SCOTUS to Trump: No.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a request from former President Donald J. Trump to intervene in the litigation over documents seized from his Florida estate.

I was wondering about that yesterday. Would even an extremely right-wing court with three out of nine members owing their places there to Trump really be on his side over theft of top secret documents, refusal to give them back, lying about them, threatening people over them? It seems not.

The court’s order, which was a sentence long, was a stinging rebuke to Mr. Trump. There were no noted dissents, and the court gave no reasons, saying only: “The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Sept. 21, 2022, presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the court is denied.”

I suppose Virginia “Gini” Thomas is fuming.

Mr. Trump asked the court last week to step into the tangled case, saying that an appeals court had lacked jurisdiction to remove about 100 documents marked as classified from a review of the seized material. The Supreme Court’s action means that the special master in the case, and Mr. Trump’s legal team, will not have access to those documents.

I hope the sting is very painful.

H/t Mike Haubrich

Gee, I wonder why he did that.

Days before the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit accusing Donald J. Trump and his company of fraud and seeking to shut down some of their business in the state, Mr. Trump’s lawyers created a new company in Delaware.

The new company’s name had a familiar ring to it: the Trump Organization, the same name as his old company, now threatened by the lawsuit. And on Sept. 21, the day the suit was filed, the new Delaware company filed paperwork in New York, seeking to be recognized there as the Trump Organization II.

But it totally won’t be a place to stash all the money so that New York state can’t touch it, no no no no, of course not.

Those maneuvers were detailed for the first time in a court filing on Thursday from the attorney general, Letitia James, who raised the prospect that Mr. Trump was seeking an end run around some of her lawsuit’s harshest potential punishments.

Who, Trump? He never does that kind of thing.

Mind you his lawyers swear up and down that it’s all aboveboard, but somehow James doesn’t entirely believe them.

Alina Habba, a lawyer for the former president and his company, said in a statement that Ms. James’s filing was “simply another stunt.”

“We have repeatedly provided assurance, in writing, that the Trump Organization has no intention of doing anything improper,” she said.

And Trump does not have a long long history of providing assurances and then doing anything improper anyway?

Come on.

Remember those first tweets of JKR’s on the subject? How hedged and cautious and hyper-polite they were?

Those days are over. Yaboosucks.

The resistance is spreading. There’s a group called Evidence-Based Social Work Alliance.

As a coalition of qualified practitioners, academics and social work students, we came together in response to our individual concerns regarding the uncritical use of gender identity theory in social work and other professions. As a group we believe social workers have a responsibility in law, underpinned by professional ethics and values, to promote and uphold the safeguarding of children. Children and young people with gender dysphoria are presenting to the profession and we are being silenced in our attempts to understand and discuss the evidence-base approaches to exploring this phenomenon.

They have news today:

Social Work England to discontinue case against social worker for “offensive” Facebook posts about Mermaids and “gender identity” policies.

A registered social worker who is appealing against a warning issued by Social Work England (SWE) in 2021 has been informed that it does not intend to defend its position at a review hearing which starts on Monday 17 October. The official warning followed a complaint by a single person that posts by the social worker on her private Facebook page were ‘offensive’ and ‘disgusting’ because they criticised the concept of gender identity. SWE’s decision followed receipt of submissions on the case.

It seems like only yesterday that adults knew perfectly well that their fantasies were personal to them and in no way suitable or permissible to impose on other people.

The posts which were deemed “offensive” and “disgusting” comprised articles, blogs and cartoons critical of or satirical about “gender identity”. Raising concerns about charity Mermaids was found to be illegitimate and bigoted. The charity is now at the centre of a growing scandal, including a trustee with links to paedophile groups on its board and serious safeguarding breaches in its contact with children. Many of the posts were from mainstream publications. Others were from legitimate campaign groups such as Fair Play for Women. None of the posts used abusive or derogatory language nor singled out any individual for targeted harassment. There was no evidence that the social worker had ever behaved in a discriminatory way in her previously unblemished social work career. None of the posts were personally offensive towards anyone All were a reflection of the social worker’s protected “gender critical” beliefs.

Although SWE now wants to withdraw from the review, it has not acknowledged the case made in the submissions that the views expressed are entirely legitimate and necessary to be publicly expressed by a registered social worker.

Maggie Mellon said “EBSWA believes that the case should be heard in full. It is essential that SWE is required to either defend or to withdraw its entire case against our colleague. SWE’s conduct has sent out a chilling message to the entire profession that they may not raise concerns about any aspect of belief in ‘gender identity’ without facing accusations that their fitness to practice is impaired. SWE should make it clear that it will not sanction social workers for merely expressing criticism or concern about claims made about “gender identity” and their impact on social work practice.”

“Gender identity” is the opposite of social. That’s the whole problem in a nutshell. It’s individual. It’s a fantasy in the head; it can’t be social. Fictions can be social, as for instance with movies and plays, novels and stories, but personal fantasies – fantasies about the self – can’t. It doesn’t work, and people should stop trying to make it work, at the expense of everyone who is aware that it doesn’t work.

I missed this last week. Elon Musk tried to appoint himself “peacemaker” between Ukraine and Russia by telling Ukraine to give Putin what he wants. Ukraine told him to fuck right off. Who does he think he is?

Elon Musk drew backlash on Monday from Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his unsolicited advice on how to bring about “peace” amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country.

Who is he to give advice? Who asked him? Who does he think he is?

In a Twitter poll, Musk suggested a path to “Ukraine-Russia Peace” that included re-doing elections “under UN supervision” in the regions of the country recently annexed illegally by Russia. The land grab, covering nearly a fifth of Ukraine, followed referendums that have been widely dismissed as “shams” by much of the world.

The billionaire Tesla CEO also suggested making Crimea, a region Russia invaded and annexed from Ukraine in 2014, “formally part of Russia.” He added in bullet points: “Water supply to Crimea assured” and “Ukraine remains neutral.”

Ok fine how about we all go invade Elon Musk and then make peace by keeping half of what we invaded and telling Elon Musk what he has to assure supplies of to us.

“Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply to you,” Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk wrote in response to Musk’s Twitter thread.

Can I join the ambassador in that? Fuck off, Elon. You made a car. You’re not a god-emperor.

Russian officials, on the other hand, welcomed Musk’s tweets. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and a former Russian president and prime minister, tweeted Musk “kudos” and predicted Musk’s next tweet would say that “Ukraine is an artificial state.”

Well they would, wouldn’t they.

UK news media are sycophantically promoting Eddie Izzard’s campaign to be elected a Labour MP for Sheffield. They’re not sycophantically promoting the campaign of Sheffield councillor Abtisam Mohamed. What is it that indicates Izzard would be a good MP? Experience, training, education? Anything?

Abtisam, who has represented Firth Park ward on the council for the Labour Party since 2016, will now seek to be nominated by city party branches.

…

Abtisam said why she wants to become an MP: “It’s about making sure that the local voice is heard at a national level, being able to challenge the current situation with decisions being made by the Conservatives and the impact that has on us as local communities and on public services.

“I want to be able to take that back to a national level. My strengths are that I’m from the community. I always make sure I listen to local views and I’m listening to what people want and establishing services that meet their needs.”

For Eddie Izzard, on the other hand, it’s about Eddie Izzard, and being called “she” a lot. As far as I can tell he has no connection to Sheffield.

Nearly a billion.

Jurors ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Wednesday to pay nearly $1 billion to Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims’ relatives and an FBI agent, who said he turned their loss and trauma into years of torment by promoting the lie that the rampage was a hoax.

The $956 million verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host for spreading the myth that the massacre never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns.

The verdict came in a defamation lawsuit filed by the relatives of five children and three educators killed in the 2012 shooting, plus an FBI agent who was among the first responders.

Jones wasn’t in the courtroom, he was too busy doing Infowars.

“All made up. Hilarious,” he said. “So this is what a show trial looks like. I mean, this is the left completely out of control.”

The left? Really? They’re going with that? They really want to say it’s the left that doesn’t torture the parents of murdered children by telling lies about them on a popular amateur talk show? They really want to own that level of brutality and sadism?

Originally a comment by iknklast on You have to get water there.

This is my field, building and restoring ecosystems. Doing it on Earth we get it right less than 3% of the time. It is more than just water, and how likely are the lunar poles to provide enough water to keep more than a handful of humans for a short time? Who knows? There is research going on to determine how much water is on the moon…and other planets.

But there are a myriad of things we depend on, many of which we might not even know about. Fungus. Bacteria. Plants. Animals. Protozoans. Water. Soil. Atmosphere.

A moon colony – or any other planet – would not be more likely to succeed than an Earth colony, it would be less. And the expense is simply unacceptable to keep a handful of rich assholes in a colony on the moon while they strip the earth of its resources – because that is what they will do. And probably still die, because space is not friendly to human life.

The reality is our solutions will not come from purely technological ingenuity. That might be necessary (for instance, including nuclear power in the mix, though I remain skeptical it will ever be sufficient enough to replace all other forms of energy because of some limitations). There are technological things we can do, some we are doing, but space colonies are still the stuff of science fiction. EVERY TIME I talk to someone about this, I get the same sorts of answers. A writer I know (a prof in my writing program) has been writing a book about the moon from this standpoint. I asked him once if he planned to consult any scientists, since his sources didn’t include any so far. He said yes, he planned to talk to NASA psychologists about the possibility of mental problems in astronauts.

Really? You’re not going to consult ANY biologists? You’re talking about LIVING on the MOON, and you’re not going to listen to BIOLOGY, which is, simply defined, the study of LIFE?

Biology has been dismissed at every turn. I find it difficult to get environmental activists to consider biology. It is impossible to get those interested in space colonies to consider biology. Trans won’t consider biology. Creationists won’t consider biology. Quack herbalists and others won’t consider biology.

FACE IT, EVERYONE. Biology is the science of us. Of our pets. Of our crops. Of our forests and grasslands and hot springs and oceans and deserts and any other place life exists. If you dismiss biology, you dismiss life, and if you dismiss life, you really aren’t talking about LIFE on other planets, you’re talking about STUFF on other planets.

The basic requirements for life:

Food

Water

Shelter (at least for some forms of life)

Atmosphere

A livable temperature range

A livable pH range

An appropriate level of gravity

An appropriate level of pressure

Lack of exposure to radioactivity

At this point, few if any of these are available on other planets, or on the moon. Those who are in love with technology insist we can make them. Many of these are people who dismiss single-payer healthcare as too expensive.

Let that last sink in. Thank you.

The Independent tells us:

Transgender prisoners “with male genitalia” should no longer be held in women’s prisons, the justice secretary has announced.

That is, men should no longer be held in women’s prisons, even if they claim to be trans.

In a parliamentary statement, Brandon Lewis said he would bring forward a new policy on the issue later this year.

“Under the reforms, transgender prisoners with male genitalia should no longer be held in the general women’s estate,” he added.

“This will not be a blanket rule; exemptions to these new rules will be considered on a case-by-case basis. This will also apply to transgender women who have been convicted of a sex offence.”

What will? The rule, or the fact that exemptions will be considered? What will also apply, the rule, or the fact that exemptions will be considered?

A parliamentary committee previously found there was a risk of violence, sexual assault, self-harming and suicide “where trans prisoners are not located appropriate to their acquired/affirmed gender”.

What about the risk of violence and sexual assault when men are located “appropriate to their acquired/affirmed gender”? That’s the important bit. The issue is women in prison trapped with men who could assault them.

Several trans women have killed themselves in male prisons in the past decade.

How many? This is really crappy reporting. Unclear and lacking basic information.

Last week, Mr Lewis told the Conservative Party conference that it was “not right that transgender prisoners, when convicted of serious sexual offences or those who have not had reassignment surgery, are housed in the general women’s prison estate”, vowing: “This will end.”

The new justice secretary said there had been sex attacks and inappropriate relationships involving transgender inmates in recent years. He suggested that the use of “specialist cells” could be increased to “further protect women in prison”.

The statement came days after official figures showed that police-recorded hate crimes targeting transgender people had rocketed by 56 per cent in a year.

That’s nice. Quote the justice secretary pointing out that putting men in with women is dangerous to the women, then “balance” that obvious fact with “hate crimes” (which we know from bitter experience can include just skepticism about magic gender) “targeting” trans people.

Galop, an LGBT+ anti-abuse charity, said transphobic narratives in the media and by senior politicians have been allowed to grow without challenge and were translating into “violence against our community”.

The N word. Suddenly it’s a “narrative” that men are more dangerous to women than women are to men.

Suella Braverman, the new home secretary, has focused on trans issues in recent weeks, wading into a Twitter row over the gender identity of a child sex abuser and hitting out at “biologically male police officers strip-searching female suspects”.

“Wading into” and “hitting out at” – very neutral, much impartial.

The former attorney general has been strident in her views at a series of events and interviews, replying when asked what a woman is that “a woman has two X chromosomes, a woman gives birth, a woman does not have a penis”.

Oh oh oh how strident, how shocking, how wicked.

The Indy is embarrassing.

I don’t think this claim is true:

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis has spoken out against violence against trans people in a revealing interview with Spain’s Cadena SER radio network. The 63-year-old performer explained how her trans daughter receives death threats, and expressed alarm about the “terrifying” rise in transphobia.

“I have a trans daughter. There are threats against her life just [for] her existence as a human being,” she told Cadena SER on Tuesday. “There are people that want to annihilate her and people like her. The level of hatred… [It’s] as if we haven’t learned from fascism, [as if] we haven’t learned what the result of that is: the extermination of human beings. That is terrifying.”

I don’t believe her. I think she’s doing what it’s become second nature to do for so many zealots: translating refusal to believe magical claims about the self into threats of annihilation. I think she’s translating disbelief in a category into a desire to kill the people who claim to be in the category.

I suppose it’s possible that an offspring of a movie actor gets attention from weirdos, including weirdos who threaten people like movie actors and their offspring. But systematic threats to kill Curtis’s offspring for being trans? I don’t believe it.

The interview was shared on Twitter by trans activist Carla Antonelli, who was the first trans member of parliament in Spanish history. In the tweet, Antonelli asked: “Is someone going to stop this hate and injustice. Or only when it’s too late?”

The first trans member of parliament in Spanish history, but of course far from the first male member of parliament in Spanish history. I wonder if there could possibly be a motivation to call oneself trans other than the overpowering feeling of being “in the wrong body”…

About this “statement” of Munroe Bergdorf’s, which was apparently made on Instagram, which makes it a pain in the ass to quote or cite – it’s interesting that it starts with insulting women.

Note the disdain – “spurred on by a group of middle-aged cisgender women.” As if there’s something obviously contemptible and illegitimate about adult women having opinions and goals, and acting on them. He sounds like people ranting about “the Jews.” Yes, women are interested in this political movement, partly because it has such immense hostility and disdain toward women. Jews are interested in anti-Semitism and women are interested in men who claim to better women than women are.

Munroe Bergdorf is a man who performs “being a woman” by posing simpering coyly over his shoulder at the camera like a 21st century Betty Boop, while maligning actual women as hags who have no right to political action.

I’m tired of these guys.

LGBT+ Labour @LGBTLabour is “The Labour Campaign for LGBT+ rights. Campaigning for equality since 1975. Affiliated to @UKLabour.” Yesterday it went all-in for Mermaids.

Team Urge Children to Destroy Their Bodies. Yay.

This seems a bit clumsy.

It’s not just a quick concise statement, either, but a long (to the point of tedium) detailed self-important little essay.

And why are random people issuing “statements” on the subject anyway, as if they were important or informed or otherwise relevant? Why is anyone supposed to care what Jameela Jamil thinks? Why are we consulting her about whether it’s ok to ruin teenagers’ bodies for the sake of a cultish belief?

Originally a comment by KB Player on You have to get water there.

All the effort to make something which on earth nature does it by itself even on unpromising sites.

This morning I walked past a piece of “waste” ground, a slab of concrete about two feet from the ground, about 100 yards long and 10 yards wide. It was put in as part of the tram works, probably around 10 years ago.

It is now covered with buddleia, which attracts insects in the summer. There’s a cotoneaster with berries. Soil is building up from the leaves that have fallen and rotted. I did a little guerrilla gardening the year before last and planted some daffodil bulbs, and in some places the soil was deep enough to sustain them so they flowered. Buddleia is a terrific coloniser – one colonised a gutter on my house, so the roots grew up a down pipe and clogged it with soil.

A book I read recently, Islands of Abandonment, which I thoroughly recommend, goes to different places like slag heaps, or the area around Chernobyl, or abandoned war zones, and tells of how they can regenerate. On earth nature will work hard to keep growing. Trying to make it work on somewhere which hasn’t had the millions of years to provide that kind of ecosphere sounds like the worst waste of time and money. Is it from a kind of Year Zero mind set – that having made a mess we can start afresh somewhere – with the same disasters as other Year Zeros, as in Cambodia.

Talking about women’s rights is transphobic.

Teachers who discuss sex-based women’s rights with transgender colleagues would be considered “transphobic” under a policy proposed by members of Britain’s largest teaching union.

That is, feminist teachers who talk about feminism with colleagues who call themselves transgender will be branded evil by their own union. People who call themselves trans have all the rights and women have none.

The National Education Union’s trans and non-binary network has proposed that anyone who expects trans people “to participate in discussion or debate about their rights and/or identities” is transphobic.

I wouldn’t want to talk to trans people about it, frankly, because they wouldn’t listen. The trouble is it will probably come up, because the men who claim to be women will violate women’s rights, so then women will be forced to tell them so and explain how. But that will be thought crime so women are SOL either way.

The draft proposal of a transphobia definition, seen by The Telegraph, also cited “propagating ideas, concepts and misinformation harmful to trans people and which erase and ignore trans history, such as trans as an ideology or contagion”, as an example of transphobic behaviour.

The policy neither outlined what it meant by “trans history”, nor what “ideas, concepts and misinformation” would be considered harmful to trans people.

It further defined transphobia as a “rejection of trans identity and a refusal to acknowledge that those identities are real or valid” or the “incorrect use of pronouns”.

A refusal to acknowledge – so it’s not just active rejection that’s a thoughtcrime, it’s also the mere not saying or echoing or agreeing. No you can’t just keep your mouth shut, you have to recite the creed twice a day. If not, Torquemada has an appointment with you.

The definition has been drafted after a resolution to define transphobia was passed at the last annual NEU conference in the spring.

The conference instructed the NEU’s executive to “work with the Trans and Non-Binary Network to develop a Union definition of transphobia that goes above and beyond legal compliance and that supports and endorses trans and non-binary identities without resorting to the erasure or downgrading of ‘gender’”.

Ahhh above and beyond – that’s where the mandate to affirm comes in. It’s not enough to just be quiet, however reluctantly; you have to say, and say and say and say, from dawn til dusk, or it’s the fire for you.

When have women ever had this level of concern and caring and support? Never, that’s when.

How “skepticism” has fallen.

You are what’s in your head, not what your body is. Could it be any more “spiritual” and religion-like? Thoughts determine physical reality; physical reality does not.

It’s all the more fatuous given the emphasis skepticism normally puts on how easy it is to fool ourselves, how difficult it is to see ourselves clearly, how prone we all are to flattering self and disparaging others (like “GC idiots” for instance). There’s all that, but on the other hand there’s also “if you like to fantasize about being a woman then you are a woman.” Puh-leeze.

If you are what’s in your head and not your body, then if you spend enough time fantasizing about being a cheetah or a crocodile or a hummingbird then you are one. Now what? Do we all have to buckle down to affirming all those exciting new idenninies? Install perches everywhere? Resign ourselves to being eaten?

Mermaids is getting more unwelcome attention:

Parents of children who have used the transgender youth charity Mermaids have complained to the watchdog after a [male] worker posted explicit images and sexualised pictures “as a schoolgirl” online.

Darren Mew, digital engagement officer at the children’s charity and who identifies as “they/them”, posted an image of himself on Instagram with an upwards view through his short skirt with the words “Sorry I can’t hear you. I’m just out here living my fantasy” and the hashtag “nonbinaryfinery”.

Mew was also featured in a collage of six pictures of himself naked, holding his erect penis, from the rear and with pairs of breasts with penises protruding from them for a shot for Haus Magazine, an LGBT publication.

It’s all part of being a mermaid, isn’t it?

Oh hey what do you know, Biden does know what a man is.

Under President Joe Biden’s administration, transgender women who are born male must register for the Selective Service, which provides the Defense Department with troops in the event of a military draft. Transgender men who are born female do not have to register for the Selective Service. While the policy was established before Biden took office, the Biden administration has not changed the standard.

How very interesting. As people are pointing out all over Twitter, Biden thinks it’s fine for men to invade women’s sports and take their prizes and join them in the toilets and locker rooms, but not to refuse to register for the potential draft.

According to the Selective Service System website, nearly “all male US citizens and male immigrants, who are 18 through 25, are required to register with Selective Service.” The website states that all biological males must register for the draft, including “U.S. citizens or immigrants who are born male and have changed their gender to female.”

It’s almost as if Biden knows perfectly well that lots of men would hurry to identify as women if the draft returned.

Originally a comment by iknklast on A cold, dark, black emptiness.

It takes MASSIVE amounts of fuel just to get off the planet. Transporting the ingredients of biospheres too isn’t doable.

Not to mention the ecological issues. We don’t have much success building ecosystems on Earth, in places where there is existing soil, a seed bank, and a nearby highway to readily move things from one spot to another. I worked on one demonstration project – just a five mile stretch of a lake, to show it could be done. We moved aquatic plants from south central Oklahoma to south eastern Oklahoma, a three hour drive in good situations, but five hours when you are going slow and stopping to water plants. More than half of them didn’t survive the journey. The seeds/bulbs/etc we used? Didn’t even germinate, even though we knew those plants were able to live in that lake.

The project was budgeted at $300,00 and went over budget before we even started the planting. That was for a small research project with a small crew of college boys who served as interns, and only two full time staff, one a temp the other an intern – in short, not highly paid, but as knowledgeable as any other expert.

Did we succeed? Sort of…we established plants that lived for one and a half seasons. The project was abandoned as too expensive.

We haven’t moved very far on our knowledge of building ecosystems since then, though you will see glowing reports on the web, I’m sure. People need to justify their grants. It was my job to justify the grant, and to persuade the funders that going over budget was reasonable (it was – the budget was about three to four times too low for what was needed).

Keep in mind, we had good soils with adequate nutrients (better than adequate phosphorus), water available at every step of the way, a source of materials within a reasonable distance, and a crew of ten. Plus three boats, two trucks, and the Corps of Engineers available. We failed. Not because the project was undoable, but because we didn’t know enough, and we didn’t have enough money, and the locals weren’t going to put any more money into it.

The only people I tend to see thinking we could go to Mars/Moon/exoplanet are engineers and technicians. Biologists know better. Building a colony on another planet is more than just getting people and building materials to the planet. You have to get water there. Know how much water weighs? You have to get plants and animals there. Humans cannot live without the resources we have on earth; we evolved on this planet for a reason. The only way to hope to get them there is to decimate every economy on Earth, and every ecosystem on Earth.

Those of us not wealthy enough to afford the price tag? We’ll be working back here in diminishing situations for the rich colonizers – who probably won’t live long, just long enough to decimate this planet.

From Pliny: