Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Process as punishment.

There is apparently an expression among some law enforcement types that “you can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride.” Meaning that if cops decide to arrest you and drive you around in the back of their squad car for hours before processing you (typically so that it’s too late to arraign you until the next day and you have to spend the night in jail before you can get bail set), then you’re not getting that time and inconvenience back even if the charges are quickly dropped or dismissed.

This is also why I get so ranty about speech-restrictive laws being dangerous even when they’re supposedly … Read the rest

Wings Over Scotland:

Welcome, readers, to what may be the final week of Wings Over Scotland.

We’ve been covering the Scottish Government’s horrific, draconian Hate Crime Act for almost four years now. But until this month, we hadn’t felt directly under threat by it. Wings is – sorry if this comes as a shock to anyone – based in Bath, in England, and we couldn’t see how the Scottish police could come after us.

But then they were informed that Scottish law holds that anything on social media which can be read in Scotland is published in Scotland.

…then lawyer after lawyer queued up to support his interpretation, and we became alarmed. Along with JK Rowling, For

A new hate-crime law in Scotland causes widespread concern

Subhead:

Transgender identity is protected; biological sex is not

Thank you for noticing and saying. That’s so unusual. The BBC and the Guardian take great pains not to notice and not to say. They take such great, and conspicuous, pains that I’m pretty confident they know they’re doing it, that they do it with malice aforethought, that it’s not mere clumsiness or absence of mind or confusion.

Scotland already has an offence of “stirring up racial hatred”. From April it will become a crime to use “threatening or abusive” behaviour with the intention of stirring up hatred on the basis of other characteristics, too—namely religion, age, disability, sexual orientation and

Always lead with the careful obfuscation.

Practical suggestions on how sports federations can be fair to transgender athletes

He means male “transgender” athletes of course, but he hides that in the usual way. He is one Andy Harvey, a former lecturer in sport science at Swansea University, writing for an outlet called Play the Game.

In the absence of robust scientific data, sports federations should take an ethical approach on how to include transgender athletes. Andy Harvey suggests developing benchmarks for tolerable unfairness and baselines for acceptable safety risks as a way to determine if transgender athletes should be included or not. 

That’s cool because the “tolerable” unfairness will have to be tolerated by women, not men. Obviously that’s … Read the rest

Case dropped.

A government lawyer who faced legal action after expressing gender-critical views at work including commenting that only women menstruate has had the case against her dropped.

Elspeth Duemmer-Wrigley works for an arm’s-length body affiliated to the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and was due to appear at a tribunal this week accused of harassment.

The claimant has now officially withdrawn all accusations against Duemmer-Wrigley, who is a chairwoman of a civil service network that represents staff with gender-critical views.

That is, a civil service network that represents staff who are aware that people can’t change sex. Weird that it needs a network; weird that there are apparently staff who think people can change sex.… Read the rest

Is there an authoritative list of what we’re allowed to hate and what we’re not?

Are we allowed, for instance, to hate the trans ideology?

Are we allowed to hate misogyny? (That’s a pun of sorts, but it’s also what I mean. Are we allowed?)

Are we allowed to hate bad illiberal lawmaking?

Are we allowed to hate religions?

Are we allowed to hate tyrants?

Is it a hate crime to hate Donald Trump, and to say so, with details?

Is it a crime to hate Putin? Hamas? Netanyahu? Kim Jong Un?

Please advise.

Humza Yousaf is attacking not merely free speech but our concept of law and morality. It's actually worse than you thinkhttps://t.co/3Onv7mN0YS pic.twitter.com/kU3Ej9Kiqz

— Effie Deans

But will they enforce it?

A New York judge on Tuesday issued a gag order barring Donald Trump from making public statements about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors in his upcoming hush-money criminal trial.

Judges have issued gag orders on Trump before, and he’s violated them, if I remember correctly. He’s violated them and gotten away with it.

The judge, Juan Merchan, cited Trump’s previous comments about him and others involved in the case, as well as a looming 15 April trial date in granting the prosecution’s request for a gag order. “It is without question that the imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount,” Merchan wrote.

Prosecutors had asked for the gag order citing what

Guest post by Jonathan Gallant

Contemporary academia in the US is blessed with a wealth of programs that start with the word “Critical” and end with the word “Studies”.   I hereby announce a new discipline which will interrogate the history, sociology, hermeneutics, and astrology of all these programs.  Our new discipline is called Critical Studies Studies, and its monographs will appear in our own scholarly journal, to be called Studies in Critical Studies Studies.  We intend this journal to take its place in high-powered scholarly publication, alongside such outstanding examples as Social Text, the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, the Journal of Progressive Policy & Practice, Hypatia, and Gender, Place & Culture.  We will require “positionality … Read the rest

Engineers say yeah that’s what happens.

To bridge experts, the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge after being hit by a heavy cargo ship was as inevitable as it was devastating.

When a vessel as heavy as the Singapore-flagged Dali collides with such force against one of the span’s supercolumns, or piers, the result is the type of catastrophic, and heartbreaking, chain reaction that took place early Tuesday.

So maybe take all possible measures to keep that from happening? If you have a setup where massive container ships regularly go toddling under bridges, you’re gonna wanna make sure they don’t go oops on the way through.

No bridge pier could withstand being hit by a ship the size

I was accidentally awake in the middle of the night, as I often am, so I saw that clip of the bridge disintegrating soon after it happened. It grabbed my attention rather. I live in a port city and see container ships chugging in and out all the time. Seattle is also a very bridge-having city, because of being so up and down, so seeing a massive bridge go from normal to in the water in pieces in a matter of seconds is a shocker.

