Interesting. This cop tells Billboard Chris that if his sign says something “offensive” to anyone that’s “where you fall short.” He says it’s the law, and he says it more than once. Chris reasonably points out that that would mean anything at all could fit that description and the cop agrees that it could. But the cop is wrong.

The bit where the cop says it:

The bit where he’s wrong:

Let’s hope that proposed law doesn’t get enacted.

He said to them, quite honestly, no.

They told him he could do coaching or reffing, but no, he said, if he did that it would mean he was accepting “that trans women can’t play this sport.”

No it wouldn’t. That’s a lie. The usual lie. It would mean he was accepting that men (including men who identify as trans) can’t play women’s rugby. Not the whole sport, just the women’s sport. So, he’s lying, in the usual way.

Then he goes on to admit that the whole point for him is bashing women. “So they were just like, ok we’re gonna move on now, as a trans woman you can play touch rugby, you can coach, you can ref. You just can’t play contact.”

He wants to play contact, god damn it. He wants to be able to injure the women.

Oliver Brown at the Telegraph talked to cyclist Hannah Arensman about being forced to compete against a man. Her passion for cycling

was a passion she channelled with distinction, wearing the colours of her country, winning national medals, even nurturing a dream of representing the United States at next summer’s Paris Olympics. And yet last December, at the age of 24, she simply walked away. The immediate trigger for that decision was not injury or dwindling form, but the fact that in her final race, at the US cyclocross championships in Connecticut, she lost out on a podium place to a biological male. “There are,” she says, “a million different levels where it hurts.”

Arensman was fourth on that Hartford winter’s day, two seconds adrift of Austin Killips, who this month sparked a global furore by becoming the first transgender cyclist to win a globally-sanctioned stage race, at the Tour of the Gila in New Mexico. 

He’s a man, competing against women. It’s grossly unfair.

And so today, she is finally speaking out, too scalded by the sense of injustice to choose the path of least resistance. It is a move of considerable courage, given the febrile climate in which sport’s trans debate is conducted. The fear of being denounced as transphobic is so acute that at the elite level, no active female athletes dare put their names to their disquiet over fairness. Only last week, Inga Thompson, a retired three-time US Olympian, found herself accused by cycling team Cynisca of “affecting its brand and reputation” for opposing the presence of post-puberty males in female sport.

But Arensman is breaking the omerta, conscious that the fight is no longer hers alone and that, ultimately, the sanctity and integrity of the female category are at stake. “I realised that if an opportunity presented itself to say something on behalf of other women, then I would take it,” she says. “This has gone on long enough, it has gone far enough. It should never have reached this point, it should never have been allowed. Someone has to take responsibility. This is not fair sport, and the governing bodies, who should have made the rules at the beginning, need to realise it. The very people who should be protecting our sport are not doing so.”

And what does that tell us? That women don’t matter. That what men want matters, and what women want doesn’t matter. That women are just some fluffy nuisance off to the side, useful for fucking purposes but otherwise tiresome Karens who must be ignored.

It’s just a tad embittering.

At times, the fury would consume her. “I had no desire to be anywhere near Killips,” she admits. “It became more and more difficult for me to hang around at the finish line to congratulate my rivals, because Killips would be there, parading around in front of the cameras. It was sickening. What are you celebrating? You just beat women, and there’s a clear unfair advantage.”

Another Rhys McKinnon. It is sickening.

The angrier Arensman grew, the more threats there were for her to acquiesce. On Dec 11, the day of what would be her last race, members of the John Brown Gun Club (a Left-leaning group that claims guns are a necessary protection against armed Right-wingers) mobilised at the course, holding up transgender pride flags and wearing balaclavas to conceal their identities. “Sounds like a weird thing for gun clubs to do,” the Connecticut chapter tweeted, “until you realise there’s a massive TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist] problem in cycling.” The same extremists later celebrated Arensman’s retirement, writing: “Hope we helped her find the door. She won’t be missed.”

Thanks for not shooting her, I guess.

Reminded of the intimidation, Arensman can only despair of the toxic backlash that any attempt to discuss the transgender controversy attracts. “It just adds to the complete disrespect,” she says. “When you have to use physical violence to keep other people in check, so you can do whatever you want, there’s something seriously wrong. It’s a form of tyranny.”

And of open, proud, self-congratulatory bullying.

The climate emergency in progress:

The province of Alberta, Canada, home to more than four million people, is under a state of emergency, as nearly 100 wildfires burn, dozens of them out of control. Since the first local state of emergency was declared on 4 May, over 782,000 hectares of land – 1.9 million American football fields or more than 3,000 square miles – have burned, local officials said.

