Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Week 3.

Welcome to the new normal.

One of the things that gets brushed aside in the right’s politicization of climate change is that things don’t just get warmer; they get destabilized. Not only do weather patterns change, they become chaotic. It’s not just a different set of new temperatures and amounts of precipitation to be adapted to, but a constantly changing kaleidoscope of conditions, without enough stability for things like growing crops, which rely on particular, reliable combinations of conditions. The further our excursion from previous conditions, the more unstable things get. And this is just the agricultural realm. What happens to all of the current biomes when the patterns of flower and pollinator, plant and grazer, predator and prey are uncoupled suddenly and unpredictably? The emergence of a new, stable climate regime is unlikely to happen on a timescale convenient to human civilization; it can’t start at all until we stop doing all the things that are causing this disruption in the first place. We have to stop lighting fires before we can hope to see what might be left after the flames have gone out.

These are issues that can’t be fixed by dialing up the AC. This is food on the table stuff. At some point, those that have it will be unwilling to sell it to those that don’t, whatever the price, because you can’t eat money. Climate change denialism has always ignored these underlying issues in their preference to maintain the status quo, prioritizing the preservation of profit under business-as-usual to retooling how we do things to allow our continued survival without destroying the bio-geo-chemical basis of that survival. We’ve invented a technologically driven culture that thrives on ever accelerating change and innovation. But that culture has been dependent upon a steady, reliable basis for growing food. If we push the the Earth to the point where it becomes an ever-accelerating engine of change and “innovation,” that will erode or destroy the foundations of our being that we have taken for granted for too long. Turnabout is fair play, and the laws of physics play for keeps. We’re all along for the ride on this submarine, and its implosion is as inevitable, as that of the Ocean Gate Titan; it’ll just take a bit longer. It’s “Fuck around and find out,” writ on the largest scale we could possibly manage. Having failed to learn from the smaller scale, regional failures we’ve already passed through unnoticed, because there were still places outside the zones of failure that carried on, we’ve now graduated to disaster at a planetary level. Go us. We will suddenly discover that food doesn’t come from supermarkets, and parking lots, and highways, but from clean air, clean water, reliable rain and sunlight, and the interplay of life, climate, and geology that give rise to them.

Another man takes another place that was supposed to be for a woman.

Ok this is going well.

So this is a quiz now? Or a treasure hunt? Dig where? With what kind of tools?

Then why announce it on Twitter at all? Why tell the world it happened, and then get offended when people ask for the specifics? Who are “they”? If there’s a spokesperson why not just say who and quote her/him? Why the bizarre mix of “hey guess what!” and “it’s a secret”?

What room?? If you want the journalists to take over why bring it up in the first place?

Then why bring it up?? If you can’t tell us how you know then why bring it up?

The issue isn’t what I believe, the issue is why anyone should believe any of it in the total absence of sources or even specifics? “Rugby” and “Hamilton, Ontario” aren’t quite enough.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s Rachel McKinnon in heavy disguise.

Sigh. This isn’t how to go about it.

1,126 shares so far, and 3,582 likes, but – no source. The tweet author says it happened in Hamilton, Ontario, but also that it has not hit the news yet. She doesn’t say how she knows it happened. So – useless. Worse than useless, because being shared.

Come on now. Don’t be reporting stuff like this if you have absolutely nothing besides your own word. It could be a snare for all we know – look at how easily the terfs are fooled blah blah blah.

Updating to add:

So this is a game?

No. If you assert a thing happened you need to (at a minimum) say how you know. That’s all the more true on a hotly contested subject like this.

How did we not know this until now???

Don’t visit Texas right now.

A record-breaking heat wave is entering its third week in Texas, as temperatures reach triple digits in the broader US south and tens of thousands of people in affected states are without power and lack air conditioning.

More than 40 million people in the US are under a heat alert.

Texas cities have reached an unprecedented heat index – which combines temperature and humidity. Corpus Christi has hit 125F (51C), while Rio Grande Village notched 118F (47C) and Del Rio marked 115F (46C). States including New Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri are also experiencing scorching heat, with the National Weather Service predicting the temperatures to rise further and last into the week of 4 July.

The heat follows a weekend of destructive storms that left hundreds of thousands of people without power. The heat dome, as it is known, has settled above Mexico and parts of the US south-west and is caused by hot ocean air that has become trapped in the atmosphere.

Lots of people will die.

When you’re going to do an extremely dangerous thing, the key is to find cheap parts that are cheap because they’re inferior. Yep, that’s the ticket.

Arnie Weissman, the editor in chief of Travel Weekly, nearly went on that fatal trip on the Titan. He had a chat with Stockton Rush the night before the dive.

