I said life is too short to go on with that Rolling Stone love letter to Jeffrey Marsh, but I’ve changed my mind – life is too short but the love letter is too stupid to leave unmocked.

It’s a flowery message given by a person who built a career by giving beautiful advice. But every moment hasn’t been joyful. Marsh is nonbinary, loves wearing bright lipstick, and is open about their support for the LGBTQ+ community, all things that have made them an ongoing target for death threats and right-wing campaigns. 

Car crash with multiple victims. A flowery message? That’s not actually a compliment. Flowery writing=over the top, too much, undisciplined. What is “beautiful advice” when it’s at home? “every moment hasn’t been joyful” is the wrong way to say what’s intended. The correct way to say it is “not every moment has been joyful.” “every moment hasn’t been joyful”=every single moment has been non-joyful. Yet again I wonder where the hell all the competent editors have gone. Being non-binary does not make people “an ongoing target for death threats and right-wing campaigns,” and neither does loving to wear lipstick, and neither does being “open about their support for the LGBTQ+ community.” They may make people disliked or avoided or disputed, but they don’t by themselves inspire routine death threats. Again: editor needed. Yes, it’s still true that lesbians and gay men aren’t universally popular or accepted, but that does not mean they’re all subject to death threats. Accuracy is desirable in journalism.

But their years of being a vocal advocate for self-love mean that now, even when there’s pushback, Marsh is staying focused on their mission: helping as many people as possible. 

But he doesn’t “help people.” He videos himself performing a role in a melodrama. That’s not the same as helping people. There is zero reason to think that a self-admiring creep talking platitudes on social media is “helping” anyone.

You’ve been a constant target for right-wing attacks, accused of being a groomer, and sent death threats. Is that hate something that frustrates you? 

It used to. Right now, it galvanizes me. It helps me to concentrate on my mission. I help people hate themselves less and I forward LGBTQ acceptance. Those are the two things that I’m about and part of that job is inspiring in other people the things that they need to heal.

Why should we believe he helps people hate themselves less? How does he know he does? Does he ask followup questions?

This might sound odd, but in some ways, the hateful obsession helps me. Because it’s a representation of the obsessively hateful voice that a lot of people have inside their heads. A lot of people have a voice in their head saying ‘That was terrible. They’re gonna hate you.’ Every single video [I post] has mean comments, accusations, everything, right? And I post again the next day and then the next day, and then the next day. That to me is metaphorical for the internal process of living our lives, no matter what a mean voice in our head is saying.

Oh dear. Chronic unfalsifiability. No doubt lots of people do have voices in their heads that say “You suck,” but it doesn’t follow and it isn’t true that no one sucks. Some people do suck – that is, some people do say stupid shit as opposed to glorious helpful rescuey aphorisms. Jeffrey Marsh is one such someone. Also, of course, the stuff he says strikes a lot of people as predatory. The fact that they laughed when you sat down at the piano does not necessarily mean you’re Glenn Gould.

Life is still too short but it was worth it.

Are they kidding???????

Uber has suspended its head of diversity, equity and inclusion after Black and Hispanic employees complained about the workplace events she moderated exploring the experience of white American women under the title “Don’t Call Me Karen”.

That’s about as stark as it gets. It’s ok to single women out for abuse, as if women were the dominant privileged default sex.

Lee’s suspension, which was first reported by the New York Times, follows mounting internal discontent over two “Don’t Call Me Karen” sessions that she convened on Zoom for up to 500 employees. The events, one in April and the second last week, were billed as “diving into the spectrum of the American white woman’s experience from some of our female colleagues, particularly how they navigate around the ‘Karen’ persona”.

Not permitted. The “white” part completely erases the “women” part (see also: “cis”), such that women who have the bad taste to be white are more powerful and oppressive and domineering than any other kind of person, including white men. (What’s the male equivalent of “Karen”? There isn’t one. Funny how that works.)

The sessions were held as part of a “Moving Forward” series of discussions on race and minority experiences organized by the company in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. The focus on the discomfort of white women specifically over the term “Karen” was denounced by several employees as being insensitive towards people of color.

In internal Slack channels for Black and Hispanic Uber employees seen by the Times, workers said they had felt lectured at. “It was more of a lecture – I felt like I was being scolded for the entirety of that meeting,” one Black woman wrote.

