Speaking of Trump about to be arrested, he also failed to report a quarter of a million dollars worth of prezzies from foreign governments.

Donald Trump’s White House failed to report more than 100 gifts from foreign nations worth more than a quarter-million dollars, according to a US government report, and several of those gifts – including a lifesize painting of Trump given by the president of El Salvador and golf clubs from the prime minister of Japan – are still unaccounted for.

The revelations came as part of a report on Friday from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. The report details numerous unreported items, among them 16 gifts from Saudi Arabia worth more than $45,000 in all, including a dagger valued at up to $24,000, and 17 presents from India that include expensive cufflinks, a vase and a $4,600 model of the Taj Mahal.

Funnily enough, there are rules about this.

The Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act requires that gifts above $480 given to the president, vice-president and their families by foreign officials must be reported to the state department.

For very fucking obvious reasons. If they’re not reported, they become bribes.

The top Democrat on the committee, congressman Jamie Raskin, said the findings indicate “a brazen disregard for the rule of law and its systematic mishandling of large gifts”.

Which amounts to taking bribes.

The report is the result of a year-long investigation into Trump’s failure to disclose foreign gifts while in office, according to the Washington Post, and runs 15 pages long.

“Today’s preliminary findings suggest again the Trump administration’s brazen disregard for the rule of law and its systematic mishandling of large gifts from foreign governments, including many lavish personalized gifts that vastly exceed the statutory limit in value but were never reported – some that are still missing today,” said Raskin in a statement.

He’s a greedy corrupt criminal. Maybe it was a mistake to make him president.

Trump is expecting to be arrested next Tuesday and is inciting violence in response.

“TAKE OUR NATION BACK” is pure January 6.

Not how to teach science:

They deleted it.

Too bad she has faith that men can be women.

BBC insults women some more.

The BBC has rejected viewer complaints about the trans rapist Isla Bryson being referred to as a woman on a Scottish news programme. The corporation’s executive complaints unit (ECU) launched an investigation after concerns were raised about how Bryson was described in coverage of his conviction for raping two women.

…

A presenter said: “A woman has been found guilty of raping two women prior to changing her gender. 31-year-old Isla Bryson carried out the attacks in Clydebank and Glasgow in 2016 and 2019 while known as a man called Adam Graham. Bryson now identifies as a woman and is in the process of starting gender reassignment.”

Rubbing our noses in it. They didn’t have to say “A woman has” at the very start of the piece. They chose to. Rubbing our noses in it.

The viewers took issue with the fact the rapist was referred to as a woman, and female pronouns used, when Bryson did not have a gender recognition certificate. The BBC refused to uphold the complaints but said the wording used in the programme was “not ideal”.

I don’t give a flying fuck whether he has a “certificate” or not; he’s a rapist; he’s not a woman. I wouldn’t be fine with that insulting lede if he had had a “certificate” at the time.

The ruling said: “The ECU considered whether the programme met BBC standards of accuracy. The ECU agreed the opening line was not ideal (subsequent bulletins referred to ‘a trans woman’). However, it did not agree audiences had been misled on a material point. Anyone watching the programme would have been in no doubt as to the gender identity of Bryson at the point at which the crimes were committed.

But people don’t always “watch the programme” in the sense of staring fixedly at the screen while doing nothing else. People also listen to it while doing other things, with or without glances at the screen. It’s not a test. It shouldn’t be a matter of “Viewers knew if they were paying proper attention” as if the BBC were teaching first grade arithmetic.

“Notwithstanding the tension between the requirement to report accurately while using appropriately inclusive language, it was a matter of fact that Bryson was convicted as a woman.”

Azza. The court unfortunately went along with his insulting dodge, but it shouldn’t have, and neither should the BBC. The language was not “appropriately” “inclusive” – it’s not in any way “appropriately inclusive” to call a violent rapist a woman. Try being appropriately inclusive of women for a change.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey at Miscellany Room.

The point of laws like this TN one is to intimidate people and chill expression, and this very thread demonstrates how.

Oh, the law doesn’t specifically say that all drag performances are illegal, only ones that appeal to a prurient interest! And who could be against performances of a prurient interest where CHILDREN might see it? (Won’t somebody think of the children?)

Except what makes something an “appeal to a prurient interest”? Yes, it’s a phrase used in obscenity law, so it has some legal meaning, but obscenity has other requirements that limit its applicability, and even with those it’s still a bit of a dangerously fuzzy concept.

