Canada is on fire early again.

Thousands of people in western Canada are facing the wrath of wildfires this week amid severe drought. Some six thousand people were told to evacuate Fort McMurray, Alberta, where 90,000 residents were forced to flee during the 2016 wildfires. More than 3,000 others were ordered to leave Fort Nelson, British Columbia, where a fire is burning 2.5km (1.5 miles) from the town.

Evacuation alerts were also issued in the provinces of Alberta and Manitoba. Smoke from the fires has triggered air quality alerts in Canada and the US.

It’s only May. That’s early.

There are two common sources of wildfires in Canada: lightning and human beings, Gordon McBean, a geography and environment professor

Excellent: we’re having the conversation about difficulty/complexity versus truth. It’s an important conversation.

JK Rowling:

I wouldn’t mind, but the people telling me I don’t appreciate the complexity of the issue are the same ones saying ‘a man is a woman if he says he’s one. This isn’t difficult. How can you not grasp it?’

It’s complex when they want it to be complex and easy when they want it to be easy.

But more to the point, it doesn’t matter that it “isn’t difficult.” Of course it isn’t difficult; making stupid flat nonsensical assertions is laughably easy; so what? The point is, it isn’t true.

Eyes on the prize, people.… Read the rest

This one is exceptionally hard to read without head explosions.

Women’s Liberation Front aka WoLF:

This week, WoLF received the disappointing news that the district court dismissed Chandler v. CDCR on procedural grounds. We are reviewing the decision and considering our options for the next steps in this case. 

Background:

In 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 132 (SB 132) into law. This legislation, which went into effect in January of 2021 as the “Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act”, allows incarcerated men to be housed in women’s correctional facilities based on self-declared “gender identity.” This law allows men to “self-identify” as women or non-binary, and be housed in women’s facilities.

Something in this paragraph leaps right … Read the rest

The ACLU is ecstatic. Women, not so much.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by an anti-transgender group against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) challenging SB132, the groundbreaking law protecting transgender people incarcerated in California.  

The law protecting men incarcerated in California at the expense of women incarcerated with them. Men are protected and women are endangered, and the ACLU is just thrilled.

Lambda Legal, Transgender Law Center (TLC), the ACLU Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal), and O’Melveny & Myers had joined California’s request to dismiss the case on behalf of the Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project (TGI Justice Project) and four currently incarcerated

This doesn’t seem very judicialish. It doesn’t even seem moderately adult.

An upside-down American flag – a symbol used by some supporters of former President Donald Trump who challenged the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory – hung outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito after the election, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Well why didn’t he just go on Fox News and show us his ass on camera? If you’re gonna go, go big.

The revelation is almost certain to prompt calls for Alito, a member of the court’s conservative wing, to recuse himself from several high-profile cases pending before the court this year involving the election and subsequent attack on the US Capitol, including the

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Certificates determine reality.

They have to work backward to the justification on the spot, which isn’t easy when there’s no valid argument that can get you there from sound premises.

Having failed to think very long or hard about trans “rights” when they took them on board means they’re having to defend claims that are impossible and extreme.

Humans have gender identities.

Humans can be “born in the wrong body.”

Gender identity over-rides sex.

In humans, sex is a spectrum.

Humans can change sex.

Each of these claims about the nature of material reality requires evidence and proof on its own, yet they’re usually sold together as a package, and … Read the rest

The University of Reading (or, perhaps, just its Twitter jockey) does not believe in women’s rights. Trans rights yes, of course, but women’s, no. If you want to talk about women’s rights you can’t, you have to call them people’s rights.

Clash of the monotheisms:

French police have killed a man after a synagogue was set on fire in the north-western city of Rouen. The man was armed with a knife and a metallic tool and was shot after he threatened officers, the Rouen prosecutor said…French reports say the suspect was Algerian and was appealing against an order to leave France.

You could also call it clash of the colonizers and the colonized, but then colonization itself is often entangled with monotheistic rivalry. Christian countries get to colonize Muslim countries because they have The Correct God™ – and vice versa. It’s basically the same god, but it doesn’t do to say so.

Earlier this week a memorial in Paris that

Coup plotters signal each other in broad daylight:

Matt Gaetz echoed Donald Trump’s infamous remarks about the far-right Proud Boys on Thursday, as the Florida Republican congressman and other rightwing supporters of the former US president attended his criminal trial in Manhattan.

“Standing back, and standing by, Mr President,” Gaetz wrote on social media, with a photo of his group of supporters standing behind Trump outside the court where Trump is on trial…

Standing by to overthrow the government is it?

The Proud Boys, a “western chauvinist” group, were involved in street violence during Trump’s years in power, clashing with leftwing protesters.

Identifiable by their black and yellow colors, they participated in the attack on Congress of 6

Pathetic.

Gillian Keegan has said men who undergo gender reassignment are women.

Last month, the Education Secretary told The Telegraph that she would no longer say that trans women were women, saying her understanding of the issue had “evolved”.

But in an interview with Radio 4’s Today programme, she said it depended whether the person was self-identifying as the opposite sex or whether they had actually obtained a gender reassignment certificate from a doctor.