Thousands of firefighters and support staff from across Canada and the US have descended upon the area to fight the ceaseless flames. Still, there are 93 active wildfires in Alberta as of 12:00 EST (17:00 BST) on Friday, and experts say the end is nowhere in sight.

Wild fires are common in Alberta in spring but this year’s weather – aka global warming – has made them especially catastrophic.

By 16 May, 19,576 people had been forced to evacuate their homes in Alberta, officials said. Since then, the number of evacuees has dropped to 10,523.

“We are only in mid-May,” said Josee St-Onge, an information officer with Alberta Wildfire. “Our wildfire season usually goes until the fall.”

The 782,000 hectares that have already burned are nearly seven times higher than the five-year average for the same period, she said, which is 123,000 hectares.

See this is the climate catastrophe. It’s not a sign or warning or precursor of it, it’s the thing itself. It’s bad.

Nobody disinvites the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

LA Pride has pulled out of an annual Pride Night hosted by the Dodgers after the team disinvited a non-profit drag group from the event.

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Dodgers rescinded an invitation to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a well-known San Francisco order of queer and trans ‘nuns’ that has existed since the 1970s, amid opposition from conservative Catholics. The group, which does does charitable and protest work in addition to its street drag show performances, was set to receive an award during a ceremony before a 16 June game against the San Francisco Giants.

Conservative Catholics can go soak their heads. The Catholic church is an evil institution that has done harm to vast numbers of people over the past couple of millennia. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? Not so much.

The controversy took off when Senator Marco Rubio, who[m] the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign has described as “one of the most anti-LGBTQ+ politicians in America”, wrote to the MLB commissioner earlier this week criticizing the team’s decision to honor the order, which he claims mocks Christians. Leaders of conservative Catholic groups also contacted the MLB arguing that it was “rewarding anti-Catholicism”.

So? Anti-Catholicism exists for good reasons.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence first appeared in San Francisco in 1979 in the Castro District in the form of three men wearing nun outfits. The group formed in response to the Aids crisis and was among the first to raise money to help care for people with the disease, it said in a statement. Today they fundraise hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for underserved grassroots organizations, which in 2020 included grants to legal aid clinics serving LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and an alliance empowering deaf queer people, among others.

The group’s mission statement says the non-profit is devoted “to community service, ministry and outreach to those on the edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment”.

“We use humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit,” according to the group’s website.

Humor and irreverent wit as opposed to endless genuflection to luxury identities. Long may they wear the rosary beads.

Willoughby. Such a nice guy.

The Guardian on Jankowicz v Fox part 2:

Her aim she said was partly to show that individuals could also confront the powerful, not just businesses like Dominion and Smartmatic. “These companies have venture capital firms behind them, they can afford fancy lawyers and years-long trials to hold Fox to account. For individuals like me, it’s much harder – and I don’t believe that is something that our system can sustain.”

By bringing the lawsuit, she runs the risk of potentially opening herself up to a renewed wave of criticism that she is attempting to limit free speech protected under the first amendment. The Guardian asked her whether suing for defamation was the best way to counter Fox’s alleged disinformation.

Jankowicz stressed that she didn’t pursue the lawsuit lightly. “I don’t think anybody should pursue a lawsuit just because someone said something mean about them – I have a thick skin. But I believe Fox’s continued lies about individuals are a greater threat to free speech and democracy than a carefully considered, narrow lawsuit like mine.”

She said her main aim was to force Fox to answer for what she called its false statements of facts. “That sort of coverage is not protected speech,” she said. “If Fox isn’t brought to account, they will not stop.”

Mean is one thing and lie is another.

Oddly familiar.

Nina Jankowicz sued Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for allegedly damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. The lawsuit was lodged in a Delaware state court exactly a year after she resigned as executive director of a new Department of Homeland Security unit combatting online disinformation.

The Disinformation Governance Board was abruptly shut down in the wake of a storm of virulent rightwing criticism, allegedly fueled by Fox News. Jankowicz and the new DHS division she led were attacked as being part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by Joe Biden.

Shutting down disinformation is translated to stifling politically incorrect opinion. We’ve been seeing that translation around here lately. Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom of disinformation.

Jankowicz resigned from the federal post on 18 May 2022, barely three weeks into the job.

