When even banks and the police are on board, it’s time to realize your cause may not be all that progressive.

The Bank of England has stated that people of any gender identity can become pregnant.

Then the Bank of England has said a deeply stupid thing. “Any gender identity” will necessarily include males, and males cannot become pregnant.

In any case “gender identity” is irrelevant to pregnancy. A person’s sex is relevant to pregnancy. The female sex is the one that can get pregnant; the male sex is the one that can’t. Next question?

Andrew Bailey’s under-pressure central bank, which is battling to bring inflation under control, also offers to help staff to pay for gender reassignment treatment using private medical insurance.

The Bank of England’s views and actions were included in its 2022 submission to be included in the list of the 100 top employers published by Stonewall, the LGBT lobby group, a copy of which has been obtained by The Times.

What, the Bank of England wants to be one of the cool kids? Since when do banks aspire to Stonewall stardom? When have banks ever given this much of a shit about women?

The Bank is to introduce a recruitment system that will include “broader gender definitions” and wants to create “quantitative targets” in respect of LGBT employees. Stonewall suggested a focus on categories such as parents, LGBT staff aged under 26 or over 50, those at board level and people of faith. It added: “Stonewall can support with developing this area through creating bespoke workshops.”

The Bank of England said: “The Bank is committed to being an inclusive place to work for all of its colleagues who are all dedicated to delivering monetary and financial stability.”

Surely this is parody. Surely.

Conor Friedersdorf on the hypocrisy of mandatory diversity statements:

John D. Haltigan sued the University of California at Santa Cruz in May. He wants to work there as a professor of psychology. But he alleges that its hiring practices violate the First Amendment by imposing an ideological litmus test on prospective hires: To be considered, an applicant must submit a statement detailing their contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

That sounds like a stretch to me, but I’m not a lawyer. But whether it violates amendment #1 or not, it is at least an irritating mode of gatekeeping. It’s jargon, and jargon of that kind tends to put people off more than it inspires them to help minorities dismantle barriers. Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s good to help minorities kick over those barriers, it’s just that I think pious jargon isn’t the way to do that.

The lawsuit compares the DEI-statement requirement to Red Scare–era loyalty oaths that asked people to affirm that they were not members of the Communist Party. It calls the statements “a thinly veiled attempt to ensure dogmatic conformity throughout the university system.”

Plus it’s pious jargon.

Imagine if we get dueling pious jargons – the air won’t be fit to breathe.

The Haltigan lawsuit—filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a right-leaning nonprofit—is the first major free-speech challenge to a public institution that requires these statements. If Haltigan prevails, state institutions may be unable to mandate diversity statements in the future, or may find themselves constrained in how they solicit or assess such statements.

…

Alternatively, a victory for UC Santa Cruz may entrench the trend of compelling academics to submit DEI statements in institutions that are under the control of the left—and serve as a blueprint for the populist right to impose its own analogous requirements in state college systems it controls. For example, Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, who was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis to help overhaul higher education in Florida, advocates replacing diversity, equity, and inclusion with equality, merit, and colorblindness. If California can lawfully force professors to detail their contributions to DEI, Florida can presumably force all of its professors to detail their contributions to EMC. And innovative state legislatures could create any number of new favored-concept triads to impose on professors in their states.

One, two, many Pious Jargons!

This specialty gatekeeping seems to have developed and ballooned very quickly.

The regime these administrators created is a case study in concept creep. Around 2005, the UC system began to change how it evaluated professors. As ever, they would be judged based on teaching, research, and service. But the system-wide personnel manual was updated with a novel provision: Job candidates who showed that they promoted “diversity and equal opportunity” in teaching, research, or service could get credit for doing so. 

…

If matters stood there, the UC approach to “diversity and equal opportunity” might not face legal challenges. But administrators successfully pushed for a more radical approach. What began as an option to highlight work that advanced “diversity and equal opportunity” morphed over time into mandatory statements on contributions to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The shift circa 2018 from the possibility of credit for something to a forced accounting of it was important. So was the shift from the widely shared value of equal opportunity to equity (a contested and controversial concept with no widely agreed-upon meaning) and inclusion. The bundled triad of DEI is typically justified by positing that hiring a racially and ethnically diverse faculty or admitting a diverse student body is not enough—for the institution and everyone in it to thrive, the best approach (in this telling) is to treat some groups differently than others to account for structural disadvantages they suffer and to make sure everyone feels welcome, hence “inclusion.”

