Links - 10th July 2023 (1)

How to Unblock Reddit in Indonesia? [TUTORIAL] - "Reddit, a popular community and discussion platform, has been under a strict ban under the Indonesian "Healthy Internet" (Internet Sehat) Program. It was an effort to protect Indonesians from explicit content and pirated media. The problem with this restriction is that not all websites are wholly explicit or cause moral damage. In the case of Reddit, there were only countable subreddits with explicit content, but the whole of Reddit got blocked in Indonesia."

Arjun Singh: Left wing values have invaded Canada's legal system and diminished our charter rights - "one would expect the courts, upon petition, to step in and stop government overreach, being the constitution’s supposedly “non-partisan” referees. Until 1986, in Canada, that was true — until left-wing jurists, after rewriting the law, captured the judiciary that interpreted them. That year the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision by Trudeau appointees, established the Oakes Test in R. v. Oakes to determine what restrictions on charter rights were “reasonable.” Among others, it allowed the curbing of charter freedoms in the name of “a commitment to social justice and equality” and “respect for cultural and group identity.” With this decision, a faction of activist judges — seeing the constitution as a ‘living tree’ to be pruned without the people’s consent — reset the foundations of freedom overnight, bending them towards progressive politics. Instead of having minimal restraints for public order, all charter freedoms could now be legally impeded in the name of contested left-wing concepts like “social justice” and protecting “group identity.”  Worse, neither did the court define what these terms meant, enabling the left — via its dominance of social science academia — to influence their meanings, suiting the moment’s political objectives. As its late Chief Justice, Antonio Lamer, himself said, Section 1 empowered judges to “make essentially … a political call.” In effect, the constitutional “referees” changed the rules mid-game, to ensure their side would always win.  Thus, with Oakes, the dangers of Section 1 were fully unleashed, and have since beat a toll on Canadians’ civil liberties — capturing our constitution for the supremacy of “woke” social mores. “Whoever would overthrow a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech,” said Benjamin Franklin; and, true to form, it was one of the first casualties. In the Keegstra and Andrews decisions, the Supreme Court used Section 1 to allow the criminalization of speech “inciting hatred” — an ambiguous offence, at best, which effectively curbs free speech for the sake of hurt feelings. Once more, in the Little Sisters case, Section 1 rubber-stamped the Chretien Liberals’ banning of LGBTQ books’ import for their “obscenity.” This spate has continued, with governments and courts in concert over the years using Section 1 to curb the presumption of innocence until proven guilty (R. v. Stone), conservatives’ participation in elections (Harper v. Canada) and, most recently, to ban travel by citizens during COVID-19 (Taylor v. The Queen).  In defending such overreach on the charter, the progressive establishment has often asserted the notion of “collective rights” as the reason for restraining individuals, e.g., “safe spaces” precluding free speech to avoid public offence. There are few greater absurdities than this; “rights” exist to protect individuals and minorities from tyranny of the majority, which — with strength in numbers — needs no further safety in a democracy. By claiming a “collective right” of any kind, the Canadian left turns the very notion of rights on its head. It is legal fiction at best, and a neo-Marxist praxis at worst — a desperate attempt to stir up “class conflict” between the majority and minority where none ought to exist.  In the future, it’s highly likely that Section 1 will be used again to uphold encroachments upon citizens’ rights — from vaccine passports to online censorship (e.g., Bill C-10) and others. Canadians must, hence, stand on guard for thee and expunge this threat — regardless of the high bar for constitutional change. If Section 1 is the end of charter rights, we must end it, first."

Carson Jerema: Pierre Poilievre listens to the alienated — his unhinged critics can't handle that - "Pierre Poilievre deserves credit, not opprobrium, for his willingness to speak and listen to those who are feeling angry and alienated, rather than immediately dismissing their concerns as illegitimate. This sometimes leads him down a path where he risks turning himself into a populist caricature, but providing a mainstream avenue to channel this anger is undoubtedly better than letting it fester.  For Poilievre’s most unhinged critics, this is too much of a deviation. His opposition to vaccine mandates and empathy for vaccine refusers somehow disqualifies him for high office, despite it being the identical position held by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a year ago. Rather than question why a certain segment of the population is so untrusting of political institutions, Poilievre’s detractors cast him and his supporters as grave threats to Canada itself... Mason captures what passes for much of the criticism levelled against Poilievre — namely, that he’s not only wrong or over-the-top, but that he’s a dangerous harbinger of violence.  This ignores the fact that angry conspiracy-addled protesters long predate Poilievre’s leadership campaign and have been increasingly common throughout the pandemic. As Mason notes himself, rocks were thrown at Trudeau during the federal election last fall...  the more Poilievre is scolded, especially with zanier arguments like Mason’s, for having the gall to listen to people who are angry, the more it reinforces their sense of exclusion... Poilievre’s most ardent opponents are not content to challenge his views or his wisdom. Instead, they insist on doing the political equivalent of drawing horns and a tail on his picture and pretending he is actually the devil, and acting shocked when others don’t buy it...   What Poilievre does better than most anyone else is to correctly identify the source of people’s discontent. He is not speaking in abstractions about making the world a better place when he talks about housing prices, the carbon tax, inflation or civil liberties. People clearly feel that he is articulating their very real frustrations and unrealized dreams. Trust in our institutions have been declining for years and during the pandemic just about every public institution failed Canadians: a brittle health-care system under constant threat of collapse; long-term care homes where thousands died needlessly; politicians who took away people’s livelihoods and ordered them to stay away from friends and family, without any plan beyond lockdowns; a court system that moved much too slowly and, when it did, sided with the government as if civil rights don’t exist; and soaring inflation rates devaluing paycheques as a direct result of federal government policies and Bank of Canada failures.  This doesn’t excuse the intensity of the anger out there, but that it is there is hardly surprising.  When institutions fail as badly as they have in recent years, why do they still deserve reverence? Why is only polite disagreement acceptable?   Demanding they work as advertised, even doing so crudely, and breaking deferential norms, should not be considered taboo. If public institutions are so fragile that they cannot withstand Poilievre’s bombast, that is only further proof of their failure."
To liberals, deplorables need to be ignored

Conrad Black: Poilievre has a real chance to break the Liberal status quo — and that has his enemies trembling - "The political establishment of Canada has been thoroughly addicted to a gelatinous soft-leftishness that permeates the political media, most public policy discussion, the entire public service and most conventional political wisdom in the country, to the point where it is, to say the least, monotonous. Poilievre’s professed respect for, and pursuit of, liberty frustrates them, as no one can attack liberty as a concept, and Poilievre is both sincere and agile in his defence of it. To the extent that Poilievre threatens some change to the comfortable Liberal status quo built on durable advantages in Quebec and urban Ontario, Poilievre renders the political establishment uneasy. And they respond in the only way they know — by slinging muck at him, attempting to paint him as an extremist and an uncaring person. This is very tiresome and it is also somewhat imitative of the extraordinary decline in the quality of public discourse in the United States... During Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s time in office, average per capita GDP growth has been less than half the average of the Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper years; and in the Justin Trudeau years, Canadian investment in foreign countries has exceeded foreign investment in Canada by about $400 billion. We are propelling ourselves over a cliff to second-rate status among the world’s nations."
Nowadays liberty is considered a far right, white supremacist concept by the left, so

