It’s a detail but…oh my god the childish mindless destructive stupidity.

Some Trump White House documents preserved by the National Archives were ripped up by the former president and had to be taped back together by government officials, the records agency said Tuesday.

“Some of the Trump presidential records received by the National Archives and Records Administration included paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump,” the agency said in a statement to NBC News. “As has been reported in the press since 2018, White House records management officials during the Trump administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records,” a reference to reports that Trump habitually ripped up documents and threw them away

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Et tu British Library?

Pronoun badges have been introduced at the British Library on the advice of Stonewall, despite fears the move could appear “too woke”

Never mind “too woke”; that’s too sophisticated for this childish nonsense. Pronouns are how we refer to other people so as to avoid repeating their names every time we mention them. That’s it; end of story. They’re not little pills to boost people’s feelings of Validation or Chosenness. The whole idea of personalized pronouns is idiotic, and bragging about them is even more so. That the British Library has fallen for the idea is embarrassing.

Labels displaying “he/him”, “she/her” or “they/them” have been rolled out for staff, with internal documents stating that making

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New York Magazine last month:

The trajectory of [Bandy] Lee’s life had indeed taken a strange turn of late. A widely respected scholar who has authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles and either written or edited a dozen academic books on violence, Lee was an assistant clinical professor in the law and psychiatry department at Yale for 17 years until the summer of 2020, when Yale declined to renew her contract. The precipitating offense? Tweeting about the retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

Academics aren’t allowed to tweet about Alan Dershowitz?

Lee claims it was all Dershowitz’s doing: “Dershowitz’s pressure seems to be the reason why everything changed.” But Lee had long been one of her department’s most controversial

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All are welcome.

Ok not all. Some. Some are welcome. Not you. You’re not welcome.

I took this photo about an hour ago. It’s on the door of Category Is Books in Govanhill, a bookshop @NicolaSturgeon has promoted. In fact, in 2019 she popped in to reassure the owners she was committed to reforming the gender recognition act – what a nice personal touch. I’m> pic.twitter.com/7R1YA8hvyr

— Kate (@campervanwoman) February 1, 2022

It actually does say on its homepage: ALL WELCOME.

Category Is Books is an independent LGBTQIA+ bookshop in the southside of Glasgow.

We hope the bookshop is a space to learn about, be inspired by and share in our love of queer books, history, art, activism, writing

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Ah yes be kind. Get more women involved in politics, including men of course, and above all be kind.

Ok but suppose we all do be just a little bit kinder, i.e. define women as including men who say they are women – what then?

Then getting more women involved in politics could be done by getting more men (of the self-declaring as women variety) involved in politics – so what’s the point? Why not just settle for people involved in politics and let it go at that? Why try to keep track of ways women are excluded if it turns out men can be counted as women?

Also Caroline Nokes:

What if the quad making decisions were all trans … Read the rest

Mumsnet is doing a live conversation with MPs Stella Creasey and Caroline Nokes today. So what do we get?

IdealisticCynic

To both: I think it will impossible to understand the context and proper content of any answers you may provide on women and mothers in politics without an answer to a question posed by others already:

How do you, personally, define a woman?

How odd that we’re in a place where anyone has a “personal” definition of women. Such definitions have to be universal to be any use.

Hi – Caroline here – and happy to be able to take part today.

I think it is really important to focus on this being a chat about how we get more

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It’s maybe not ideal if the police have contempt for broad swathes of society, like for instance women and Other races. That’s because they’re the police. They have police power over us, so if they hate many of us going in, they might abuse that power they have.

Metropolitan Police officers joked about raping women, beating up their partners and killing black children, a damning report by the police watchdog has found.

…

Nine linked investigations were launched by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) in 2018 following reports that a police officer had sex with a drunk person at a police station.

The Telegraph gives examples of the “jokes,” including one about grinding up African children … Read the rest

“Protesters” attack people feeding the homeless in Ottawa.