…

Perhaps the most extreme developments in the UC system’s use of DEI statements are taking place on the Davis, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and Riverside campuses, where pilot programs treat mandatory diversity statements not as one factor among many in an overall evaluation of candidates, but as a threshold test. In other words, if a group of academics applied for jobs, their DEI statements would be read and scored, and only applicants with the highest DEI statement scores would make it to the next round. The others would never be evaluated on their research, teaching, or service.

Wo. That’s startling. It’s not an add-on at the very end, it’s the first gate.

This approach—one that is under direct challenge in the Haltigan lawsuit—was scrutinized in detail by Daniel M. Ortner of the Pacific Legal Foundation in an article for the Catholic University Law Review. When UC Berkeley hired for life-sciences jobs through its pilot program, Ortner reports, 679 qualified applicants were eliminated based on their DEI statements alone. “Seventy-six percent of qualified applicants were rejected without even considering their teaching skills, their publication history, their potential for academic excellence, or their ability to contribute to their field,” he wrote. “As far as the university knew, these applicants could have well been the next Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk, or they might have been outstanding and innovative educators who would make a significant difference in students’ lives.”

I hate to agree with Catholic University on anything, but that’s appalling if it’s true.

And the cruise ships still ply to and fro.

Travelers are drawn to Antarctica for what they can find there—the wildlife, the scenery, the sense of adventure—and for what they can’t: cars, buildings, cell towers. They talk about the overwhelming silence. The Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge called it “the quietest place I have ever been.”

All of these attractions are getting harder to find in the rest of the world. They’re disappearing in Antarctica too. The continent is melting; whole chunks are prematurely tumbling into the ocean. And more people than ever are in Antarctica because tourism is on a tear.

“Antarctica is so brilliant because it’s quiet and empty of people, so I’m going to go there!” The human story in a nutshell.

Four decades ago, the continent saw only a few hundred visitors each summer. More than 100,000 people traveled there this past season, the majority arriving on cruises. 

That is, on cruise ships, the ones that burn 85 thousand gallons of fuel a day when in motion.

Perversely, the climate change that imperils Antarctica is making the continent easier to visit; melting sea ice has extended the cruising season. Travel companies are scrambling to add capacity. Cruise lines have launched several new ships over the past couple of years. Silversea’s ultra-luxurious Silver Endeavour is being used for “fast-track” trips—time-crunched travelers can save a few days by flying directly to Antarctica in business class.

Well if there’s anything you want when visiting Antarctica it’s ultra-luxury.

Traveling to Antarctica is a carbon-intensive activity. Flights and cruises must cross thousands of miles in extreme conditions, contributing to the climate change that is causing ice loss and threatening whales, seals, and penguins. By one estimate, the carbon footprint for a person’s Antarctic cruise can be roughly equivalent to the average European’s output for a year, because cruise ships are heavy polluters and tourists have to fly so far. 

To repeat: cruise ships burn 85 thousand gallons of fuel a day. And this is purely recreational aka luxury travel – it serves no purpose other than the enjoyment of the people on the cruise ships and planes. Enjoyment is a good thing, but slowing the destruction of the Antarctic is a better thing.

Antarctic tourism also directly imperils an already fragile ecosystem. Soot deposits from ship engines accelerate snow melting. Hikes can damage flora that take well over a decade to regrow in the harsh environment. Humans risk introducing disease and invasive species. Their very presence, North Carolina State scientists have shown, stresses out penguins, and could affect the animals’ breeding.

Yet as tourism gets more popular, companies are competing to offer high-contact experiences that are more exciting than gazing at glaciers from the deck of a ship. Last year, for instance, a company named White Desert opened its latest luxury camp in Antarctica. Its sleeping domes, roughly 60 miles from the coast, are perched near an emperor-penguin colony and can be reached only by private jet. Guests, who pay at least $65,000 a stay, are encouraged to explore the continent by plane, Ski-Doos, and Arctic truck before enjoying a gourmet meal whose ingredients are flown in from South Africa.

Yeah that’s great, zip around on Ski-Doos and disrupt Emperor Penguins’ breeding. Whatever floats your jet ski.

In 2007, the MS Explorer, a 250-foot expedition cruise ship, sank near penguin breeding grounds on the South Shetland Islands, leaving behind a wreck and a mile-long oil slick. Most cruise ships are registered in what Stephens calls “flag-convenient countries” that are lax on oversight.

That’s nice. That’s an impressive touch.

It’s Wednesday. I think that’s the only day in the week there isn’t a cruise ship or two at the pier due west of where I’m sitting right now.

It’s not the future any more.

The world’s average temperature reached a new high on Monday 3 July, topping 17 degrees Celsius for the first time. Scientists say the reading was the highest in any instrumental record dating back to the end of the 19th century. The high heat is due to a combination of the El Niño weather event and ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide.

Researchers believe there will be more records in the coming months as El Niño strengthens.

Stay in the shade.

If you’re a man who claims to be trans you can do whatever you want.

A transwoman who admitted having dozens of indecent images of children has been spared jail after magistrates said they took an “unusual” decision.

Images of children being sexually abused, that is.

Tanya Howes, 66, was told by magistrates that the offences “would normally attract immediate custody”.

But they said they had decided to suspend a 12 month jail term, something they conceded was “unusual”.

But you see he’s a Member of the Trans Communniny so it wouldn’t do to punish him.

A ban on trans women with male genitalia who are violent or sexual offenders serving sentences in female prisons came into force earlier this year.

No trans women should be serving sentences in female prisons.

Howes, of Netherwood Green, Norwich, was sentenced to a total of 12 months imprisonment, suspended for two years.

Ian Taylor, chair of the bench of magistrates, said: “These offences would normally attract immediate custody.”

“But you’re trans so you can do whatever you want all the time.”

Damien Moore, mitigating, said: “This case has attracted publicity that has inevitably had consequences for her in her personal life. It’s very, very clear that she will forever more have to live with the shame and embarrassment that these offences bring upon someone”.

Or maybe he doesn’t feel any shame and embarrassment.

Transgender Trend shares a heartbreaking and enraging letter to Rishi Sunak from five teenage girls asking for single-sex toilets in schools.

Five teenage girls from schools across England have got together to write to the Prime Minister asking for the re-establishment of single-sex toilets in schools, for the privacy, dignity and safety of girls, and to state this unequivocally in the forthcoming trans schools guidance. The girls have used pseudonyms to protect their identities, which we also think sends a strong message about the situation for girls now in schools, that they are too afraid of being ostracised or bullied for holding gender-critical views [to make this reasonable request openly].

Dear Rishi Sunak

Single-sex facilities are an essential safeguarding feature, however we – five girls in secondary school – are concerned that this matter may be overlooked in the upcoming schools transgender guidance in place of a recommendation for a mixture of single-sex and mixed-sex toilets. If this is the case, it will severely lessen the safeguards set in place to protect girls and will place many at risk. We urge the Prime Minister, as the father of two young daughters, to ensure our rights are upheld in the upcoming schools transgender guidance. 

Secondary school can be an incredibly turbulent time for girls – our bodies are changing, the social relationships between boys are girls are different, and we may not feel entirely uncomfortable with everything happening to and around us. This can be an extremely distressing time, and single-sex spaces such as toilets can be a place for us to deal with stress in a private environment – but when you introduce the opposite sex into the equation, any dignity we retain is immediately obliterated.  

But girls don’t need dignity, right? Girls don’t need anything? Girls are the ruling class? Girls are the oppressors of trans people? Girls are cis-white Karens?

Periods, for instance, are something that solely girls experience at school. When dealing with menstruation, girls must have private spaces where we can sort this out with dignity, away from potential shaming from boys and the humiliation of having everyone know you’re on your period. However, boys continue to mock girls for menstruating…

If there were no menstruation, there would be no boys to be mocking girls for doing it. How about a little empathy or even gratitude, instead of mockery and disgust?

At one of our schools, there have been multiple complaints from students – for instance, at a student council meeting, the pupils grouped together to ask for change; the boys explaining they found the feminine hygiene products “disgusting”, and the girls stating they felt afraid and upset being forced to use the same toilets as the boys, which have gaps at the top and bottom. However, the school refused to change anything, and to this day, half the toilets in that specific school remain mixed-sex.

