Originally a comment by iknklast on They’re gone.

I remember even as recently as 15 years ago my husband and I would sit on the porch watching fireflies. They were abundant. Bullfrogs croaking in the distance, and crickets chirping somewhere unseen…and we live in the city. A small city, to be sure, but a city. Now what I see is squirrels, domesticated pets, and the roar of automobiles.

I’ve been talking about this a long time. People want to focus solely on global warming, and I’ve had this argument – what good is a world where we’ve solved global warming and there are no animals left? We need to focus on the big picture, but we are not good at that. All of them are part of the same interlocked problem. The biggest losses of species are caused by loss of habitat. That loss of habitat comes with increased emissions, plus the urban heat island effect.

The species that are still abundant seem to be those that like living with humans…and other than a few domesticated animals, most of those we don’t like. Dandelions, rats, racoons, and other species that can feed off our detritus.

OJ has a gotcha.

He’s literally a man running for public office while claiming to be a woman. That’s it. That “it” is not nothing. Imagine a white man running against Raphael Warnock while claiming to be black – imagine how well that would go over. Consider why that would not go over well. Now apply that to a man running for public office while claiming to be a woman. That’s it, and that’s all you need.

Say goodbye to wetlands?

On Oct. 3 — the first day of its new term — the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a case that could dramatically reduce the number of wetlands and other waters across the United States that are protected under the landmark Clean Water Act.

And the court being what it is, it seems very likely to be team Sackett and not the EPA that wins.

The Sacketts started their dispute with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2007, after purchasing a parcel of land that was subject to Clean Water Act protections. The parcel — which included sensitive wetlands a stone’s throw from Priest Lake, one of the largest lakes in Idaho — required a wetlands permit before being developed.

Instead of following EPA’s processes to get a permit to fill sensitive wetlands to build a lake house, the Sacketts sued. This 14-year legal battle now has them before the Supreme Court, for the second time. (The Sacketts first appeared before the justices in 2012, securing the right to bring a court challenge against an EPA compliance order.)  

The Sacketts’ case against the EPA, however, is not about a parcel of land, let alone a lake house, but is a coordinated push by industry polluters that want to blow a hole in the Clean Water Act, bulldoze cherished wetlands, and contaminate the country’s streams with waste from mining, oil and gas, and agro-industrial operations as they see fit, just to maximize their profits.

And they’ll win, thanks to Trump and McConnell.

In 2015, based on a comprehensive scientific study, the EPA issued a regulation that defined “waters of the United States,” a term that determines which waters the Clean Water Act protects.

The Trump administration later attempted to replace that regulation with one that would have substantially narrowed the law’s protections. But a group of Tribes represented by Earthjustice were able to get that regulation overturned. The EPA is now working on an updated definition of the “waters of the United States” to reflect the latest scientific knowledge.

But the Supreme Court isn’t waiting for the EPA to finish that work.

Instead, it is stepping in to decide what waters and wetlands the Clean Water Act protects.

Profit is everything, the environment it and everything else depends on is nothing.

H/t Mike Haubrich

The transports continue.

The Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, plans to continue flying undocumented migrants to Democratic strongholds, his spokeswoman said on Saturday, a day after released records showed the state paid nearly $1m to arrange two sets of flights to Delaware and Illinois.

But worth every penny, to make a point and torment the migrants.

The flights would be a follow-up to 14 September flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, that carried 49 mostly Venezuelan migrants to the island where the former president Barack Obama owns a home. Local officials were not told in advance that the migrants were coming.

DeSantis claimed responsibility for the flights as part of a campaign to focus attention on what he has called the Biden administration’s failed border policies. He was joining the Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, in sending migrants to Democratic strongholds without advance warning.

More precision or less precision? It depends on who is talking.

A transgender science teacher has become the subject of criticism after a video of him insisting it was important to “clean up” language, like “women produce eggs” and “males are more likely to be colorblind,” in order to be more “accurate” and “precise,” resurfaced from a webinar series held earlier this year.

Sam Long, an activist for “gender-inclusive” policies and “trans/non-binary” educators, teaches science at Denver South High School, part of the Denver Public Schools (DPS) system. Long, along with other science teachers, has previously spent time establishing “gender-inclusive biology” curriculum resources, which he promotes to educators across the country.

