Money that could have gone to someone starting a PhD doing real research.

Let’s see what the Equality Act 2010 says about how to define “sex.”

Under the Equality Act 2010, ‘sex’ is understood as binary, being a man or a woman. For the purposes of the Act, a person’s legal sex is their biological sex as recorded on their birth certificate. A trans person can change their legal sex by obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate. A trans person who does not have a Gender Recognition Certificate retains the sex recorded on their birth certificate for the purposes of the Act.

Well there’s a train wreck. Sentence 2: “a person’s legal sex is their biological sex as recorded on their birth certificate.” Sentence 3: A trans person can change their legal sex by obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate. In other words, a person’s legal sex is their biological sex and a person’s legal sex is not their biological sex. No wonder that needs “clarification.”

The Equality Act protects individuals from discrimination and harassment on the basis of a protected characteristic. Protected characteristics include sex (being a man or a woman) and gender reassignment (being an individual who is ‘proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process or part of a process to reassign their sex’).

Well guess what, chumps, you can’t do both of those. You can’t and you aren’t and you don’t. You can’t protect women from endless bullying and shunning and persecution if you insist on pretending that men can become biological women by getting a “gender recognition certificate.”

What on earth is this supposed to mean?

Saying “sex” means “biological sex” is a change? From what? What does it mean in the Equality Act now? Height, nationality, hobby?

They need advice? They don’t know what “sex” means?

So we’ll have to read what they say.

On 21 February 2023, the Minister for Women and Equalities asked for our advice on the definition of the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act 2010.

Section 11 of the Equality Act 2006 allows the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to advise the UK Government on the effectiveness of equality law.

The EHRC’s initial response to this request is set out in a letter sent to the Minister on 3 April 2023.

Baroness Kishwer Falkner, Chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said:

“A change to the Equality Act 2010, so that the protected characteristic of ‘sex’ means biological sex, could bring clarity in a number of areas, but potential ambiguity in others.

“Our response to the Minister’s request for advice suggests that the UK Government carefully identify and consider the potential implications of this change.”

So in the Equality Act 2010 “sex” currently means…what? Social sex? Cultural sex? Psychological sex? Literary sex? Political sex? Fashion sex? Eye of the beholder sex? Possible sex? Approximate sex? Fictional sex?

“Should they wish to pursue work in this area, we recommend detailed policy and legal analysis be undertaken, in compliance with the Public Sector Equality Duty and with due regard to any possible disadvantages for trans men and trans women.”

Oh, so that’s it. The definition of “sex” now has to cater to people who think they’re the sex they’re not.

Why?

Sea level is going to rise around Charleston.

The city is in the lowcountry region in South Carolina, and it is very, very low: more than a third of the houses in the city are at 10 feet above sea level or less. The first settlers saw mostly marsh when they arrived in 1640, stepping gingerly over scores of muddy creeks. Much of the city was built on fill – trash, oyster shells, wooden pilings, human waste, loose dirt – over centuries, and now nature wants its land back. Charleston’s residents have already become accustomed to frequent high-tide flooding on days when the sun is shining.

The message that climate change is happening, and happening quickly, is acknowledged by national governments around the world. But the translation of that message into action at the local level is not yet, really, happening.

The trouble is that sea level rise is taking place relatively slowly compared with the human attention span – which is, let’s face it, gnat-like, and made even shorter when other crises (a global pandemic, the threat of world war, domestic political instability, rising inflation) are on our minds. City leaders, occupied with running for re-election, prioritize continued growth and expanding the tax base over protecting against future doom. Awareness is smoothed over by the common cognitive bias toward believing that anything awful is anomalous. Humans are not by nature long-range planners, particularly when they are focused on simply surviving. Boosterism and denial are at work in Charleston, as they are everywhere.

What I keep saying. Nothing is being done; planes still fly in their thousands every day; cars still zoom in their millions; cruise ships keep advertising and passengers keep boarding; nothing is changing.

Extraordinary.

A community sentence handed down to a man who raped a 13-year-old schoolgirl when he was 17 has been described as “extraordinary” by a leading KC. Sean Hogg, now 21, attacked the girl in Dalkeith Country Park, Midlothian, on various occasions in 2018.

Judge Lord Lake said that if the offence had been committed by an adult over 25, Hogg would have received a jail sentence of four or five years. Tommy Ross KC said the 270-hour community sentence was “very unusual”. Hogg’s punishment has also been condemned by Rape Crisis Scotland.

