Andrew Sullivan is stirring the pot again.

So, it’s a defamatory lie, but here I am saying it again.

No biggy, just a little drone flight on MARS.

Monday, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. The Ingenuity team at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed the flight succeeded after receiving data from the helicopter via NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at 6:46 a.m. EDT (3:46 a.m. PDT).

“Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “The X-15 was a pathfinder for the space shuttle. Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers. We don’t know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but today’s results indicate the sky – at least on Mars – may not be the limit.”

The solar-powered helicopter first became airborne at 3:34 a.m. EDT (12:34 a.m. PDT) – 12:33 Local Mean Solar Time (Mars time) – a time the Ingenuity team determined would have optimal energy and flight conditions. Altimeter data indicate Ingenuity climbed to its prescribed maximum altitude of 10 feet (3 meters) and maintained a stable hover for 30 seconds. It then descended, touching back down on the surface of Mars after logging a total of 39.1 seconds of flight. Additional details on the test are expected in upcoming downlinks.

It’s kind of like the Wright brothers only more so.

NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen announced the name for the Martian airfield on which the flight took place.

“Now, 117 years after the Wright brothers succeeded in making the first flight on our planet, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has succeeded in performing this amazing feat on another world,” Zurbuchen said. “While these two iconic moments in aviation history may be separated by time and 173 million miles of space, they now will forever be linked. As an homage to the two innovative bicycle makers from Dayton, this first of many airfields on other worlds will now be known as Wright Brothers Field, in recognition of the ingenuity and innovation that continue to propel exploration.”

It’s like the Wright Brothers in the sense that the flights were short.

We’re not the only ones.

It’s the wrong 50%, you see.

The head of Planned Parenthood, in the New York Times yesterday, breast-beating over the racism of Margaret Sanger:

What we don’t want to be, as an organization, is a Karen. You know Karen: She escalates small confrontations because of her own racial anxiety. She calls the manager. She calls the police. She stands with other white parents to maintain school segregation.

No, I don’t know Karen. What I know is this stupid new trick of blaming women for things like racism and pasting belittling nicknames on us at the same time. What I know is this filthy habit of throwing women overboard and patting yourself on the back for doing it. Planned Parenthood can go fuck itself.

And then there are the organizational Karens. The groups who show up, assert themselves, and tell you where to march. Those who pursue freedom and fairness, but also leverage their privilege in ways that are dehumanizing.

So groups are Karens? So women are to blame for everything?

And sometimes, that’s how Planned Parenthood has acted. By privileging whiteness, we’ve contributed to America harming Black women and other women of color. And when we focus too narrowly on “women’s health,” we have excluded trans and nonbinary people.

Wo. That’s a kick in the face. What’s with the scare quotes? Is women’s health a joke now? Is it a stupid mistake? Is it something that doesn’t exist? What is it doing in scare quotes?

And what the hell do they mean “too narrowly”? Women get to have some things for themselves! That’s the whole point. Women are generally treated as an afterthought and given scraps after all the good stuff has been allotted to men; we are allowed to have some things for ourselves.

As the nation’s leading provider of sexual and reproductive health care with a presence in 50 states, Planned Parenthood has an obligation to change how we operate. We must take up less space, and lend more support. And we must put our time, energy, and resources into fights that advance an agenda other than our own.

Bye, wims, sucks to be you!

There’s a lot of chat about an Observer article by Rowan Moore, an architecture critic who writes for the Guardian, and his trans son Felix. The latter is annoyed with people who don’t entirely agree that some people are born in the wrong bodies.

Rowan Moore You experience many emotions when your child comes out as transgender. You want to support them but you also feel doubt: is this for real? Have they caught this off the internet? Will they make irrevocable choices that they will regret? You will discover that your child is not who you thought they were, which might shock you, although I’d say that this is something every parent should go through as their children become adults. You might have conflicts (we did) about the best courses of action.

I should think there are other questions a parent wonders about, questions about love and sex, marriage and children, the future, the distant future. It’s all very well to have the Enlightened Ones on your side, but is that really going to make up for all the likely bumps in the road? Even if every single person on the planet thinks it’s brilliant fun to change sex and heroic to boot, the bumps are still there.

So I understand the anxieties that cisgender people like myself sometimes have. But the parent also discovers more about what it is to be trans, how much seriousness and commitment it takes. It is not easy to start dressing to suit your chosen gender, to endure strange looks and possible hostility, to go into the relevant public toilets, to tell family and friends, to persuade people to use your name and pronouns, to undergo medical evaluations, to endure the increasing number of obstacles and delays that lie between you and medical attention.

Maybe not, but what about what’s easy or not easy for everyone else? What about all the social aspects? The trans idea is so solipsistic, as if each trans person operated in a world where other people just don’t matter, except when they’re applauding the heroic trans person.

All of which takes place over years (it’s been more than seven since Felix came out to his immediate family). And then, hopefully, parents see their trans children grow more comfortable in their skin, more confident about who they are. Neither parent nor child might ever know for certain if the “right” choice has been made, or if things might have been different in other circumstances, but such uncertainties are surely part of life in general.

Sure they are, but life in general doesn’t always include drastic moves like stopping puberty or amputating body parts.

Space does not allow us to address all of these issues in detail, but Felix and I have picked out some of the more significant themes from recent debates, and address them below. We have tried to show how these questions look if you take into account the humanity of trans people. Being trans is not something you can take off and put on like clothes, or put on hold while others discuss the rights and wrongs of your situation. It is part of who you are. Many commentators on trans issues don’t seem to understand that.

No, I don’t understand it, because it seems meaningless to me. “Part of who you are” is just jargon. It’s also not clear how Moore knows that being trans is not something you can take off and put on like clothes. Is it never that? If it’s never that then what does “gender fluid” mean? If it’s never that why are there so many more girls who identify as trans than there were ten years ago? Does the fact that something is “part of who you are” mean that it’s a good thing and must be clung to? In all cases? No matter what? Being an asshole is part of what some people are; so what? Much better they should get rid of that part than their sexual equipment.

Later on in the piece Rowan Moore talks about Maya Forstater, and tells some startling lies about her, claiming she repeatedly says things on social media that she has never said on social media.

It’s almost as if the rules are different for women as opposed to trans people.

Student Maxwell Meyer wrote in the Stanford Review a couple of weeks ago:

When I moved back to Stanford last week for the first time in over a year, I grinned almost childishly when I saw the Hufflepuff name-tag on my door. For all that’s strange about campus during the pandemic, it was nice to see my new dorm continue the Stanford tradition of each house choosing a fun theme: “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.”

Uh oh. We know that can’t end well.

As it turns out, choosing a beloved children’s fantasy series as a theme for a college dorm in 2021 is dangerous territory. Being well-versed in the ways of the woke, I admit that I should have seen it coming. But I did not, and was completely floored when student staff read the following statement during our first virtual house meeting:

“We want to acknowledge that J.K. Rowling has made many transphobic, anti-semitic, and racist statements over the past year. Her beliefs do not reflect our values as a house, and we want to make it clear that we do not tolerate comments like hers in this dorm. Our theme… is intended to make this space safe and fun for you this quarter.”

The hell she has. She has said some things critical of the belief system that undergirds trans activism, but that doesn’t make her phobic. As far as I know the “anti-semitic and racist” bit is just a straight-up lie. Meyer points this out.

This brings me to the most chilling part of the house theme statement: the implied threat that if you don’t join the witch hunt, you’ll become the next target. “Her beliefs do not reflect our values as a house, and we want to make it clear that we do not tolerate comments like hers in this dorm.”

We weren’t asked whether J.K. Rowling’s beliefs reflect our values, we were told that they don’t. No examples of “comments like hers” were given, but we were still warned that they won’t be tolerated. Just what sorts of comments do they mean — perhaps the “anti-semitic and racist” ones that they made up?