Science teachers teaching magical nonsense.

During an April webinar series “to address hot topics that are on the top of educators’ minds,” hosted by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), Long argued it wasn’t the most “accurate” or “precise” statement to say it’s “women who produce eggs.” Rather, Long argued, it was more “precise” to say, “it’s ovaries that produce eggs.”

And it’s only women, women only, who have ovaries.

“We’re acknowledging that not all women produce eggs and also not all egg producers are women,” Long says during the webinar. “We’re teaching students that language matters. We’re not just talking about imaginary people,” he continued.

Language does matter, and it’s a lie that not all egg producers are women. Yes all egg producers are women. Schools should not be teaching lies in science class. Literature class (should they have such a thing) are closely related to fiction, so truth and falsehood are not really relevant, but in science classes, this kind of deliberate bullshitting should be expelled.

Bill McKibben writes:

A vast new study finds there are 70 percent fewer wild animals sharing the earth with us than there were in 1970.

Ouch.

I notice a lot of missing wild animals even here in big city Seattle. It used to be commonplace to see mergansers and coots and buffleheads on lakes and ponds here, lots of them, and now I walk along Lake Washington and see none at all. None at all. Sometimes I see one or two, but not often. And swallows. Swallows used to come back in the spring, and you’d see a lot of them. Now? Zip. None. Very occasionally one lone pair, but that’s all. They’re just gone.

We must burn the house down to save it.

Eco-activists have doused UK supermarket aisles with milk – including Harrods, Fortnum & Mason and Waitrose, with Animal Rebellion spokesperson Robert Gordon telling LBC “we don’t have a choice”.

The co-ordinated protests from Animal Rebellion activists were staged across the UK, pouring milk down aisles and dousing displays in what they dubbed ‘Milk Pours’.

We must waste food in order to [something goes here].

Here they are in action. It’s quite unpleasant to watch, all that milk wasted, not to mention the mess they won’t be cleaning up.

John Lewis at the Edmund Pettis Bridge they’re not.

JKR on Nicola Sturgeon:

Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, believes the protesters outside parliament on October 6 have nothing to complain about. The woman who calls herself a “real feminist” said to the BBC that her proposed new Gender Recognition Act “doesn’t give any additional rights to trans people nor does it take any rights away from women”.

That just shows she has her whole fists stuck in her ears, aka she’s not listening.

If Sturgeon’s new act passes into law, a person will be able to change their legal gender as long as they’ve lived in their acquired gender for three months, and made a statutory declaration that they intend to keep doing so. Remarkably, nobody seems able to explain what living in an acquired gender actually means, so how those granting certificates can judge whether the criteria [have] been met is anyone’s guess.

Under the current act, those who wish to change their gender need a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, ie, persistent distress and discomfort with their natal sex. However, all medical gatekeeping has been removed from Sturgeon’s revised bill. I presume this is in response to the strong push from the trans activist lobby to “depathologise” trans identities. The argument is that trans people aren’t mentally ill: being trans is as natural as being gay. As Rachel Cohen, campaigns director of Stonewall wrote in 2017: “Being trans is not about ‘sex changes’ or clothes, it’s about an innate sense of self.” You may ask how anyone can assess the authenticity of somebody else’s “innate sense of self”. I haven’t a clue.

No one has a clue, because it’s inherently meaningless and impossible. Trans ideology is wholly dependent on the worship of a magical Self, but only for some people. Feminist women don’t get to claim any kind of magical self; we’re just a kind of donkey, or system of pulleys.

In 2019, The Sunday Times made a freedom of information request to the Ministry of Justice that revealed almost 90 per cent of sexual offences committed in changing rooms happened in those that are unisex. Nevertheless, Sturgeon loftily dismisses anyone who fears her new legislation could be wide open to abuse. “It is men who attack women [feminists should worry about] and we need to focus on that, not on further stigmatising and discriminating against a tiny group in our society that is already one of the most stigmatised.”

Yes it is men who attack women we should worry about, and some of them call themselves trans women, and we’re being systematically disabled from avoiding or resisting them.