And here in this very thread we have J.A. expressing the view that drag performances are de facto appeals to prurient interest.

Imagine trying to advise a client on what they can and can’t do in TN. Can you perform a stage version of Mrs. Doubtfire? Well, the Robin Williams version didn’t seem terribly sexy, so probably? But maybe not. Maybe it depends on the size of the fake breasts. But hey, you probably wouldn’t be convicted. I mean, you might be arrested and lose your job and not be able to pay rent or mortgage while you await your trial, and end up owing huge amounts of attorneys fees, but you’ll probably be acquitted, right? Sound like a risk you’d like to run?

It’s the same with some of the laws being passed in Florida. Oh, gosh, the law doesn’t say you can’t have books about Rosa Parks in schools! I mean, a teacher wouldn’t be convicted for having such a book in their classroom library. Well, almost certainly not. They probably wouldn’t even be charged. I mean, what are the chances of some conservative parent making a stink, and some crusading and/or politically ambitious D.A. deciding to press charges? That would never happen in the great state of Florida! Well, ok, it might. But probably not! That sounds like something worth risking your career, financial security, and freedom for!

The Federalist Society is grappling with the always-grappled-with conundrum of democracy versus rights (or democracy versus law, democracy versus principles, democracy versus charters). Democracy is more fair and just than dictatorship or monarchy, but then what about democracies that persecute minorities? What do you do when the majority is all for violating human rights?

This year’s gathering was even more important than most. As the first student symposium since the Supreme Court handed conservatives a historic package of victories on gun rights, religious freedom, environmental deregulation, and, of course, abortion, the weekend offered a window into the shifting priorities and preoccupations of the youngest and most elite members of the conservative legal movement, at a time when the future of the movement as a whole is quietly unsettled. 

The first major clue about those preoccupations came from the symposium’s theme, which the organizers had designated as “Law and Democracy.” As the programming unfolded over the next day and a half, it became alarmingly clear that, even among the buttoned-up young members of the Federalist Society — an organization not known for its political transgressiveness — the relationship between those two principles is far from settled. 

Is it ever settled? Can it ever be settled? It seems to me the tension is built in. Majorities don’t always respect human rights. Democracies can neglect or persecute their own minorities. They can and do and have.

To those who have followed the Federalist Society closely since its triumphs at the Supreme Court last year, the symposium’s focus on law and democracy may hardly seem incidental. Since its founding in 1982, the Federalist Society has championed “judicial restraint,” the notion that judges should limit their roles to interpreting the law as written, leaving the actual business of lawmaking to democratically elected legislatures. 

Which is a sensible principle on its face, but at the same time, democratically elected legislatures can be very eager to make law that violates some people’s rights. It’s always a tug of war.

That approach made sense for conservatives when they still saw the federal judiciary as a liberal force dragging the country to the left. But now that conservatives have secured a solid majority on the Supreme Court — and voters in several red states have soundly rejected hard-line positions on abortion — a spirited debate is underway within the Federalist Society about the wisdom of deferring to democratic majorities as a matter of principle.

Or to put it another way, deference to democratic majorities is good when it goes our way but not quite so good when it doesn’t. Who knew?

“From our very beginning, there has been an aspect of judicial restraint, and there has been an aspect that it’s judges’ jobs to interpret the Constitution, that whatever it says, that’s what they should do — and those two can sometimes be in tension,” said Eugene Meyer, the president and CEO of the Federalist Society, as we spoke in a back hallway of the conference center. 

What I’m saying.

Headline:

Woman jailed for four-and-a-half years for threats to murder her mother

Except, not a woman.

A woman who threatened to torture, rape and murder her mother, was today jailed for five and a half years with the final 12 months suspended.

Except NOT A WOMAN. Not a woman, not even close. A man. A violent abusive violent man.

Judge O’Donnell noted the defendant, who was born male but identifies as a woman “is unrepentant” about wanting to kill her mother.

His mother.

Unfortunately the women in that prison will now have to deal with him.

Famous they/them artiste Sam Smith wore a thing at an awards do last month.

I’m chagrined that I missed it.

Sam Smith’s inflatable latex suit was the talk of the red carpet at this year’s Brit Awards. Its designer is also a latex farmer in India, who reveals it was inspired by his dog.

An inflatable latex suit! Of course it was the talk of the carpet! (Wait what? What is the talk of the carpet? That don’t make no sense.) Plus it was inspired by a dog!

Aesthetically it’s just [chef’s kiss] –

And the back view!