Like J.K. Rowling, I believe in both equal rights for trans people and the reality of sex as a category. If that now constitutes thoughtcrime at Stanford,then I should probably start packing my bags.

Maybe just find a better dorm?

Loading the dice, episode ten billion.

The question is carefully shaped to elicit mostly “oppose.” The “transition-related” part is going to sound like mumble-mumble to most people. The question is carefully shaped to appear to ask people if they oppose denying medical care to trans people. It’s sly and manipulative and dishonest.

It’s not medical care at all. Some of it may be psychological care if you believe the story of what trans means, but it’s not medical. It’s not medical care to cut off healthy breasts or penises.

First do no harm.

That “almost” is quite a good joke.

It makes sense in their terms though, because their terms are:

No.

That’s all. It’s just No. The libertarian No, the tantrumming child No, the nihilist No. No you can’t put restrictions on us No you can’t make us get vaccinated No you can’t tell us this is a real virus No you can’t call this a pandemic No you can’t act to end the pandemic. No no no.

This is a very interesting thread.

But maybe they’re not right. A 4000 percent rise would seem to hint that they’re not, because how could there be such a steep rise in the absence of any cultural influence? Where were all these cases 20 years ago?

Possibly we should think carefully about it instead of just shouting slogans.

The Heritage Foundation says it’s all lies lies lies about the Georgia voter bill.

Myth 2: The Georgia law eliminates voting opportunities in order to suppress African American votes.

The Truth: The law makes no distinctions based on race.

It doesn’t have to, does it. The vote suppressors have become more sophisticated about it. The goal is not so much to suppress African American votes specifically (although that’s for sure a bonus) but to suppress non-Republican votes. The goal is to make it impossible for Democrats to win, and the path to that result is to make voting logistically far more difficult. It looks neutral on its face, unless you think about it for 5 seconds, and it avoids the embarrassing spelling out of things like “poor” and “working class” and “not-white.”

In a country with better provisions for people who don’t have much money – better public transportation, better income support, national health insurance for all, better child care facilities – the Make Voting More Difficult ploy wouldn’t work so well. People without much money would nevertheless be able to get to a voting place, leave the kids in reliable care, take a couple of hours off work. In this country though it works a treat: any logistical hurdle at all will eliminate the votes of a lot of people at the bottom of the ladder, with their nasty unclean Democratic voting habits.

Global deaths from the pandemic:

The number of people who have died worldwide in the Covid-19 pandemic has surpassed three million, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The milestone comes the day after the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the world was “approaching the highest rate of infection” so far.

India – experiencing a second wave – recorded more than 230,000 new cases on Saturday alone.

Almost 140 million cases have been recorded since the pandemic began.

WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Friday that “cases and deaths are continuing to increase at worrying rates”. He added that “globally, the number of new cases per week has nearly doubled over the past two months”.

Not good.

Problem at all?

Rape suspects are able to self-identify as female, it was revealed after a freedom of information request by a feminist policy think-tank.

Police Scotland said that if a rape or attempted rape was perpetrated by a “male who self-identifies as a woman . . . the male who self-identifies as a woman would be expected to be recorded as a female on relevant police systems.”

Campaigners claim that the position could lead to a “distortion” in society’s understanding of crime and the measures needed to tackle it.

“Campaigners claim” – of course it would lead to a distortion. If you falsify the stats so that it looks as if some (or many or all) rapes are perpetrated by women when actually it’s men who call themselves women (perhaps for this purpose alone) then obviously that’s a distortion.

What took them so long?

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Friday revoked a series of Trump administration orders that promoted fossil fuel development on public lands and waters, and issued a separate directive that prioritizes climate change in agency decisions.

…

The new orders revoke Trump-era directives that boosted coal, oil and gas leasing on federal lands and promoted what Trump called “energy dominance” in the United States.

Haaland also rescinded a Trump administration order intended to increase oil drilling in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve.

Haaland called the orders by her predecessors, Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt, “inconsistent with the department’s commitment to protect public health; conserve land, water, and wildlife; and elevate science.”

In fact to do anything other than throw fresh meat to people determined to trash everything for $$$.

More than 25% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions originate on public lands, and Interior has “unrivaled opportunities to restore natural carbon sinks, responsibly deploy clean energy and reduce existing emissions,” said Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation.

“Rescinding the previous administration’s orders that encouraged unfettered drilling in ecologically and culturally sensitive areas and establishing a climate task force will help ensure wise management of our natural resources for people and wildlife alike,” O’Mara said.

Better than just tearing it all up without regard for consequences, if you ask me.

The Star on today’s sentence:

To his supporters, he is a “hero” for having taken a public stand against his transgender child’s decision to pursue gender-affirming treatment, even if that stand meant breaching court orders.

On Friday, the one-time crusader sat in a B.C. courtroom, slumped forward in red-coloured jail attire, his head bowed down, as a judge lashed him for “blatantly, wilfully and repeatedly” defying publication bans and said a “strong denunciatory sentence” was required.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen ordered the father, who had pleaded guilty to criminal contempt of court earlier in the week, to a six-month jail term — far exceeding what the Crown had recommended — and to make a $30,000 charitable donation.

What an absolute trainwreck.

The Toronto Star has more:

Facing the possibility of additional jail time, a B.C. father who repeatedly flouted court orders in order to wage a public campaign against his transgender child’s gender-affirming treatment told a judge Wednesday he may have got caught up in the publicity and put his trust in people with ulterior motives.

The court also heard this week from the teenager, who said in a statement his father’s defiance of publication bans left him feeling anxious and terrified he would be outed.

“Over and over private stuff about me was published online because of my dad. I have lost my faith that the courts can protect me. That makes me feel really vulnerable,” he wrote in a victim-impact statement submitted to the court, a copy of which was obtained by the Star.

Ugh god what a nightmare. It’s awful for the kid and awful for the father.

The father, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban, pleaded guilty Tuesday to criminal contempt of court, avoiding a trial. The Crown recommended a sentence of 45 days in jail, plus 18 months probation, with credit for the time he had already served.

But B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen said Wednesday he was leaning toward a heftier sentence based on the father’s conduct.

Well at least he didn’t sentence the father to a firing squad.

The contempt-of-court case comes at a time when the debate over parental rights and medical decisions involving transgender children appears to be ratcheting up.

Yes, because deciding that children are “transgender” and need amputations and/or cross-sex hormones and/or puberty blockers is not like deciding they need to floss their teeth.

The B.C. case started in 2018 as a family dispute when the father went to court in a bid to block a decision by his then 14-year-old — who was assigned female at birth but identifies as male and has the support of his mother — to pursue gender-affirming testosterone hormone therapy.

But what if “gender-affirming” is meaningless jargon? What if the issue here is letting 14-year-olds get irreversible changes to their bodies that they could well come to regret when they get older and develop better judgement? What then?

The case made it to the B.C. Court of Appeal, which reaffirmed in January 2020 the right of the child to make his own health decisions under the B.C. Infants Act, noting that a medical team had assessed him to be “sufficiently mature” and that “no further consent” from his parents was required.

While acknowledging the right of the father to express his views to his child, the appeal court also found that the father’s refusal to accept his child’s chosen gender and identity was “disrespectful” and “hurtful” and the manner in which he aired his concerns in online forums was “irresponsible.”

Now, if the child had claimed to be a shark or a grasshopper or a cruise ship, the court perhaps would have seen the father’s point, but since we’re talking about Sacred Gender, skepticism and disbelief are not allowed.

The father testified that when he reviewed the medical consent form signed by his child, he became concerned by all the potential effects the hormone therapy could have on his child’s body.

“I’m saying wait until you’re 18 … so your body can handle these medical procedures,” he said.

“I’ve never seen this — honestly — as a transgender issue. It has always been about the medical implications of what would be the result of my child doing this at a young age.”

Which is something a parent ought to be doing, you would think.

H/t Screechy Monkey

This is a startling development.

Originally a comment by latsot on That’s sense?

This is what I was trying to say in a recent thread. We’ve lost the ability to stick to the argument. The trans ‘movement’ is incredibly distracting and it’s almost impossible to get through a rebuttal of a single argument without being deflected by a new articulated lorryload of insanity hitting you amidships.

Far be it for me to tell people how to activist. I tried that in the olden gnu atheist times and look how that worked out. I can’t even get through a single paragraph without mixing a metaphor, nobody should be listening to me. I mean, “amidships”? Where the fuck did that come from?

But having said all that, what we all need to do is focus a lot more on what we cannot concede. Unapologetically. Irreverently. Rudely. Belligerently. Like a bellicose giant, to steal a phrase from Dawkins. Like people, what is more, who will not take any shit.

I know all of us around here are brilliantly cross and argumentative already, it’s what I love about this place. And the message here could not be clearer: men are not women, women are not men, what the fuck is this non-binary bullshit anyway? But we’re all in danger of losing focus when we argue because of the distracting gew-gaws of fuckbuggery I mentioned before. This is why I miss the brilliant Helen Staniland on Twitter. She was absolutely focused on one particular issue, usually phrased as the question you’ll all be familiar with. No matter what nonsense came her way, she found an entertaining route back to that question. Very effective, that’s why She Had To Go. Me, I’m all over the fucking place, but I learned a lot from Helen. Focus like a laser on your bottom line, on the thing you’re not willing to concede, and your enemies will scamper about it like cats.

You see? Even I can do metaphors when I really try.

In other words, framing (sorry) is important. This is not an argument about rights. Nobody’s rights are in danger. This is because trans people have all the rights the rest of us have anyway and we are absolutely unwilling and unable to compromise on the existing rights of women and homosexuals. We won’t do it. It won’t happen. That’s not the argument and it never has been and never could be, but it’s horrifyingly easy to be sidetracked into arguments about rights anyway.

The argument has to be about what we can concede, and it turns out it’s loads of stuff. We can stop judging the gender non-conforming (come on, even we who consider ourselves more enlightened do it a bit, we can admit it and we can try to stop doing it). We can fight more for acceptance of the gender non-conforming: upset at events where drag queens read to children because of the grotesque and harmful caricature of ‘femininity’ and non-conformance on display? I am, I’m fucking furious about it. But what I do is complain about it instead of setting up more positive events about gender non-conformity.

What I’m saying is that’s the kind of concession we need to make; to be as open to doing things that help people who are lost as we are resolute in not giving up rights and language and free speech. I think we are, but we are easily sidetracked into debates about rights because we are somewhat logical beings who care a great deal about truth. And because we are emotional beings who care a great deal about injustice. We’re easy – in other words – to manipulate.

As I’ve said before, negotiation is about creating options, not about giving away things we don’t want to give away in exchange for not being beaten with a pink baseball bat. Come at me with the bat, trans activists. Come at me. It will not work out well for you and I will not budge one inch. But I will happily work with you and your many, many other enemies to help de-marginalise the non-conforming. I’ll move heaven and fucking earth for that.

Now…. why won’t you work with me to do that, trans activists? It’s a question worthy of Helen.

To do voter suppression effectively you have to be a little bit subtle.

Georgia has a long history of racial inequity at the ballot box. Voters wait an average of just six minutes in line after 7pm in precincts where 90% of residents are white. But when 90% of voters are Black? The wait soars to 51 minutes.

And if you think that’s just happenstance, I have a Greenland to sell you.

