Vaccination passports are as dystopian as it gets? I’ll give you dystopian.

Here’s your dystopian.

NYPD says 65-year-old Asian American woman was walking to church this morning when suspect assaulted her and said “f*** you, you don’t belong here.” Happened in front of 360 W. 43rd St. 11:40am. Sources say building security guard not only failed to render her aid… 1/2 pic.twitter.com/ZLtQEHHJci

— CeFaan Kim (@CeFaanKim) March 30, 2021

I’m Asian American and I belong here. RT if you are too or you agree. https://t.co/smpLBqQile

— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) March 30, 2021

The security guard inside closed the door from inside instead of going to help her. I saw someone say that’s their job, to secure the building, their job … Read the rest

It doesn’t? Really?

No vaccine passport. It doesn’t get much more dystopian than being required to show your “health papers” wherever you go.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) March 30, 2021

I can think of way more dystopian it can get. Lots of it. Surveillance cameras in every room, recording-transmitting devices on every surface, militarized police everywhere you go, food shortages, criminalization of all dissent, closure of all independent sources of knowledge and discussion, harsh prison sentences for the smallest infractions, death penalties for the smallest infractions, mandatory prostitution, mandatory impregnation and childbirth, disfavored races and ethnic groups and immigrants sent to camps in miserable climates, most people denied health care, schools eliminated…and so on and so on.

It’s laughably easy … Read the rest

Originally a comment by maddog on Cyclist and expert.

Let boys compete in girls’ competitions, but don’t count their wins

^^ This suggested model is a “solution” that doesn’t solve the fundamental problem: Why should boys compete in the girls’ division at all? There already exists a solution for boys who want to play sports: they can play in the boys’ division. “Where can boys play sports?” has NEVER been a problem. Wailing about, “where can this boy play?” is a ridiculous non-problem

He can play in the boys’ division, that already exists for him. Boys’ sports get the lion’s share of attention and resources, just as it always has been. Historically, girls haven’t had nearly as many opportunities … Read the rest

The thing about being an academic in English (the discipline) is that it’s pretty hard to say anything original, given the huge number of academic colleagues who precede you. So what do you do? In some cases you bullshit. Might as well, right?

“Unquestionably” – that’s rich. It’s questionable.

More:

Lavery told us that he was going to talk about a eugenicist (Marie Stopes) and a charlatan (L. Ron Hubbard) though ultimately [he] never gave us the lowdown on Stopes’ support for eugenics and Hubbard was given only a very passing mention in the Q&A.

… but if I confess to attempting to animate within realism, the erotic frisson that might derive from a fantasy of being

They what?!

BREAKING: Arkansas has become the first state to ban health care for trans youth.

— ACLU (@ACLU) March 29, 2021

Arkansas banned health care for a group of people? How can that be?

That’s how – by wording it deceptively. Arkansas didn’t ban health care for trans teenagers, it banned “gender affirming” care, i.e. puberty blockers and amputations. The NBC headline is honest, the Washington Post one is fuzzy, the Insider one is just a lie, like the ACLU tweet.

From the NBC story:

The Arkansas Senate passed a bill Monday that would ban access to gender-affirming care for transgender minors, including reversible puberty blockers and hormones.

But puberty blockers are not entirely reversible.

It’s interesting how … Read the rest

Never mind girls, pay attention to trans girls [who are boys]. Lawyers, Guns & Money:

The right-wing freak out that transgender girls could dominate girls’ sports at the high school level (as if right-wingers care about women’s sports except when it is useful in their culture wars) is so very, very frustrating. Claire Thornton decided to do what few journalists have done–actually talk to transgender girls and their families about it.

Well that’s mind-numbingly obtuse. How about talking to girls about it? Especially girls who have already lost out to boys who call themselves trans and take all their prizes?

Of course there are higher principles [in] play:

Civil rights experts said competitive sports are the latest facet of

Speaking of international commerce…

Customs officials in Ecuador discovered 185 baby tortoises packed inside a suitcase that was being sent from the Galápagos Islands to the mainland on Sunday.

The reptiles had been wrapped in plastic and were found during a routine inspection at the main airport on the island of Baltra.

Ten of them had died, officials said.

One of the biggest threats to Galápagos tortoises is illegal trading for animal collectors and exotic pet markets.

Many of the Galápagos tortoise subspecies are endangered. Also, wrapping live animals in plastic and shipping them in a suitcase is inhumane and disgusting.

Ecuador’s environment minister, Marcelo Mata, described the incident as a crime against the country’s wild fauna and natural

Dislodged and on the move.

Tug boats honked their horns in celebration as the 400m-long (1,300ft) Ever Given was dislodged on Monday.

Traffic is set to resume in both directions through the canal at 19:00 local time (17:00 GMT), according to local authorities.

…

The vessel was being towed for safety checks to Great Bitter Lake, which sits between two sections of the canal to the north of where the ship got stuck.

…

According to Lloyd’s List, there are currently more than 370 ships waiting to pass through the canal, including container vessels, tankers, and bulk carriers. Clearing that backlog is expected to take several days.

Some economies of scale aren’t.… Read the rest

She can go lower. Can and does.

I’m so sick of Covid-deniers referencing the Holocaust in their wild, untrue, conspiracist claims. The analogy is wrong and hugely offensive. It’s enraging seeing people wilfully posting this stuff, even more so when it’s a verified account. Absolutely disgusting. https://t.co/Q81cRHF0Iv

— Zoe Margolis🎗️ (@girlonetrack) March 29, 2021

Not that she’s gone at all conspiratorial in her thinking.

China wrote a white paper leaked to me to control the world via controlling all biodata by 2025. My best analysis is that CCP is in league with Big Tech and using Bill Gates (who is a willing asset) to flow billions to corrupt our leaders and institutions to comply with all this. https://t.co/pWrexxtsfy

— Dr

Watch: Ships blow their horns moments after #EverGiven is re-floated, almost one week after it had blocked the #SuezCanal. https://t.co/PmPvRx2o5B pic.twitter.com/YsaPSDWYQH

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) March 29, 2021

… Read the rest

It seems that if a woman “identifies as” a gay man then that’s what she is. Simples.

Who is Chiyo? I had to look it up. The BBC last August:

Being judged on his masculinity is something Chiyo feels every time he steps outside the front door.

Chiyo is transgender and, in April next year, he’ll be standing on stage with a group of other men – who aren’t trans – to be judged in what is ultimately a male beauty contest.

He’s a finalist in the (coronavirus-delayed) Mr Gay England 2020.

In other words Chiyo is a woman, who next month will be standing on stage with a group of other actual men to be judged in … Read the rest

Graham Linehan boosts the message of a woman currently suspended by His Majesty the Twitter:

Trade unions are trade unions. What makes them think it’s their job to force women to call men “women” if the men demand it?

Hubble’s response:

No, I wouldn’t like to talk about it. I have not said one thing that is transphobic (which has become a meaningless word as it is used so often). I proudly stand for the rights of women and the single-sex exemptions that are enshrined in equality law, and if that is considered transphobic then the problem is with the definition not with my stance.

I believe in biological reality and do not subscribe to the notion of gender identity

They’re building those things too damn big.

Over the past decade, out of the sight of most consumers, the world’s container ships have been quietly ballooning in size. A class of vessels that carried a maximum of about 5,000 shipping containers in 2000 has doubled in size every few years since, with dozens of megaships now traversing the ocean laden with upwards of 20,000 boxes.

The ocean can deal with it; canals, not so much.

The ships’ rapid growth has outstripped the capacity of marine infrastructure to follow. The Panama canal was expanded at a cost of more than $5bn (£3.6bn) more than a decade ago to meet the size of new container ships – only to be left

Ted Cruz tries to go all Apocalypse Now and everybody just laughs at him.

