation.

“I thought it would be a five-minute drag event with queer representation. I was amazed. It started with Lady

Politico on Vance’s bumpy week:

THE VANCE CATFIGHT — The WSJ editorial board is joining the pile-on over Sen. JD VANCE’s (R-Ohio) comments about “childless cat ladies.”

In a tough piece posted last night, Paul Gigot and colleagues call the comment “the sort of smart-aleck crack that gets laughs in certain right-wing male precincts” but that “doesn’t play well with the millions of female voters, many of them Republican, who will decide the presidential race.”

This is the fly in the ointment for political hopefuls who campaign on misogyny – they forget that women get to vote and that they’re quite a large demographic, aka half the population.

But the most interesting bit is:

The dive into Vance’s transformation

The BBC is obsessed with drag. It currently has a long, photo-rich piece on men dressed up as parody women, which must be somewhere around its 5 thousandth piece on the subject over the past month.

For Danny Beard, though, the real magic of Hastings’ work is about championing the diversity of local drag queens who haven’t been given – or don’t want – a platform like Ru Paul’s Drag Race.

Ah yes, championing the diversity of local drag queens. Not championing the diversity of local women – god, how boring would that be??? – but of men mocking them.

I wonder why the BBC doesn’t have a parallel obsession with blackface?… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Jim Baerg on Stuck in presentism.

It was only with Kepler’s elliptical orbits that a heliocentric model predicted planetary motions better than a geocentric model.

Galileo’s observation of Jupiter’s moons showed that there are at least some objects that definitely orbit something other than the earth. The phases of Venus are hard (impossible ?) to explain in a non-heliocentric model.

For a non-dogmatic thinker, it was really only the combination of all of those developments that would remove reasonable doubt about heliocentrism. Though the lack of observable parallax of stars bothered scientists until measurements became good enough to detect the parallax in the 19th century.

Similarly in the case of continental drift/plate tectonics. There was … Read the rest

Trump has a new fixation: Hannibal Lecter. Makes sense.

Trump mentioned Hannibal Lecter again last night, during a rally in North Carolina. During a rambling tangent about immigrants, Trump said: “They’re coming from everywhere. They’re coming from all over the world, from prisons and jails, and mental institutions and insane asylums. You know, they go crazy when I say, ‘The late great Hannibal Lecter,’ OK? They say, ‘Why would he mention Hannibal Lecter? He must be cognitively in trouble.’ No no no, these are real stories. Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lamb [sic]. He’s a lovely man. He’d love to have you for dinner.”

These stories really are stories, yes, but that doesn’t make them true accounts … Read the rest

Trump doesn’t want to debate Harris. Of course he doesn’t.

In a statement released Thursday night, Trump’s campaign explained that they would be putting any future presidential debates on hold.

“Given the continued political chaos surrounding Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrat Party, general election debate details cannot be finalized until Democrats formally decide on their nominee,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung.

Childish.

“There is a strong sense by many in the Democrat party—namely Barack Hussein Obama—that Kamala Harris is a Marxist fraud who cannot beat President Trump, and they are still holding out for someone ‘better,’” said Cheung. “Therefore, it would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds.”

Still … Read the rest

Oh shit. Half of Jasper has burned up.

I haven’t been there but I know people who have, and loved it.

Huge, fast-moving wildfires have destroyed up to half of the historic Canadian town of Jasper, officials say, as firefighters try to save as many buildings as possible. Entire streets have been levelled by the blazes in Alberta province, with video showing smouldering rubble where homes once stood.

…

During a news conference on Thursday, a tearful Alberta Premier Danielle Smith struggled at times to recount the scale of the damage, but said “potentially 30 to 50%” of buildings had been destroyed.

“There is no denying that this is the worst nightmare for any community,” she said, adding that

Dear BBC droning on and on about drag queens again.

When Sab Samuel became the first drag queen to read children’s stories to youngsters at UK libraries it sparked protests across the country.

Oh no, those horrible naughty people who aren’t particularly thrilled to see mockery of women made a feature of libraries.

Sab, who is better known for their stage name Aida H Dee, is used to being challenged. Growing up, they were too scared to go to school. Sab said bullies attacked them while teachers said they “could not do anything to help”.

Everything changed for Sab, they said, when they performed in drag as an evil villainess in their Bath school play at the age of

Originally a comment by Sonderval on Activists shocked to learn of other views.

Well duh, what would you expect it to reflect? Your views?

Yes, people probably expect exactly that because they think that different from all people in the past, their current moral and ethical values are the endpoint of ethics evolution. It is totally inconceivable to most people that some things we today take for granted may be viewed as horribly wrong in the future. Even if you point out that people 200 years ago thought the same thing, they still do not see the relativity of the situation.

Furthermore, they also do not see how they stand on the shoulders of past people to actually arrive … Read the rest

We want Trump to lose, right? So this is good news:

Barack and Michelle Obama endorse Kamala Harris for president

In a joint statement announcing the endorsement, the Obamas praised Harris and listed her accomplishments.

“But Kamala has more than a resume,” the statement said. “She has the vision, the character, and the strength that this critical moment demands. There is no doubt in our mind that Kamala Harris has exactly what it takes to win this election and deliver for the American people.”

…

Obama and Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, have been in touch regularly, and he has been serving as a sounding board for her as he has over the 20 years they’ve known each other, a source