Too bad, JuniorKarens. Sucks to be you.

In another school, one of us started an online petition asking for single-sex spaces, however the petition, once reaching 12,800 signatures, was deleted by Change.org. 

Trans people>girls.

Originally a comment by Arty Morty on A seven-page dossier.

I’m glad the Free Speech Union is defending Colonel Wright. I recently ditched my little canvas New Yorker tote bag for a little canvas Free Speech Union bag that I proudly carry every time I go to the market.

I’m not entirely surprised the army is so hostile to gender-critical views, considering the military is lousy with crossdressers. For reasons still not quite understood, military men are far more likely to become transvestites than men in any other profession. The trope of the secretly-crossdressing general has been around since at least the 18th century. It’s incredible how many of the most famous trans activists of the 20th and 21st centuries were soldiers:

Private Bradley “Chelsea” Manning, famed Wikileaks whistleblower.

Admiral Richard “Rachel” Levine, Assistant Secretary of Health.

Sergeant First Class James “Jamie/Ellie Rae” Shupe, first legally-recognized “nonbinary” American.

Lieutenant Colonel James “Jennifer” Pritzker, founder of the Pritzker Military Library.

G.I. George “Christine” Jorgensen, the first famous transsexual.

Lance Corporal James “Jan” Morris, CBE, journalist and bestselling author; famed for accompanying Hillary on his Everest expedition.

No wonder the “trans in the military ban” was the first major campaign the nascent transgender movement took on. I have a friend who works in a government job that serves veterans — he says you wouldn’t believe how many crossdressers/trans identifying men he has to deal with.

There’s a great scene in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, where the director Ed Wood, played by Johnny Depp, confesses to a film producer that he’s a transvestite (but definitely not gay) in an attempt to win the bid to direct a Christine Jorgensen bio-pic:

Producer: “So, you’re not a fruit?”

Wood: “No, I’m all man. I even fought in WW2. Course I was wearing women’s undergarments under my uniform.”

Producer: “You gotta be kidding me.”

Wood: “Confidentially, I even paratrooped wearing a brassiere and panties. I’ll tell ya, I wasn’t scared of being killed, but I was terrified of getting wounded and having the medics discover my secret.”

Starts at about the 1:30 mark.

All perfectly normal.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk appeared in a Twitter post to endorse the idea of taking the right to vote away from people without children.

Yet again, where are the editors? Musk didn’t appear in a Twitter post. That’s silly: nobody can appear in a Twitter post. But anyway – Musk said the thing.

The billionaire Tesla co-founder replied “Yup,” to a series of posts from Twitter user @fentasyl, which argued “democracy is probably unworkable long term without limiting suffrage to parents.”

Yo Eelzee baby, maybe it’s the other way around. Ja ever think of that? Maybe it’s parents who shouldn’t be allowed to vote, because they’re so likely to favor their children over everyone else.

These opinions are hardly surprising for Mr Musk, who has long expressed concerns about declining birth rates in the US and the lack of “smart” people having enough children, views which critics have argued are verging on eugenicist.

In 2022, Musk, who has fathered nine children, wrote on Twitter that, “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”

Super nice of him to do his bit. Mind you, his bit is a whole hell of a lot easier than the woman’s bit, so he’s not really making much of a sacrifice.

Earlier this year, he elaborated, telling former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson that society hasn’t “evolved” to respond to abortions and contraception, which the billionaire incorrectly claimed were invented in the last 50 years.

“I’m sort of worried that hey, civilisation, if we don’t make enough people to at least sustain our numbers, perhaps increase a little bit, then civilisation’s going to crumble,” Musk said. “The old question of, will civilisation end with a bang or a whimper?”

What “old question” would that be exactly? It’s certainly not what T. S. Eliot meant by the phrase.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Are you now or have you ever been a diversity statement?

If you do think that the different men/women ratios in roles such as primary-school teaching and nursing, versus, say, construction work, being a lumberjack and computer coding, are all about socialisation and very little to do with biological differences, then, well, I think you’re wrong.