Weissmann said Rush told him how he had gotten the carbon fiber used to make the Titan “at a big discount from Boeing.” Weissmann wrote in Travel Weekly that Rush said he was able to get the carbon fiber at a good rate “because it was past its shelf life for use in airplanes.”

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

Rush had hailed the lighter carbon fiber as an innovation in a field that has long relied on more expensive titanium and claimed the company had worked with Boeing to make sure the pressure vessel, the carbon-fiber tube that keeps passengers alive, was safe. But the carbon fiber and the shape of the Titan had raised concern among maritime regulation experts and experienced mariners. And Weissmann said he felt that the man who he thought was going to lead him on a 13,000-foot dive to the ocean floor came off as “cocky” when talking about safety.

Boeing says it hasn’t found any record of selling the carbon fire to Ocean Gate.

The Post includes a rather telling clip of Rush boasting of breaking some rules.

H/t Bruce Coppola

The header for Dublin Pride’s Twitter:

Fake. That sign just above the rainbow flag – that’s fake.

Thanks to clamboy for the tip.

Rewriting history.

Yesterday evening I started a frivolous read of a novel about life at the Barbizon Hotel for Women in the ’50s. I stopped reading at the top of page 12. Here’s why:

Page 2, in an account of marital sex: “she had instead surrendered to the enormity of him.”

Page 6, of an elderly fellow resident of the Barbizon: “Only her tentative movements…and the lines around her mouth and down her neck, belied her advanced age.”

Page 12: “Leave it to Patrick to bury the lead.”

Great god almighty are there no editors any more? How did no one catch these? Just in the first 12 pages!

Now there’s a surprise.

Warnings over the safety of OceanGate’s Titan submersible were repeatedly dismissed by the CEO of the company, email exchanges with a leading deep sea exploration specialist show. In messages seen by the BBC, Rob McCallum told OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush that he was potentially putting his clients at risk and urged him to stop using the sub until it had been classified by an independent body.

Mr Rush responded that he was “tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation”.

Right on. Who cares about safety? Full speed ahead.

(I don’t know why the BBC quotes this Rob McCallum fella without saying who he is.)

The tense exchange ended after OceanGate’s lawyers threatened legal action, Mr McCallum said.

“I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic,” he wrote to the OceanGate boss in March 2018. “In your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: ‘She is unsinkable'”.

In the messages, Mr Rush, who was among five passengers who died when the Titan experienced what officials believe was a “catastrophic implosion” on Sunday, expresses frustration with the criticism of Titan’s safety measures. “We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often,” he wrote. “I take this as a serious personal insult.”

How trumpish. “Dangerous things are dangerous” is not a personal insult. Taking true statements about risk personally is so trumpish.

Mr McCallum told the BBC that he repeatedly urged the company to seek certification for the Titan before using it for commercial tours. The vessel was never certified or classed.

What?!

Throughout the exchange, Mr Rush defended his credentials and questioned the existing framework around deep sea expeditions.

He said “industry players” were trying to stop “new entrants from entering their small existing market”.

Yeah see items like this shouldn’t be a “market” at all.

“The industry has been trying for several years to get Stockton Rush to halt his programme for two reasons,” Mr McCallum, a specialist who runs his own ocean expedition company, told the BBC on Friday.

Whew, we finally learn who he is.

“One is that carbon fibre is not an acceptable material,” he said. “The other is that this was the only submersible in the world doing commercial work that was unclassed. It was not certified by an independent agency.”

Free ennerprise, baby.

“Stockton fancied himself as somewhat of a maverick entrepreneur,” Mr McCallum said. “He liked to think outside the box, didn’t like to be penned in by rules. But there are rules – and then there are sound engineering principles and the laws of physics.”

He maintains that nobody should have travelled in the Titan sub. “If you steer away from sound engineering principles, which are all based on hard won experience, there is a price to pay, and it’s a terrible price,” he said. “So it should never be allowed to happen again. It shouldn’t have been allowed to happen this time.”

It will be allowed to happen again.

The Famous Artis Birdy Rose spots a contradiction that is all too pervasive in these Inclusive No Not You times.

Yesterday I read online a statement on the Leigh Folk Festival Facebook page, which read:

“Leigh Folk Festival is, and always has been, an inclusive environment where everyone should feel welcome and comfortable, from artistes, to attendees, volunteers and crew”

The statement went on to say that a member of an act due to perform at this year’s festival has “made remarks online that are not in keeping with Leigh Folk Art’s values. As soon as we were made aware, the act’s performance was pulled from the line up”

Genius, isn’t it? “Incloosiv environment. Everyone should feel welcome and comfy. An act has said things we don’t like, so we kicked them out.”

