Trump was supposed to be in Georgia to help the Republican candidates in the run-offs for the Senate, but of course he talked exclusively about himself as he always does. He

has held his first political rally since losing the presidential election, delivering an incoherent speech laced with baseless conspiracies theories about election fraud and attacks on Republican state officials in Georgia who have refused to help him subvert the results.

In front of a crowd of thousands of mostly maskless, non-socially distanced supporters in south Georgia, Trump repeatedly claimed, falsely, that he had won the presidential election, and called for those in government with “courage and wisdom” to help him reverse the result.

So Georgia’s COVID numbers will rocket … Read the rest

Another university tells another student to shut up about All That, but there’s a twist.

Alistair Bonnington, an ex-BBC legal adviser and former honorary law professor who taught Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon during her student days, posted his views on an Open University forum during a discussion about the 18th Century French writer Voltaire – an advocate for freedom of speech.

But his comments, referring to Scotland’s Hate Crime Bill, which will allow men to self-identify as women, and the ‘woke’ backlash faced by Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling earlier this year over her trans views, were deleted.

He’s a law maven, and an adult, but the OU wouldn’t (and won’t) let him speak freely.

In his

… Read the rest

Ugghh. Trump is doing his loathsome Steal The Election rally.

Trump tries to express sympathy for Covid victims but can't help but immediately transition into bragging about how he helped the vaccine process. Then he falsely claims "a lot of people already are vaccinated." pic.twitter.com/4kClJPElG5

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 6, 2020

"They want to go into a communistic form of government" pic.twitter.com/JE4KK2EBxk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 6, 2020

Trump can't believe he lost the election despite getting 74 million votes pic.twitter.com/hGv60at2Ca

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 6, 2020

Trump is out here delusionally claiming that he won Georgia. It's completely nuts. pic.twitter.com/MxL8u3uSDG

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 6, 2020

… Read the rest

Pink News flings its stones at the witch with its usual sloppy illiterate vacuous zeal.

The SNP’s new equalities convener is facing scrutiny for her support of anti-trans pressure group For Women Scotland and the author JK Rowling.

Scrutiny from this Pink News reporter at least. That’s so typical of this kind of shite – agent-free accusations of “scrutiny” – from whom? Besides you there at your laptop?

Elections for the party’s national executive committee on Monday (30 November) saw Lynne Anderson chosen by the party membership to serve as equalities convener, giving her a crucial say in SNP policy.

And Nick Duffy, the hack who wrote this, wants the party membership to un-give that crucial say. He has her … Read the rest

There’s a public Facebook group called Edinburgh LGBTI+. Note the public part: anyone can read the posts. It shares details in a top of the page post:

Edinburgh LGBTI+ Community Group is intended as a safe space for all members of our community, regardless of race, religion, sex, gender, sexuality, trans identity, and ability/disability. We stand, to the best of our current knowledge and understanding, against both direct and indirect discrimination, striving to be anti-racist, anti-abilist, anti-ageist, anti-religious discrimination. We are anti-asexual erasure, anti-aromantic erasure, anti-intersex erasure, anti-bisexual erasure and anti-polyamory erasure. We are pro-trans rights, pro-nonbinary rights. Ultimately we are pro-human rights.

It’s oddly careful to say nothing about women or sexism or misogyny or feminism. It … Read the rest

Is it cruel to find this funny?

https://twitter.com/elijahyab/status/1335002327401558017 https://twitter.com/RahulKohli13/status/1335006060562661377 https://twitter.com/RahulKohli13/status/1335006876954624001

He’s not always so sweet and obliging.

https://twitter.com/RahulKohli13/status/1334751284327378944… Read the rest

That must have been an awkward phone conversation, maybe the most awkward since that “We need you to do us a favor though” one.

President Trump called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Saturday morning to urge him to persuade the state legislature to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state and asked the governor to order an audit of absentee ballot signatures, the latest brazen effort by the president to interfere in the 2020 election.

