Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Storm Hans.

I’m still here even though it’s been a while. About a year ago I commented on how last summer was the driest on record in South-Eastern Norway. To hydropower companies, such as the one I work for, the drought made it a serious challenge to keep our powerplants running. To the end consumers the consequence was economy-breaking energy prices and a real danger of energy rationing during the winter. In the end what saved us (for the time being..) was heavy rainfall in late September/early October and lots of snow in January.

Well, this year is the polar opposite. In (what used to be) a “normal” year, the reservoirs would rise rapidly and the water flow in the rivers would increase something like 5-fold around the 2nd half of May due to snowmelt in the mountains (often we would get a second peak in the autumn due to heavy rainfall). It was this “spring flood” that was completely absent last year. By comparison this year has been closer to “normal”. Until the last couple of weeks, that is. A little over two weeks ago now the weather forecasts predicted heavy rain, but no one was prepared for just how much. I was working when the downpour began and spent the next two days monitoring one of Norway’s largest lakes as it kept rising faster than anything anyone had ever seen. I must have received something like 6-7 phone calls in a single day telling me to open the floodgates even more than I already had (I barely had time to make one adjustment before they called back and asked for the next) because the situation was even worse than previously expected.

Still, this was nothing compared to what was about to hit us. We hadn’t even recovered from the last downpour when “Hans” arrived. As late as last Friday the models seemed to suggest that the impact in our area would be relatively mild. Then during the weekend the forecasts got a lot more dire and emergency level red was declared on Sunday evening. All our reservoirs have already surpassed the highest levels seen during the last spring flood (usually by far the highest levels during the course of a year), and continue rising so rapidly the graphs look almost vertical (despite all the floodgates being open wide). It takes a lot of water to raise the level in one of these lakes by one centimeter: 34-137 centimeters in 24 hours is insane! There are already reports of closed roads, flooded basements etc. And yet the peak isn’t expected to pass before Thursday or Friday this week. And the summer has always (in the past) been the driest season of the year!

Most of the people I talk to still seem to think of each new extreme weather event as a freak anomaly that will pass, and then everything will go back to “normal”. But it won’t. We left “normal” behind years ago, and the worst we have ever seen so far may soon be as good as it ever gets.

Question of the day: is Mhairi Black a Karen?

Speaking with journalist Graham Spiers this week, Black suggested that gender-critical commentators were “bad actors” and “50-year-old Karens”. She also compared the gender-critical school of thought to historic white supremacy and intellectuals “who made these big prolific statements about how race was a key factor”. 

[God only knows what she meant by “prolific” there.]

When challenged by a member of the audience, who asked if someone could be perfectly decent and simply disagree with her on gender ideology, Black replied “If you keep it to yourself, aye.” So her message to those of us concerned about our hard-won sex-based rights might be summed up as: shut up woman. 

It’s not exactly the kind of statement you would expect from someone who has made their name preaching about the problems facing women in politics. Indeed, not so long ago Black announced that she would step down from Parliament because of Westminster’s “sexist and toxic” environment. 

Yet it is hard to imagine any other group being maligned so casually by a sitting MP.

It’s true you know. Imagine Mhairi Black referring contemptuously to “Abduls” or “Aishas” or “Arjuns” or “Parvatis”. Wouldn’t happen. But women? Pfffffff, who cares.

Anything an SNP politician says about gender-critical women should, at this point, be taken with a truck load of salt. But what Black might not realise is that, in her tut-tutting at women who dare to speak out, she herself is demonstrating everything that is perceived to be wrong with “Karens”. By telling women to keep their political views “to yourself” if they don’t fit in with gender ideology, she exemplifies a bossy, self-righteous know-it-all. 

But sadly, this is an issue which goes far beyond one politician and her attention-seeking ways. Increasingly it is deemed OK for those in the mainstream to call middle-aged women (quite often lesbians) slurs like “Karen” or “Terf” – particularly when their views are shared by the multitude, such as that sex is real, giving hormones to kids is questionable, and women should be able to pee in peace. 

Why did Oxfam deem it acceptable to use a haggard woman’s face in their “terf” section of their Pride campaign? The answer is that there is a right kind of woman and a wrong kind. The right kind “keep to themselves” their concerns and questions about the erasure of sex difference and women’s freedoms. The wrong kind are the ones who won’t shut up. Well Mhairi Black, call me a Karen.

It could become a saying expressing surprise. Well knock me down and call me a Karen.

The NY Times broke the secret memo story and has the details.

The memo had been a missing piece in the public record of how Mr. Trump’s allies developed their strategy to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory. In mid-December, the false Trump electors could go through the motions of voting as if they had the authority to do so. Then, on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally count those slates of votes, rather than the official and certified ones for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Step one, create some fake electoral votes. Step two, put Mike Pence alone in a room so that he can count the fake ones. Success!

While that basic plan itself was already known, the document, described by prosecutors as the “fraudulent elector memo,” provides new details about how it originated and was discussed behind the scenes. Among those details is Mr. Chesebro’s proposed “messaging” strategy to explain why pro-Trump electors were meeting in states where Mr. Biden was declared the winner. The campaign would present that step as “a routine measure that is necessary to ensure” that the correct electoral slate could be counted by Congress if courts or legislatures later concluded that Mr. Trump had actually won the states.

But present it that way to whom? Presenting it that way to the public is one thing, but surely there are people in charge who would tell Chesebro and Trump and all of them that no it is not a routine measure, get out of here, if you try it again we’ll Lock You Up. In other words I don’t quite get how that would work in practice. But then it didn’t work in practice, so maybe that’s the answer.

There’s a secret memo.

An internal Trump campaign memo by Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer allied with Donald Trump, reveals new details about how the former president and his team initiated the plan to interfere with the electoral college process and install fake GOP electors in multiple states after losing the 2020 presidential election.

The 6 December 2020 memo, made public on Tuesday by the New York Times, shows how Chesebro laid out the plan to put forth slates of Republican electors in seven key swing states that Trump had lost.

The document, which federal prosecutors described as a “fraudulent elector memo”, revealed that Chesebro proposed the appointment of fake electors, and detailed a “messaging” strategy to portray them as evidence if legislatures later concluded Trump as the victor in those states.

In the memo, Chesebro acknowledges that he is suggesting a “bold, controversial strategy” that the supreme court would “likely” ultimately reject. He argues that the plan would focus attention on claims of voter fraud and “buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column”.

I think “bold, controversial” is lawyerese for “illegal.” You try to avoid saying in writing that you’re proposing an illegal “strategy” so you veil it in words like “bold” and “controversial.”

In weather/climate news:

A powerful storm has brought destruction to Norway, causing landslides and leaving an entire town stranded, as meteorologists warned of the strongest rainfall in a quarter of a century.

The storm – named Storm Hans – has killed two people, ripped off roofs and caused widespread disruption across northern Europe in a summer that started with wildfires across much of the region.

…

Strong winds and rain continued across the region, also causing disruption, cancelling ferries, delaying flights, uprooting trees, flooding streets and also causing outages across Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden.

…

The Swedish meteorological and hydrological institute issued a red warning for Halland and parts of Småland for Tuesday and Wednesday. The institute said Hans had also brought in warm air across the north, leading to tropical nights in multiple locations in Norrland. On Tuesday, Haparanda recorded a temperature of 30.2C – its highest August temperature since 1969.

Meanwhile, in Estonia, nearly 10,000 people were left without power. In Denmark, waves of up to eight metres were reported and beach houses were washed into the North Sea. In Finland, authorities urged people to reconsider whether they needed to go out to sea.

H/t Harald Hanche-Olsen

Joan Smith has thoughts on the unabashed misogyny of Mhairi Black.

Does the SNP approve of abusing women? Opponents of the party’s extreme views on transgender rights have long highlighted the poor quality of debate in Scotland, but remarks by a leading SNP politician provide dramatic evidence of a hostile climate towards outspoken women. Mhairi Black, Deputy Leader of the party at Westminster, has dismissed women who disagree with her views on transgender rights as “50-year-old Karens”. 

Maybe she thinks women should be terminated at age 40, or perhaps 35. She’s 28…I wonder if it’s ever crossed her mind that she will eventually be 50.

Some observers might think it is a bit rich for a party represented by such confused and incoherent people to pass judgement on the rest of us. But it is much worse than that. The SNP now promotes magical thinking, expecting everyone to go along with its belief that men can become women simply by saying so. It’s telling that Black singled out older women for her vile comments, recycling centuries of prejudice that allowed them to be characterised as witches.

This is pure misogyny, expressed in language designed to silence and shame women who hold perfectly rational views. A feminist organisation, For Women Scotland, has suggested that Black’s comments call into question her fitness for office. But the SNP leadership has bigger questions to answer. Are they going to repudiate Black’s repellent views? Or is misogyny now official party policy?

I’m not going to risk any money on that bet.

Always worse than predicted.

It is “virtually certain” that future extreme events in Antarctica will be worse than the extraordinary changes already observed, according to a new scientific warning that stresses the case for immediate and drastic action to limit global heating.

A new review draws together evidence on the vulnerability of Antarctic systems, highlighting recent extremes such as record low sea ice levels, the collapse of ice shelves, and surface temperatures up to 38.5C above average over East Antarctica in 2022 – the world’s largest ever recorded heatwave.

…

The rate of ice sheet loss from Antarctica “matches the IPCC worst case” for predicted ice loss under high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, Hogg said. “The observations show we’re tracking [along] the most extreme prediction of what might happen.” This is despite global emissions currently tracking closer to an intermediate emissions pathway.

Ice shelves, which fringe three-quarters of the Antarctic coastline, have also retreated in recent decades. Large sections of the Larsen-A, Larsen-B, and Wilkins ice shelves “collapsed catastrophically” in 1995, 2002 and 2008 respectively, the study noted. Ten Antarctic ice shelves have also experienced major ice calving events since 2009.

“We should be deeply concerned about the environment of Antarctica in the years that are coming under continued fossil fuel burning,” said the study’s lead author, Prof Martin Siegert of the University of Exeter.

We will, we’ll be very deeply concerned. We just won’t do anything about it.

If you don’t think men can be women you’re like WHITE SUPREMACISTS. Don’t try to deny it.

Gender-critical campaigners are comparable to white supremacists, the SNP’s deputy Westminster leader has claimed.

Mhairi Black said that “bad actors” and “50-year-old Karens” were responsible for the debate over transgender rights and suggested those who vocally disagreed with her views on such issues could not be “decent” people.

Ah yes those pesky women who are rude and evil and white supremacist enough to stop being 30, they should all be locked up. How dare a woman be 50?! You’ll never see Mhairi Black being 50, because she’s far too enlightened and perfect for that sort of thing.

Progressives today, honestly – going through a box of Kleenex a day crying over men who say they are women, while insulting and belittling actual women every chance they get.

In comments likely to deepen an already bitter divide in Scotland, she said those who made “intellectual” arguments against extending trans rights were akin to past generations who claimed non-white ethnic groups were inferior.

Except that that’s not even slightly true. There are sound reasons for declining to “extend trans rights” so far that they let men invade and destroy and take everything that belongs to women. Men are not the underdogs here. Mhairi Black is thick as ten planks.

For Women Scotland, a prominent gender-critical campaign group, claimed that the MP’s comments called into question her fitness for office.

Well, yes, they do. They’re lies, for a start, and they’re grotesquely insulting. I suspect quite a few of her constituents are women who are 50 and older.

“To me, a decent person is someone who tries to make others comfortable and accept them, particularly when it’s a marginalised, oppressed group.”

I guess she’s unaware that women are a marginalised oppressed group?

Susan Smith, a director at For Women Scotland, said Ms Black’s comments were a “damning indictment of her intellectual capacity and her fitness to act as a legislator”.

She added: “Her inability to grasp why highly vulnerable women in prison, fleeing domestic violence, or being cared for in hospital might not want to share intimate spaces with someone of the male sex suggests that it is long past time she got out of her highly cosseted, gilded bubble.