You can’t have everything you know. You can’t boast of being incloosiv and in the very next breath brag about kicking people out because you don’t like their thinking. You have to pick one.

That’s why I for one never boast of being incloosiv, because it depends. A promise to inclood everyone and everything is a promise impossible to fulfill, so just don’t bother.

As Birdy puts it:

I also think it is owed to the public that we know what these “values” are, as it now appears very clear this festival is NOT an “inclusive environment where everyone should feel welcome and comfortable” because there is an elusive, unspoken set of “values” that we apparently must all “align” ourselves with. 

So it should be “we’re inclusive provided you adhere to this list of values, see Appendix pp 1 through 785.”

And another thing. What kind of message does this send to people who want to attend or perform at the Leigh Folk Festival?

Additionally, no consideration has been made of the possibility that other artists, staff, volunteers or attendees and members of the public might feel worry, anxiety or distress now that they are aware that they’re going to be potentially judged and/or publicly shamed and/or punished for their thoughts and opinions, even in their own personal lives. 

I want to know if there’s anything in the contract or “festival values” at Leigh Folk Arts/Festival which specifically states that despite Leigh Folk Festival only occurring once per year, all artists, musicians, staff, volunteers and attendees *must* “align” their “values” with the “Festival values” all year round, outside of the festival, in their own lives, including on their personal social media accounts

Seems just a tiny bit exigent, doesn’t it.

H/t tigger_the_wing

Two successive tweets to sum up. First tweet:

Awwwwww look at that sweet little thang, wouldn’t so much as swat a mosquito.

Next tweet:

For people not familiar with the UK education system, “two O Level” is roughly equivalent to “flunked out of high school at 16″…only more so because of the UK’s baroque and sadistic obsession with class. It’s gasp-level insulting.

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on They would magically transform.

I’m not entirely sure they really want to be women, so much as they want to be what they think women are.

That distinction I think matters. I don’t think I could ever see myself as trans, because I am me, I can only ever be me, and thus I have no frame of reference for how to really truly be anyone else.

This doesn’t mean I can’t imagine how others feel, or that I can’t empathize, but that my frame of reference is based on data that is available to myself, and thus can never fully encompass someone else’s life.

If I were to try and be a woman, the best I could manage would be to be my concept of a woman based on paying attention to what women have to say about the subject, and that is going to only cover the things women care to inform me about that manages to penetrate my somewhat muddled brain.

Which is a very incomplete picture indeed.

I think part of the problem with the trans cult, is that what they seem to see a woman as being, is straight out of “As Good as it Gets” – a man minus reason and accountability. The worse activists behave in ways, that aren’t really acceptable in either gender, because what they have is that incomplete picture.

And it is not a picture you can ever really complete, because we can only ever really live our own lives. Of course the trans may respond that I’m not trans so my limitations apply to them as much as they do to women, but I’m not pretending those limitations aren’t there.

This is why the question about how to define a woman isn’t a gotcha – we really don’t have any clue what they mean when they say “Trans women are women”.

We need to understand what their understanding of what a woman is, and they can’t seem to tell us what that really is, because I don’t think it is the same thing that a real woman sees it as being.

It’s a funny thing, when you think about it, that trans women are women, but women are cis women. I think it should be the other way around. Women are women, and trans women are not.

Helen Joyce:

It’s obviously extremely hurtful for men whose dearest wish is to pass as women to be told they really don’t. I wish they hadn’t been lied to and misled by gender doctors, who promised them the impossible.

These men were promised that if they took cross-sex hormones and underwent genital amputation, they would magically transform to such a degree that everyone, but specifically women, would see them as women.

Those men want that so badly, and they are so self-centred, that in response to such promises they take it upon themselves to enter women’s spaces as if by right. And they interpret women’s silence as proof that women see them as women.

Is it possible to be trans without being self-centered? I lean toward no. I think if you take other people into account, you’re unlikely to develop ideas about a magical hidden inner self, and even less likely to try to impose your magical hidden self on those other people.

That silence is motivated by kindness, embarrassment and fear. Women are told they will lose their jobs – or get a punch in the face – if they say that they can see these men are men. It takes astonishing narcissism to interpret our forced acquiescence as genuine acceptance.

And it takes astonishing recklessness to interpret astonishing narcissism as evidence of magical special beautiful awesomeness. Trans women are lionized while women are ignored at best and bullied at worst. Weird kind of social justice.

I feel sorry for them. But women’s rights are on the line, and we’re half the population. We can’t indulge them any more. And so we’re saying politely: You’re men. Stop trying to control our language. Stop coming into our spaces.

No, you don’t pass. No, you’re not welcome. No, we’re not “cis”, we’re just women, and you’re not. I understand it hurts to hear this, but you have left us no choice but to say it. And if you don’t listen when we say it politely, you can expect to be told less politely.

