Links - 21st July 2022 (2)

Rhodes Scholar who claimed she was abused is accused of making it all up - "A Rhodes Scholar who won a coveted scholarship at Oxford after claiming she overcame childhood abuse and grew up in foster care has been accused of lying to officials and is in fact the daughter of a radiologist who went to private school.   Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, describes herself as a 'queer, first generation, low income' student at The University of Pennsylvania. In 2020, she was given a scholarship to go to Oxford after dazzling the Rhodes Trust with her story of how she overcame welfare, an abusive mother and the foster care system.    But after a November 2020 Philadelphia Inquirer news article about the scholarship, lauded her as a 'first-generation student' who 'has been low-income throughout her life, and grew up in foster care,' an anonymous tipster contacted the Rhodes Trust and UPenn to report her for being 'blatantly dishonest'... In her application to UPenn, Mackenzie identified in application as 'queer', 'low income' and a 'first generation student.'... She maintains that she never lied and that the Rhodes Trust is attacking a 'survivor' of abuse."

Labor Union Opposes Quickly Moving Containers from Cargo Ships - "Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), a consortium of 70 companies that negotiates and administers labor agreements with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), has accused ILWU of refusing to allow upgrades in port technology to move “cargo productively”...  The International Longshoreman’s Association estimates equipment that will reduce the supply chain crisis could “eliminate 40 to 70 percent” of union jobs, noting, however, that “automation also creates new jobs associated with the installation and maintenance of electrified equipment, programming, and related functions.”"

Ports Are Open: DeSantis Announces Global Shipping Company Moving Part of Operations from California to Florida - "the global shipping company Sea-Lead Shipping is moving part of its operations from California to Jacksonville, Florida — another victory for the governor, whose state’s ports have increased their capacity to help alleviate the nationwide supply chain crisis."

#EmptyShelvesJoe trending amid Biden's supply chain crisis
Maybe the people who said Trump was to blame for everything bad that happened during his term (even if it was not his fault) will find some way to blame him for the global supply chain problems

Global Supply-Chain Problems Escalate, Threatening Economic Recovery - WSJ

Our Sec. of Transportation has been on paid leave for MONTHS to help his husband with their new babies while the supply chain crisis spins out of control - "our fearless Sec. of Transportation – whose qualifications include being an unpopular mayor of a small city and being gay – has taken MONTHS of paternity leave... I'm not against time off for having or adopting a baby. I thought it insane that I got only one day of paid leave for my first two children, considering the value I would bring to my then-employer if I was well-rested and knew my wife had the support system in place to care for the babies while I was away. But months??? For two dudes?? Pete might be the token Midwestern gay guy that the coastal elites like to have on retainer, but he fits into the Washington Swamp like Cinderella into her glass slipper.  He has a large enough salary (not to mention government resources and security) to hire a team of nannies to help... When you take on a Cabinet role in the White House, you know it comes with certain sacrifices. That goes double in times of crisis, and triple when the crisis is in the very area you allegedly oversee"

Pete Buttigieg Joins the Parental Leave Debate: ‘This Is Work.’ - The New York Times
Apparently employers should pay employees for family care work

Sen. Warren Tells Elon Musk to "Stop Freeloading Off Everyone Else" - "Time had just named Musk its Person of the Year, so Warren tweeted: "Let's change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else."... Musk's best response was to counter the claim that he won't pay taxes this year—a common talking point from those who won't acknowledge that many ultra-rich founders and CEOs accrue such high net worths not via traditional salaries alone (or in some cases at all) but via a mix of stock options, capital gains, interests, dividends, and business income. Though Musk did not pay federal income taxes back in 2018 (because he took out loans against Tesla shares), he will be on the hook to pay an extreme amount this year: potentially between $9 billion and $10 billion, if he exercises soon-to-expire stock options... While Warren was hectoring Musk for failing to "actually pay taxes," 61 percent of Americans (roughly 100 million households) actually, for real, didn't pay federal income taxes last year...   The Tax Foundation noted that in 2018, the top 25 percent of taxpayers paid 87 percent of total federal income taxes. The top 1 percent pony up roughly 40 percent of total federal income taxes. Warren's spending priorities are largely bankrolled by the richest people in America—to the extent that they're bankrolled at all, as opposed to being added to the exorbitant national debt"

Jordan Peterson Thanks Elon Musk For Paying $11 Billion In Taxes - ""And if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year,” responded Musk. “Don’t spend it all at once … oh wait you did already,” Musk later mocked. Warren reportedly responded by spending thousands of dollars on six Facebook ads attacking Musk"
So much for mocking him for not paying taxes

Elon Musk Responds To Elizabeth Warren Spending Thousands On Facebook Ads Attacking Him - "Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk responded to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spending thousands of dollars on Facebook ads attacking him in recent days by saying that the people of Massachusetts deserve “someone better” to represent them in the U.S. Senate."

Elon Musk on Twitter - "US national debt is ~$28,900 billion or ~$229k per taxpayer. Even taxing all “billionaires” at 100% would only make a small dent in that number, so obviously the rest must come from the general public. This is basic math. Spending is the real problem."

Japanese 'Prince' Switched At Birth Was Raised A Pauper - "What happens when you find out that the life you've lived could have been better — much better? That's what a 60-year-old Japanese truck driver had to grapple with when he discovered he was switched at birth after being born to a rich family.  The man, who has chosen to remain anonymous, was raised by a single mother in a 100-square-foot apartment. A court ruled Tuesday that a social welfare organization that ran the hospital where the mix-up occurred must pay him about $317,000 for causing "mental distress by depriving him of an opportunity to gain a higher education."   The truck driver has chosen to remain anonymous. The boy who was raised in his place by the rich family became the president of a real estate company."

Meme - "When you both agree to try BDSM...
...and neither of you is a bottom
*Justice League - Superman and Wonder Woman tug of war*"

Meme - "Harassing people who owe you money is so broke. If you needed it right back you shouldn't have lended it out. Just gotta take ya L and move along"
"Imagine someone that owes YOU money calling you broke"

Protect your data with BusKill, a dead man's switch for your laptop - "the new BusKill USB kill cord. It’s a dead man’s switch for laptops designed to protect your data by locking or even wiping your computer if someone snatches it away from you while you’re using it.   BusKill is designed for journalists, activists, crypto traders and travelers, the company said. Though it seems it could come in handy for anyone at risk of losing a laptop via smash-and-grab tactics."

BA flight forced to land early because of smelly poo - "The plane was heading from Heathrow to Dubai on Thursday - a seven-hour flight... The plane had been airborne for just 30 minutes when it turned round.  The next available flight was 15 hours later, so passengers had to be put up in a hotel overnight."

How does a Jet Engine work? - "This works on the model of ‘Suck-Squeeze-Bang-Blow’."

Boringly postmodern and an ideological fantasy: Slavoj Žižek reviews Matrix Resurrections | The Spectator - "Every reader has for sure noticed that, in my description of the movie, I heavily rely on a multitude of reviews which I extensively quote. The reason is now clear: in spite of its occasional brilliance, the film is ultimately not worth seeing – which is why I also wrote this review without seeing it."

Meme - Neil deGrasse Tyson @neiltyson: "For Santa to deliver gifts to all world's Christians in one night requires hypersonic speeds through Earth's lower atmosphere, vaporizing his reindeer & sleigh. Just sayin'."
Justin Whang @JustinWhang: "That's why he uses magic, dumbass"

Meme - "whenever you question your own political analysis there's always someone worse"
"ARCHDUKE'S DEATH REMOVES DANGER OF EUROPEAN CONFLICT
Murdered Prince Said to Have Been a Militarist Who Favored, Germany's Aggressive Policy. WAS FAVORITE IN ENGLISH CIRCLES
And Was Frequent Visitor to London and Guest of King George"

SURVEILLANCE STATE: "Identify and Disrupt" Bill will Give Australian Authorities Access to Any Citizen's Social Media, Email Account Without Consent; Allow Them to Add, Delete Information and Send Messages - "When the bill was first being introduced in August 2020, officials claimed the new overly-intrusive powers would “only” be used to target “serious offenses,” such as terrorism, drug trafficking, or child pornography.  Considering the state of things in Australia a year later  – with people being dragged out of their homes by Covid gestapo, Vax-entration camps being built to house dissenters, and anti-vax or anti-lockdown speech considered to be a crime of the highest order – their bar for “serious offenses” might be a little to easy to clear."
Did they pass this due to Chinese infiltration?

Wake Up, Singapore - Posts | Facebook - "For those dorm operators complaining - If you can't afford to give workers the bare minimum, maybe you don't deserve to stay in business."
Of course, they love to complain about how expensive things are. Apparently money comes from out of nothing

Singapore migrant workers are still living in Covid lockdown - ""This is prison life. This is a captive's life."... Singapore's government has always been open about separating dormitory residents from everyone else in the country.  They hold a different visa, work under different labour laws and the authorities do not pretend that these men have the same rights as other foreigners who do the white collar jobs in the city.  Even official daily case numbers for Covid-19 are split into three categories: "Imported", "Dormitory residents" and "Community"."
From Sep 2021
I saw someone complaining about the statistics being separated for migrant workers and others. I pointed out that this was why citizens and PRs were combined when reporting unemployment statistics - to prevent stereotyping
Ironically some of those complaining about discrimination against foreign workers also bashed the government for not controlling covid

Kids Causing Havoc - "You really can't take kids anywhere"

Meme - "The only thing keeping me sane is knowing that there's an animal called sea squirt and they look like cute blobs that are surprised"

Nicky "New Album Out Now" Flowers on Twitter - "if you know someone from nyc and they're feeling down, ask them to explain to you exactly what a bodega is. they love telling people about bodegas. now, what they're going to describe to you is a regular corner store. but act like it's just as magical as they think it is"

Dave Ramsey - Posts | Facebook - "🚗 The top 10 car brands driven by millionaires:
1. Toyota
2. Honda
3. Ford
4. Lexus
5. Subaru
6. BMW
7. Acura
8. Hyundai
9. Lincoln
10. Buick
Most millionaires don't drive flashy cars.
69% of millionaires did not average $100,000 or more in household income per year—and (get this) one-third of millionaires NEVER had a six-figure household income in their entire careers.
When people don't waste money trying to LOOK wealthy, they have money to actually BECOME wealthy."