The third argument Sturgeon uses is that it’s transphobic to suggest any man would fraudulently claim a female identity. This claim is extraordinary. Nobody but the very naive can fail to be aware that predatory men are capable of going to great lengths to gain easy access to victims, and have often sought out professions or special status that offer camouflage for their activities. Sex offenders have historically been found among social workers, teachers, priests, doctors, babysitters, school caretakers, celebrities and charity fundraisers, yet no matter how often the scandals break, the lesson appears never to be learned: it is dangerous to assert that any category of people deserves a blanket presumption of innocence.

This is what the worship of a magical Self does: it causes people to forget everything they know about male aggression toward women, and instead decide that trans women are holy beings with immaculate souls and we should all be overjoyed to have them moving among us.

BBC India correspondent Soutik Biswas reports:

At the 1,000-bed not-for-profit Kasturba Hospital in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, doctors are grappling with a rash of antibiotic-resistant “superbug infections”.

This happens when bacteria change over time and become resistant to drugs that are supposed to defeat them and cure the infections they cause.

To be a little more precise, it happens when natural selection does what it does: selects the bacteria that because of a favorable mutation are able to resist the antibiotic. The more the antibiotic is used, the more of those bacteria there are.

Such resistance directly caused 1.27 million deaths worldwide in 2019, according to The Lancet, a medical journal. Antibiotics – which are considered to be the first line of defence against severe infections – did not work on most of these cases.

This is why antibiotics should not just be thrown around like popcorn.

India is one of the countries worst hit by what doctors call “antimicrobial resistance” – antibiotic-resistant neonatal infections alone are responsible for the deaths of nearly 60,000 newborns each year. A new government report paints a startling picture of how things are getting worse.

…

Saswati Sinha, a critical care specialist in AMRI Hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata, says things are so bad that “six out of 10” patients in her ICU have drug-resistant infections. “The situation is truly alarming. We have come to a stage where you are not left with too many options to treat some of these patients.”

Meanwhile an ignorant “Health Secretary” in the UK hands out antibiotics as if they were aspirin.

A widespread lack of knowledge about antibiotics means that most patients – rural and urban – are not aware of antibiotic resistance. Even the rich and educated take antibiotics if they fall ill or pressure doctors to prescribe antibiotics.

And not just in India.

Nothing can be for women any more. Nothing nothing nothing. Every single thing has to be taken away and made for men too.

Never heard of antibiotic resistance then?

Patients will be able to obtain antibiotics from pharmacies without seeing a doctor under new plans aimed at reducing the need for GP appointments.

Thérèse Coffey, the health secretary, has pushed to make antibiotics more freely available and has said that she has previously handed out her own supplies of the medicines to friends and family who were feeling unwell.

She what???

One, she shouldn’t have “supplies” of antibiotics – you have to take the whole prescription. Two, you’re not supposed to give them away like after dinner mints! Three, they’re not for “feeling unwell”! Four, there are different antibiotics, they’re not interchangeable or random or all-purpose. Five, antibiotic resistance is a crisis the way climate change is a crisis. Six, antibiotics shouldn’t be “more freely available” (see 1-5). Seven, how in hell is this idiot health secretary???

Sources close to the health secretary denied suggestions from sceptical officials that “she thinks anyone should just be able to get antibiotics”, saying that such comments reflected initial questions from her early days in office.

Coffey had to be convinced by Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, that the rise of antibiotic resistant superbugs was a significant problem, after suggesting at the start of her tenure that the drugs should be made far easier to obtain in order to free up doctors.

So why in hell is she health secretary? No one that ignorant should have that job.

Pushing for easier availability of antibiotics has been branded “moronic” by some medical experts, who increasingly see the menace of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as one of the gravest threats to modern medicine.

No shit. It’s a horror show.

The overuse of antibiotics speeds up the rate at which bacteria develop resistance to such medicines. As the drugs stop working, common infections could once again kill and treatments ranging from chemotherapy to hip replacements could become too risky to attempt.

And, like climate change, this isn’t some distant future possibility thing, it’s already happening. It’s in progress.

Coffey should be moved to a different post. Secretary of Hobbies perhaps.

NPR is so captured.

This story is part of a series looking at transgender inmates in the U.S. and the challenges they face in confinement and upon release. The series focuses on topics such as being incarcerated in prisons that do not reflect their gender identity, the medical hurdles faced behind bars and rehousing after being released.

