Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on 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.

Nobody has direct, unmediated access to what is going on inside anyone’s head. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about people’s self image and self understanding. People suffering from anorexia. Rachel Dolezal. Donald Trump. To take them at their word, to accept their claims about themselves can lead to harm to those individuals, the people believing the claim, or both. Yet with “gender identity,” we are told that these claims are true, honest, and real. More than that, we are told that we must accept these claims without qualm or question. Failure to do so allegedly results (somehow) in harm to the individual claiming the professed “identity,” through self-harm, or through “marginalization” or “violence” by others. The online participation of a single gender skeptic will render zoom meetings “unsafe” for trans folk and their allies. A single gender critical professor can turn an entire university campus into a potential death-trap for trans people. Doubt=trans genocide. This isn’t even posited as a “slippery slope”, but as a sheer cliff off of which “vulnerable” trans people will topple if we misgender them or deadname them. This extreme “danger” of potential “harm” is supposed to justify the sacking, banishment, and de-platforming of such critics and skeptics. While the alleged “harm” to gender snowflakes is hypothetical transperbole, failure to submit and comply is harmful to those who question and resist. That’s okay, though: they deserve it.

Why is it the case that if I were to claim that I was Bill Gates, had surgery to make myself look like him, and dressed like him, I would be thrown into prison if I were to repeatedly demand access to his home, his private plane, or his bank account? What if I claimed I was better at being Bill Gates than Bill Gates 1.0? Why would nobody come to my aid if I said that the failure of anyone to acknowledge my Gates-hood was oppressive and discriminatory? Would I achieve greater success if I said that if anyone were to tell me I was not Bill Gates, or if they called me by the name bestowed upon me at birth, I would kill myself? No. I would be institutionalized, not lionized. Would I have governments, corporations and other authorities and institutions backing me up and paving the way for my claims of Gatesness? Would I have the police making threats to arrest anyone who questioned my claim, or who wrote a critical limerick against it? Would Bill Gates would be told to “be kind” and accept my claim? Would I be granted the access to his stuff that I demanded, with its denial penalized and punished? Again, no. Unless I had done something truly rash or violent, nobody would have paid me the slightest heed, because I would have been taken away and put into the mental health system, for my own good and the good of everyone else. Obviously. Unremarkably. All because my claims and actions were based entirely on stuff going on inside my head. My claims were unable to supervene on reality. I was unable to recruit support for these claims from anyone else because they were outlandish, unbelievable, and not in agreement with reality.

Using Bill Gates as my “target identity” is an admittedly extreme example intended to help me make my point. But my point would be as valid if the identity I claimed stole was of nobody rich, famous, or powerful. The crime of identity theft is not contingent upon the celebrity or privilege of the person whose identity is being appropriated (though someone rich and powerful is likely to have such issues resolved more quickly because of their influence). It is considered harmful and wrong regardless. It is a violation of the person, and an abuse of the institutions that rely upon open, plain dealing, and good faith claims of identity. If you aren’t who you say you are, then all bets are off. You are not to be trusted. You must have something to hide. Access and use of property, resources, positions, and facilities under the falsely claimed identity can be assumed to be for no good or honest purpose. This is bad enough in individual cases. A data breach within a company or government that exposes the information of millions is a scandalous disaster that is seen with a great deal of alarm, and rightly so. It can lead to identity theft on a huge scale. The intent of those causing the breach, or taking advantage of it, is unlikely to be benign. Fraud and confidence scams are built upon false claims of identity. They depend upon the acceptance of hidden untruths that victimize one party to the advantage and benefit of the deceiver. They are corrosive of the basic trust upon which societies rely, and are rightly punished.

So how is it that genderists have been able to pull off the identity theft of an entire sex with the blessing and vigourous assistance of governments and other organizations? How is it that men claiming to be women have been given access to women’s spaces, resources, facilities and positions without the bat of an eye of those so willingly handing it over? Why can we not assume, as we would with any other identity theft, that those so eager to lift or breach women’s boundaries are doing so for no good purpose? Women are already held responsible for their own assaults. “What were you wearing? Why were you alone? How much did you have to drink?” And here are some of the very same people and institutions removing the remaining barriers women have left to be safe from men. And just to crank up the gaslighting even more, women are told that they are supposed to trust these individuals because of the claims they make, based on stuff going on inside their heads. Accept the fraud. Play along with the con. There are five lights. Be complicit in your own victimization, or else. They’ll further punish any woman who dares question this, or who is rude enough to call these magically harmless individuals by their true sex. It’s the only instance I can think of of the deliberate, calculated erasure of men. Not for inclusion, but for camouflage. For invasion. It’s a war on multiple fronts. Rape shelters; sports; classrooms; awards and positions. Things are so fucked up that women aren’t even safe from men in a goddamn PRISON. It’s all mind over matter: men don’t mind, women don’t matter.

Okay, I was wrong. Turns out the crime of identity theft is contingent upon the identity that is being appropriated. You’re good to go if you’re a man pretending to be a woman.

You’re a woman? Great! Here’s your all-access pass. Don’t bother shaving; no-one will say a thing. Enjoy your self!

Originally a comment by Cluecat on Six out of ten.

As is mentioned in the other posts, this is a huge problem with industrial livestock raising all over the world.

There are a few antibiotic agents designated as the absolute “last line of defence” – to only ever be used in human treatment when literally nothing else has had any effect, and to never ever be routinely prescribed because of that critical designation.

These medications treat bugs that are resistant to every other antibiotic on the market, infections that cause horrible, drawn-out death. These meds are the reason we no longer have Sepsis Wards in healthcare settings in Western countries – although it looks like we might be heading back that way…

These are treatments that can save lives in extremis. They must be handled as the critical interventions that they are.

What happens instead? These critical medications are routinely added to animal feed, thrown around like candy in industrial farming settings, because using them means more efficient animal growth/less disease burden in atrocious conditions. This is once more focusing on profit at the expense of welfare – and a complete disregard for the wider consequences.

Areas in the Indian Subcontinent, certain countries in Africa, have been warning the rest of the world for decades. Multi-Drug Resistant TB has been an issue for many years. We are heading back to a time when a tiny scratch in the skin could be someone’s death warrant, as has been the case for most of human history. Sure, some of it is stupid people not completing the full course of antibiotics, or demanding them unnecessarily, but a huge amount of the problem is industrial farming methods. Profit uber alles.

All the Pharma companies have little interest in developing new anti-microbial agents because there’s no instant pay-off for their shareholders. Companies refuse to put new drugs through testing because it costs money, and that isn’t coming back to shareholders. Companies hang on to patents and refuse to make drugs availible for the same reasons.

Without firm support from governments and international health authorities, and a willingness to recognise this issue, it’s only going to get worse. Humans are stupid, and greedy. The people who are going to suffer are the same ones who always end up suffering, and only when the incredibly entitled and wealthy idiots driving the profit cycle find out that no amount of money will stop a lethal infection will there be a serious attempt to fix the issue. By then, it’ll be too late. Just like everything else.

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.