Viagra could be a potent force in the fight against Alzheimer’s, says study
So much for that joke about spending more on viagra and boob jobs than Alzheimer's meaning that there'll be people running around with big breasts and hard cocks but no idea what to do with them

Paramedic took her own life after being shamed for littering, inquest hears - "A “well-loved” young paramedic took her own life during the national lockdown after being shamed on Facebook for littering, an inquest has heard.  Charlotte Cope, from Gelli, in Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales was found dead at her family home in April 2020."

U.S. Paralympian Says Strangers Shame Her For Using Handicapped Parking Spots - "Paralympian Jessica Long is shining a light on a common problem many people with disabilities face — harassment from people who don’t believe they’re disabled. The swimmer, who has won 13 Paralympic gold medals, recently posted a TikTok in which she expressed frustration over being shamed for using a handicapped-accessible parking spot, despite being an amputee and having a disabled person parking permit... “I get two to four comments per week, just going about my normal routine and parking in handicap spaces,” the caption of her post reads. “I’ve had people yell at me, leave notes on my windshield, knock on my car window, or wait for me to get out of my car just to tell me I can’t park there. My worst experience to date was an older couple that followed me around a grocery store and kept making comments because they wanted the handicap spot I took and said that I didn’t need it. I even explained I had two prosthetic legs and they told me I was a liar.” Unfortunately, disabled people being harassed by parking lot vigilantes who do not think they should be parking in handicapped-accessible spots is incredibly common.  It is important to remember that not all disabilities are visible."

Meme - "Hard to swallow pills: Even if school taught you life skills like how to do taxes instead of latin or geometry you wouldnt have paid attention to that either"

Meme - "Employees stay
When they are
1. PAID WELL
2. MENTORED
3.CHALLENGED
4. PROMOTED
5. INVOLVED
6. APPRECIATED
7. TRUSTED
8. EMPOWERED
9. VALUED
NOT ONE TIME DID WE MENTION PIZZA"

The Motivational Power of Pizza - "In a research conducted by the psychologist, Dan Ariely, as a portion of his book, Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations, he wrote that offering pizza to workers would motivate them to become more productive in contrast to providing more money... the free pizza was the most motivational message out of all. In contrast to the control group that received no messages, the workers that were offered free pizza demonstrated an escalation in productivity by 6.7%. The promise of recognition from the employer showcased similar results, with an escalation in productivity by 6.6% ahead of the control group. However, what astounded Dan Ariely was that the reward for money only improved productivity by 4.9%.  And, the workers that were offered the $30 reward demonstrated a 13.2% decrease in productivity. At the end of the week, Dan Ariely observed that these workers showcased an overall decrease of 6.5%.  However, it turned out that over the duration that these observations were made, the workers that were receiving recognitions from their employers were becoming more productive as opposed to the ones that were receiving free pizza."

Meme - "Pizza Hut Taiwan unleashes cilantro century egg pig's blood cake pizza...   In recent years, Pizza Hut and Dominoes have marketed a number of eclectic pizza flavors based on foods and beverages popular in Taiwan, such as pearl milk tea, durian, strawberry stinky tofu, zongzi, and spicy hot pot... In its post, Pizza Hut wrote that although preserved eggs, pig's blood cake, and cilantro may all seem to clash, "once melted mozzarella cheese ties them together, the explosion in your mouth is better than you had imagined." The pizza company added that the cilantro is grown by small farmers in Yunlin County and is complemented by peanut powder also from the southern Taiwanese county...   When asked for his take on the new pizza, Taiwanese actor Aaron Yan (炎亞綸) described it as "Michelin level." This prompted some netizens to suspect that he had been paid by the company to promote the new product, but he denied any deal with Pizza Hut, saying, "I really didn't even get a dime.""

America's 15 best pizzas

Meme - "Swedish literally translated names for animals...
Riverhorse - Hippo
Blubberhunter - Orca
Inkfish - Squid
Latewalker - Sloth
Leechcone - Anteater
Beakanimal - Platypus
Flappingmouse - Bat
Sheildtoad - Tortoise
Washbear - Raccoon"

Meme - "GOING AS a GHOST THIS HALLOWEEN MOM?"
*In blanket* "NO I'M GOING AS YOU"
"DON'T COME IN MOM!" *Fwop Fwop*
"IT'S NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE! I'M UH... MAKING MY BED!" *Fwop Fwop*"

The Meme Policeman - Posts | Facebook - "Friendly reminder when you see locked up baby food, a company would rather children starve than to lose a small amount of money to theft."
"A) It’s not a small amount of money lost to theft, and
B) Locking up baby food does NOT cause children to starve.
But why is baby formula often locked up? That question became far more interesting than I thought before I researched this lousy meme.
▪️When thinking of high-theft retail items, the first things you’d think of would probably be electronics, designer clothes, liquor or tools. Few outside the retail industry would think of baby formula.
▪️Yet, in the National Retail Federation’s 2018 crime report, infant formula ranked the 3rd most targeted item in the US! Only designer clothes & laundry detergent were stolen more. In their 2020 survey, formula was tied for 6th, beating out items like cigarettes and cell phones... it’s so big that there have been entire organized theft rings targeting it for decades. Police busted the “Hernandez Group” in 2010, who stole $2.5M in formula from Safeway stores in CA and OR. Feds carried out “Operation Milk Money” the same year, busting a ring in NJ...
Infant formula is surprisingly (and unnecessarily) expensive. A 30 oz can typically costs over $30, with specialty formulas going for 2-3X that or more. For dehydrated milk and some vitamins. Just 3 companies (Abbot Laboratories, Mead Johnson & Gerber) control 98% of the market. This is due to a combination of strict manufacturing regs & huge gov’t subsidies. 57-68% of all infant formula in the US is purchased with gov’t funds through WIC, the welfare program for infants and children.
This effectively eliminates price sensitivity for the most price-conscious buyers of formula (and also why locking up formula doesn’t result in babies starving). For low income mothers needing special formulas for medical reasons, Medicaid covers it, again eliminating the price sensitivity...  Small retailers, who can’t buy in bulk like the big box stores, have an incentive to purchase formula from “outside sources” to improve their bottom line. This provides an avenue for thieves and organized crime to sell formula to, a consistently high demand but legal item. Mothers on WIC or Medicaid could sell their excess formula for some cash, as could small-time thieves stealing a few cans from their local store...
Of course, those stealing formula aren’t doing so for their own use. Many are drug addicts looking for a quick buck. Some retailers, like Publix, spent significant effort to figure out their often sophisticated methods and identify repeat offenders. In the case of Formula Mom, they helped police bust that ring...
the only avenue left to retailers is be responsible for their own loss prevention. One obvious action to reduce theft is…to lock up baby formula! Like they do with razors, video games, drill bits & other small, high-value items. It’s a sad reality, but ridiculous to blame the store."
Liberals get upset when stuff is locked up too. So the only solution is for stores to close down in high crime areas. They'll get accused of "racism" regardless, but at least they won't be losing money

Meme - "How do you get a nun pregnant?"
"Have an altar boy fart in her pussy!"

Rep. Ro Khanna on Twitter - "I sent a letter to the FDA today signed by 24 of my colleagues regarding the new guidelines on homeopathic products. More clarity is needed on how the FDA plans to ensure that genuine homeopathic products remain accessible while protecting consumers from unsafe products."
You need to get the right quack medicine

People sticking objects up their bums costs the NHS £350,000 a year - "their figures may be an underestimation as they do not include data from private hospitals."

Skeletal remains of man found in Potong Pasir flat: Unit put up for sale, attracts buyers - "If the deal goes through, I will ask a priest to recite prayers before I move in, and set up an altar. There is nothing to be superstitious about."
Ironic.

'Even as a chef, I hope we see foie gras banned' - "The news that luxury department store Fortnum & Mason will be removing foie gras from its shelves after continued pressure from campaigners has been described as a huge step forward by chef Alexis Gauthier.  The French chef used to sell 20kg of foie gras a week at his London restaurant, Gauthier Soho, until he removed it from the menu in 2015 after protests outside his restaurant from the London Vegan Action Group.   The product, made from the liver of a goose or duck that has been force-fed in a process known as ‘gavage' to produce a smooth, rich meat, has long been a contentious issue, with many believing the practice to be outdated and cruel.  “It’s wonderful that a large company has made the decision to stop selling it altogether," Gauthier says. "Delicious food should never come at the cost of torturing an animal. Perhaps 80 years ago we may have thought this was fine, but with what we know now about the consciousness of animals, I see it as barbaric.”   The chef himself turned fully vegan in 2015 having taken part in an international vegan month organised by animal rights activist group PETA – an action Gauthier took initially simply “to test the water”, but which in addition to growing demand from celebrity diners including Stella McCartney, Tom Cruise and Al Gore, led him to make the switch to an entirely vegan menu...   Gauthier isn’t the only chef to have removed the product from the kitchen; in 2008, Daniel Clifford’s Michelin-starred Midsummer House in Cambridge was forced to take it off the menu after the exterior of the restaurant was vandalised by the Animal Liberation Front. The House of Lords also removed foie gras from the menu of its Barry Room restaurant in 2012 after pressure from animal rights groups.   Hoping to sway the Government to impose a ban on the product, as was seen in the state of New York in 2019 (where the ban will come into effect in 2022), Gauthier recently wrote a letter to Boris Johnson on the matter. “I was very surprised to get a response,” he reveals, “and even more so to get another from the Department of Agriculture! They informed me that this was an issue they were keen to look into this year. Of course, Covid may delay this, but I’m hopeful that we could see a nationwide ban in the future.”"
First, they came for the shark's fin...
We know gas stoves are already being targeted too

How NBA star, aspiring model became victims of a massive catfishing scheme out of Canada - "As an aspiring model in Southern California with hundreds of thousands of social media followers, Paris Dunn relishes being in the spotlight.  But the 23-year-old, whose stage name is Paris Dylan, never imagined that she would get so much attention for being entangled in a mind-bending, elaborate “catfishing” scheme that would eventually include vicious threats, blackmail, search warrants, an NBA star and an international criminal investigation... When she was just 17 years old, she said she started flirting with pro-athletes online, telling them she was older. Then she thought she had caught the eye of NBA star Chris “Birdman” Andersen on Facebook... a new person started messaging Dunn on Facebook, saying his name was Tom Taylor, claiming to be a gamer and Andersen’s best friend, and they soon started communicating. Dunn said she noticed the phone numbers she had for both Andersen and Taylor had odd area codes and she asked Taylor about it.  “He just said, ‘Oh it's my Google number, you know, it's all good. I'm just switching Google numbers, it's online so people don't get my number,’” Dunn said. “Me being 17 and dumb, I just believed it.”  Dunn said she continued to text back and forth with Andersen, and their relationship turned x-rated.  “We exchanged nude photos,” she said. “I trusted that it was him and I knew he wouldn't do anything because of his position.”  Dunn said it was Taylor who suggested she go meet Andersen in person... Dunn landed at the Denver International Airport and Andersen was there to pick her up. Dunn said their “first date” quickly became awkward because they both seemed to have incorrect details about each other.  “[There were] a couple little weird things that didn't add up,” Dunn said. “Such as, he had turned on the Xbox… and he says, ‘Look, your sister must be online.’ … and I was like, ‘I don't have an Xbox and my sister doesn't play this game.’”  There were other inconsistencies too.  “He said, ‘You told me you brought a lot of Victoria's Secret stuff to wear for me.’ I said, ‘No I didn't,’” Dunn said. “And then he was like, ‘When is your trip to Africa?’ I was like, ‘I'm not going on any trip. What are you talking about?’” And then Dunn said she brought up Taylor, Andersen’s supposed best friend.  “I said, 'Well Tom said' … he was like, ‘Who's Tom?’ I was like, ‘Your best friend.’ He was like, ‘I don't know a Tom,’” Dunn said.  Thinking Andersen was messing with her, Dunn said she just shrugged it off. The two continued the weekend with Dunn hanging out at Andersen’s house in Larkspur, outside of Denver.  “It wasn't just about sex at all,” Dunn said. “We actually did stuff and watched movies on TV and then he went off to practice ... and I stayed with the dog.”... Andersen declined requests for comment from ABC News “20/20,” and instead his attorney Mark Bryant sat down for an interview.  Bryant said in February 2012, Andersen was playing an away game in Oklahoma City when he got a strange email and handed Bryant the phone. Bryant said the writer of the email claimed to be Dunn's mother and said she knew that Andersen had spent the weekend with her 17-year-old daughter. Bryant said Andersen believed Dunn was older and she had lied about her age when she booked her plane ticket to Denver.  “She booked through a travel agent of Chris's, and gave a date a birth that matched 21,” Bryant said. “How did she come through the airport and everything else with security with that date of birth?”  Bryant said the author of the email was threatening to ruin Andersen’s life and career.  “I respond back, ‘You're talking to his attorney. There's nothing that's happened here that's criminal. You're engaged in extortion. Go away,’” Bryant said.  Even if Dunn was only 17, Andersen’s relations with her are legal in the state of Colorado, where the age of consent is 15. But the nude photos of her on Andersen’s phone would be considered child pornography since Dunn was under 18. To protect Andersen, Bryant said he sent the writer of the email $3,000 over PayPal to make the whole thing go away, writing back, ‘You might have something, I don't know, but look, without any admissions, one way or the other ... this is embarrassing to us. Just go home.’”  A couple of months went by and Bryant said he and Andersen heard nothing more until Andersen was pulled over by the Douglas County, Colorado, sheriff’s department in May 2012. Their Internet Crimes Against Children Unit had swarmed Andersen’s home and seized his computers, phones and other electronic devices... Dunn said she thought Andersen betrayed her by sharing her nude photos with Taylor, who posted them online and threatened her life.  At the time, neither Andersen nor Dunn knew they both had been communicating through a stranger, who had posed as both of them, Tom Taylor and Dunn’s mother in the email to Andersen... The IP addresses were traced back to the province of Manitoba in a tiny town called Easterville... a reclusive woman named Shelly Chartier had not only been “catfishing” Andersen and Dunn, but that she allegedly had been tormenting 11 victims over three years, making numerous Facebook pages impersonating a YouTube comedian, a Playboy Playmate, and even reality TV star Brody Jenner. She was arrested in January 2013."

You can take the Singaporean out of Singapore, but you can't take Singapore out of the Singaporean

In an expat Singaporean group:

A: Quick question, apologize if it’s been discussed previously. Will I need to leave this group if I eventually leave [country] and return to [Singapore]?

B: Only a Singaporean would ask this... whatever you want lah, you won’t get fined or summoned.

C: lol. My wife (non-singaporean) is always amazed at how we follow most rules to a T. Not a bad trait but this takes the cake!

D: You’ll have to self isolate for 3 mths, and tested negative for kiasuism before you’re allowed back in the group.

Links - 21st July 2022 (1 - Trans Mania)

Meme - "I can tell they've had pronoun training at my hospital because the check in guy said "Sir, over here. Oh! No, uh, they?" And the lady at the next cube said, "No gendered honorifics or antiquated respectability phrases, KEVIN!!!!"
"Have a good day! See you Monday, Mrsrt- buddy. Hogan Buddy." - Kevin as I was leaving"

Meme - "Driver: My pronoun is they.
Police: Then here's another ticket."

Alaska Airlines launches gender-neutral uniform policy for flight attendants and other staff - "The company has also created personal pronoun pins that employees can choose to wear with their uniforms."

Kansas teacher wins federal case, will not be forced to use students' preferred pronouns - "After a months long battle, Pamela Ricard has won her battle against transgender-accommodating policies being implemented in public schools across the nation. Ricard was reprimanded in April of 2021 for failure to use a student's preferred pronouns, despite the school not having an official policy on preferred pronoun use at the time. The school later implemented various policies on the issue after Ricard was reprimanded. Ricard sued the school after she was reprimanded, citing that her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated. In May of 2022, Ricard received a ruling by a federal court that her termination for failing to use students' preferred pronouns was unconstitutional. The decision rendered the termination unconstitutional because her refusal to use the pronouns was based on her religious beliefs, specifically Christianity... This ruling comes nearly a year after Tanner Cross, a gym teacher in Virginia was reinstated after a brief suspension for failing to use a student’s preferred pronouns. Like Ricard, Cross appealed his suspension on his Christian beliefs."

Judge Reinstates VA Teacher Suspended For Refusing To Affirm Trans Identity For Kids, Calls School Response ‘Vindictive’ - "Plowman found the “school system’s suspension was unconstitutional” and its handling of the situation was “vindictive.” The school argued that it suspended Cross not for his beliefs but because of the “disruption” he allegedly caused, but Plowman said there was “simply an absence of evidence” that any disruption to school operations took place."
Teacher Byron Tanner Cross, who criticized transgender preferred pronoun policy, reaches settlement with Virginia’s Loudoun County School Board - "Under the settlement, the school system must reinstate the teacher, remove any reference to his suspension from his personnel file, and pay some attorney’s fees."

Meme - ""Stop forcing your religion one me" says person demanding you refer to them by made up pronouns"

Indiana company doesn't allow pronouns in email signatures - "Loughery's departure was spurred by Solution Tree's new policy that doesn't allow employees to include their pronouns in email signatures... employees would be able to use pronoun identifiers internally for everyone inside the company, but not in messages sent to clients. "This is a company email and this company is about advancing the work of our authors and not bringing any attention to us as individuals or what we care about personally""
Good way to get rid of low performers

Trans: U.S. prof wins settlement after refusing to use pronouns - "A public university in southern Ohio has agreed to pay a professor US$400,000 after it disciplined him four years ago for refusing to use a transgender student's preferred pronouns, according to Shawnee State University... the philosophy professor, Nicholas Meriwether, will not be required to use certain pronouns regardless of a student's request... Meriwether sued in 2018 after he was disciplined, and a federal district court dismissed the suit for lack of standing. Then, last year a three-judge appellate panel revived the lawsuit and sent it back to the lower court, where Meriwether could have argued his First Amendment rights of free speech and religion and his 14th Amendment right to due process were violated...  Shawnee State introduced a policy in 2016 requiring the use of a student's pronouns to match their gender identity, according to Meriwether's complaint. The professor pushed back, claiming this went against his beliefs as a Christian.  A series of compromises then was discussed over months, including Meriwether offering to "use any name the student requested instead of titles and pronouns"... The school opened a Title IX investigation against the professor, ultimately concluding Meriwether's treatment of the student created a "hostile environment," and the dean of the university's College of Arts and Sciences recommended putting a formal warning in his file. Had the behaviours continued, Meriwether was on the hook for suspension without pay or even termination"

Mothers of boys with gender identity disorder: a comparison of matched controls - "This pilot study compared mothers of boys with gender identity disorder (GID) with mothers of normal boys to determine whether differences in psychopathology and child-rearing attitudes and practices could be identified. Results of the Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines and the Beck Depression Inventory revealed that mothers of boys with GID had more symptoms of depression and more often met the criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder than the controls. Fifty-three percent of the mothers of boys with GID compared with only 6% of controls met the diagnosis for Borderline Personality Disorder on the Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines or had symptoms of depression on the Beck Depression Inventory. Results of the Summers and Walsh Symbiosis Scale suggested that mothers of probands had child-rearing attitudes and practices that encouraged symbiosis and discouraged the development of autonomy."
Clear proof that Munchausen syndrome by proxy is not a thing and that these mothers are supportive and should be praised for not being "transphobic"

Meme - Monikathrowaway88 [VENT] Rejected at a lesbian bar
First post and sorry if its a little all over the place and scrambled, Im just kinda shaken up and upset. A group of friends invited me to join them at a lesbian bar called Roxys in my hometown, and being a single lesbian, I thought it would be fun and said I would go. So we go on Saturday night, and were just drinking and talking and having fun and all that jazz and I see this one girl sitting by herself at the bar and I thought she was pretty cute which was weird because she looked like a total tomboy and _usually am only into feminine girl because I like my partners to look like girls and Butches and tomboys make me feel kinda dysphoric. My friends hyped me up to go talk to her so I did. I sat in the seat next to her and literally just asked her how she was doing. She takes one look at me and downs the last of her drink before literally saying "fuck no" and getting up and going into the bathroom. felt so fucking embarassed. My face was burning and I was trying not to cry as I went back over to my friends. I kept an eye on the bathroom and she came out a little while later to pay at the bar and leave and on her way out she gave us a dirty look. I feel so fucking horrible about myself and Im still upset about it and dont know what to do with myself"

Meme - "believe it or not, one of the women in this photo is trans"
Literally indistinguishable!

Meme - "10 YEAR CHALLENGE!"

Meme - "Daniel James Ceri Fisher"
"DANIELLE M CERI FISHER
Rest in Power!"
"tranny's fake identity is a cheap flag that will deteriorate and wither without constant maintenance and repair
tranny's true identity is carved in stone, unchangeable, and still obviously visible behind the facade"
Comments (elsewhere): "Imagine losing your kid because he was recruited into the cut your dick your dick off and deal with not being able to cum cult and committed suicide, then catching his recruiters desecrating his grave."

Meme - "Your parents will use your real name when they bury you.
time to start a new account"

Meme - "Ellen "Elliot" Page
Bruce "Caitlyn" Jenner
Dude, Where's my cock?"

Blaire White on Twitter - "Trans acceptance would be in a way better place if they stopped pushing the kid stuff. Most reasonable people can support adults making choices about their own bodies. Only insane people think kids can consent to sterilization or removing body parts before they can drive a car."

Blaire White on Twitter - "If you’re not old enough to consent to sex, you’re not old enough to consent to changing your sex."
One reply: "If you're not a parent of a transgender child, it's none of your gd business."
Ironically these are the same people who want parents who spank their kids to go to jail

Super straight on Twitter - "What is super straight? This is a new sexuality that means that you are only attracted to cisgender women or men. This was made due to an influx of people saying that you aren’t straight if you aren’t attracted to trans women/men. We are part of the LGBTQ+ now. #superstraight"

Meme - "DON'T LIKE IT? BUILD YOUR OWN TWITTER"
"DON'T LIKE IT? BUILD YOUR OWN PAYMENT PROCESSOR."
"DON'T LIKE IT? BUILD YOUR OWN... UH... SEXUALITY?"
*Super straight*

People are starting to use Lefties' nonsensical language against them and it’s absolutely beautiful: Meet #SuperStraight and #BlueAnon - "  One of the biggest issues conservatives have faced in recent decades is a lack of control over shaping language. See, everyone right of Marx believes in objective, scientific definitions. For example, a tree... is a tree.  For the Left, however, a tree might not be a tree. A tree might be an animal. A man is a woman. An expensive death sentence is "affordable healthcare." War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Now you begin to understand me. This is how we've come to a point where most labels in mainstream culture are created by the politically-correct Left, whether it be "income equality," "social justice," "inclusion," "cultural appropriation," or "anti-racism."  But with their destruction of meaning, the Left's ideology that language (and reality) can be molded in whatever form you fancy is starting to backfire on them.  It turns out, when you say nothing is true, even your own statement becomes false. And so, after years of waiting, the Right has begun to parody the Left by playing their own stupid game. This led to the creation of two terms this week that began trending: "Superstraight" and "Blue Anon.""

Meme - "Yes, ALL sexualities are valid, you bigot!"
"Alright"
"I identify as SuperStraight"
"No thats not a real sexuality you can't just make things up thats transphobic!!!!!"

Meme - "WE. EXIST. Don't be a bigot. #superstraightpride"
"ITS.NOT.A.SEXUALTY it's a preference and you're being fucking transphobic"
"Please don't use the term "preference" like that. Preference implies choice. We were born this way. Don't be straightphobic. My sexuality isn't transphobic. Please don't be hateful."

Matt 🟧⬛️🟧⬛️ on Twitter - ""super straight" lmao if you wanna tell people you're a cunt just say that"
"That’s superphobic of you. We just want to be understood. We have nothing against the other categories in the BGLST+ community. Try to be more open minded please."

Straight people who don’t date trans people are now calling themselves ‘Super Straight’ - "Of all the social movements TikTok has birthed, the new ‘Super Straight’ movement may be the most controversial.It originated when user Kyle Royce told his Tik Tok followers that because so many people were calling him transphobic for not wanting to date trans women, he decided that he would identify as Super Straight, a sexuality for people who only want to date people born as the gender they identify with.Royce’s Tik Tok blew up immediately, racking up millions of views and millions of supporters who joined in to identify as Super Straight. A flag was created and lines were drawn as many others quickly trashed the trend as transphobic and bigoted."

Nocissexual | LGBTA Wiki | Fandom - "Nocissexual also called Noctic or Undisexual is the attraction to all genders, except, either:
    One's attraction fades once it is known someone is cisgender.
    One does not feel attraction to people until it is known that the person in question is not cisgender.
    One chooses not to date cisgender people/chooses not to date people unless they know the person in question is not cis."
Of course only superstraights are a problem. Cisphobia is good

Meme - "The year is 2042. Rachel Levine is the first woman President. There are 92,109 genders. The only small businesses left are black owned hair salons and drive through strip clubs. They released Chinese built Fauci-bots to hunt down the last of the "Unvaxxed". Sex with anyone but transgenders has been outlawed. l am the last Super Straight white male and this is my story."

Meme - vanesaproductions: "they took down the super straight video"
kyleroyce Creator: "i removed it bcz they sent death threats to my mom over it"

The Trans Movement Is Not About Rights Anymore - "An unusual thing happened in the conversation about transgender identity in America this week. The New York Times conceded that there is, indeed, a debate among medical professionals, transgender people, gays and lesbians and others about medical intervention for pre-pubescent minors who have gender dysphoria. The story pulled some factual punches, but any mildly-fair airing of this debate in the US MSM is a breakthrough of a kind.  Here’s the truth that the NYT was finally forced to acknowledge: “Clinicians are divided” over the role of mental health counseling before making irreversible changes to a child’s body. Among those who are urging more counseling and caution for kids are ground-breaking transgender surgeons. This very public divide was first aired by Abigail Shrier a few months ago on Bari’s Substack, of course, where a trans pioneer in sex-change surgery opined: “It is my considered opinion that due to some of the … I’ll call it just ‘sloppy,’ sloppy healthcare work, that we’re going to have more young adults who will regret having gone through this process.” Oof.  The NYT piece also concedes another key fact: that puberty blockers are neither harmless nor totally reversible... I would think that, just as a general rule, minors making permanent, life-changing decisions should receive more psychological treatment than adults. How on earth is this not the default? In what other field of medicine do patients diagnose themselves, and that alone is justification for dramatic, irreversible medication? The NYT doesn’t give you the data for the “increasing number” of transitions because it’s hard to find in the US. In the UK, however, the data show a 3,200 percent rise in adolescents seeking transition over a decade — 70 percent of whom are girls seeking to become boys, a break from historical norms where boys/men were much more likely to seek transition. Nor does the NYT give any data for “detransitioners.” But any brief look online suggests they are not exactly “quite rare.” They are, in fact, becoming a small but recognizable and tenacious part of the trans landscape. And among the risks of puberty blockers that the NYT does not mention are neurological damage, bone-density loss, and a permanent inability to experience sexual pleasure. And in almost every case (98 percent in one report), puberty blockers are never reversed... “What rights do trans people currently not have but want that don’t involve replacing biological sex with one’s subjective ‘gender identity’?” And the response was, of course, crickets. The truth is: the 6-3 Bostock decision places trans people in every state under the protection of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It’s done. It’s built on the sturdy prohibition on sex discrimination. A Trump nominee wrote the ruling. What the trans movement is now doing, after this comprehensive victory, is not about rights at all. It is about cultural revolution. It’s a much broader movement to dismantle the sex binary, to see biology as a function of power and not science, and thereby to deconstruct the family and even a fixed category such as homosexuality. You can support trans rights and oppose all of this. But they want you to believe you can’t. That’s the bait-and-switch. Don’t take it. The radicalism of this assault on nature, science and bodily integrity is not hidden. Just before Christmas, for example, New York Magazine ran a first-person cover-story that celebrated “an asexual gay man with a penis and a vagina.” His hatred of his natal femaleness stemmed in part, he says, from being groomed to “live as a sexually available cute-lady vessel capable of carrying white babies” as part of “patriarchal, heterosexist, racist, capitalist acculturation.” He insists that he has always had a “native penis, which some people call a clitoris.” Now, surgeons have carved out flesh from his thigh to create a simulacrum of a non-native dick... What’s interesting here is not the person’s evident mental instability. (The author had previously organized his own rape as therapy for meeting rape victims in Haiti, and published a piece about it.) It’s the decision by the editors of the magazine to elevate and exploit this assault on bodily sex, to épater les bourgeois one more time, to insist on the normalcy of this, as if it were a matter of civil rights rather than a foray into the nihilist and grotesque... This is what the editors seem to promote: a view of the body as beyond sex or gender, to be created and recreated at will and indefinitely, and an abandonment of any stable notion of sex at all. Whatever else this is, it is not a matter of civil rights."

Radical Gender Lessons for Young Children - "Evanston–Skokie School District 65 has adopted a radical gender curriculum that teaches pre-kindergarten through third-grade students to celebrate the transgender flag, break the “gender binary” established by white “colonizers,” and experiment with neo-pronouns such as “ze,” “zir,” and “tree.”"

Doctors Debate Whether Trans Teens Need Therapy Before Hormones - The New York Times - "An international group of experts focused on transgender health last month released a draft of new guidelines, the gold standard of the field that informs what insurers will reimburse for care... A new chapter dedicated to adolescents says that they must undergo mental health assessments and must have questioned their gender identity for “several years” before receiving drugs or surgeries.  Experts in transgender health are divided on these adolescent recommendations, reflecting a fraught debate over how to weigh conflicting risks for young people, who typically can’t give full legal consent until they are 18 and who may be in emotional distress or more vulnerable to peer influence than adults are.  Some of the drug regimens bring long-term risks, such as irreversible fertility loss. And in some cases, thought to be quite rare, transgender people later “detransition” to the gender they were assigned at birth. Given these risks, as well as the increasing number of adolescents seeking these treatments, some clinicians say that teens need more psychological assessment than adults do"
Weird. I thought we were told that anything other than gender affirming care was child abuse, and kids couldn't be groomed into becoming trans

Aydan on Twitter - "we have “top surgery” and “bottom surgery” but personally I would like to have the option for Whole Surgery where they just remove the whole physical body and allow you to exist as a liberated abstraction"
Shared by Pink News
Nope. Not mental illness

Facebook - "One of the recent misinformation tactics used is to conflate intersex (rare genetic disorders with actual differences in chromosome number and significant disabilities / fertility issues) with transgenderism (socially transmitted mental issue with normal XX or XY genotype, sometimes resulting in self imposed fertility issues caused by unnecessary surgical intervention), by placing both under "nonbinary", and falsely implying that "biological sex is a spectrum".
Plus when they try to even dump human genetic mosaicism such as absorbed fraternal twins into the "omg nonbinary is so common" bucket. That really gets my goat since it's a pain in the neck to explain the mechanism to anyone without at least a B.Sc."

Buck Angel® TRANSSEXUAL MAN on Twitter - "I have a disorder called gender dysphoria. I wish I did not. I wish I was born male. But I was not. I live as a male because it helps me walk the world in peace with myself. I am not trying to trick anyone and why I am honest about who and what I am. Love Tranpa #biologymatters"

Meme - "MEET JOHN MONEY
Dr. Money was a pioneer in gender theory. He introduced concepts such as "gender identity" and "gender role". He differentiated "gender" from "sex", thinking that the former is a social construct of sorts. During the one Reimer family got twin boys, Bruce and Brian. Bruce's penis was ruined in a botched circumcision. The concerned parents brought thelr boy to dr. Money, who saw this as an opportunity to prove his theory that gender is taught. He advised the Reimers to remove Bruce's testicles and raise him as a girl ("Brenda"), expecting that he'll become a legitimate girl. However, "Brenda" didn't feel like a girl and soon fell into deep depression. What's worse, Money forced the twins to perform sexual acts and strip for "genital inspections", and took photos of them. "Brenda" later changed his name to David and tried to return to being a boy by installing artificial penis and testicles. In the end, Brian developed schizophrenia and died by overdose from antidepressants. David shot himself after years of depression, financial instability and marital issues. Dr. Money wrote his critics off as bigots who believe that "masculinity and femininity are built into the genes so women should get back to the mattress and the kitchen"."

Sydney Watson on Twitter - "Women have nothing left that's ours. Anyone can appropriate our sex. We are referred to as "bleeders" and "pregnant people". Biological men beat us out of our own spaces. "Woman" doesn't have any definition or meaning. And we're expected to accept our own erasure. It's gross."

Meme - "Consent involves divulging all information that your partner needs to know before they can make a choice, or else it's manipulation"
"I dont need to tell people I date that I am trans"

Meme - Queen Of The Rings @CircaStarr: "Literally devistated.. I was on a date with a guy and he asked "where you wanna go ma'am" and I told him to be careful not to misgender someone before you call them the wrong thing, and he said "I can tell this won't work out" and pulled over and made me get out of his car then called me "faggot". WHY ARE MEN??"

Meme - "IMPORTANT INFORMATION!
PEDOPHILES ARE USING THESE TERMS ON SOCIAL MEDIA TO IDENTIFY EACH OTHER!
HE/HIM - PREFERS LITTLE BOYS
SHE/HER - PREFERS LITTLE GIRLS
THEY/THEM - PREFERS ANY KIND
Bright neon colored hair is often used to attract a childs attention
Rainbow clothing and accessories are worn to present a 'playful' appearance to children
In African-American communities, the term "BLM" is often used to mean "Boys Loving Men" and for "All Children Are Beautiful"
REPORT THESE ACCOUNTS IMMEDIATELY AND TAKE ACTION TO KEEP THESE PEOPLE AWAY FROM OUR CHILDREN! VISIT www.MomsAgainstPedos.org FOR MORE INFORMATION"

Sanaz Ahmadi on Twitter - "Kajsa Ekis Ekman (KEE) wrote last week about Kristoffer Johansson who will be moved from class 1 security men’s prison to class 2 security women’s prison. There are no class 1 security women’s prisons in Sweden. Take a guess why. #peaktrans #radicalfeminism #marxism #swepol
We can no longer coddle men’s emotions. Kristoffer Johansson raped, smeared his sperm on his victim, murdered and butchered her. He then feigned concern and joined the search party for her body. The butchering of Vatchareeya Bangsuan is a part of men’s terror against women.
Vatchareeya’s murder is a terror that women grow up with and is normalized by societal institutions. It is not random that he was a man and she was a woman. That Kristoffer’s emotions has higher priority than women’s lives is a natural consequence of institutionalized patriarchy.
That Vatchareeya’s life as a brown woman was so worthless that Kristoffer’s sentence was reduced and lowered to manslaughter was not a big enough ball of spit in women’s faces. Now the women he hasn’t yet reached will also be spat on.
A man so psychosexually disturbed that he sexually enjoys butchering women, also enjoys wearing women’s skin. That is what happens in Kristoffer’s head when he wears his feminine costume – he wears women’s skin, a form of autogynephilia.
It is not strange that such a psychosexually disturbed man would be tired of being surrounded by other men. It is not strange that he’d rather be surrounded by women he has a patriarchal advantage over and sexually enjoys torturing, terrorizing and murdering...
Kristoffer going to a women’s prison is the ultimate psychosexual confirmation for him. For the inmates it is a continuation of the same terror they have endured their whole lives. And now they cannot even flee.
I haven’t even touched on the fact that medical treatment is not necessary for Kristoffer to change legal sex. He can do so because Woman is no longer a biological and material reality. Woman is a feeling a man has.
The Eigth Rule of Misogyny: “Men are what men say they are, and women are what men say they are”.
KEE cannot stand against the misogyny of trans ideology by herself. Swedish sisters, you need to join and raise your voices. Men know they cannot divide feminists, so they have decided to label themselves women to divide us from the inside."

Meme - "I like this game lol
Mathematician: triangles have three sides
Trans activist: what about those with five
Mathematician: those are pentagons
Trans activist: why are y'all still stuck in this reductionist, kindergarten definition of triangle? Feel free to join"

Meme - "Biologist: insects have six legs
Trans activist: what about those with eight
Biologist: those are arachnids
Trans activist: why do you HATE eight-legged insects so much?"
"Biologist: Homo sapiens are vertebrates
Trans activist: STOP REDUCING ME TO MY SPINAL COLUMN!!!"

Meme - "> Working at IT department in bank
> Company currently joined the woke- train and now we get all kinds of workshops on why straight white men are the devil
> Roll eyes - none of the Directors/VPs are of color...
> People start to insert moronic and to their signatures >
Getting so annoyed by this, I insert 'they/then' in my signature
> One of my colleagues (and one of the drivers behind this whole moronification of signatures) asks me about my signature
>I reply "I don't think it's appropriate to talk about these things at work - please just respects my pronouns"
> This person goes mad, accusing me of mocking the pronouns
> I think "Fuck it. No way for her to prove it", and step to HR to complain
> Colleague is being asked to stop her questioning (and gets her first official warning), but still brings it up two more times
> I go to HR again, she gets her second official warning
> I'm enjoying that this moronic shit is now biting the proponents in their ass
> Again, she's alluding to my pronouns not being genuine during a meeting
> I make a big scene of it (lulz), and HR gets involved again
> Last Friday was her last day.
LOL"

In a single decade, trans “feel this way” has triumphed over gay “born this way” - "somehow transgender activists have managed to accomplish what a generation of Christian political voices were utterly unable to do. They are defeating the once-proud gay movement, not by a societal sermon from without, but by imploding it from within. Transgenderism relies on the presumption that sex distinctions don't really exist; or at least that there is no binary. There is no one who can be considered "fully male" or "fully female," but rather just gender nomads fitting somewhere on society's sliding scale of identity. But rather than thoughtfully following that outrageous claim to its logical end, most gay activists still perceive conservatives as their biggest enemy, and remain blind to the Trojan Horse they have permitted within their movement's walls. Today, in increasing intensity, that horse is emptying its devious contents inside the gay rights crusade and collapsing it from the inside out."

Meme - Ben Appel @benappel: "I was not all prepared for LGBT rights groups, activists, and so many others to start advocating for the transitioning of gays and lesbians and for the erasure of homosexuality." Wesley Yang @wesyang: "It's really just cultural churn for the purposes of sustaining the appearance of "progress" in order to keep an activist class employed - cannibalizing prior subjects of progressive movements in the process"
The "myth" of the slippery slope strikes again

Midwifery students being taught how to help men give birth - "Midwifery students are being taught how to help men give birth in a textbook that experts have warned is rife with anatomical fiction.  Edinburgh Napier University told training midwives that they may be caring for a “birthing person” who has male genitalia and a prostate gland, in a bid to support transgender people.   A module guide on how to provide safe care in childbirth told students: “It is important to note that while most times the birthing person will have female genitalia, you may be caring for a pregnant or birthing person who is transitioning from male to female and may still have external male genitalia.  “You need to be familiar with the catheterisation procedure for both female and male anatomy. For this reason, where appropriate, this book refers to the birthing person.”... Midwifery students were advised that “male persons should be warned of discomfort as the deflated balloon passes through the prostate gland”, a part of anatomy that is only found in biological males.  This prompted a backlash from students at the university, one of only three Scottish institutions recognised by the Nursing and Midwifery Council for undergraduate midwifery courses, as it is impossible for men to get pregnant or give birth.   On Thursday night, experts criticised the guide as “inclusive to the point of nonsense” and warned that the simplification of procedures risked dangerous practices.   Prof Geraldine Walters, the executive director of professional practice at the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the regulator, told The Telegraph: “This workbook includes some clear inaccuracies in its current form. We’d expect the university to review and correct this.”  Kat Barber, the co-founder of the Sex Not Gender Nurses and Midwives group, added: “Women can’t have prostates, that's quite straight forward, so this policy reads to me as though it is inclusive to the point of nonsense."...   “What's more concerning is that the students have had to take to journalism to ask questions about it, which tells me a lot about the state that our nursing and midwifery institutions are in, who should be able to ask questions.”  A student backlash when the guide was released late last month led to course leaders apologising for “wording being the wrong way round”. They said they were referring to a trans man who “has surgery to construct a penis, but still has a uterus and may conceive”.  However, The Telegraph understands that the wording of the guide has not been changed and the university on Thursday stood by it.   Elaine Miller, a fellow of the Chartered Society for Physiotherapy, raised concern about scientific accuracy even for female-to-male transitioners, given the lack of evidence on those who undergo a phalloplasty to create a penis and wish to give birth.  She told Reduxx, the feminist website which first reported the guide: “A [female] with a gender difference can become pregnant but will not have male genitalia.  “Most [females] who use testosterone, at the doses used for ‘transition,’ will develop vaginal atrophy. The fragile tissue of an atrophied vagina may be unable to stretch to accommodate a baby’s head,” warning of “new types of birth injury” which have not been studied...   Debbie Hayton, a teacher who is a transgender woman, added: “Somebody needs to wake up - this is crazy. I think language is the issue - people who should know better are signing this off because they don’t want to upset people.”"

Meme - "We must stop disinformation" - pregnant man

Meme - Reddit Lies: "Teachers discusses how to "crack an egg" which, in this context, literally means #grooming a child. They suggest not telling her parents because it may "hinder the child's cracking" and scheduling a 1-on-1 summer trip with her. The subreddit is currently set to private"

Links - 19th July 2022 (2 - General Wokeness [including trigger warnings])

Facebook - "Race has never been represented on the #PrideFlag because it's not about race. We have racial issues in the #LGBTQCommunity, but they have nothing to do with our flag and changing its colors does nothing to resolve those issues. We can do better than this. #DontRacializeOurFlag ✊"

Wake Up, Singapore - Posts | Facebook - ""If we allow it to, queerness can free us all. Queer kinship can teach us to take care of each other beyond narrow notions of family. Queerness is life-affirming, gorgeous, revolutionary, and irreverent to authority – and I want us to never forget it. We do not request for our freedom, we do not plead for acceptance, we do not wait for approval. We do not surrender our bodies and relationships to state regulation. We do not need to bargain with the architects of our oppression. Your dignity and mine are non-negotiable." Kokila Annamalai, a community organiser, delivered a moving speech at Pink Dot 14 that touched the hearts of many attendees. In her speech, she shared her dreams for the queer movement."
The tension within Pink Dot (inoffensiveness to do a bait and switch on moderates vs strident activism) has been breaking through for a while but this might be the most extreme manifestation of it yet

UK's first female suicide bomb plotter, 37, planned to blow up St Paul's at Easter to 'kill as many as possible' - "Safiyya Amira Shaikh, 37, carried out a trip to the City of London to scope out St Paul's as a potential target while staying in a hotel... Shaikh became radicalised in 2015 after converting to Islam in 2007 following an act of kindness from a neighbouring Muslim family. Christened Michelle Ramsden, she became isolated from her family during her conversion."
Damn racism and white supremacy!

Trigger Warnings Are Trivially Helpful at Reducing Negative Affect, Intrusive Thoughts, and Avoidance - "These results suggest a trigger warning is neither meaningfully helpful nor harmful."
But then trigger warnings are really about controlling other people and virtue signalling rather than helping anyone
Comment: "Trigger warnings are just a surface feature of the real problem, which is the systematic infantilisation of young adults. The more we protect people from discomfort, the more fragile they become."

Trigger warning: Empirical evidence ahead - "Trigger warnings increase peoples' perceived emotional vulnerability to trauma.
    Trigger warnings increase peoples' belief that trauma survivors are vulnerable.
    Trigger warnings increase anxiety to written material perceived as harmful."

Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals With Trauma Histories - "Trigger warnings alert trauma survivors about potentially disturbing forthcoming content. However, empirical studies on trigger warnings suggest that they are functionally inert or cause small adverse side effects. We conducted a preregistered replication and extension of a previous experiment. Trauma survivors (N = 451) were randomly assigned to either receive or not to receive trigger warnings before reading passages from world literature. We found no evidence that trigger warnings were helpful for trauma survivors, for participants who self-reported a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis, or for participants who qualified for probable PTSD, even when survivors’ trauma matched the passages’ content. We found substantial evidence that trigger warnings countertherapeutically reinforce survivors’ view of their trauma as central to their identity. Regarding replication hypotheses, the evidence was either ambiguous or substantially favored the hypothesis that trigger warnings have no effect. In summary, we found that trigger warnings are not helpful for trauma survivors."

The latest study on trigger warnings finally convinced me they’re not worth it. - "“Cognitive avoidance is really counterproductive,” psychologist Darby Saxbe told Katy Waldman for a 2016 Slate story on the then-current science of trigger warnings, a point Jones also made to me. I know this extremely well from my days avoiding public speaking: Having an anxious reaction, and living to tell the tale, is actually an important part of learning to live with one’s brain. That’s not to say that people who have experienced trauma should be left on their own to have that panicked response and just get over it. “Rather than issuing trigger warnings, universities can best serve students by facilitating access to effective and proven treatments for P.T.S.D. and other mental health problems,” Richard McNally, a Harvard psychologist and co-author on the paper with Jones, wrote in the New York Times in 2016. He argued that emotional reactions to assigned readings were “a signal that students need to prioritize their mental health and obtain evidence-based, cognitive-behavioral therapies that will help them overcome P.T.S.D.” In other words, if you feel you need a trigger warning, maybe what you really need is better medical care... There are other problems with trigger warnings. Even if they did work, how would we go about issuing them for all possible triggers? Different people have different triggers, which are based on personal experiences and may or may not be connected to what the average person considers disturbing or explicit. “My experience is that the audience can do a better job than I can at figuring out what kind of content will upset them by reading the headline than I ever could randomly guessing what blog posts count as triggering,” Amanda Marcotte wrote in Slate in 2013"

Trauma and sex surveys meet minimal risk standards: implications for institutional review boards - "Institutional review boards assume that questionnaires asking about "sensitive" topics (e.g., trauma and sex) pose more risk to respondents than seemingly innocuous measures (e.g., cognitive tests). We tested this assumption by asking 504 undergraduates to answer either surveys on trauma and sex or measures of cognitive ability, such as tests of vocabulary and abstract reasoning. Participants rated their positive and negative emotional reactions and the perceived benefits and mental costs of participating; they also compared their study-related distress with the distress arising from normal life stressors. Participants who completed trauma and sex surveys, relative to participants who completed cognitive measures, rated the study as resulting in higher positive affect and as having greater perceived benefits and fewer mental costs. Although participants who completed trauma and sex surveys reported slightly higher levels of negative emotion than did participants who completed cognitive measures, averages were very low for both groups, and outliers were rare. All participants rated each normal life stressor as more distressing than participating in the study. These results suggest that trauma and sex surveys pose minimal risk."x
Trigger warnings are about power, not preventing harm, after all

Trigger warnings and resilience in college students: A preregistered replication and extension. - "Trigger warnings notify people that content they are about to engage with may result in adverse emotional consequences. An experiment by Bellet, Jones, and McNally (2018) indicated that trigger warnings increased the extent to which trauma-naïve crowd-sourced participants see themselves and others as emotionally vulnerable to potential future traumas but did not have a significant main effect on anxiety responses to distressing literature passages. However, they did increase anxiety responses for participants who strongly believed that words can harm. In this article, we present a preregistered replication of this study in a college student sample, using Bayesian statistics to estimate the success of each effect’s replication. We found strong evidence that none of the previously significant effects replicated. However, we found substantial evidence that trigger warnings’ previously nonsignificant main effect of increasing anxiety responses to distressing content was genuine, albeit small"
Doesn't change the finding that they are either useless or counter-productive

Trigger warnings for abuse impact reading comprehension in students with histories of abuse - "Results: Results showed that students did not differ in their selection of TW-labeled and unlabeled articles. Students with a history of interpersonal violence, however, showed significantly poorer reading comprehension of a TW-labeled article than those who read the same article but denied such histories (p = .004). Conclusions: Results did not support the concern that students may use TWs to avoid content but did support the concern that use of TWs may result in deleterious effects counter to their intended purpose."

University demands people stop saying 'trigger warning' because it's too triggering - "Brandeis University has issued new language that they suggest be used because the previous terms were too offensive, oppressive, and violent. Among those terms to obliterate is the phrase "trigger warning." As alternatives to "trigger warning," which is itself a term that was invented to make college students feel safe in class, Brandeis suggests the phrases "content note" or "drop-in" be used. "The word 'trigger,'" they write, "has connections to guns for many people; we can give the same head's up using language less connected to violence." In addition to "trigger warning," the Prevention, Advocacy and Resource Center has made a list of "violent language" that they suggest be removed utterly from a person's vocabulary. The phrase Orwellian comes to mind, and likely they would say that, too, is an oppressive descriptor of their "oppressive language list."... "Killing it," they note, is not okay because "If someone is doing well, we don't need to equate that to murder!" Brandeis suggests that "great job" or "awesome" be used instead. Both "take a shot at" and "take a stab at" are no good either, because "These expressions needlessly use imagery of hurting someone or something." Instead, try "give it a go," or simply "try."  Among the other metaphors and creative language that Brandeis wants to simplify, dumb-down, and make less offensive to whoever is actually offended or oppressed by these phrases, are "rule of thumb," because they say that "This expression comes from an old British law allowing men to beat their wives with sticks no wider than their thumb."... "Picnic" is not good either, and Brandeis wants people to say "outdoor eating," because picnics are racist. They write: "The term picnic is often associated with lynchings of Black people in the United States, during which white spectators were said to have watched while eating, referring to them as picnics or other terms involving racial slurs against Black people."... Even "long time no see" and "no can do" are out, because "These terms as well as other expressions using broken English originate from stereotypes making fun of non-native English speakers, particularly applied to indigenous people and Asians."... Many of the terms Brandeis condemns to the linguistic dust-bin, however, were themselves the kinder, gentler alternative. They state that "committed suicide" is not a good phrase, and it should be replaced by "died by suicide," or "killed themself," even though the phrase "killed themself" was replaced by "committed suicide" when it was believed to be kinder to say the latter than the former. This is literally a reversal. They state that "Language that doesn't say what we mean can often serve to avoid directly addressing what we really need to say. Using euphemisms, vagueness, and inaccurate words can get in the way of meaningful dialogue; PARC encourages you to be transparent around what you mean." What they are really saying is to speak with terms that are precise to what they want you to mean, regardless of what you actually are meaning to say... Instead of identifying a person as a "victim," or "survivor," which progressive linguistics authoritarians have previously told us are the appropriate terms, Brandeis wants us now to be more specific, and to say "person who has experienced" a given thing, as opposed to identifying a person by their trauma or other status."
I once said that my trigger was the term trigger warning.
The "rule of thumb" is an urban legend but facts don't matter - only feelings

Correlates of “Coddling”: Cognitive distortions predict safetyism-inspired beliefs, belief that words can harm, and trigger warning endorsement in college students - "In their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Lukianoff and Haidt (2018) contended that the rise of “safetyism” within American society has inspired beliefs and practices that hinder college students' socioemotional development. One of their most controversial claims was that college students' safetyism-inspired beliefs (e.g., emotional pain or discomfort is dangerous) are rooted in and supported by cognitive distortions, or negatively biased patterns of thought (e.g., emotional reasoning). Citing evocative anecdotes, they argued that such distortions emerge in students' perceptions of offensive or ideologically-challenging experiences as disproportionately harmful or traumatic. However, no empirical work has substantiated an association between cognitive distortions and safetyism-inspired beliefs or practices. In a large (N = 786), ethnically and economically diverse sample of college students, we conducted the first examination of the relationship between these variables. Aligning with Lukianoff and Haidt's assertions, we found that students' self-reported prevalence of cognitive distortions positively predicted their endorsement of safetyism-inspired beliefs, the belief that words can harm, and support for the broad use of trigger warnings. Considering our exploratory results, we argue that greater empirical scrutiny of safetyism-inspired beliefs and practices is warranted before such customs become more widely adopted."
Cognitive distortions linked to safetyism beliefs, support for trigger warnings, and the belief that words are harmful - "Results suggest an association between higher cognitive distortion scores and higher safetyism-inspired beliefs. There, too, was an association between higher cognitive distortion scores and the stronger belief that words are harmful. Higher conflict avoidance, higher social liberalism, and higher economic liberalism were all associated with greater safetyism-inspired beliefs as well. On the other hand, greater safetyism-inspired beliefs were associated with lower resilience and lower analytic thinking. Some exploratory mediation analyses indicated cognitive distortions may predict increased support for trigger warning support through the increase of safetyism-inspired beliefs and through the belief that words can harm"

Trigger Warnings and Mass Psychogenic Illness - "Schools appear to be the most common venue for psychogenic outbreaks, perhaps because a population concentrated in a tight setting makes an ideal conductor... the trigger-warning movement... also creates a state of emergency, draws its power from shared beliefs, and blames injurious effects on phantom causes (such as words on the page). It’s because of the recognized fallacies of hunting for the deep-seated “cause” of our mental ills that the makers of the diagnostic system used to classify psychiatric disorders in the United States—a taxonomy introduced in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980—specifically refrained from making causal attributions. For the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (also introduced in 1980) they made an exception, however. By definition, PTSD is caused by a trauma or “stressor.” Over time, and contrary to the intent of the original designers of the diagnosis, the lowering of the diagnostic threshold made it possible to claim that events well within the scope of common experience set off PTSD. As the chair of the group that drew up the original criteria for PTSD, Nancy Andreasen, noted in 2010, the concept of PTSD following its instatement in the DSM was “steadily broadened by clinicians to include milder stressors that were not intended for inclusion. . . . The diagnosis, assumed to be relatively rare in peacetime, became much more common.” Could those who crafted the diagnosis of PTSD with Vietnam veterans in mind have foreseen the day in 2014 when students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, passed a resolution calling on professors to alert them in advance to material “that may trigger the onset of symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”? A provocative synonym for “cause,” the verb “trigger” as used here and elsewhere by the movement that adopted it exemplifies the beliefs about causality that drive a psychogenic outbreak. Much as illness raced through the Tennessee high school not as a result of a toxic exposure but because those affected got swept up in a frenzy of imitation, demands for trigger warnings raced from coast to coast in recent years in a kind of epidemic manner... While a trigger warning in theory guards against trauma, it has the actual effect of multiplying claims of trauma by students who are primed to expect it and have a ready-made lexicon to describe both its effects and the outrages that bring it on. Elsewhere I’ve discussed the process of “disease-mongering” by which normal experiences like transient depression come to be defined, diagnosed, treated, popularized, and perhaps even suffered as disorders. (See, for example, The Nocebo Effect: Overdiagnosis and Its Costs [Palgrave Macmillan, 2015].)  The trigger-warning movement brands and propagates “trauma” in the same way, making it possible to portray even a work as non-inflammatory as The Great Gatsby as dangerous to the psyche of the reader. While the distress of the aggrieved students is real, so was the distress of the Tennesseans who found themselves in the ER as a result of exposure to an agent that didn’t exist. If words on the page have as little power to inflict deep and lasting wounds as an imaginary toxin, then how do they come to be magnified into an existential threat? Possibly the trigger-warning movement itself lends them a virulence they don’t otherwise possess... So much duplication of behavior took place that, in the words of the NEJM authors, symptoms seemed to spread by “contagion”—sociological contagion, that is. For what it’s worth, the medical literature refers to the event inciting such an outbreak as a trigger... While doctors on hand during psychogenic outbreaks tell “war stories” about them and count the costs of the “disruption to the community” (as the NEJM authors put it), the proponents of trigger warnings seek to disrupt the community, just as they aim to impose their own sort of martial law, in which ordinary liberties like respect for the beliefs of others are suspended... a movement intended to give students a sense of security has perversely inflamed their fears."

SJSU bans 'Spartan Up' gesture for resembling a white power hand gesture - "The “Spartan Up” hand gesture will be retired as a San Jose State University tradition because it closely resembles the “white power” hand gesture, SJSU President Mary Papazian announced... Tuite said when the gesture was misinterpreted as an OK sign and not the proper gesture, the improper sign created a division on campus."

Meme - "i knew miss elastigirl was too gorgeous to be straight here's she waving at a woman in the new trailer 2018 IS A GAYS ONLY EVENT"
"Why are all like this"
"SHE'S HAPPILY MARRIED WITH A LOVING AND SUPPORTING HUSBAND AND HAS 3 FUCKING KIDS"
"Ladies, is it gay to smile at another woman?"
"That's not even a woman, that's a LITTLE GIRL. Is this really the hill y'all wanna die on?"

Sears: Criminals Don't End up in Nice Neighborhoods of 'Woke People' Who Let Them Out, Woke Should Help Those They 'Claim to Help' - "Virginia Lt. Gov Winsome Sears (R) said that “we have woke people letting the criminals out” but those criminals don’t end up going to the neighborhoods that woke people live in because the woke crowd lives in nice areas and can afford private security, and urged the woke people to actually help those that they “claim to help and to love more than anybody else.”"

Teen changing identity constantly - "I need some help gaining perspective on my 15-year-old child’s whiplash approach to gender and sexuality. For the last three years, they have been on a journey with regard to their sexuality, declaring and changing identities one every few weeks or months, even when those identities have been both contradictory (how can one be both asexual and polyamorous?) and hypothetical (my kid isn’t dating and hasn’t dated). They are committed to being anything but cisgender and hetero, and that identity—whatever it turns out to be—appears from their actions and words to be the central part of their sense of self. They spent a lot of time on queer wikis, looking up new possible identities. They avidly “ship” fictional characters into same-sex couples, express anger/disappointment when shows/books have hetero couples, and talk constantly about LGBTQIA issues, representation, etc... In the last two weeks, my kid has changed their name once and pronouns twice, colored their hair, worn exaggeratedly feminine eye makeup, pinned their hair up to look masculine, purchased a bikini and a dress and then asked me to buy them a binder (because they think it would be “fun” to look like a boy sometimes). At this point, it feels like they’re trying on identities like costumes, and that makes me very uncomfortable. None of it feels authentic—it seems more like a bid to stand out in a crowd or perhaps to find the limits of my acceptance."
Clearly a bigot
The response is that kids try on identities like costumes and that's normal for adolescence. Weird. I thought that kids know their sexuality from a young age, and we must take people's proclamations about their sexualities at face value

White private school boys are the new disadvantaged, says Cambridge academic | News | The Times - "Professor David Abulafia said that the culture wars had made being “white”, “male” and “privileged” terms of disapproval in university admissions. He claimed that white boys from outstanding private schools were going to Durham, St Andrews and Bristol if rejected by their first choice Oxbridge colleges, rather than being given places in the pooled system where they could be picked up by other colleges. Some were heading to Ivy League universities and might never return to Britain... Abulafia, a historian and fellow of Gonville and Caius College, recommended removing school names from university application forms to avoid any perceived prejudice against the privately educated. He wrote in The Spectator: “It is vital to remember that admitting students is all about individuals. University admissions have become another site for culture wars in which ‘white’, ‘male’ and ‘privileged’ are terms of disapproval, linked together to justify injustice... teachers at Eton College were puzzled by the sharp reduction in the number of pupils gaining places at Oxbridge, which halved between 2014 and last year. This coincided with an increase in the number of teenagers with top A-level grades from ambitious state school sixth forms targeting Oxford and Cambridge. Stephen Toope, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, told The Times Education Commission last week that “we have to make it very, very clear we are intending to reduce over time the number of people who are coming from independent school backgrounds into places like Oxford or Cambridge”. Abulafia claimed that this had been “going on for a long time but has simply become more obvious in the past few years” as university’s state school targets crept up. He insisted that snobbery at Oxbridge was “long gone” and that entrance interviews were based on academic discussion. However, he said candidates who had performed better in thinking skills assessments (TSAs) were being turned away in favour of state school applicants with lower scores."

French food is ‘expression of white privilege’ | World | The Times - "A law professor has suggested that France’s food is racist. A video of Mathilde Cohen, discussing “food whiteness” at a seminar organised by the elite Sciences Po and Nanterre University outside Paris, has provoked consternation in France, where cuisine is seen as a cornerstone of the national identity... “eating culture ... has been the central means of racial and ethnic identity formation through slavery, colonialism, and immigration. The whiteness of French food is all the more powerful in that it is unnamed, enabling the racial majority to benefit from food privileges without having to acknowledge their racial origin.” David Abiker, a journalist, reflected on her comments with irony. On Radio Classique he called on the French to take the knee in their kitchens and to “beat themselves with their whisks”."
Liberals hate their countries after all

Mount Everest is too white, black climbers claim | World | The Times - "A team of black mountain climbers is attempting to climb Everest to tackle what one member described as the sport’s “colonial history”."

‘Quince challenged me’: how to cook, eat and enjoy seven of the world’s most difficult fruits - "No list of difficult fruit would be complete without the durian, the fruit that – while popular in south-east Asia – smells terrible and tastes like onion custard to the western palate. Lebo persevered with durians, only to throw up her hands and admit that she would never truly enjoy eating them. Part of that was cultural, although she wanted to be absolutely sure that she wasn’t adding to the wealth of “white people who might try it, say, ‘This is disgusting’, exoticise it and then discard it”. Eventually, she blended it with condensed milk and popped it into an ice-cream maker. “Arguably delicious,” she says of the results."
White guilt means you must eat food you find disgusting

Meme - "When Foucault was in Tunisia in the late 1960s, he regularly raped boys aged roughly 8- to 10- years-old on the gravestones at a local cemetery, according to Guy Sorman, who met Foucault and saw him paying the children to arrange this."
"Also well known that after his HIV diagnosis he continued to have sex with men in bath houses. (Keep in mind that this is the most cited scholar of all time)"

'Captain Underpants' book pulled over allegations of 'passive racism' - "A new "Captain Underpants" title, "The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future", has been aggressively pulled from shelves by its publisher, Scholastic, amid allegations of what is being called "passive racism"... In the Book, the two protagonists, Ook and Gluk, travel forward in time from prehistoric days to the year 2222, where they meet "Master Wong", who is a martial arts instructor. Master Wong trains the pair so that they can go back in time and "save the day.""

18-Year-Old Trying To File Her Taxes Wishing Her Teachers Had Spent Less Class Time On Polyqueer Trans Theory | The Babylon Bee - "Jones dug up her old notes from her high school economics class, but only found page after page on critical gender theory and a section on the systemic oppression of evil, colonizing arithmetic and its triggering effects on polygender people who bleed.  She sighed and rubbed her head.   "Well, at least I'll be able to get into Harvard.""

Television Channel In Spain's Valencia Region Refuses To Air Dragon Ball Due To Law Prohibiting “Content That Encourages Gender Discrimination Through Stereotypes And Sexist Roles” - "following a vocal fan campaign requesting that the requesting that the government-owned television channel À Punt air the series, Valencia Deputy of Compromís Mónica Àlvaro asked whether “the General Directorate of the Sociedad Anónima de Medios de Comunicación [planned] to incorporate into the regional channel À Punt the drawings of Bola de Drac in Valencia?”...   Despite their belief that Dragon Ball promotes sexism and gender discrimination (in a series featuring, of all characters, Bulma, without whom Earth and the universe at large would have been destroyed a dozen times over), neither the Valencian government nor À Punt Mèdia have provided any specific instances of such content to support their rejection of the series from broadcast."

L.A. Official: U.S. Should 'Make Amends,' Return Land to Black Families - "Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn said Friday that it is time for the U.S. to “make amends” with black families in America by returning land their ancestors owned which was taken from them."
The only thing more important than the public good (served through eminent domain) is anti-racism. Clearly only white people's land should be taken

‘Yellowstone’ Prequel ‘1883’ Dominates Ratings Despite Critic Calling It, ‘Family Values Conservatism’ - "the reviewer gives “1883” a D+, concluding that, “stories of those who sought better futures are certainly worth telling; a problem is that they’ve been chronically incomplete. And in what has been described as a global historical reckoning, as statues and monuments to racism, colonization, and legacies of injustice continue to fall around the world, ‘1883’ just feels like a series out of time.”  It’s a sentiment that’s likely shared across Hollywood, but with the audience that “Yellowstone” and “1883” command, it’s clear that the general public has a different take on classic Westerns. “1883” currently has an 88% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s also rated as 86% fresh."

Opinion | This Is How Biden Should Approach the Latino Vote - The New York Times - "We began by asking eligible voters how “convincing” they found a dog-whistle message lifted from Republican talking points. Among other elements, the message condemned “illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs” and called for “fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.”  Almost three out of five white respondents judged the message convincing. More surprising, exactly the same percentage of African-Americans agreed, as did an even higher percentage of Latinos... Democrats should call for Americans to unite against the strategic racism of powerful elites who stoke division and then run the country for their own benefit"
This is rich. If you don't support illegal immigration and drugs, want to fund the police and people to follow the law, you are racist. And given that Democrats are the ones using strategic racism to stoke division and run the country for their own benefit...

Gay Couple Was Denied I.V.F. Benefits. They Say That’s Discriminatory. - The New York Times - "A same-sex married couple said in a complaint filed Tuesday that the City of New York discriminated against them in denying them in vitro fertilization coverage under the city’s insurance plan for employees.  The couple, Nicholas Maggipinto, 36, and Corey Briskin, 33, claim the policy discriminates against them based on their sex and sexual orientation and that if they were female or in a heterosexual relationship they would have access to the I.V.F. benefits that city employees are entitled to. Mr. Briskin was, until recently, an assistant district attorney.  Under the city’s insurance benefits policy, a covered person is only eligible for such services when they are deemed infertile. The policy defines infertility as the inability to conceive after “12 months of unprotected intercourse,” or intrauterine insemination — a procedure that inserts sperm directly inside a uterus — for a period of time."
Biology is discriminatory and homophobic
Then again, since some men can get pregnant, the policy doesn't discriminate against men. And since it covers homosexual women, it doesn't discriminate against homosexuals either

Welcome to the woke age of cinema - where 'historical dramas' peddle revisionist lies - "Even five years ago, it would have been hard to argue with a straight face that a film about a 19th century lady fossil scientist stood as a symbol of one of the great and most menacing social ills of our time.   Well, welcome to 2021, a year that – while promising in other ways – seems destined to build on the horrors of its predecessor where woke hegemony and its penchant for ceaseless propaganda, distortion and revisionism are concerned.  It has long been obvious that we are living in an age in which historical accuracy has been superseded by the demands of a raging fixation with identity politics and political correctness. But what is becoming freshly apparent is the growing role that TV and film – most of it made by people who have drunk deeply from the trough of woke kool aid – are playing in distorting the past... The film is meant to be about Mary Anning, the 19th century paleontologist (played by Winslet) who made groundbreaking fossil discoveries on the Jurassic Coast. She is a fascinating, totally unsung woman, the story of whose discoveries alone could easily have carried a brilliant, enriching film.  All of this was ignored by Francis Lee, the film-maker, who chose instead to focus not just on Anning’s sex life but on an entirely speculative, seemingly fabricated lesbianism with geologist Charlotte Murchison (Ronan). Lee himself is smug about the “storm” this decision has caused, proud of how he has put one in the eye of homophobic western culture and historical tradition. Odd, then, that he seems blind to the fact that he – a man –  has usurped and misconstrued the life of the only significant female paleontologist in history in favour of titillation...   But Ammonite is just the latest in a growing line of such output. Dickinson, a 2019 drama about Emily Dickinson, featured the famously reclusive 19th century poet as sexually fluid – she actually twerks in one scene. Meanwhile Jamestown, about 17th century settlers in America, had young wives demanding an end to rape, and Hulu’s 2020 drama about Catherine the Great didn’t bother with history at all. Who cares, you may ask? Well, Jamestown or Dickinson alone might not change the course of historical understanding. But other shows will – and have. Take The Crown and Bridgerton, both watched by tens of millions of Netflix subscribers last year. The Crown was based on living characters and real events that most people dimly recognised, so it appeared to be history. Even so, it manipulated reality – and the extraordinary achievements of Margaret Thatcher – in accordance with the politics of Peter Morgan, its maker. Bridgerton, meanwhile, was a costume romp but encouraged viewers to “learn”, misleadingly, that Queen Charlotte was black and that history has been racist in portraying the Regency court as largely white, which it was.    History is under siege everywhere from university classes to museum exhibits – and newspapers of the most respectable hue. In 2019, the New York Times launched its 1619 project, an attempt to rescript American history so that it revolves around the date the first slaves were imported, and comes to supersede 1776, the date of American independence. The year 1619 is indeed a terrible and important one, but it’s not where American history starts – and ends." So much for art's duty to portray reality. Of course, its duty to promote liberal gospel is more important