So should we read that “barn-burner” letter that Bari Weiss is so excited about? Sure.

He The author addresses fellow Brearley parents to say why he’s taking his daughter out of the school. It’s because it’s not good enough.

It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob. What follows are my own personal views on Brearley’s antiracism initiatives, but these are just a handful of

… Read the rest

Andrew Sullivan is stirring the pot again.

This barn-burner denies that there’s been systemic racism in the U.S. since the 1960s. His daughter must be mortified. https://t.co/2EGWpuosd6

— Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson) April 17, 2021

This is a defamatory lie.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) April 18, 2021

Race IS inherited to a great extent. Are we at the point where you are denying that two white parents will have white children? I mean please. Have you read any Darwin?

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) April 19, 2021

So, it’s a defamatory lie, but here I am saying it again.… Read the rest

No biggy, just a little drone flight on MARS.

Monday, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. The Ingenuity team at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed the flight succeeded after receiving data from the helicopter via NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at 6:46 a.m. EDT (3:46 a.m. PDT).

“Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “The X-15 was a pathfinder for the space shuttle. Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers. We don’t know exactly where

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We’re not the only ones.

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1383804707605413896

Disturbing to ponder that there are actual real-life breathing humans who read these paragraphs and aren't embarrassed pic.twitter.com/z388kFWFGD

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 18, 2021

So embarrassing to have focused on 50% of the population and their critically underserved health needs.

— em (@margerymeanwell) April 18, 2021

It’s the wrong 50%, you see.… Read the rest

The head of Planned Parenthood, in the New York Times yesterday, breast-beating over the racism of Margaret Sanger:

What we don’t want to be, as an organization, is a Karen. You know Karen: She escalates small confrontations because of her own racial anxiety. She calls the manager. She calls the police. She stands with other white parents to maintain school segregation.

No, I don’t know Karen. What I know is this stupid new trick of blaming women for things like racism and pasting belittling nicknames on us at the same time. What I know is this filthy habit of throwing women overboard and patting yourself on the back for doing it. Planned Parenthood can go fuck itself.

And then

… Read the rest

There’s a lot of chat about an Observer article by Rowan Moore, an architecture critic who writes for the Guardian, and his trans son Felix. The latter is annoyed with people who don’t entirely agree that some people are born in the wrong bodies.

Rowan Moore You experience many emotions when your child comes out as transgender. You want to support them but you also feel doubt: is this for real? Have they caught this off the internet? Will they make irrevocable choices that they will regret? You will discover that your child is not who you thought they were, which might shock you, although I’d say that this is something every parent should go through as their children become

… Read the rest

Student Maxwell Meyer wrote in the Stanford Review a couple of weeks ago:

When I moved back to Stanford last week for the first time in over a year, I grinned almost childishly when I saw the Hufflepuff name-tag on my door. For all that’s strange about campus during the pandemic, it was nice to see my new dorm continue the Stanford tradition of each house choosing a fun theme: “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.”

Uh oh. We know that can’t end well.

As it turns out, choosing a beloved children’s fantasy series as a theme for a college dorm in 2021 is dangerous territory. Being well-versed in the ways of the woke, I admit that I should have

… Read the rest

Loading the dice, episode ten billion.

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1383553274465247235

The question is carefully shaped to elicit mostly “oppose.” The “transition-related” part is going to sound like mumble-mumble to most people. The question is carefully shaped to appear to ask people if they oppose denying medical care to trans people. It’s sly and manipulative and dishonest.

It’s not medical care at all. Some of it may be psychological care if you believe the story of what trans means, but it’s not medical. It’s not medical care to cut off healthy breasts or penises.

First do no harm.… Read the rest

That “almost” is quite a good joke.

Fauci on vaccine hesitant Republicans: "It's almost paradoxical that on the one hand they want to be relieved of the [public health] restrictions, but on the other hand they don't want to get vaccinated. It just almost doesn't make any sense." pic.twitter.com/XwCRAgvWwj

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2021

It makes sense in their terms though, because their terms are:

No.

That’s all. It’s just No. The libertarian No, the tantrumming child No, the nihilist No. No you can’t put restrictions on us No you can’t make us get vaccinated No you can’t tell us this is a real virus No you can’t call this a pandemic No you can’t act to end … Read the rest

This is a very interesting thread.

1./ A thread about conversion therapy, gender identity and the elephant in the room : mental health. It's remarkable how in the debate on 'gender identity' there's such a stubborn refusal to consider the power and fragility of the human mind. Here's why that's dangerous.

— Malcolm Clark (@TwisterFilm) April 17, 2021

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1383215365937713159

5./ Psychosomosis gets a bad rap; as if doctors are saying it isn't real. But psychosomatic symptoms ARE real. The girls were also an example of an MPI, a 'mass psychogenic illness' where groups of similar people suffer similar symptoms with no obvious physical basis.