Ottawa’s Shepherds of Good Hope has received an outpouring of support and donations after its staff were harassed and a client was assaulted by “Freedom Convoy” protesters on the weekend.

Freedom freedom freedom: freedom to harass and assault people.

On Saturday, a group of protesters associated with the convoy of truckers and supporters railing against COVID-19 health measures in downtown Ottawa harassed staff and demanded food from its soup kitchen in an altercation that lasted for hours. Shelter officials described their behaviour as “mob-like”.

It’s almost as if libertarianism and assholism go together.

Earlier, a man who lives in the shelter was assaulted outdoors by protesters who then hurled racial slurs

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The Mayor of Bangor is distraught.

https://twitter.com/OwenJHurcum/status/1487837875882315779

Ah um er – by “bathroom they are entitled to” he must mean the women’s – so his partner and partner’s squeeze were squeezed into a single cubicle to…

So anyway they got thrown out, to the relief of a lot of women with bursting bladders, I should think.

They weren’t starving to death hon. They were doing whatever they were doing in the toilet together and got thrown out for it. Will this faux victim hood ever end?

— Al (@hagflint1) January 31, 2022

Most people doing drugs or having sex in a nightclub toilet would think it’s a fair cop if they got caught and thrown out. But if you’re trans

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Again with the idiot idea that not getting vaccinated=FREEDOM and vaccine mandates=unfreedom. Being on a ventilator plays hell with anyone’s freedom.

Thousands held a loud but peaceful protest in Canada’s capital Ottawa against prime minister Justin Trudeau’s Covid-19 vaccine mandates, on the streets and snow-covered lawn in front of parliament.

The so-called “Freedom Convoy” started out as a rally of truckers against a vaccine requirement for cross-border drivers, but turned into a demonstration against government overreach during the pandemic with a strong anti-vaccination streak.

A rally of truckers against a vaccine requirement for cross-border drivers – ok let’s discuss this. Where do the truck drivers think trucks come from? Or the roads they drive on? Or the stuff they haul? … Read the rest

When you think you’re quoting Voltaire (or Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King or Confucius) but you’re actually quoting an obscure white nationalist from 1993:

On Sunday, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky tweeted out criticism targeting Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, containing a political cartoon superimposed with a quote that has been often misattributed to the French philosopher Voltaire.

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,” the quote said.

Which is kind of a stupid thing to quote anyway, because of the inelegant syntax. The “who” should be “whom” but that would make a very awkward clunky sentence so the … Read the rest

The criminal who wants to be the criminal president again is promising his goons he will pardon them if he gets to be the criminal president again.

Former president Donald Trump suggested Saturday night that he will pardon the rioters charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol if he is elected president in 2024.

Trump, who has teased but not confirmed another run for president, has repeatedly criticized the prosecution of people who violently stormed the Capitol to protest the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president. But his comments at a Texas rally on Saturday marked the first time he dangled the prospect of pardons, an escalation of his broader effort to downplay the deadly

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Horrible man.

Rosie Duffield has harmed trans people by choosing to spread provocative and damaging misinformation about treatment options for young people with gender dysphoria. There should be no place in progressive politics for her. https://t.co/19D8A0sgDp

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) January 30, 2022

He posted that hours after she talked about being the target of constant abuse.

I am aware of yet more personal, libellous, nasty and fictional crap being published about me again today. All published/written by ex and current @UKLabour members who are clearly absolutely obsessed by my private life for some reason. I have been subjected to this rubbish…

— Rosie Duffield MP (@RosieDuffield1) January 30, 2022

Kent Police, Parliamentary Security team and the Speaker's Office have

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I’m not the only one who thinks it’s grotesque.

https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1487877635606732802 https://twitter.com/Leyanelle/status/1487882761499287555 https://twitter.com/salltweets/status/1487911293189120001

What a lazy patronizing git. We’re supposed to do what he orders us to do, we’re supposed to take his word for it that human rights are not negotiable, we’re supposed to go away if he doesn’t like us, but he’s too grand and important to defend his own stupid assertions.

