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?

Charlie Nash at The New Statesman says Jordan Peterson isn’t quite the social media darling he once was. In fact he’s a bit of a joke.

YouTube is rife with edits that splice Peterson’s increasingly hysterical rants with gameplay from the Command & Conquer games, a series that features a cast of eccentric villains who issue apocalyptic threats to the player as they progress through the story. Sadly, these edits are not even necessary. Peterson’s video monologues are quite enough on their own. Last year, with Bond villain-esque delivery, Peterson warned the Masters of the Universe to leave him alone or face the consequences: 

“Leave us alone, you centralisers of power. You worshippers of Gaia. You sacrificers of the wealth and property of others. You would-be planetary saviours. You Machiavellian pretenders and virtue-signallers objecting to power, all the while you gathered around you madly… Leave us alone, or reap the whirlwind and watch terrible destruction of what you purport to save in consequence.”

Hahahahaha he sounds like Disaffected Podcast, or is it the other way around.

We were right that Anthony Fauci is a sociopath and a liar.

We were right that the majority of you would turn Anthony Fauci into a living demi-god.

We were right that millions of people would sell out their own family members and leave their elderly to die alone in hospital.

We were right that this was the greatest moral crime of modern history in the West, and that it was going on right in front of all of us while you called us crazy.

We were right about everything. Not “just some things.” Everything.

Turns out those of us who understand abusive psychology intimately weren’t hysterical, or crazy, or histrionic, or lying.

That was you.

I can’t speak for others who correctly predicted this mess, but I can speak for me.

I’m not forgiving.

I’m not forgetting.

You who went along with this are my enemy. Not just my opponent-my enemy.

You will be treated as an enemy. If you think I had a hair trigger temper before, try me now.

I’m entirely done.

Either come to accept what you participated in, confess what you did, make serious, honestly felt, public apology to those you tried to ruin (the people you said you ‘loved’) or make sure you keep your distance from me.

You get no grace at all.

Ooooookay but where is all this happening? It sounds like a battlefield, but in fact it’s just…the world. Other people. People who see things differently. Where is all this being “treated as an enemy” going to happen? We don’t need any barked orders to keep our distance, we have no intention of going anywhere near the disaffected one. We’re not going to sob into our sleeves about the not forgiving and not forgetting because we don’t seek them in the first place. It’s like going to someone’s house and banging furiously on the door and when it’s opened shouting “LEAVE ME ALONE.”

Anyway, I find it hilarious that Peterson does the same thing.

Originally a comment by What a Maroon at Miscellany Room.

This should be easy, right? A sport which depends entirely on strength should be strictly segregated by sex. Or perhaps you could accommodate trans people by creating a third category for people calling themselves trans and “non-binary”, as USA Powerlifting tried to do. Seems like a reasonable compromise.

But of course a TIM disagrees, and he found a judge to agree with him. The judge’s opinion is, well, something.

“Segregation and separation are the hallmarks of discrimination,” Minnesota District Judge Patrick Diamond wrote in a Feb. 27 decision. “Separate but equal is unavailing. Discrimination claims are not defeated because separate services, facilities, accommodations were made available.”

If that’s the case, why have separate women’s sports at all? Shouldn’t everyone just compete in one league? I mean, we don’t allow segregated schools anymore.

Most of the rest of the judge’s opinion is the same old boring arguments (inclusion, fairness, etc.), but at least the article itself is fairly well-balanced in presenting the other side of the issue.

And while I don’t condone corporal punishment, and never practiced it on my kids, I got a chuckle out of this (Larry Maile is the president of US Powerlifting; JayCee Cooper is the trans-identified male who sued) (my bolding):

Maile resisted, though, and apparently became frustrated with the repeated efforts by Cooper and her [sic] supporters to challenge USA Powerlifting’s policies, writing in one email that “someone did not get beaten enough as a child. These people were children screaming in Walmart and their parents did nothing. Now they are adults and still screaming.”

The organization fights on.

The case is scheduled to proceed to a trial on damages in May. Maile said the organization is willing to take the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court, if necessary. Legal costs are mounting, but for USA Powerlifting, Maile said the outcome of the case is a matter of survival.

