Much discussion today of the NYTimes article about puberty blockers and the possibility that they…er…don’t achieve the desired goal.

The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care.

In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one

The Heritage people get to decide who hears what.

You could hear the spittle fly as the Heritage Foundation shouted out its latest intellectual assault on the Naval Academy. All over Ruth Ben-Ghiat and a lecture the midshipmen likely will never hear.

She’s a New York University historian with a book on what happens to the military when authoritarians take power. She shows up as a commentator on MSNBC, connecting former President Donald Trump to some of the dictators she’s studied.

The academy’s history department invited her to speak about her work at the annual Bancroft Memorial Lecture. Then she was disinvited. Her politics were the problem, not her lecture.

…

Deep within Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 925-page

Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis ends membership of Rape Crisis Scotland

“This is not a decision we have taken lightly. We have done so to hold fast to our principles and to best serve the women and girls that need our support.

“We were created to provide support by and for women. We believe, and women have consistently told us, that single-sex services delivered by an all-female workforce are crucial to help them heal from sexual trauma. This approach remains our priority but is at odds with RCS’.”

Glasgow is the biggest city in Scotland and the 5th biggest in the UK.

… Read the rest

Disgusting and creepy beyond your wildest dreams.

Tucker Carlson’s vision of a Trump presidency is that “dad comes home” and says to America,
“You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking, right now. … It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”pic.twitter.com/fh25KmyYmG

— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) October 24, 2024

… Read the rest

Oliver Brown in the Telegraph:

Lord Triesman, the former chairman of the Football Association, has said he is “deeply concerned” that the governing body he used to lead is “not providing women and girls with fair, safe sport” because of its policy of allowing biological males to compete in the female category.

In a sharply critical letter to Debbie Hewitt and Mark Bullingham, the FA’s chair and chief executive respectively, Lord Triesman, who served as the organisation’s first independent chairman from 2008 to 2010, argues that his successors’ approach is not only compromising the integrity of women’s football but creating an atmosphere where many people feel frightened even to speak up about their concerns.

And all for the sake … Read the rest

A press release from Gov.UK:

Poor governance at Mermaids amounted to mismanagement, inquiry reveals

By “poor” they of course mean bad, not financially lacking. The word “bad” must always be euphemized, lest it frighten the horses.

In September 2022, the Commission opened a regulatory compliance case into the charity after complaints were made by the public, and highlighted in the media. Concerns were raised around chest-binding services and online support offered to young people, and alleged ties between the charity’s now former CEO and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. 

There follows a torrent of bureaucratic bafflegab that doesn’t tell us anything. This is the most informative bit:

The inquiry also found the purpose of the information about puberty

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Draw your weapons.

It’s the “two kinds of experts” problem: science-minded people, polite and overcautious to a fault with their criticism, try to rationalize puberty blockers like they’re antidepressants — they only discuss them in terms of potential mood improvement.

That’s because it’s not scientifically possible to evaluate the religious belief that our sexed bodies are profane while our “gender identities” are sacred.

The cultists who’ve taken over the gender clinics don’t even care if puberty blockers have a negative impact on the children’s mood. They don’t see puberty blockers as antidepressants, they see them the way they see all “gender medicine”: as a mandatory rite of passage to bond new recruits into … Read the rest

Ah yes…if you don’t like the findings, bury them.

Where have we heard this before? US follows UK. Findings of a study begun in 2015 show no improvement to wellbeing of children given puberty blockers. Doctors say they haven’t published because they don’t want findings weaponised. 9 years they’ve known.https://t.co/uZegd2Abmw pic.twitter.com/nspswX4riB

— Hannah Barnes (@hannahsbee) October 23, 2024

The children had good mental health, and puberty blockers didn’t make their good mental health even better. Bury that finding in the cabinet under a stack of refrigerators in the basement.

This whole article is astonishing & bizarre.

This gender doctor hasn’t published the results of her study on puberty blockers because the results — which show no improvement in mental

Oyyy.

Uh, yeah, because that’s the whole point.

“Prominent torturer Fiendy Painmaker has refused to publish data from a study of torture, fearing that the results will be weaponized by critics of torture.”

Listen up, Johanna Olsen-Kennedy: the whole point of medical studies (as of course you know perfectly well) is to determine whether they are beneficial or the other thing. If a study finds out that X is the other thing, aka harmful, it’s not your job to hide the data on the grounds that critics of X will cite it in order to prevent further harm. You’re not supposed to want to keep perpetrating harm.… Read the rest

Rather late in the day, we’re having the “Trump is a genuine fascist” conversation.

(Well of course he is. It’s not as if there’s some high bar to being one. It doesn’t require erudition or physical fitness. He’s every inch a fascist, and it’s all right there on the surface where we can see it.)

John Kelly, a former four-star Marine general and former chief of staff to former President Donald Trump, hammered his old boss in a stunningly public fashion on Tuesday — just two weeks before Election Day.

Kelly, who had previously refrained from discussing his time in the White House so openly, said in expansive interviews with The New York Times that Trump’s discussion of using

Another brave courageous indomitable fierce proud man invades women’s sport.

Hundreds of female golfers have complained about the participation of Scottish-born transgender player Hailey Davidson in the penultimate stage of the LPGA Tour’s qualifying competition.

Gets it wrong the way they always do. If even the Telegraph refuses to get it right what hope is there?