“Hi Brian, do me a solid and get the lej to throw out the votes for Biden, ok?”

Hours before he is scheduled to hold a rally in Georgia on behalf of the state’s two GOP senators, Trump pressed Kemp to call

… Read the rest

The fox-clubbing QC has riled people again. It’s about the Tavistock ruling of course.

First they came for the Jews and I said nothing… https://t.co/ac5OMtBbqq

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) December 5, 2020

Except that not giving children medication that stops puberty is not comparable to exterminating them.

I said here – explicitly – what the Bell case would mean for abortion rights. https://t.co/ivukUTDNKz

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) December 5, 2020

First they came for trans people and perhaps you didn't speak out because you were not trans. But Conrathe and the interests he represents will come for you.

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) December 5, 2020

https://twitter.com/GoonerProf/status/1335277156847546373 https://twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1335169738041937921 … Read the rest

Those rock paintings in the Amazon:

Thousands of rock art pictures depicting huge Ice Age creatures such as mastodons have been revealed by researchers in the Amazon rainforest.

The paintings were probably made around 11,800 to 12,600 years ago, according to a press release from researchers at Britain’s University of Exeter.

The paintings are set over three different rock shelters, with the largest, known as Cerro Azul, home to 12 panels and thousands of individual pictographs.

Located in the Serranía La Lindosa in modern-day Colombia, the rock art shows how the earliest human inhabitants of the area would have coexisted with Ice Age megafauna, with pictures showing what appear to be giant sloths, mastodons, camelids, horses and three-toed

… Read the rest

Ok so I was reading a story about COVID measures in California and there’s a photo of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco seen between two rows of buildings, with the caption:

California Street, usually filled with iconic cable cars, is seen mostly empty in San Francisco, California on March 17, 2020.

And I was annoyed. Cable cars are not iconic! Neither are movie stars, or shoes, or apartment buildings, or the Space Needle, or the Grand Canyon. “Iconic” is not another word for famous or recognizable or familiar. That’s not what it means.

I know, I know, that is what it means now, because usage is what counts, but it isn’t, and I hate it.

I saw one … Read the rest

You were worrying that bankers wouldn’t be among the first to get the vaccine, weren’t you. Well worry no more!

Wall Street could get a shot in the arm in the coming months, while much of Main Street waits months for their COVID inoculations.

Lenders, bank tellers and traders could jump ahead of most Americans for vaccines, after such remedies receive emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, potentially putting financial industry workers ahead of those aged above 65, adults with medical issues and the rest of the U.S. population.

Bankers are important! How do we know? All that money they have. Stands to reason.

Essential workers are in the second group, after front-line health care workers and residents … Read the rest

Trump lost 5 cases in 2 hours today.

Trump's day in court today:

-Minnesota Supreme Court denies effort to block certification of election results

-Nevada court denies effort to block certification of election results

-Michigan appeals court denies bid to appeal lower court loss b/c election certified

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) December 4, 2020

2 more losses:

-Wisconsin Supreme Court denies challenge to election certification

-11th Circuit denies challenge to GA certification

Trump & allies have lost 5 cases in 2 hours

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) December 4, 2020

Update: oops make that 6.

The court losses keep piling up for Trump & his allies: in the span of 2 hours this afternoon/evening, courts in Minnesota, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia

… Read the rest

This is surprising.

Love twitter. Hate Terfs#TransRightsAreHumanRights pic.twitter.com/QA358pbhbx

— Thomas Pringle T.D. (@ThomasPringleTD) December 4, 2020

A T.D. is a Teachta Dála, a member of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Irish parliament, so comparable to a Congressional Representative or an MP.

#TransRightsAreHumanRights pic.twitter.com/jX6s6vCiWz

— Thomas Pringle T.D. (@ThomasPringleTD) December 4, 2020

Yes, surprising.… Read the rest

Why we can’t have interesting things.

