Jacq

Anyone going on BBC this month should order one of these beforehand and let them sweat www.poppyshop.org.uk/products/pri...

"What if a cis guy pretends to be a trans woman" is something that has literally never happened. Cis guys do not pretend to be trans women. They occasionally cross-dress! For entertainment purposes or to make a point? But the point doesn't land unless they retain their identity as a cis man.

The wild thing to me is no cis people are remotely bothered by sharing a ward with a trans person. It's completely an elite manufactured problem. novaramedia.com/2023/10/04/t...

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

Bristol Rises' far right "protest" has resulted in the postponement of the annual Shine Night Walk, a women-led charity event that raises money for Camcer Research, with a day's notice. Avon & Somerset Police are more willing to facilitate a dozen fascists than 2k+ women raising money for charity.

The US criminal justice system is not designed to prevent crime or even to punish the guilty. It's objectively, quantifiably, not very good at either of those things🤷🏿‍♂️ It is designed to arrest, convict, and incarcerate, large numbers of innocent, poor, Black, men. It is the best in the world at that

Diabetes. Long COVID. Cancer. There will always be a way poor people “could have handled that better.” My point is this: you don’t know. Maybe there was. Maybe there truly wasn’t. The truth is very likely somewhere in between. None of that changes obligation to people who are suffering now.

It's my birthday 🎉 so in Bluesky tradition I'd love for folks to repost my art today! 😊 #artistSupport #illustration #darkArt

As the UK prepares to vote on Assisted Dying, I want to share Stéphanie Lavoie’s story. She was a 30 year old disabled Canadian suffering from Lyme Disease & severe malnutrition. She needed a feeding tube. She was given MAiD instead. She was only 59lbs when she died.

Since it's my 50th time round the sun, would you care to share my art around? That would be a splendid gift, thank you! 🥰 emilyhare.com #dragons #fantasyart #watercolour #creatureart #unicorns

Damn you, @tkingfisher.com, for writing books that keep me up half the night reading. Very unreasonable behaviour.

'Unlike England, Scotland chose to retain public ownership of Scottish Water and, between 2002 and 2019, the company invested 35% more per household in infrastructure than the privatised English water companies. It charges users 14% less and it doesn’t pay dividends.' 2/2

So often what are called “culture wars” are one set of people saying “please can we live without perpetual persecution” and another saying “no, f*** you” but the press considering the latter group have “legitimate concerns” and must be perpetually platformed

If you got a bat stuck in your hair on August 9th at Olympic National Park, please go to the hospital immediately and then contact the Mason County Health Department, they're worried about you.

OK wait: The "pipeline rerouted because of grave of fictional character" story was never true? It's a silly season spin-up reposted by the BBC, Guardian etc.? The pipeline never went near the "grave" and was never rerouted? Rusty Foster with the links: www.todayintabs.com/p/dobby-s-gr...

I cannot stress this enough - the side claiming to “protect children” are now posting the names of children they claim to be trans, photos of those children to help people identify them, and the name of the school they attend. It is impossible to overstate the level of danger for these children.

For some reason people lose all critical judgment when interpreting jokes made by infrastructure people at conferences or on a podcast. This just isn't what happened.

Content warning Today is #SevereMEDay the birthday of Sophia Mirza. Sophia was wrongfully sectioned for refusing to attend a clinic that treated patients with Graded Exercise Therapy. The mistreatment during her stay resulted in a dramatic deterioration and she later died.

With alt-text for further sharing:

As Rod Liddle has died, I notice this column I wrote in 2019 about his attacks on people with M.E. is on the most read again. Rebekah Brooks, of News UK, described Liddle today as “provocative”. In reality, he spread lies about very sick people for cash. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This take is incredibly stupid. MAHA is Ye Olde Patent Medicine Show. Complete with all the traditional conspiracy theories, evangelical religion only when convenient, woo, retrograde gender roles, and grifts.

Good Night World

friends, please: don’t use transreads dot org they claim to support trans authors, but take our entire texts, post them for free, fundraise off it, and have the gall to claim it’s about preservation they are literally taking money from trans creators and make it harder for us to keep creating

I want people to understand the full impact of the devastation that First Nations in Canada are facing. It's NOT just that people and wildlife are losing their homes...it's the history that is being lost for generations to come.

Re: cyclospora, Taco Bell having ethics and going "you know what, it's always the fucking lettuce, why don't we just pull that until we know what's going on" resulting in all the outlets going "LETTUCE SOLD AT TACO BELL LINKED TO EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA" is a fantastic way to discourage ethics in future.

This summer’s heat waves may have already resulted in more than 2,700 deaths in England and Wales

They last time I had a colleague who was at all like Graham, he was bodily ejected from the worksite after a racist and misogynistic tirade at the sous-chef. Not only would we not have mourned his death, some of us were only prevented by the law from causing it.

This point needs to be made over and again: The main purpose of wealth taxes should not be to raise revenue. That's a small and secondary benefit. The main purpose should be to *reduce the fortunes of the ultrarich*. Why? Because those fortunes present a massive threat to democracy and public life.

A truly new voice, like a new cuisine, might not immediately hit your palate like Kraft Mac and Cheese. It might make you uncomfortable. It might not resolve as you hope. It might be abrasive. It might star characters you don't relate to. All these can turn into brilliant writers getting rejected.

It's not because real marginalized authors aren't good. Many are excellent. (I rebuke the idea that a diverse slate requires lowering your standards.) And, after all, the AI story itself wasn't good. But it turns out that for a lot of editors, "quality" means "looks like stuff I've read before."

It's all "ooooh we need a meritocracy" until the wrong people have merit and then it's like "oooh we need to protect us." Trans kids deserve a chance play in sports because EVERYONE deserves a chance to play in sports and nobody should lose that chance because they're disfavored by bigots.

Having social media access made growing up gay 1 million times easier (I don’t think I would even know I was gay as a teen if it weren’t for social media), but it also made growing up progressive and informed possible. Social media was where I learned about abortion rights, for starters

I’ve had a huge health setback following my move. My level of function is half what it was before. The hospital said they would connect me with “resources” to assist with activities of daily living. There’s a 1.5 year wait list. MAiD was offered in under a month.

When the selkie returned to the beach, a man was holding her sealskin. "Is this yours?" he asked. "May I borrow it?" "You want to be a seal?" "No, but when I take it off, I'll be a woman, right?" "My heart, you already are," the selkie said. "That skin is mine, but I can help you find yours."

NEW ARTICLE from me for @fairmediawatch.bsky.social. "Media Won't Stop Psychologizing Long Covid" An overview of this unfortunate propaganda trend in the media since 2020, including where it comes from and what it gets wrong. fair.org/home/media-w...

Pretty clear last night's knife attack involved a man exclusively targeting Muslims. No doubt driven by the racist language now common in the UK, and repeated by certain politicians. There's a statement from MEND Scotland. Apparently Police Scotland are going to put out more details later today.

Ah so LLMs operate like senior male academics. Who could have envisioned that technology trained on existing texts could operate in a fundamentally conservative nature