All entries by this author

Free & Equal unless you’re a woman

Oct 9th, 2024 6:11 am | By

The UN coughs up a hairball onto women again.

Oh look! There are the women with missing lower legs again, complete with weird antiquated Captain Hookish prosthetic replacements. Corporate Memphis Pegleg.

Anyway. The real issue is here is the UN again telling us that men can be women, i.e. men can push women aside and take over everything. I tried to find a parallel Gay Men Day but was unable to. UN … Read the rest



The fuel necessary

Oct 9th, 2024 5:03 am | By

Are we there yet? I think we are.

Catastrophic hurricane approaches popular low-lying state

Hurricane Milton tore towards Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday, leaving residents with one final day to evacuate or hunker down before the “catastrophic” Category 5 storm is predicted to hit, triggering a life-threatening storm surge.

With more than 1 million people in coastal areas under evacuation orders, those fleeing for higher ground clogged highways on Tuesday and gas stations ran out of fuel, in a region still recovering from the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago.

Milton is on a rare west-to-east path through the Gulf of Mexico and is likely to bring a deadly storm surge of 10 feet

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Guest post: We’re not dancing anymore

Oct 8th, 2024 3:45 pm | By

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Trump’s decompensation on the campaign trail.

“Climate change covers everything. It can rain, it can be dry, it can be hot, it can be cold….”

That’s exactly right, and that’s a huge part of the goddamn problem. It’s not just a “change” like flipping a switch on or off; it’s the disruption and destabilization of established, reliable patterns upon which human civilization (and the biosphere in general) depends. It is the removal of “pattern” itself, which makes human planning much more difficult, in this instance, the rescheduling, or the end of the concept of a hurricane “season” itself.

Looking more closely, it’s not just a “climate change” problem, but a … Read the rest



Given the low gravity of the offending

Oct 8th, 2024 12:46 pm | By

What’s the big deal?

trans rights activist who poured tomato juice over controversial women’s rights activist Posie Parker is seeking to have her conviction overturned, with her lawyer saying it was out of proportion to the offending.

Eli Rubashkyn previously pleaded guilty to assault after she poured tomato juice over Parker – also known as Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull – and another woman at Auckland’s Albert Park in March 2023.

Eli Rubashkyn ain’t no she.

Rubashkyn earlier pleaded guilty to two charges of assault and was convicted and discharged by Judge Kirsten Lummis in September.

On Tuesday, Rubashkyn’s lawyer, James Olsen, appealed the conviction at the High Court at Auckland. Olsen told Justice David Johnstone that Judge Lummis was not correct

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Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook

Oct 8th, 2024 11:30 am | By

Interlude for hilarity.

The image. I just can’t love the image enough.

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Intervening

Oct 8th, 2024 10:01 am | By

Trying to make who is what sex a matter of law instead of fact:

Amnesty International has been given permission to intervene in a landmark Supreme Court case on the legal definition of woman.

The charity, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Scottish Lesbians, and Sex Matters have all been granted permission to take part in For Women Scotland vs Scottish Ministers at the end of next month.

The case at the UK’s highest court is the latest development in a long-running legal battle over whether someone who is biologically male can legally be regarded as female for the purposes of the Equality Act.

The answer to that ridiculous question is so obviously “no” that it’s hard … Read the rest



Trump’s decompensation on the campaign trail

Oct 8th, 2024 9:02 am | By

Public Notice on Trump’s relentless lying about climate change:

With another historic storm, Hurricane Milton, now bearing down on Florida, Trump not only still refuses to acknowledge that climate change is happening and creates conditions more favorable to severe storms, but he’s actively lying about it.

“Nobody thought this would be happening, especially now,” Trump said during a photo op in a Helene-impacted part of Georgia on October 1. “It’s so late in the season.” 

The season is June 1 to November 30, so now is late in a sense, but it’s also irrelevant. Hurricanes don’t look at the calendar and think “Aw damn I can’t possibly get there in time” and decide to stay home. Trump means, as … Read the rest



Given his history of killing women

Oct 7th, 2024 10:36 am | By

[This story is a couple of years old but what the hell, a second thrashing is well deserved.]

The Times reporting does eventually hint at how appallingly reckless and women-hating the “Marceline” Harvey story is.

It is unclear where [Susan Leyden’s] path first crossed Ms. Harvey’s, but at the time Ms. Harvey posted about Ms. Leyden, she was seeking her own placement in city shelters. Immediately after her 2019 release, she sought housing in the Bronx. [In other words Harvey was seeking placement in city shelters.]

Ms. Harvey “presented as a mild spoken, very tall Black man,” said Anne Brennan, the nurse practitioner who ran the intake. “I said, ‘Well, why are you in the women’s shelter?’”

Ms. Brennan

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No lie is too evil

Oct 7th, 2024 9:44 am | By

The New York Times, July 30, 2022:

The person before the parole panel in June 2019 was tall and slim, in far better shape than 81 years of life might have suggested. Mild and polite, the supplicant seemed nothing like the murderer who had spent decades in prison, first for shooting a girlfriend dead in 1963, and then for stabbing another in 1985, stuffing her corpse into a bag and leaving it in Central Park.

“I’m no longer that person,” the inmate told the parole board commissioners. Despite misgivings, they would rule in favor of release.