The non-scandal over Poilievre's YouTube tags and our contempt for men - "An invisible search engine optimization tag that was promptly removed from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s YouTube videos after its discovery doesn’t amount to a scandal. The attempt to spin it into one, however, reveals society’s contempt for men and a collective inability to cope with criticism of feminism. Global News reported earlier this month that, since 2018, the Conservative leader’s online videos had been tagged with “#mgtow,” which stands for “men going their own way.” It refers to a loose movement of men online who choose to avoid relationships with women and focus on self-improvement instead. Poilievre’s office has since condemned the movement and removed the tags... MGTOW originated on Reddit...  The Reddit ban would hold more significance if other communities faced similar consequences, but they don’t. The site’s radical feminist dating advice community, for example, often objectifies men while airing frustrations about relationship failures. Similarly, MGTOW commonly included discussions about marriage breakdowns and divorce. They’re more cynical and sad than they are hateful.  Even so, Poilievre’s #mgtow tag isn’t scandal-worthy because it appears to have been unintentional.  Global reported that the tags were generally recycled from one video to the next. This was confirmed by epidemiologist and data blogger Jean-Paul R. Soucy, who conducted his own analysis...   The term “MGTOW” was most popular around 2017 and 2018. Google’s records show it was frequently more popular than “metoo” — the feminist movement against sexual assault. In other words, there’s a good chance that the software Poilievre’s team was using back then could have automatically generated the tag. Regardless, the record shows that little attention was paid to his video tags over the years. Regardless of intent, the mere appearance of appealing to a nonviolent men’s movement shouldn’t be considered a scandal. As with women, minorities, Indigenous groups, religious groups and so on, it shouldn’t be a risk for politicians to try to appeal to men.  The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) says that MGTOW is a men’s movement that espouses the hateful ideology of “male supremacy.” The SPLC is a left-wing advocacy organization geared towards social justice and hate group monitoring. It demonizes criticism of the feminist movement as being anti-woman and appears to have taken isolated examples of violence to paint a fairly moderate group as a bunch of extremists.  Canadian intelligence officials have warned that extreme misogyny can constitute a national security threat. But lumping MGTOW in with male terrorists would be like criticizing all Muslims because Islamic groups make up the majority of listed terrorist entities in Canada. It’s unfair and divisive to paint a large group as violent criminals because of an extreme few. That’s what happened in the House of Commons after the Global story was published, though... Of course, it isn’t necessarily misogynistic to criticize feminism (it has plenty of flaws, and survey data shows it’s falling out of favour with younger progressives and conservatives alike). Another Liberal MP, Jennifer O’Connell, said Poilievre had been trying to “connect with and target incel, right-wing, anti-women, violent rhetoric for their own personal and political gain” — people, she said, who promote the murder of single women. Which is like saying it’s murderous and violent for women to swear off dating men. Maybe it’s childish or maybe it’s completely rational, but either way, it’s not “anti-woman” to choose to be alone. Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said the Conservatives were “exploiting technology to proliferate hate.” That’s a stretch. Indeed, proliferating hate probably looks more like actively funding a raging antisemite... ences.” It’s remarkable that a movement about independence and finding a way to be comfortable with one’s masculinity is being cast as some sort of far-right scourge. Men make up the majority of suicide and opioid deaths in Canada. Loneliness is a growing concern, as well, as men are living alone in increasing numbers. Heck, the Supreme Court recently ruled that biological fatherhood is considered a minimal factor in deciding the household in which a child should live.  Men are more and more likely to be looking at a future of living alone without a family, being priced out of the housing market and facing fewer opportunities due to diversity quotas that systemically discriminate on the basis of gender. There isn’t a lot to look forward to for some, despite all the preaching about male privilege.  It’s not so bad for a politician to appeal to a generation of younger men who see their future prospects declining. Attempts to make this into something shameful are misguided and out of touch."

Poilievre perceived to be more competent than Trudeau: national poll - "Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is seen as more competent and having better judgment than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a new poll suggests, but the PM is perceived to be kinder and less extreme than his rival... when respondents were asked whether Trudeau and Poilievre hide their true views to make them more acceptable, the difference was huge: 56 per cent believe Trudeau does, and only 40 per cent think Poilievre does.  And when asked whether Trudeau and Poilievre understand what “life is like for people like you,” only 30 per cent think the PM does, while 40 per cent think the Conservative leader “The poll results indicate that the Liberals and Trudeau have a challenging road ahead when competing against Poilievre,” said Abacus Data’s David Coletto in a note accompanying the poll.  “Many people have not yet paid much attention to their political choices, but among those who have formed an opinion, Poilievre maintains a considerably stronger image than Trudeau""

EDITORIAL: CBC president opens mouth, inserts foot - "It’s hard to know what CBC President and CEO Catherine Tait was thinking when she came up with the idea of defending the publicly funded broadcaster’s ostensible journalistic objectivity by attacking Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.  Perhaps she wasn’t thinking."
Anyone who believes in CBC bias is a deluded far right conservative

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Emmett Brown's answer to Can you fake fainting in the hospital in the ER or will the doctors know? - Quora - "Eyelashes don’t lie.  The best trick I ever learned for figuring out if someone was faking or not was the old eyelash trick.  You can try this on a friend without harming them:  Have you friend close their eyes and pretend to be unconscious. Take the tip of your finger and touch or flick one of their eye lashes. Your friend’s eye lid will twitch to show you very obviously that they are NOT unconscious.  Actual unconscious people’s eye lids won’t twitch when you do that.  There, now you have a way to tell if someone is faking or not.
EDIT: Thanks for all the upvotes. I used to teach new clinicians to use this as their go-to first before any of the pain response techniques as there is little to no risk of injury. I’ve seen too many sternal rubs and the pen on the finger leave marks. And honestly I think it’s more accurate. People who have “committed” to being unconscious will sometimes take it too far by resisting the pain. And honestly our job isn’t to call them out on their faking - it’s only to determine if we need to intervene or not."

Meme - "Congratulations EA. You have earned one star. Additional stars can be bought for $5.49 each."
"You dare use my own spells against me, Potter?"

Richard Hanania on Twitter - "Paul Ehrlich demanded coercion against the global poor to limit population growth. He got the US, World Bank to enforce his ideas on India, which ended up sterilizing 8 million. Those opposed to efforts to sterilize them were accused by the media of spreading misinformation."

Meme - Wilfred X. Reilly, Californian @wil_ da beast630: "How is this, from my casual buddy @KonstantinKisin, "bad stat" - or really even controversial at all?"
bad stats @thebadstats: "13 This man is actually so stupid and self righteous he almost makes me forget about the Weinsteins"
Konstantin Kisin: "I am not a conservative because I believe change and disruption are not only inevitable but also essential. am not a progressive because I don't make the mistake of thinking all change and disruption is progress."

Meme - Google Chrome: "WHICH WEBSITE WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE?"
Man: "I DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW"
Google Chrome with Hand Puppet: "WHAT ABOUT TELLING MR. INCOGNITO?"
Man: "OKAY!"

Is 'Cum Park Plaza' a Real Place? | Snopes.com - "What's True
Cum-Park Plaza is the name of a real shopping center in Burlington, North Carolina.
What's False
Signs for stores such as Hooters, Dick's Sporting Goods, Beaver Liquors, and Kum & Go were digitally added to the meme image for humorous effect...
While this plaza's name may have certain NSFW ("not safe for work") connotations for some, this name actually refers to the two people who developed the plaza in the 1960s: Carl Parks and Hugh Cummings. While the name of this plaza is displayed as "Cum Park Plaza" on the sign, news reports about the shopping center add a hyphen between "Cum" and "Park.""

Cathay needs to boost staff morale, union says, after "blanket-carpet" furore - "Cathay Pacific needs to address staff and resource shortages and raise pay to boost morale, its flight attendant union said, after three staff were fired for allegedly mocking passengers who could not speak English.  A passenger on the CX987 flight from the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu to Hong Kong on Sunday wrote in an online post that flight attendants had made fun of passengers for asking for a carpet instead of a blanket in English... The passenger on CX987 on Sunday wrote that flight attendants complained about passengers amongst themselves in English and Cantonese.  "If you cannot say blanket in English, you cannot have it ... Carpet is on the floor. Feel free if you want to lie on it," a flight attendant said, according to a recording"

Meme - *Under-sink Drain Pipes with Mario and King Koopa/Bowser*

Sainsbury's worker wins £8,000 after 'being sacked for calling boss a young idiot' - "A Sainsbury’s worker who called her boss a “young idiot” has been awarded more than £8,000 after an employment tribunal ruled she’d been unfairly dismissed.  The ex-employee, known only as Miss A Spence, aged 68, made the comment about her manager on Facebook.  Miss Spence - who had worked for the supermarket for 24 years - argued that she didn’t realise the message could be seen publicly, and thought she was contacting a former colleague privately.  The tribunal heard she was later fired after she questioned whether the disciplinary manager was in a romantic relationship with the manager referenced in the Facebook comment.   Miss Spence told the hearing that her Facebook profile had been set up by her daughter in 2017, and she thought all her posts would be private. She had also asked her daughter to remove references of her Sainsbury’s employment online, but she didn’t... only seven other people could see the post, but the message was screenshotted by another manager who shared it with the senior management team...   The tribunal ruled Sainsbury’s “did not follow its processes” when dealing with her grievances as there were no meetings held.  Speaking to her union representative in January 2019, Miss Spence later raised concerns that the manager she wrote about was in a relationship with the customer trading manager who chaired her disciplinary hearing...   The judge said even a final written warning was “manifestly inappropriate”."

The Market for Real Estate Porn Is As Hot as Ever - "“The real estate agent is practically a mythical figure in pop culture and local lore: often a hot woman, perhaps a little older (cougar type), and flashy,” porn scholar and author of Alice in Pornoland Laura Helen Marks told me. “As an English person moving to the U.S., I was really weirded out and fascinated by the real estate agent billboards—the huge photoshopped faces of women with tons of makeup and big hair. It was almost as though the woman herself was a selling point. The process, too, relies on a high degree of performance and getting the client to like you.”... a tenant sued her landlord for trying to include a clause in her lease that would require her to have sex with the property manager."
This seems like it would be shitty but is actually pretty good. Typical VICE though

Meme - "When your dog casts a level 4 protection spell *dog in pentagram surrounded by pigeons*"

Man's life saved by stranger's note after she spotted warning sign at hockey game - "A man has thanked the complete stranger who saved his life after spotting a mole on his neck and encouraging him to see a doctor.  Nadia Popovici, 22, was watching her favourite ice hockey team, the Vancouver Canucks, play in October when she saw the dark spot on Brian Hamilton's neck.  As a medical student, Nadia recognised the mark on the Canucks' assistant equipment manager's body could be dangerous.  But, sitting in the stands just behind the team bench, she struggled to get his attention throughout the match.  Eventually, she had the idea to write a note on her phone, which she hoped Brian would see...  tests revealed mole was type-2 malignant melanoma and had to be removed... "The words out of the doctor’s mouth where if I ignored that for four to five years, I wouldn’t be here," he said.  Nadia, who is just about to start medical school, said she spent time volunteering in hospitals and was "surrounded with a lot of melanomas," which helped her spot the warning signs on Brian's neck.  In particular, she pointed out the raised shape of the mole, its large diameter, and "irregular border.""

