All entries by this author

With respect

May 24th, 2024 7:02 am | By

From Woman’s Place UK a couple of years ago:

For the International Women’s Day episode of BBC Woman’s Hour, Emma Barnett interviewed Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, and asked her for a clear definition of ‘what a woman is’.

And didn’t get one. Of course.

Anneliese Dodds: Well, I have to say that there are different definitions legally around what a woman actually is. I mean, you look at the definition within the Equality Act, and I think it just says someone who is adult and female, I think, but then doesn’t see how you define either of those things. I mean, obviously, that’s then you’ve got the biological definition, legal definition…

Emma

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The first millennial to be canonized

May 23rd, 2024 5:30 pm | By

The BBC solemnly informs us that a teenager is going to “become a saint.”

Carlo Acutis died in 2006, at the age of 15, meaning he would be the first millennial – a person born in the early 1980s to late 1990s – to be canonised. It follows Pope Francis attributing a second miracle to him. It involved the healing of [a] university student in Florence who had bleeding on the brain after suffering head trauma.

So why did Carlo Acutis die? If he can heal a university student in Florence why can’t he cure himself?

Carlo Acutis had been beatified – the first step towards sainthood – in 2020, after he was attributed with his first miracle – healing

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Patience rapidly waning

May 23rd, 2024 5:06 pm | By

Yeah. Same.

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For treating pregnant patients

May 23rd, 2024 3:04 pm | By

The ACLU three weeks ago:

Anti-abortion politicians brought this case all the way up to the Supreme Court to deny pregnant people access to emergency abortion care that is necessary to prevent severe and potentially life-altering health consequences, and even death.

The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States, which will determine whether politicians can put doctors in jail for treating pregnant patients experiencing medical emergencies. The ultimate decision in the case — which is expected by the summer — could have severe consequences on the health and lives of people across the country facing emergency pregnancy complications.

Etc etc etc. The ACLU doesn’t say “women” or “woman” even … Read the rest



Exploiting

May 23rd, 2024 10:43 am | By

Perfect. The Supreme Court says yay racial gerrymandering; let the fun begin.

The Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 decision along party lines on Thursday, which represented its fullest endorsement of partisan gerrymandering to date. 

In the past, legal restrictions on racial gerrymandering — maps drawn to minimize the voting power of a particular racial group, rather than the power of a political party — had the side effect of also limiting attempts to draw maps that benefitted one party or another. While the Court largely tolerated gerrymanders that were designed to lock one party into power, those maps sometimes failed because they also targeted racial minorities.

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference

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The MP for Canterbury

May 23rd, 2024 9:56 am | By

Keir Starmer is still pretending Rosie Duffield doesn’t exist.

Rosie Duffield was snubbed from Sir Keir Starmer’s election launch event in Kent on Thursday – even though she is the only elected Labour MP in the county. The MP for Canterbury – who has angered many in her party for her stance on women’s rights – only found out about the event on social media. No Labour leader had visited Kent for years after Ms Duffield was elected in a shock 2017 victory.

He’s so determined to exclude her that he ignores the opportunity to big up his own launch event for the sake of blacklisting her.

The Labour leader was joined by Angela Rayner, his deputy, Naushabah

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Quite the oopsy

May 23rd, 2024 9:26 am | By

Oh come ON.

An error???

Meaning what, their foot slipped and they typed “gender critical” instead of “transphobic”?

Come on. It wasn’t a fumble or a blunder or a pratfall or a “genuine mistake.” It was an iteration of the trans dogma that the two are the same thing, and equally evil and deserving of punishment and exile. It was yet another instance of the hatred of women … Read the rest



Tho thorry about the negative and triggering impact

May 23rd, 2024 5:54 am | By
Tho thorry about the negative and triggering impact

Unbelievable.

https://twitter.com/JournalistJill/status/1793172365444100518 The complete reply:

Bad enough yet?

He’s still hasn’t been fired.… Read the rest



Whose serious needs matter?

May 22nd, 2024 6:20 pm | By

It’s all just a game to some of them.

As Democrats lauded the White House’s 200th judicial confirmation, though, a partisan firestorm raged in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Republicans ground proceedings to a halt during a confirmation hearing for the latest slate of court nominees.

Among the appointees who faced questioning Wednesday morning was Sarah Netburn, tapped by the Biden administration to join the bench on the Southern District of New York.

GOP lawmakers on the committee dialed in on a 2022 case she presided over as a magistrate judge in the same district, in which she granted the request of an incarcerated transgender woman who asked to move to a women’s prison from a men’s prison. The

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A push for a more Christian-minded government

May 22nd, 2024 4:19 pm | By

Oops. Turns out it wasn’t the neighbors after all.

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It ain’t pretty

May 22nd, 2024 3:56 pm | By
It ain’t pretty

If you’re going to write a book about the Church and its hatred of women, don’t accept a glammed-up tits-out cover. Like this one:

Yeah they weren’t standing their in ball gowns that highlighted their breasts and with flowing hair tossed by the breeze. It wasn’t a sexy festive occasion.

This is how you do it:

Cover by Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin… Read the rest



“Open” “Activism”

May 22nd, 2024 10:54 am | By

More Wings Over Scotland on Adam Ramsay:

Since 2019 Ramsay has been the editor of Open Democracy, an activist “news” site funded – to the tune of millions of pounds a year – chiefly by large grants from American and other corporate and industrial charities like the Ford Foundation, created by the notorious racist and anti-Semitic car magnate Henry Ford.

