Hacks get smacks

Sep 7th, 2019 3:22 pm | By

Former heads of NOAA are blasting current NOAA brass for undermining the organization that people rely on during weather emergencies.

Former top officials with NOAA spent Saturday criticizing the agency after its statement defended Trump…

…and undermined the National Weather Service in Alabama.

Former officials at NOAA called the statement dangerous and an attempt to politicize weather forecasts.

Monica Medina, a former top official at NOAA who served in the administrations of former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clintons, said the statement “will make us less safe as a country.”

“As a former @NOAA leader I can say two things with certainty. No NOAA Administrator I worked for would have done this. And I would have quit if I had been directed to agree to let this BS go out,” she wrote on Twitter.

Bill Read, who became director of the National Hurricane Center director during the Republican George W. Bush administration, said on Facebook the NOAA statement showed either an embarrassing lack of understanding of forecasting or “a lack of courage on their part by not supporting the people in the field who are actually doing the work. Heartbreaking.”

Justin Kenney, who headed the agency’s communications in the Obama administration, said “by politicizing weather forecasts, the president … puts more people — including first responders — in harm’s way.”

James Franklin, Former Chief of the Hurricane Specialist Unit, National Hurricane Center, NOAA/NWS did a whole thread that’s worth sharing:

Concerning NOAA’s statement this afternoon throwing WFO Birmingham under the bus…I thought Birmingham’s statement Sunday morning that Alabama would see no impacts from Dorian was spot-on and an appropriate response to the President’s misleading tweet that morning.

NHC’s WSP product serves as guidance to forecasters, and it showed only a very small likelihood of tropical-storm-force winds in the state, and essentially zero chance of hurricane-force winds. The risk of significant impacts in Alabama by that time was virtually nil.

Based on my experience as an NHC forecaster, I saw no meteorological justification on Sunday for the President to add Alabama to the list of states that would “most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated”.

Lastly, It’s the job of forecasters to interpret the numerical guidance available to them, not to echo it back out verbatim. I’m surprised and disappointed that NOAA’s statement today seems to not recognize the value its forecasters add to NWS products and services every day.

You all did the right thing. Take heart, @NWSBirmingham

Good. I was feeling very furious on behalf of NWSBirmingham yesterday. The point of their tweet contradicting Trump was to say there is NO reason to panic or run away. Trump has no business punishing them for that.

Meanwhile President Bozo tweeted an hour ago:

The Failing New York Times stated, in an article written by Obama flunky Peter Baker (who lovingly wrote Obama book),”Even after the President forecast the storm to include Alabama.” THIS IS NOT TRUE. I said, VERY EARLY ON, that it MAY EVEN hit Alabama. A BIG DIFFERENCE……..FAKE NEWS. I would like very much to stop referring to this ridiculous story, but the LameStream Media just won’t let it alone. They always have to have the last word, even though they know they are defrauding & deceiving the public. The public knows that the Media is corrupt!

The Republicans might as well just nominate a horse for president next time.



Make the women stay home

Sep 7th, 2019 2:26 pm | By

There was a Lesbian Strength March in Leeds today, and protesters showed up to do a counter-march. Theocratic homophobes, right?

No.

A Lesbian Strength March in Leeds today was met with a counter-protest by trans rights activists.

Police were called in to keep the groups separated on either side of City Square.

So trans rights activists are telling us they oppose lesbian strength? Women can’t have anything without trans approval?

On one side, the Lesbian Strength March gathered to fight for a ‘visible lesbian presence’ on the streets.

The women travelled to Leeds from across the country and said they were protesting as they no longer felt safe at Pride marches.

Organiser Julie Furlong said: “Pride doesn’t represent us for lots of different reasons.

“For just once this year, we want to be somewhere where we are appreciated, where we are valued and where we are with our sisters.”

Julie claims that the march has nothing to do with transgender people – but trans rights activists gathered opposite City Square to oppose the Lesbian Strength March.

The counter-protesters believe that the march is inciting hatred against trans people.

Do they? Or do they just believe that the march isn’t about them, and that that won’t do?



Wrapped up in gender systems

Sep 7th, 2019 2:16 pm | By

Trans woman Katelyn Burns tells us

It’s really incredible that a lot of cis people are so wrapped up in gender systems that they view a loved one’s transition as a literal death. It’s a sickness of the mind.

If your partner transitions, you are not a “widow” and claiming so is insulting to actual widows.