No no you’ve got it all wrong, it’s about inclusion. It’s so much more inclusiony this way.

Good Morning Britain viewers have been left furious as the CEO of Oxfam spoke out on why the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are to be banned in the charity’s new foundation scheme.

Oxfam has instructed its staff to use the word ‘parent’ instead of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ as it updates its language guide…

CEO Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah explains why Oxfam’s inclusivity guide has been updated, claiming the changes “create an inclusive environment within the work place.”

But it doesn’t. It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t. Is Dr Sriskandarajah aware that lots of people in the work place are themselves mothers or fathers? Does it not occur to him that forbidding mention of them is not inclusive? That it’s especially not inclusive when it’s not a mere oversight but an explicit written instruction?

Oxfam CEO Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, said on Friday (March 17) morning’s episode of GMB: “All foundations need to create an inclusive environment within the work place and that’s what this guide is about. Its not about telling staff what to do or what not to do its a guide.

“We want to make sure we treat people, staff and communities that we work with around the world with kindness and dignity. We have tens of thousands of volunteers and we want to make sure that the language we use is inclusive of all of us, of people with all backgrounds.”

By telling those people of all backgrounds not to mention mothers and fathers. I’m not seeing the kindness and dignity. Not seeing the inclusive of all of us.

You know, he probably doesn’t either. He’s not a purple-haired teenager. He probably doesn’t see kindness or dignity in this either, but The Iron Law of Trans Entitlement has dictated that he has to pretend to. We really need to get this law repealed.

Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah couldn’t answer how much it costs to update the guide. He added: “What we’re learning is if we’re going to end poverty, we need to take people with us. And using inclusive language is an important way of showing dignity and respect to the people.”

But you’re not going to take people with you by carefully erasing the words “mother” and “father” from your language. You’re not going to take people with you by making it an explicit rule that it’s naughty and exclooosionary to mention mothers and fathers. The people you’re trying to take with you are going to get off that train so fast they’ll be a blur.

Oxfam has issued a new inclooooosive guide to how to erase everyone except Trans Folks.

Oxfam has instructed staff to drop the words “mother” and “father” from their vocabulary and replace them with “parent” when describing family roles.

Which is to say Oxfam has instructed staff to describe family roles without describing family roles.

The charity said that allowances should be made for trans families that might not identify with the conventional roles of a man and woman in parenthood and that in such cases “parent” would be more appropriate.

Except it’s not actually “conventional”; it’s physical. There are of course many conventions that go with the physical roles in parenthood, but the conception and gestation and expulsion and lactation are physical. Not having a word for the one who does the gestating and lactating or a word for the one who does the inseminating is just fatuous.

The word parent describes “the role in raising children without directly ascribing gendered roles”, Oxfam said.

No, it doesn’t. That’s exactly what it doesn’t do. It throws a modesty veil over the role in raising children; it removes the precision that names the parent who nurses the infant and the parent who is unable to nurse the infant by lumping them together. In the real world, sometimes “parents” is the right word, but other times the specific parent has to be specified. We have a quick and easy way to do that: say “mother” or “father.” It’s not an obscenity, it’s not blasphemy, it’s not libel, it’s just the ordinary word.

Oxfam said: “This guide is not prescriptive but helps authors communicate in a way that is respectful to the diverse range of people with which we work. We are proud of using inclusive language; we won’t succeed in tackling poverty by excluding marginalised groups.”

They won’t succeed in tackling poverty by refusing to mention mothers, that’s for damn sure.

Sigh. The burning stupid, it’s like mildew, or ants, or a bad smell.

When we “include everyone” in the sense of calling men “women” if they tell us to will overcome poverty? Really? How? What’s the mechanism? And does this eccentric claim apply to all people who call themselves something they’re not? How about rich people, and bosses, and CEOs, and stockbrokers, and market manipulators, and advertisers, and politicians who spurn immigrants and labor unions? When we “include” them will poverty be overcome? Please explain how it works so that we can get busy.

Meet “cute authoritarianism.”

The results of a study of the effects of Disney films and “cute webpages,” such as Lolcats and Cute Overload, suggest that humans have a hardwired biological response to cuteness. Communications expert Julia Möller argues that “the sensitivity to cuteness is directly connected to the reproductive phase of the recipient.” Some other research suggests that “gazing at cute babies releases dopamine”—the neurotransmitter that also plays a crucial role in drug addiction.