“When you consider the rights of all of our various constituencies, it may be the hill we die on,” he said. “So we will continue because we believe that we’re right in terms of what ultimately are the differences and what constitutes fairness — not in all sports and not out there in society but what constitutes fairness on our platform.”

I’m reading Bernard Lane’s review of Hannah Barnes’s Time to Think at Quillette, and this bit jumped out at me:

In a 2015 parliamentary submission, Carmichael and her Tavistock colleague Bernadette Wren, both clinical psychologists, reported:

We offer assessment and treatment not just to those young people who are identifiably resilient and for whom there is an evidence base for a likely ‘successful’ outcome. We have carefully extended our programme to offer physical intervention [such as blockers] to those who have a range of psychosocial and psychiatric difficulties, including young people with autism and psychiatric difficulties, and young people who are looked after [in care].

Their stated rationale for this approach was that “[we] have felt that these young people have a right to be considered for these potentially life-enhancing treatments.” The clinic’s leaders were admitting that they were providing physical interventions for, in Barnes’s words, “those to whom the evidence base does not apply.” And their basis for doing so was apparently the psychologists’ own feelings.

What’s striking about it, to me, is the not spelled out but nevertheless clear fact that for some reason Carmichael and Wren framed this and perhaps understood it as a matter of A Good Thing being withheld from these young people, when the “Good” part was very very very much in question. They framed it as a matter of these young people having a right to the “treatment” without saying anything about the young people’s right to go through a normal puberty or the young people’s right not to be experimented on or the young people’s right to be protected against faddish but drastic interventions.

I mean we know that’s what they thought, of course, but it’s interesting how blithely they frame it that way. Interesting and blood-curdling. It’s like saying “we have felt that these young people have a right to be anorexic.” An illness isn’t really a “right” as commonly understood.

I suppose we can be grateful they said “potentially life-enhancing” as opposed to just “life-enhancing,” but why didn’t they think about the “not life-enhancing but life-damaging” potential? Why were they so much more confident about the enhancement than they were about the damage?

Why didn’t these young people’s “right” to be not tampered with weigh at least as heavily as their “right” to be tampered with? It’s as if transing were a kind of heaven on a distant mountaintop that everyone gazes it with longing, and the GIDS people know how to get everyone there.

Germaine Greer in peak form.

The man she’s talking to says why not stop spending your time on this and instead say “Ok fine, if you want to come and join us as women then you’re women, come and join us in the bigger struggles.”

Right. Why don’t we all do that? Why don’t we all stop spending our time on our own struggles and instead urge different people, who have different struggles, to come and join us and indeed take our place and push us out? Why not?

Oh well cough cough he doesn’t mean everyone. No no. It’s not that everyone should invite intruders to take over their struggles for them, it’s only women who should do that. Why? Well the reason’s obvious, isn’t it. Because women aren’t good enough. Women aren’t good enough to do their own struggling – we’re too weak, too stupid, too frivolous, too busy shaving our outer labia, too distracted by shoes, too squeaky, too excitable, too treacherous.

Junior here is confused.

No, kid. Men can’t get periods because they don’t have the necessary uterus. No uterus=no endometrium. No endometrium=no need or ability to expel it every 28 days. No expulsion of endometrium=NO PERIOD.

A kitchen table can’t do 70 on the freeway because it doesn’t have an engine or wheels. A dog can’t fly south for the winter because it doesn’t have wings. The Chrysler building can’t stroll over to the UN because it doesn’t have feet.

A Texas judge may be about to make mifepristone unavailable but he wants to do it in secret.

The Texas judge who could undo government approval of a key abortion drug has scheduled the first hearing in the case for Wednesday but took unusual steps to keep it from being publicized, according to people familiar with the plans.

After all, what business is it of ours?

The hearing will be an opportunity for lawyers for the Justice Department, the company that makes the drug and the conservative group that is challenging it to argue their positions before U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. After they do, the judge could rule at any time, potentially upending access to medication abortions across the country.