Now ask the Karens what they feel like.

Another said that she didn’t understand the premise of the session: “I think when people are called Karens it’s implied that this is someone that has little empathy to others or is bothered by minorities others that don’t look like them. Like, why can’t bad behavior not be called out?”

Point completely missed. It’s not “people” who are called Karens, it’s women. It’s not bad behavior that’s being called out, it’s bad behavior by women, as if women had a monopoly on it. It’s misogynist, in just the way it would be racist for me to “call out” Juans and Kanyes for bad behavior.

One small step in the effort to avoid draining the Colorado River completely dry:

A deal has been struck by Joe Biden’s administration for California, Arizona and Nevada to take less water from the drought-stricken Colorado River, in a bid to prevent the river dwindling further and imperiling the water supplies for millions of people and vast swaths of agricultural land in the US west.

The agreement, announced on Monday, will involve the three states, water districts, Native American tribes and farm operators cutting about 13% of the total water use in the lower Colorado basin, a historic reduction that will probably trigger significant water restrictions on the region’s residents and farmland.

…

The agreement averts, for now, the prospect of the Biden administration imposing unilateral water cuts upon the seven states – California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming – that rely upon the river, a prospect that has loomed since last summer when the waterway’s two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, hit perilously low levels.

And that’s good, but, of course, it’s not as if it’s going to fill the river back up to where it was.

Experts welcomed the deal but cautioned that a longer-term solution was still badly needed.

…

Harnessing the might of the Colorado river, which rises in the Rocky Mountains and flows all the way to Mexico, has enabled cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas to flourish…

…and drain the Colorado dry. It turns out that building huge cities in a desert was not such a good idea.

I thought the Guardian was talking about specialty pronouns in German but it turns out to be more interesting than that.

Berlin’s recently appointed conservative mayor has said he will refuse to use gender-neutral language in office, insisting he wanted to use a language “that everyone understands”.

Surprise twist.

This is arguably more complicated than it would be in English because the German language genders words into male, female, and neutral.

Not “words”; the reporter means “nouns.” Nouns have genders in all the European languages I know anything about, while English doesn’t. That fact does indeed make things more complicated.

According to traditional language rules, a male citizen is a Bürger, a female a Bürgerin. But when male and female citizens are referred to collectively or plurally, the generic masculine automatically applies and they are termed Bürger.

In French (and perhaps all the rest of the languages) you can’t ever use the female plural “elles” if there is even just one “il” in the crowd. A billion “elles” and one “il” – “ils” it is. (At least that’s the “rule.” I suspect it’s not obeyed quite that rigorously.)

So yes, I think a move to gender-neutral language of that kind would be a good thing. English too please.

Horrible sadist Bacari Ogarro pretends his sadistic actions are “pranks.”

A TikTok user who went viral when he entered a stranger’s house uninvited has defended his videos after they were described as “abhorrent” and “criminal” by politicians.

Bacari Ogarro, known as Mizzy on social media, posted the video of himself entering the London home as a “prank” two weeks ago. It was met with shock and anger, with many online calling for him to be arrested.

The self-described content creator has now said the negative reaction to his videos is partly down to him being Black.

Nope. It’s because he grabbed a woman’s dog and ran away with it laughing madly. It’s because he physically and verbally harassed women. It’s because he bounced into a public library, grabbed a book, and started tearing it up while taunting the library staff. He’s a sadistic bully, end of story.

Mizzy confirmed he has previously been arrested after sharing a number of videos that seemed to show him harassing Jewish people.

In one, he appears to put his hands on the victim’s shoulders and attempts to leapfrog over him. He claimed this was a TikTok trend “where you leapfrog over someone when the beat drops” and he has done this “to many different types of people”.

Well, if he did it to strangers without their consent, that’s assault.

Mizzy, from Hackney in London, said he began to consider content creation more seriously as a career path in Year 8 or 9, after having been “kicked out of school three times”.

He started to realise that every time he “upped the ante and did wilder videos” he would garner more online engagement – so that is what he continued to do.

“Controversy, even though it’s not good, is the best way to blow up on social media,” he said. “I always know outrage is going to happen. I know exactly what I’m doing and the consequences of my actions.” He added, “I tell people not to reciprocate what I’ve done.”

The videos aren’t “wilder”; they’re sadistic. He appears to be a psychopath.