A group of young men claiming to be Christians have posted a video of themselves tearing down a mysterious monolith that had appeared atop a California mountain and replacing it with a cross.

The monolith had been built near the town of Atascadero and sparked huge interest after the appearance of a similar silvery metal-faced monolith that had been discovered in the deserts of Utah.

The one in Utah was torn down by some random people.

Now the Atascadero monolith has met a similar kind of fate, according to a report in the San Luis Obispo Tribune newspaper.

In a video, which was livestreamed and posted online, the group of young men drive

… Read the rest

Those damn turkeys.

Americans couldn’t resist the urge to gather for Thanksgiving, driving only slightly less than a year ago and largely ignoring the pleas of public health experts, who begged them to forgo holiday travel to help contain the coronavirus pandemic, data from roadways and airports shows.

The nation’s unwillingness to tamp down on travel offered a warning in advance of Christmas and New Year’s as virus deaths and hospitalizations hit new highs a week after Thanksgiving. U.S. deaths from the outbreak eclipsed 3,100 on Thursday, obliterating the single-day record set last spring.

Vehicle travel in early November was as much as 20% lower than a year earlier, but it surged around the holiday and peaked on Thanksgiving

… Read the rest

Let’s see if we can figure out how this works, or if it works.

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1334879171437338629

There’s something that I see GC people saying a lot, JKR said it, and they’re right

“If you cannot name your injustice or oppressor, then you can’t fight it”

And then they try to stop people saying transphobe, TERF, even cis. They try and shut down all discussion of transphobia

I don’t know what Montgomerie has against periods at the end of sentences…Maybe it’s a sly joke about the fact that trans women don’t have periods?

Anyway, I think I have figured it out, and it doesn’t work. You have to name the injustice and the oppressor accurately. They both have to be real. … Read the rest

Nailed it.

1/ What turns a child into an adult? Puberty. It follows that if a 10 year old is given puberty blockers & 8 years later, legally an adult, decides to take cross – sex hormones, having missed this crucial stage in human development, is this really the consent of an adult?

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) December 4, 2020

3/ This is why PBs in gender dysphoria are *completely* different to PBs for precocious puberty. A 7 yr old taking PBs to stop an early puberty will be on them for a short time before experiencing full puberty. A GD child on PBs will not & will never complete normal development.

— Allison Bailey (@BluskyeAllison) December 4, 2020

5/

… Read the rest

Amnesty International and Liberty are joining forces to say that oh yes children should definitely be put on puberty blockers if they’re not loving their experience of puberty.

Amnesty International UK and Liberty are disappointed to see the High Court’s judgment on the use of puberty blockers. We are concerned not only for what this means for the health and well-being of trans young people, but the wider implications this will have on the rights of children and young people of all genders, particularly on consent and bodily autonomy.

Children don’t have “rights to bodily autonomy.” They’re not old enough.

Puberty blockers have been a reversible intervention used for decades to pause precocious puberty. Young trans people have been able

… Read the rest

A November 27 letter from Canadian Women and Sport to the CEO of World Rugby implores him to repeal the “ban” on trans women playing on women’s teams.

Dear Brett, Canadian Women & Sport and the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) are writing to express our strong opposition to World Rugby’s ban on Transgender Women Athletes. In doing so, we join 84 academics, Athlete Ally, Egale Canada and others in urging World Rugby to repeal their recent ban preventing transgender women from participating in women’s rugby.

The ban violates the human rights of transgender and gender diverse women, forcing them out of sport and denying them the benefits it brings. The discriminatory ban perpetuates the harmful and marginalizing

… Read the rest

So that’s one bit of good news.

News: @JoeBiden tells me he spoke with Dr. Fauci this afternoon, asked Fauci to stay on in his position at NIAID, and also to serve as a chief medical adviser for him.

Clip coming up on @CNN on @CNNSitRoom

Full interview w Biden/Harris at 9 pm ET

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 3, 2020

… Read the rest