Welcome to Friday, October 3, 2025: the end of the “work”week. It’s also Thomas Wolfe‘s 125th birthday, as well as National Butterfly and Hummingbird Day. Here’s the world’s smallest hummingbird (and sworld’s mallest bird), the bee hummingbird, Mellisuga helenae. It’s endemic to Cuba, and this is how small it is (from Wikipedia):
Females weigh 2.6 g (0.092 oz) and are 6.1 cm (2+3⁄8 in) long, and are slightly larger than males, which have an average weight of 1.95 g (0.069 oz) and length of 5.5 cm (2+1⁄8 in).
It would take ten big females to weigh even an ounce!
Here’s a video of both sexes. It doesn’t really show how small they are, so I put another figure from Wikipedia below:
It’s also Global Smoothie Day, National Denim Day, National Caramel Custard Day, and National Soft Taco Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 3 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Yes, the U.S. government is still shut down, with no sign of an end. Besides government workers getting “furloughs,” essential data is also on furlough:
The timing could hardly be worse. Policymakers have been watching closely for signs that a cooling job market, rising unemployment and worsening inflation could be weighing on the economy. The September jobs report was expected to provide a much-anticipated snapshot of the U.S. labor market, after a summer of rapid cooling.
“It’s a bad time to be missing data,” said Erica Groshen, an economist at Cornell University who led the Bureau of Labor Statistics during the 2013 shutdown. “We are flying blind right as the economy could be turning.”
That is what distinguishes this shutdown from previous ones, experts say. The last time the jobs report was delayed, by a couple of weeks in October 2013, the economy was on a clear path, with rising gross domestic product and falling unemployment.
This time around, the U.S. economy appears to be at a crossroads. Although growth has been strong so far this year, hiring has slowed significantly in recent months, raising concerns that further cooling could quickly spell trouble for the broader economy. Data from payrolls processor ADP on Thursday showed that employment at private companies dropped by 32,000 in September, the largest decline in more than two years. Another report, from employment firm Challenger Gray & Christmas, showed that companies’ hiring plans are at their lowest level since 2009.
“The question right now is: Why is the labor market weak when everything else is good?” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. “Now not only do we not have data, we don’t have data in a situation where there are some very significant signals coming from the labor market.”
Those of a conspiratorial frame of mind might think the Republicans did this on purpose so they wouldn’t lose votes in a bad economy, but the midterms aren’t till next year and the government will surely be open then and cranking out data. Or at least one hopes. . . .
*The editorial-board editors of the Wall Street Journal are not diehard Trump supporters, as shown in their new op-ed, “America’s Pharmacist-in-Chief,” calling out Trump’s latest cockamamie plan:
When politicians interfere in private markets and industry, crazy things happen. So it goes with President Trump’s rolling attempt to play Pharmacist in Chief on drug production, government approvals, and consumer access and prices.
The comedy portion of this show debuted this week with Mr. Trump’s announcement of a new government website dubbed (of course) TrumpRx. The plan is to sell medicines directly to consumers at discount prices. Details are vague, though the business theory is supposedly to bypass insurance “middlemen.”
Someone should have told the President that private businesses already do this. One example is Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drug Co., which markets itself as selling “safe medicines at the lowest possible price.” We know Mr. Trump doesn’t like Mr. Cuban, but there are other competitors, and why does the federal government need to become a drug marketer? Doesn’t it already do enough not very well?
The White House is advertising TrumpRx discounts on the likes of Xeljanz for autoimmune conditions (40% discount), Zavzpret for migraines (50%), Eucrisa for dermatitis (80%), and Duavee for osteoporosis (85%). What the White House isn’t saying is that most drugs already cost much less than their list prices.
Most Americans pay far less out-of-pocket for medicines using their insurance cards at neighborhood pharmacies. A Berkeley Research Group study last year found that drug makers receive only about 50% on a dollar of revenue for every drug they sell in the U.S. Most of the rest goes to pharmacy benefit managers, which use rebates from drug makers to reduce insurance premiums.