Kacsmaryk held a conference call with attorneys Friday to schedule Wednesday’s hearing in Amarillo, Texas, said multiple people familiar with the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. Normally, such a hearing would be quickly placed on the public court docket, where anyone tracking the case online could see it. But Kacsmaryk said he would delay putting the hearing on the docket until late Tuesday to try to minimize disruptions and possible protests, and asked the lawyers on the call not to share information about it before then, the people said.

Public access to federal court proceedings is a key principle of the American judicial system, and Kacsmaryk’s apparent delay in placing the hearing on the docket is highly unusual. The judge and his staff did not respond to emails requesting comment on Saturday evening.

Some battles in the war on women have to take place in secret so that the pesky stupid harlots can’t interfere.

Attorneys on the planning call with Kacsmaryk on Friday included representatives from the Alliance Defending Freedom, which filed the lawsuit; the Justice Department, which represents the FDA; and the drug company that makes mifepristone.

The Alliance Defending Freedom of course doesn’t mean it’s defending women’s freedom. Hahahaha of course not – women can’t be free to make their own decisions about pregnancy. Pregnancy is something the state gets to impose. That’s Freedom!

Kacsmaryk was nominated by President Donald Trump and is known for his conservative views on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.

Forcing women to remain pregnant isn’t so much conservative as just plain misogynist.

By waiting to publicize the time of the hearing, Kacsmaryk and his staff could make it difficult for the public, the media and others to travel to the courthouse in Amarillo, Tex. The rural, deeply conservative city has few direct flights except from Dallas or San Antonio and is at least a four-hour drive from any of the state’s major, heavily-Democratic cities.

It has everything, doesn’t it. A federal judge in a backwater Texas town, appointed by a rapist who displays utter contempt for women, gets to ruin the lives of millions of women.

In the final paragraph the Post itself throws women under the bus.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, eliminating a person’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy and triggering abortion bans in more than a dozen states, many antiabortion advocates have focused on trying to limit the availability of medication abortions, even in states where the procedure is legal.

If it were a person’s right it would be a different story.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on What was that about arbitrary ranking?

One of the things I find frustrating in this area is the insistence by so many that there are simply no legitimate criticisms, and no legitimate critics.

Here you have someone saying that Stock’s work isn’t even “scholarship” and that philosophers should have, I don’t know, tarred and feathered her or something. Whatever is the philosophical equivalent of being disbarred or “struck off” the official Registry of Philosophers, I suppose.

Emily Bazelon writes a very even-handed article for the NY Times about youth gender medicine? Well, what does she know about this subject? Jesse Singal writes multiple articles about this area and does deep dives on the published research? Ugh, that dude is OBSESSED, donchathink there’s something creepy and odd about that?

Anyway, you can’t opine on what went on in those clinics unless you worked there. Oh, but if you did (Jamie Reed), then you can’t be trusted because you’re a transphobic bigot, even if you’re trans yourself, and besides, she was “just a receptionist” (which I’m sure folks here know wasn’t the case). Erica Anderson, a trans psychologist who’s worked in the field? Oh, ignore her, she’s a bigot, too.

The NHS comes out with a report raising concerns about gender medicine in the UK? Well, that’s TERF Island, what do you expect? Sweden, Finland, and Norway, too? Nothing to see here, folks, please disperse. All is well.

There are, of course, public controversies over which there really is no legitimate debate. There really aren’t any reasonable, good faith Flat Earthers. But that’s a pretty high bar to clear, and when you declare that your views have no legitimate opposition, you’re putting yourself out on a precarious ledge.

And it’s really counterproductive. When people can see that it sure looks like there’s some legitimate criticism, attempts to handwave it away — or worse, intimidate or dismiss it with accusations of bigotry — just encourage conspiracy theories and open the door to actual bigots, and the grifters and political opportunists who pander to them. I’m not saying that justifies anyone deciding to go full-on bigot. Anyone who does that is morally responsible for that choice, just like anyone who becomes a full-on white supremacist because they’re a little irritated by wokeness needs to own that choice. But there is simply no way that all the developments we’re witnessing — a massive increase in children being diagnosed and given medical and surgical treatment, and trans women competing in women’s sports, etc. — is going to happen without some societal debate and discussion, and anyone who truly cares about trans people is making a massive miscalculation by thinking they can preempt that debate by just branding everyone who disagrees with them as an ignorant bigot.