Not to be confused with Rape Crisis Edinburgh, whose CEO is a man who calls himself a woman.

Another man uses his fame to throw women overboard.

Swim England has been accused of sacrificing the interests of young female divers to appease high-profile athletes such as Tom Daley.

On Monday the national governing body became the first to create an open category for competitors who were born male, including transgender women or non-binary participants, with the women’s category exclusively for “athletes with a birth sex of female”. In diving, however, the rule will not apply to all competitions. Self-identification by trans divers will be permitted in some Swim England-approved events below elite level.

Brilliant. “Most people with male advantage will be excluded from competing against people with female disadvantage…but we’re making an exception for some divers.”

World Aquatics (WA) decided in June to ring-fence the women’s category for females, ruling ineligible any athlete who has gone through male puberty. It plans to release details of its own open category in July on the cusp of the World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan. World Athletics has banned trans women from competing in the female category at international events and is considering an open category.

Daley said in June that he was “furious” with WA over the decision. “Anyone that’s told that they can’t compete or can’t do something they love just because of who they are, it’s not on,” he said. “It’s something I feel really strongly about: giving trans people the chance to share their side.”

It’s not “just because of who they are.” It’s because of what they are: males. If you don’t divide sports by sex then women will never win anything; sports are divided by sex so that women will be able to compete and to win. What’s “not on” is throwing that principle out because a few selfish men want to cheat by competing against women.

It just is the case that there are countless things we can’t do “just because of who [or what] we are.” There’s a long list of jobs we can’t do because who we are=someone who doesn’t have the right skills or professional training for the job. There are many things we can’t do because we lack the time, or money, or freedom, or health, or energy, or years of practice.

Pro Publica has a very interesting piece on the way railroads have been making trains longer and longer, without doing the corresponding safety properly. Lots and lots of one or two mile trains with empty cars in front and heavy cars in back and other safety mistakes; result: lots and lots of derailments.

I’m all the more interested because as I think I’ve mentioned a few hundred times I live near the tracks, and enjoy hearing the locomotives thundering past, especially at night. Sometimes they’re especially thundery, so then you know there are four or five locomotives pulling that one train, and maybe one at the back too. When I walk on an overpass above the tracks I often stop to look at an especially long parked train; sometimes they’re so long I can’t really see the end, only a blur. The length of them has surprised me but I didn’t realize it’s an innovation…or how dangerous it is.

Trains are getting longer. Railroads are getting richer. But these “monster trains” are jumping off of tracks across America and regulators are doing little to curb the risk.

…

[T]he corporations that ran those trains had recently adopted a moneymaking strategy to move cargo faster than ever, with fewer workers, on trains that are consistently longer than at any time in history. Driven by the efficiency goals of precision scheduled railroading, companies are forgoing long-held safety precautions, such as assembling trains to distribute weight and risk or taking the proper time to inspect them, ProPublica found. Instead, their rushed workers are stringing together trains that stretch for 2 or even 3 miles, sometimes without regard for the delicate physics of keeping heavy, often combustible tanker cars from jumping off the tracks.

…

Today, the rail administration says it lacks enough evidence that long trains pose a particular risk. But ProPublica discovered it is a quandary of the agency’s own making: It doesn’t require companies to provide certain basic information after accidents — notably, the length of the train — that would allow it to assess once and for all the extent of the danger.

Ahhhh that old trick – don’t collect the data on X, so that you can truthfully say you don’t have the data to show that X is a risk. Clever.

On July 31, 2017, CSX assembled Train Q38831 in a rail yard in Chicago, destined for a city outside of Hyndman. It had five locomotives at the front and 136 cars trailing behind, about half hauling hazardous material: propane, isobutane, ethyl alcohol, phosphoric acid and molten sulfur heated to 235 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a bomb train, as some workers refer to them, given its combustible cargo. When it left the yard and traveled east, the train grew. In Lordstown, Ohio, workers added 28 cars. In New Castle, Pennsylvania, they added 14. Now the train was 2 miles long.

Engineer Donald Sager, who boarded the train on the night of Aug. 1 in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles west of Hyndman, was uncomfortable with it. It was, he later told federal investigators, “big and heavy and ugly.” It had 38 empty cars near the front with almost all the train’s tonnage behind them, so the empty cars would be lurching around as all that weight bore down on them. He said the train would be bucking.

