Oh gee what do you know it turns out all those Christmas lights use a lot of electricity. I thought there had to be a special dispensation from someone that made them magically not part of our brisk destruction of our own ecosystem, but no.

With the world moving towards cleaner energy and looking to reduce emissions, there are questions to be asked about the heavy usage of Christmas lights.

Yes like why the fuck don’t people just stop doing it, seeing as how we’re racing toward disaster as it is.

I bet a lot of people think it’s “for the kids,” but if so that’s sad because guess who is going to be dealing with much worse … Read the rest

To the surprise of absolutely no one:

Former Pope Benedict XVI failed to act over four child abuse cases when he was archbishop of Munich, a German probe into the Catholic Church has alleged.

Of course he did. That’s what the church did for generations until it finally got caught. What matters to the Catholic church is the Catholic church. Not people, just the church (and its clergy – those people matter).

[A] new report into historical abuse allegations carried out by a German law firm incriminated the former pontiff. Abuse continued under his tenure, it is alleged, and the accused priests remained active in church roles.

Because that’s what always happened. The church always put the church first.… Read the rest

Oh isn’t that sweet – Princess Ivanka handing out apples to The Poor.

https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/1483453364126031877

For sure. She’s not the crook child of a crook father, she’s not the corrupt daughter who gave herself a nepotistic job in the White House when her corrupt daddy was pretend-president, she’s not the object of an investigation by the New York DA, she’s a sweet dainty young girl who carries big boxes around in a snowy landscape and then tells us about it on social media. Arwa Mahdawi has a good laugh.

Ever since her father lost his job as president and she lost her job as special advisor to the president, Ivanka has been keeping a low profile in Miami and largely

… Read the rest

The National Women’s Law Center is no longer about women’s law. Chalk up another win for institutional capture!

It tells us:

On January 19, 2022, the National Women’s Law Center, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., and 20 additional organizations committed to gender justice and LGBTQ rights submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Brandt v. Rutledge. We filed our brief in support of Dylan Brandt, Brooke Dennis, Sabrina Jennen, and Parker Saxton, transgender young people with gender dysphoria who the state of Arkansas has tried to bar from receiving gender-affirming health care, as well as their parents and two doctors.

What does that have to do with women’s … Read the rest

This is…so American.

https://twitter.com/NinaStrohminger/status/1483992827482804224

Ask them what they think the federal minimum wage is.

https://twitter.com/NinaStrohminger/status/1484155207579799552

And that’s why we have the terrible, ludicrous politics we have, including the massive gap between rich and poor.

Even NPR reporters are bad at it.

You need to call me to tell me who this was! Lol

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) January 20, 2022

https://twitter.com/Currying_Favor/status/1484083374604099584 … Read the rest

Institutional capture:

Canadian Bar Association Demands “No Exception” To Male Transfers to Women’s prisons

Well, that’s women decisively thrown under the wheels of the runaway locomotive.

The Canadian Bar Association had issued a series of recommendations and directives to the Correctional Service of Canada demanding violent male criminals be accommodated in women’s prisons, and to ensure their biological sex is never recorded.

In a letter dated December 4, 2020 the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) denounced a draft proposal by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) that they claim was not lax enough in its treatment and transfer of trans-identified prisoners. The CSC Commissioner’s Directive currently takes into consideration operative status and any overriding safety concerns for staff and other inmates

… Read the rest

Pakistan is such a hellhole.

A court in Pakistan has sentenced a woman to death over allegedly blasphemous messages sent over WhatsApp and Facebook.

Aneeqa Ateeq, 26, was found guilty and given a death sentence by a court in Rawalpindi on Wednesday after a complaint was registered against her under Pakistan’s draconian cybercrime and blasphemy laws

Why not just let Allah deal with the problem? Why not concentrate on being good people themselves instead of handing out death sentences for private chats?

Pakistan is an Islamic state and has some of the harshest blasphemy laws in the world, regularly handing down death sentences. In practice executions are not carried out and the accused spend their lives in jail.

Pakistan … Read the rest

Stewart Rhodes was arrested last week.

From Day One of the Jan. 6 investigation, the FBI was after Person One — the Justice Department’s legal term for Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, a Yale-educated military veteran who founded the extremist group Oath Keepers.

He was not among the hundreds charged in the year after the attack with crimes ranging from assaulting a police officer to unlawfully entering the Capitol.

But he made frequent appearances in prosecutors’ court filings, which said that “Person One” was in regular contact with those who allegedly attacked Congress, pushing his disciples to prepare for an apocalyptic confrontation with those who would acknowledge Joe Biden’s presidential victory and the end of Donald Trump’s time in office.

… Read the rest

A good watch:

Andy tells us (which I didn’t know) that Aaron Rabinowitz writes regularly for The Skeptic, not the Shermer one but the UK one. Comes as a bit of a shock after his performance in that letter exchange.… Read the rest

This one is funny, in the usual “but horrifying” way Trump things are funny.

In 2015 and 2016, Trump boosted his balance sheet by tripling the size of his Trump Tower penthouse and overinflating its value about $200 million. After he was elected president, he reported the correct value. pic.twitter.com/8oMEXqVyLO

— Seth Hettena (@seth_hettena) January 19, 2022

Heh heh heh. In 2015 his apartment was 30 thousand square feet, in 2017 it was 11 thousand square feet. Did it shrink in the laundry or what?… Read the rest

Nothing says Land of the Free like mandatory patriotism.

FORT MYERS, Fla. – A proposed law would require all professional sports teams to play the National Anthem before the start of every sporting event. 