TL;DR version: you can’t keep crying wolf (or, in this case, TERF) and be surprised when people stop taking you seriously.

Berry gender muffin:

Children as young as seven might be a “mixed berry gender fluid muffin”, teachers have been told in a sex education resource promoted by the Welsh Government.

That’s sex education? What would sex-non-education look like? What would sex fiction look like? How is it education to tell teachers children might be muffins? Sure, it’s a metaphor, but it’s a metaphor for a fantasy aiding a let’s pretend elucidating a fairy tale.

The 170-page “Agenda” pamphlet, which has been promoted to all schools in Labour-run Wales, claims that biological sex “is not just ‘male’ and ‘female’” and lectures teachers on how some “want to change our gender pronouns (eg. from he to she) or want to be ‘agender’”, where they have no gender.

Uh huh, yup, right, got it – except none of that is actually true, it’s a story, and a new story at that. You don’t want to be teaching stories as fact – not the Jesus story, not the Mo story, not the berry muffin story.

An investigation by The Telegraph found last week that pupils in some secondary schools have been told there are 100 genders and children are being taught gender fluidity as fact in some major academy trusts and independent schools, which led to Rishi Sunak ordering an urgent review this week.

Why stop at 100? Why not one hundred billion trillion?

Stonewall, the LGBT+ charity, said: “It is important that these claims are not allowed to whip up a ‘moral panic’ with the goal of banning age-appropriate inclusive RSHE altogether.”

Better no RSHE than RSHE from lalaland.

Why it’s not a brilliant idea to take massive doses of ivermectin on the advice of that guy on the Internet:

Just before 7 am on March 3, Danny Lemoi posted an update in his hugely popular pro-ivermectin Telegram group, Dirt Road Discussions: “HAPPY FRIDAY ALL YOU POISONOUS HORSE PASTE EATING SURVIVORS !!!”

Hours later, Lemoi was dead.

Was it the poisonous horse paste that made him dead?

For the last decade, Lemoi had taken a daily dose of veterinary ivermectin, a dewormer designed to be used on large animals like horses and cows. In 2021, as ivermectin became a popular alternative COVID-19 treatment among anti-vaxxers, he launched what became one of the largest Telegram channels dedicated to promoting the use of it, including instructions on how to administer ivermectin to children.

I guess Lemoi had a really bad worm infestation?

In the Telegram channel, administrators broke the news of his death to his followers. “Though it was obvious that Danny had the biggest heart, it was unbeknownst to him that his heart was quite literally overworking and overgrowing beyond its capacity, nearly doubled in size from what it should have been,” the admins wrote, adding: “We understand that this is going to raise questions for those who were following him.”

…

Lemoi began taking the version of ivermectin designed for animals on a daily basis in 2012, after he was diagnosed with Lyme disease, according to a detailed account of his medical history he gave on a podcast last November. He said then that five months after first taking the drug, he quit all other treatments and believed ivermectin had “regenerated” his heart muscle. 

But the worms were still there?

[A]ccording to the Missouri Poison Center, ingesting large doses of ivermectin formulated for animals has a long list of side effects, including seizures, coma, lung issues, and heart problems. Veterinary ivermectin is not a cure or effective treatment for COVID, the FDA has repeatedly warned, and is highly concentrated because it is designed for large animals like horses and cows. “Such high doses can be highly toxic in humans,” the FDA cautions.

Horses and cattle are bigger than humans. Quite a lot bigger.

[A] review of Lemoi’s Telegram channels shows that many of his followers who are taking his dosage recommendations, or “protocols,” for veterinary ivermectin are experiencing numerous known side effects of taking the drug.

“I’m 4 months now and all hell’s breaking loose, all pain has hit my waist down with sciatic, shin splints, restless leg syndrome, tight sore calves & it feels like some pain in the bones,” a member wrote on Friday.