Meme - "I was born in the wrong generation: I don't want to do schoolwork anymore. Send me to the coal mine."

Meme - Beth: "helpmyspacebarbrokecanyou comeoverandgivemeanalternative"
"Sure but what does 'ternative' mean?"

I feel bad for Anne Frank. She had her diary published for all the world to read, which is every girl's worst nightmare. And she didn't get paid for it, which is every Jew's worst nightmare.

Meme - ""Go play outside" *Gaming party on road*"

Meme - "EVERYTHING REMIND ME OF HER. *draping between two poles looks like panties*"

Meme - "I'm guessing from your spelling "realise" that you're not native to America and quite possibly English is a second language to you. In any case, I hope you're not annoyed by this, just trying to help."
"I'm British."

Do not bring your whole self to work - "no one should actually bring their whole selves to work. People are a melange of traits, some good and some bad. Many of them should be kept well away from the workplace. Your professional self displays commitment to the job and eats lunch at a desk. Your whole self is planning the next holiday and binges ice cream on the sofa. Your professional self makes presentations to the board and says things like: “Let’s get the analytics team to kick the tyres on this.” Your whole self cannot operate a toaster and says things like: “Has anyone seen my socks?” Pretending to be someone you are not is not a problem; it’s essential. For the same reasons, your employer may say it wants you to bring your whole self to work but doesn’t really mean it. A company is a hierarchy, in which even the most understanding bosses expect people to follow orders rather than their hearts. Say something that causes your firm embarrassment, as a senior hsbc executive did last month by making fun of apocalyptic warnings about climate change, and you will end up being disowned rather than lauded for authenticity... Any job that involves a uniform is by definition asking employees to subsume their personalities, not express them. When times are tough or performance is shoddy, an employee is an individual second and a line item in the budget first. If the circumstances require it, he will be asked to leave and take his whole self with him.  As a result, the bringing of whole selves is carefully circumscribed. Candidates for jobs typically feel obliged to tell interviewers a few things about themselves in order to show that they are rounded human beings. Without fail those things are along the lines of “I have a dog called Casaubon, run a local food bank and love to go sea kayaking.” They are never “I hate animals, exercise and my fellow humans.”  Lots of executives, too, deal in whole-selfery of a very synthetic kind. As a rule of thumb, if you are taking advice on how to be authentic, you are not being authentic. And if you are scheduling meetings in order to display vulnerability, you are mainly showing controlled cunning.  One of the attractions of the workplace is that it is a place where there is a shared endeavour"

Meme - "The leader Singapore football deserves. Comments on the post where this comment was made have now been disabled.
THE LEADER OF THE FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE AFTER A 7-0 DEFEAT TO MALAYSIA. ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY.
bernardtanfas: "Nic. I don't get paid. One time offer. Instead of abusing me here. Abuse me face to face. Let's meet. Drop me a mail at bernard@fas.org.sg. I will leave your comment for 24 hours. After which I will delete you. Its my wall."

Links - 9th July 2023 (2 - General Wokeness)

Meme - "People not liking you isn't oppression"

Meme - Gays Against Groomers: "Do you have any idea how hard it is to watch radical activists and nefarious industries use us to sexualize, indoctrinate and medicalize children? The public is turning against us all, after we fought so hard to be accepted into civil society. It's hard to even blame them. The majority of us really just want to live our lives and leave everyone alone, most of all children. This agenda being pushed is setting us back decades and erasing everything we achieved in this country. For the children's sake, and our own, this must be stopped. #GaysAgainstGroomers"

Meme - "I don't understand pride month.. Why do I need to celebrate you taking it in the ass or slapping your fish biscuits together?"

Democrats Confused By Parades Where Everyone Wears Clothes And Doesn’t Swing Sex Toys Around | Babylon Bee - "Several sources investigated the events around the nation, which reportedly featured American flags, apple pie, and innocent joy. As of now, it is still unclear what these events were celebrating and who they were for. "Our sources indicate these strange kink-free parades could be fronts for dangerous fascist groups," said Congresswoman and affirmative action recipient Cori Bush. "I watched one on TV and didn't see a single genital. This is white supremacy." Parents who brought children to these events are being urged to read a copy of Gender Queer to their children as soon as possible to counteract any white nationalist programming they may have absorbed at a July 4th parade"

Michigan Hate Speech Bill Would Make It A Felony To Cause Someone To ‘Feel’ Threatened - "A Michigan hate speech bill that has passed the state House and is now in the hands of the Senate is alarming conservatives, people of faith, and legal experts. The bill, HB 4474, is part of a package of legislation that would replace Michigan’s existing Ethnic Intimidation Act and make it a hate crime to cause someone to “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened.” Under the bill’s framework, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” are included as classes protected against intimidation. If passed, the hate speech legislation would make violators guilty of a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000... In a Tuesday ruling that could potentially have implications for the hate speech legislation in Michigan, the Supreme Court set new standards for what constitutes a threat, making it more difficult for a state to convict someone of making a threat. “The State must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority opinion and was joined by six other justices."

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Ian McEwan remembers author Martin Amis - "‘I don't know if you saw um Hanif Kureishi writing I think yesterday on Twitter about, um, saying I'm relieved not to be a young writer today working in this atmosphere of self-consciousness and trepidation. This North Korea of the Mind, as as he put it’"

Meme - CNN @CNN: "Black fathers are often portrayed as absent or distant, but that isn't what most people experience, according to both data and Black dads themselves. Such biased portrayals are often based on who is telling the story."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "Percentage of children living absent their biological fathers:
Black children: 64%
Hispanic children: 42%
White children: 24%
Asian children: 16%"

Meme - "MEXICAN GIRLS IN MEXICAN CARTOONS *pretty*
MEXICAN GIRLS IN "LATINX" CARTOONS *ugly*"

St Paul’s Cathedral branded Winston Churchill a ‘white supremacist’ and ‘unashamed imperialist’ - "St Paul’s Cathedral has upset the family of Sir Winston Churchill after they branded the wartime leader as an “unashamed imperialist” and “white supremacist.” The insulting description is understood to have remained on the cathedral’s website for more than a year, although Sir Winston’s state funeral was held there in 1965."

Hospital prayer room for gravely ill children plastered with LGBT flags - "A hospital prayer room for gravely ill children and their families has been plastered with LGBT flags amid claims that the NHS is being hijacked by transgender ideology. As part of a new inclusivity drive, a “sanctuary” at Edinburgh’s “Sick Kids” hospital, designed as a quiet space for those suffering trauma and grief, was taken over by symbols representing dozens of sexualities and genders. The “spiritual care” facility previously described as offering room for “quiet reflection, prayer or meditation” was also rebranded a “chill-out zone” for Pride month, with rainbow-coloured signage directing patients and relatives to it. The move has outraged some staff and family members of poorly children, with one clinician claiming a leading children’s hospital had been turned into a “social issues battlefield”. Meanwhile, the family of a terminally ill toddler said they were no longer able to use the room to find comfort in their faith as it had become a “display of activism” which contradicted the teachings of mainstream religions. The chaplaincy service at the hospital, one of the UK’s leading centres for paediatric care, is run by Maxwell Reay, a transgender man and activist who belongs to a fringe Christian congregation in Edinburgh. Mr Reay, who has described being trans as a “gift from God”, is facing claims that he has breached rules which state hospital chaplains should not seek to impose their own beliefs when offering spiritual care... Among the garish bright flags put up in the otherwise plainly-decorated prayer room were colours representing polyamory, meaning consensual sexual relationships involving more than two people."
Clearly gravely ill children and their families who happen to be queer need to know that they are accepted
This is a clear admission that LGBT is the new religion

Ian Miles Cheong on Twitter - "Seattle authorities initiate manhunt against offender who defaced LGBTQ+ crosswalk"
Auron MacIntyre on Twitter - "They put their sacred symbol on crosswalks because they want them to be defiled They want to manufacture these opportunities to punish blasphemers publicly"
When crime is so low that you have time to hunt down blasphemers

Ian Miles Cheong on Twitter - "Wokeism can be defined by its active denial of reality and adherence to dogmatic irrationality.
- "Healthy at every size."
- "Trans women are women."
- "There are more than two genders, but also genderfluid, genderqueer, and bigender people are both male and female and sometimes neither."
- "Children can consent."
- "Genital mutilation is gender affirming healthcare."
- "Racial discrimination through affirmative action is neither racist nor discriminatory."
- "Riots are mostly peaceful protests."
- "Self-defense is murder."
- "Gas ovens and woodfire stoves cause climate change."
- "True democracies like Ukraine indefinitely suspend elections and ban opposition parties, the media, and jail critics."
- "Wind turbines promote sustainability, and are good for the environment, but nuclear energy is not."
- "Engaging in war against foreign countries and destabilizing governments through regime change and color revolutions promotes peace and stability.""

Meme - Alliance Defending Freedom @ADFL...: "LANDMARK SCOTUS VICTORY: Today the Supreme Court strongly reaffirmed free speech in our case, 303 Creative v. Elenis, ruling 6-3 that govt may not compel Americans to express messages they don't believe...."
Seth Dillon @SethDillon: "Leftists don't seem to realize that this ruling protects them, too. They can never be compelled by the state to make a cake for conservative that says, "trans women are men" or "gender-affirming care is child abuse." Their own freedom of expression has been preserved here. The only thing that hasn't been preserved is their non-existent right to trample on the freedom of others.
Their reaction to this ruling shows that they value forced expression over freedom of expression. If that seems authoritarian, it's because it is.

Meme - AskDrBrown: "the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision that Lorie Smith, a Colorado-based Christian graphic artist and web designer, did not have to create content that violated her beliefs. In response, Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, tweeted, “perhaps gay stylists, designers, caterers, and planners should start withholding services from Christian conservatives and see where that goes.” After all, Jeffery reasoned, if a Christian can create content for a gay couple, surely gay professionals can decline services to Christian conservatives. More extreme was the reaction of actor Michael Imperioli who posted on Instagram, “I’ve decided to forbid bigots and homophobes from watching The Sopranos, The White Lotus, Goodfellas or any movie or TV show I’ve been in. Thank you Supreme Court for allowing me to discriminate and exclude those who I don’t agree with and am opposed to. USA! USA!” In her strong dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that, “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.” And she claimed that the ruling comes amid a “backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender and sexual minorities.” Many headlines reflected similar sentiments, such as this one posted on the UK Guardian: “US supreme court strikes blow against LGBTQ+ rights with Colorado ruling.” In reality, the ruling did no such thing, and Justice Neil Gorsuch was right to challenge Justice Sotomayor’s arguments. He stated that Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion “reimagines the facts” from “top to bottom.” He also argued that she failed to answer the fundamental question of, “Can a State force someone who provides her own expressive services to abandon her conscience and speak its preferred message instead?” In his view, what Justice Sotomayor was arguing for was for the court to allow the government to force an individual to “speak contrary to her beliefs on a significant issue of personal conviction.” This is clearly a violation of our most fundamental Constitutional rights. That’s why law professor Jonathan Turley described the Supreme Court decision as an “amazing moment” in history with regard to the First Amendment. And he rightly pointed out that the decision had nothing to do with discrimination, since Smith freely served a wide range of customers, including those who identified as LGBTQ. As Turley noted, cases such as these “do not change the public accommodation laws. You cannot be refused to go into stores and buy items that are pre-made, for example, based on your race or your status.” But if someone wants to compel you to create something contrary to your convictions, the state cannot compel you to do so. That is exactly what Colorado law was trying to do, and the Court, by a ruling of 6-3, shut that unjust law down. Kristen Waggoner, CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Erin Hawley, an ADF attorney, echoed Turley’s sentiments, writing, “The Supreme Court’s decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis is a crucial victory for every American regardless of their religious, political, or ideological views. In that case, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the most fundamental of civil liberties—that the government may not tell people what to think or say.” As for the counter-argument raised by Jeffery’s and others, I’d love to hear their answer to these simple questions. Should a gay web designer be compelled by the state to design a website for a counseling service that helps people overcome same-sex attractions? Should an Orthodox Jewish web designer be compelled by the state to design a website for Jews for Jesus? Should an atheist web designer be compelled by the state to design a website called “Answering Atheism”? Should a trans-identified web designer be compelled by the state to design a website on the dangers of hormone therapy and sex-change surgery? Should a Muslim web designer be compelled by the state to design a website for a meat service specializing in pork products? Should an African American web designer be compelled by the state to design a website selling Confederate flags? Should a Christian web designer be compelled by the state to design an “Adultery Hookup” website? Should any web designer be compelled by the state to design a pornography website? If Jeffery or Imperioli were website designers, should the state be able to compel them to create pro-Trump content for a Republican lobbyist? Or content stating that he won the 2020 elections? The answer to all these questions is obvious: none of these people should be compelled to create content that violates their beliefs or convictions. The state clearly has no right to compel them to do so. And what about a gay-owned T-shirt company? Should they be compelled by the state to design a t-shirt with the words, “God does not recognize same-sex marriage”? Should a Christian-owned printing company be compelled by the state to design flyers for a Satan conference? The list goes on and on, and in every case, the answer is an obvious “No!” But should these same individuals or companies be allowed to refuse general services to someone because they are gay or trans or Jewish or Muslim or Christian or Black or White? Obviously not. That’s why some of the Christians who have come under attack in recent years had served LGBTQ+ customers for years. Some of them even had LGBTQ+ employees. But when it came to creating artistic content that violated their beliefs (such as creating a wedding cake or designing a floral arrangement for a same-sex ceremony), they declined. And for that, they were dragged into court, with their lives turned upside down. (See here and here for prime examples.) In the same way, if a gay person said to Lorie Smith, “I’m Tony and I’m gay, and I’d like you to create a website for my window cleaning company,” it would be illegal (not to say unchristian and unethical) for her to say, “No, I won’t do that because you’re gay.” But if Tony said, “I’m Tony and I’m transgender, and I’d like you to create a website for my children’s books that are designed to help kids recognize their hidden trans identity,” it would be legal (and Christian and ethical) for her to politely decline. That’s why the Supreme Court’s decision should have been 9-0, applauded by people from all backgrounds. The fact that it was 6-3, with many Americans outraged over the ruling, reminds us of just how confused our nation has become. May truth and sanity prevail."

Meme Single person to crowd: "You should all change your core values and beliefs so I fit in"

Meme - Kid: "Parent-person, just take a look upon this cool & healthy example of masculinity."
*Pride flag parent*: "ugh. Don't look at this muscular, white, conservatie (sic), cis-male, binary, heteronormal catholic priest, Alex. I don't want you to be influenced by... Alex?... OH MY GOD! ALEEEX?!"
Kid: "It is too late, father. I am based now and my name is Alexius, like Saint Alexis of Edessa, and you can never be a real woman. Even with rotting wound between thighs. It is officially Sacred Heart"

Meme - Sargon of Akkad: "Progressivism can not survive mockery. "There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy.""
"Guardian takes legal action to shut down parody headline generator"

Meme - Be The Match. Sponsored: "At only 19-years-old, Camille deserves to experience all life has to offer. But without a donor, her life will be cut short. YOUCOULDBETHECURE.ORG Black Donors Needed. Sign Up Be The Match for Camille" KM Dougherty: "Last i checked, our skin color did not define the inside of us. Anyone could be a match for this young lady." Be The Match: "Hi there! We encourage everyone to join the registry, though there is a critical need for those with diverse ethnic backgrounds to join. When it comes to matching human leukocyte antigen (HLA) types, a patient's ethnic background is important in predicting the likelihood of finding a match. This is because HLA markers used in matching are inherited. Some ethnic groups have more complex tissue types than others. So a person's best chance of finding a donor may be with someone of the same ethnic background. Hf you are not yet on the registry, you can join online by clicking here: http://ms.spr.ly/6187r7L3J. We hope you advocate for others to join the registry and give hope to searching patients. -Sydney"
Weird. Why don't they know that race is socially constructed?

Meme - Bleppsama @Bleppsama: "The kids are not alright. Congratulations on being the most groomed generation in history I guess."
iskamag @iskamag 14 so no nsfw pls | gay | robo fur | need frens | love vgm and chiptune | xbox fan
Scarlet (idk) @pluvvvv she/her | minor | pansexual | aspiring polyglot | vent acc @s7UwU1 | @gay_shitposts i love her so much!! fyi i have social anxiety and bpd
Gala!Kohan @MageWolf721 15 | Male He/him they/them | angry human being | I'm unsure what else to put | pfp by @depressowof
Spooky Squarm @Squarmptin Abby, 14, pan, ace, and enby, she/they || Where I write shit wattpad.com/user/Squarmptin || art acct: @Squarms_art"

Demoted and Placed on Probation - "It all started in June 2018, when Quillette published my article, “Why Women Don’t Code”... In his tweet promoting my article, Peterson took issue with one of my claims. I had written that I thought I could survive at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering where I work. Peterson disagreed. As it turns out, Peterson was right. My position is not tenured and when my current three-year appointment came up for review in December, I was stripped of my primary teaching duties and given a highly unusual one-year probationary appointment. The administration insists this decision had nothing to do with the controversy generated by my article. But as I will explain, that seems highly unlikely. As one faculty colleague put it, an “angry mob” has been after me ever since my article came out. In 2005, the University of Washington hired me to redesign their two introductory computer science classes. I developed two highly successful courses that have over 4,500 enrollments combined per year and are among the most highly rated 100-level courses at the University of Washington. In a recent internal survey, over 80 percent of the students agreed that the assignments increased their interest in computing and showed them how useful such knowledge can be. Teaching at this scale is a massive undertaking and for the last 15 years I have been responsible for overall management of the staff, instructors, and TAs who provide this service. In response to my Quillette article, a group of graduate students in the Allen School filed a grievance against me with their union. The university agreed to several of their demands, including that, “A group of (mostly senior) faculty will review the introductory programming courses to ensure that they are inclusive of students from all backgrounds.” A working group was formed and it produced a set of recommendations... Most of these suggestions seem to rely on the notion that undergraduates are delicate. While I agree that we must be careful to ensure that all students feel welcome and respected, we should be helping our students to become antifragile... In the 15 years I have been part of the school, I am the first regular lecturer to be offered less than a three-year extension... A faculty colleague told me he believes I am being fired for my political beliefs. He said it became clear during the meeting at which my reappointment was discussed that quite a few people wanted me to be summarily dismissed. Others said it was unacceptable to fire me outright. In the vote that was taken, faculty were asked to choose one of three options: no reappointment, a one-year reappointment, or a three-year reappointment. So the one-year appointment was the middle ground that allowed faculty to punish me without taking the most drastic available step just yet. I have the impression I am expected to feel grateful. The students weighed in on the decision as well. A poster was plastered throughout the undergraduate labs and the student union encouraging students to visit a web address if they wished to express concern about my possible reappointment (reposted here). Critical student testimonies were collected in a letter to the dean urging her not to reappoint me. Nor have my teaching evaluations slipped in recent years. I am, however, spending more time thinking about how to encourage viewpoint diversity... n the fall of 2018 I assigned Haidt and Lukianoff’s The Coddling of the American Mind as part of a seminar for honors students. I received my highest scores ever for this seminar (an average of 5.0 on a 5-point scale)... a blogger identified as “Anonymous Husky” called for me to be fired in a Medium post entitled, “Why the UW Computer Science Department Can Do Better than Stuart Reges.” The article mentioned the bake sale, my Quillette article, and my protest against the war on drugs that led me to be fired from Stanford in 1991. It was emailed to every member of the computer science faculty and many of the undergraduate TAs I work with... the Stanford Daily published a full-page article I had written entitled, “On Being Gay: Feelings and Perceptions.” The chair of the department told me that they wanted to offer me the job, but that they had been embarrassed by my article. They wanted me to promise never to publish such an article again... Over the course of my life, it has been astonishing to watch anti-gay sentiment reverse. Today, the people on campus who need to worry about expressing their ideas are conservatives and religious people. Now it is gays doing the punishing of anyone who opposes gay marriage, gay adoption, hate speech codes, and civil rights protection for gays. Everything old is new again. I’m once again having private conversations behind closed doors in my office with closeted individuals, but this time they are students, faculty, staff, and alumni who oppose the equity agenda. They are deeply concerned about the university’s direction, but they are also afraid of jeopardizing their current or future job prospects. They also worry about losing friendships and professional relationships. One faculty colleague described it as “mob rule.”... I am concerned that people believe free speech is improving on college campuses when in fact things are getting worse. We have fewer overt examples of speakers being shouted down and disinvited, but now the censorship is going underground. Those who talk to me behind closed doors censor themselves because they know the consequences of speaking up. As the economist Timur Kuran has explained, this preference falsification is extremely dangerous because it prevents us from having the meaningful conversations necessary to find practical solutions to problems. So I understand why many people will choose to stay silent. I did it myself aged 23 when I stopped writing articles about being gay so that I could be hired into my dream job. But I’m older now and although I don’t have what people call “fuck you money,” I have enough saved that I can afford to speak my mind. For the rest of you, remember Jordan Peterson’s admonition: “Watch what you say. Or else.”"
Damn privilege, stopping him from understanding what it's like to be a minority!

Gay Rights And The Limits Of Liberalism - "How the far left broke the gay settlement. And reignited homophobia.
At the Human Rights Campaign Fund... I said (paraphrasing from memory): “The goal of any civil rights movement should be to shut itself down one day. And once we get marriage equality and military service, those of us in the gay rights movement should throw a party, end the movement, and get on with our lives.” You can imagine how well that went down. And, sure enough, 30 years later, with marriage, military service and trans equality enshrined in the law, the HRC building now has a massive, six-story high poster hanging on it: “BLACK LIVES MATTER. TRANS BLACK LIVES MATTER.”... liberalism knows limits. A liberal politics does not seek to impose meaning on everyone; it creates the space for individuals to choose that for themselves. It doesn’t seek to deliver the truth about anything either; it merely provides the mechanisms for the open-ended pursuit of truth. A liberal politics will seek formal equality for members of minorities; but not substantive equality — what is now called “equity.” It would not require us to come to one, single understanding of reality; it would always allow diversity of opinion and encourage free debate. Live and let live. Remember that?... Homosexual citizens absolutely deserved equal rights, but the question of homosexuality itself would — and should — always be open to dispute and debate. Since a liberal society contains both fundamentalist preachers as well as lesbian atheists, it cannot resolve the core question. So it shouldn’t try. And it should celebrate, not bemoan, this ideological diversity... the gay rights movement should have shut down in 2015 after Obergefell; and the trans rights movement should have shut down in 2020 after Bostock. Once gay men and lesbians and trans people achieved legal and constitutional equality, the fight was over. But in the movement I was once a part of, many, of course, were not liberals, let alone liberal conservatives — but radicals, who reluctantly went along with marriage equality, but itched to transform society far more comprehensively. And these radicals now control everything in the hollowed-out gay rights apparatus. Their main ticket item is a law that would replace biological sex with gender in the law, and remove protections for religious liberty: smashing the liberal settlement. Combine that with acute polarization in the Trump era, and information silos, so that many gays get their sense of reality from MSNBC and Elton John, and you can see how the spiral into illiberal madness began. And this is what I mean by “illiberal”: the use of public education, corporate power, and government fiat to enforce the postmodern doctrines of queer and gender theory; the suppression of debate; the abuse of science; and the deployment of children as weapons in an ideological campaign... When majorities supported gay couples getting married, they did not thereby support having their daughters forced to shower next to biological males in locker rooms, or compete with them in competitive sports; they did not support teaching kindergartners that their bodies have nothing to do with whether they are boys or girls; they did not support using unapproved drugs on troubled children to arrest their puberty, and sterilize them for life; and they did not support schools transitioning their children into the opposite gender without their knowledge... most who were persuaded to support gay equality did not believe that supporting gay rights meant endorsing anti-scientific piffle that sex is a “spectrum.”... there is no good, scientifically sound evidence at all behind “gender-affirming care” for children. No solid evidence it reduces suicidality; no solid evidence it is “life-saving”; and truth be told, very little evidence for knowing whether it helps or hurts. Clinical experience and small selective studies just cannot substitute for rigorous research. We have none. But we have piles of evidence that mistakes have been made — in abundance. For that matter, there is no empirical, medical way to show what a child’s “gender identity” is at all — outside the child’s own words, which are now, in a medical first, deemed to be completely dispositive in diagnosis. Some super-blue states are actually making it illegal to conduct more thorough psychological counseling to test for other factors, before setting a kid on a lifetime of medicalization. In what other context is this even imaginable? In what universe is it morally essential to subject children to irreversible medical treatments, for which we have no solid, long-term clinical trials? And to use emotional blackmail to force parents to go along?... all male and female biological differences have to be denied, and those who object are slandered or fired. Women are “menstruators”; lesbians are “non-men”; gays are all “queers”; and homosexuality is a bigoted form of “genital preference.” This ideology, by denying there is such a thing as a male sex, has even taken aim at homosexuality itself — and the gays are too tribal, oblivious or distracted to stand up for themselves. The ignorance in this movement is also stunning... the current head of HRC, testifying before Congress, said that Serena Williams could beat a pro male tennis player, and refused to answer if she believed there were physical differences between men and women. It seemed, in fact, as if she had never been in a debate about this before, and never thought much about it. But as Riley Gaines noted in that hearing, “Both Serena and Venus lost to the 203rd ranked male tennis player.” In the gay rights movement, we examined every single possible argument that could be used against us, and answered them. We debated anyone anywhere. And, in the broader context, we left you, gays and straights, alone. Nothing in your life had to change to accept gay equality. Compare that with the transqueer movement. They will never leave you alone, they will police the words you use, they will deny you access to any same-sex space, they will force your daughter to compete against males, they will tell your child they may be the opposite sex inside and keep it from you, and they will use blackmail — and a farrago of falsehood — to put your kid on a lifetime of medication. They refuse to debate opponents; they cancel and demonize even the most liberal of people (see JK Rowling); they censor words or destroy their meaning and defend violence."
The "myth" of the slippery slope strikes again

The tragedy of becoming a woman

The tragedy of becoming a woman

"The metamorphosis of puberty is hard for almost everyone. For girls, though, there is a specific trauma. You don’t simply become an adult: you become a product on the sexual marketplace, regardless of your own will. This divides you: you learn to see yourself from the outside, as an object, through the imagined eyes of men. You lose your space in the world, and any part of you that goes beyond the strictly minimal can start to feel like grotesque excess.

Did I have dysphoria? There was no one to diagnose me; I only have my own memories to guide me. What I can say is that I don’t know of another word that describes my desire to discipline and punish myself into something safely un-sexed. When I read accounts from other female people describing their own dysphoria, I feel a painful recognition...

If I had been offered a way out — a medical “pause button”, as hormone blockers are casually called — would I have taken it? I can’t think, actually, of anything I would have received more gratefully at this time in my life. Nor can I think of a more carelessly poisonous response than adults affirming what I felt about my body. It’s strange, then, that for 31 years, a specialist unit existed within the NHS which effectively took girls like me and told them: “yes, you’re right, your body is wrong, but we can fix that for you.” The unit was the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), contained within the Tavistock and Portman Trust in London. What happened there, and how it went so appallingly wrong, is now the subject of a remarkable book by the journalist Hannah Barnes called Time to Think.

GIDS didn’t only treat girls, but it’s the girls who particularly interest me. That’s partly because, as Barnes outlines, GIDS itself was remarkably uninterested in them. The service was founded by child and adolescent psychiatrist Domenico Di Ceglie in 1989, and initially, the patients had a clear profile: mostly boys, and usually referred in pre-pubescent childhood. Girls with dysphoria weren’t unheard of (the initial case that got Di Ceglie interested in gender identity was female), but they were not typical.

That changed dramatically. In 2011, GIDS saw for the first time an equal number of male and female patients. In 2020-21, 68% of the patients for whom GIDS recorded sex were female. (A repeated theme of the GIDS scandal is poor record keeping: shockingly, no birth sex was recorded for 22% of patients referred in 2021-22.) And these girls were arriving at the clinic older than the boys: pubescent adolescents who, like me, had no previous history of dysphoria.

But while they were strikingly unlike GIDS’s previous patients, these girls were astonishingly similar to each other. Barnes relates the description given by Anna Hutchinson, a senior clinical psychologist formerly employed at GIDS, and one of the many whistleblowers to have gone on the record about the service’s failings:

“Self-diagnosed adolescent trans boys — natal females — started to fill up GIDS’s waiting room with similar stories, haircuts, even names – ‘one after another after another’. They’d talk about their favourite trans YouTubers, many having adopted the same name, and how they aspired to be like them in the future.”

One thing that all GIDS patients had in common, regardless of sex, was that they had far more going on than just gender trouble. A 2012 study found that associated difficulties included “non-suicidal self-harm, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, autism spectrum conditions (ASCs), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), symptoms of anxiety, psychosis, eating difficulties, bullying and abuse”.

Also, a lot of the girls presenting at GIDS were bisexual or lesbian — over 90%. Or rather, they would have been lesbian, if they’d identified as female. One clinician Barnes speaks to recalls female patients saying things like, “When I hear the word lesbian, I cringe. I want to die”, and “I’m gonna vomit if I hear the word lesbian another time”. Gay and lesbian clinicians who asked whether such internalised homophobia should complicate a dysphoria diagnosis were told that they were “too close” to the subject to be objective. That this dismissal of same-sex attracted people’s experiences and insights was itself a signal instance of homophobia seemed not to occur to GIDS as an institution.

GIDS, it seems, was no longer interested in asking questions. When the service was founded, one of its principles had been an explorative approach... In 2009, Polly Carmichael took over from Di Ceglie as head of the clinic. Her tenure saw the clinic adopt a high public profile — participating in a string of documentaries that boosted GIDS’s image and promoted its work — while internally adopting an “us against the world” attitude. Clinicians were encouraged to see themselves as a “family”: disagreement became a personal betrayal. One GIDS staff member recalls that anyone raising criticisms of the service was likely to be told “this has made Polly cry”.

Perhaps as important as the clinic’s leadership, though, were the external pressures: as the concept of “gender identity” took hold more widely, the idea that one’s “subconscious sex” ought to supersede the physical body began to direct treatment. Trans support groups like Mermaids and GIRES promoted an “affirmative model”, which insisted that any child who said they were trans should be treated as trans. This influenced both the expectations of patients and their families, and the practice of GIDS doctors. Hormone treatment became the default. Patients came, not because they wanted to explore their gender issues, but because they wanted puberty blockers. If doctors were unwilling to prescribe them, Barnes reports, patients would simply be referred to a different doctor. There was usually little opportunity for reflection: GIDS staff were expected to manage caseloads of up to 100 patients each, as referrals increased from 97 in 2009-10 to 2,748 in 2019-20 (a 2,800% increase overall, and an even more shocking 4,200% increase in girls). Once patients were on puberty blockers, nearly 100% would go on to take cross-sex hormones.

A service that had once prided itself on treating its patients as individuals had become something more like an assembly line. Whatever issues a child had, the only answer the clinic had was blockers. What’s terrible about this isn’t just that many children will have been put on a path to transition that could have been avoided; it’s that they were not receiving specialised support for their other, more pressing problems. Barnes tells the story of one boy who, as well as identifying as a girl, had such severe OCD that he couldn’t leave the house. His family got no support for the OCD, but GIDS sent a psychiatrist who offered to make an endocrinology referral.

With its one-size-fits-all plan, GIDS was failing every one of its patients... girls were particularly damaged by GIDS, because girls were being put on a pathway that was the definition of male default. GIDS had developed its approach to serve the traditional paediatric sufferer of dysphoria: a pre-pubertal boy. Because the clinic’s culture militated against self-reflection, the treatment stayed the same even though the patients had drastically changed.

It’s not uncommon for women to be badly served by medicine in this way, given that women are neglected as research subjects. Historically, femaleness has been treated as an abnormality, to be ignored if it cannot be remedied. What’s exceptional about the GIDS case, though, is that the underlying philosophy of trans identity effectively made these girls doubly invisible. They were invisible, firstly, to a model that had never taken them into account. But secondly, and more profoundly, they were invisible because gender identity doctrine held that even to think of them as female was to “misgender” them. You couldn’t say how they were different to boys without conceding that they were not, in strict fact, boys.

But to hate your body as a teenage girl is one of the most categorically female experiences possible. I didn’t hate my body because I wasn’t a girl; I hated it precisely because I was, and because of everything I feared or knew that being a woman might mean.

Trans activists tend to dismiss stories like mine: if I had truly been dysphoric, they say, I would never have grown up to be the basic bitch I am today. I would have found a way to transition. But if I’d had YouTube, Mermaids and a compliant medical service, the way would have been signposted for me in neon lights. I learned to live with my body, in time, because no one gave me an alternative.

One of the many reasons that the “pause button” claim about blockers is a lie is that going through puberty is one of the ways you become reconciled to puberty... Taking puberty blockers means you never reach adult sexual function. Tentative research suggests that girls who went on blockers actually felt worse about their bodies after several years. Blockers didn’t treat their dysphoria: they exacerbated it.

For some few, transition will have been the right outcome. Others are left forever learning to live with bodies that have been made strange and vulnerable — weakened bones, dropped voices, vaginal atrophy, scarred and breastless chests if they went on to have mastectomies. There is a small, but growing, community of female detransitioners. Barnes quotes one, who has undergone a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy: “I regret all of it… I wish someone would have been there to tell me not to get castrated at 21.”

The things these women did in an effort to become not-girls remind me so keenly of the girl I used to be, with her vague longing for a bodiless life... The tragedy of a misogynistic world is that it makes girls believe they need a cure for femaleness. The scandal of GIDS is that it pretended it could supply one."

 

Anyone who talks about social contagion is a transphobe, since everyone knows that gender identity is immutable! (weird how that bled over from sexual orientation, where it isn't accurate either)

Once again, trans mania is the true conversion therapy

Links - 9th July 2023 (1)

Meme - "Am I a good mother Susan?"
"My name's Amy"

Sorry, Android users: These iPhone snobs won't date you - "While Android phones have a larger market share than iPhones, millennials feel a stronger emotional attachment to Apple products than any other brand, according to a 2018 analysis by marketing agency MBLM... Some believe Apple purposefully implemented the text color scheme, which has been part of the iPhone operating system’s design since iMessage launched in 2011, to create a stigma against Android users... For Earle, an Android user, phone type doesn’t matter — but using a texting app that has good data privacy, such as Signal, does.  “If you’re not using good open standards for communication that are encrypted,” he says, “I don’t think we can ever get together.”"

Meme - "I need to learn archery to become a skeleton archer after death, not an shitty infantry skeleton"

Michigan boy, 13, saves sister by hitting potential kidnapper with slingshot - "The boy’s eight-year-old sister was hunting for mushrooms in her back yard in a rural area of Alpena township on Wednesday when a 17-year-old boy emerged from the woods"

Woman in China forks out $8,600 in compensation for stuffing leftover food into handbag at buffet - "The diner surnamed Wen, was caught on surveillance footage ordering more than what she could eat and using several pre-prepared plastic bags to pack leftovers under the table before sneaking them into her handbag.  The manager of the restaurant, surnamed Wu told the Chinese media outlet Hongxing News that Wen was seen visiting the restaurant in Guizhou province five times in over two weeks back in August 2022.  Wu added that the restaurant charged 218 yuan per person for the buffet and each time she ordered, it was 10,000 yuan worth of food – 10 times more than most people...   The restaurant sued Wen for nearly 45,000 yuan for her five recorded binges as the restaurant clearly displayed signs saying “waste over 100g or takeaway needs to be paid according to the menu pricing” which were placed on the cashier desk and at every table.  Wen, who initially refused to pay, did so under legal threat and an additional 8,000 yuan in legal costs"

Ontario announces break up of Peel Region, cities to become independent by 2025 : toronto
So many hateful liberals immediately dunked on Doug Ford, because everything that happens is part of one of his evil plots

Russian Woman Born In S'pore Unable To Get PR, Still On Employment Pass Despite Being Raised Here - "Imagine being born and raised in Singapore, but still considered a foreigner, especially on paper.  Unfortunately, this is the reality for Russian woman Elena Tsvetkova, who admitted that she has felt like a local all her life due to her upbringing on our sunny shores."

International students faced with housing and cost-of-living stress say they were misled about Australia

Why are rents in Australia increasing? The root cause may be more to do with COVID than interest rates and immigration - "Advertised rents began climbing sharply in late 2021 — six months before the Reserve Bank began pushing up interest rates, and at a time when it was forecast not to.  And net migration was negative back when rents were taking off — the number of arrivals didn't even match the number of departures... On the face of it, neither demand nor supply was changing much during COVID as rents started climbing. Australia's population was growing more slowly than at any time in modern history. And, as best as we can tell, the number of properties available for rent was climbing, albeit weakly.  What did change during COVID, according to the research department of the Reserve Bank, was the average number of people per household.  The change doesn't sound big — the average fell from a bit above 2.6 residents per household to a bit below 2.55 — but applied to millions of households it meant about 140,000 more houses and apartments were needed than would have been"

WWI ‘Dazzle' Camouflage Protected Ships by Confusing the Enemy - "By covering ships’ hulls with startling stripes, swirls and irregular abstract shapes that brought to mind the Cubist paintings of Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque, one could momentarily confuse a German U-boat officer peering through a periscope. The patterns would make it more difficult to figure out the ship’s size, speed, distance and direction.  Wilkinson’s idea was a startling contrast to those of other camouflage theorists. American artist Abbott Thayer, for example, advocated painting ships white and concealing their smokestacks with canvas in an effort to make them blend into the ocean...  “When the US Navy adopted Wilkinson's scheme for both merchant and fighting ships there is statistical evidence to support Wilkinson's technique”... Dazzle camouflage was resurrected by the U.S. during World War II, and was used on the decks of ships as well, in an effort to confuse enemy aircraft. Today’s electronic surveillance technology makes dazzle pretty much obsolete for protecting ships, but as Forbes points out, the concept of visually disruptive patterns is still used in military uniforms."

Ladies and gentlemen, I present your new No. 1 player, Iga Swiatek : tennis
Unicorn outfit tennis player

Meet Oscar, the Cat that Predicts Death and Provides Comfort - "Time and time again, animals have proven the ability to provide an unparalleled level of comfort for end-of-life patients. Yet what has famously transpired at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centerin Providence, RI over the past decade has, quite frankly, still managed to leave us speechless.  What has famously transpired is the story of Oscar the Hospice Cat, known for his ability to predict death and comfort patients who will soon pass away. A story so compelling that Dr. David Dosa, a health researcher at Brown University and a geriatrician working with patients at the Steere House, actually wrote an entire book about it."

America Doesn’t Know Tofu - "Leave soy curds to be, and they will coalesce into silken tofu. Spoon them into a mold, press out some water, and they become soft, firm, pressed, or thin tofu sheets. Smoke, dehydrate, ferment, or alkali-treat these tofus and you arrive at several new varieties. Throw them in the freezer and their inner structures will become porous like a sponge.  There are also tofus made without soy curds. Cook soy protein with fat, starch, and seasonings and you’ll have a smooth, dense, fishcake-like tofu. Or warm soymilk and enjoy the rich, high-protein film that forms on top, either as thin sheets or rolled into delicious tofu sticks, fresh or dried. All in all, there are more than 20 types of tofu.  A common misconception outside of Asian communities is that tofu is just an ingredient. In fact, it’s an entire category of proteins. Just as a chef would never cook chicken breast like chicken feet, so too are these tofus completely different from one another. They have different strengths and weaknesses. They have different flavors. They have different mouthfeels. It’s not like substituting a black bean for a kidney bean. Because these tofus are so different from one another, and from meat, each one opens up its own world of culinary possibilities. These are the most versatile plant-based proteins in existence... The ability of Chinese craftspeople and chefs to turn humble plant-based ingredients into dazzling culinary experiences is on par with the highest gastronomy in the West. But to the creators, these foods are rarely seen as “art.” They are subsistence. To consumers, these foods are not pride and treasure. They are relics of poverty, discardable afterthoughts en route to modernization."

Meme - "When he says he's hung like a dragon, but you misunderstood... *Mushu in Mulan with Mulan making small penis sign*"

‘Merkel kicked every can down the road’ - "Some people adore Angela Merkel. Some journalists have called her the leader of the Western world. I have never bought this. I have followed her since before she was chancellor. She was very skillful in reading political trends and managing her position inside her party. But she was never particularly interested in solving problems. When the eurozone crisis started, she was the one who kicked the can down the road. That was basically the tenet of her reign.  Another problem was energy policy. She triggered Germany’s exit from nuclear energy before it had a plan to move on from coal. That not only made electricity more expensive, but also made Germany dependent on imported Russian gas. And it meant that Germany ended up with one of the worst records on tackling climate change in Europe.  Merkel also failed to modernise Germany. Germany is still in the pre-digital world. The German public sector is still reliant on the fax machine. Health-sector offices are often not computerised. And even Germany’s industrial base is still largely reliant on analogue technology. Merkel was essentially a representative of the old economic model. She was not interested in innovation. Her main focus was to peddle German products to foreign powers.  Germany needs to do some deep thinking about its future. Merkel did not prepare it for that... Olaf Scholz, who is most likely to become chancellor, is in the same mould as Merkel."

Man Orders Kway Chap Without Meat At Bugis Stall But Gets Rejected, Hawker Says Tough To Fulfil Request - "Since he doesn’t eat meat, including intestines and pig skin, he asked for the dish with four pieces of tau pok, one fish cake, and two servings of kway.  However, the stall owner allegedly refused to sell it to Mr Yang, saying that it was because he did not order meat. This confused Mr Yang as he had managed to order the dish without meat from the same stall before without incident.  “I’ve eaten kway chap all over Singapore, and this is the first time I’ve encountered such an arrogant [boss],” he said. “The problem isn’t the money. It’s his attitude.”... Mr Yang’s meatless order had come up to S$4. This was cheaper than a single set meal, which costs at least S$5, so he decided not to sell it to him.  Mr Zhang added that Mr Yang had offered to pay the price of a regular set meal, but the former didn’t think it was right.  He’s worried that someone might complain about a kway chap dish without meat being so expensive, and giving in to Mr Yang’s request would make it hard for him to argue back."
Many Singaporeans just follow the system for the sake of following it

People in the U.S. Think They Are Better Than They Actually Are. People in Asia Don't - Scientific American - "How competent are you, compared with your colleagues? When psychologists approach teams of coworkers with variations of this question, an interesting pattern emerges. If people have a truly realistic perspective of their abilities, then their self-assessments should generally fall around the middle. Instead psychologists have repeatedly found that people’s self-assessments are inflated. In fact, superstars and underperformers alike tend to think they are better than they truly are. This effect is one example of a positive illusion: a cognitive bias that makes you feel more competent, more blessed, more fortunate and better than you are...  the available evidence is based almost exclusively on a small fraction of humanity called Westerners. If positive illusions were truly essential to our species, we would expect them to be universal. But my work—and that of other research teams—suggests otherwise.   In the early 1990s my colleagues and I started our “Culture and the Self” project, exploring how the sense of the self might vary across cultures. We found no strong evidence for the better-than-average effect or other positive illusions in East Asia. In Japan, for example, when university students were asked what proportion of their peers were better than them in various traits and abilities, the average estimate fell around 50 percent.  In our newest area of research—cultural neuroscience—we find that the neural pathways that support positive illusions are absent in certain communities. In other words, a pattern that most psychologists have seen as a human universal is instead a product of culture."
Weird. I thought it was racist to say people from different cultures are different (e.g. pain response)

DJ Cooper fails FIBA drug test using pregnant girlfriend's urine - "D.J. Cooper has been hit with a two-year suspension by FIBA after using his pregnant girlfriend's urine to try and pass a drug test"

Meme - LemonPepperAINNA: "Teacher: Turn to page 23
Page 23:
*Sketch with Florida as penis, Michigan as head, Maine as foot etc*"

Eating certain herbs and spices ‘could stop mosquitoes biting you’ - "mosquitoes were consistently drawn to the smells of people emitting more carboxylic acids - probably produced by skin microbes - but were repelled by a person who had elevated levels of eucalyptol.  Eucalyptol, an aromatic component of many plants, is found in mugwort, sweet basil, rosemary, sage and cardamom and is a common ingredient in toothpaste and mouthwash."

State Department to phase out Times New Roman font, adopt Calibri - The Washington Post - "The U.S. State Department is going sans serif: It has directed staff at home and overseas to phase out the Times New Roman font and adopt Calibri in official communications and memos, in a bid to help employees who are visually impaired or have other difficulties reading... The change was recommended by the secretary’s office of diversity and inclusion, but the decision has already ruffled feathers among aesthetic-conscious employees who have been typing in Times New Roman for years in cables and memos from far-flung embassies and consulates around the world.  “A colleague of mine called it sacrilege,” said a Foreign Service officer in Asia, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy changes. “I don’t mind the decision because I hate serifs, but I don’t love Calibri.”... “I’m anticipating an internal revolt,” said a second Foreign Service officer... Many experts agree that serif typefaces — categories of fonts with added strokes — are more difficult to read on computer screens. (The difference is lessened when it comes to printed materials.)  Size is important too: The best practice, according to the University of Edinburgh’s Disability and Inclusive Learning Service, is to use 14-point font and avoid writing in block letters or italicizing or underlining text... But there is no one-size-fits-all accessibility solution, says Jack Llewellyn, a London-based designer who specializes in typography, and a change in font that could help some readers may actually make reading more difficult for others... Other design factors, including the alignment of the text, the spacing between lines and the contrast in color between the text and the background can make a bigger difference in accessibility than font type or size, says Ian Hosking, a senior research associate at the Engineering Design Center at the University of Cambridge. Hosking says those seeking to make text accessible to the largest number of people should allow personalization. “Pick a good default font, go to one-and-a-half line spacing, consider a baseline off-white background with black text, and then guide” readers to increase or decrease the contrast or font size based on what feels most comfortable to them, he says.  This approach comes with trade-offs, Hosking points out: Increasing the line spacing, for example, makes a document longer. For institutions like the State Department that prize succinct and standardized memos, that could be a problem.  Overall, designing a functional, usable and readable document is a “complicated” and “individual” process with no “simple solution,” he says.  The debate over fonts and design is long-running. In its memo, the State Department cited Microsoft’s use of Calibri as a default font as a reason for its shift. But in 2021, Microsoft announced it would phase out Calibri as a default font in favor of one of five new custom sans-serif fonts."

Meme - "Came across this at my parents house. Stay classy Nintendo
February 28, 1991
Dear David:
Thanks for sending in your game idea. It's obvious that you spent a great deal of time and thought on it, and I was really impressed by your creativity. Although we receive many outstanding proposals every day, we're limited to using our own creative resources to develop our products, most of which are designed and made in Japan. Every game we make takes a substantial investment of both time and money. In fact, creating a game as complex as Super Mario Bros. 3 can require years and involve the talents of complete teams of planners, artists and programmers. Because we can't use your game diagrams we are returning them to you. We encourage you to keep developing your creative ideas. Who knows David--perhaps someday you'll be the one designing games. Thanks again for writing. We appreciate your interest in our products.
Sincerely,
NINTENDO OF AMERICA INC.
LouAn M. Williams
Consumer Service Representative
Enclosure"

Meme - "So I walked by the vending machine yesterday at work....
WARNING: Endoscopy equipment is NOT to be used for stealing food from the vending machine! ~ Management"

Meme - "Diss tracks were savage in the 1700s
My Mill grinds Pepper, and Spice, Your Mill grinds Rats,and Mice"

Meme - "Don't spam click the like button for 30 seconds. worst mistake of my life"
There're still people who claim if you don't do anything wrong, you won't get zucced on Facebook

Meme - "Someone advice me to do skincare, here we go, it's my mother's skin cream, I will become a white man soon"
"White face isn't cool James"
"I'm so sorry my friend. In China dark skin represent low status work in field. I do not want to be dark skin. very cool very swag I like it"
"THIS IS COLOURIST LMFAOOOOO"
jameswhite @JamesCageyWhite: "I'm so sorry my friend. Please do not judge China culture mind you business. Please buy my t- shirt to support me"

Shower Thoughts on Twitter - "Finding out stripper poles spin in place (instead of strippers around the poles) is the grown-up’s finding out Santa isn’t real."

World of Engineering on Twitter - "Biology tells you that you are 7% BLOOD. Chemistry tells that you are 70% WATER. Physics tells you that you are 99,999999% EMPTY SPACE."

Meme - "Americans: Nooo you can't drink, you are only 20
I'm sorry dad"
"Germans: *Kids drinking beer*"

Meme - *Blonde* "BLM: Bang Local MILFs"

Why You Shouldn't Put The Cork Back In Your Wine Bottle - "when you put the cork back into a half-empty bottle, the wine is exposed to more oxygen both because of the porous cork and because there's more air in the bottle. "What we really want to do is reduce the amount of oxygen to wine ... What I recommend is a Mason jar. All you do is take whatever wine you have left over [and] pour it into a Mason jar or any kind of airtight container. In desperate times, I have cleaned out a kombucha container and used that. Seal it tight. There you have it. There is so much less oxygen in here than in the rest of the bottle."

'They call me a unicorn': Singaporean moves to Melbourne, colleagues tease him for grinding 5 days a week - "Muhammad Fadhil Abdul Latiff, 34, received quite the culture shock when he started work in Melbourne."

Prisoners Could Serve '1,000 Year Sentence in 8.5 Hours' in the Future - "Dr Roache said drugs could be developed to distort prisoners' minds into thinking time was passing more slowly.  "There are a number of psychoactive drugs that distort people’s sense of time, so you could imagine developing a pill or a liquid that made someone feel like they were serving a 1,000-year sentence," she said.  A second scenario would be to upload human minds to computers to speed up the rate at which the mind works, she wrote on her blog .  "If the speed-up were a factor of a million, a millennium of thinking would be accomplished in eight and a half hours... Uploading the mind of a convicted criminal and running it a million times faster than normal would enable the uploaded criminal to serve a 1,000 year sentence in eight-and-a-half hours. This would, obviously, be much cheaper for the taxpayer than extending criminals’ lifespans to enable them to serve 1,000 years in real time.""

Restanrant In Taiwan Is Serving Giant Isopod Ramen - "TheRamenBoy is serving Giant Isopod Ramen for 1480元 ($48.22) in Taiwan."

Full article: Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust - "This essay uncovers the systematic, intentional distortion of Holocaust history on the English-language Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia. In the last decade, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia, one touted by right-wing Polish nationalists, which whitewashes the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolsters stereotypes about Jews. Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), blame Jews for their own persecution, and inflate Jewish collaboration with the Nazis. To explain how distortionist editors have succeeded in imposing this narrative, despite the efforts of opposing editors to correct it, we employ an innovative methodology. We examine 25 public-facing Wikipedia articles and nearly 300 of Wikipedia’s back pages, including talk pages, noticeboards, and arbitration cases. We complement these with interviews of editors in the field and statistical data gleaned through Wikipedia’s tool suites. This essay contributes to the study of Holocaust memory, revealing the digital mechanisms by which ideological zeal, prejudice, and bias trump reason and historical accuracy. More broadly, we break new ground in the field of the digital humanities, modelling an in-depth examination of how Wikipedia editors negotiate and manufacture information for the rest of the world to consume."

Meme - GG Allin Turing @dubsteppenwolf: "tired of "your feelings are valid" discourse. sometimes my feelings are dumber than dogshit and I have a responsibility to get a grip."
Clearly "toxic"

Man, 30, dies with ping pong ball up his bum after being electrocuted while pleasuring himself - "The single 30-year-old from the Czech Republic, who lived at home with his parents, was found dead on the floor of his bedroom by firefighters, who were forced to kick his door down.  He was wearing a one-piece women's swimsuit, and had 'tightly' wrapped his legs, trunk and neck in straps of plastic and fabric... People most commonly shove objects into their rectum for sexual pleasure.   This is partly to do with the number of nerves in the anus, making it highly sensitive it can also stimulate the prostate in men.   For women, it can also indirectly stimulate parts of the vagina."

'A deadly problem': should we ban SUVs from our cities? - "SUVs are a paradox: while many people buy them to feel safer, they are statistically less safe than regular cars, both for those inside and those outside the vehicle. A person is 11% more likely to die in a crash inside an SUV than a regular saloon. Studies show they lull drivers into a false sense of security, encouraging them to take greater risks. Their height makes them twice as likely to roll in crashes and twice as likely to kill pedestrians by inflicting greater upper body and head injuries, as opposed to lower limb injuries people have a greater chance of surviving. Originally modelled from trucks, they are often exempt from the kinds of safety standards applied to passenger vehicles, including bonnet height. In Europe legislation is being brought in to end such “outdated and unjustified” exemptions."
Risk compensation is only a myth when it comes to masks and covid

Chicago's SUV Tax and Road Damage: Do the Numbers Add Up? - "'Engineering and transportation experts contacted Monday insisted that roads are typically designed for heavy trucks that weigh "at least double," if not 10 times what an SUV does.' They argued that there is virtually no difference between the road damage caused by a 5,401-pound Lexus LX-470 or a 5,070-pound Toyota Sequoia, and the wear and tear caused by a 3,950-pound Ford Crown Victoria, a 4,049-pound Cadillac Deville or a Mercedes Benz S-Class that weighs 4,200 pounds."

Meme - "State Street Diner. MOMS GET FREE CREAM PIE 5.14
Pretty sure that's what made her a mom the first time."
Addendum: I thought this got this post put behind a warning but when I removed it it didn't change anything