Monday: Hili dialogue

February 20, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Beginning of the week: Monday, February 20, 2023: National Muffin Day. Just remember how many calories those big boys have!

It’s also National Cherry Pie Day, Love Your Pet Cat Day, Presidents’ Day, Shrove Monday, World Day of Social Justice, and Day of Heavenly Hundred Heroes (a Ukrainian holiday)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February20 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*I woke up this morning (that’s a blues song intro) to find that Biden is making a secret visit to Kyiv. They gave a quote from his speech on the radio, assuring Ukrainians that America stands behind them. (He arrived secretly by train from Poland; I had wondered if he was going to nip across the border.).

Mr. Biden promised to release another $500 million in military aid in coming days, citing artillery ammunition, Javelin missiles and Howitzers, but he did not mention the advanced arms that Ukraine has sought. Mr. Zelensky told reporters that he and the president spoke about “long range weapons and the weapons that may still be supplied to Ukraine even though it wasn’t supplied before.”

Mr. Biden joined Mr. Zelensky for a visit to St. Michael’s Monastery in downtown Kyiv, where the sun glittered off the golden domes as the air-raid alarm wailed. Trailing two soldiers bearing a wreath, the two leaders walked along the Wall of Remembrance, where portraits are on display of more than 4,500 soldiers who have died since Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and first fomented a rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

Give Zelensky those weapons, Mr. President!

A photo from the NYT:

(From the NYT): President Biden met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Kyiv on Monday.

*I heard this on television yesterday, but couldn’t find confirmation in print, so I didn’t put it up yesterday. It’s only a rumor, but I wanted to find the rumor in print. Now it is, for example, at the NYT, where the article is titled, “Blinken says U.S. believes China is considering giving Russia weapons.” I think we’ve known for a while that China is giving Russia non-military aid for its Ukraine war, but this suggestion is a big step up:

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the United States believed China was considering supplying weapons and other lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine and that he had warned Beijing that doing so “would cause a serious problem” for already strained relations with Washington.

The Biden administration has repeatedly warned Russia’s allies against providing military support for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. While the United States has so far only seen Beijing supply nonmilitary aid to Russia, “the concern that we have now is, based on information we have, that they’re considering providing lethal support,” Mr. Blinken told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” in an interview that aired on Sunday.

Mr. Blinken did not elaborate on what the United States believed China might supply, but said that it could include weapons and ammunition. . .

On Saturday, Mr. Blinken met with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, at an annual security conference in Munich, the first high-level diplomatic exchange between the two sides since a Chinese spy balloon was found flying over the United States, causing a crisis in bilateral relations. A detailed readout of the meeting published by the Chinese state news agency Xinhua did not mention Russia or Ukraine.

But what American officials described as a testy encounter between the two diplomats highlighted how the war in Ukraine has become the latest point of friction between the United States and China. And it came at a Munich conference that was dominated by the war, with Western officials doubling down on their resolve to support Kyiv as Russia tries to step up a new offensive in eastern Ukraine.

What the news said was that Blinken told the Chinese that America would not put up with their giving weapons to the Russians to use against Ukrainians. But really, what can we do? We can pump more weapons into Ukraina, and Zelensky, though brave, is sounding a bit desperate. But weapons alone can’t save the beleaguered nation from the Russian numerical advantage PLUS Chinese-supplied weapons. Really, what kind of threat against China can we make good, besides economic ones? I doubt we’re going to risk nuclear war, so what do we do when they move against Taiwan?

*Two days ago I put up a tweet showing three changes in Roald Dahl’s book that his publishers had recently made. Dahl can’t object because he’s been dead for 33 years. I hadn’t realized that they actually made hundreds of changes, and now Salman Rushdie, back to his lovable and outspoken self, has called out the publisher.

A decision to change hundreds of words in Roald Dahl’s children’s books has drawn condemnation from author Salman Rushdie, who called it “absurd censorship.”