Out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs accounts for a mere 1% of U.S. healthcare spending. TrumpRx looks like a political branding exercise designed to show voters that Mr. Trump is reducing the cost of drugs. But wait until the next Democratic President takes this idea and expands it.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump on Tuesday announced a deal that gives Pfizer a three-year reprieve from his mooted 100% tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals. In return, Pfizer will sell medicines to Medicaid at a price that matches the lowest paid in the developed world—the so-called most-favored-nation price.
This is a good short-term deal for Pfizer since federal law already requires companies to sell drugs to Medicaid at huge discounts. Pfizer’s stock popped 6.8% Tuesday and another 6.8% Wednesday on the news. Drug stocks have underperformed this year under the threat of Mr. Trump’s tariffs and price controls.
Other drugs, then, will be motivated to join TrumpRx for fear of otherwise having to pay more tariffs. This is yet another segment of the economy that Trump wants to bring under his personal control. Fortunately, I have a drug plan that’s cheaper than any of these alternatives (one of the benefits of retiring early), so I’ll never have to use TrumpRx. The man slaps his name on everything!
*The undocumented immigrant who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, and who was returned (after a judge ordered his return) to face criminal charges, has been barred by an immigration judge from seeking asylum in the U.S. But the case of Mr. Abrego Garcia is far from over.
An immigration judge has rejected a request by Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March and then brought back to face criminal charges, to seek asylum in the United States.
The decision by the judge in Baltimore on Wednesday foreclosed one of the options that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers had tried in an effort to keep him in the country. While the ruling meant that a final order of removal that was first imposed on Mr. Abrego Garcia in 2019 remained in place, the Trump administration cannot deport him again until a separate case he filed in Federal District Court in Maryland is resolved.
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s asylum request, which was filed in August, added to an already complex web of cases that he has found himself involved in since mid-March, when the Trump administration deported him in error to a notorious terrorism prison in El Salvador, his homeland.
Even though Mr. Abrego Garcia was in the country illegally at the time and was subject to removal, Trump officials acknowledged that his expulsion to El Salvador violated a provision of the 2019 decision that had expressly barred him from being sent to that country because he feared his life could be in danger there.
Since bringing Mr. Abrego Garcia back to U.S. soil to face federal charges of immigrant smuggling, administration officials have said they want to expel him again — this time to a country other than El Salvador. Officials have offered a shifting array of plans, saying first that they wanted to deport Mr. Abrego Garcia to Uganda and then to the small African nation of Eswatini.
Those plans have been stymied, his lawyers have said, by the fact that the Trump administration has apparently not reached agreements with either country to accept him. The plans have also been blocked for the moment by a federal judge in Maryland, Paula Xinis, who has barred the administration from expelling Mr. Abrego Garcia to any third country until she holds a hearing on Monday to determine whether the process the government is seeking to use is in fact legal.
Unless the Justice Department, which has already bungled the case, can show that Abrego Garcia really was engaged in criminal activity, he could fight this case on the grounds of vindictive prosecution. An earlier NYT article states this, but the defendant’s lawyers deny it:
At the heart of the case was a 2022 traffic stop during which Mr. Abrego Garcia was pulled over and discovered to be driving several Hispanic men, some of whom were in the country illegally. Even though the F.B.I. learned about the stop at the time, it decided not to do anything about it and Mr. Abrego Garcia was released without charges.
Given that the FBI didn’t do anything before, how can it justify such a vigorous prosecution now. Yes, it does smell like vindictive prosection.
*I hadn’t realized that the Washington Post had fired its only black female opinion writer (note that they do have both black and female writers), which has led to complaints about the absence of “black voices”:
As the founding global opinion editor for The Washington Post, Karen Attiah believed her job had always been about assessing world affairs in a way that elevated a diverse range of perspectives.
“I’m not just a columnist,” she recently said.
But last week, the Post’s only Black female opinion writer revealed she had been fired over posts on Bluesky about violent white men in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing that the newspaper said violated its social media policy. After offering what she called an “honest reflection on the state of violence in America,” her 11 years at the Post came to an abrupt end.
“Being pushed out of the Washington Post for expressing myself — for not even expressing myself, for doing my job as a journalist — is really a deep, sort of cruel 180,” she told The Associated Press.
