Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Never going back.

I have been thinking a lot about intellectually compelling problems vs. emotionally compelling problems lately: Considering that climate change – along with the strongly interlinked problem of ocean acidification, the mass-extinction of species, and the general toll the human economy is taking on ecosystems and the natural world – is the most dire existential emergency our species has ever faced, many have struggled to explain why – despite constant claims of “alarmism” and “hysteria” – there isn’t more alarm and public outrage around the issue.

The most obvious answer, and usually the first one that comes to mind – is that tackling the problem puts you on a direct collision course with powerful vested interests. The fossil fuel industry is the richest, most profitable industry in history, and is thus able to spend practically unlimited resources financing disinformation campaigns, lobbying buying politicians etc. But there’s more to it than that. Even if only a relatively small percentage of the population get their income directly from the fossil fuel industry, we are all invested in the modern, high-tech, consumerist life-style, and while I don’t think there’s much evidence that consumerism ever made us any happier (I’m strongly inclined to suspect the opposite is true!), it’s certainly addictive as hell, very much like heroin or alcohol in this respect. You can learn pretty much everything there is to know about human self-deception, rationalization, compartmentalization etc. by studying addicts alone, and we’re all addicts when it comes to fossil fuel.

Another common explanation is that the issue has become so heavily politicized that many also have an ideological stake in denying the problem, especially in the U.S. where it’s become just another proxy issue in the ongoing Culture War between Democrats and Republicans for the soul of the nation. In reality, of course, neither Democrats nor Republicans have any real interest in doing anything about the problem that has any chance of actually working. But since Democrats at the very least tend to accept the problem as real and pay lip-service to doing something about it, even acknowledging that the problem exists has come to be seen as a “liberal” or “leftist” position and hence a proxy for everything people dislike about taxes and regulations, immigration, abortion, gun control, political correctness, multiculturalism, feminism, secularism etc. Thus rejecting it out of hand becomes about group identity (“My kind of people don’t believe things like that!”), tribal loyalty, rooting for your team, booing the other team, etc. The actual facts of the matter hardly enter into your considerations at all.

But this still doesn’t quite explain why even people who accept all the facts, understand what’s happening on an intellectual level, and are able accurately assess the danger, are mostly not motivated to do anything about it. Of course there is a game-theory aspect to it: Why should I give up the benefit (in the short term) of fossil fuels if others won’t and the world gets screwed anyway? And of course the potential for self-fulfilling prophecies is only too obvious.

But I also think there’s a lot of truth in what people like Daniel Kahneman have said about apathy and indifference to climate change and human psychology. The human brain evolved to react strongly to a sudden danger or threat. It did not evolve to react to a gradual worsening of conditions over time. We’re all familiar with the (probably apocryphal, but never mind) claim about frogs in hot water: If you put a frog directly into scolding hot water, so the story goes, it will instantly jump out and save its own life. If you put the same frog in lukewarm water and gradually heat it to that exact same temperature, it will look in vain for the “line” where the temperature changes from acceptable to unacceptable and hence remain passive and indecisive while it’s slowly boiled to death. The claim doesn’t have to be literally true (after all, the topic at hand wasn’t frogs anyway) to be instructive.

The human brain also evolved to react strongly to a threat from a clearly identifiable and hostile external agent (a predator, a rivaling tribe etc.). Climate change offers none of these psychological triggers. The problem is incremental rather than binary (i.e. all or nothing), and while wildfires and extreme weather events can be both sudden and dramatic when they occur, it’s not like they never happened in the past. Rather than a sharp line we’re once again looking at a gradual increase in the statistical frequency and intensity of such events. Nor is there a clearly identifiable external enemy. Blaming politicians or even the fossil fuel industry doesn’t quite do it justice since ultimately we’re the ones who keep electing those politicians and paying those companies to fuel our cars, heat our homes etc. As someone once put it, the elephant in the room is all of us. And so even if you understand the problem on an intellectual level, it doesn’t trigger the kind of instinctive, visceral fear reaction required to motivate action. In other words, it may be an intellectually compelling problem but it’s not an emotionally compelling problem, and only emotions can generate motivation.

Compare it to, say, the threat of Islamist terrorism. If you’re an average citizen in the West and you look at the most statistically probable causes of death for people within your demographic, Islamist terrorism should rank very low on your list of concerns – certainly orders of magnitude lower than climate change. But here we have almost the opposite dynamic going on: It may not be an intellectually compelling problem, but it sure is emotionally compelling. Terrorist attacks are usually sudden and dramatic when they occur and conjure up images of dangerous fanatics shouting violent slogans who hate us and want to destroy us. It ticks all the right boxes and pushes all the right buttons.

Bottom line, visceral fear – and hence motivation to act – often has very little to do with any objective assessment of risk, and so people burn enormous amounts of calories worrying about vanishingly improbable dangers and act accordingly while the greatest existential threat to our collective survival is treated with about as much urgency as a bad haircut. Well… Not quite that much…

The Guardian does a long conversation with athlete and “LGBTQ+” activist Tom Daley:

Isn’t part of the problem that the LGBTQ+ community is at war with itself over trans rights? The level of fury between trans rights activists and gender-critical feminists astonishes me, I say. Daley nods, and says it’s dangerous. “The LGBT community is so fractured right now over certain issues. And that’s when the right are going to get us. They’re going to try to break us down. And if you think they’re just going to take away trans people’s rights, you’re wrong. It’s going to go much further than that, and we have to stick together as an LGBTQIA+ community to stop that happening.”

But it isn’t a community. The T part is a different subject, a different category, a different issue. Mashing them together is very useful for the T but very the opposite of useful for the L and the G. The G are being very slow to figure that out, probably because they’re not the ones who have to deal with the men invading women’s sports and women’s rape shelters and women’s changing rooms.

Daley goes on to perform this very “not my problem” blindness:

Daley has 2.2m followers on Twitter. In June, speaking at the British LGBT awards, where he was named Sports Personality of the Year, he condemned the decision of Fina (the administrative body for international water sport) to ban trans athletes who have been through any part of male puberty from elite women’s competition. Daley said when he heard the ruling, “I was furious. Anyone that’s told that they can’t compete or can’t do something they love just because of who they are, it’s not on. It’s something I feel really strongly about – giving trans people the chance to share their side.”

He feels very strongly about letting men ruin women’s sport. How women will feel about that simply doesn’t impinge on his awareness at all. Women, meh, who cares, they need to shut up and take it.

For so long, Daley has been regarded as a national treasure. But as he takes a more active role in the charged debate about trans athletes, it is inevitable that opinions about him will become divided. In an interview with GB News, former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies responded to Daley’s speech by suggesting that as a male athlete he doesn’t have any skin in the game: “Tom is male and this does not affect him in the slightest … I think we have to listen to the women, and Fina were the first governing body since 2015 to actually poll their female athletes and listen to their coaches.”

That’s not suggesting, it’s pointing out, and rightly so. Of course he fucking doesn’t have any skin in the game. He’s a man. I am so sick of watching men blithely ignoring women’s rights in favor of the made-up “rights” of men to “do something they love” even when that means women don’t get to do the same something they love.

Does he think that ultimately inclusion trumps fairness? “No, of course not. But, as human beings, we have to be a little bit more thoughtful before banning people completely from something. If kids are doomed to never be able to do what they love, they may well just give up.”

That applies to female kids too, you stupid prick. What about the female kids who just give up???

The issue of trans women even became the battleground for the Tory leadership election. Penny Mordaunt, a contestant on Daley’s ITV celebrity diving show Splash! in 2014, was accused by rivals of being a “woke warrior” for her previous support of trans women. Mordaunt desperately tried to distance herself, insisting she had never claimed “trans women are women”.

Is this what he means by LGBT issues being hijacked? He nods. “Think of the tiny percentage of trans people in the population, and prospective Tory leaders are using that to win votes. I don’t understand why people think they have to be less woke in order to lead a country. “How can understanding people’s feelings be a bad thing?” He trails off, lost for words.

Again. Listen carefully. Women have feelings too. Women. have. feelings. too.

aley has always been one of life’s planners. I met him again in 2015 when he’d just turned 21 and was living with Black, a prominent campaigner in the fight for US marriage equality. Daley was mapping out his future – a gold medal at Rio, a career in television after diving, marriage and kids at some point. He said he knew he’d be the disciplinarian because he was tougher than Black, despite the fact that his partner was 20 years older. Two years later he and Black married, and in 2018 Robbie was born with the help of an egg donor and a surrogate.

You know – some woman and some other woman. A couple of women. Bitches. Karens. People who don’t matter. Trivial worthless people without feelings or ambitions or goals who just happen to have the eggs we want and the ability to gestate the baby we want. Technology, basically.

He’s planning to order a second baby. Yet more Karens to deal with.

Fun and games in Ireland:

An Irish “LGBTQ+ Inclusive” football team beat out the female competition in the 2022 Junior J Shield Final, claiming a significant margin of victory in every placing that many attribute to the fact a biological male was on the team.

For “many” read “all,” even if some of them wouldn’t admit it. Yes, Virginia, teams that are “inclusive” of males are going to beat the female competition.

Na Gaeil Aeracha, which bills itself as Ireland’s “first explicitly LGBTQ+ inclusive” football club was forced to lock down its social media accounts following backlash as sport fans noticed one of the players appeared to be an older man.

All “LGBTQ+ inclusive” means in this context is “mixed-sex.” A mixed-sex team played against an all-female team and won: surprise surprise. It’s dishonest for mixed-sex teams to label themselves “LGBTQ+ inclusive” because that makes the team sound progressive and virtuous when in fact it’s exploiting its advantage over the all-female team. This ploy is ridiculous and everyone should stop humoring it.

Giulia Valentino, a male who identifies as a transgender woman, was playing against young women and girls in the Ladies Gaelic Football Junior J Shield tournament on July 27 and August 3 on behalf of Na Gaeil Aeracha. Photos from the event began to circulate on social media after sport writer Ewan MacKenna called attention to the results.

MacKenna posted a screenshot of Na Gaeil Aeracha’s policy on inclusivity from their now-private Instagram page in which the team reiterated that its players “may play at training or in a match for the team they best identify with, without restriction.” Another policy posted by the football club explicitly states that medical transitioning is not necessary.

Naturally. They want to maximize their advantage, don’t they.

Originally a comment by Laurent on Scoop: more men running for office!

We’re all non-binary.

I keep struggling with gender stereotypes themselves, and the whole issue clearly doesn’t clarify at all.

I really wonder what are the keystone gender norms that apply to the binary as a general inalienable truth, that almost everyone would acknowledge is actually what historically defines gender at core and still applies mostwhere, if possible independently of secondary cultural norms.

What I get is that it is not about lifestyle at all.

Men -. I was about to write down “none”, but admittedly there is one norm that became quite exceptional but may make an unexpected come-back in the future: obligation to go to war and serve the country.

Women:

– shut up, smile, be nice

– much less safety outside of home

– have kids (and take charge) (husband is a special kid with special needs)

– housekeeping & home management

– paygap, way fewer career opportunities, way fewer opportunities at large

Claiming non-binarity is not doing anything to change that.

Disclaimer: I am not claiming exhaustivity, I was aiming for defining core. Does not imply feeling fine about it neither.

In Alex Jones news: $45.2 million in punitive damages.

Jones spent years telling his audience that one of the worst school shootings in American history was a hoax. Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, who brought the charges against Jones, told the court how he made their lives a “living hell” after Jesse, their 6-year-old son, was gunned down in the attack.

