Anything to win:

Washington’s Seattle Academy High School girls’ cross-country team qualified for the state championship thanks to trans student, Aspen Hoffman. 

Last year, Hoffman was a mediocre cross-country runner on Seattle Academy’s boys’ team. During freshman year, Aspen Hoffman competed as a boy and finished 72nd in the League finals. Now, as a sophomore competing as a girl, Hoffman broke Seattle Academy’s school record in the girls’ 5000-meter category and ranks 1st in League.

Seattle Academy competes in the Emerald Sound Conference which is comprised of 14 schools. Libs of TikTok spoke with a coach in the conference who told us, “allowing [Hoffman] to compete against biological girls deprives other girls’ teams of the chance to compete at State (which is a big deal).  If [Hoffman] competed in the boys’ division, [Hoffman] would place 56th on the boys’ team.” 

Since this is a team, he gives his team an advantage. It’s the other teams that are being cheated, as opposed to individuals as with “Lia” Thomas. Still cheating.

Parents are terrified to even raise concerns about Hoffman’s presence on the girls’ team. Another parent noted, “parents are upset but they know it has to go to the state committee, which isn’t politics, it’s the state high school board, and unless there’s any kind of pressure put on them to change the rule nothing’s going to happen.” 

Well if all the other teams just replace one girl with a boy it will all be fair again.

This is a long thread, and very disturbing. I didn’t read all of it. The Dr Gallagher is Sidhbh Gallagher, of yeet the teets.

Many horrifying tweets later:

Rylan is still vehemently pro the ideology though, still eager to call doubters terfs.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Dr Brat.

I’m under no illusion that free speech in any way guarantees that the best evidence and the strongest arguments will rise to the top in the “marketplace of ideas”. Despite what Movement Skeptics™ might like to think, judging evidence and arguments on their merits is not a straightforward matter, but something that requires a great deal of experience and accumulated pre-knowledge in its own right.

Also, the strongest indicators of truth vs. falsehood objectively speaking rarely coincide with what seems most subjectively persuasive to a lay audience. Playing by the rules of science, critical thinking, and intellectual honesty is nothing if not limiting while the peddlers of nonsense are free to say whatever it takes to impress people. In the absence of the necessary pre-knowledge, critical thinking skills etc. all your average lay person can be expected to get out of the kind of “rational debate” that believers in the “marketplace of ideas” like to imagine, is that one side comes across as far more confident and assertive, more aggressive etc. while the other side is forced to use conservative language (“seems to indicate”), talk about statistical probability and error bars, acknowledge doubt and uncertainty, and introduce caveats, conditions, and qualifiers at every turn. No need to specify which side is the scientific one, and no need to specify which side your average lay person is going to find most persuasive.

Still, while free speech may not guarantee that the truth prevails, at least it guarantees that it gets a fighting chance. As I’m sure many of us still remember the late great Christopher Hitchens explicitly invoked Holocaust denial as an example of the kind of thing that has to be allowed if free speech is to mean anything at all, precisely because it’s the kind of thing most of us would like to silence. If anything I think old Hitch’s question “Who gets to decide?” is even more pressing today. After seeing how easily institutions like courts, the mainstream media, and even universities can be captured by agenda-pushers of various kinds, it’s unfathomable to me how people can still trust anyone else to decide for us what we’re allowed to read or hear.

Movement or just more delay?

Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel on Friday to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.

The presence of classified documents=Trump’s theft of classified documents.

Though the appointment installs a new supervisor atop the probes — both of which are expected to accelerate now that the midterm elections are over — the special counsel will still report to Garland, who has ultimate say of whether to bring charges.

The role will be filled by Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor who led the Justice Department’s public integrity section in Washington and who later served as the acting chief federal prosecutor in Nashville, Tennessee, during the Obama administration. More recently, he has been the chief prosecutor for the special court in the Hague that is tasked with investigating international war crimes.

But law people are saying this is just another unnecessary extra step. Never mind yet more investigating whether to charge him, just charge him already!

Always remember kids – knowing that men are not women is bigotry. The right, moral, just, decent, humane view is that men are women if they say they are. Knowing that mere saying isn’t magic, and that while declaration can change some kinds of reality, it can’t change all of them, is evil, shameful, malevolent, deserving of every kind of hostility and ostracism.

Aw yeah.

The Telegraph reports:

The Society of Authors has been “lost” to cancel culture, members fear, after free speech rebels failed to oust the current chairman in a row over gender ideology.

It can be confusing trying to pick out who is for free speech and who is for cancel culture in this dispute. Joanne Harris was exercising her free speech when she used the violent attack on Salman Rushdie to sneer at JK Rowling, but critics see her sneering as an abuse of her role as chairman.

The UK’s largest writers’ union has faced an internal revolt over claims it has not properly defended gender-critical authors from being “cancelled” if they do not agree with prevailing opinions.

…

Writers including Julie Bindel and Amanda Craig brought a motion at its annual general meeting on Thursday night, which sought to have Harris removed as president. They brought another that aimed to introduce “robust” measures to protect free speech.

Both were voted down. The smelly little orthodoxy won big.

I can’t help finding the Elon Musk car crash funny. Dude bounces in shouting threats and insults at his employees and guess what, most of them quit.

Twitter has told employees that the company’s office buildings will be temporarily closed, with immediate effect. In a message seen by the BBC, workers were told that the offices would reopen on Monday 21 November. It did not give a reason for the move.

The announcement comes amid reports that large numbers of staff were quitting after new owner Elon Musk called on them to sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave.

And they said “We’re already working long hours at high intensity so fuck you, we’re out.” Musk’s only option was to scream “Fine, then I’m closing the building!!”

Ain’t capitalism great?

Well that’s one way to get away with murder: become a Head of State.

The US has determined that Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader – Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – has immunity from a lawsuit filed by murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancé.

…

[I]n court filings, the US State department said he has immunity due to his new role as Saudi prime minister.

So if you’re a murderer the thing to do is get a new role as prime minister.

It was always highly unlikely that the US, as Saudi Arabia’s strategic partner and arms supplier, was ever going to facilitate the arrest of MBS. But granting him immunity in this way will cause some relief in the Saudi royal court and has provoked a storm of protest from human rights groups as well as Mr Khashoggi’s fiancée.

And disgust in anyone paying attention.

Mr Biden declined to talk to Mohammed bin Salman when he first became president.

But over the summer, President Biden said he wanted to “reorient” relations, ahead of a visit to Saudi Arabia in July.

Right, because Saudi Arabia is such an important “ally.”

His visit – in which he was pictured fist-bumping the crown prince – was criticised as validating the Saudi government following Mr Khashoggi’s murder.

Because it did.

Amnesty’s Agnes Callamard wrote on Twitter: “This is a deep betrayal. Another one. First disregarded by Pres. Trump. Then Pres. Biden’s fist bump… At all points, they had other choices.”

And Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the Biden administration had “sold Jamal Kashoggi’s blood for Saudi oil”.

Those SUVs don’t run on pixie dust you know.

Joanne Harris remains.

The novelist Joanne Harris has seen off an attempt to remove her from a leading position at the UK’s largest trade union for writers, illustrators and translators, after members comprehensively backed her in a vote.

…

In a vote of its members at its AGM, held online, a resolution to unseat Harris as chair of the Society of Authors management committee fell by 608 votes to 143. It represented 81% of voters backing her.

Too bad. She seems very unpleasant to me – bratty, sneery, flippant, and a bully.

The move to oust Harris followed a row earlier this year over her response to the stabbing of Salman Rushdie in New York state. The Booker prize-winning author lost sight in one eye and the use of a hand in the onstage knife attack.

Harris was criticised for launching a Twitter poll in the wake of the attack and after a death threat to the Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who had expressed solidarity with Rushdie.

Harris asked authors if they had ever received a death threat, offering a choice of answers: “Yes”, “Hell, yes”, “No, never” and “Show me, dammit”.

In other words it was snide mockery of JK Rowling, because all the cool kids think she’s a “transphobe.” But apparently the members like that kind of thing so whatever.

Billy Bragg says those evil women caused harassment of trans people to increase, doubters asked for evidence, he produced “people said.”

Several students said. Hearsay Your Honour. Also what was the baseline? Also, we know from long irritating experience that many trans activists call any kind of disagreement or skepticism “harassment,” so no, “several trans students have reported” doesn’t add up to evidence. At all.

The vacuous smug bullies are out in force today.

Only Kathleen didn’t say anything about being “offended.”

Condescending shits like Billy Bragg probably.

Amanda Brunton calls Stock names and urges people to go protest her talk, then whines about people talking back. Solidarity forever wot wot?

The people they hire at Cambridge these days. Good grief.

Childish as well as censorious.

It’s right there on the sign – votes for WOMEN.

Today in women’s prison news:

A prisoner who identifies as a woman – despite having the physicality of a tall man – battered a fellow inmate in the male wing of a Scottish jail after being made the subject of “comments” by other lags, a court heard on Wednesday.

Having the physicality of a tall man=being a man. He has the physicality of a tall man because he is one.

Katie Dolatowski, 22, a convicted paedophile who sexually assaulted a 10 year old girl in a Fife supermarket, was serving a sentence in Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution for physical assault.

Let’s pause to notice this. He’s a tall man who assaulted a ten year old girl. He’s not a good person. He’s pretty much the worst kind of person – one who uses superior strength to harm and injure and terrorize people who aren’t as tall and strong as he is, for his own jollies. He’s a very bad man, yet here’s a newspaper bowing and scraping to his “marginalized idennniny” as if he were a fragile delicate flower brutalized by society.

Falkirk Sheriff Court was told she had been placed in male accommodation in the prison “notwithstanding” her identifying as a woman.

As he should have been. Men who assault women, let alone little girls, should never be placed in female accommodation. Neither should any other men, but especially the rapists and batterers should not.

Appearing in the dock at Falkirk Sheriff Court flanked by security guards, Dolatowski, whose last address was given on court papers as Dunfermline, Fife, pleaded guilty to assaulting Mr Patterson by punching him repeatedly on the head and body.

Not something a woman would be able to do.

Solicitor Kelly Howe, defending, said: “She identifies as female, but, notwithstanding that, she had been placed in the male prison population at Polmont, and the court can probably anticipate the difficulties that caused her.

Can anyone imagine the difficulties that his being placed in the female prison population would cause the women in that prison population? Can anyone manage to care?

In March 2018, Dolatowski sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl in the toilet of Morrisons supermarket in Kirkcaldy. The terrified youngster was grabbed by the face, shoved into the cubicle, and ordered to remove her trousers.

The attack came a month after Dolatowski had filmed a 12-year-old girl on the toilet in another supermarket in the Fife town. For the sex offences, she was placed on a three year community payback order and banned from having contact with children.

#Not Our Crimes

And a pony.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced the launch of a new guaranteed income program for the city’s transgender community on Wednesday.

Why? Why them in particular? Why not people who need it rather than a particular “community”?

The Guaranteed Income for Trans People (GIFT) Program will provide low-income transgender residents with $1,200 each month, up to 18 months to help address financial insecurity within the community.

Why?

The city also said that the new pilot program is the first guaranteed income initiative to focus solely on transgender people and will provide 55 eligible participants with temporary income. Additionally, the city said it will provide the same individuals with “wrap-around” direct services, such as gender-affirming medical and mental health care, case management, specialty care services and financial coaching.

Why? Why them in particular?

“We know that our trans communities experience much higher rates of poverty and discrimination, so this program will target support to lift individuals in this community up. We will keep building on programs like this to provide those in the greatest need with the financial resources and services to help them thrive,” said Mayor London Breed in a statement.

Transgender communities, experience poverty and economic instability at disproportionate rates according to the city.

“The US Transgender Survey, which is the only largescale study of trans people in the United States, in 2015 found that 33% of trans people in California were living in poverty,” said Pau Crego with the San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives.

Is that a good reason to give them but not other people living in poverty a guaranteed income?

“We hope that our guaranteed income program will be the beginning of a reparative process to change the inequities experienced by our communities, help them survive in a world that is constantly debating their right to exist, and empower them to engage in healthcare services in a meaningful and life-changing way,” said JM Jaffe, executive director of Lyon-Martin Community Health Services.

Which “communities” though?

That’s the trouble with this robotic stale language: you can’t tell what the hell they’re talking about or what they think they mean by it. It’s just a group of units of goodspeak, which don’t actually tell us anything. Reparative process, inequities experienced, debating their right to exist, empower them, meaningful – the phrases are like a stack of poker chips. Arrange them in pretty combinations and that’s the job done for today.

Man explains how indifferent he is to women and their petty selfish desire to compete in sports against other women:

Australia’s most successful male Olympian Ian Thorpe has hit back at [criticized] a decision by international swimming’s governing body Fina to ban transgender women athletes from elite female competitions.

The swimming great, who won five gold medals at the Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 Olympic Games, said the sport’s leaders had made the wrong decision.

“This is a very complicated issue, I can’t deny that, and I am personally opposed to the position Fina has taken on this,” he said. “I am for fairness in sport, but I’m also for equality in sport. And in this instance, they’ve actually got it wrong.”

It’s not “equality” in sport for men to be allowed to compete against women.

Also, and all too obviously and familiarly, it’s no skin off his ass, is it. If it’s no skin off your ass maybe you should just shut up about it. It’s very easy for men to say “Oh let trans women compete against women, that’s equality.” It will never ever ever ever ever cost them anything. It will only ever cost other people anything. That’s why they should shut up about it. They’re breezily giving away other people’s rights, not their own.

Following a storm of controversy, and a campaign of harassment against a swimmer who won an American collegiate event, Fina banned transgender women from competing in women’s races unless they had transitioned before the age of 12.

What a disgustingly dishonest paragraph. There was no “campaign of harassment” against William Thomas. The Australian Associated Press lies about the facts and suppresses the relevant details about William “Lia” Thomas.

Fina’s June ruling was welcomed by some of Australia’s Olympic stars, including Tokyo gold medallists Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm, who had previously voiced concerns about “fairness” and physiological differences between men and women.

Note the scare quotes on “fairness” – as if fairness had nothing to do with it. There were no scare quotes for “campaign of harassment” which was in fact a lie, but there are scare quotes on fairness as if it were in fact fair for hulking Lia Thomas to take all the prizes.

The five-time Olympic champion called Fina’s decision a “temporary solution” that failed to consider the implications it could have on the gender-diverse community.

Thorpe has failed to consider the implications of all of this for [not “on”] the women community.

What. an. asshole.

I went for an explore this afternoon, and on the way home I experienced the following:

• On the return leg of the trip I transferred to a different bus downtown, and as it arrived and I made for it there was a woman lying on the sidewalk seizing. People were approaching her so I didn’t stop, and anyway there’s always a heavy police presence in the area because it’s an open air drug den. A block away is the McDonalds where there was a mass shooting a few years ago.
• I sat on the first front-facing seat and a woman sat in front of me in the side-facing seat. She had a paper bag from which she took some fired battered chunks of something, fish or chicken, and a little tub of sauce, and she proceeded to pull some of the batter off each chunk, dip it in the sauce, and eat it, then dip the bits of batter in the sauce and eat those, then lick her fingers. There were quite a few chunks and she ate them all. She was maybe a foot away from me and the smell was nauseating, not to mention the sight.
• I did another transfer at the big stop outside KEXP, just up the block from Climate Pledge Arena. It’s a nice place to transfer because while waiting you can use the rest rooms at KEXP, get some water, get warm or dry or both. I got some water then wandered up the street to the corner and just as I got there a maniac on a bike crossed from the other side at speed, heading right for me. I stopped walking and he gave me a little thank you wave, as if I’d done it to be nice. I’d done it so that he wouldn’t smash my skull on the sidewalk.
• There was a guy in front of one of the bus stop benches leaning over with his face almost on the bench and his butt in the air, with his pants falling off. He was kind of weaving back and forth and making cryptic gestures.

All this was in the space of 20 minutes.

Sometimes big city living is a bit much.

They’re not taking it lying down.

Anthony Zurcher at the Beeb tells us some ways Trump won’t find it such a doddle this time. There’s all the legal jeopardy for instance.

The former president is currently defending himself against a criminal election-tampering inquiry in Georgia, a civil fraud case targeting his business empire in New York, a defamation lawsuit involving a sexual assault allegation, and federal probes into his role in the Capitol attack and his post-presidential handling of classified material.

That’s five separate items. Bit of a drawback in a chief exec, maybe.

Also Ron DeSantis, unfortunately, is not Jeb Bush.

Above all…they don’t love him any more.

According to exit polls from the recently concluded midterm elections, Mr Trump is simply not very popular – including in the key states he would need to win to secure the presidency in a general election.

In New Hampshire, only 30% of voters said they wanted Mr Trump to run for president again. Even in Florida, that number only rose to 33%.

Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you like the play?