It would help things immensly if we were looking at this in an environment where socialization was neutral, but we’re not. I think it’s far too early to rule out socialization. Horribly naive in fact. Even without the subtle (and not so subtle) coaching and influence of even the most well-meaning and enlightened parents, there’s still the rest of the world to deal with outside the small bubble of progressive parenting. The classroom, the schoolyard, the shopping mall, the internet, all have their lessons to pass on, some overt, others less so. You can’t prevent children from seeing and absorbing these influences, however good and non-sexist a parent you are. You can teach your kids how to swim, but they’re still going to get wet. The values, attitudes, and expectations are out there, and will have to be countered and reacted to; even if resisted successfully, it’s still a strain, a burden and yes, an influence all the same. It’s all “socialization,” even if you do not adopt the unacceptable mores in which you find yourself immersed. It’s still a current you have to swim against, one that requires effort, focus, and energy that could have been directed elsewhere had they not been pushing against you. Sure struggle can “build character,” but needless, pointless, bloody-minded idiocy can be a fucking drain, too. The current is wide, and it is constant, and it is strong. Pink Lego is is not value neutral. It’s a physical manifestation of the cultures demands and expectations, coded into a toy. But sure, let’s just dismiss socialization as a factor that has an impact on the sex ratios in jobs and careers.

Women haven’t caught up with men in so many ways in the “developed world” and if you look at the situation from a global perspective, things are even more tenuous for women. Until women get equal pay, equal access to and possession of property and wealth, reproductive choice, supportive childcare, and girls get equal access and provision for education, nobody will be able to run the experiment. We still have cultures where some adults would rather let girls die rather than escape a burning building without modestly covering their heads, that would kill their own daughters if they “dishonour” their families, that will let women die before aborting a doomed fetus, where the police put more effort into prosecuting tweets and limericks than rape. What messages does this send to girls and women in these socities? When do we level this playing field? How free are women in any of these cultures? Maybe we should work out this kind of life and death calculus before we decide that we can safely disregard the influence of socialization in a woman’s decision to become a teacher rather than a lumberjack?

But wait, ther’s more. now women are having to fight a rearguard action against the encroachments of trans activists before they’ve achieved parity with men generally. Another current to fight against, another drain on time energy, and attention. The very word “women” has been declared up for grabs by men claiming it as their own and huge swathes of government, media, and industry are helping them. Children are lured into life long medicalization, stunted development and sterility, again with the enabling hand of powerful, influencial institutions paving the way. Telling kids they can change sex is “socialization” too. Too many kids, and their parents are falling for these blatant lies before we’ve even stopped telling the more subtle and pervasive lies of sexist, patriarchal sex roles that start with pink or blue baby booties. We haven’t acheived justice yet, but are all too eager to swallow madness. These are sex roles with a vengeance. Again, girls are learning lessons in real time about their worth and value as human beings from school boards, universities, sporting bodies, the media and more, who all allow and encourage male invasion of female sports and facilities. It’s a wonder there aren’t more girls trying to flee femaleness when they can see that their rights are so easily violated and cast aside in the interests of male feelings. And if they dare to say “No?” Welcome to pariahhood, Karen. Who wouldn’t rather be special and lionized than worthless and vilified? Not everyone has the strength to fight this kind of battle, to swim against this current. Children shouldn’t have to. But sure Coel, let’s pretend that we can just say that it’s all down to underlying, biological, sex-based preferences, and stop worrying about the the wrongheaded belief that occupational outcomes have anything at all to do with the influence of the cultures that kids are brought up in.

Note: YNnB followed up that comment with “Rereading my post above, I’d like to apologize in advance to Coel for my rhetorical excess in ascribing to him an all or nothing, either/or nature/nurture argument which he has not. I still think he’s far too dismissive of cultural influence, and I think we’re a lot farther from having any sort of control group than he thinks.”

Even the Army?

A colonel has claimed he was forced to quit the Army after he was criticised for stating that “men cannot be women”.

Dr Kelvin Wright, 54, had been a Reservist commanding officer with 14 years’ unblemished service, including two tours in Afghanistan, before his “honour was attacked” with a transphobia complaint and an investigation he described as “hellish”.

In May, he shared a post on his private Facebook account from Fair Play for Women, a campaign group that works with governing bodies to preserve women’s sport for those born female, which consisted of a quote from Helen Joyce, a feminist campaigner backed by the author JK Rowling.

The quote, shared without any additional comment, said: “If women cannot stand in a public place and say ‘men cannot be women’, then we do not have women’s rights at all.”