A law requiring pro sports to play The Patriotic Song before doing the pro sports thing. Observers are pointing out how like North Korea this is.

What the hell is the point of forced patriotic display anyway? If it’s forced, you don’t know if it’s genuine or not, so what do you gain? Besides the thrill of forcing people to do what you think is good – which I guess answers the question. You will sing the song and you will like it, or out … Read the rest

A press release from the New York state Attorney General:

New York Attorney General Letitia James today took legal action to compel Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump to appear for sworn testimony as part of the office’s ongoing civil investigation into the Trump Organization’s financial dealings. The motion to compel filed today seeks a court order enforcing testimonial subpoenas issued to Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump, as well as the production of documents held by Donald J. Trump. As the papers filed today make clear, each of the individuals was directly involved in one or more transactions under review. Earlier this month, the Trumps filed a motion to quash these interviews,

… Read the rest

Does the value of free speech mean we have to let for instance Joe Rogan tell his massive audience lies about Covid?

One said it was the vast size of his audience that made him so dangerous. Another suggested it was the fact the average age of his listeners was just 24, and hence particularly persuadable.

Another expert said he appeared to have a cult of personality. One said he had repeatedly spread misinformation about Covid, and ignored calls to stop.

These were among just some of the accusations levelled at Joe Rogan, podcaster, influencer and sometime actor, from more than 150 scientists, doctors and healthcare professionals who have said the 54-year-old was “extraordinarily dangerous”.

They sent an open letter … Read the rest

The 21st Century Salonnière explains that there are universal conditions such as anxiety, and there are culture-bound explanations for those conditions.

It’s really easy to point this out when it happens in other cultures. Only if you live in a culture where the extreme anxiety related to becoming a cannibal is “a thing” is it possible for your own wired-in extreme anxiety to find a home in that fear.

It’s harder to point this out in our own culture, though. Only if you live in a culture where cutting yourself to express your emotional pain is “a thing” is it possible for your own emotional pain to find a home in cutting yourself. That seems less [more?] intuitive because it’s

… Read the rest

How ugly.

When the Supreme Court justices emerged from the red drapes at the front of the courtroom last Friday and took their seats — to hear arguments about President Biden’s vaccine mandate — all but one of the justices there were wearing masks. The exception was Neil Gorsuch.

That Gorsuch would resist mask wearing is no surprise. He is a conservative judge with a libertarian streak who has spent his life around Republican politics. In conservative circles, masks have become a symbol of big-government subjugation.

But that is surprising. It’s surprising because it’s so dumb. It’s like seeing it as “big-government subjugation” to stop at red lights, or not serve weed-killer to your guests, or not beat your … Read the rest

Do what now?

Then call them hormone-history categories, don't call them gender categories. That's all I ask.

— Alice Dreger, Ph.D. (@AliceDreger) January 17, 2022

Hormone-history categories???

We’re right back with “folks with vulvas” but even more ludicrous. Somehow it’s radioactive to call male people “men” and “boys” but it’s fine to call them…what…testosterone-history-havers? That’s an improvement how exactly?

Maybe this is all a way to deal with the approaching catastrophe. Never mind the metaphorical comet, just lose yourself in fantasies of being the other sex, a bird, a castle, the North Sea, chocolate, the library at Alexandria, music, a sunset, drunk, the sky…… Read the rest

About women but never mentioning women.

Nope, Planned Parenthood is definitely not erasing WOMEN. 38 tweets in the last 30 days, many about WOMEN or directed to WOMEN. The word "women" has not been used even ONCE. @PPFA pic.twitter.com/oG0dJZwQXp

— Logic Illustrated (@LogicIllustrat) January 18, 2022

… Read the rest

San Francisco has a place called the Gender Confirmation Center, where people can go to get bits of themselves cut off or reshaped so as to Confirm their Genders. Another way of looking at it is that it’s a group practice of three plastic surgeons who specialize in slicing or shaping people for cosmetic gender purposes.

One of their menu items is Top Surgery with No Nipple Grafts.

We’ve seen an increase of patients at The Gender Confirmation Center who want to get top surgery but do not want to keep their nipples. We’ve developed this content to raise awareness that this is a viable option and to communicate that choosing no nipples is a completely valid choice.

… Read the rest

Jo Bartosch on the bullying of yet another disobedient woman:

During Lisa Townsend’s campaign to become Surrey’s Police and Crime Commissioner last year, the subject that most frequently came up on the doorstep wasn’t gang crime, burglaries, or car theft. It was Stonewall, and the lobby group’s influence on policing policies, such as the placement of males who identify as transwomen in women’s prisons.

Townsend was elected. She’s an outspoken critic of Stonewall.

But while her constituents greeted her comments with admiration, the reception from other quarters was hostile: she has faced calls for her resignation, an inquiry by Surrey Police and Crime Panel (PCP) and a slew of anonymous threats to her life. After [she received] over forty

… Read the rest

Said by a prominent libertarian rebel-troll-smartass guy:

If you’re saying “I’m not allowed to” in regard to any normal thing you might do, like go to a restaurant, you should be furious with, first, yourself for pretending to accept this BS, and, second, whatever municipal or corporate clown pretended to have the authority of allowance.

Is that so.

What’s he assuming there?

That going to a restaurant is “normal.”

Of course in one way it is, that one way being the fact that it has been normal in some places for some people for several decades. But in another way it’s not the slightest bit normal; on the contrary it’s abnormal, and entirely dependent on a whole massive network of … Read the rest