“Women who disagree with her should not be forced to be silent like some latter-day scold, nor are they the racist or religious fundamentalist bogeywomen.”

Or even Karens.

Well now that’s just silly. Why would God build a cathedral upside-down and buried in the ground?

(Not knocking the protecting public and indigenous lands part. Just saying a big hole in the ground doesn’t have to be “God”‘s doing. Shout out to the Colorado River here; peace be upon it, or what’s left of it.)

Originally a comment by What a Maroon on Intern runs amok.

This does sound like fun! Let’s dog the Mary Rose collection.

Dogging the Mary Rose collection:

Octagonal mirror: an octagon has eight sides, twice the number of paws of a dog. As social beings, dogs like to be around at least another dog, so the number 8 has special significance. (And did you know that if you turn the 8 sideways, you get the symbol for infinity?! How cool is that! We love our dogs to infinity!) As for the mirror itself, dogs don’t recognize their own reflection, so they may see the dog in the mirror as a rival, perhaps causing anxiety. On the other hand, they may see their human in the mirror, bringing them great joy!

Comb: Dogs love to be combed, as long as you don’t tug any knots in their fur too hard!

Ring: dogs often suffer from ringworms, leading to a loss of hair (c.f. combs). On the other hand, a ring is circular in shape, just like a collar. And put two together, and you have the number 8! (or infinity)

Paternoster: all dogs are good boys or girls (or enbies!) and they all go to heaven!

Oh look, hours of fun for the whole family: Queering the Mary Rose’s Collection.

How can we understand The Mary Rose’s collection of personal objects through a Queer lens?

This blog does not attempt to identify the sexuality or gender identity of crew members, which would be an impossible task. Instead, we will use ‘Queerness as an interpretative tool’ to represent LGBTQ+ stories.

Who’s “we”?

Turns out it’s Hannah.

Queering The Mary Rose’s Collection by Hannah (Collections & Curatorial Intern)

I wonder if the non-intern staff are regretting having an intern, especially one with no last name.

How can we understand The Mary Rose’s collection of personal objects through a Queer lens?

This interpretation of historical objects is inspired by ‘Queering the Collections’, a collective movement that occurs in museums around the world. From the Tate Britain and the Wellcome Collection, to the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, museums are reinterpreting and Queering their objects. 

Ready? No one needs to go potty first? Ok let’s begin.

Octagonal mirror

There a photo of an octagonal wooden frame.

A circular, reflective surface would have sat within this beech frame. This mirror would have been considered a luxury item on the Mary Rose. Looking at your own reflection in a mirror can bring up lots of emotions for both straight and LGBTQ+ people. For Queer people, we may experience a strong feeling of gender dysphoria when we look into a mirror, a feeling of distress caused by our reflection conflicting with our own gender identities. On the other hand, we may experience gender euphoria when looking in a mirror, when how we feel on the inside matches our reflection.  

Well! There’s the Mary Rose queered for you!

Hannah goes on to queer nit combs, a ring, and paternosters in the same inventive way. The nit combs were for getting rid of lice but combs are for hair and for queer people hair is a central part of their idenniny. The ring could be a wedding band and queer people can marry each other you know. Paternosters are a churchy thing, and Henry VIII made churchy law state law, and some queer men people were executed for having sex with men queer people.

It’s profound stuff!

The Times offers detail on the protective order:

The first miniskirmish in the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election involves a step that is taken in the early phases of many prominent criminal cases: a proposal to impose rules on how the voluminous discovery evidence in the matter should be handled.

The disagreement started on Friday, when prosecutors in the office of the special counsel asked the judge who is overseeing the case for what is known as a protective order governing the disclosure of discovery material to Mr. Trump’s lawyers. The entreaty was routine, although in making their request, the prosecutors took what could be considered an extra step.

The extra step was citing Trump’s I WILL COME AFTER YOU tweet.

The prosecutors did not ask Judge Chutkan to issue a gag order against Mr. Trump because of the post. But they did use the message to suggest there should be clear rules in place to keep the former president from posting online any evidence that his legal team would get through the discovery process, an apparent acknowledgment that for Mr. Trump, few things are ever routine.