His is the latest prominent voice in the heated debate sparked after a report Friday in Britain’s Telegraph detailed a litany of changes by Dahl’s publisher and the Roald Dahl Story Co., which manages the works’ copyright and trademarks, that were designed to make the famous books more inclusive and accessible for today’s readers.

The litany of changes is paywalled at the Torygraph, but you can see them archived here. From that article:

By comparing the latest editions with earlier versions of the texts, The Telegraph has found hundreds of changes to Dahl’s stories.

Language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race has been cut and rewritten. Remember the Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach? They are now the Cloud-People. The Small Foxes in Fantastic Mr Fox are now female. In Matilda, a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane Austen added. It’s Roald Dahl, but different.

Read the rest to see more bowdlerization, which is odious, but back to Rushdie’s criticism, which is totally justified:

“Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship,” Rushdie, a Booker Prize-winning author, wrote on Twitter, calling out the children’s imprint of the British publisher Penguin Books. “Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.”

The changes in Dahl’s children’s books were done in partnership with Inclusive Minds, a collective for people who are passionate about inclusion, diversity and accessibility in children’s literature, according to the Roald Dahl Story Co.

Among the changes, according to the Telegraph: The character of Augustus Gloop from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is no longer described as “fat.” Now he is referred to as “enormous.” What was described as a “weird African language” in the book “The Twits” is no longer weird. In “The BFG,” a reference to the character of the “Bloodbottler” having skin that was “reddish-brown” has been removed.

Some characters are now gender-neutral. The singing and dancing Oompa Loompas from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” were once described as “small men”; now they are “small people.” In “James and the Giant Peach,” the Cloud-Men — mysterious figures who live in the sky — are now known as Cloud-People.

In some cases, new lines were added. In “The Witches,” a paragraph that explains that the witches are bald underneath their wigs has a new sentence: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

Bloody sensitivity readers messing up Dahl’s prose. Do I need to add that it’s unethical to change a writer’s words without his permission. Perhaps they can issue a series of his books with all the changes indicated: a Dahl Variourum, but this makes me ill. At least PEN America has also objected:

Suzanne Nossel, chief executive of PEN America, said the organization, a nonprofit that works to defend and celebrate free expression through the advancement of literature and human rights, was “alarmed at news” of the changes to Dahl’s works, calling the move “a purported effort to scrub the books of that which might offend someone.” On Twitter, Nossel wrote that “literature is meant to be surprising and provocative” and that efforts to erase words that might cause offense only “dilute the power of storytelling.”

“If we start down the path of trying to correct for perceived slights instead of allowing readers to receive and react to books as written, we risk distorting the work of great authors and clouding the essential lens that literature offers on society,” she said.

She and Rushdie are on the side of the angels.

*When I reported yesterday that Jimmy Carter has entered hospice care at home at 98, adding that he was the best EX-President, I’ve seen, people beefed that he wasn’t a perfect President. Yes, that’s true, but that’s not what I said; this exemplifies the rage that people love to spew on social media. The fact that he was well loved was exemplified yesterday by a public demonstration.

Dozens of well-wishers made the pilgrimage Sunday to The Carter Center in Atlanta, as prayers and memories of former President Jimmy Carter’s legacy were offered up at his small Baptist church in Plains, Georgia, a day after he entered hospice care.

Among those paying homage was his niece, who noted the 39th president’s years of service in an emotional address at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Carter taught Sunday school for decades.

“I just want to read one of Uncle Jimmy’s quotes,” Kim Fuller said during the Sunday school morning service, adding: “Oh, this is going to be really hard.”

She referenced this quote from Carter: “I have one life and one chance to make it count for something. I’m free to choose that something. … My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can.”

“Maybe if we think about it, maybe it’s time to pass the baton,” Fuller said before leading those gathered in prayer. “Who picks it up, I have no clue. I don’t know. Because this baton’s going to be a really big one.”

Yes, he was religious, another imperfection, but he never pushed it on anyone, and, to quote Stephen Weinberg, “with or without religion, good people do good things”. He was a good person , and if you think otherwise, you’re just wrong.

*And an op-ed in the NYT, “America can’t go ‘wobbly’ on Ukraine” makes a desperate plea for America to continue supporting that gallant little nation. Our support is waning, as would be inevitable in a continuing war, but we can’t give up, says David French, op-ed columnist, writer, and lawyer.

As we approach the first anniversary of Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, two ominous trends are emerging at once. First, Russia is doubling down. It’s pouring fresh troops into Ukraine and launching new offensive operations.

Second, poll after poll after poll demonstrate that American support for Ukraine is slipping away. While Americans have sympathy for Ukraine, declining percentages are willing to spend American resources to keep Ukraine in the fight.

Yet the outcome of the war is simply too important — to America as well as Ukraine — to allow our support to falter. On the war’s anniversary it’s time for a concerted effort to persuade Americans of a single idea: We should support Ukraine as much as it takes, as long as it takes, until the Russian military suffers a decisive, unmistakable defeat.

Instead, domestic agreement is fraying, As The Washington Post reported last week, the Biden administration is telling Ukraine there are no guarantees of future support, and it’s “raising the pressure” on Ukraine “to make significant gains on the battlefield” in the short term, while Western aid still flows.

According to The Post, the administration is even qualifying the meaning of President Biden’s State of the Union pledge to support Ukraine “as long as it takes.” It quotes an administration official saying, “‘As long as it takes’ pertains to the amount of conflict,” but “it doesn’t pertain to the amount of assistance.”

I’m with French: until Ukraine surrenders or is overrun, we have to stand with them and support them. We cannot let the odious Putin just grab whatever territory he wants, and extinguish the freedom of Ukraine. As French—who thinks this war is “winnable” for Ukraine if it gets the right help—says:

. . . . if Russia defeats Ukraine, a dangerous precedent will be set. Nuclear-armed powers will prove they can invade smaller foes and then rattle the nuclear saber to deter an effective response, creating a one-way ratchet toward territorial aggression. Ironically enough, the effort to placate Russia to avoid escalation is likely to result in more aggression from nuclear-armed foes.

That’s only one of the reasons we should support Ukraine, the main one being that it’s the right thing to do. There are others, too, but I’ll let you read French’s plea. We can’t send troops in, as that would start a US/Russian war, but we can keep the aid flowing—and increasing.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s in the way:

Hili: If the shadow could talk…
A: It would only say that you are blocking the light.
In Polish:

Hili: Gdyby cień mógł mówić…
Ja: To mówiłby tylko, że przeszkadzasz światłu.

And a photo of Baby Kulka:

********************

From Moto: Duck traffic control:

From Only Duck Memes:

From Merilee, a Mark Parisi cartoon:

 

From Pyers:

President Zelensky zooms to the Munich Security Conference:

From Titania on the J. K. Rowling fracas:

 

Retweeted by Masih: Italians rally for Iranian freedom.

From Barry, one of the most impressive displays of sexual selection (“lek” behavior) in an American bird:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a Polish Jewish woman who died in Auschwitz at 19:

Tweets from Professor Cobb:

I’m going to put this up every day for a while (Tina is Matthew’s wife):

. . . and the fracas goes to ChatGPT:

I have no idea why Tammy Nichols is doing this (most Covid shots, for example, are made with mRNA). Without looking, I would guess that Nichols is a Republican.

Snow leopards are quite elusive, so this photo is extra special:

34 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day:
    1472 – Orkney and Shetland are pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark.

    1792 – The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by United States President George Washington.

    1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.

    1877 – Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake receives its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

    1905 – The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Massachusetts’s mandatory smallpox vaccination program in Jacobson v. Massachusetts.

    1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.

    1943 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms.

    1962 – Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, making three orbits in four hours, 55 minutes.

    2014 – Dozens of Euromaidan anti-government protesters died in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, many reportedly killed by snipers.

    Births:
    1839 – Benjamin Waugh, English activist, founded the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) (d. 1908).

    1898 – Enzo Ferrari, Italian motor racing driver and entrepreneur, founder of Scuderia Ferrari and Ferrari (d. 1988).

    1902 – Ansel Adams, American photographer and environmentalist (d. 1984).

    1925 – Robert Altman, American director and screenwriter (d. 2006).

    1927 – Roy Cohn, American lawyer and political activist (d. 1986).

    1927 – Sidney Poitier, Bahamian-American actor, director, and diplomat (d. 2022).

    1937 – Nancy Wilson, American singer and actress (d. 2018).

    1942 – Mitch McConnell, American lawyer and politician.

    1943 – Mike Leigh, English director and screenwriter.

    1951 – Randy California, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1997).

    1967 – Kurt Cobain, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1994).

    1984 – Trevor Noah, South African comedian, actor, and television host.

    Flatlined:
    1626 – John Dowland, English lute player and composer (b. 1563).

    1895 – Frederick Douglass, American author and activist (b. c. 1818).

    1961 – Percy Grainger, Australian-American pianist and composer (b. 1882).

    2005 – Hunter S. Thompson, American journalist and author (b. 1937).

    2017 – Steve Hewlett, British journalist (b. 1958).

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  2. Hopefully, a reader can straighten me out on this. My sense was that a copyright on a work accrues to the publisher rather than the author and once thus copyrighted the author actually loses control over the work. The copyright system was created to advantage publishers- not authors. For my entire career with the federal government, we had a little boilerplate paragraph to sign when sending a research paper in to a journal for publication saying that the work was a result that was funded by the government, was in the public domain, and copyright could not be assigned. When, later, I was an author of some work in conjunction with an educational non-profit, CK12 Foundation, we published under a creative commons (CC) license or copyright which would allow anyone to use and modify the work for their use as long as they acknowledged the original authors’ work.

    Someone please straighten me out on this, as I am just a poor retired engineer trying to understand some lawfare.

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    1. I think you keep the copyright unless you explicitly sign it away. I don’t know how it works with publishers, never having published a book, but I assume the author keeps the copyright and licenses the publisher to produce copies.

      The creative commons licence does not transfer copyright but it does licence other people to be able to make copies under certain conditions.

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      1. So maybe a book author/commenter can help out here. For books such as Faith vs Fact or Why evolution is True or As Gods, etc, do you as author, hold the copyright or do you assign it to the publisher. Do you, as an individual and author, have control over the published content of the copyrighted work?

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    2. In the US, copyright exists from the time of creation of a work, and is owned by the creator, unless the creator transfers the right. In my day job, me employer owns copyright to my work created in the course of my job, and this is a section of my contract. There are a lot of details involved (which why I use an IP attorney), but the copyright always starts with the creator of the work.

      When I do outside work, I retain copyrights and grant license for specific uses to the client (my standard contract terms) unless the client wants to purchase rights, which turns into a negotiation for what rights and uses, so as to protect my IP and keep a client from preventing me from using it in other work. The best is when a client tries to slip a rights grab into the NDA. That is a giant NOPE.

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  4. The waning support of the American public for continuing aid to Ukraine is, I think, the result of several factors. The first is the country’s long tradition of isolationism that goes back to George Washington. Unless the public perceives that the country is under imminent threat, the public shies away from helping other nations with direct material support and, ultimately, the direct intervention of the U.S. military. The notion of “Fortress America” still exists. The second reason is the Vietnam Syndrome. Here the country got involved in a long war that was a mistake from the start. Billions of dollars and thousands of lives were lost for nothing. For those old enough to remember that war, the fear of direct American intervention is chilling. Finally, and most importantly, the Biden administration has done a poor job in explaining to the American people as to why support for Ukraine is essential to America’s national interest. The idealistic component of American foreign policy (it is simply the right thing to do to protect a small nation from a predator) can only go so far. Unless the Biden administration can convince the American public that a successful Russian invasion of Ukraine will result in a real threat to American lives (economically or otherwise) and, therefore, must be prevented with American help, public support is likely to continue to diminish.

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    1. I would add also that the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has also dampened enthusiasm for intervening in foreign conflicts.

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    2. “Unless the public perceives that the country is under imminent threat, the public shies away from helping other nations with direct material support and, ultimately, the direct intervention of the U.S. military.”

      Whom do Americans (and the ruling American elite, specifically “Chicken Hawks”) expect to join the military and go in harm’s way, possibly to be killed or maimed for life, and for what purpose? Defense of the country, Mom, The Flag and Apple Pie I can somewhat understand. American (corporate financial?) “interests,” not so much.

      Regarding American “national interest,” how has NATO eastward expansion of the last two decades or so promoted the national interest?

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    1. … using public money to fund private education, a consummation devoutly to be wished by Republicans …

      Thereby resulting in public education’s suicide — which is to say, the same consummation devoutly to be wished by Hamlet in his Act 2, Scene 3 soliloquy, Stephen?

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      1. Public Education is already suicidal. Here’s the latest on their path forward:

        Numerous public school districts now prohibit teachers from giving students a score of less than 50% on homework, no matter what. Scores of zero — or any score below 50% — are prohibited, even if no work is turned in or if the student turns in plagiarized work. Other school districts, such as Prince George’s County, Maryland, mandate 50% credit if students show a “good-faith effort.”

        In California, several big public school districts, including Los Angeles, still allow grades, but only A’s, B’s, and C’s. D’s and F’s are no longer allowed.

        One Virginia high school has gone a step further, not just rewarding students who do no work but also penalizing students with high academic achievement. Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria withheld National Merit awards notifications from students and their families. These students did not learn that their hard work and study had placed them among the best in the country. Because the school did not tell them about the awards, they were unable to mention the honor on college and scholarship applications. This was no administrative oversight; it was on purpose. One of the school officials who withheld the notifications offered this rationale: “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements.”

        The renowned KIPP Public Charter Schools network, which had years of success preparing disadvantaged youths for college, dropped its motto, “Work Hard. Be Nice,” in July 2020. Why? According to its public statement, the motto “supports the illusion of meritocracy.”

        https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-pandemic-learning-loss-end-of-letter-grades-20230217-mfgdqdtb4refjpj4krwcxskmgi-story.html

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      2. Yes, Ken. The Republicans are engaging in what would be called “progressive discharge” in the HR world, which, as you know, is against the law. They are forcing the baby to drown himself in the bathtub.

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      3. Public education is not some sacred trust, Ken. It is just a transaction that allowed economies of scale to educate those children whose parents couldn’t afford private tutoring and couldn’t home-school them because neither parent could read or write, to get the ball rolling. There is enlightened self-interest for the well-off to pay, through taxes, so that all children can read, write, do arithmetic and learn who the Founding Fathers were (although in Canada, ours have all been canceled so all the kids learn about is Chief Tecumseh and residential schools and Whatshername who’s on the 10-dollar bill now.)

        But if poor kids aren’t learning math and can’t read, what are we getting for this outlay that could possibly justify the predictable capture of the system by rent-seeking unions and educrats?

        I smile about the professed sanctity of public education. Teachers resent being compared to day-care workers so both parents can work for money. Yet this is what gives their unions so much power. If every family had a motivated mother at home ready to step into the breach, teachers’ strikes would produce nothing but a yawn. (My just-getting-by mother conducted school for my sister and me on rare snow days. No watching TV all day in our PJs. We could have held out for weeks. Now a snow day gets called at the slightest excuse and all hell breaks loose to find short-notice child care. Strikes are catastrophes with great public pressure to give the union what it wants, or order it back to work, depending on political persuasion.)

        The irony is that a visionary man called Egerton Ryerson is regarded the father of public education in Upper Canada, which eventually become Ontario. Unfortunately for his memory, he made an off-hand suggestion that for Indian children in remote areas—this was in the early roadless colonial days of primitive railways—boarding schools where both teachers and students would live in residence would likely be more practical than neighbourhood schools that children even in farming hamlets could walk to. So he’s canceled now, too. Literally: Ryerson University changed its name and the head of his bronze statue chopped off with an angle grinder is proudly displayed on a pole at a nearby Indian Reserve.

        Wokewatch Canada has been looking at the capture of dysfunctional school boards by race- and trans- obsessed inclusion ideology that ignores scholastic performance. Maybe it is time to burn it all down and start over, just as fire renews a forest.

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        1. That may well be, Leslie, but were it not for American public education, I’d’ve likely missed our resident librarian’s allusion to the line from Prince Hamlet’s fifth soliloquy.

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          1. I would add that destroying the public school system because some schools (we’re never told how many by the sky-is-falling folks) have gone woke would be a horrible thing to do to millions children whose parents can’t afford private schools or tutoring and whose parents are too busy working to provide home-school. Anti-wokery goes too far when it turns into callousness.

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            1. . . .we’re never told how many by the sky-is-falling folks . . .

              Seems to be quite a few schools in Chicago. This may not necessarily be down to wokeness. It could be just what they have to work with. And it wasn’t much better before the pandemic. School spending per student is in the $15,000 – $20,000 range, with some abysmal schools spending more than double that.

              https://wirepoints.org/not-a-single-student-can-do-math-at-grade-level-in-53-illinois-schools-for-reading-its-30-schools-wirepoints/

              In 930 public schools in Illinois, a quarter of the total, only 1 out of 10 students can do math at grade level.

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      4. Who would Republican fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life . . . puzzles the will, and makes one rather bear the ills he has, than fly to others he knows not of.

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  7. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that Roald Dalhl’s writing will continue to be published.

    Thank you, oh great Chairpeople Dei, may we have another?

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      1. Is it a reboot, or is it evolution?

        Like how Mickey Mouse looks different now?

        We are about to find out….

        You know those “Non GMO” labels on food packages, with a pretty butterfly? There needs to be a label like that on Dahl’s work now. Not sure what … because they _are_ “modifying” a writer’s words.

        Linguistically-Modified Writing..?

        LMO…. LMAO…

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  8. Controversy over Dahl’s work is nothing new. When “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was originally published, the Oompa Loompas were African pygmies. The kids taking the tour actually ask Wonka if he made them out of chocolate. For the movie, they were made into elf-like creatures with orange faces and green hair because the NAACP had threatened to boycott the movie if they were depicted as Black. Dahl later rewrote the book to remove references to their race. I see that they are still described as “small,” however. A friend of mine who has a daughter who is a dwarf asked why it is wrong for Wonka to have Blacks as slaves but not little people.

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  9. a reference to the character of the “Bloodbottler” having skin that was “reddish-brown” has been removed.

    So it’s OK to have different pigmentation, it’s just not OK to mention what the nature of it is?

    Ukraine coverage: I like this guy’s coverage He puts a new one up every day with detailed maps.

    And meanwhile that snow leopard can’t believe his good fortune at finally getting so close to Max Waugh.

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  10. “I woke up this morning (that’s a blues song intro) . . . .”

    Shortest blues tune ever: “I didn’t wake up this morning –“

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    1. Also the intro to one of the great songs of the late 1960s, First Edition’s deranged, psychedelic rocker, I Just Dropped In.

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  11. Hey, Jerry. Re: Jimmy Carter… is being religious really an imperfection? Would you say the same about MLK Jr.? We are all flawed human beings, and calling out being religious or spiritual as an imperfection seems petty. Would you do the same regarding Tibetan Monks? How about the practitioners of Ayahuasca Religions?

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  12. I looked at the replies to the Titania McGrath tweet and noticed a large percentage didn’t realize it was parody, despite it being ridiculous. Then I realized I’ve seen similar comments on the subject that in the past I would not have imagined could be meant seriously but now I realize are. The other day I saw a comment calling JKR evil for setting up a rape crisis center for females because transwomen weren’t allowed to work there, as if giving traumatized women a single sex refuge to help them recover is bad somehow.

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    1. The Vancouver City Council canceled its financial support of the Vancouver Rape Crisis Centre a few years ago because it will not admit men, no matter that they claim to be transwomen. Fortunately, the Centre has many other sources of funding which continue.

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