He continued: “I don’t fake my pranks, but I always make sure to sort out the situation after if I feel like I went too overboard, but none of my pranks have malicious intentions behind them and most of the people in the pranks acknowledge that after I speak to them.”

I don’t believe that for a second. Dude needs a compassion transplant.

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Lipstick=target of death threats.

I despise these platitudes.

“I can predict the future, and you’re going to be okay.”

Unless you’re not, in which case you’ll be dead and unable to point out how full of crap I was.

“Maybe all you need to know is you are great, just as you are now!”

Maybe all you need to know is that you are not great, just as you are now. Maybe, you kind of suck and need to take some time to make the effort to not suck. Maybe you need to consider that there is a whole world out there full of things you don’t know or understand, and rather than jacking off to your own reflection, you should go out there and have some life changing experiences.

This whole idea of “You are great, just as you are now” is if anything incredibly toxic, because most of us fall into that second camp of people who are not particularly great, we’ve got to put some work in, and honestly? Even the people who are great? They don’t stay that way by resting on their laurels.

Besides, being great as you are now would be profoundly depressing. It is like saying it all gets worse from here on out.

“The way you express yourself: it’s up to you. It’s not up to anybody else.”

No. Everybody else does in fact get a say in how you express yourself, because if you say “Fsaad wekhrfshf kashdkdash weabsz” not a lot of people are going to understand you.

“But their years of being a vocal advocate for self-love…”

Self love, is, to put it bluntly, narcissism. This is an issue that goes beyond the trans movement – it is how you end up with people like Donald Trump. Some self criticism is healthy, heck having some shame isn’t a bad thing. Sure, have some self-respect, don’t be a doormat, but keep in mind that those negative feelings? They’re as important as the positive ones.

This whole article sounds like how to bonsai a personality – a poisoned sweetness that presents itself as support but really just stunts the audience’s growth.

Is there a Stupidity Defense? Trump could use one.

Federal prosecutors have evidence Donald Trump was put on notice that he could not retain any classified documents after he was subpoenaed for their return last year, as they examine whether the subsequent failure to fully comply with the subpoena was a deliberate act of obstruction by the former president.

The previously unreported warning conveyed to Trump by his lawyer Evan Corcoran could be significant in the criminal investigation surrounding Trump’s handling of classified materials given it shows he knew about his subpoena obligations.

Well this is where the stupidity defense comes into play. Telling Trump things doesn’t equal Trump knowing things. First, he has to listen. Second, no, seriously, he has to listen. Three, he has to grasp. Four, he has to remember. Five, he has to understand. Six, he has to give a shit. Seven, he has to go on remembering and giving a shit for a long time. Really long. More than five minutes.

Last June, Corcoran found roughly 40 classified documents in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago and told the justice department that no further materials remained at the property. That was later shown to be untrue, after the FBI later returned with a warrant and seized 101 additional classified documents.

Trump concealed more than twice as many as he handed over.

The federal investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith has recently focused on why the subpoena was not compiled with, notably whether Trump arranged for boxes of classified documents to be moved out of the storage room so [that] he could illegally retain them.

In particular, prosecutors have fixated on Trump’s valet Walt Nauta, after he told the justice department that Trump told him to move boxes out of the storage room before and after the subpoena. The activity was captured on subpoenaed surveillance footage, though there were gaps in the tapes.

Deliberate act of obstruction, or no? Maybe he wanted them moved because he thought they would look prettier somewhere else.

Rolling Stone is making googoo eyes at Jeffrey Marsh.

YOU DON’T HAVE to tell Jeffrey Marsh they make a certain portion of the internet upset. They’re well aware— they just won’t let it stop them from helping people. 

Politics and idenniny aside, the “they” affectation is just bad writing. It makes extra work for the reader. It’s confusing and distracting both at once. That makes it irritating, so that’s three things that get between the reader and the writing.

Long before trans star Dylan Mulvaney‘s collaboration with Bud Light lit a portion of the right’s brains on fire, Marsh was making videos about love. Part pun, part dance, part affirmations, their videos directly address the viewers, encouraging them to self-reflect, accept themselves, and sometimes just choose peace. “I can predict the future,” Marsh says in one of their early viral videos on Vine, posted in 2014. “And you’re going to be OK.” “Maybe all you need to know is you are great, just as you are now!” “The way you express yourself: it’s up to you. It’s not up to anybody else.” 