So maybe don’t take medication advice from Random Internet Guy.

Despite Lemoi’s death, administrators said this week the Telegram channel would live on, and the group is attracting new members who continue to take ivermectin despite suffering serious side effects.

“I am very new to this… I’ve been on Bimectin paste for 20 days,” one new member wrote on Friday morning, explaining that he too was suffering from Lyme disease. “I have severe chest pain. Costochondritis symptoms. Air hunger, internal tremors, brain fog, headaches on the back of my head, anxiety, depression, doom and gloominess.”

That shows it’s working!!!

The Supreme Court power grab:

In a November essay for the Harvard Law Review, the Stanford Law School professor Mark A. Lemley describes this Court as an “imperial” one that has embarked on “a radical restructuring of American law across a range of fields and disciplines.” The means run along two lines: substantive changes to the Constitution made under the guise of interpretation, and procedural power grabs executed despite traditions of deference. This has pushed our constitutional system dangerously off balance, with little opportunity for correction.

Ironically, the danger comes from the “conservative” wing of the Court, born in part out of a purported rejection of “activist” court decisions, which it criticizes as policy making—territory that belongs to the elected branches of government. All six of the purportedly conservative justices—Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—have professed a commitment to textualism and originalism, methods of constitutional interpretation that theoretically should constrain judges’ discretion to the “plain” language of the text, with occasional reference to historical understandings of the Framers’ contemporaneous intent. Many folks blithely assume that the right-wing justices are more restrained than their progressive counterparts as a result. The precise opposite is the case.

Another one of those irregular verb items. When they do it it’s activism, when we do it it’s restraint.

Neither textualism nor originalism can possibly answer every thorny question about the ambiguous language that fills the relatively terse, 236-year-old constitutional text. Judges judge, after all—meaning they exercise discretion, often subjectively. For example, in both Dobbs and the controversial Second Amendment decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which permanently clipped the power of states to regulate public safety with regard to guns, Justices Alito and Thomas in their respective majority opinions picked and chose snippets of history that favored one outcome while rejecting others, and offered no guiding principle for deciding which “originalist” evidence is worthy of deference and which is not. 

The guiding principle is intuition. Fortunately their intuitions are infallible.

This is not how it is supposed to work. A too-powerful, unaccountable Court is a threat to the entire system. Short of a constitutional amendment retracting their life tenure, or a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate willing to do controversial things such as restricting the Court’s jurisdiction or expanding the number of justices, there’s nothing the voting public can really do about this political power grab and its lasting impact on the lives of millions.

It’s Clarence Thomas’s world and we’re just tenants.

Yet another smug philosophy bro telling women why we don’t get to talk without his approval.

Fox has a second lawsuit to deal with.

Smartmatic USA Corporation’s lawsuit against Fox News has attracted only a fraction of the attention garnered by the legal action of Dominion Voting Systems. Yet both firms are suing Fox for defamation related to its coverage of Donald Trump’s stolen-election lie, and both pose a serious threat to Fox’s finances and reputation.

Smartmatic is asking for more money.

So far, attempts by Fox lawyers to have the Smartmatic case dismissed have fallen on stony ground. Last week the New York state supreme court in Manhattan gave the green light for the case to proceed against Fox News, the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, the former business anchor Lou Dobbs and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Smartmatic, a global election technology company headquartered in London, lodged its defamation suit in February 2021. “The Earth is round,” was the complaint’s striking opening sentence. “Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election … ”

The earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Men are not women.

The complaint goes on to argue that, contrary to these indisputable facts, Fox News broadcast a series of blatant lies in support of Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theory. “Defendants did not want Biden to win the election. They wanted President Trump to win re-election … They also saw an opportunity to capitalize on President Trump’s popularity by inventing a story.”

To prop up that story, the lawsuit claims, Fox needed a villain. That villain was Smartmatic.

Smartmatic claims that over 100 false statements were broadcast by Fox News hosts and guests. Smartmatic was falsely said to have been involved in 2020 election counts in six battleground states – in fact, it was present only at the count in Los Angeles county.