In the style of a wildlife documentary, Cruz captured his experience with the help of professional photographers and shared his recent journey to the US-Mexico border Thursday night on social media, where he aimed to shed light on what Republicans have dubbed a crisis.

Sporting a dark green fishing shirt and matching baseball cap with the Texas flag, Cruz spoke at a press conference where he sought to paint a dramatic picture of his experience: “On the other side of the river we have been listening to and seeing cartel members – human traffickers – right on the other side of the river waving flashlights, yelling

A Saturday soppy. Abandoned dog keeps returning to a store to try to take possession of a purple plush unicorn.

The business in Kenansville, North Carolina, called animal control on Sisu, a large male stray dog, because of his repeated thievery. He had come to the store five times to steal the same stuffed unicorn.

However, instead of being left empty-handed, the Duplin County Animal Control officer who went to pick him up ended up buying the toy for Sisu instead.

And Duplin County Animal Control advertised him on Facebook.

This is what happens when you break into the dollar general consistently to steal the purple unicorn that you layed claim to but then get animal control called

Another first for a…man.

LGBT rights advocate Martine Delaney has become the first Tasmanian transgender woman to be recognised on the Honour Roll of Women — an award given to those who have made an “outstanding contribution” to the state.

That is, the first man to be recognised on the Honour Roll of Women. Much honour, very scruple.

Ms Delaney said it was “humbling” to have been recognised.

Not humbling enough, since he accepted. That’s an award that should have gone to a woman. There’s a woman who missed out because of him.

“It’s not been something that transgender women in Tasmania have been nominated or inducted into previously,” she said.

Naturally not, because they’re men.

One of the campaigns

It’s ok, the asteroid won’t hit for at least a century. Of course if you have descendants you might be worried for their descendants, but…sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, I guess.

Earthlings can breathe a sigh of relief after US space agency Nasa confirmed the planet was “safe” from a once-feared asteroid for the next 100 years at least.

…

“A 2068 impact is not in the realm of possibility any more, and our calculations don’t show any impact risk for at least the next 100 years,” Davide Farnocchia, a scientist who studies near-Earth objects for Nasa, said in a statement on Friday.

It waved from a distance recently.

The asteroid recently made a distant

This is just straight up a lie.

BREAKING: Tennessee Governor Lee just signed a bill banning trans kids from playing sports.

We’ll see them in court.

— ACLU (@ACLU) March 26, 2021

Of course he didn’t.

CNN reports:

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a transgender sports bill into law Friday requiring students to prove their sex at birth in order to play in middle and high school sports.

The bill states that “a student’s gender for purposes of participation in a public middle school or high school interscholastic athletic activity or event be determined by the student’s sex at the time of the student’s birth, as indicated on the student’s original birth certificate.”

Students must show proof of their

Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Sometimes America’s legacy of white supremacy is hiding in plain sight, literally. When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a hastily passed voter suppression law that many are calling the new, new Jim Crow on Thursday night, surrounded by a half-dozen white men, he did so in front of a painting of a plantation where more than 100 Black people had been enslaved.

The fitting symbolism is somehow both shocking and unsurprising. In using the antebellum image of the notorious Callaway Plantation — in a region where enslaved Black people seeking freedom were hunted with hounds — in Wilkes County, Ga., as the backdrop for signing a bill that would make it a crime

Hadley Freeman writes:

A recent YouGov survey found that 86% of women aged 18-24 in the UK have been sexually harassed. This statistic shocked me: did the other 14% not understand the question? To live in fear of harassment or assault is such a universal female experience that many of us don’t even think about it, having learned to accept it from an absurdly early age. It doesn’t break you but it shapes you, like a rock face getting battered by strong waves.

She provides ten examples from her own life.

Aged seven: my friends and I are in the park when a bush next to us trembles. A man climbs out holding his penis towards us, as if