Yeah yeah yeah. What Rolling Stone of course leaves out here is his utterly creepy, indeed skin-crawling, presentation of self. Buffalo Bill was Fred Astaire in comparison.

Marsh is nonbinary, loves wearing bright lipstick, and is open about their support for the LGBTQ+ community, all things that have made them an ongoing target for death threats and right-wing campaigns. They tell Rolling Stone that there are days when their husband, Jeff, has to stand in the gap for them when negative backlash is louder than their inner peace. But their years of being a vocal advocate for self-love mean that now, even when there’s pushback, Marsh is staying focused on their mission: helping as many people as possible. 

Oh he’s an advocate for self-love all right. I’ve never seen anyone so infatuated with himself.

Time for the Q and A at last.

How do you think the violent response to trans existence has changed how queer people interact with the world right now?

A very reasonable and thoughtful question.

I stopped reading at that point. Life’s too short.

Disturbing. Really disturbing. The whole and only point is to frighten people, to make them terrified and upset and even bereft (the one where he grabs a woman’s small dog and dashes off with it). The whole and only point is to make people miserable, and this vile man giggles like a loon the entire time.

There are sadists in the world; did I not know that? I did know it. I guess it’s the social media thing – now there are sadists in the world who share their sadism on TikTok. Yay human progress.

He comes back later and hands over the dog, giggling sadistically.

Women get arrested for saying men are not women, and this guy bounces around London free as a bird.

Every word of this ridiculous piece is wrong. It’s just one bonehead error after another. It’s a man saying why it’s good for men to take over women’s sports.

As our understanding of gender identity continues to evolve, so too does the conversation around trans athletes in competitive sports.

“Gender identity” is a stupid new religion, and the “understanding” of people like Anthony Bernardi is not evolving but decaying.

Trans women, in particular, have become the focus of heated debate when it comes to their participation in women’s sports.

Duh. That’s because they’re men, so their “participation” in women’s sports is cheating and bad. Women in men’s sports don’t have the same power to cheat. Trans “women” are intruding in women’s sports, not “participating.”

But in the interest of fairness, inclusivity, and respecting the rights of all athletes, it’s crucial that trans women be allowed to compete in the category that corresponds to their gender identity.

No, fool. The other way around. All the fairness and inclusivity and respect of right is on the other side.

Firstly, it’s essential to debunk the myth that trans women have an inherent and insurmountable advantage over cisgender women in sports.

Not a myth. No debunking needed. Jumping past his attempt at “debunking” –

Furthermore, excluding trans women from women’s sports sends a harmful message to the transgender community.

What kind of message does this chump think it send to the female community to let males take over all their sports? And why does he not give a shit?

Sports should be an arena where all individuals are welcomed and celebrated for their dedication, hard work, and determination.

Trans people can be welcomed, just not in women’s sports if they’re men.

It’s also important to recognize that gender is not a binary concept. The traditional male-female dichotomy doesn’t encompass the full spectrum of human experience…

Of course it doesn’t and nobody says it does. What buffoonery. Female or male is not all there is to human experience; no kidding. Nevertheless those are the two sexes.

Finally, it’s worth noting that sports have historically been a powerful force for social change. Throughout history, athletic competitions have often been a platform for challenging stereotypes and breaking down barriers. By embracing trans women in women’s sports, we can continue this tradition of progress and help to create a more equitable and inclusive society.

No, child, the way to continue the progress is to continue doing more to promote women’s sports and pay attention to women’s sports and break down barriers to women’s sports. There’s a large mural on the main drag of my neighborhood of the local women’s basketball team, along with one of the men’s team a few blocks away. That’s what we need more of.

In conclusion, the question of whether trans women should be allowed to compete in women’s sports is not just about athletics. It’s a question about human rights, dignity, and the values we want to uphold in our society. 

What about the human rights and dignity of women?

We must reject the misconceptions and biases that fuel opposition to their inclusion and recognize the importance of fairness, inclusivity, and the fundamental right of every individual to express their true identity.

There is no such right. There is especially no such right when what is meant by “their true identity” is a fantasy identity, aka a lie.

Allowing trans women to compete in take over women’s sports not only respects their rights and humanity but also enriches the world of athletics by embracing the full spectrum of human diversity destroys the rights of women. By dismantling the barriers that exclude trans athletes men from women’s sports, we can foster a sports culture that champions equality, understanding, and the power of unity in our shared pursuit of excellence the complete removal of women from sports.

As I said – every damn word is stupid and wrong.

It drives me crazy how normalized dangerous driving is.

Road safety campaigners have accused the UK home secretary of trying to downplay the dangers of speeding after she reportedly requested a private speed awareness course after being caught driving over the speed limit.

Bad writing. You have to read the whole piece to understand that she requested a private course instead of a group one. She didn’t ask for a speed awareness course because she wanted to improve her awareness, she asked for a private one instead of a group one because she wanted to be sneaky.

Within the last year, two of Braverman’s ministers at the Home Office were banned from driving for six months. The immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, was caught driving almost 30mph over the limit and the security minister, Tom Tugendhat, was caught driving while using a mobile phone.

What I mean. It’s normalized. It’s so normalized that it’s often all but impossible not to speed, because people will endanger you by tailgating at high speed unless you speed even more.

Simon Munk, the head of campaigns at the London Cycling Campaign, said: “The police and the coroners and everyone knows that speeding is one of the most kind of dangerous forms of driving. And yet we have a senior politician essentially asking to sidestep the law. It is difficult to square that with reducing fatal road collisions.”

And we have most people who drive not only speeding but doing their best to force everyone else to speed too.

Never mind about the health of the baby, if the man wants to “participate” in breastfeeding the baby by taking a cocktail of drugs and hormones here’s the list. Women, meanwhile, must not drink so much as a glass of wine.

What a stupid thing to lose a job over – curated pronouns ffs.

A New York Christian university terminated two employees for putting pronouns in their respective email signatures, these former workers allege, according to reports.

Where are all the secular universities here? The idea that pronouns are magic is more theocratic than secular; the secular universities absolutely need to resist that idea too.

Raegan Zelaya and Shua Wilmot, who were residence hall directors at Houghton University, said that administrators told them to take the words “she/her” and “he/him” off of their email signatures.

Apart from anything else, customized pronouns in email are utterly stupid because nobody is going to be using their pronouns in email in the first place. People don’t use third person pronouns for the people they’re talking to, face to face or in email. They serve no purpose other than display of rectitude.

Mind you, it’s also a stupid thing to fire people over. Everybody in this story is being absurd.

Another girl loses another opportunity to a boy in a girls’ sport.

It’s the girls 1600m so the boy shouldn’t have been there at all. It’s not fair. It’s obviously not fair.

This damn fool doesn’t understand “fair.”

The kids today, you know? How does anybody think anybody wants to watch a clip of “Watch me squirming to music in the front seat of a car”?

Well let’s face it, wims, your bodies just are ugly. We know it, you know it, the whole world knows it. We try to be polite about it but when we want to show off our fabulous new swimsuits it would be stupid to get lumpy bulgy clumsy women to do it. It takes a man to model a women’s swimsuit.

Adidas has come under fire for advertising a female-style swimming costume using a model with a penis.

That’s the small polite kind of bulge. Not like those sloppy bobbly breast things, let alone those giant buttocks.

See how beautiful???? Who would dream of replacing that with a woman?

The move has prompted criticism from campaigners for women’s equality in sport, who argue that the use of a biologically male model for a women’s swimsuit creates unrealistic body expectations for women.

Oh come on. Wah wah wah. Can’t you girls grow up for a change? It’s not unrealistic to expect a woman to look like the guy with the flat chest and bulgy groin: all you whiners have to do is lay off the cheesecake for a few days.

Adidas is not the first global brand to be criticised for using biologically male trans models in advertising campaigns.

Budweiser recently faced a backlash for using trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney on its cans of Bud Light.

And when Mulvaney featured in a Nike bra advert, this also prompted calls from consumers for a boycott of the Nike brand.

Sigh. How many times do we have to go over this? Men just do everything better, okay? We know it, you know it, everybody knows it, so just stop whining and go watch a real housewives of somewhere show.

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

The bit where the cop says it:

The bit where he’s wrong:

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

He said to them, quite honestly, no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s just a tad embittering.

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

Another Rhys McKinnon. It is sickening.

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

Thanks for not shooting her, I guess.

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

And of open, proud, self-congratulatory bullying.

The climate emergency in progress:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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