Aka an apparent acknowledgement that Trump is a raging psychopath who will do whatever pops into his head in his efforts to save his ass.

On Monday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers responded to the government’s request by arguing in court papers that prosecutors, by asking Judge Chutkan to limit the former president from publicly discussing the evidence in his case, [were] infringing on Mr. Trump’s First Amendment rights and [were] having “the court assume the role of censor.”

Which to an outsider seems just silly. If he goes to prison that will infringe on his rights to freedom of motion and yadda yadda, too, because that’s how that works. You lose some rights when you are convicted of serious crimes.

On Monday night, in what has become a typical tit for tat, prosecutors fired back, accusing Mr. Trump’s legal team of proposing its own version of the order “designed to allow him to try this case in the media rather than in the courtroom.”

Might as well make ourselves even more of a laughingstock than we already are, right?

Oh wait, Swansea University West Ham Society is on board. This changes everything!!!

(What do you mean “who?”? SWANSEA UNIVERSITY WEST HAM SOCIETY. It’s a society. At Swansea University. Devoted to West Ham. The football club. 36 people follow it on Twitter. It’s kind of a big deal.)

Fulham eat your heart out.

Hanan Razek at the BBC reports:

A hidden world of sex abuse and exploitation by men working as “spiritual healers” has been uncovered by BBC Arabic.

Spiritual healing, also known as “Quranic healing”, is a popular practice in the Arab and Muslim world. It is mostly women who visit healers – believing that they can solve problems and cure illness by expelling evil spirits known as “jinn”.

Naturally. Women are ferociously subordinated in the Arab and Muslim world, which makes them unlikely to have much education, which renders them credulous about scams like “Quranic healing.”

Testimonies gathered by the BBC from 85 women, over a period of more than a year, named 65 so-called healers in Morocco and Sudan – two countries where such practices are particularly popular – with accusations ranging from harassment to rape.

It’s like that Boccaccio story about the priest who Drove Out The Devil with his dick. In fact it pretty much is that story.

Dalal (not her real name) sought treatment for depression from a spiritual healer in a town near Casablanca a few years ago, when she was in her mid-20s. She says the healer told her the depression was caused by a “jinn lover” who had possessed her.

At a one-to-one session he asked her to smell a scent he said was musk – but which she now believes to have been some kind of drug, because she lost consciousness. Dalal, who had never had any sexual experience before, says she woke to find her underwear had been removed, and realised she had been raped. She says she began screaming at the raqi (Quranic healer), asking him what he had done to her.

“I said: ‘Shame on you! Why did you do this to me?’ He said: ‘To make the jinn leave your body.'”

Boccaccio wasn’t just making it up.

The ACLU rejoices that girls will be forced to take their clothes off in front of boys.

Trans students must have access to bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender, but there is zero need for girls to have access to bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their sex. Why is that exactly?

Peter Tatchell tries to LGBT+ a Jewish lesbian who escaped the Nazis.

She did not become an “LGBT+” activist. She was a lesbian activist.

David Semple in The Guardian November 5, 2013:

My friend Sharley McLean, the lesbian activist, has died aged 90. She was born Lotte Reyersbach in Oldenburg, north Germany, and escaped to Britain on the Kindertransport in 1939. Her father, Franz, a socialist, and her Jewish mother, Grete, were both killed in the Holocaust. Her gay uncle, Kurt Bach, died, wearing a pink triangle, in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

…

After 1945, Sharley continued working for the NHS, and had two children. In 1950, following a breakdown and an unsuccessful attempt to take her own life, she was told by a psychologist that she was a lesbian. This came as a shock, and when she later visited the Gateways, a lesbian club in Chelsea, she felt she didn’t fit in with the tweedy women she met there. But in 1953, she began a relationship with a West Indian woman, Georgina, which lasted for 24 years, although Sharley carried on living with her husband. Divorce would have meant losing her children.