“I can’t even describe the last nine-and-a-half years,” Heslin said. “The living hell that I and others have had to endure because of the recklessness and negligence of Alex Jones.”

Not to mention the brutality and cruelty and total lack of empathy.

Hoo-boy…“unethical” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

FPFW:

There are a couple of studies being done in British universities in an attempt to prove that “transition” from male to female reduces the male performance advantage enough to make it fair for those post-pubertal adult males to play and compete in women’s sport. It’s known that testosterone suppression reduces oxygen-carrying capacity, which reduces athletic performance a bit, though it’s obvious that most of the effects of male puberty are irreversible. Nonetheless, Loughborough and Brighton Universities are both hosting PhD studies led by trans-identifying males who wish to prove their own eligibility for female sport.

I’ll just say that again. Loughborough and Brighton Universities are both hosting PhD studies led by trans-identifying males who wish to prove their own eligibility for female sport.

That’s not a study, that’s not academic work, that’s not research – that’s men using a veneer of pretend-research to enable their theft of women’s places in women’s sport.

At Loughborough, Joanna Harper is trying to back up the anecdotal evidence provided to the IOC in 2015, on which their testosterone suppression policy, since dropped, was based. We wrote about the problems of study design and the conflicts of interest for the study leader and for the participants. It is hopelessly compromised.

Now the leader of the Brighton study, Blair Hamilton, has confirmed this. In calling for trans athletes who feel their potential exclusion from female categories is unfair to participate in their study, Hamilton is actively recruiting participants who want to demonstrate their loss of performance. As we’ve written before, we can be certain they’ll succeed.

Not exactly the right way to recruit participants for a research study.

Fun at the swimming pool:

A senior woman who expressed discomfort regarding a trans-identified male in the women’s changing room at her local pool has been banned from using the facilities she frequented for over three decades. Julie Jaman, 80, had been a guest at the YMCA-run Mountain View community pool in her small town of Port Townsend, Washington for over 35 years.

Interrupting for a moment to say I know that small town. It’s on the Olympic Peninsula, the remainder of the state west of Seattle and Puget Sound; it’s on a bluff overlooking the water and features a lot of gorgeous Queen Anne-style Victorian houses. It’s a lovely place.

Speaking to Reduxx, Jaman revealed that on July 26, she witnessed a trans-identified male using the female locker rooms at the pool, and became concerned due to the fact he appeared to be watching the little girls as they changed out of their bathing suits.

“I was showering [after a swim] and I heard a man’s voice … it was quite deep,” Jaman told Reduxx, “So I looked through the shower curtain. There was a man in a women’s bathing suit, and he was near four or five little girls who were taking off their bathing suits. He was standing there watching them.”

Jaman observed the male through the opening in the shower curtain for a moment. Shocked by his presence and becoming increasingly distressed about his proximity to the children, she quietly asked: “Do you have a penis?” The male refused to answer, prompting Jaman to demand he leave the locker room.

Rowen DeLuna, the pool’s aquatics manager, was in the area at the time, and when Jaman appealed to her to remove the male from the restroom, DeLuna told her she was being “discriminatory” and threatened to call the police.

“She said, ‘you are being discriminatory, you are banned from the pool, and I am calling the police.’”

Calling the police, because a woman told a man to get out of the women’s changing room. You couldn’t make it up.

Read the rest.

U wot?

Young people who bleed across Wales? What do they do, open a vein in Fishguard and march bleeding all the way to Abergavenny?

Haha, silly me, no, they mean “people” all over Wales who shed their uterine linings once a month.

Our aim is to break the taboo around periods by encouraging conversation on one of the most normal, natural topics that half the world’s population experience.

Which half? Which half which half which half which half which half which half?

Of course they don’t say. Funny that they want to break one taboo by instituting another.

We’re immensely proud that Bloody Brilliant was created for the young people of Wales by the young people of Wales. 

Following research with young people across the country, we got to the heart of their challenges when talking about and experiencing periods. From this, we uncovered key insights and Bloody Brilliant was born. Working with an incredible bunch of young people, we used co-creation workshops to shape the brand and information you’ll see on this website. And we can’t forget to give a massive shout out to the top team of experts and influencers across the period health field who helped us out throughout our journey.

What a pity the experts and influencers forgot to tell the young people which half.

Social Change UK created Bloody Brilliant on behalf of NHS Wales and the Welsh Government. Their combined aim is to open up the conversation and provide information on period health, so generations of young people don’t suffer in silence through fear of speaking out or lack of understanding around what’s normal when it comes to periods.

That’s great but which half?

Let’s see…off the top of my head rather than looking in a dictionary…

-fer

-late

-ition

-parent (that pun is the title of a Netflix show of course)

-cendent

-itory

Quite a few words to render meaningless.

H/t soogeeoh

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Never going back.

The situation is much the same in south-eastern Norway. For the first time ever this year the trusted spring flood due to snowmelt in the second half of May has been completely absent due to record-low levels of snow in the mountains. Combine that with the driest summer on record, and it’s becoming a major challenge for hydropower companies such as the one I’m working in to keep our power plants running. To the end consumers this has the effect of driving the already economy-breaking energy prices even further up. Factor in the European over-reliance on Russian gas that is no longer available, and we’re facing the real prospect of rationing this upcoming winter.

Many have suggested that Putin is now counting on the crisis to turn Europeans against their own governments and make them elect pro-Russian rightwing populists who will ease the sanctions against Russia and withdraw their support for Ukraine. He is obviously also counting on the Republicans to regain control over the U.S. Senate, in which case his old friend and ally Donald Trump (or someone equally bad) may very well be “legally” declared winner of the next presidential election, even if he doesn’t win the election – not even on a technicality as in 2016.

It’s like everything about this problem is self-reinforcing. Not only does the initial increase in global temperatures trigger positive feedback loops that lead to further increases in global temperatures (the greenhouse effect being amplified due to more water vapor in the atmosphere, less sunlight reflected back into space due to less snow and ice etc.), and not only does the problem significantly impair the best available alternatives to fossil fuel, such as hydropower, but the misery and suffering caused by the problem make it – if at all possible – even less politically feasible to do anything about it.

Oh well… The rest of the universe should be fine…

Amnesty International is even dumber than I thought – or its social media intern is, but that’s the same thing, because what is Amnesty doing letting a stupid clueless woman-hating child handle its social media?

It’s millions of men who can become pregnant.

Who knew?

The snowpack is shrinking.

The Western US is an empire built on snow. And that snow is vanishing.

Since most of the region gets little rain in the summer, even in good years, its bustling cities and bountiful farms all hinge on fall and winter snow settling in the mountains before slowly melting into rivers and reservoirs. That snowmelt, often traveling hundreds of miles from mountain top to tap, sustains the booming desert communities of Las Vegas, Phoenix and Salt Lake City — even coastal Los Angeles and San Francisco. A civilization of more than 76 million people, home to Silicon Valley and Hollywood alike, relies on snow.

Without the snow, it’s mostly desert.

Dangerously high temperatures in the Pacific Northwest and California’s deadly McKinney Fire flung the Western states’ changing climate back into the national spotlight this past week, and it only gets tougher from here. With the Southwest gripped by its worst drought in 1,200 years, there’s less precipitation of any kind these days across the region, especially the crucial frozen variety with its multi-month staying power. Rain, as desperately as it’s needed, isn’t quite the same: Unless it goes into a lake or reservoir, it won’t be available for weeks or months in the future, the way snowmelt can be. What little winter precipitation does arrive now often lands as rain and runs off, long gone by summer. The West’s mountain snowpacks have shrunk, on average, 23% between 1955 and 2022. By the end of the 21st century, California could lose as much as 79% of its peak snowpack by water volume.

But by then someone will have invented artificial water, surely.

Columbia University climate scientist Richard Seager’s lab has been modeling the next two decades of rainfall in the US Southwest, and all of the projections show the area will be drier than in the 1980s and 1990s.

“The Southwest has to get it in its head that it’s never going to get back to the levels of water availability that we had in the late 20th century,” he said.

It can’t, it’s too busy building new houses in the desert.

Farmers are cutting back on production already, which…you know.

Bloomberg ends with some wan discussion of what can we do, but it’s obvious that the answer is nothing.

It seems I missed new jokes from Jason Stanley during my exile from internet privilege.

Please, sir, tell us more about yourself.

Oh look, he does!

But for the chef’s kiss –

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.

Right-wing talk show host Alex Jones will have to pay the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim a little more than $4 million in compensatory damages, a jury decided Thursday, capping a stunning and dramatic case that showcased for the public the real-world harm inflicted by viral conspiracy theories.

…

A separate, shorter trial during which punitive damages will be discussed is now expected. Punitive damages are awarded when the court finds the defendant’s behavior to be especially offensive.

…

“Neil and Scarlett are thrilled with the result and look forward to putting Mr. Jones’ money to good use,” Bankston added. “Mr Jones on the other hand will not sleep easy tonight. With punitive damages still to be decided and multiple additional defamation lawsuits pending, it is clear that Mr Jones’ time on the American stage is finally coming to an end.”

And he’s a warning.

The jury’s decision, while far lower than what the plaintiffs’ attorneys had asked for, sends a message to those who propel lies into the public conversation, whether for political power or financial gain, that there can be consequences for such behavior.

Bring it on.

Sorry! Internet torture hell. I think it’s been fixed now…

Interesting ploy in this one – mention racism but scrupulously refrain from mentioning sexism…when talking about an issue that is precisely about women and not men.

We can talk about racism and “discrimination”…but not sexism or discrimination against specifically women. We can’t ever ever ever talk about women and injustice against women. That would be transphobic.

But what it won’t do is say the word “women.”

Who? Who is “we”? Who is “us”? Whose bodies are we talking about? Everyone’s? What kind of sexual and reproductive health care are we talking about?

It’s a mystery.

See also:

No.

Not forcing “someone”: forcing a woman.

Not “their” will: her will.

Not “Americans”: American women.

NOT PREGNANT PERSON. JUST STOP.

Well obviously. Nobody is “just their genitals.” That would be weird. Imagine it, just millions and millions of genitals and nothing else. They couldn’t even walk around, because no legs (this goes for the male variety too). No walking, no talking, no ballet, no eating a cheeseburger – nothing. Just genitals. You may be thinking well at least it would be sexy, but would it? Would it? When there’s absolutely nothing else? No brain, no eyes, no ears, no feet? I say no.

Mkay this is scary. Everything is scary these days. This is very scary.

As former Republican senator Rick Santorum addressed Republican lawmakers gathered in San Diego at the American Legislative Exchange Council policy summit, he detailed a plan to fundamentally remake the United States. 

By making a new constitution! A new far-right constitution! Oh boy, kids, won’t that be fun?!

The December 2021 ALEC meeting represents a flashpoint in a movement spearheaded by powerful conservative interests, some of whom are tied to Trumpworld and share many of Trump’s goals, to alter the nation’s bedrock legal text since 1788. It’s an effort that has largely taken place out of public view. 

…

During an extraordinary few weeks in June, the Supreme Court’s three new Trump appointees powered the reversal of Roe v. Wade. They fortified gun rights and bolstered religious freedoms. Future presidents now have less power to confront the climate crisis. Each win is the product of a steady, and in some cases, decades-long quest by conservatives to bend the arc of history rightward. 

Well I guess we can take comfort from the climate change part. Soon we’ll all just be dead or struggling to stay alive and no one will give a rat’s ass about any constitution.