BREAKING: Ship collides with Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing it to collapse pic.twitter.com/OcOrSjOCRn

— BNO News (@BNONews) March 26, 2024

CNN is updating:

The DALI container ship that struck Baltimore’s Key Bridge

The BBC is so infuriating on this subject.

More than 100 elite British sportswomen have told the BBC they would be uncomfortable with transgender women competing in female categories in their sport.

That’s such a bad, stupid, misleading, unfair, sneery lede.

Yes, duh, elite sportswomen don’t want men competing in female categories in their sport. Why would they?! The issue, as always, is not being “transgender” but being male. But the Beeb just will not admit that, ever, so instead it solemnly reports that sportswomen are creepy nasty bigots for feeling “uncomfortable” about their darling trans sisters.

But many have expressed fears over sharing their opinion publicly because of concerns they would be seen as discriminatory.

Says the … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Artymorty at Miscellany Room.

The Trump appeals court reprieve really bothers me. Here’s a take by David Graham in The Atlantic, which argues that, even though Trump routinely exploits legal procedures to get out of justice, it’s right of the appeals court to lower his bond and grant him yet more extensions. It would be “unjust” for Trump to lose his ill-gotten assets if he succeeds in getting this case dismissed:

But then imagine that a few weeks from now, Trump won his appeal, convincing the court that Engoron’s finding was incorrect, or that the calculated amount of the penalty was unfair. Trump would have no way to recover the assets he’d been forced

More from the women in sport front:

Some observations about the IOC trajectory, and again, I can't really source them without getting into trouble, but please just take this as informed speculation…

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) March 25, 2024

… expect more policing of language from the IOC – talking about 'male bodied athletes' will be clamped down upon. …

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) March 25, 2024

… the fact that the Framework Document is ignored by the big international federations – swimming, cycling and athletics – is noticed, but explained by 'political manipulation' (for which read, consultation with female athletes) …

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) March 25, 2024

All this energy – conferences! more conferences! yet more conferences! – … Read the rest

Bahahahahaha

Remember – from a few hours ago – the lanyard doctor? Who said “My work lanyard gets a lot of comments, and people spotting something on it and asking about it has started a lot of conversations over the years.”? Well, sometimes Twitter people step up.

My work lanyard gets a lot of comments, and people spotting something on it and asking about it has started a lot of conversations over the years. pic.twitter.com/23kYrb2SWr

— dubz 3.0 (@dubz3dot0) March 25, 2024

https://twitter.com/ShowerAbsolute/status/1772252568451785185

My work lanyard gets a lot of comments, and people spotting something on it and asking about it has started a lot of conversations over the years. pic.twitter.com/31inBgv2fZ

— Matthew 'Call Me Swishmale' Greenfield (@MatthewGreenf11) March

SERIOUSLY??????

A New York appeals court on Monday paused for 10 days a massive civil business fraud judgment against Donald Trump — and sharply reduced to $175 million the bond amount he will have to post to obtain a longer stay of that award.

The ruling came the same day that New York Attorney General Letitia James would have been allowed to start seizing the former president’s real estate assets and bank accounts to satisfy the $454 million-and-rising judgment after he failed to obtain an appeal bond.

James is prevented from doing so — for now — due to the order from the five-judge panel in Manhattan Supreme Court’s appellate division.

…

In its order Monday, the appeals court stayed

What was that we were just saying about using honest language to talk about women and sports and men invading women’s sports?

… to keep within these rules I have blanked out the logo on the slide and I won't name the speaker. But I will say that this is an important slide, and I will comment critically on it, mainly on the third row. …

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite) March 25, 2024

… female sport, this will be 'reframed'. Instead of responding to the overwhelming majority of female athletes, the people in question will *support stakeholders to understand* why transwomen must come first. It's because they are *at most risk of being harmed* …

— Jon Pike (@runthinkwrite)

BBC Sport tells us, with a puzzled frown, that female athletes are not always entirely ecstatic to lose prizes to men who pretend to be women.

More than 100 elite British sportswomen have told the BBC they would be uncomfortable with transgender women competing in female categories in their sport.

Or to put it in ordinary language, more than 100 elite British sportswomen have told the BBC they don’t want men competing in their sport. Well duh: of course they don’t. Women’s sport is for women.

Over the past couple of years, a raft of sports have banned transgender women from competing in elite women’s sport because of concerns.

Because they are men. They have the male physical advantage, … Read the rest

Oooooooooh an all-female film festival!

Sheffield’s first all female film festival

Ok then! Mark your calendars: it’s November 24 at the Showroom Cinema.

Highlighting the work of women and women’s achievements in all incarnations of cinema. Inspired by events showcasing films made by women (such as Scotland’s Femspectives), we want to recentre the focus of film history and the future of the industry on projects creatively led by women. Sheffield has a rich cultural history and we hope to further develop the city’s reputation as a hub for excellence supporting diversity in film in the North of England.

The aim of FFStival is to provide an intersectional platform highlighting the work of women, female presenting and non binary people’s achievements

Primum non nocere: First do no harm.

Some doctor is boasting about his badge encrusted lanyard that’s dangling round his neck all day at work. As a tattooist I’d be forbidden to work with a cross contamination hazard like this and risk losing my license but it’s ok for him because ‘it’s trans’. pic.twitter.com/gw7jnpzYXs

— Joolz Denby (@JoolzDenby) March 25, 2024

That plus the frenzied messaging. I would feel extremely uneasy with all that hectoring from a doctor. I think I would feel that way whether I agreed with the content or not, because it’s so…all about Dr Opinions instead of about what Dr Opinions is supposed to be doing.

Here is the lovely man talking lovingly about himself.

My

Oh yay, another dude wins a women’s race, how heartwarming.

Congratulations Kylie Not All That Small!… Read the rest