Georgina’s death in 1977 was a body blow; Georgina had kept her sexuality secret and her family refused to allow Sharley to attend the funeral. But she threw herself into political activism, working for the Campaign for Homosexual Equality and later the Terrence Higgins Trust. In 1982, she founded the Hyde Park Gays and Sapphics and gave public speeches from a rickety stepladder at Speakers’ Corner every Sunday for more than 20 years. She showed great courage and enriched many lives by speaking about gay rights at a major London tourist attraction, week after week, to a largely hostile crowd.

Gay rights. Lesbian rights. Gays and Sapphics. Don’t thrust the T on people who are dead and can’t consent.

What fresh hell is this?

“PLANET GIRL” is pink – “PLANET BOY” is blue – now there’s progressive for ya!

“Which planet were you sent to as a baby?”

I beg your fucking pardon?

Why is “NON-BINARY PLANET” much bigger than PLANET GIRL and PLANET BOY and also the original or parent planet that the inferior two are sprouting out of?

The people from PLANET IDIOT need to go away and stop messing with children.

It should have happened years ago! He’s not wrong there.

Trump continues to do whatever he wants all the time.

t Donald Trump’s arraignment last Thursday for trying to overturn the result of the 2020 election, magistrate judge Moxila A Upadhyaya warned him that he could be taken into custody if he violated the conditions of his release, including attempting to influence jurors or intimidate future witnesses.

…

The judge then warned Trump: “You have heard your conditions of release. It is important you comply. You may be held pending trial in this case if you violate the conditions of release.”

She asked Trump: “Do you understand these warnings and consequence, sir? Are you prepared to comply?”

Trump responded: “Yes.”

But not 24 hours later, Trump posted on social media a message that could be understood as an attempt to influence potential jurors or retaliate against any witness prepared to testify against him: He wrote: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

More than could be, I think. He’s facing a trial. He’s been told not to try to influence or intimidate jurors. He shouts a threat on social media. Can jurors feel 100% confident that he doesn’t mean that threat for them? I don’t think so.

On Friday evening, prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith asked the court for a protective order to stop Trump from making public any of the information they were about to deliver to his lawyers under the discovery phase of the upcoming criminal trial, such as the names of witnesses who will testify against him.

…

On Saturday, the presiding judge in the case, Judge Tanya Chutkan, ordered that Trump’s lawyers respond to the prosecutor’s request for a protective order by 5pm Monday.

All through the weekend, Trump continued to threaten potential witnesses.

“WOW, it’s finally happened! Liddle’ Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him VP, has gone to the Dark Side,” he posted Saturday.

And Trump hasn’t stopped attempting to obstruct justice.

On Sunday he called Jack Smith “deranged”, and in another all-caps message he accused Smith of waiting to bring the case until “right in the middle” of his election campaign.

In another post he asserted that he would never get a “fair trial” with Chutkan and jurors from Washington DC.

These statements directly violate the conditions of Trump’s release pending trial.

But he’s not just some raggedy ordinary person, he’s DONALD TRUMP, so he gets to ignore what judges tell him to do and refrain from doing.

Trump is now under the supervision of the court, as would be any criminal defendant after an arraignment.

But he will continue to test the willingness and ability of the court to treat him like any other criminal defendant unless he’s reined in.

The court must fully assert the rule of law during these proceedings, even if that requires threatening Trump with jail pending his trial. And if he continues to refuse to abide by the conditions of his release, it might be time to actually jail him.

Ya think?

Trump loses another round.

A federal judge has dismissed Donald Trump’s counter defamation lawsuit against E. Jean Carroll, dealing another legal blow to the former president.

In an order Monday, Judge Lewis Kaplan said that Trump had not proven that Carroll’s statements on CNN the day after the jury awarded her $5 million after finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll and defamed her were false or “not at least substantially true,” which is the legal standard.

Yikes, that’s a clumsy sentence. I’d start over if I were CNN. Break it into shorter sentences for the sake of clarity.

Carroll’s attorneys have argued the only issue for the jury in January is how much in damages Trump should pay her. Trump’s attorneys argued there should be a cap on damages to avoid double counting from the jury’s verdict in the ASA case.

Nah. Gouge the mofo until he screams.