In an interview with the Guardian, she said her motive in suing Fox was to ensure accountability for what she alleged was a campaign of lies against her that undermined American democracy. “There need to be consequences,” she said. “It was lies, very personal and very vitriolic lies. And I don’t think that is democratic.” She added that what she claimed was Fox’s reckless disregard for the truth had implications for the future of the country. “If we can’t agree on statements of fact, how can you live in a democracy?”

But of course Fox doesn’t see it that way.

Jankowicz was announced as the head of the new disinformation board on 27 April last year and was instantly engulfed in a tempest of rightwing anger. In the lawsuit, Jankowicz’s lawyers allege that the attacks skyrocketed the following day, after Fox News hosts began fuelling the hatred with unfounded claims about her desire to censor rightwing voices.

One of the most vociferous critics, the complaint says, was Tucker Carlson, the news channel’s then primetime star who was fired by Fox last month in the wake of the Dominion settlement. In his opening monologue on 28 April, Carlson called Jankowicz a “moron”, said that what she was doing amounted to a “full-scale attack on free speech” and dubbed the disinformation board “the new Soviet America”.

But of course Tucker Carlson specializes in disinformation; it’s what he does. He wants Freedom of Lying to be a right, and he’ll probably get what he wants.

Is that steam?

Temperatures in the world’s oceans have broken fresh records, testing new highs for more than a month in an “unprecedented” run that has led to scientists stating the Earth has reached “uncharted territory” in the climate crisis.

The rapid acceleration of ocean temperatures in the last month is an anomaly that scientists have yet to explain. Data collated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), known as the Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) series, gathered by satellites and buoys, has shown temperatures higher than in any previous year, in a series stretching back to 1981, continuously over the past 42 days.

…

Prof Mike Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey said: “This has got scientists scratching their heads. The fact that it is warming as much as it has been is a real surprise, and very concerning. It could be a short-lived extreme high, or it could be the start of something much more serious.”

Yeah that’s not good. “We didn’t expect this, and it’s bad” is not what we want to hear.

Warming oceans are a concern for many reasons. Seawater takes up more space at higher temperatures, accelerating sea level rise, and warmer water at the poles accelerates the melting of the ice caps. Hotter temperatures can also be dire for marine ecosystems, as it can be difficult or impossible for species to adapt. Corals in particular can suffer devastating bleaching.

But it’s all worth it because we can take cruises.

Some scientists fear that the rapid warming could be a sign of the climate crisis progressing at a faster rate than predicted.

What I mean – we really don’t want to hear that. It was already horrific. Now it’s even worse. One gets the feeling it’s never going to be “Hey folks it’s not as bad as we thought, whew!”

Mark Maslin, professor of Earth system science at University College London, said the climate crisis was taking hold before our eyes. “Climate scientists were shocked by the extreme weather events in 2021,” he said. “Many hoped this was just an extreme year. But they continued into 2022 and now they are occurring in 2023. It seems we have moved to a warmer climate system with frequent extreme climate events and record-breaking temperatures that are the new normal. It is difficult to see how anyone can deny climate change is happening and having devastating effects around the world.”

I think it’s pretty easy, really. Denial is a lot pleasanter than the alternative.

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on All the rivers.

Quite honestly, the most frightening aspect is that the heating is affecting access to resources, especially water. Flooding does have its benefits when it’s part of a natural cycle, as in the Red River Valley of the North, or the Nile Delta, where the floods leave behind nutrients on agricultural land that would otherwise be overused and end up not being arable. But the floods, such as in Italy, in Pakistan last year, and in England before that, do not do much to restore the natural water table as the water rushes down towards the sea. And the water that’s flooding there is not falling in places that also need it, such as Syria and Jordan and other areas of the Levant that are arable.

War is fundamentally a struggle over resources. And the conflicts over resources are going to escalate. The Russian invasion of the Ukraine is just one of the wars that will be sending missiles and rockets into the cities and towns. And war manufacturing feeds the economic cycle, so all the Net Zero goals of the governments trying to comply (or pretending to comply) with the IPCC goals will be obliterated by conflict. This will further exacerbate the movement of people seeking a safe place, where they can work and feed themselves. And the movements to restrict refugees are based on resource conflict as well. What we see at the US Southern border and on the shores of Dover is a trickle of the flood of people that will be seeking some sort of promised land that doesn’t exist, or won’t for long.

So, yes, James, we can try to greenify as much as we want. But as long as Raytheon stands to profit from the resource conflicts, you may as well drive that big diesel truck you’ve been eyeing with the lifts and the bull balls on the trailer hitch.