Two and a half years after leaving Cayuga Correctional Facility, Marceline Harvey was accused again, charged with killing Susan Leyden, 68. Parts of

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So white and privileged and heterosexual and never marginalised in your life

Oct 6th, 2024 4:57 pm | By

The Times interviews Sandi Toksvig:

Toksvig certainly boasts the widest-ranging CV imaginable. Her most recent achievement was officiating at the Abba star Björn Ulvaeus’s third wedding last month in Copenhagen. She and Ulvaeus, it transpires, have been friends since 2015, when she organised a Scandinavian-themed Women of the World festival at the Royal Festival Hall, where an all-female orchestra played Waterloo and Ulvaeus appeared. “You can be feminist and fun, you see.” More recently they collaborated on writing the interactive show Mamma Mia! The Party.

“Björn is a very gentle, not divaish person; he and I are both humanists,” she says…

I knew that about Björn. That time I went to Stockholm when Hatar Gud Kvinnor? was published,

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All I said was

Oct 6th, 2024 11:38 am | By

Behold: a dishonest fool.

Yesterday:

Today:

Calling JK Rowling “the worst person in the UK” is not equivalent to “I don’t agree with JK Rowling’s views.”… Read the rest



A stark reminder

Oct 6th, 2024 11:20 am | By

From Inside Climate News, a discussion of the implications of Helene and North Carolina.

From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood with Abrahm Lustgarten, author of “On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America.”

Helene’s huge size and speed are linked to increasingly hotter water in the Gulf of Mexico, and a stark reminder that with global heating, weather forecasts based on history are becoming [worse] guides to present dangers. Hurricanes have usually weakened when they make landfall, but to the surprise of many, Helene’s impact was just as devastating in the inland mountains of western North Carolina as on the Gulf Coast

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Law is one thing and reality is another

Oct 6th, 2024 9:53 am | By

Another turn of the screw:

What is a woman? This now highly controversial issue will be decided in November by the highest court in the land.

No it won’t. It’s not the kind of thing that can be decided by a court, however high. The question would have to be “What will we all be required to call a woman?” or some similar wording for the claim to be true. Courts decide law; they can’t decide reality.

The justices — three men and two women — will be led by Lord Reed of Allermuir, 68, president of the court and the UK’s most senior judge. He is undaunted by the task. “When we hear cases … we are not

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Jumpfortrump

Oct 6th, 2024 6:00 am | By

Weirdness report:

A number of Donald Trump critics have mocked Elon Musk over his appearance alongside the former president at a Pennsylvania rally.

What, just because he jumped up and down like a lunatic?

Musk, the billionaire owner of X, formerly Twitter, and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, joined Trump onstage in Butler on Saturday to show his support for the Republican and state that he is “not just MAGA — I am Dark MAGA.”

After Trump introduced Musk to the stage, the tech mogul enthusiastically jumped in the air several times while supporters cheered. Musk, who wore a black Make America Great Again cap, warned in his speech that “this will be the last election” if

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Oligopoly

Oct 5th, 2024 5:08 pm | By

Billionaires unite to trash everything.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1842679008791581140 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1842679258587488697

We’re doomed.… Read the rest



Enby credit report

Oct 5th, 2024 9:15 am | By

Shit just got real.

Financial services firms have been forced to pay hundreds of pounds in compensation to non-binary customers over “discriminatory” application forms. 

MoneySuperMarket (MSM), the comparison website, and Transunion, a credit union, were hit with separate complaints because their application forms did not include options for non-binary customers in their gender section.

But…that’s not a thing. It’s not real. It has nothing to do with realities like credit. You might as well say credit applications should include options for witches.

According to the complaint, MSM argued that changes to their website are bound by the information their insurance partners ask for and that many of them have not made provision for customers who identify as non-binary.

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Yes they can

Oct 5th, 2024 8:51 am | By

If only we could have not-idiots. Never mind nice things, that’s too much to ask, but just not…this…

Marjorie Taylor Greene challenges YOU to prove Hurricane Helene wasn’t an inside job.

As the death toll from one of the worst U.S. storms in recent memory topped 200 on Friday morning, the Republican congresswoman and noted conspiracy theorist posted a timely reminder on X that “yes they can control the weather” and that “it’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

I wonder who “they” are. The Jews? The Dems? People with some brain cells?

The Georgia Republican drew widespread mockery and derision in 2021 after it was revealed she’d previously suggested devastating wildfires in

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How can people talk such crap?

Oct 5th, 2024 6:22 am | By

It seems the hot new thing is to claim that the Feds are ignoring the hurricane victims.

Yeah good question except that that’s not what’s happening.

I did a little exploring and, of course, found that it’s the usual bullshit – baseless claims being amplified by fools.

Ok due warning, this is the Washington Post, which of course is in on the sinister plot … Read the rest



Guest post: Scientific fact AND philosophical belief

Oct 5th, 2024 4:35 am | By

Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on These rococo claims.

Maya Forstater won her landmark employment case in the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) on Thursday, June 10, 2021. The UK EAT is a high court, so she won a binding precedent for lower court cases (e.g. in the more recent case of Elizabeth Pitt that the FSU reported above).

Later that day, Freddie Sayers interviewed Maya about her case, and Ophelia posted the interview video here. In my comment #6 there, I transcribed part of the video, where Maya explained that her legal position had two parts to be taken together:

(1) The scientific FACT that “sex is real” — as her shorthand for “binary, immutable”, and … Read the rest



Fun with engineering

Oct 4th, 2024 5:57 pm | By

On a brighter note, meet the Falkirk Wheel. It joins two canals that are at different heights. They used to be joined by 12 locks that took almost an entire day to go through. Now the joining takes minutes.

Adding another, filmed by a drone.

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