Does the series ever focus on the results for women when men are incarcerated in prisons that do reflect their “gender identity”? The danger, the loss of privacy, the fear?

“Christina” Lusk had just been told he would be getting “surgery to affirm her gender identity” but before it happened he was busted for dealing meth.

She pleaded guilty. She has since spent about three years incarcerated in a men’s prison. She faces relentless harassment and crippling loneliness, she said, and now she wants this mistreatment to end.

He wants to shift the burden onto women, which just goes to show that he has no idea what it’s like to be a woman.

He’s suing the Department of Corrections.

After her guilty plea in 2019, Lusk was sent to the Moose Lake men’s facility. Lusk believes that she, a trans woman who has a reissued birth certificate that states she is female and who has undergone gender-affirming procedures, should be placed in the women’s prison in Shakopee, Minnesota. (It should be noted that the authenticity around a trans person’s gender identity is not inherently tied to surgeries, other medical treatments or changes to legal documents. Some people don’t take these steps for a variety of reasons.)

It’s not tied to anything. It’s bullshit. It’s also dangerous to women. It’s nauseating to see NPR oozing sympathy for meth-dealer guy while ignoring the plight of women who would have to share space with him.

Lusk is now 57. It was only a few years ago that she really started living freely as herself. A psychiatrist told her she had gender dysphoria. That’s a medical term used to describe the deep discomfort caused by a mismatch between a person’s assigned sex at birth and their gender identity.

No, it’s not a medical term. It’s a pseudo-medical term at best.

When Lusk detailed some of the instances of abuse she has dealt with, she started to cry. She took a long pause and quickly wiped the tears from her face.

“That’s why I want to move to Shakopee. I don’t think the women are going to be as aggressive and horrible to me,” she said.

Men are aggressive and women are less aggressive, so he, a man, wants to impose himself on women. Nice for him, not so nice for the women.

NPR finally gets around to a reluctant mention of this angle near the end of the piece.

The state has started slowly moving inmates who have requested a change and gone through steps for approval. Opponents of the policy say they’re concerned about the potential for assault by inmates transferred from men’s facilities.

They do??? Who could possibly have dreamed of such a thing?

Lusk, as well as many other trans individuals NPR spoke to for this project, said there will no doubt be people who are not transgender, nonbinary or intersex who try to take advantage of housing policies like this.

But they say it’s up to the prisons to establish guidelines that help secure approval for nonviolent offenders, while weeding out any cisgender inmates acting in bad faith. It can be done, they said.

Yeah you just weed them out. That’s how we do it everywhere else in life so that’s why there’s no rape or abuse or violence against women. Problem solved. Thanks, NPR!

The same old stupid lies:

Being a sports star does give [Olympic diver Tom Daley] a platform that’s useful for more than just reverse pike backflips. He was “furious” after a ruling by the diving body FINA in June to ban transgender women who have gone through male puberty.

“We should be sending out a message to everyone that everyone is welcome no matter who you are, where you come from, your gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, whatever it is, everyone should feel welcome when they try sport,” he says.

Welcome in sport, yes, but not men welcome in women’s sport. Easy for Tom Daley to ignore the problem with letting men invade women’s sport.

We don’t get into the question of fairness, here: the counter-argument runs that divers who were born biologically female would be at a clear competitive disadvantage. But Daley’s point is a broader one. “I just think of myself when I was younger. I’m not transgender, obviously, but if I was told as a gay man I was never going to be able to compete because of who I was, then of course I’d never have tried.”

But that’s not what transgender people are told. Nobody is telling them “You can’t compete because of who you are.” But if men who claim to be transgender take over women’s sport guess what – women are being told it will become impossible for them to compete because the men will always win.

It’s always interesting to see the police getting the law completely wrong.

See, the problem with that is, it’s not a crime. If it’s not a crime it can’t be a hate crime, because as many people are patiently pointing out TO THE POLICE, there is no stand-alone hate crime: there has to be a crime first, which can then have the category “hate crime” added. It’s not a crime to get someone’s name wrong, even on purpose. It may be rude, but it’s not a crime.

Meanwhile, as I keep saying, rape is almost never prosecuted.

Trump sent the January 6 committee an angry letter:

The same group of Radical Left Democrats who utilized their Majority position in Congress to create the fiction of Russia, Russia, Russia, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, the $48 Million Mueller Report (which ended in No Collusion!), Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, the atrocious and illegal Spying on my Campaign, and so much more, are the people who created this Committee of highly partisan political Hacks and Thugs whose sole function is to destroy the lives of many hard-working American Patriots, whose records in life have been unblemished until this point of attempted ruination. The double standard of the Unselects between what has taken place on the “RIGHT,” and what has taken place with Radical Left, lawless groups such as Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and others, is startling and will never be acceptable, even to those who will be writing the history of what you have done to America.

This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt, and despite strong and powerful requests, you have not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, and have targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself. Those who committed the Fraud, thereby having created the Crime of the Century, go unblemished and untouched, but those who fought the Crime have suffered a fate that was unthinkable just a short time ago. We have a two-tier system of Justice in the United States that cannot be allowed to continue. A Majority of people in our Country say that the Presidential Election of 2020 was determinatively dishonest, including the fact that many Legislatures were overridden by local and State politicians and judges on vital regulations and requirements, which is totally illegal and UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

It’s such elegant writing, don’t you think? Reminds you of Burke, or Thoreau, or a tantrumming child.

In addition, the Unselect Committee has willfully ignored the fact that days before January 6, 2021, I recommended and authorized thousands of troops to be deployed to ensure that there was peace, safety, and security at the Capitol and throughout Washington, D.C. on January 6th because I knew, just based on instinct and what I was hearing, that the crowd coming to listen to my speech, and various others, would be a very big one, far bigger than anyone thought possible.

I love his quiet boasting, don’t you? He knew “just based on instinct” and what he was “hearing” (i.e. seeing on tv) that there would be a lot of people in town – it’s awe-inspiring, that’s what it is.

As it turns out, it was indeed one of the largest crowds I have ever spoken before, a very wide swath stretching all the way back to the Washington Monument. The massive size of this crowd, and its meaning, has never been a subject of your Committee, nor has it been discussed by the Fake News Media that absolutely refuses to acknowledge, in any way, shape or form, the magnitude of what was taking place. In fact, for such a historic event, there are very few pictures that accurately show the event, or how many people were really there. Incredibly, it seems that pictures showing the size of the event were perhaps cancelled, scrubbed, deleted or, in any event, not available, but we still have some—as attached.

Who deleted them??? Who, I say???? Was it Obama? Was it the New York Times? Was it the Harvard Law Review???

Despite very poor television ratings, the Unselect Committee has perpetuated a Show Trial the likes of which this Country has never seen before.

Ratings! They can’t even get the ratings! Donnie gets the ratings!!

There’s an appendix, with photos of…the crowd.

Sometimes the stupidity goes on and on and on until it’s out of sight, like Route 66 or the Trans-Siberian railway. Behold an online summit devoted to research on a famous 18th century lesbian, requesting “your pronouns” and then removing a lesbian who provides sarcastic ones, and then blocking anyone who criticizes this lesbian-hostile behavior.

So, obediently, we consult the Code of Conduct:

Anne Lister Research Summit is committed to providing a welcoming and harassment-free environment for participants of all races, gender and trans statuses, sexual orientations, physical abilities, physical appearances, and beliefs.

No it isn’t. It’s explicitly (and apparently proudly) not providing a welcoming environment for belief that gender idennniny is bullshit, or for all trans statuses, or for all gender statuses.

The Anne Lister Men Can Be Lesbians Research Summit.

Who is the bully in this scenario? Is it really the gender skeptic who is doing the bullying?

This made me feel quite ill, but then I learned that the painting is behind glass. The National Gallery says there’s a little damage to the frame, but none to the painting.

Pelosi takes charge:

There was a video going around today of King Choss dissing Liz Truss.

All very well, but what gets my pained attention is the protocol that dictates she has to bow to him. She does it twice, a quick little bob, but it’s still a mandatory cringe. It’s revolting. She’s doing an actual job, however badly, and he’s just a relic of the absurd institution of monarchy. People shouldn’t have to make propitiatory gestures to talentless firstborn sons who have some genes in common with Queen Victoria. It’s silly and it’s degrading.

A “public order offense.”

What public order offense officers?

“You called someone a muppet.”

You can actually hear them saying that. With a straight face. Four cops.

Meanwhile rape is almost never prosecuted.