— Malcolm Clark (@TwisterFilm) April 17, 2021

https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1383215381758693382 https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1383215388482174980

But maybe they’re not right. A 4000 … Read the rest

The Heritage Foundation says it’s all lies lies lies about the Georgia voter bill.

Myth 2: The Georgia law eliminates voting opportunities in order to suppress African American votes.

The Truth: The law makes no distinctions based on race.

It doesn’t have to, does it. The vote suppressors have become more sophisticated about it. The goal is not so much to suppress African American votes specifically (although that’s for sure a bonus) but to suppress non-Republican votes. The goal is to make it impossible for Democrats to win, and the path to that result is to make voting logistically far more difficult. It looks neutral on its face, unless you think about it for 5 seconds, and it avoids the … Read the rest

Global deaths from the pandemic:

The number of people who have died worldwide in the Covid-19 pandemic has surpassed three million, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The milestone comes the day after the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the world was “approaching the highest rate of infection” so far.

India – experiencing a second wave – recorded more than 230,000 new cases on Saturday alone.

Almost 140 million cases have been recorded since the pandemic began.

WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Friday that “cases and deaths are continuing to increase at worrying rates”. He added that “globally, the number of new cases per week has nearly doubled over the past two months”.

Not … Read the rest

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Problem at all?

Rape suspects are able to self-identify as female, it was revealed after a freedom of information request by a feminist policy think-tank.

Police Scotland said that if a rape or attempted rape was perpetrated by a “male who self-identifies as a woman . . . the male who self-identifies as a woman would be expected to be recorded as a female on relevant police systems.”

Campaigners claim that the position could lead to a “distortion” in society’s understanding of crime and the measures needed to tackle it.

“Campaigners claim” – of course it would lead to a distortion. If you falsify the stats so that it looks as if some (or many or all) rapes are perpetrated … Read the rest

What took them so long?

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Friday revoked a series of Trump administration orders that promoted fossil fuel development on public lands and waters, and issued a separate directive that prioritizes climate change in agency decisions.

…

The new orders revoke Trump-era directives that boosted coal, oil and gas leasing on federal lands and promoted what Trump called “energy dominance” in the United States.

Haaland also rescinded a Trump administration order intended to increase oil drilling in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve.

Haaland called the orders by her predecessors, Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt, “inconsistent with the department’s commitment to protect public health; conserve land, water, and wildlife; and elevate science.”

In fact to do anything other … Read the rest

The Star on today’s sentence:

To his supporters, he is a “hero” for having taken a public stand against his transgender child’s decision to pursue gender-affirming treatment, even if that stand meant breaching court orders.

On Friday, the one-time crusader sat in a B.C. courtroom, slumped forward in red-coloured jail attire, his head bowed down, as a judge lashed him for “blatantly, wilfully and repeatedly” defying publication bans and said a “strong denunciatory sentence” was required.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen ordered the father, who had pleaded guilty to criminal contempt of court earlier in the week, to a six-month jail term — far exceeding what the Crown had recommended — and to make a $30,000 charitable donation.

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The Toronto Star has more:

Facing the possibility of additional jail time, a B.C. father who repeatedly flouted court orders in order to wage a public campaign against his transgender child’s gender-affirming treatment told a judge Wednesday he may have got caught up in the publicity and put his trust in people with ulterior motives.

The court also heard this week from the teenager, who said in a statement his father’s defiance of publication bans left him feeling anxious and terrified he would be outed.

“Over and over private stuff about me was published online because of my dad. I have lost my faith that the courts can protect me. That makes me feel really vulnerable,” he wrote in

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This is a startling development.

https://twitter.com/christophelston/status/1383135985295237123 https://twitter.com/christophelston/status/1383141324686127106 https://twitter.com/christophelston/status/1383146397449351171… Read the rest

Originally a comment by latsot on That’s sense?

This is what I was trying to say in a recent thread. We’ve lost the ability to stick to the argument. The trans ‘movement’ is incredibly distracting and it’s almost impossible to get through a rebuttal of a single argument without being deflected by a new articulated lorryload of insanity hitting you amidships.

Far be it for me to tell people how to activist. I tried that in the olden gnu atheist times and look how that worked out. I can’t even get through a single paragraph without mixing a metaphor, nobody should be listening to me. I mean, “amidships”? Where the fuck did that come from?

But having said all … Read the rest

To do voter suppression effectively you have to be a little bit subtle.

Georgia has a long history of racial inequity at the ballot box. Voters wait an average of just six minutes in line after 7pm in precincts where 90% of residents are white. But when 90% of voters are Black? The wait soars to 51 minutes.

And if you think that’s just happenstance, I have a Greenland to sell you.

Between 2012 and 2018, Georgia shuttered 8% of all precincts statewide, and moved 40% of them. According to a study by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the combination of fewer precincts and longer commutes could have kept as many as 85,000 people from casting a ballot in 2018.

… Read the rest