So the heresy-sniffers leapt into action.

This prompted a junior officer to warn him that his gender-critical views could be at odds with Ministry of Defence transgender policies, before what Dr Wright calls the Army’s “LGBT champions” allegedly drew up a seven-page dossier about his “substandard behaviour” – which he was not allowed to see.

Isn’t it interesting how women have never had this kind of instant intense rushing to punish people for disputing our rights, but when we have the gall to say men are not women and if we’re not allowed to say that then we can’t have our own rights – then the hammer comes down. The hammer comes down so hard that it hammers even army colonels who say it with us.

Dr Wright, who led a team of 60 troops in 306 Hospital Support Regiment alongside working as an NHS intensive care consultant, has this month felt forced to retire six years earlier than planned, slashing his total Army pension in the process.

He is being supported by the Free Speech Union, which has appointed an employment barrister to defend him, as the investigation is still ongoing.

Dr Wright told The Telegraph: “This attack on my honour made my position completely untenable. I could no longer remain in an Army which treated its officers with such disrespect.

“What message does it send to women in the Army, that merely for noting the existence of women and women’s rights even a colonel can be placed under investigation? I therefore feel there is no other choice but to make this matter public.”

The message it sends to women in the Army is absolutely horrific. He’s a good man for giving a damn.

Extremely rich man who pays no taxes gets extremely expensive new sword paid for by people not as rich as he is.

A new sword will be presented to King Charles when he receives Scotland’s crown jewels at a ceremony in Edinburgh.

The King will be presented with the Honours of Scotland at a service in St Giles’ Cathedral on 5 July.

Named after his late mother, the Elizabeth sword was commissioned because the existing 16th Century sword is too fragile to handle.

So don’t handle it then. Skip the sword-handling, or use another sword from the cupboard.

The Elizabeth Sword cost £22,000 to make and was designed by Mark Dennis and worked on by a number of expert Scottish craftspeople.

A bargain, am I right?! And worth every penny.

Huh. I thought Choss was supposed to be such a keen environmentalist.

King Charles’s private country estate at Sandringham in Norfolk has been linked to the deaths and disappearances of a string of legally protected birds over the past two decades, a Guardian investigation has found.

The cases include the alleged poisoning, shooting and disappearance of some of the UK’s rarest birds of prey. One of the cases involved the mysterious loss of eastern England’s last breeding female montagu’s harrier, a critically endangered species whose future in the UK is now looking bleak.

The Guardian has identified 18 cases since 2003 involving suspected wildlife offences or the alleged misuse of poisons, linked to the royal estate and neighbouring farmland owned by the king.

But that’s all right, he sells Duchy Organic Shortbread, so it all balances out.

Many of the cases are detailed by official regulators in internal documents that have been released under freedom of information legislation.

The documents reveal how the police and enforcement officials have regularly investigated the Windsors’ private estate, which spans about 8,100 hectares (20,000 acres) of parkland, farmland and forestry. The latest investigation ended earlier this year.

The documents also reveal how the estate appears on occasion to have hindered official investigations. In 2016, Natural England, the conservation regulator, recorded that it was unable to investigate the suspicious deaths of up to 40 wood pigeons on the estate as it appeared the area had been “cleaned up” early one morning.

Shhhh. Have a cup of tea and an organic shortbread.

The disclosures could be particularly uncomfortable for the king since the late Queen Elizabeth II had been patron of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) since 1952. Prince Philip was patron of the British Trust for Ornithology until his death in April 2021.

Oh come on. That’s a whole different thing. It’s not about giving a shit about birds, it’s about PR.

Is the heat really such a problem? Who needs fish and plants anyway?

The UK’s hottest June on record caused unprecedented deaths of fish in rivers and disturbed insects and plants, environment groups have warned. Nature is being “pounded by extreme weather without a chance to recover”, the Wildlife Trusts said.

…

“The reports of the number of fish death incidents in rivers for this time of year has been unprecedented. I would normally expect rivers to be affected later in the summer when it’s hotter and drier,” Mark Owen, from the Angling Trust, told BBC News. In one case, sea trout were found dead on the River Wear in north-east England, he said.