I gave up saying it politely years ago.

Peter Brookes in The Times:

H/t Margaret Nelson

Where it started.

It’s worth belaboring this because it’s dangerous as well as wrong. It’s a not very subtle way of inflaming and intensifying hatred of people who don’t subscribe to gender ideology.

No, wrong; she doesn’t deny that trans people exist, she denies that people can be the opposite sex. She disputes a fact claim about people who call themselves trans, which is very different from denying that people who call themselves trans exist. We know they exist. We see their smirking selfies and/or their enraged threats.

People can say “You’re not a socialist” to someone who identifies as a socialist, and that is not denying that the person who identifies as a socialist exists. You can substitute almost any self-descriptive noun or adjective for “socialist” and the result is the same. The one exception is “alive.” “You’re not alive” is indeed a denial of someone’s existence, but it’s also a bit weird. If the subject is not alive what’s the point of saying so? If the subject is alive, still what’s the point of saying so? But anyway, disputing descriptors is not repeat is not denial of existence.

It’s a symptom of the stupidity of the ideology, frankly, that people under its spell keep repeating this dopy claim.

Existence precedes essence.

What’s not super hard is grasping that people don’t cease to exist when others don’t believe their self-descriptions. The two things are separate. Tom Coates could claim to be very clever, and I would not believe that claim, yet my non-belief would not cause Tom Coates to stop existing.

Originally a comment by Freemage on Mandatory affirmation.

Puberty blockers have been weighing on my mind, in particular, lately.

The whole claim is that the blockers prevent the development of sexual characteristics until the child has become old enough to be able to decide for themselves as an adult whether or not to transition. On first glance, this seems reasonable–I’m fine with adults transitioning, though I still agree to the GC in terms of what transition actually entails, and more importantly, permits. (Ie, an adult TIM still has no business in a women-only space, or participating in women’s sports, etc.) At that point, it becomes cosmetic surgery, which is generally up to the person getting it.

But this claim overlooks the fact that the whole reason adulthood exists as a legal category is cognitive development–you don’t suddenly become more able to make decisions about alcohol because you’ve taken 21 trips around the sun; you become more cognitively able to perceive the impacts of drinking after your body (most specifically, your brain) has developed to a point where you can make at least some amount of rational choice about such things.

But that development is both experiential and hormonal–if you stop the hormonal development with blockers, then you impede the very state of being that is supposed to enable you to decide better if you want life-altering surgery.

I know a family who adopted a child with fetal alcohol syndrome. She just hit her 18th birthday, but cognitively, she’s about 12 (and likely will still be at that stage for most purposes for the rest of her life). She’s a genuinely caring, friendly and happy kid–but the notion that she’s now at the point where she could be given the benefit of the doubt upon declaring that she wants to be considered a man is flat-out absurd. While hormone blockers probably aren’t as drastic in their inhibition of development as that, it seems pretty damned likely that the 18 year old who’s been on blockers since they were 12 is not going to be in the same position cognitively as one who actually has had all the brain development that comes with adolescence.

Abigail Shrier tells us:

Gender ideologues in California let the mask slip, or perhaps just tossed it away: A new bill, AB 957, directs family court judges to award custody based in part on “a parent’s affirmation of a child’s gender identity,” which the bill defines as intrinsic to the “health, safety and welfare of the child.”

And what “a child’s gender identity” means in this context “a child’s assertion that she or he is the other sex.” So custody decisions will be based partly on a parent’s “affirmation” of a silly lie, one which could end up prompting the child to make drastic changers to her or his body – irreversible damage in short.

How far must a parent go in pursuit of “affirmation”? The bill doesn’t say. “Affirmation” can include anything from allowing your daughter to adopt a male name and pronouns to commencing a schedule of hormones and surgeries that are variously risky, irreversible, and without proven mental health benefit. Puberty blockers, a staple of so-called “gender-affirming medicine,” can produce permanent sexual dysfunction and infertility, diminish cognitive development, undermine bone density and tooth enamel. How much is custody or visitation of your daughter worth to you, the Gender Thugs want to know. Sterilization and splitting teeth?

Not to mention diminished cognitive development.

Today, the notion that “affirmation” is necessarily in the best interest of every child can no longer seriously be believed. In the last two years, England, Sweden, Finland, France, and Norway have all conducted rigorous scientific reviews of pediatric gender medicine and concluded the opposite. The efficacy, far too doubtful. The harms, too grave. These countries—every one of them liberal—responded to their independent reviews by shuttering pediatric gender clinics, curtailing the availability of these medicines, restricting them to experimental settings, or banning them entirely.

It’s a fad, people, and one with far more dire consequences than most.