The issue is not that Davidson is “transgender”; the issue is that he’s a MAN.

Davidson, a 31-year-old professional originally from Ayrshire but now based in Florida, has said that the intention is “to make Scotland proud” by earning a card on the women’s premier circuit.

Second para and still doing it. “the intention” ffs – HIS intention.

Newspapers and tv and … Read the rest

Pride versus Pride With Mission Creep.

Our Pride Badge symbolises support for the LGBTIQ+ community, an integral part of our Armed Forces past and present. It stands in solidarity with those who faced discrimination, especially under the Ban, when being gay, lesbian, or bisexual in the military was illegal.

— Royal British Legion (@PoppyLegion) October 22, 2024

But there is no “LGBTIQ+ community.” There’s only forced teaming of the LGB with the TIQ+.

We use the Intersex-Inclusive Pride Flag as this is the internationally recognised new Pride flag, increasing LGBTQIA+ allyship and intersex visibility, representation and inclusion worldwide…(1/3)

— Royal British Legion (@PoppyLegion) October 22, 2024

No no, not allyship; forced teaming. The T is not an ally of the … Read the rest

So much lying in one little article…

Weightlifter Laurel Hubbard’s dogged fight to keep her name out of the media

His. His name. He’s a man.

Olympic weightlifting hopeful Laurel Hubbard has failed in a nine-month battle to keep her name secret over a driving charge.

Hubbard, 41, a transgender athlete who is trying to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, was charged with careless driving causing injury after her vehicle fishtailed on a sharp bend near Queenstown on October 24, 2018.

Her car hit a vehicle carrying an Australian couple in their 60s. The male driver spent nearly two weeks in Dunedin Hospital and needed major spinal surgery on returning to Australia.

His. His name, his vehicle, his car. … Read the rest

You might as well unpack your suitcase for that trip to Mars.

Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars’s dead core? No? Well. It’s fine. I’m sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let’s discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.

OK, so you still want to talk about Mars. Fine. Let’s imagine that Mars’s lack of a magnetic field

Musk is bribing voters.

A group of 11 former Republican officials have become the latest public figures to raise questions over the legality of cash incentives being offered by tech billionaire Elon Musk to voters before the US election on 5 November.

Mr Musk’s campaign group America PAC, which was set up to support Donald Trump in the presidential contest, calls on registered voters in seven swing states to sign a petition. Each day until the election, one signatory is selected at random and awarded a million-dollar prize.

But legal experts and several Democrats have suggested the giveaway may break American law by offering money for an act that requires someone to be signed up as a voter.

And … Read the rest

The deck, of course, is stacked.

With former President Donald Trump on the precipice of possibly becoming president again, let’s recall that he’s on the 2024 ballot thanks partly to the Supreme Court. 

I’m not talking about the ruling granting him broad criminal immunity. Though the Roberts Court’s handling of that appeal helped Trump push off a trial in the federal election interference case — possibly forever, if he wins the election and deploys his reacquired presidential power to crush it.

I’m talking about another Jan. 6-related appeal from the last Supreme Court term, one that more directly positioned the Republican to take office again: Trump v. Anderson.

It was there that the justices

Another thing Trump has been pushing lies about: FEMA diverting its money to “migrants” and thus having no money for disaster relief.

False claims that federal emergency disaster money was given to migrants in the U.S. illegally have spread quickly in recent days, boosted by former President Donald Trump and some of his most high-profile supporters.

Trump repeated one of the more extreme baseless allegations during a rally Thursday in Saginaw, Michigan, saying that the money had been stolen.  “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” Trump said.

That was October 4. He’s still … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on Be sure to omit all the important facts.

RILEY GAINES et al v. NCAA et al is an excellent reference. This class action lawsuit is funded by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS). The ICONS web page about the lawsuit has the latest amended version of the lawsuit as a PDF file (208 pages, filed Sept. 23, 2024).

In this latest version, the list of Plaintiffs (p. 168) adds Brooke Slusser, a volleyball player at San Jose State University (SJSU). In the expanded section on Volleyball (pp. 151-163), she adds details of her experience with Blair Fleming on the SJSU team. Of course there are safety concerns about Fleming hitting harder … Read the rest

Oops now Trump has got himself a libel suit. Fully deserved.

Five men who were wrongfully convicted as teenagers in the so-called Central Park Five jogger rape case sued Donald Trump on Monday, saying the Republican presidential nominee defamed them by falsely claiming they killed someone and pleaded guilty.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Philadelphia, cites several statements Trump made about the men during his Sept. 10 debate with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, after she blasted Trump for taking out an ad in 1989 calling for the then-teen defendants to be executed.

“Defendant Trump falsely stated [at the debate] that Plaintiffs killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime. These statements are demonstrably false,”

Newsthump (i.e. satirical):

McDonald’s has been praised by the liberal media for giving work experience to a convicted felon who is currently looking for a new job.

Florida resident Donald Trump, 78, has a string of felony convictions that will quite rightly prevent him from seeking gainful employment in a number of businesses and organisations, but McDonald’s said it was willing to offer a helping hand to anyone trying to get back into work.

McDonald’s spokesperson Chuck Williams told us, “I understand that this man lost his job almost four years ago now, and that this job loss led to some poor life decisions that have left him with a significant criminal record – but for one morning, we were