Updating to add another commentator:

https://twitter.com/SCynic1/status/1487926934159908870

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Surely he’s trolling now.

And this is the very reason she shouldn't be Chair of a Human Rights organisation. Human rights aren't negotiated. They shouldn't be rolled back because others think them contestable. They are immutable. That's their very point. pic.twitter.com/Sqw2rhRmUY

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) January 30, 2022

Of course human rights are negotiated. What else does he think they are? Handed down by god? How does he think the UDHR came into being? Magic? Does he think Eleanor Roosevelt just wrote a list of them and that was that? How does he think the US Bill of Rights happened? How about Magna Carta?

Of course the aim is to declare them universal, binding, permanent, all that, but they’re still … Read the rest

Amnesty UK smuggles in its assumptions too. It’s a core part of trans activism and ideology and allyship – it’s crucial to refrain from spelling out what is meant by “trans rights,” because that would make it too obvious how destructive they are to other people’s rights, especially women’s.

On the recent statements published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the governments’ consultation on conversion therapy, Amnesty International UK disagree unreservedly in the EHRC’s assessment of separating protections for LGBTI people and specifically excluding trans people from initial legislation.

It’s a very useful aid to smuggling, this lumping together of “LGBTI” people as if they were all the same kind of thing, or all needed the same … Read the rest

Notice how the assumptions are smuggled in.

Many thanks to @cdutilhnovaes for sitting down with me to discuss our different opinions on whether some of what is being asked for in the name of trans rights conflicts with what we see as women’s rights, and to @JulianBaggini for hosting the discussion. https://t.co/DX8JAnBHyk

— Mary Leng (@mary_leng) January 21, 2022

It’s the “(But note the oddity of having 3 cis people talking abt trans rights!)” interjection that I’m talking about. What oddity? What’s odd about it? What, even, is it? What does it mean? The first assumption that’s smuggled in via that interjection is that there is a meaningful category called “cis” people. There isn’t. “Everybody who is not trans” is … Read the rest

I wish we didn’t have to turn to National Review for reporting on the injustice to women.

The University of Pennsylvania is weighing whether to pursue legal action if transgender swimmer Lia Thomas is prohibited from competing in the upcoming NCAA women’s swimming championship, according to a report.

…

Thomas is eligible to compete on the women’s team under current USA Swimming rules that require a year of testosterone suppression. Under new NCAA rules, transgender athletes will be required to document testosterone levels to remain eligible, leaving Thomas’ eligibility for the NCAA women’s championships up in the air.

Which is almost worthless, of course, because even if he does suppress his testosterone now, he still keeps most of his … Read the rest

It’s great having random guys who admire themselves a lot telling us all what’s what and collecting millions of fans for doing it, but, that said, I can’t help thinking there’s occasionally a slight downside. Like when they tell us what’s what about Covid or climate change.

As podcaster Joe Rogan faces condemnation from medical scientists for spreading misinformation about vaccines and Covid-19, another interview by the controversial host this week has become the subject of mockery — this time among climate scientists.

Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” on Monday, making false and generalized claims that the modeling scientists use to project climate change and its impacts are flawed.

https://twitter.com/thebadstats/status/1486103450446303234

See this … Read the rest

Ok throw out the words for women but…do it nicely?

Replacing words like “women” and “mothers” with terms like “birth-givers” and “pregnant people” in research risks dehumanising women and would harm decades of work to improve the visibility of women in medical literature.

That is the conclusion of 10 prominent women’s health researchers from Australia, the US, Europe and Asia who will argue in a paper published next week that replacing words like “breastfeeding” with terms such as “lactating parents” risks “reducing protection of the mother-infant [bond]” and “disembodying and undermining breastfeeding”.

It’s also the conclusion of a hell of a lot of women, but we’re shouted at and threatened if we say so.

The authors acknowledge words are

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