Many corporations have learned to capitalize on this in advertisements that feature images of puppies, kittens and children. Möller describes this strategy as “fluffy dollars.” This strategic use of cuteness is also used to sell non-cute items, such as AI. According to a Chinese study, customers are more willing to adopt AI applications with “high perceived cuteness.”

I think there’s also a counter-cuteness response, when the cuteness goes too far or misses the mark in some way. Some cuteness is just too damn cute. Think Shirley Temple for instance – she was extremely cute as a child, but she was also just too damn cute. Too many dimples, too much curly, too giggly. For the long haul you want a little gawkiness or pathos or similar. That probably applies only to humans though – not puppies.

Most citizens of modern democracies are resistant to being forced to do things against their will. To combat this, social engineers have developed the psychological tool of nudging. Pioneered by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, nudge theory draws on the reductive science of behaviourism and advocates the practice of operant conditioning through indirect suggestions and positive reinforcement through “rewards.” 

“Thank you for not smoking.” I know. It’s a good thing there are so many literal-minded people like me who snarl “You don’t know what I’m doing.”

When Boston Dynamics got three of its robots to do a coordinated dance to the Motown classic “Do You Love Me?” the social media world thought it was very cute indeed. The resulting YouTube videos and GIFs garnered hundreds of millions of views.

This is all very cute—but the cuteness conceals the fact that Boston Dynamics worked with DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) for over a decade and still works with the US military and is involved in the manufacture of robots like the LSR pack mule—a large dog-like AI-powered legged squad support system. Robotic dogs that resemble Spot the dancing robot have been developed by tech companies like Ghost Robotics for explicitly military use and their role within the military has been expanding. One such robotic dog was used to enforce lockdown curfews in Shanghai. It issued commands like Your behaviour has violated anti-pandemic rules. Please go home immediately, or you will be punished in accordance with the law. What a cute doggie!

Imagine the psychic trauma: a darling robotic puppy threatening you with punishment. Ouch.

Japan’s cute army is a strange example of this fusion between military weapons and cuteness. Fighter jets have been painted with anime figures and soldiers often pose with fluffy toys in social media posts. On one fighter ship, a decoy rocket launcher has even been “anthropomorphized into a bunny rabbit, complete with mortar tubes for ears.”

See this is why I think there must be some resistance built in too: because I hate anime [chibi]. I think it’s revolting. It doesn’t make me want to cuddle anything, it makes me want to knock heads together. It’s like the word “winsome” – I hate anything labeled winsome, and always have. Cute can be a love-hate thing.

Kawaii (the “cult of cute”) has been an integral part of Japanese culture since the post WW1 years and includes curly handwriting, shy and childlike manga and anime characters and cute monsters and animals like Hello Kitty and Pikachu. Matt Alt has argued that its strange adaptation to military use “could reflect a deep-seated discomfort with the nation’s military history,” a form of denial.

Samurai Hello Kitty.

Cuteness is where the Red Guard came from.

In his 1963 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Robert Jay Lifton has shown how China made public expressions of joy and happiness mandatory, enforced by rewards and punishments. The populace had to repeat song lyrics and phrases such as Long live Chairman Mao for ten thousand years and Anyone who sees Chairman Mao is the happiest person in the world. This mandatory performative cuteness heightened the sense of inescapable oppression. Fengyuan Ji reports that, by the mid 1970s, there were 141 million radio loudspeakers around the nation, blaring out joy-filled anthems and propaganda to 95% of workers and 65% percent of rural households…

In an attempt to make the populace childlike and compliant, Mao unleashed an army of school-aged children, teenagers and students: the Red Guards, staffed by children as young as twelve. During their two-year reign of terror, the Red Guard children and youths became the policers of Mao’s enforced-positivity state, rooting out all negative elements and forcing older people to perform humiliating struggle sessions—public confessions that sometimes led to prison, torture and even death.

Now the Red Guards are punishing us for gender ideology non-compliance.

There are a few striking parallels between Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the Rainbow Rebellion of identity activism in the 2020s. Both ideologies deploy kitsch for political purposes. In the case of rainbow identity politics, this has evolved from the gay camp that Susan Sontag explored back in the swinging 60s, but also from kawaii, cosplay and drag, which stress-test the limits of the acceptable. The cute is here an ironic rebellion against social norms, argues Simon May in his book The Power of Cute. “Cuteness is queer,” writes May. Through hybrid mythical figures like the hermaphrodite and the sphinx, the cute “beguiles us” by “distorting the values of gender, age, morality, and even species into something playfully indeterminate.”

Playfully except when it comes to non-compliant women. Game over!

Both rainbow activism and Maoism share a strong belief in behaviourist linguistic engineering: in the designation of some words as good and others as bad, in the censorship of words, the cancellation of people and the imposition of compelled speech. The very Maoist idea has re-emerged that we can build a new egalitarian, queer, tolerant society, if we simply police all language, images and behaviours and force the populace to use the new rainbow-coloured lingo.

This involves using correct and affirmative words, chants and slogans like mantras, to repel political enemies. This new revolutionary language is based on tearing down the old language of history and discrimination, on the basis that all prescribed forms of identity are oppressive social constructs, bearing the dead weight of history. New pronouns are needed for a new rainbow youth that is free from the past, new forms for a reborn Red Guard.

New pronouns are needed and people who refuse to use them must be sent away for…further training.

Guardian columnist Catherine Bennett wrote a piece about misogynist men a few weeks ago.

The continued detention of the professional misogynist Andrew Tate deprives fans of a treasured role model. Even if Tate is soon free to resume his life’s work – essentially, telling women to “shut up, bitch” – it could be a while before Romanian police return the luxury cars that validate his alpha male status.

…

In what is increasingly acknowledged to be a golden era for misogyny, it’s still unusual to find anything approaching Tate’s strutting self-regard, his bragging, his contempt for women, especially mouthy or older ones. “I don’t even talk to old hoes,” he offers, in one video. As for working women who aspire, to Tate’s disgust, to “thoughts and opinions and a job”: “Sit at home,” he tells them, “be quiet, make coffee.” Rule one for “chicks” (which must be tricky to enforce from prison) goes: “No. You stay in the house, you don’t go nowhere. No restaurants, no clubs, nothing.”

Or as the Labour party’s director of communications, Matthew Doyle, was heard saying last week, after a woman MP started playing up, spend more time in your constituency rather than “hanging out with JK Rowling”. He was referring to the MP for Canterbury, Rosie Duffield, once a darling of the party, now feeling, as she written, “ostracised”, but in refusing to shut up, becoming the sort of problem Tate never faced.

She’s making a point here. Matthew Doyle’s insult is a slightly more refined version of Andrew Tate.

If Labour’s responses to its woman problem (as Duffield rightly calls it) can never compete with Tate’s videos, its progressive approach to misogyny is arguably more instructive for men who would like to shut women up but cannot afford a Romania-based chick compound. Men who study, for instance, the conduct of Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle may even conclude that the manosphere could have done more to nurture, as he does, male belief that bullying and insulting women is indicative of moral superiority. For Russell-Moyle, when he brought himself to apologise for insulting and intimidating Miriam Cates MP (having previously barracked Duffield in the debate about the government’s section 35 order blocking Scotland’s gender recognition reform bill), the aggression only confirmed the purity of his sentiments. His “tone”, he conceded, was a mistake, but he stood by his words: “Our job as MPs is to channel passion and anger into considered debate to win our arguments.”

When, that is, we’re talking down to women.

Russell-Moyle is channeling his passion and anger again:

This headline comparing me & Ben Bradshaw with an alleged sex trafficker/serial abuser is sickening from the @ObserverUK. It claims things which are untrue, and places my photo as a form of doxing continuing the abuse, death threats & homophobia which has been ongoing for 2 weeks https://t.co/ZRCperS8Tb

— Lloyd Russell-Moyle 🌹🏕️🏳️‍🌈 (@lloyd_rm) January 29, 2023

He expects to be able to abuse his female colleagues with impunity.

Two University of Bath senior lecturers have a piece in Jacobin about…you’ll never guess…”transphobia” and moral panic and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sorry sorry I’m awake now – yes transphobia and moral panic and transphobia. The subhead presents their claim.

Britain’s moral panic over the trans “threat” is often promoted by people who see themselves as liberals. But their transphobia echoes the same reactionary themes long used to demonize minorities.

Or to put it another way, their evil echoes the same evil long used to be evil to saints. Compelling argument; can we talk about something else now?

No. Pay attention. These are senior lecturers telling us.

The horrific murder of Brianna Ghey has put transphobia in Britain’s news headlines yet again, with police currently investigating it as a potential hate crime.

That is of course horrific but is it necessarily more horrific than the vastly more “yet again” murders of women that don’t generally get this level of sanctimonious attention-calling?

Violence targeting trans people is unfortunately not rare. In 2022, Vice reported that “the number of homophobic hate crime reports in the UK has doubled and the number of transphobic hate crime reports has tripled over the last five years”.

That’s a hell of a non sequitur. Doubled from what? One to two? Telling us the unknown number has doubled does not tell us that violence targeting trans people is not rare.

It is essential to see such extreme actions as part of a broader discursive environment — one that links together mainstream, far-right, and extreme-right actors.

That is, it’s essential to see one murder as somehow connected to feminist women doing feminism. It’s essential to bullshit about this one murder in such a way that it becomes the fault of feminist women who dispute the ideology that claims men are women if they say they are.

The disproportionate and generally negative focus against trans people across the media spectrum has been well documented. In a 2020 report, the Independent Press Standards Organisation in the UK noted that there had been a 400 percent increase in coverage of “trans issues” between 2014 and 2019. Many mainstream public actors have also used their huge platforms to push anti-trans narratives into the mainstream, emboldening extreme-right activists.

What these two senior lecturers call a “generally negative focus against trans people” is in fact mostly an ongoing argument about the ideology that claims gender trumps sex and people are whatever gender they say they are. It’s not “a focus against trans people”; it’s an encyclopedia of arguments about women and sex as opposed to gender and women’s rights.

Many mainstream public actors have also used their huge platforms to push anti-trans narratives into the mainstream, emboldening extreme-right activists.

“Narratives,” they say. We stupid feminist women are just telling stories. Women are too dumb to make arguments.

Then they admit that many of “these actors” are not in fact right wing, but that just makes us all the more sneaky, doncha know.

But individual intentions aren’t all that matter. The anti-trans discourse they’re joining in supports a more global reactionary movement by reinforcing key far-right tropes and giving mainstream legitimacy to forms of exclusion.

Back atcha, chums. The anti-feminist discourse you’re joining in supports a more venomous reactionary movement by reinforcing the breath-taking misogyny of men who claim to be better at womaning than women are.

Jumping ahead a little (yes, they’re boring – of course they are) –

This also relates to the memetic nature of how the threat of “trans ideology” and “social contagion” is discussed in political and media circles. For example, it is common to see stories about dramatic 3,000 percent or even 4,000 percent increases in referrals to the youth gender identity service, which turn out to represent an increase from mere dozens of referrals per year to stabilization at the number of referrals we should broadly expect, if existing estimates of the size of the trans population are correct.

Wait, what was that you said at the beginning? Oh yes –

Violence targeting trans people is unfortunately not rare. In 2022, Vice reported that “the number of homophobic hate crime reports in the UK has doubled and the number of transphobic hate crime reports has tripled over the last five years”.

Ahem.

After that we get paragraph after paragraph of academicky posturing and name-checking that never grapples with the actual issues. Tedious, pretentious, and wrong.

H/t Mostly Cloudy

Now that we’ve met Maisie Hill let’s get to know her even better. She certainly wants to tell people on the internet all about herself.

Chapter one: she had horrible period pain for 15 years, which is not something I would wish on anyone. Except Donald Trump.

Chapter two: she became fabulous.

At the time I was managing a rock bar in Soho and trying to find my path in life (having previously experimented with tattooing, music merchandise, and working in a parrot store in New York), so when I found the perfect combination of therapies that finally dealt with my period pain once and for all, I was inspired to train as a health practitioner.

What’s a health practitioner? How is it different from a doctor or nurse?

She says she’s been “working in reproductive and hormonal health” for 15 years. Again I don’t know what that means. I suspect the vagueness is deliberate.

My qualifications include:

• BSc Chinese Medicine Acupuncture which included a semester in the neurology department of a Chinese hospital.
• Diplomas in Life Coaching, Reflexology, Aromatherapy, Massage, and the Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal Therapy (ATMAT).
• Post-graduate diploma in Paediatric Acupuncture.

Ah, so no qualifications at all then. A new agey quack.

Conclusion:

I’m an all round fantastic person.

And a person who wants to hire a part-time assistant to do the full time jobs of 3 or 4 people. Much fantastic.

An unexpectedly hilarious read, starting from Helen Joyce’s note-taking.

All righty let’s read that job ad, because it is both horrifying and hilarious. You want to read the archived version, because they’ve already edited out the “you can’t work here if you’re a terf” bit from the original.

Maisie Hill, seeking a virtual assistant, remote, contract.

We are looking for an organised, responsive, and helpful person to join our business as a Virtual Assistant. This role is all about supporting the needs of the business, so that we can create the results we want and help our clients to create the results that they want.

As the Virtual Assistant, you will take complete ownership of customer facing systems. You’re clear, efficient, and detail-oriented. You’ll have the honour and privilege of being the first point of contact for our potential clients as well as existing ones. This position gives you the opportunity to deploy your organisational and customer success skills.

This is a contractor role, working approximately 30 hours per month at £30GBP per hour.

30 hours a month??? About 7 hours a week? That doesn’t sound like much time to deal with all the “customer facing systems.” Especially not when you see the list.

Responsibilities

Administration

• Managing the public-facing inbox, replying to enquiries and fan mail.
• Responsive and helpful customer service via email, including all back end operations support, ie, billing issues, refunds, address updates, and tech issues etc.
• Responding promptly to PR enquiries.
• Managing Maisie’s calendar, ensuring it’s kept spacious.
• Researching and organising in Maisie’s personal life.
• Clear open communication with Maisie (CVO, Chief Visionary Officer), Bek (DOO, Director of Operations) and the team.
• Regularly test customer journeys to find leaks and plug them, such as testing links on social media and the waitlist sign up form.
• Liaise with contractors (podcast team and web team)

Uhhhh that’s not a part-time job.

And that’s not even all! There’s another whole long list. Also, organising “in Maisie’s personal life”? No thank you, especially not when paid for only 30 hours a month.

Then there are the requirements, which are separate from the responsibilities.

Requirements

The Virtual Assistant position might be right for you if:

• You have extensive VA experience (coaching industry a plus).
• You want to work in a company that makes a difference, and want to be part of something bigger than yourself.
• You’re super organised—nothing slips through the cracks.
• You love to tick things off a list.
• You’re responsive and can move quickly to ensure things get done effectively and efficiently (without rushing or putting pressure on yourself).
• You can anticipate what is needed and can think way ahead for everything.
• You’re self-sufficient and don’t need lots of feedback.
• You can execute at a high level without being micromanaged.
• You can both follow and create processes and procedures.
• You’re comfortable figuring technology out, and can learn through instructional videos as well as trial and error.
• You’re able to zoom in on the details and zoom out to see the big picture.
• You love the idea of receiving voice notes from Bek and Maisie with ideas, tasks they’ve thought of, and any questions they have.
• You have some flexibility with your schedule and are able to work occasional weekends for events, and are up for being all hands on deck during launches and events when prompt customer service is essential.
• You’re able to evaluate your own work and see the value in doing so.
• You can manage your own mind, have low drama, and take responsibility for how you show up to work.
• You pay attention to details – “Is this the correct date? Is that time-zone right? Does this link work? Is their name spelled correctly?”
• Proficiency or ability to master using; Gmail, Google Drive, Active Campaign, ClickUp, Slack, Zoom, Searchie, Vimeo, and our membership platform. We use various pieces of software in our business, you’re not expected to know them in advance but you will need to use them with confidence after we have trained you in their use.
• You’re resourceful and proactive with problem solving. We pride ourselves on being able to come up with solutions to problems… all whilst minimising them happening in the first place.
• You’re happy to take care of admin in Maisie’s personal life as well as within the business.
• You’ll naturally hold absolute respect for Maisie’s intellectual property and confidentiality.
• And (would be great but not required) you’re already familiar with Maisie Hill Ltd. and the services we offer. You’re a fan! You’ve read Period Power, you listen to Maisie’s podcast, you’re in-the-know about what we do, and you already love our work.

All that in 30 hours a month!

And by the way what do they do?

We are a life coaching business that uses a body-meets-brain approach which includes mindset coaching and awareness of stress responses and hormones. Our services include The Flow Collective (monthly online membership) and a small amount of private coaching. The membership will be growing this year so we are looking for someone who is able to grow with the company.

They’re modest, too.

• We are resourceful. We find quick and clever ways to make improvements and overcome difficulties. We are capable of finding solutions because we are powerful problem solvers.
• We value, respect and support all types of diversity across all identities including, but not limited to, ethnicity, race, gender, LGBTQIA, age, religion, neurodiversity, and abilities. We work with a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) expert to continually assess and improve DEI within the membership and within the business.
• We help each other thrive. We show up as real, vulnerable, transparent human beings who speak from the heart, value others’ contributions, and invest in each other’s growth.
• We do epic shit without burning ourselves out. We believe that rest is radical and that we get more done by slowing down. We expect you to work when you are at work, and be off when you are off.
• We like to have a laugh. We don’t complain and we take the time to celebrate the big and small.

They do epic shit without burning themselves out and without paying their admin assistant a full-time wage. (Mind you, the ad doesn’t say what the pay is, but since it’s a 30 hour a month job we can be pretty confident it’s nowhere near a living wage.) (Correction: it does say: £30 an hour so £900 a month.)

Trump is objecting to Ron DeSantis’s ethics. Trump is objecting to someone else’s ethics. Yes that’s right, his ethics.

Donald Trump’s allies are stepping up their battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, formally accusing him of violating state ethics and election laws with his “shadow presidential campaign.” 

Have they paid much attention to their own guy at all?

Make America Great Again Inc. is filing a 15-page complaint Wednesday with the Florida Commission on Ethics, a draft of which was obtained exclusively by NBC News. 

It asks the commission to probe whether pro-DeSantis super PACs, his “personally lucrative book tour” and a continued wave of state-level campaign contributions, among other things, “are unlawful because they serve his personal political objectives, are in furtherance of his personal financial gain at the expense of Florida taxpayers, and are intended to influence his official decision to resign from office.”

Ethics. Trump people making a fuss about ethics.

Nice impartial lede:

JK Rowling has defended her decision to weigh in on the debate about transgender issues in the past few years.

Ah yes, her “decision” to “weigh in” – as if she had absolutely no business saying anything about a debate that impinges on women’s rights at a million points. As if she’s a presumptuous pushy intruder talking about something that’s none of her business. Now she has the gall to “defend” this bossy meddlesome move. Really, where does she get the nerve.

In the years since, Rowling has shared a number of controversial social media posts and essays on the debate, leading to accusations of transphobia. She has denied that she is transphobic.

Same again. The “reporter” labels Rowling’s posts and essays controversial and then sneers that she denies it. The “reporter” poisons the well right at the beginning and then carries on poisoning it thereafter.

Trump explains that January 6 was all Pence’s fault.

Donald Trump on Monday sharply rebuked Mike Pence’s assertion that history would hold him accountable for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, telling reporters that his former vice president should shoulder the blame for the violent riot that day by Trump’s supporters.

It was Billy who broke the lamp/ate the last cookie/spilled grape juice on the rug.

“Had he sent the votes back to the legislatures, they wouldn’t have had a problem with Jan. 6, so in many ways you can blame him for Jan. 6,” the former president said, referring to Pence’s refusal to reject the electoral college votes in Congress as Trump wanted him to do that day. “Had he sent them back to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, the states, I believe, number one, you have had a different outcome. But I also believe you wouldn’t have had ‘Jan. 6’ as we call it.”

You would have had a successfully stolen election, is what he means. Those were the two options – a quietly stolen election, or a violent insurrection at the Capitol.

Now there’s a genius heckler’s veto.

Parents have been issued with a demand for £600 to cover the cost of hiring private security guards before a public debate over gender ideology in schools.

But why do they have to hire private security guards?

The group, Concerned Adults Talking Openly About Gender Identity Ideology, plans to hold a meeting at Portobello Library in Edinburgh on March 14 but it has prompted anger among trans activists who are trying to force its cancellation.

That’s why. Because many “trans activists” and their “activist” allies get violent.

Making the objects of the violence pay for security is an ingenious way to silence the objects of the violence, which of course is the goal of the people who resort to violence.

The parents’ group had hoped Edinburgh city council would defend their right to discuss their concerns and were stunned to be asked to pay for security guards.

It is indeed pretty god damn stunning.

Marie Mamulova, its spokeswoman, said: “The council is unreasonably trying to hold us responsible for the maintenance of public order in the face of threats of disturbance if the meeting goes ahead.”

Which is not how this is supposed to work. At all.

“If there is any genuine threat to public order, we are the victims not the perpetrators and we should not have to pay a premium just to enjoy our rights as local residents.”

The council says yeah you should because we hate you.

Cammy Day, leader of Edinburgh city council, said: “When considering whether any proposed event should go ahead, we’re clear that everyone has the right to freedom of expression — but, equally, that this must be done within the law and in line with relevant public safety requirements. This applies to meeting attendees, council staff, potential protesters, library users and the wider community.

“For the purpose of this event, our public safety team have set out our requirements for it to go ahead safely and are awaiting a response from the organisers.”

So if a lesbian/gay group scheduled a meeting and a group of religious zealots promised to attend and make trouble, the council would tell the lesbian/gay group it had to pay for security?