Sager took the train with his conductor, James Beitzel, from the Connellsville yard at 8:28 p.m. under a clouded sky and began climbing the backside of the mountain outside Hyndman. The climb was steep and the train needed a push from an extra locomotive, which coupled onto the rear. The locomotive broke off when the bulk of the train crested the mountain, passing a sign that read: “Summit of Alleghenies, Altitude 2258.”

THE LONG, WINDING DESCENT into Hyndman is one of the steepest in all of CSX territory, and the train weighed 18,252 tons, heavier than 200 fueled and loaded Boeing 737s. An engineer on a train like that has to closely watch the speed. It’s best to operate the brakes proactively, but as the train started down the mountain, Sager’s instruments were telling him the air brakes were beginning to fail. He stopped the train at 11:36 p.m. and radioed dispatchers.

Urgh. It just does not seem like a good idea to take an 18 thousand ton train down a steep mountain. Gravity is not your friend.

It’d be easy to blame Bobb or Main for what was about to happen. But they were only following CSX policy when they set the hand brakes on this huge, heavy train and sent it rolling down the long, steep hill. A safe and proper move would have been to break the train into two at the top of the hill and drive each section down separately, said Grady Cothen, a former FRA attorney who has written a widely cited white paper on the challenges of operating longer trains. 

Yes do it that way. Do it more slowly and safely.

There’s more; it’s interesting.

Good old mainstream meeja, giving extra publicity to Marjorie Taylor Greene.

CBS came under fire after devoting an interview on its flagship current affairs show, 60 Minutes, to Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right pro-Trump congresswoman from Georgia who has espoused conspiracy theories and faced censure for threatening behaviour towards Democrats.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York progressive congresswoman among those threatened by Greene, told Semafor: “These kinds of extreme and really just unprecedented and dangerous notions are getting platforms, without much pushback or real kind of critical analysis.”

Matthew Gertz, of the progressive watchdog Media Matters, told the same outlet: “Anyone who believes that the congresswoman from QAnon is serious about renouncing far-right radicalism and conspiracy theories should make me an offer on my Jewish space laser.”

…

Gertz said: “Less than 48 hours after CBS News gives her a mainstream platform to airbrush her image, Marjorie Taylor Greene will be rallying with Jack Posobiec of Pizzagate fame and the quasi-fascists of the New York Young Republican Club to defend Donald Trump from what she calls the ‘political persecution’ of a ‘Soros-backed’ district attorney.”

Yes but Stahl definitely shook her head in disagreement at one point. Hard-hitting stuff.

When the men decide.

He’s a guy though. Hidden replies are firm on this point.

Consultation, we must have consultation, we just don’t know what to think without consultation.

The FA is to consider letting footballers in England decide for themselves if they play in men’s or women’s teams.

Brilliant. The FA is to consider letting male footballers decide for themselves if they cheat.

The football governing body said it was in the process of “consulting with and listening to” its counterpart associations around the world about how to tackle the participation of transgender women in female sport.

Why is only that something to “tackle”?

Because it’s grossly unfair and physically dangerous to women, that’s why. Women playing on men’s teams harm only themselves so nobody cares, but men playing on women’s teams harm women, so it’s necessary to knit our brows and puzzle about whether or not that’s ok before we decide sure it’s ok, because women don’t matter.

Bonus: we get to pretend this is ultra-enlightened and compashnut and progressive.

Among those it is liaising with is thought to be the German football association (DFB) which this season introduced a policy of allowing transgender and non-binary players at an amateur level chose for themselves which teams they should play for.

It means transgender women are not required to lower their testosterone levels to play in women’s teams.

Sure guys, go right ahead, it’s only bitches after all.

DFB diversity ambassador Thomas Hitzlsperger has hailed the approach being taken in Germany and said that the FA had been in touch to better understand the policy.

The English football governing body is looking at what policy it should adopt on the matter.

An FA spokesperson told BBC Sport: “Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do at the FA and we are passionate about celebrating and supporting the diversity of our national game.”

By “diversity” they mean trashing women’s sports and physically injuring women. Such inclusion! So diverse!

First we need to bear in mind that the vast majority of rapes in the UK don’t get reported to the police, and that only 1% of those – yes ONE percent – get prosecuted. Now we can learn about what happens when one rapist is prosecuted and convicted.

A man who raped a 13-year-old schoolgirl in a park when he was 17 has avoided a prison sentence.

Sean Hogg, 21, attacked the girl in Dalkeith Country Park, Midlothian, on various occasions between March and June 2018. Judge Lord Lake said that if the offence had been committed by an adult over 25, Hogg would have received a jail sentence of four or five years. Instead he was ordered to do 270 hours of unpaid work.