Between 2012 and 2018, Georgia shuttered 8% of all precincts statewide, and moved 40% of them. According to a study by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the combination of fewer precincts and longer commutes could have kept as many as 85,000 people from casting a ballot in 2018. This disproportionately burdened Black voters, who were 20% less likely to make it to the polls as a result.

Because that’s the whole point. If you tinker with the voting system in such a way that voting is more difficult and less convenient, who is going to be more burdened? People with lots of resources (aka the rich) or people with fewer (aka the poor)? Who is more likely to be rich in Georgia and who is more likely to be poor?

Now Georgia’s GOP legislature has enacted another 92 pages of voting restrictions and regulations that will make voting much more complicated and burdensome. It’s harder to register to vote. It’s more difficult to get a ballot. And it will be tougher to cast it.

Now this will mean that some white people will also be burdened, and that some black people won’t – but overall it’s pretty solidly racist, so booya Georgia’s Republicans, clever wheeze.

The supporters of these provisions suggest that they are necessary because of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election – a baseless assertion for which they are unable to provide any evidence. Or they suggest that they’re needed to restore faith, especially among Republicans, in the legitimacy of our elections. This is especially convoluted, since nothing has done more to damage that sense than month after month of these unfounded “fraud” allegations.

It’s another genius wheeze. Spend months screaming lies about voter fraud, and then impose a lot of restrictions on voting to address this fictional “voter fraud.” The Duke and the Dauphin are running everything.

Those who want to keep people from voting can’t rely on fire hoses or crude Jim Crow tactics like poll taxes and literacy tests any longer. They need to modernize Jim Crow, so that he becomes Dr James Crow, a specialist in statistics, expert at layering traps for Black voters while pretending they’re race neutral. Then they raise the barriers for Black voters and other communities of color by demanding the particular forms of ID lawmakers know they’re least likely to have, or assign more voters and fewer machines to some precincts, generating lines just a little bit longer, perhaps carefully positioning other voting centers a few miles away, maybe just too far for convenient public transportation. The intent and the effect are the same: creating restrictions that keep Black voters away from the polls.

And they’re doing it in broad daylight.

Well it would do something to make women safer so…nah.

The government is facing growing anger after voting against putting serial stalkers and domestic abusers on a national register, despite briefing they were likely to support the measures following the death of Sarah Everard.

Liberty. Liberty liberty liberty liberty.

Next item?

Conservative MPs voted against amendments to the domestic abuse bill on Thursday that would have placed serial domestic abusers and stalkers on the current Violent and Sex Offender Register (Visor).

…

Domestic abuse and stalking survivors and campaigners were disappointed and frustrated, said Sophie Francis-Cansfield, the senior campaigns and policy officer at Women’s Aid.

“Domestic abuse remains underreported and only a small proportion of survivors see criminal sanctions against their perpetrator – a register could have been a useful tool,” she said. “We have to find ways to proactively hold perpetrators to account and prioritise survivors’ safety.”

But it’s only women. Were you forgetting that part? It’s only women. We can’t go to all that trouble and do all that rudeness to liberty when it’s only women.

The decision to exclude migrant women from protections offered under the new bill was “deeply troubling”, said Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters, which is taking part in a government pilot project to support migrant women and address an “evidence gap” around the need for support. “Copious evidence already exists,” she said. “The pilot is no substitute to the need for meaningful, long-term measures of protection for some of the most vulnerable women in our society. We will not be celebrating the bill when it becomes law because it is not a bill for all women.”

That’s the real kind of “most vulnerable.” (No coincidence that it’s also the real kind of women.)

The government’s decision to vote down a requirement for all family court judges to have training on domestic abuse and sexual violence was “unbelievable”, said Dr Charlotte Proudman, an expert on gender-based violence and family law.

“I’m devastated,” she said. “The government’s harm report and three domestic abuse appeals show that the family courts are failing women and children leaving them in situations of harm.”

Well they’re just women and children. They’re not adult rich important powerful men. You see the problem.