Wait…what? It’s “cis” people who are wrapped up in gender systems? But if that’s the case, why transition at all? What even is transition in that case? If gender systems are not something to be wrapped up in, what can possibly be the point of transitioning?

Surely Burns has it backward. Surely it’s the person who transitions, and wants (say) his wife to agree that he’s now a woman, who is wrapped up in a gender system. If he’s not wrapped up in a gender system why can’t he just wear a skirt and enjoy knitting (or whatever it may be) without all the fuss and bother and disruption of transitioning.

But I guess this is just one more of those “blame the women” things, which, ironically, just reminds us all that “Katelyn” is a man.



Basic norms of respectful speech

Sep 7th, 2019 11:56 am | By

From a conversation I saw somewhere:

…it is not non-trans people’s place to decide if misgendering is acceptable or not. You don’t get to decide if I should be okay with being misgendered or not.

Is that a real principle? Is it workable? Can it be generalized? Can it be applied more broadly, ad infinitum?

I don’t think so. I don’t think it can be a genuine rule that we all must use opposite pronouns for people who tell us to. I don’t think it can be because it amounts to ordering us to lie, to override our own perceptions, to pretend to believe someone else’s fantasy – none of which seems to fit into a genuine social rule.

We may want to, some of the time or all the time, to avoid awkwardness, to avoid cruelty, and so on, but we also may not, and it doesn’t seem reasonable to make it mandatory. I do think it is “non-trans people’s place to decide” what words we are going to use, within reason. I think calling male people “he” is within reason.

“… if someone doesn’t share the view that gender is identity and/or that a male person can be a woman, you can’t describe sex-correct pronouns as “misgendering”.”

Yes you absolutely can. Your position on ontology of gender has nothing to do with whether you should adhere to basic norms of respectful speech. I don’t use ‘gender’ synonymously with ‘gender identity’ either and I don’t believe a male person can be a woman, but I wouldn’t call a trans woman ‘he’ because I have respect for the humanity of trans people.

Wait. A position on the ontology of gender does have something to do with whether or not one is willing to call a man “she.” Whether or not it is “a basic norm of respectful speech” that people can mandate special pronouns for themselves is just what is at issue, so it can’t be assumed as part of the argument for yes. Having respect for people’s humanity doesn’t require calling them by special pronouns. That’s a newly-invented “rule” and it’s contentious and we do get to contend over it, trans or not.



And our dog, Pickle

Sep 7th, 2019 11:20 am | By

Getting them early.

Children are being put at risk by transgender books in primary schools that “misrepresent” medical knowledge on puberty blockers, an academic has claimed.

Books and lesson plans that are designed [to] educate pupils about transgender issues “fail child safeguarding and conflict with the law”, according to Dr Susan Matthews, an honorary senior research fellow in creative writing at Roehampton University.

After analysing a series of books that are circulated in British schools, Dr Matthews found that much of the information given about medical transition is “inaccurate”, adding that “potential harms are ignored, glossed over or falsified”.

Why do children in primary school need to be “educated” about transgender issues at all? Unless it’s to proselytize them, which surely shouldn’t be a goal.

She cited a book called Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity? which is aimed at children aged seven plus. The story’s protagonist is a 12-year-old character called Kit who is transitioning from female to male by using hormone blockers to stop the onset of puberty.

The opening passage reads: “My name is Kit and I’m 12 years old. I live in a house with my mum and dad, and our dog, Pickle. When I was born, the doctors told my mum and dad that they had a baby girl, and so for the first few years of my life that’s how my parents raised me. This is called being assigned female at birth. I wasn’t ever very happy that way.”

No, “this” is not “called” being assigned female at birth. It’s just being a girl. Being happy with it is a separate issue, but it’s not an assignment, it’s just a physical fact, like the fact that Pickle is a dog.

Young children believe what adults tell them, so adults should not be telling young children that their sex is an external imposition as opposed to a material fact.



No one else writes like that on a map with a black Sharpie

Sep 7th, 2019 10:00 am | By

Trump is the one who tried to fake the weather map, according to the Post.

President Donald Trump, a fan of Sharpies, used one to edit an official map of Hurricane Dorian’s projected path sometime before displaying it to the public on Wednesday at the White House, according to The Washington Post, which cited a White House official.

“No one else writes like that on a map with a black Sharpie,” the anonymous official told The Post.

If someone else did it it was at his direction, but it seems more likely that he did it himself when no one was watching. He has just barely enough brain cells to grasp that doing it covertly was essential to his goal of convincing everyone that he’d been right all along, but not nearly enough to grasp that no one would believe his Sharpied loop.

People on the internet seized on the incident and submitted their own memes of images doctored with a black marker. But editing a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map is something that could bear serious consequences, as some legal experts pointed out it could have violated federal guidelines.

According to 18 US Code § 2074, which is filed under “False Weather Reports,” “whoever knowingly issues or publishes any counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather conditions falsely representing such forecast or warning to have been issued or published by the Weather Bureau, United States Signal Service, or other branch of the Government service, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ninety days, or both.”

I would love to see Trump locked up for 90 days, starting tomorrow.

On Thursday, US Coast Guard Rear Adm. Peter Brown, a homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, appeared to take some of the blame for the confusion from the map.

In a statement presented by the White House, Brown said Trump’s comments regarding Hurricane Dorian’s chances of hitting Alabama were based on a briefing.

“The president’s comments were based on that morning’s Hurricane Dorian briefing, which included the possibility of tropical-storm-force winds in southeastern Alabama,” Brown said.

A White House source familiar with the matter said Trump personally directed Brown to give the statement, according to CNN.

Of course he did.



And me

Sep 7th, 2019 9:42 am | By

Cringe

This morning Trump tries, sort of, to pay attention to the misery of the Bahamas, but he makes it about him all the same.

Thank you to Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Minnis for your very gracious and kind words in saying that without the help of the United States and me, their would have been many more casualties. I give all credit to FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard, & the brave people of the Bahamas.

Oh lord. That fatal “and me.” What’s that even doing there?

Why does he make it about kind words at all? Why does he lead with thanking the PM for kind words instead of with the tragedy of what happened to the Bahamas? Why doesn’t he make it about our sympathy for them instead of their flattery of him? How can he be so stupid-egomaniacal that he can’t even focus on an island literally flattened by a hurricane instead of on compliments to Majestic Him?

I wish I could walk slowly and deliberately into the Oval Office and empty a bucket of puke over his head.



What’s in HIS wallet?

Sep 7th, 2019 8:38 am | By

Interesting. It seems Trump has been using the military to improve revenues at his golf resort in Scotland. What a coincidence: just the other day he used Pence’s drop-in on Dublin to improve revenues at his golf course on the far side of the country. Fun fact: he’s not allowed to do that. It’s corrupt, and he’s not allowed to do corrupt things. Sadly, though, we don’t enforce our own rules, so oh well.

In early Spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies.

What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland.

Since April, the House Oversight Committee has been investigating why the crew on the C-17 military transport plane made the unusual stay — both en route to the Middle East and on the way back — at the luxury waterside resort, according to several people familiar with the incident. But they have yet to receive any answers from the Pentagon.

Any guesses as to why? Could it at all be because the Pentagon is part of the executive branch and the executive branch is currently enslaved by Trump?

The inquiry is part of a broader, previously unreported probe into U.S. military expenditures at and around the Trump property in Scotland. According to a letter the panel sent to the Pentagon in June, the military has spent $11 million on fuel at the Prestwick Airport — the closest airport to Trump Turnberry — since October 2017, fuel that would be cheaper if purchased at a U.S. military base. The letter also cites a Guardian report that the airport provided cut-rate rooms and free rounds of golf at Turnberry for U.S. military members.

Taken together, the incidents raise the possibility that the military has helped keep Trump’s Turnberry resort afloat — the property lost $4.5 million in 2017, but revenue went up $3 million in 2018.

The “possibility” – they’re so polite.

On previous trips to the Middle East, the C-17 had landed at U.S. air bases such as Ramstein Air Base in Germany or Naval Station Rota in Spain to refuel, according to one person familiar with the trips. Occasionally the plane stopped in the Azores and once in Sigonella, Italy, both of which have U.S. military sites, the person added.

More in the general direction of travel, you see. Glasgow is in another direction altogether.

But on this particular trip, the plane landed in Glasgow — a pitstop the five-man crew had never experienced in their dozens of trips to the Middle East. The location lacked a U.S. base and was dozens of miles away from the crew’s overnight lodging at the Turnberry resort.

The crew’s overnight lodging at the Turnberry resort. What a breathtaking sentence that is. The crew flew in the wrong direction so that Donald Trump could charge his own government for housing the crew overnight.

One crew member was so struck by the choice of hotel — markedly different [from] the Marriotts and Hiltons the 176th maintenance squadron is used to — that he texted someone close to him and told him about the stay, sending a photo and noting that the crew’s per diem allowance wasn’t enough to cover food and drinks at the ritzy resort.

That’s nice. They put money in Don’s pocket, and they went hungry doing it.

The revelation that an Air Force mission may have helped line the president’s pockets comes days after Vice President Mike Pence was pressed about his decision to stay at Trump’s property in Doonbeg, Ireland, despite its location hundreds of miles away from his meetings in Dublin.

Yes, it does, and both cases are absolutely grotesque.

Several weeks after being alerted to the curious overnight stop, the Oversight Committee wrote a letter to acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan asking for documents related to Defense Department expenditures at Trump Turnberry and the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport.

The letter, signed by signed by House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), notes that U.S. military expenditures at the airport “appear to have increased substantially since the election.”

Prestwick Airport has long been debt-ridden. The Scottish government bought it in 2013 for £1, but it has continued to lose money in the years since. In June, the government announced its intent to sell the airport, which the panel’s letter described as “integral” to the success of the Turnberry property, 30 miles away.

Because of that, the lawmakers argued that the spending at the airport — in addition to the spending at the Trump property — raises concerns about conflicts of interest and possible violations of the domestic emoluments clause of the Constitution…

Oh good grief. It’s a failing airport, and Trump made the mistake of buying a golf resort that depends on a failing airport…so he’s using his government job to try to keep the airport from folding as well as to stick money directly in his pocket. The sleaze doubles with each new fact.



Days of erratic behavior, wild outbursts, and bizarre fixations

Sep 6th, 2019 5:43 pm | By

Oh great.

Business Insider reports:

President Donald Trump’s aides and confidants are growing more and more concerned about his mental state after days of erratic behavior, wild outbursts, and bizarre fixations.

“No one knows what to expect from him anymore,” one former White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations about the president, told Insider. “His mood changes from one minute to the next based on some headline or tweet, and the next thing you know his entire schedule gets tossed out the window because he’s losing his shit.”

The president’s advisers are particularly worried about his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that a tweet he sent over the weekend claiming that Alabama was going to be hit by Hurricane Dorian was false. They believe that his frustration is compounded by stress about the 2020 election and the economy’s recent downturn.

It’s more than a refusal to acknowledge, it’s an insistence that he was right. He could have just shut up about it but noooooooo.

“People are used to the president saying things that aren’t true, but this Alabama stuff is another story,” the former official said. “This was the president sending out patently false information about a national-emergency situation as it was unfolding.”

Putting people in danger, in short, and then attacking anyone who said so.

Later Friday, the president posted a misleading video that included a CNN clip from Wednesday, August 28, in which a reporter discussed how the hurricane was threatening several US states, including Alabama. The video then played the reporter saying “Alabama” on loop, cut to a clip of Trump nodding, and then to a doctored clip of CNN’s logo superimposed onto a moving truck which careened off the road and caught fire.

Oh gawd. I missed that.

“He’s deteriorating in plain sight,” one Republican strategist who’s in frequent contact with the White House told Insider on Friday.

Asked why the president was obsessed with Alabama instead of the states that would actually be affected by the storm, the strategist said, “you should ask a psychiatrist about that; I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment.”

Ego. Ego ego ego. An ego that blots out the sun.

Trump often airs his grievances publicly, either on Twitter or while speaking with reporters, which means the world has an unprecedented window into the president’s stream of consciousness.

For instance, on Labor Day weekend, as Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas and made its way to the US’s mainland, Trump took breaks in between golfing to post more than 120 tweets.

In addition to updates on Hurricane Dorian and quote tweets of fawning praise of his presidency from Fox News, the subjects of Trump’s tweets included:

  • Former FBI Director James Comey.
  • Four freshman Democratic congresswomen of color known as “the squad.”
  • AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
  • “Failing New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.”
  • “Amazon Washington Post.”
  • The “LameStream Media.”
  • The liberal actress and activist Debra Messing.

This isn’t the first time questions have been raised about Trump’s mental state and his fitness for office. In fact, Trump’s mental stability is a regular topic of discussion in the White House.

This was confirmed by the anonymous author of a famous 2018 New York Times op-ed who said Trump’s aides routinely ignore or dismiss his orders for the good of the country. Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” and Bob Woodward’s “Fear: Trump in the White House” detailed similar instances.

Well of course. His stew of egotism and stupidity and recklessness have been on display all along.

One person who was close to Trump’s legal team during the Russia investigation told Insider his public statements were “nothing compared to what he’s like behind closed doors.”

“He’s like a bull seeing red,” this person added. “There’s just no getting through to him, and you can kiss your plans for the day goodbye because you’re basically stuck looking after a 4-year-old now.”

Whereas back in 2017 they were stuck looking after a 5-year-old.



It’s not just Sharpie-gate

Sep 6th, 2019 5:04 pm | By

NOAA’s weird, unattributed statement is not being well received.

The Post’s Greg Sargent:

It’s not just Sharpie-gate. This is part of a broader pattern. I count at least seven glaring examples in which government officials have wheeled into action in an effort to make Trump’s lies, errors and obsessions into truths.

He wrote it up at the Post:

Again and again, government officials have wheeled into action in an effort to make Trump’s lies, errors and obsessions into truths, in some cases issuing “official” information explicitly shaped or doctored to do so.

He counts at least seven times this has happened. It started on day one, with the Crowd Size issue. He made Sean Spicer tell brazen lies, and he told his Park Service chief to find pictures that would back him up.

There were the many lies about voter fraud.

When Trump declared before the midterm elections that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” with migrant caravans, multiple officials tried to bolster this claim by offering an official-seeming statistic about terrorism arrests that was entirely spurious and proved nothing of the kind.

When Trump vowed a surprise 10 percent middle class tax cut before the midterms, officials were caught off guard, but nonetheless sprang into action to try to create the impression this was a real promise by, for instance, discussing a nonbinding pledge. The tax cut never happened.

To justify suspending the credentials of CNN’s Jim Acosta after he annoyed Trump, then-White House press secretary Sarah Sanders shared a video that experts determined had been deceptively edited to make Acosta look physically abusive toward a press aide.

That’s like the faked weather chart – actually forging “evidence” to make his lies look true.

He told lies about violence against migrant women to whip up support for The Wall and an official tried to find evidence that would make them true.

To buttress Trump’s distortions of the migrant threat, the Department of Homeland Security produced a slick official presentation about the border that claimed nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists had been blocked from entering the United States. But this number had nothing whatsoever to do with efforts to cross the border, a distinction multiple officials also dishonestly fudged.

Some time ago, Dana Milbank noted that in multiple cases such as these, government officials are using “federal resources in vain attempts to turn the president’s lies into truth.”

Government officials are not supposed to use federal resources for that purpose.

One interesting question is why Trump doesn’t just concede he made a mistake — or, to get even more outlandish about this, try to learn from it.

After all, It’s not like this is one of the big, foundational lies Trump regularly tells to support the entire narrative of his presidency, such as the claims that he was totally exonerated by the special counsel probe, or that China is paying his tariffs, or that he inherited a horrible economy and converted it into the greatest economy in the history of this country.

By contrast, this was in all probability a mistake. Yet Trump has now kept this story going again, raging on Twitter that “certain models” did say Alabama might be hit.

Why? Because that’s how much of a jerk he is. A normal person realizes everyone makes mistakes and that it’s far better to admit them than to stick yourself with having to defend them forever. Trump is not a normal person: his ego is so precious to him that nothing is too contemptible or criminal when he wants to shield it. His vanity is more important to him than all the people alive today – he would see us all shoveled into a cosmic furnace rather than admit to a lie. Nothing on earth matters to him more than his own loathsome self.

Can you imagine a life lived that way? Everything there is in the world – oceans, birds, music, flowers, poetry, generosity, sunsets – as dust and ashes compared to him?

He’s the ultimate “sucks to be that guy.”



Blink twice for “they have a gun at my back”

Sep 6th, 2019 3:20 pm | By

NOAA has put out a statement covering Trump’s ass for him, dated today.

From Wednesday, August 28, through Monday, September 2, the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama. This is clearly demonstrated in Hurricane Advisories #15 through #41, which can be viewed at the following link.

The Birmingham National Weather Service’s Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.

The call is coming from inside the house.



Trump to refugees: go home

Sep 6th, 2019 11:40 am | By

Trump wants the US to admit no refugees.

In meetings over the past several weeks, one top administration official has proposed zeroing out the program altogether, while leaving the president with the ability to admit refugees in an emergency. Another option that top officials are weighing would cut refugee admissions by half or more, to 10,000 to 15,000 people, but reserve most of those spots for refugees from a few handpicked countries or groups with special status, such as Iraqis and Afghans who work alongside American troops, diplomats and intelligence operatives abroad.

Both options would all but end the United States’ status as one of the leading places accepting refugees from around the world.

The issue is expected to come to a head on Tuesday, when the White House plans to convene a high-level meeting in the Situation Room to discuss at what number Mr. Trump should set the annual, presidentially determined ceiling on refugee admissions for the coming year.

The Guardian comments:

Politico reported back in July that Trump was weighing an effective shutdown of the refugee program, at the urging of an official aligned with senior White House adviser Stephen Miller.

Miller has been the most ardent anti-immigration official in the president’s closest circle of advisers, and his influence is reportedly only rivaled by Jared Kushner’s.

In his two and a half years in the administration, Miller has championed a number of proposals aimed at limiting both legal and illegal immigration.

For example, he was a major proponent of the administration’s proposal, announced last month, to penalize green-card applicants who use public benefits.

Xenophobia rules ok.



Girlys, wot?

Sep 6th, 2019 11:27 am | By

Prepare to be astonished: Boris Johnson is a sexist boor.

Boris Johnson referred to David Cameron as a “girly swot” in a recent cabinet paper, an unredacted version of court documents has shown, prompting condemnation of the prime minister for sexist insults.

During his inaugural prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Johnson seemed to call Jeremy Corbyn “You great big girl’s blouse” in relation to the Labour leader’s refusal to back an immediate general election.

The other reference dates back to 16 August, appearing in a handwritten note about the idea of suspending parliament for five weeks.

Well you know, girls – they’re weak, they’re dumb, they’re useless. Also they’re too good in school. (Swot is Molesworthish slang for nerd, one who studies too hard.)

The revelation of the latest insult prompted scorn from Labour MPs. The party’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, tweeted: “It’s like this particular cohort of Bullingdon Club and Old Etonians hit their emotional plateau before graduation from Oxford. Johnson and Rees-Mogg in particular see politics as a game.”

Well said Tom Watson. (I like him. We have a mutual friend in the much-missed Maureen Brian.)



Properly said

Sep 6th, 2019 10:44 am | By

Finally Trump has stopped whining about Alabama.

 

Kidding! No he hasn’t!

The Fake News Media was fixated on the fact that I properly said, at the beginnings of Hurricane Dorian, that in addition to Florida & other states, Alabama may also be grazed or hit. They went Crazy, hoping against hope that I made a mistake (which I didn’t). Check out maps………This nonsense has never happened to another President. Four days of corrupt reporting, still without an apology. But there are many things that the Fake News Media has not apologized to me for, like the Witch Hunt, or SpyGate! The LameStream Media and their Democrat……..partner should start playing it straight. It would be so much better for our Country!

“Check out maps………” But that’s what everyone did, and the maps all showed him to be wrong. That was the point.



“Siri is not a feminist” shocker

Sep 6th, 2019 10:26 am | By

On the one hand, why would anyone ask Siri about feminism in the first place? On the other hand, people are people and will do whatever silly thing comes into their heads, so Siri should say “That’s not my department” and leave it at that. But “she” doesn’t.

An internal project to rewrite how Apple’s Siri voice assistant handles “sensitive topics” such as feminism and the #MeToo movement advised developers to respond in one of three ways: “don’t engage”, “deflect” and finally “inform”.

The project saw Siri’s responses explicitly rewritten to ensure that the service would say it was in favour of “equality”, but never say the word feminism – even when asked direct questions about the topic.

Herp derp. We can tell what’s coming – all lives matter, I don’t see color, all men are created equal.

“Are you a feminist?” once received generic responses such as “Sorry [user], I don’t really know”; now, the responses are specifically written for that query, but avoid a stance: “I believe that all voices are created equal and worth equal respect,” for instance, or “It seems to me that all humans should be treated equally.” The same responses are used for questions like “how do you feel about gender equality?”, “what’s your opinion about women’s rights?” and “why are you a feminist?”.

Bingo.

Bad move, Apple. Just have it say “not my brief.” Don’t have it give a stupid substantive answer.



“We welcome genuine dialogue”

Sep 5th, 2019 5:54 pm | By

The Institute of Arts and Ideas have now published a Retraction Statement by philosophers Robin Dembroff, Rebecca Kukla and Susan Stryker, explaining why they didn’t want to be part of a debate with philosophers they consider not just wrong but worse than wrong on the questions around trans gender identity. That’s ok, but some of the content of what they say is not.

We welcome genuine dialogue and mutually respectful exploration of the complex and contentious social realities that characterize contemporary transgender issues. We devote a large part of our working lives to these issues, and we have much at stake in them, personally and politically. We object, however, to any “debate” that questions transgender people’s fundamental legitimacy as people who are entitled to the same respect as any other person.

Does that describe the other participants in the discussion, Holly Lawford-Smith, Kathleen Stock, and Julie Bindel? Do those three question “transgender people’s fundamental legitimacy as people who are entitled to the same respect as any other person”? No. Of course not. But it makes them sound evil, so I guess that’s a good-enough reason for saying it?

We reject as a starting place presuppositions held by some voices included in the IAI forum that transgender people are by definition mentally ill or delusional, and that respecting transgender people irreparably conflicts with the interests of cisgender women.

More subtle, but still dishonest. They don’t presuppose that transgender people are by definition mentally ill or delusional, they argue that it’s not the case that people can change their sex. That doesn’t translate to: trans people are delusional.

These presuppositions are uniformed, and fly in the face of evidence as well as years of feminist thought and activism. They preemptively delegitimate transgender people as speaking subjects.

The presuppositions aren’t what Dembroff, Kukla and Stryker say they are, and if they were they wouldn’t necessarily “preemptively delegitimate transgender people as speaking subjects.” That’s just a kind of rabble-rousing meant to make The Enemy look bad. We’re supposed to think they’re bad people who want to harm the helpless transgender people, like mean bullies in the playground.

We consider the right to occupy spaces in which our basic safety is not at risk to be a right that should not be up for debate.

But what about women’s safety?

We refuse on principle to engage in any discussion that treats such positions as up for abstract intellectual debate, in the same way that we would refuse to participate in a conversation that debated whether the Holocaust actually happened, or whether corrective rape should be used to cure lesbianism, or whether or not the white race is superior to all others.

Dirty dirty pool. Gender-skeptical feminists are not comparable to Holocaust deniers or advocates of corrective rape or white supremacists. Filthy pool. They should be embarrassed.

There are limits to civil and intellectual discourse beyond which speech acts are simply acts of violence.

We believe that the discourse of some invited participants in the original IAI forum goes beyond those limits. We refuse on principle to “co-platform” with those who seek, under the guise of “debate” with us, to persuade an audience that it should partner with them in advocating harm to us.

Filthy pool. They should be embarrassed and ashamed.



But sir the real hurricane is over here and we need to warn people

Sep 5th, 2019 5:29 pm | By

The National Weather Service wishes Trump would stop distracting people from paying attention to accurate information about the actual hurricane.

The nation’s meteorologists saw the extended presidential eruption as an unhelpful diversion from a serious threat. The National Hurricane Center’s latest estimate on Thursday afternoon showed Dorian approaching the coast of South Carolina and then hovering over or near the North Carolina coast Thursday night or Friday.

“There is a potentially life-threatening hurricane headed for the Carolinas, and any distraction from making people aware of the potential consequences is not doing anyone a favor,” said Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization. “This is a distraction from what the official government message should be right now.”

Sobien said the union representing the National Weather Service has fielded numerous calls over the past 24 hours from managers from the weather service, private-sector businesses and union members asking how the National Weather Service can stop the president from continuing to repeat confusing information — or worse, undermining the fact-based reports from the Miami-based hurricane forecasters. They issue regularly scheduled hurricane reports at least four times a day.

“What is most important is that people listen to and trust the National Weather Service,” Sobien said. “I would hate it if someone from the coast of North Carolina might have gotten a mixed message.”

Especially if it’s because of the throbbing vanity of the world’s worst person.



More than 100 evacuees died

Sep 5th, 2019 4:41 pm | By

And another thing. The AP reports:

Trump had raised eyebrows and drawn an emphatic fact check from the National Weather Service on Sunday when he tweeted that Alabama, along with the Carolinas and Georgia, “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.”

You know, in ordinary times presidents talk to us about approaching hurricanes in order to give relevant useful advice. They can advise people to leave or to hunker down or to relax because the hurricane has faded out. What presidents say has an impact on what people do. Something I’d forgotten until I watched a NOVA on hurricanes last night is that in 2005 people in Houston died trying to evacuate, because the traffic locked up and they were stuck in the heat.

Hurricane Katrina had devastated the U.S. only a few weeks earlier. And with Hurricane Rita – documented as the strongest Gulf storm on record – on track to bash East Texas, Houstonians heeded the call to evacuate. That’s the moment residents remember best a decade later.

In the Houston area, the muddled flight from the city killed almost as many people as Rita did. an estimated 2.5 million people hit the road ahead of the storm’s arrival, creating some of the most insane gridlock in U.S. history. More than 100 evacuees died in the exodus. Drivers waited in traffic for 20-plus hours, and heat stroke impaired or killed dozens. Fights broke out on the highway. A bus carrying nursing home evacuees caught fire, and 24 died.

Evacuations themselves are dangerous, which makes sense as soon as you think about it. Trump really shouldn’t be out there squawking random bullshit about hurricane danger that doesn’t exist, and he shouldn’t be pitching a fit now about being corrected on the subject. He should act as if our health and safety were the issue, not his enormous prickly ego.



Argue with the avocado

Sep 5th, 2019 4:18 pm | By

Trump is still relitigating the Alabama thing.

Two hours ago:

Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit. The Fake News denies it!

Image

Also two hours ago:

I was with you all the way Alabama. The Fake News Media was not!

Image

Trump was warming up his arm for when they needed him to throw paper towels. UNLIKE THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA.



Identity is social

Sep 5th, 2019 12:57 pm | By

At Psychology Today, Michael Moscolo explains that identity isn’t something we can determine all by ourselves. He starts with Yaniv’s ball-waxing caper.

Yaniv’s actions should not be taken to be representative of transgender individuals. Nonetheless, Yaniv’s actions illustrate the deep conceptual problems that arise when we think of gender a form of “self-identification.” I want to show that regardless of one’s views on transgender issues, it is an error to think that gender identity—or any other identity for that matter—[i]s something that can be completely determined by one’s self.

These actions underscore the problem of using self-identification as the sole criterion on which to establish a person’s gender identity.  Although Yaniv identifies her gender as a woman, Yaniv’s biological sex is male.

In an individualist society, we prize the values of freedom, autonomy, equality and self-determination. We believe that people should be free to pursue their own agendas, to become whomever they wish to become, provided that they do not hurt others along the way.

Well, yes and no. Yaniv isn’t the only kind of “no”; Trump is another clear example. Trump “identifies as” all kinds of things that he emphatically is not, and he became president of the US partly by doing that, as well as partly by stealing, cheating, pussy-grabbing, racism-spouting, and other deplorable actions. I don’t think people should be free to do that. I think Some Restrictions May (and should) Apply.

From this view, it is easy to see how we might want to sanction the idea that gender—one’s experience of self as man or woman, masculine or feminine, as non-binary, or even non-sexed—as something that a person defines for oneself.  But this is neither true of transgender identities nor of any other type of psychological or social identity.

I do not and cannot create my identity by myself.  Identities are created in interactions that occur between people using public as well as personal criteria. Like it or not, I cannot establish an identity by myself; it must be negotiated with and validated in my relations with others. This does not mean that I have no role in establishing my identity—it simply means that I cannot and do not do so by myself.

You can have a fantasy by yourself. You can have a fantasy about yourself by yourself. That’s possible, and it makes conceptual sense. But the minute you start trying to impose your fantasy about yourself on other people, the Some Restrictions start to Apply. You can’t force us to believe your personal fantasies. It won’t work and it isn’t right. It isn’t possible and it isn’t a reasonable demand. Here’s the good news: the same applies to you. You don’t have to believe my fantasies about myself, either.

Mascolo chooses politics as his not very useful example – you can say you’re a Democrat but then if you vote and talk Republican, etc. It’s not very useful because it’s already purely external and social as well as voluntary. Better examples are race, nationality, and the like, or skilled occupations that can’t be just picked up in a moment.

The point here is not that one’s personal experience is irrelevant to one’s identity—it is indeed foundational. The point is that it is simply not sufficient. We need more than what someone says in order to establish and verify an identity.  We need to be able to point to public and shareable expressions of the person’s experience in order to verify the person’s identity. A person can claim an identity as a Democrat, but without voting for Democrats, espousing Democratic principles and acting on those principles, a person’s self-identification has no warrant.

Or, more usefully, a person can claim an identity as an immigrant or a lawyer, but without actually being either of those things what are we even talking about?