That’s it. Seven weeks worth of volunteer labor. Rape of a child is on a level with littering.

Elon Musk had a tantrum and grabbed the NY Times’s blue tick away. So nyah!

Twitter has started removing verification badges from accounts which already had a blue tick, after announcing they would be part of a paid subscription from 1 April.

The New York Times, along with several other organisations and celebrities, said they would not pay for the tick.

It prompted Elon Musk to launch a volley of insults at the newspaper.

“The real tragedy of @NYTimes is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting”, Mr Musk, who owns Twitter, wrote on the platform.

“Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It’s unreadable,” he added.

Well, yes, but does he expect any kind of digestive byproduct to be readable? None of it is useful in that way.

Under Twitter’s new rules, blue ticks which once showed official, verified accounts, will start to be removed from accounts which do not pay for it.

Organisations seeking verification badges instead have to pay a monthly fee of $1,000 (£810) to receive a gold verification tick, while individual accounts must pay $8 (£6.40) a month for a blue one.

Someone clever pointed out yesterday that this whole plan is silly, because Twitter gets all this valuable content for free. It’s the NY Timeses and LeBron Jameses who generate revenue for Twitter for nothing, so Spaceguy is shooting himself in the foot by demanding money from them.

Trump has his Tuesday afternoon blocked out – fly up to New York, get arraigned, fly back to darling Florida to soak up more rays.

Law enforcement officials have told BBC’s US partner, CBS News, that the former president will be escorted by members of the US Secret Service on his way to New York.

I bet they’re thrilled. It’s kind of a novelty, having to escort a ForMer PresiDent to court to be arraigned. Guiness World Record type of thing. Very glamorous and dignified.

A rally for Mr Trump with Republican House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has been scheduled for noon on Tuesday in New York, calling for supporters to join in “peaceful protest” against the indictment.

Yeah that’s a noble cause. “Let’s protest this greedy lawless scumbag having to face consequences for once. Power to the people criminals!”

Adam Schiff disses DeSantis:

Rep. Adam Schiff slammed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Sunday for comments the likely GOP primary candidate made about former President Donald Trump’s indictment.

…

DeSantis, who is expected to enter the 2024 presidential race, criticized the indictment delivered by a New York grand jury on Thursday, calling it “un-American.”

“Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda,” DeSantis said…

On Sunday, Schiff, who led Trump’s first impeachment in the House and sat on the high-profile committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, called DeSantis’ comments “cowardly.”

“He certainly knows better about the law. He knows what his obligation is to extradite someone who is accused of crime in another state,” Schiff said. “This is kind of a cowardly action by Ron DeSantis to try to compete with Donald Trump on Trump’s own turf.”

More cynical and self-serving than cowardly, I’d say. It wouldn’t take any real courage to say “The law must take its course” or similar. Trump is never going to be his buddy, let alone help him run for president, let alone get elected president. He might as well just say “No one is above the law” and leave it at that.

Trans woman approved to play women’s Gaelic football

Man approved to play women’s Gaelic football.

Na Gaeil Aeracha, the first explicitly LGBTQ+ inclusive GAA club, said it welcomed the decision to approve the application from Giulia Valentino, an Italian trans woman who has played on the team since 2021.

Na Gaeil Aeracha welcomes the decision to allow a man to endanger and have an unfair advantage over the women on opposing teams.

The LGFA published a policy in February which stated that trans women would be eligible to play at all levels subject to certain conditions. These included that they have not been deemed to be an “unacceptable risk”, which it said would “likely only arise in the most exceptional circumstances”.

That’s ridiculous. The unacceptable risk would arise every single time they played or praticed.

In a statement, Na Gaeil Aeracha said it was “delighted that Giulia’s application has been accepted”.

“We want to make sure there is a space on the pitch for everyone regardless of their identity,” the team said.

Then why have women’s Gaelic football at all? If “identity” (i.e. being a woman or not being a woman) is irrelevant then what remains of women’s Gaelic football?

Last year the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) banned trans women from participating in contact rugby. It cited peer-reviewed research that it said showed there were physical differences between people whose sex was assigned as male and those assigned as female at birth.

Gee, really? Who knew? I hope parents find plenty of peer-reviewed research before they tell their sons not to bully their daughters.

Seriously? Saudi Arabia is growing alfalfa in Arizona because it’s used up its own tiny supply of water? “Hey it’s kind of dry here so let’s use Arizona instead. Sure it’s on the other side of the planet and it too is a desert but what could go wrong?”