Yebbut First Amendment. Fox might win because of First Amendment, but…one can dream.

I saw this from Hadley Freeman –

So I went looking. It’s New Yorker editor David Remnick talking to New Yorker writer Masha Gessen, who went all they/them recently, much to my surprise too (too along with Hadley Freeman). I’d thought she was a grownup. The interview is on what we talk about when we talk about trans rights. It’s beyond depressing to see adults carrying on this way.

Remnick first encountered Gessen in Moscow more than 30 years ago.

As a reporter for the Washington Post, I was trying to keep track of the countless ways in which Soviet society was changing. For a long time, despite all the other radical shifts consuming the country, discussion of gay rights was largely absent. In those days, public figures would sometimes proclaim that homosexuality was a repugnant peculiarity of the West and did not exist at home. In the late eighties, the official press declared that H.I.V. was alien to the Soviet Union and had been created by the U.S. defense establishment, in a bioweapons-research lab at Fort Detrick, in Maryland. But by 1990 or so this, too, began to shift. For me, at least, one of the embodiments of this change was the sight of a determined young journalist and activist at the head of a small gay-rights rally near the Bolshoi Theatre. This was Masha Gessen.

Gessen has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 2017 and is best known for their writing on Russia, human rights, democracy and authoritarianism, and, for the past thirteen months, the war in Ukraine.

Thud. First paragraph, adult talking. Second paragraph, CLANG. That “their” – are we in high school all of a sudden? Masha Gessen is one person, not two or more. She’s also a woman.

Recently, not long after Gessen returned from a reporting trip to Ukraine, I sent them an e-mail pointing out some of the debates over the way trans issues are being covered and discussed. The latest flash point had been at the New York Times. I asked Gessen, who identifies as trans and nonbinary, how The New Yorker should be thinking about its own coverage and approach. The reply led to an interview on The New Yorker Radio Hour.

Step one: don’t consult people who tell you to refer to them with “they/them” on this subject.

Remnick starts:

Masha, to hear many Republicans right now, you’d think that L.G.B.T.Q. rights are somehow as big a threat as the new Cold War, or nuclear war. I spoke with Michaela Cavanaugh, a Democratic state senator in Nebraska, who is fighting to block a bill that would withhold gender-affirming care from trans kids, including mental-health care.

There are no “LGBTQ” rights. T and Q rights are in conflict with LGB rights. And “gender-affirming care” is another verbal nudge to agree with dangerous bullshit.

Gessen: Note that Putin’s war in Ukraine goes hand in hand with extreme anti-L.G.B.T. rhetoric. In his last speech, he took time to assert that God is male, and that the crazy Europeans and the “Nazi” Ukrainians are trying to make God gender-fluid. I’m not kidding.

Remnick: Men are men and women are women, and that’s the end of the story.

Gessen: Right. That simplicity—women are women, men are men. There’s social and financial stability. Where relevant, there’s whiteness.

But men are men and women are women and tautologies are tautologies. Some women and men like to mix up gender conventions; that doesn’t mean they become the sex they’re not. A rabbit in a tutu is still a rabbit.

Gessen: Professionally, I started out in gay and lesbian journalism, as it was known, in the mid-eighties. At the time, it was obvious that, if somebody was doing gay and lesbian journalism, they were at least queer. Growing up, I was most definitely trans-identified, except I didn’t have words for it.

What does “queer” mean there? Something more than lesbian and gay? Or just a way of repeating lesbian and gay, but then why bother to say LG=queer? Does it mean something like “halfway to being trans”? I don’t know. I don’t know what she means.

Gessen: And then I went through puberty and I could no longer live as a boy so clearly. Then I was a lesbian for many, many years, or more likely queer. But I’ve always thought of myself as having more of a gender identity than a sexual orientation.

What does “queer” mean there?

Remnick: One of the things that became part of the language at a certain period of time was the following sentence: “Gender is a construct.” I think most people over the centuries thought of gender as something provided by biology. What is the origin of the notion of gender as a construct?

It’s simpler than that. Gender was just another word for sex, and useful because “sex” also means the activity, so “gender” disambiguates.