That’s so idiotic. You might as well say it depended whether the person was self-identifying as an airplane or whether they had actually obtained an object reassignment certificate from a doctor.

A doctor issuing a “certificate” doesn’t and can’t make a man into a woman. … Read the rest

It turns out Daniel Perry isn’t a very nice fella.

Check out some of the heinous things Daniel Perry has said—including bragging about killing a homeless person, researching attacks on Jews in Texas, and googling “chats to meet young girls.” https://t.co/OqvBrpDpHd

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) May 16, 2024

So Greg Abbott pardoned him.… Read the rest

In Texas news…

Daniel Perry, a former US Army sergeant who was convicted of murdering a protester at a Black Lives Matter rally in 2020, was released from prison Thursday after he was pardoned by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Abbott’s decision comes after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously Thursday to recommend a full pardon and the restoration of firearm rights for Perry, who was sentenced last year to 25 years in prison. Shortly after he was pardoned, Perry was released from Texas Department of Criminal Justice custody, a spokesperson for the agency told CNN.

…

Perry faced between five and 99 years in prison for fatally shooting 28-year-old Air Force veteran Garrett Foster at an

Mister Menno!

“But then trans comes along and says [air quotes] ‘We are going to identify into what you are, objectively, because of how we feel, subjectively.’ And that is not a human right. That is a colonizer’s privilege.”… Read the rest

Yet another one of these.

Nothing to see here except yet another attempt to have an academic event cancelled. pic.twitter.com/Bdlv80iBn0

— Prof Jo Phoenix (@JoPhoenix1) May 16, 2024

Nonsense. Of course a Sex Matters event couldn’t “compromise the safety” of students and staff. They just say that because they want to shut Sex Matters and Jo Phoenix up, and they don’t have a good reason so they offer a bad and dishonest one.

As for “extremist,” look in the mirror, ya punks.… Read the rest

Finally: a win.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto has settled defamation actions launched against him by two women who joined a controversial rally on the steps of state parliament that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis last year.

The private settlements – with UK anti-trans rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen and Melbourne woman Angela Jones – leave Pesutto to fight just one defamation action in the Federal Court, brought by exiled Liberal MP Moira Deeming.

…

Keen and Jones alleged Pesutto defamed them in an effort to have Deeming removed from the Liberal party room, after the three women helped organise the Let Women Speak rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis outside parliament in March last year.

The women all alleged Pesutto defamed

Next up: get rid of everyone who says the earth is not flat.

Scottish Greens expel gender rebels

Rebel members have been kicked out of the Scottish Green Party for declaring that “sex is a biological reality”.

Signatories to the Scottish Green Declaration for Women’s Sex-Based Rights were accused of making the party less safe for trans and non-binary members in an official complaint.

Did anyone point out that the obsession with “trans and non-binary members” is making the party less safe for women? And that there are far more women than “trans and non-binary” people? That in fact half of all people are women and girls? Did anyone ask why it’s better to make the party “less safe” for … Read the rest

Republicans are the party of liberty liberty liberty.

The North Carolina Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to ban anyone from wearing masks in public for health reasons, following an emotional debate about the wisdom of the proposal.

So people with compromised immune systems just have to stay home or die. Peak liberty!

The proposal faced strong opposition from Democratic lawmakers, community activists, and advocates for people with health issues — who are concerned about the consequences of the proposal.

House Bill 237 would ban everyone, not just protesters, from wearing masks in public for medical reasons if it becomes law. It passed 30-15, with every Republican in favor and every Democrat opposed.

“It’s unconscionable,” said Sen. Lisa Grafstein,

A tiny step back at last.

Schools in England should not teach about gender identity, according to new draft guidance from the government. Government sources told BBC News about plans to ban sex education for under-nines, as well as teaching about gender identity, on Wednesday.

…

Under the plans, secondary-school pupils will learn about protected characteristics, such as sexual orientation and gender reassignment. But the updated guidance makes clear schools “should not teach about the concept of gender identity“, the government says.

There’s a problem already: what is “gender reassignment”? How will these pupils learn about it minus the concept of “gender idenniny”? In short why not delete “gender reassignment” from the curriculum too?

It said it was

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on Just going with what a lot of other people have said.

The purpose of the thought experiment, indeed any thought experiment, is to force you to confront the intersection of your intuition and your reason. It is not to stack the deck and make one choice seem absurd.

It is exactly the thing that we do when we work in idealized frictionless environments of perfect elasticity. If you, as a physics student, refuse to answer the exam question because the real world is messy and not frictionless, you’re missing the point. We idealize the situation in full knowledge that it’s unrealistic. Why? Because it allows us to focus on the … Read the rest

This is in the Guardian?? Oooooh she gonna be in TRUBble.

I have some inspiring news for heterosexuals who may be struggling with their lifestyle choices: Dannii Minogue has bravely come out as straight.

She has a long-term boyfriend, see, but she was doing a presser and was asked if she fancies women.

Minogue replied: “You girls are hot. You know it. I love it. I’m here for it. Is that an answer?” Not really, to be honest. Still, she also helpfully clarified that she identifies “as queer in a weird way”.

Whoops, the Australian singer obviously thought, when she looked at the papers the next day and saw a million headlines along the lines of “Dannii Minogue ‘fights