I listen to a lot of music to avoid having to think about this all the time. I can recommend some tunes if you’d like.

More inclusive inclusiony huggy kissy embracey inclusion (but not for you though):

Kinetic has made its commitment to diversity and inclusion spectacularly clear with one of its iconic SkyBus red double decker buses transformed with a rainbow-coloured design.

Ooooooh has it??? It painted a bus in colors??????? That’s the most diverse and inclusiony thing I’ve ever heard of!! I can hardly breathe from the diversity and inclusion.

The ‘Pride Bus’ will adorn freeways and arterial roads connecting SkyBus passengers between the city centre and Melbourne’s two major airports at Tullamarine and Avalon. 

It will adorn them? So it won’t go to and fro carrying passengers in the usual way of buses, but instead it will adorn freeways and arterial roads? Like bunting and banners and stuff?

Kinetic says the initiative serves as both a welcome to visitors landing in Victoria and a permanent reminder to the broader community that everyone should feel safe, respected and welcomed in Melbourne. 

Why should everyone feel that? I mean, sure, you don’t want people feeling unsafe or insulted, but does that mean you need to paint buses in order to make people feel actively respected? And even if it does, how will that work? If I saw that bus it wouldn’t make me feel respected, and the odds are slim that I would see it because it’s just the one bus.

In other words what a load of meaningless PR drivel. Painting a commercial bus doesn’t make anyone feel anything.

Also look at the stupid bus.

Come on. “You are loved.” What, because the words appear on a bus? Give me a break.

And when has anyone ever done this kind of thing to send a friendly message to women? Never. Not ever. Women are just a nuisance.

Mike Lewis, Inclusion and Equity Manager at Kinetic, said the initiative was a very visible celebration and recognition of LGBTIQ+ communities.   

“We wanted to unveil the design in the lead up to IDAHOBIT (International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia) and beyond, demonstrating our support for LGBTQI+ communities every day of the year,” he said.

Hey, Mike, is there a comparable day for women? Mike? Mike? Where’d you go?

The vehicle features the Progress Pride Flag with an emphasis on inclusion and progression, with the words “You are Loved” in bold font on either side. 

Where’s the emphasis on inclusion and progression? I’m not seeing it. Is it the wavy bit in the rainbow? Does that stand for inclusion and progression? To me it just looks like a wavy bit.

I wonder what Mike does with the rest of his time. It can’t take all that much time to get a bus decorated and tell the press about it.

Different moves, different grooves. Stands to reason, don’t it.

Planned Parenthood tells women to be quiet.

Climate crisis in Italy:

More than 20 rivers have burst their banks in Italy, leaving 13 people dead and forcing thousands from their homes after six months’ rainfall fell in a day and a half.

More bodies were found on Thursday after almost every river flooded between Bologna and the north-east coast 115km (70 miles) away. Some 280 landslides have taken place.

…

Many factors contribute to flooding, but a warming atmosphere caused by climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely. Already, the world has warmed about 1.1C since the industrial era began, and temperatures will continue to rise unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.

Which they’re not going to do.

“We wouldn’t do this to any other community” – yes we would. Of course we would. We would and we do.

Reporter: Ms Robison, do you still stand by what you said in Parliament, there’s no evidence that predatory men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive behavior – we’ve just had the case today of Andrew Miller, do you still stand by what you said last year?

Robison: Well the vast majority of trans people are just wanting to get on with their lives. Of course what we’re talking about here are people who’ve committed very serious crimes – now I wouldn’t want to talk about the case because it’s still ongoing, but clearly anybody –

Reporter: He’s admitted the offenses.

Robison: Well anyone who’s admitted an offense is an offender and should be treated as such, but we should not – we wouldn’t do this to any other community – take those cases of offenders and imply that somehow that is an issue for the rest of the trans community.

Me: Yes we should, in exactly the same way we “imply that that is an issue for the rest of the male community.” Which is: we don’t “imply” that all men will assault and rape women if given the opportunity, but we do know that some will, and that they are bigger and stronger than women, and that’s why we don’t force women to get naked in the presence of men. It works exactly the same way with “the trans community,” or to put it less dishonestly, with male members of “the trans community.”

Robison of course continues to refuse to grasp the point, and the reporter thanks her and moves on.

But what is “your gender identity”? What is a “gender identity”? What does that mean? How do we know? What is the impersonal evidence for it? How is it different from a “soul”?

“You know it feels better when your body, mind and hormone profile matches your soul. Why wouldn’t it?”

Updating to add Mr Menno’s response.