The deaths are partly caused by less oxygen in the water as river levels decrease. Fish also die when dried-up pollutants from cars and lorries on roads wash into rivers during flash storms. The Environment Agency said it received more reports of dead fish than the same time last year.

…

Many flowering plants, including orchids, wilted in the high temperatures, meaning insects like bees and butterflies that feed on nectar and pollen will have less to eat, Ali Morse from the Wildlife Trusts told BBC News. Species with short lifespans are particularly badly affected. Many butterflies are adults for only a short time, and if they cannot access food in that period, it stunts the population.

The race to the edge of the cliff continues.

Hottest so far.

The UK had the hottest June on record, the Met Office has confirmed. The average monthly temperature of 15.8C (60.4F) exceeded the previous highest average June temperature, recorded in 1940 and 1976, by 0.9C.

Climate change made the chance of surpassing the previous joint record at least twice as likely, scientists also said.

…

“It’s officially the hottest June on record for the UK, for mean temperature as well as average maximum and minimum temperature,” said Met Office’s Climate Science Manager Mark McCarthy.

“An increase of 0.9C may not seem a huge amount, but it’s really significant because it has taken the average daytime and the night time temperature for the whole of the UK,” Paul Davies, Met Office chief meteorologist and climate extremes principal fellow, told BBC News. “That’s significant in a warming climate and because of the consequential impacts on society,” he added.

He also said that while the UK recorded a higher one-off temperature of 40.3C last summer, the difference last month was the sustained heat both day and night.

On the upside, it hasn’t cooked us yet.

A pusher of the dogma tells us how to push the dogma, which is to say, Helen Webberley says

Saving trans lives is simple:

Believe them.

Yes, that is simple, but it can’t be a general rule, for reasons that ought to be obvious if you think about it at all.

It can’t be a general rule that you must believe X brand of people, because people can be mistaken and people can lie.

Webberley is using the fact that, socially speaking, we generally do believe what people tell us if there’s no obvious reason not to. If we ask a stranger where the nearest grocery store is, we assume she’ll tell us the truth, because why wouldn’t she? If friends tell us something we believe them, because they’re friends. There’s a lot of ground between those two types of default belief. There is also a lot of ground where we’re on high skepticism alert – like the claims of advertisers for instance, or Trump saying anything at all.

So no, we don’t have to believe trans people when they tell us the very thing we don’t and can’t believe because it’s physically impossible. Even if it will make them happy, we still can’t do it. Some of us may be willing to pretend to do it (which is how we got into this mess), but most of us can’t actually do it. We also shouldn’t do it, because the sooner this ideology finds itself on the scrapheap alongside Scientology and Heaven’s Gate the better.

So can men breastfeed infants or no?? Some say yes; some even say yes of course they can and you’re a bigot for saying no.

Suzanne Moore says

Stunningly obvious that ‘lived experience’ matters. Many women here are talking about babies/breastfeeding and how difficult it can be. Then a load of ideologues telling us that men can breastfeed who clearly have never done it or ever looked after a baby? Latch on. To reality.

James Esses says

The NHS actually has official guidance on ‘Dads and breastfeeding’.

You know what it says? “Some men really like the changes in their partner’s breasts during breastfeeding”.

You know what it doesn’t say? “Men can breastfeed”.

Why?

Because they can’t.

Jean Hatchet says

My piece for @TheCriticMag on Mika Minio-Paluello being platformed by ITV claiming to be a mother. This was written before he posted a picture “breastfeeding” or it would be angrier still. ‘Men are not mothers’. Motherfaker.

Lachlan Stuart says

The image of a transwoman in a breastfeeding pose with a very young infant is deeply disturbing. Be whoever you want to be but a baby is not a prop, it is helpless and utterly dependent human. Feeding it some chemically induced goo to validate your own sense of self is abuse.

The image in question is this one:

Michael Eric Dyson writes:

This is the face of a man who climbed the ladder of affirmative action to his present perch of power only to help destroy the very ladder on which he ascended. This is not only the mark of deep ingratitude & disavowal of history, but a withering betrayal of justice & democracy.

The face belongs to Clarence Thomas.

To be fair, I think you can accept a benefit while thinking the benefit is a bad idea, without necessarily being a hypocrite. I also think you can accept a benefit and then over several decades develop views on why the benefit is a bad idea without being a hypocrite.

But I also think Dyson has a point. I’m wishy-washy.

The Chronicle of Higher Education looks closely at the DEI orthodoxy-sniffing at UCLA:

Yoel Inbar, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, was up for a job at the University of California at Los Angeles. But the psychology department there decided not to proceed after more than 60 graduate students in the department signed an open letter urging the university not to hire him.

At issue, the students wrote, were Inbar’s comments on his podcast expressing skepticism about the use of diversity statements in hiring, as well as about other efforts intended to make the academy more inclusive.

But his skepticism wasn’t (and isn’t) about the value of diversity, it was simply about the efficacy of diversity statements. A difference of opinion on that seems like a mind-numbingly stupid reason to petition the university not to hire someone. It’s like firing a carpenter for pointing out that this power saw doesn’t work.

The situation illustrates how diversity statements have become a live wire nationally, with several university systems and states banning their use in hiring over concerns about their legality or potential use as a “political litmus test.”

What is a diversity statement? Google answers:

A diversity statement is a polished, narrative statement, typically 1–2 pages in length, that describes one’s accomplishments, goals, and process to advance excellence in diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging as a teacher and a researcher in higher education.

It’s not at all clear why an opinion on whether such a statement does or does not advance excellence in DEI should be a litmus test for hiring.

[Inbar] told the hosts of Very Bad Wizards [last Tuesday] that his meeting with the diversity-issues committee was one of several “strange things” that happened while he was on campus. At the end of the meeting, in which the committee asked standard questions about his approach to diversity in his teaching and research, Inbar said he had been asked about a December 2018 episode of Two Psychologists Four Beers.

In that episode, Inbar said that diversity statements “sort of seem like administrator virtue-signaling,” questioned how they would be used in a hiring process, and suggested “it’s not clear that they lead to better outcomes for underrepresented groups.”

Well, is it clear that they lead to better outcomes?

The committee asked: Was he prepared to defend those comments now?

“To be honest, I wasn’t, because this episode is like, four and a half years old,” Inbar said on Very Bad Wizards. But he explained his current stance: “The very short version is, I think that the goals are good, but I don’t know if the diversity statements necessarily accomplish the goals.” …

The UCLA faculty members “seemed satisfied” with Inbar’s answer, he said. “Then one of them said, kind of almost apologetically, ‘Well, you know, we have some very passionate graduate students here, which is great, but what would you say to them if they were upset about this?’” Inbar said he didn’t know what he’d say beyond explaining his views, as he had to the committee.

Not good enough! Ostracize that man!

On Tuesday, during the Very Bad Wizards episode, Inbar said the graduate students who opposed his hiring had missed the nuance in his remarks about diversity statements.

“You can pull out selective quotes that make me sound like I’m a rabid anti-diversity-statement person, which I’m really not,” Inbar said. His main concern is with their effectiveness, he said: “What you want is somebody who’s going to be able to teach and to mentor people from diverse backgrounds. But what you get is somebody writing about what they believe, and perhaps what they’ve done to demonstrate that.”

Saying you’re not convinced X works is a long long long way from saying the goal of X is worthless. Really really long.

Now people who know that men are not women are having their bank accounts closed.

Wings Over Scotland:

Well well. The head of “financial tracking” at HSBC, the bank that just closed all my accounts for no reason, isn’t just a transwoman, but he and his transman partner are the top two names on the list of Patrons of controversial under-investigation trans “charity” Mermaids.

We’re done.

The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing to set more ambitious goals despite months of record-breaking heat on land and sea.

As envoys gathered in Bonn in early June to prepare for this year’s annual climate talks in November, average global surface air temperatures were more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for several days, the EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.

These “climate talks” are a weird charade when we can all see that nothing is being done and nothing will be done.

Though mean temperatures had temporarily breached the 1.5C threshold before, this was the first time they had done so in the northern hemisphere summer that starts on June 1. Sea temperatures also broke April and May records.

“We’ve run out of time because change takes time,” said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climatologist at Australia’s University of New South Wales.

China is cooking. The US is cooking.

Parts of North America were some 10C above the seasonal average this month, and smoke from forest fires blanketed Canada and the U.S. East Coast in hazardous haze, with carbon emissions estimated at a record 160 million metric tons.

Well let’s have a meeting. That will fix it.