Arizona is leasing farmland to a Saudi water company, straining aquifers, and threatening future water supply in Phoenix. Fondomonte, a Saudi company, exports the alfalfa to feed its cows in the Middle East. The country has practically exhausted its own underground aquifers there. In Arizona, Fondomonte can pump as much water as it wants at no cost.

And when it’s all gone Arizona will…uh…erm…move to Nevada. Yeah, that’s it.

The Times points out that political bluster is irrelevant in court.

But in a court of law, the magnetism that Mr. Trump and Fox News have over their audiences may lose some of its power. No matter how many times the former president insists outside the courtroom that he’s the victim of a political prosecution, inside the courtroom his lawyers will have to address the specific charges. They will win or lose based on legal arguments, not bluster.

…

James Bopp Jr., a conservative defense lawyer, said he agreed with virtually all Republicans that the Manhattan district attorney had coaxed his grand jury to bring forward a specious indictment for the political purpose of damaging Mr. Trump.

But, he said, Mr. Trump’s lawyers must answer the charges, not grandstand on the politics.

“A charge is not automatically dismissible because it’s brought for political purpose,” he said. “The motive of prosecutors may be pertinent to the broader society. It’s not pertinent to a judge.”

Stay out of Florida.

Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a bill Thursday to allow people to carry concealed loaded weapons anywhere without permits.

What could possibly go wrong?

The measure would scrap existing requirements for concealed weapons permits, including an extra layer of background checks, licensing and firearms training.

Because what Florida (and everywhere else) needs is more and more and more and more people with guns.

Senate passage comes just three days after a shooter opened fire inside a Nashville, Tennessee, school, killing six people — including three 9-year-old children — an attack DeSantis has not yet spoken about publicly.

Did you miss the Tennessee part? It’s another state. What’s Tennessee got to do with Florida? States’ rights yo.

If the bill does become law, Florida — the site of the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and the 2018 mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland — will become the 26th state to allow people to carry concealed loaded guns anywhere without permits, a growing trend that has alarmed gun safety groups.

Wawawa. Chickenshits. Getting shot is good for you, it builds character.

The bill wrapped in measures Republican legislators said would increase school safety, such as creating a standardized school threat assessment process and expanding a program that allows school district employees to carry guns at schools.

Ugh. I’ve run out of sarcasm.

What does “transphobia” have to do with Planned Parenthood?

What does “gender-affirming care” have to do with Planned Parenthood?

They’re Planned Parenthood. Why do they keep yapping about trans issues?

The Daily Mail shouts (no doubt pissing itself laughing)

‘Why will nobody kiss me?’ Dylan Mulvaney’s man-to-girl transition has won her TikTok fame, riches, and allies in the White House, but left her lonely and undateable

Gosh, Dilz, why do you think? Because you’re not attractive to men and you’re not attractive to women. What did you think would happen after the surgeries? That all sexes and genders would be all over you like flies on molasses? You’re a walking parody, and nobody cares what’s under your skirt.

It’s been a tough year for Dylan Mulvaney.

Twelve months since launching her hit TikTok series, Days of Girlhood, she’s earned hundreds of thousands of dollars, won allies in the White House, and is elbowing her way into the world of Hollywood celebrities.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars for being a mockery of women. Maybe he should take his pity party somewhere else? Like Antarctica for instance?

Mulvaney’s online transition series, which has 10.8 million followers, was always odd. But her recent imitations of a fictional six-year-old girl called Eloise, who lives in a high-end hotel, and her masquerade as a child’s doll, have taken that strangeness to a new level.

‘Let dolls be dolls, please,’ Mulvaney said in a recent clip, sporting a bright, patterned dress, braided hair, bows, and colored circles on her cheeks, before spinning for the camera. ‘Let dolls be dolls, please.’

Gladly, if you’ll go be a doll somewhere private where we don’t have to see it.

Each time Mulvaney endorses a cosmetic, credit card or fashion brand, she earns some $75,000 — and perhaps double that when posted on Instagram as well, said Assil Dayri, a social media expert and founder of AMD Consulting Group.

That adds up to as much as $1 million a year for Mulvaney, who is represented by Los Angeles-based Creative Artists Agency (CAA), according to estimates provided by industry insiders.

He could just pay someone to kiss him. Problem solved. Meanwhile, how are things in Ukraine? Are people in Pakistan coping with the aftermath of the floods? Is life looking less grim for refugees?