These grants are provided, naturally, mostly in the name of “social justice”“diversity” and “inclusion”. Many of the donors, like the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund which provided OD with $800,000 in grants in recent years, are deeply opaque, with their website declining to identify even which country the fund is based in and having been

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Itsy-bitsy castle

May 22nd, 2024 8:57 am | By

Rev Stuart Campbell at Wings Over Scotland responds to Adam Ramsay’s threats toward people who dispute him:

Adam Ramsay is Definitely a Liar

Ladies and gentlemen (and non-binary genderfluids), meet Adam Ramsay.

Adam Ramsay grew up in what his family describes as a “small castle” nestled in a 1300-acre estate in Perthshire that’s been in the family since 1232.

Check out the photo of the not all that small castle.

He was educated at the extremely exclusive private Glenalmond College, which he describes as the “poshest” school in Scotland, prone to outbreaks of “chav hunting”, and whose alumni include a lot of people called things like “Torquhil”, “Crispin”, “Rupert”, “Nairne”, “Dennison”, “Ernley”, “Beauchamp”, “Ninian”, “Logie”, “Adair” and

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His reputation for reporting the truth

May 22nd, 2024 2:58 am | By

What a horrible man.

“These facts” he says. What facts?

Wadhwa has dedicated the last 14 years of her professional life to supporting women who are victims of sexual violence. But for the last three years, she’s faced torrential abuse including unfounded smears that she’s a sexual predator and numerous threats of violence – all because she is trans.

But Wadwha of course is a man, so referring to him with “her” and “she” has … Read the rest



Guest post: The air and water departments were on different floors

May 21st, 2024 5:26 pm | By

Originally a comment by iknklast on Hamlet’s gotta eat.

I try to make all of this manageable for my students in Environmental Science, but they have always left the class stunned at the end of the semester. Every unit, they come up with solutions that previous units should have told them wouldn’t work. It’s difficult to carry so many interlocking things in our head at a time, and it’s natural for us to try to reduce it down to one more important thing that we can deal with. Unfortunately, we never deal with one problem before we move to another.

Save the whales? That used to be a big thing. The whales are not saved, but we’ve moved on. … Read the rest



Innocent transgender teenager

May 21st, 2024 5:13 pm | By

Again – cheat by starting the report with misleading language. I wonder if anyone ever reports this stuff honestly. NBC News:

A transgender teenager was booed at an Oregon sports stadium after winning a race during the state’s high school track and field championship over the weekend.

They mean, of course, a boy was booed after winning a girls’ race.

Multiple videos posted on social media show McDaniel High School sophomore Aayden Gallagher being booed by a crowd of onlookers as she crossed the finish line first in the 200-meter race at the Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA) Track and Field State Championships on Saturday. Boos could also be heard as the teenage runner received her gold medal at

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Sorry, we’re closed

May 21st, 2024 4:51 pm | By

Ok stop right there, three seconds in. “I pride myself on being a teacher who’s very open about her life.”

https://twitter.com/TTExulansic/status/1792938210815103352

NO!

Do not pride yourself on that. Be ashamed; very ashamed.

Your job is to teach, not to blather about yourself. Calling it “being open about your life” is just your way of trying to make grotesque vanity and self-absorption sound somehow admirable. Nobody on the planet needs you to be open about your life, and children you’re supposed to be teaching need that the least of anyone.

God I hate narcissism, especially narcissism that brags about itself. “Sit down, I’m very open about my life, so I plan to tell you all about it for the next 5 … Read the rest



Guest post: Hamlet’s gotta eat

May 21st, 2024 12:34 pm | By

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The obvious answer never occurs to them.

The Earth could theoretically support a much larger population, but why?

That’s really questionable. That depends on (1) how long we want the population to survive and (2) what sort of quality of life they would have.

A lot of people think if there is land that is not holding people, we can put people there. Unfortunately, they’re wrong. Some of that land is already converted to human uses – farmland, rangeland, industrial land, government land, etc. Some of it can’t support human life. I’ve heard people say we could fill up the Grand Canyon with people. Really? Think again.

Some people seem … Read the rest



Normal concepts

May 21st, 2024 12:14 pm | By

The Times is blistering on the ERCC’s treatment of Roz Adams.

Most people will instinctively understand that Adams’ views — and actions — were wholly reasonable. For many of her colleagues, however, they were “transphobic”.

The tribunal’s verdict is scathing. “Normal concepts of natural justice” were ignored, explanations offered by staff at the centre were “a nonsense” and the investigation into Adams “should not have been launched in the first place” — it was clearly motivated by bias and the prejudice that Adams’ views were “inherently hateful”. All this led to a “completely spurious and mishandled disciplinary process” that was “somewhat reminiscent of the work of Franz Kafka”.

And what does ERCC say in response? That it has a sad.… Read the rest



The banner selection process

May 21st, 2024 11:30 am | By

There’s this story about University of North Carolina Asheville’s move to maintain “institutional neutrality” and the shock-horror of students at such a move. So far so predictable.

What I wonder about is how students choose which banners to defend.

Since University of North Carolina Asheville students began protesting against the war in Gaza in early May, Chancellor Kimberly van Noort has maintained that the university should avoid an official stance on the matter.

“Neither the University nor I, the chancellor, should interfere by taking an official stance,” van Noort wrote in a public update to students and faculty earlier this month. “Institutional neutrality promotes the open exchange of ideas and avoids inhibiting scholarship, creativity, and expression. Compromising this position carries

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