Bad reporting. Really shockingly bad, inaccurate, misleading, dishonest reporting.

A woman who hopes to become the first transgender driver to compete in the British Touring Cars Championship (BTCC) has praised her “wonderful” welcome to motorsport.

Deborah Stokes, from Kettering, made her debut at Snetterton Circuit, in Norfolk, on Saturday, finishing third in a saloon series race.

The 55-year-old said she wants to encourage diversity in motorsport.

He’s not a woman. The BBC should not lie this way in a news story. It’s deliberate. The BBC chose to say “A woman who” instead of “A trans woman who” at the very beginning. It’s insulting, of course, as always, but in addition to that it’s outright deceptive and confusing. It’s not responsible reporting.

It’s also, as always, nonsensical.

Speaking to BBC Radio Northampton, she said: “Hopefully while I’m doing that I can bring more diversity into motorsport and some natural females into motorsport, because there are hardly any female racers out there.

“It’s basically just men enjoying the weekend.”

And it still is. Adding a man who calls himself a woman changes nothing in that scenario. He’s one more man enjoying the weekend.

Hotter.

The world is almost certain to experience new record temperatures in the next five years, and temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, scientists have warned.

The breaching of the crucial 1.5C threshold, which scientists have warned could have dire consequences, should be only temporary, according to research from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

However, it would represent a marked acceleration of human impacts on the global climate system, and send the world into “uncharted territory”, the UN agency warned.

Bad uncharted territory.

New record temperatures have been set in many areas around the world in the heatwaves of the past year, but those highs may only be the beginning, according to the report, as climate breakdown and the impact of a developing El Niño weather system combine to create heatwaves across the globe.

El Niño is part of an oscillating weather system that develops in the Pacific. For the past three years, the world has been in the opposing phase, known as La Niña, which has had a dampening effect on temperature increases around the world.

As La Niña ends and a new El Niño develops, there is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years will be the hottest on record, the scientists found.

There’s more. It’s all grim.

This seems ominous.

Oh well. We can always escape the heat by taking a cruise to Alaska.

Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on The customer shouted negatively.

Is there a pattern here?

Non-binary social media influencer Deni Todorovic has detailed the moment a baggage issue at Melbourne airport led to an encounter with Australian Federal Police (AFP), causing them to miss their initial flight to Sydney for Australian Fashion Week.

The 34-year-old, who goes by they/them pronouns, claims they were checking in their luggage to a Jetstar flight on Monday when the weight of one of their bags triggered an alleged verbal dispute with airline staff.

Todorovic, who was accompanied by their mother at the time, said their bag was an extra 10.5kg in weight which they said came with a surcharge of $100.

“I started yelling, yelling, yelling, yelling,” they told The Daily Telegraph after landing in Sydney the following day for Fashion Week’s Erik Yvon show.

So, the airline staff did their jobs, requested payment for the overweight luggage, and instead of either paying or calmly trying to negotiate a lower fee, “I started yelling, yelling”. I’m not sure that has ever worked as a negotiating tactic post kindergarten.

The model last made headlines a few weeks ago when they rallied against labels and brands they previously worked with including Bonds and gin brand Tanqueray.

Prior to this, the model copped backlash for their statement “some women have penises” after responding to criticism regarding a photo featuring Todorovic in lime green Seafolly bikini bottoms.

I’ve seen this movie before, and it doesn’t get any better on subsequent viewings. But, here is a new one.

Queer activist Deni Todorovic’s Australian Fashion Week woes have continued, with the social media influencer being denied entry to an event by someone they “thought was a friend”.

The non-binary 34-year-old, who goes by they/them pronouns, was forced to spend Wednesday night in their Sydney hotel room after security guards said they weren’t invited to a fashion show on day three of the event.

“I was just refused entry to a fashion show by someone I thought was a friend,” Todorovic shared in an Instagram story on their backup account @hellodarlingsmedia.

Who knew that gatecrashing a major event wasn’t socially acceptable? Not only ill-informed about how sex works, but Todi is also unsure about who his friends are and who invited him. Was it the security guard, as it seems from his above quote? No, it was former WAG and drug snorter turned fashionista, Nadia Bartell.

It’s understood Todorovic was making their way to Nadia Bartel’s offsite Henne runway at St Barnabas in Ultimo when they were turned away from the venue.

(…)

According to The Daily Telegraph’s Confidential, Todorovic never received an invitation to the event with sources telling the paper they weren’t a friend of the designer.

As we say in this Great Land Down Under – What a fucking wanker!