The firing of Attiah, the last Black full-time member on the Post’s opinion desk, worries media professionals and advocacy organizations about the wider implications for journalistic freedom and diversity. The potential fallout, they say, could make journalists of color hesitant to express opinions or address injustices, effectively muting those perspectives.
ADThe National Association of Black Journalists, the nation’s largest professional advocacy organization for journalists of color, said Tuesday that Attiah’s firing had “raised an alarm about the erosion of Black voices across the media.”
“The absence of Black journalists doesn’t just harm us — it impoverishes the entire profession,” said NABJ President Errin Haines. “When our voices are missing, stories go untold, perspectives go unchallenged, and the truth remains incomplete.”
After a meeting Monday with Washington Post Executive Editor Matt Murray, NABJ leadership said it had assurances that the news outlet is working to retain diversity among its staff and to expand access to careers for journalists of color.
ADA Washington Post spokesperson declined the AP’s request to comment on Attiah’s firing. Attiah has announced plans to dispute the Post’s decision in court.
“It’s more sort of about this chilling precedent that it sets for journalists, for educators, for researchers, for anyone who writes on gender and violence. If they think it’s going to stop with me just because I was a Black woman saying this, it never stops with just Black people,” Attiah said.
Here’s one of her posts that got her in trouble:
Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence.
— Karen Attiah (@karenattiah.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T21:56:33.956Z
Is that a black voice or a black female voice? Could you tell if you didn’t already know? Since the Post is presumably going to replace her with someone of similar ethnicity, isn’t a black person enough? Is there such a thing a a consensus black female voice, or is the Post going to hire someone who says predictable things—things we expect African-Americans to say—as opposed to, say, someone like John McWhorter. I have no objection to diversity of opinion, but I do to confecting an equity of opinion, in which everybody is not only represented, but says what they’re expected to say, at least in a left-leaning paper like the Post. (I have heard, but haven’t looked for myself, whether the paper’s op-ed section is leaning more towards the center or even Right.)
*In the AP’s reliable “oddities” section, we learn that the New Zealand falcon, Falco novaeseelandiae, has won the hotly contested New Zealand Bird of the Year contest, a contest that, I think, should be won every year by the kākāpō , New Zealand’s plump and adorable flightless parrot—the only flightless species of parrot on Earth. But the handsome falcon is charistmatic, and.one of the country’s only two endemic birds of prey.
New Zealand ’s annual bird election is contested by cheeky parrots, sweet songbirds and cute, puffball robins. This year’s winner was a mysterious falcon that wouldn’t think twice about eating them.
Kārearea, the Indigenous Māori name for the New Zealand falcon, was crowned Bird of the Year on Monday. But the annual poll, run by conservation group Forest & Bird, is no ordinary online vote.
The fiercely fought election sees volunteer (human) campaign managers apply to stump for their favorite bird. Feathers fly as avian enthusiasts seek to sway the public through meme battles, trash-talking poster campaigns and dance routines performed in bird costumes.
“Bird of the Year has grown from a simple email poll in 2005 to a hotly contested cultural moment,” said Forest & Bird Chief Executive Nicola Toki. “Behind the memes and mayhem is a serious message.”
The contest draws attention to New Zealand’s native bird species, with 80% designated as being in trouble to some degree. But it attracts passionate fandom because New Zealanders are bird-obsessed.
ADIn a country with no native land mammals except for two species of bat, birds reign supreme. They appear in art, on jewelry, in schoolchildren’s songs, and in the name New Zealanders are known by abroad, “kiwis.”
Beloved birds include alpine parrots that harass tourists and pigeons which get so drunk on berries that they sometimes fall out of trees.
“This is not a land of lions, tigers and bears,” said Toki. “The birds here are weird and wonderful and not what you would expect to see perhaps in other countries.”
If the kākāpō doesn’t win, then the kea (the world’s only alpine parrot) should win, or perhaps they should simply alternate them year after year. But the falcon is a handsome bird in itself, and I’ve seen one up close at a raptor center in NZ. Here’s a male:
And if you haven’t seen this vudei kākāpō trying to mate with Mark Carwardine as Stephen Fry looks on (from “Last Chance to See”), you need to see it NOW. See why this bird should win every year?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the dialogue between man and cat brooks several interpretations:
Andrzej: Slogans have replaced definitions.