Gessen: Judith Butler, who certainly did not invent the phrase “gender as a construct” but did a lot to popularize that idea, and an idea of gender as performance, which I think is even more relevant to what we’re talking about—she said fairly recently—or, I’m sorry, they said fairly recently—in an interview that—

Remnick: I think it’ll be heartening for some to know that you made this mistake. We’re leaving it in!

More like profoundly irritating. See? See? This is one major reason it’s such a stupid idea – it’s impossible to remember and thus a source of pointless stress and distraction.

Gessen: One of the best quotes I’ve heard from somebody who studies gender and medical intervention was “Look, the gender of a five-year-old girl and a fifty-year-old woman is not the same.” I thought, You’re right. We think of these things as stable and knowable, but they’re not. They’re fluid by definition, and in our lived experience they’re fluid.

Oh shut up. Congratulations, you’ve discovered “personality.” It’s not the gender of a 5 and a 50 that is different.

Remnick: How would you approach talking about trans people? What is the state of the conversation? Where are we? Why is it so fraught and so often painful?

Gessen: I think it’s so painful and so fraught because it is very difficult, in discussing transness, in covering transness, to avoid engaging with the argument about whether trans people actually exist or have the right to exist. That is deeply painful to trans people—and, I would imagine, to people who love trans people. That’s actually something that should be off limits. 

Another manipulative ambiguity. She’s shocking. There is no “argument about whether trans people have the right to exist.” The issue is what people call themselves and try to force everyone else to call them, not anyone’s “right to exist.” No one is proposing a genocide of trans people. She knows that, but she’s pretending not to. It’s disgusting. Remnick should have interrupted there.

Gessen: That is deeply painful to trans people—and, I would imagine, to people who love trans people. That’s actually something that should be off limits. But it is very hard, because, for example, in Emily Bazelon’s excellent piece in the New York Times Magazine last summer about the battle over transgender treatment, there’s a [paraphrased] quote from Andrew Sullivan, the conservative gay journalist, who says, Well, maybe these people would’ve been gay—implying they’re really gay and not really transgender. That really clearly veers into the territory of saying “These people don’t exist. They’re not who they say they are.” So that’s why it’s so painful.

No, no, no. Disputing people’s descriptions of themselves is not the same as saying they don’t exist.

One expects this kind of dreck from The Independent or The Guardian, but not from The New Yorker.

Remnick: So you’re saying that Emily Bazelon should not have referenced Andrew Sullivan on that? I think it was a paraphrase of Sullivan rather than a quotation.

Gessen: I wouldn’t have. I think that piece would’ve been even better without that. As journalists, we’re not under obligation to quote every single view on an issue. I think we have the right to exclude the view that somebody’s not who they say they are.

So if we say Putin’s not who he says he is, that should be excluded? We “have the right” to exclude it?

By the way, Andrew Sullivan is pissed.

Hooboy. Donnie has a hit single.

A new single, “Justice for All,” featuring former President Donald Trump, from the J6 Prison Choir, reached No. 1 on iTunes’ top songs on March 11.  

The J6 Prison Choir is comprised of a group of men who were convicted after their participation in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The song includes the choir singing  “The Star-Spangled Banner” from jail before it climaxes with the prisoners chanting “USA! USA!” The “Justice for All” track has the performance of the national anthem interrupted by clips of President Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. 

Armed insurrection is patriotic and loyal and everything good provided you sing this one song and shout USA USA over and over. Substance is nothing, appearance is everything. Amen.

Sorry but I have to sneer at Lauren Boebert some more.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., has announced that she will be a grandmother at 36 next month when her 17-year-old son’s partner gives birth to a son.

Her son’s what? Do 17-year-olds have “partners”?

Boebert staffers on Friday confirmed the announcement. Breaking from a meeting for an interview, Boebert verified her son and his girlfriend are not married and declined to reveal the age of the girlfriend, other than to say she’s over 14.

Soooooo she’s 15. Great. 15-year-olds are definitely mature enough to be parents; that’s definitely an ideal time to start pumping out the babies.

Boeberty family values: