One of the ways it’s going to kill us – flooding of critical infrastructure.

Nearly a quarter of U.S. critical infrastructure—utilities, airports, police stations and more—is at risk of being inundated by flooding, according to a new report by First Street Foundation, a Brooklyn nonprofit dedicated to making climate risk more visible to the public.

…

“Even if your home is far from the risk of flooding or forest fires, you may not so easily escape the systemic impacts from vulnerable critical infrastructure that sometimes extends hundreds of miles,” said Jesse Keenan, a climate-change and real-estate expert at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Remember Texas last winter? When Ted Cruz went bopping off to Cancun?

Recent storms highlighted the vulnerability of the electric grid. In September, Hurricane Ida killed more than 40 people, at least 10 perishing in the heat amid power outages in Louisiana. A winter storm in Texas left more than 4 million people without electricity in February, and over 200 people died, the majority from cold.

It’s not just coasts, it’s also river valleys.

The most threatened areas are concentrated along the coast of the southeastern U.S. and in river-dense areas of Appalachia. In fact, the report found that 17 of the 20 most endangered communities are in Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky and West Virginia.

But nowhere is safe, they say comfortingly.

Journalists really need to learn to report on this more precisely.

As do headline writers: the Times headline is both wrong and bad.

Truss hits out at abuse of Kathleen Stock, professor in trans dispute

No she doesn’t. The story doesn’t even say that. The lede:

Liz Truss has spoken out against the abuse a university professor has faced for her views on transgender rights and the police have told her to install CCTV cameras at home and have a bodyguard on campus.

Speaking out isn’t hitting out. The distinction is quite important, so what are newspapers doing blurring it? It’s an important distinction and it’s at the heart of this very story, which is all about violent threats against Stock because of her writing and her opinions.

Truss, the minister for women and equalities, wrote on Twitter: “No one should be targeted and harassed simply for holding an opinion.”

That’s not “hitting out.” It’s about not hitting out.

That’s disgusting. No other word for it.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on A tool that enforces sexism.

Proffering pronouns conceptually depends on the view that “one’s pronouns” are (1) of critical importance and (2) self-determined and inaccessible to others if not publicly stated. (2) gets most of the attention, as it’s the more obviously wrongheaded notion. We know what pronouns are and how they work, because we’ve been using them since we started emulating our parents’ speech as babies. Seeing that these demands for announcing pronouns, which are not always even words, are incompatible with what pronouns are and how they work is easy and intuitive for most people with functioning brain cells not warped by propaganda and in-group loyalty. Unfortunately, the ease of opposing (2) means that (1) doesn’t get the attention it deserves, which is probably most of it.

For whom is the practice of presenting pronouns putatively important? Believers don’t claim that it’s important for everyone—except instrumentally. They don’t even claim that it’s important for them—except instrumentally. Pronoun declarations are solely for those who refuse to participate in the English language specifically and reality generally. All of us and all the “allies” become mere means toward the end of sating some ill-defined need of those who fall under the “trans umbrella”, because they feel that “their” pronouns are of utmost importance. By engaging in the pronoun farce, the believer signals submission to the feelings of those who claim trans and enby status. Believers naively respond to purported suffering without realizing that endorsement of the conclusion (i.e., pronouns are existential) tacitly endorses the premises on which the conclusion depends.

And what are those? Sastra summarized the belief structure nicely:

Pronoun culture is a tool that reinforces sexism because it’s derived from a life stance in which it really, really matters if you’re a man or a woman or neither or both. That’s because the premise is that being a man or a woman or neither or both is the very core of your being, and defines your humanity. Proponents cannot emphasize this enough, as seen by how easily they accept that suicide is an expected and reasonable response to being “misgendered” too often, or too thoroughly. You cannot even think of cultivating indifference, or a personality or interests or goals which matter more than your being a man or woman or neither or both.

If one believes one’s gender and associated reproductive function to be one’s defining characteristic qua person, then pronouns map to the core of one’s identity (where identity refers to the coherent thing-that-is-I, not a mere self-conception). But even this is insufficient to motivate the conclusion that “misgendering” is an attack on one’s identity, a sort of metaphysical and not just metaphorical violence. To take that extra step requires the belief that gender is normative. Being male or female must say something about one’s worth qua person. Otherwise, to “misgender” would be no more troublesome than to wrongly describe someone’s hair color, height, age, or sports fandom. If one believes that being male or female entails something negative, then of course one will resist that label. The entire edifice rests on sexism, which believers and casual allies (at the very least) tacitly support by endorsing the conclusions that follow therefrom.

JL at the Glinner Update is not impressed by “Jaclyn” Moore and his performative fury at Dave Chapelle.

John “Jaclyn” Moore is a TV executive, a career forged prior to his newly discovered ‘gender identity’. He was a writer and co-showrunner on Netflix series, Dear White People. On Wednesday he announced on social media that he isn’t going to work for the streaming service again, accusing it of “Promoting and profiting from dangerous transphobic content”.

…

Variety interviewed Moore about his decision and allowed him to bellyache, at length, about Chappelle’s ‘dangerous rhetoric’. The article was, of course, accompanied by photos of Moore performing the coy head tilt and winsome expression we’ve come to expect when entitled white males opine about being The Most Oppressed.

Head tilt, simper, heavy makeup, huge earrings – he’s such a gurrl.

In his Variety interview, Moore maintains that Chappelle’s ‘rhetoric and language’ make him feel unsafe and claims to be have been physically attacked when using a women’s bathroom.

Moore is 6 feet 5 inches tall (even without his heels). It’s hard to imagine any woman daring to challenge his presence in a ladies’ room when he towers over everyone in there.

Head tilt is one thing, and pretending a 6’5″ man is “unsafe” in women’s bathrooms is another.

Moore went on to claim that Chappelle’s material is the reason why he isn’t seen as a ‘real woman’. He said, “People are laughing at this joke and they’re agreeing that it’s absurd to call me a woman.”

The reason people don’t see John as a ‘real woman’ is because he isn’t one. He’s a man who has watched too much pornography, a fact made patently obvious by the photographs he posts on social media. Like this picture, posted only a few months ago, of his male genitalia barely contained in sheer lilac panties.

There’s that photo and a bunch more, each more sickening than the last. Meanwhile Kathleen Stock isn’t sure she can continue teaching.

H/t Sackbut

Even the Sunday Times treats Kathleen Stock as a provocateur who insists on thinking wack thoughts like “men can’t become women.”

A university professor has told how she may need to be accompanied by bodyguards on campus and has been advised to install CCTV outside her home, following a row with students about her views on transgender rights.

Like that. It’s not a “row with students”; it’s students threatening her with violence.

Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, does not believe people can change their biological sex, an opinion she has been vocal about in her academic work and on social media. Critics have accused her of being transphobic.

And like that. Of course she doesn’t believe people can change their biological sex, because they can’t. That’s not an eccentric view or a backward view or a denial of new knowledge. People can get various surgeries and take hormones to mimic the sex they aren’t, but that’s all they can do. They can’t become the other sex any more than they can become birds by pasting feathers on their arms.

As students have returned to university in recent weeks, tensions have escalated.

And like that. It’s not that “tensions have escalated,” it’s that some students have made outrageous violent threats against Stock.

The backlash has led to police telling her she should stay off campus for now and teach classes online. Officers have become so concerned about her safety that she has been given a direct hotline to call.

Because she understands that humans can’t literally change sex.

You remember that Dave Chapelle made some jokes about the Gospel of Trans, right? Well there are consequences for these things.

Jaclyn Moore, writer and showrunner on the series “Dear White People” and the upcoming reboot of “Queer as Folk,” is boycotting Netflix after the streaming service released Dave Chappelle’s latest stand-up special, which contained a slew of jokes aimed at transgender people.

Well, Chappelle is black and Moore is white, so it’s time to start yelling about Karens and white women’s tears, right?

But wait.

Moore transitioned during production of the show’s last season, she told the Wrap, and was met with respect and support from her colleagues. But watching Chappelle’s most recent special drove her to sever her relationship with the streaming service, she said. She tweeted that Chappelle was once “one of [her] heroes,” but the jokes he made in the special “have real world consequences” for trans women, including violence and hatred, she said.

Oh dear. Moore is a trans woman, so obviously we can’t call a trans woman a Karen or a Becky, and we can’t laugh at a trans woman’s white tears.

Lawyers are laughing at Jolyon’s lawyering.

See, if you’re defending free speech, that’s what you’re doing. You’re not supposed to say “I think it’s a crock of shit but” first. You can say that in the pub, but not if you’re a university actually defending free speech. Jolyon wants them to scream “WE HATE TERFS” and then mutter “but yes yes free speech” and depart in haste.

Also…Jolyon has been saying he wishes a transphobe would agree to debate him, but it turns out he doesn’t want to.

And yet…and yet…and yet he said he wanted to.

This is not good.

Quoting the rest.

One of the women already had pronouns displayed in her username. The effect of this was to create a really odd sense that the women had made a submissive gesture and the men had not.

In discussions at work about pronouns, the solution proposed to this has often been to ‘normalize declaring pronouns’ so that everyone feels they should comply with the request. So the women are attempting to ‘model’ this compliance. So far, so gendered.

When I have been in meetings where a man does declare he/him-ness, it simply exacerbates this sense of domination vs compliance. You have a woman underlining that she is a woman & a man announcing that he is a man. It underscores disparities & does nothing to dispel them.

I still do not comply, but this particular meeting was the first time I had felt the swivel of curious eyes on me for not announcing that I was a woman, while there were none scrutinizing the men who felt free to disregard the silly request.

It spoke chillingly to me about how pronoun culture is a tool that reinforces sexism and inequality. The men still spoke over the women and dominated the discussion too. So it was just like any other mixed sex meeting, except the women had signalled their submission first.

Indeed. That and more – the women look submissive and also credulous. The men look independent and also appropriately skeptical. What a godawful set of oppositions.

Selina Todd wrote to the Times:

Sir, The role of a university should be to pursue truth, via careful research and active debate. The recent treatment of Professor Kathleen Stock suggests this is now secondary to attracting and pacifying student consumers (“Students demand firing of ‘transphobe’ professor”, News, Oct 8). Sussex University did not take “immediate action” to stop the bullying she faced this week. Offensive posters and stickers were visible by Tuesday, October 5. Only after public pressure was applied did the university remove these and (on Thursday, October 7) make a public statement, which paid lip service to academic freedom while assuring students of the university’s “inclusivity”.

Any scholar engaged in researching women or gender-identity ideology is vulnerable to bullying and intimidation. Yet the Universities and Colleges Union, and the professional associations for humanities scholars, remain silent. I hope Professor Stock’s bravery and integrity will inspire more concerned academics to speak out.
Selina Todd

So did the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission:

Sir, The attacks on Professor Kathleen Stock and the campaign to have her fired are disgraceful. Sussex University is right to investigate these attacks and to defend academic freedom of speech. Trans rights must be protected but university is a place where we are exposed to ideas and learn to debate with each other. This involves hearing about, and challenging, opposing perspectives. It is not a place where people bully and harass professionals and berate institutions because they disagree with someone’s entirely lawful expert views. Other institutions faced with the same problems should follow Sussex University’s lead to stop these attacks on freedom of speech.

Tougher regulation of social media is needed so hatred cannot be spread. We will be considering this through our work on the Online Safety Bill and as part of our new strategic plan covering the next three years.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine
Chairwoman, Equality and Human Rights Commission

The trade union UCU Edinburgh says: “A reminder of UCU’s strong position in support of trans inclusion…Liberation cannot be built on exclusion.”

A union says liberation cannot be built on exclusion. Really? So unions have to include bosses and owners? Black liberation movements have to include white people? Free speech organizations have to include censors? Atheist groups have to include believers? Consumer groups have to include advertisers and PR firms? Democrats have to include Republicans and vice versa?

Horse shit. We get to organize, and campaign, and agitate, via particular parties and groups and institutions, which necessarily exclude people who don’t match the “particular” bit. Socialists don’t have to be inclusive of capitalists, and vice versa.

What does “trans inclusion” really mean? That women are required to include men as women upon being ordered to. (Also men are required to include women ditto? No, not really. It’s nearly always women who have to be bullied over this. For some reason it’s not so urgent to bully men over it.)

Well, we won’t. The more you push us to the angrier we get. You want dinosaurs? You’ll get dinosaurs.

Says Jolyon Maugham, who never stops giving away women’s rights.

Laurie Penny had a brief moment of partial spine and said in a tweet that the bullying of Kathleen Stock was a little over the top. Then she deleted the tweet.

She left a reply up though.

Do tell feminist women they’re wrong wrong wrong but don’t use smoke flairs and giant signs.

No mention of women being harmed of course.

She doesn’t bother to remove Kathleen from these conversations, which would have been a touch more thoughtful than sending her yet more abuse via the furious replies.

The bit where she takes it back:

So she reflects, and reverts to joining the team in bullying Kathleen some more. At the behest of one of the bullies.

Then tweet after tweet after tweet, most of them also going to Kathleen, in which Laurie Penny apologizes and withdraws it all and apologizes some more. It’s contemptible.

The Telegraph reports:

Women prisoners who call transgender inmates by the wrong pronoun could face extra time in jail under equality rules, says a justice minister.

Female inmates who deliberately call a transgender woman “he” or “him” could be punished under rules barring “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”.

So…in that scenario why is it the woman who is being “threatening” or “abusive”? Why isn’t it the man? Why are women being treated as a threat to men when the reality is the other way around?

That’s before we even get to “are you fucking kidding me, women will be punished for not repeating a lie?”

This summer, the High Court rejected a legal challenge to prevent transgender inmates with convictions for sexual or violent offences against women being imprisoned alongside other women.

So, women in prison have to put up with men convicted of violent or sexual crimes being locked up with them, and they have to pretend those men are women, on pain of further punishment.

How do the people in charge manage to stay blind to how grotesque this is?

Lord Wolfson added: “The Ministry of Justice and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service are committed to advancing equality, eliminating discrimination, harassment and victimisation.”

No they’re not. They’re not advancing women’s equality, nor are they eliminating discrimination, harassment and victimisation of women.

Finally.

President Joe Biden will restore the boundaries of three American nature reserves, known as national monuments, that were reduced in size by former President Donald Trump to allow commercial activity, the White House said on Thursday.

The restoration will protect more than 3.2 million acres (1.3 million hectares) in Southern Utah known as the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, as well as the nearly 5,000 square mile (8,000 sq km) Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New England.

This is good.

Ix-nay on the executive privilege ploy. Dude you don’t even go to this school.

Joe Biden has blocked an attempt by former US president Donald Trump to withhold documents from Congress related to the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.

There’s no “executive privilege” that lets you try to overthrow the government and then hide your homework.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said Biden authorized the National Archives, a government agency that holds records from Trump’s time in office, to turn over an initial batch of documents requested by a House of Representatives select committee investigating the riot.

“The president’s dedicated to ensuring that something like that could never happen again, which is why the administration is cooperating with ongoing investigations,” Psaki told reporters. “The president has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not warranted for the first set of documents from the Trump White House that have been provided to us by the National Archives.”

…

The decision, which affects only the initial batch of documents reviewed by the White House, sets up a potential showdown with Trump, who has repeatedly downplayed the events of 6 January and sought to recast the rioters as “patriots”. The Guardian reported that he plans to sue to prevent release of the documents if necessary.

“Showdown.” Come on. He’s out of office, he’s in debt, he’s looking stupid. This isn’t the OK Corral.

Is it possible?

The healthline item is from 2018. I think I’ve seen it before, and probably written about it here, but I haven’t been able to find anything here. Apologies if I repeat myself.

The trick turns out to be easy.

Yes, it’s possible for men to become pregnant and give birth to children of their own. In fact, it’s probably a lot more common than you might think. In order to explain, we’ll need to break down some common misconceptions about how we understand the term “man.”

Oh, that. They mean women who call themselves men can get pregnant. Yes no kidding, we know that already.

Many AFAB folks who identify as men or who don’t identify as women have the reproductive organs necessary to carry a child.

Duh. All of them do unless they have a serious abnormality. This isn’t some crapshoot that nobody can really predict, it’s what everybody already knows.

Yes, pigs can fly, if you define eagles as pigs. Yes, frogs can teach physics, if you define frogs as humans who have learned physics. Yes, jumbo jets can be submarines if you define submarines as jumbo jets.

Another disaster:

There’s never a good time for an oil spill. But the most recent ones — in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Ida last month, and then this past weekend, in the ocean off Huntington Beach, Calif. — have come right in the heart of the fall migration of hundreds of millions of birds.

…

These journeys are perilous, even in the best of times. Flying thousands of miles requires vast amounts of food and protected habitats. But more and more of the wetlands, marshes, forests and fields needed to support migrating birds have been filled in, cut down and paved over. As a result, the remaining refuges are few and far between, overcrowded and vulnerable to even slight disruptions.

The Southern California spill is the worst sort of disruption. It tarred beaches and fouled a rare, fragile coastal wetland. And it happened at the peak of fall migration, in a spot especially important to the Pacific Flyway.

Southern California’s beaches and remnant marshes offer sanctuary for thousands of migrating birds, including threatened and endangered species. Oil from the spill penetrated these marshes before adequate protective barriers could be put in place, raising the prospect of long-term damage. Birds are already dying.

Oh look, a cruise ship.

Trump identifies as not broke, but…

Former President Donald Trump provided “misleading information about the financial situation” of his hotel in Washington while he was in office, according to the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

The committee, which recently obtained documents from the General Services Administration, found that Trump reported his hotel in downtown D.C. brought in $150 million in income while he served in the White House, but the hotel actually incurred more than $70 million in losses.

It depends on who’s asking. If it’s the IRS, losses losses losses. If it’s potential dupes, profits profits profits.

“By filing these misleading public disclosures, President Trump grossly exaggerated the financial health of the Trump Hotel,” the committee said Friday in a news release.

When Trump first applied to lease the Old Post Office Building in 2011 for his hotel, he also provided the federal government with information that the committee said “appeared to conceal certain debts.” Records show Trump specifically didn’t show outstanding balances for properties he owned in other major cities like New York, Chicago and Las Vegas, the panel said.

And why is that? Because the outstanding balances would make him a bad bet. Kind of like if anyone else is seeking a mortgage and doesn’t tell the lending bank about some large debts.

The committee also said the newly obtained documents show that from 2017 through 2020, the Trump International Hotel in D.C. received about $3.7 million in payments from foreign governments, which it said raises “concerns about possible violations of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.”

While he served in the White House, Trump also received “a significant financial benefit” from Deutsche Bank that allowed him to postpone making payments on the $170 million loan for the hotel, the committee said.

“Mr. Trump did not publicly disclose this significant benefit from a foreign bank while he was president,” the committee said.

But he made up for it by throwing candy at Angela Merkel.

Now there’s an easy challenge.

Yes, of course I believe that trans women are not really women, because that’s what “trans women” means. I’ve been coming out and saying it for years. This is not “like” lesbians and women of other marginalized groups, because those women are all women, but trans women are (by definition) men.

There’s no need to beg, no need to say please, I’m perfectly happy to say trans women are not really women. Just ask.

I was going to say that to Serano instead of here but he’s locked his account. I guess other women have been saying it to him.