Hili: And that’s one of the reasons to go hunting.
In Polish:
Ja: Slogany zastąpiły definicje.
Hili: I to jest jeden z powodów, żeby zająć się polowaniem.
*******************
From Stacy:
From The English Language Police:
From Give Me a Sign:
We were talking about civility the other day and I realized that J. K. Rowling is almost always civil when she encounters her haters. Here’s one example (Masih is quiet today):
‘That bitch’ definitely doesn’t want you dead. She does think you could use some mental health support, though. pic.twitter.com/POe0At0zDZ
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 28, 2025
From Luana. I do’t think we need to deal with “Communists” in America or elsewhere so much as the Left:
You’re ignorantly naive if you don’t think this can happen elsewhere across Western Civilisation.
The Communists on the Left have signed an Unholy Alliance with Islam. pic.twitter.com/AY9Wuuna7H
— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) September 30, 2025
From Simon, who says, “This is not about Trump, but it sort of feels that way.”
"Republic has no need for savants and chemists" (the political court that sentenced Antoine Lavoisier to the guillotine, 1794)*from Paul Nurse's new book
— Oded Rechavi (@odedrechavi.bsky.social) 2025-10-02T15:50:11.821Z
From Malcolm; Even with good oil, I’m amazed they last so long:
How fast pistons move inside an internal combustion engine.pic.twitter.com/sBSlvMPHKP
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 13, 2025
From my feed; a seal!
A man was filming the depth of a hole in Arctic ice when he accidentally caught a seal surfacing to breathe pic.twitter.com/oARSb7kRaB
— Interesting things (@awkwardgoogle) October 1, 2025
From Anna:
If you’re wondering why Canada isn’t a world leader in AI…@DalhousieU is hiring a tenured professor of Artificial Intelligence, but only disabled women can apply
‘This position is designated to candidates who self-identify as gender equity-seeking persons with a disability.’ pic.twitter.com/0Sb6XCIox6
— Chris Brunet (@chrisbrunet) September 28, 2025
One that I posted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
A Hungarian Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was ten.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-10-03T10:29:18.658Z
One from Dr. Cobb. Listen to this gecko!
sound on
— drewtoothpaste (@drewtoothpaste.bsky.social) 2025-10-02T00:37:47.430Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back. -Gore Vidal, writer (3 Oct 1925-2012)
The barking geckos are funny. Years ago I was surprised to learn about the variety of sounds made by different species of frogs. Years ago I found a YouTube video “Frogs of the world and the sounds they make”. Frogs don’t just say “ribbit” or croak. Some frogs whistle, cackle, groan, chirp, make farting noises, etc. I swear that a species of frog native to Indonesia almost sounded like it was yodeling. Truly an amazing array of sounds are produced by various species of frogs.
US soldiers returning from Vietnam would sometimes have with them Tokay geckos they brought from the jungles. When they stopped in Hawaii they were made to destroy them (the military didn’t want them to spread), but some GIs let them go. So now they live in Hawaii. The Tokay gecko was called the “Fuck You” lizard because its call, like a bark, sound a bit like that.
Around 1980 or so, I was hiking near Halealakla to get to a spear fishing site in the park. I had to camp in the jungle the first night because I had mis-calculated how far I had to go. The previous week some other hikers (elsewhere; on the Big Island) had been murdered when they stumbled on a marijuana plot, so I was nervous. I didn’t set up my tent, just slept on a tarp, but late in the night just as it started to rain (of course) I heard, very clearly, right next to my left ear; “FUCK YOU”. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I was going spearfishing (that was the point of the hike) so I grabbed my spear, my light, jumped up and turned to defend myself against what I thought were drug dealers.
But it was a little red and green spotted lizard.
My goodness, that was a fright, but I can see why the GIs were so enamored of them. In the clear light of day, their bark doesn’t really sound like “fuck you”, but in the jungle, at night, in your fox hole (or asleep on a wet tarp) it sure does.
I heard them all the time at night when I was in Vietnam. Yes, we called them Fuck You Lizards. They sounded more like: Wuck-you, Wuck-you, Wuck-you in a deep croaking voice. For a long time I thought they might actually be frogs. Thanks for the identification of Tokay Gecko.
Wonderful story!
Nice to start out the day with this colorful hummingbird. It does not seem much smaller than our “regular” backyard hummingbirds which are a source of constant entertainment as they are so quick and agile, quickly flying from feeder to a nest somewhere in our trees, changing direction on a dime and stopping to hover before quickly accelerating away. These were some of the behaviors that drew one of our flight controls engineers to pick the hummingbird species for his studies of bird biomimetics of flight.
Please do not try to understand anything about the fed gov shutdown by rational or scientific analysis. It is simply another case of ideology-driven action. As I said in yesterday’s comment, these actions are extremely dismissive of any product of the government (other than military defense) and any recognition that such products have value in citizens’ and even the nation’s life. Whether it is support of basic science research, basic data from weather satellites to understand the atmosphere, or commerce and jobs statistics, it is pretty much all wasteful fat to the hard-core Project 2025 types who seem to think that in a free for all economy, the private sector would supply such data if it had value…ie make a profit. Though, for some reason, support of a military defense force is the one purpose of government that these folks do seem to support. In some sense it seems no different than the rejection of enlightenment values and processes by the woke left…or sometimes referred to as the horseshoe where extreme left meets extreme right.
Oh bloody hell! One of the Jews killed outside a synagogue in Manchester yesterday, and another who remains seriously injured in hospital, were hit by police gun shots. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cx2703lnww4t
The attacker, named as Jihad Al-Shamie (who on earth calls their kid Jihad?!), didn’t have a gun.
Jihad is and always has been a fairly common Arabic name for boys.
Yes Michael. I’ve encountered the name quite a few times, there and here. (sigh).
A problem in the instant case is that the focus will be “Well GUNS killed those people” when in fact… without jihad, or here Mr. Jihad, there’d be no deaths, no disorder or Koranic chaos in the formerly quiet streets of a peaceful democracy.
This is the bait and switch the left love to do.
Its always ANYTHING but the actual instructed exhortations of Islam.
It is Islam. It is always Islam.
D.A.
NYC
Here in Oz we have a Labor politician whose first name is Jihad. He is Minister for Youth Justice in NSW.
Plot thickens – Jihad was out on bail on a rape charge when he attacked the synagogue.
Does anyone read editorials or opinion columns any longer?
All the time, both liberal and conservative.
What do you gain by reading them, anything (on a constant basis) that you didn’t know or consider?
From the staff at The Dispatch, I get a conservative view that is not Trump deranged, expressed more eloquently than I could ever do. I recommend them, especially Kevin D. Williamson and Jonah Goldberg.
Thx
Apparently the people criticizing the Washington Post know what a woman is and/or agree that sex is binary and defined by gametes.
As the tweet from JKR illustrates, “gender equity-seeking persons with a disability” pretty much encompasses all activist transwomen as long as you include mental health disabilities like being subject to incapacitating day-long panic attacks for no reason at all. So this AI position at Dalhousie might not be so hard to fill as it appears at first glance. I wonder if the person Ms. Rowling was tweeting about is available. Sounds like a good fit.
FWIW, the Canadian federal government, which funds these bogus “research chairs” which will take up a rare tenure-track position which the university must fund from its own resources after the five years of federal funding runs out*, no longer regards women as gender-equity-seeking unless they are transwomen. This position is aimed then at homosexual men willing to say they have mentally disabling gender issues for the purpose of hiring. Actual competitive content expertise optional.
(* The necessary re-allocation of resources is how the university will avoid watering the dead branches in the garden, as Mike Hart puts it.)
In the old days, we would have said that this job opening was crafted so that they could specifically hire someone they already had in mind. They were called “red-headed Eskimos” because there were unlikely to be two candidates who fit the requirements.
Yes DrB. Red-headed eskimos – nice! At NASA, the blue sheet position opening announcements listed KSAOCs (Knowledge, Skills, and other capabilities) required for a position. When my guidance and controls skilled boss was passed over for promotion in favor of a colleague of similar technical background, he dejectedly proclaimed that he was not going to waste time applying for another position unless the KSAOCs included “red hair and from Rhode Island”. As a supervisor, many years later, I found that almost any reasonable granularity of technical KSAOCs could turn up a pretty remarkable set of candidates when a nation-wide net was fairly cast…it was really difficult if not impossible to pre-select a friend through position requirements…even at the highest levels of technical capabilities. Just look at the bios of every class of astronauts.
Oh, for sure. These CIHR research chairs were created by the federal government to incentivize the universities to hire various “equity-denied” groups explicitly defined in the application process, candidates they wouldn’t have given a second look at otherwise. The crafting is done by the government, not the university search committee. The university must pick one or more of the equity-demanding groups from the menu to restrict the posting to and it must show the federal government that the candidate hired ticks the boxes under which it pays the salary money. Dal may well have someone in mind but it will still have to find one of the government’s pigeon holes to fit him into. “Red-headed Eskimo” would actually work in those chair positions that explicitly favour indigenous people, but not this one unless the candidate is also gender-confused and disabled with, say, substance use disorder or having lost one arm to a polar bear. For racial criteria they vet them. Rachel Dolezal could not have applied as a racialized minority unless she could find people willing to swear she was really black. (That her parents wouldn’t have would raise suspicion.) Indigenous candidates seeking preferential access literally have to show their Status race card or produce a letter from a Tribe attesting that they consider him/her to be one of them.
Sorry to belabor this but American readers find it hard to believe that government, employers, and schools can legally use such explicitly discriminatory criteria to enrol, hire, and exclude people. Medical schools boast about how lowering their standards for black and indigenous applicants has allowed them to meet their “goals” of admitting more of them and fewer of everyone else. It’s not something we hide under DEI-speak that has to be ferreted out by Trumpists, the all-purpose insult in Canada. This Dalhousie ad is just part of a nationwide movement to abolish merit.
Thanks for the shoutout! WRT nationwide movements to abolish merit see the Scarborough Charter, where all Canadian research universities responded to the death of George Floyd by promising to engage in lots and lots of race-based hiring of only black or indigenous people.
Here in the US the medical/law school entry stakes are deeply … uneven, depending on race/gender/DEI. I/o covers this.
Uni admissions are a big deal – they are a non expandable good. Most other things can be bought away, bought off. A few years ago this issue (and DEI) caused a near revolution in Brazil, and in Bangladesh last year it DID. There, “war veterans AND THEIR DESCENDENTS” – the preferred class – hogged prestige uni admissions. The non favored kids were fed up and flipped the gvt.
Also, Leslie … if these polar bear arm torn off incidents of which you speak are common up there… I’m going to have to delay my intended surprise Christmas visit to your home!
D.A.
NYC
About ten years ago in a delusional state, I contemplated a late-life career change and took the LSAT. I scored very highly on the test so applied to a couple of law schools in Washington state where I lived at the time. Both schools had programs for “non-traditional” students. By that they meant people who come to law school after doing something else (IOW, not right from undergraduate school). One school (UW) rejected me outright, but the other (Seattle U) invited me in for an interview. The very first person I met, one of the folks in the admissions office, took one look at me and said; “I have to be honest; you’re the wrong color and the wrong sex”.
So I gave that up.
This is really for EdwardM. At one time I considered applying to MIT. I discussed this with some MIT folks. They said “Of course, you are not qualified, but they will let you in anyways”. And “You will be the only white person who applies”. I never applied for admission.
The guy works at a place where they have “staff meetings” with “fun activities” to get them “motivated for the day”. And he STILL can’t cope.
This position is aimed then at homosexual men willing to say they have mentally disabling gender issues for the purpose of hiring.
Don’t forget the heterosexual men who are aroused by fantasies of being women. And they can claim their “gender dysphoria” as a disability.
I haven’t, and I appreciate the reminder, but in Canada, trans is mostly about homosexual men (and confused young women.) MtF Ts almost all start out as Gs. The misogyny comes from gay men who disdain and devalue women, not from straight men trying novel ways to get into their pants.
I recognize that women will see this differently from a safety perspective and I could be blind to that. Autogynephiles do cause most of the trouble for women but, I argue, it’s the homosexual groomers who cause safeguarding danger for children in schools. Much of the publicity in the UK and Australia seems to be about men who aren’t homosexual wanting access to female spaces — autogynephiles indeed. The rape relief centre I support in Vancouver excludes men, even men who say they are women and that’s why I donate to them after the City revoked their funding.)
In Canada trans ideology is otherwise chiefly a branch of gay rights, though. That might be why it has been so capturing. Straight men in masquerade would be easier to reject (and eject) because, like Pretendians, there is nothing bona fide about them. But homosexual men wanting to act out their attraction to men by “being” women (and rejecting their wives), hoping that their male targets of affection are in on the joke, are already part of a once-equity-denied minority. They are harder to say No to because being a protected group they are shielded from giving offence to.
Trans rights (in Canada) are gay (men’s) rights. Getting the T out of LGBT infuriates the Gs. Not all of them, but few opposing voices speak up, and enough that their activists and prominent homosexual politicians rush to the barricades when “anti-trans” legislation is condemned as a threat to “LGBT rights”.
But yes, a woman-attracted MtF with GD could still claim to be a disabled gender-equity-seeking person. (And he would call himself a lesbian, ticking another box if he was neck and neck with a “heterosexual” “transwoman” attracted to men.)
God has spoken: Dame Sarah Mullally is the new Archbishop of Canterbury! Just as well because Welby was beginning to have doubts, especially while he was out jogging with his dog. Who gave him that dog?
He should have ditched the dog and joined Hank Wangford in jogging with Jesus. (For the uninitiated, Hank Wangford was a British medical doctor – real name Sam Hutt – who performed as a spoof country ‘n western singer.) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6hrUMOMN9jc
Dalhousie always seems to forget that it is in the 301-350 group of world university rankings. It always amused me that it would not allow medical students to be taught by me or be attached to me because I did not study there (but at UCL, generally ranked in the top 20).
KAG applied for asylum back in 2019. It was unconditionally denied. The link is https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815.1.1_3.pdf.
Since you mentioned pharmaceuticals, this locator site for Nuvaxovid, the NovaVax COVID shot, just went active. Put your Zip in the locator box @ L.
(I like NovaVax because I, like many others, don’t get the “mild, flu-like” reactogenicity that I would get from the Moderna shot, THAT i WOULD BE HAPPY TO GET IF THERE WASN’T AN ALTERNATIVE. And, it’s protein-based and I’m a protein biochemist.)
https://www.nuvaxovid.com/vaccine-locator
And by the way, remember that flotilla of aid heading to Gaza? There was no aid. The boats were devoid of anything but hateful protestors: https://worldisraelnews.com/bombshell-report-no-aid-on-the-biggest-yacht-in-gretas-flotilla/. They don’t care a whit about Gaza.
Indeed! https://x.com/HenMazzig/status/1973356268820504925
Karen Attiah was fired for putting quotation marks around a racist statement about black women then claiming after his death that Charlie Kirk said this. For a layperson this would just be a mistake, but for a journalist who makes her living quoting people (accurately? honestly?) this can get you fired.
This black guy with >600k twitter followers explains it well.
https://x.com/thatsKAIZEN/status/1968359438840201330
That was awesome!
The KAG case isn’t really about KAG or Trump, or Xinis. It is really about Bukele/CECOT.
Now that New Atheism is gone, we need it back.
I am annoyed by all the superstition and conspiracy theories around. No Charlie Kirk dying from witchcraft (Megyn Kelly), or Peter Thiel lecturing about the antichrist who might just look like Greta Thunberg. I also could do without the Tucker Carlsons, Joe Rogans, Candace Owens and other right-wing nonsense that pops up on my X feeds.
Somewhat related, I read about the Japanese belief that your blood type determines your personality, and it’s completely crazy.