This is good. Read it, especially but not only if you are a government minister. It comes from a reflective place of praxis. Unlike much of what has been said on this topic, this is not slop.

Beth worked as a doctor for years until a transphobe turned up. Now, she's had to leave her job, leave her home, move to the other side of the world and is still being hounded and harassed by the media and cult.

She did nothing but exist as trans in the orbit of Sandie Peggie.

Tweet by Martina Navratilova. "Predator. That is how he should register. A sexual predator…" quote-tweeting a tweet by "Biology Rules OK" about Dr. Beth Upton, a trans woman

This tweet is highly defamatory and Martina Navratilova should be fired from BBC Sport for it.

It demonstrates an horrendous level of hatred for a trans woman (who was cleared of all wrongdoing in a recent tribunal) because she is a trans woman.

I tried the Japanese method of decluttering where you hold every object that you own & if it does not bring you joy, you throw it away.

So far I have thrown out all of the vegetables, my bras, the phone bill, the scale & my treadmill.

I'm looking for colleagues in the UK, #HistSTM, #HistMed, or #STS who work in institutional settings where they find it is difficult to place them in the right Unit of Assessment for REF2029. DM if that's you?

Eurasian Blue Tit pecking open a poppy seed pod to get at the seeds. Common behaviour in that part of south Cheshire in the 1980s although apparently little documented. Around 40 years later an American naturalist observed American Goldfinches doing the same thing and suddenly it was interesting and unique behaviour.

Today's #BirdOfTheDay theme is #Petals&Perches. A juvenile Eurasian Blue Tit pecking open a poppy seed pod in a south #Cheshire garden. More details in the alt text.

#ECK #photography #birds #nature #wildlife #TenMinutesFromHome #Kodachrome #1980s

Four takeaways from this;

1. Looks like Sussex Uni won its case against OfS
2. The “government” will undo legal judgments it doesn’t like but not those it likes; e.g. the SC misjudgement
3. Philippson is a deeply troubled fanatic
4. Transphobic speakers have come & gone at unis & been ignored.

Her office said the Office for Students (OfS), which regulates universities, had received reports of speakers and lecturers being harassed and blocked for holding gender-critical or religious views, of foreign interference suppressing academic freedoms, and of ideological belief requirements featuring in job advertisements.

The OfS will be able to use the new complaints scheme from September. From April, it will be able to fine universities the greater of £500,000 or 2 per cent of their income, which would amount to millions of pounds for large institutions, for breaches under the Freedom of Speech Act. Ultimately, universities could be deregistered for egregious cases.

Bridget Phillipson will introduce new laws to make it possible for Universities to be fined millions of pounds if they don't silence students who protest bigots invited onto their campuses. It's like the Tories never left office.

so, so good.

We can’t trust Palantir with our NHS data Is this really the company we should be entrusting with our health service’s digital architecture?

"Palantir is not just a problem of profiteering from our national healthcare system— it's a fundamental threat to the democratic control of our public infrastructure + the privacy of every citizen. By giving our taxes to this company, we are aiding their operations everywhere."

tinyurl.com/3ejuyv89

Photo I took of these wonderful people (the faces of whom I’ve blacked out) singing happy Birthday to their lovely old dog at a bar I was at tonight in Portland

I was at a dog-friendly bar in NW Portland tonight and a table behind me started singing Happy Birthday and then I realized it wasn’t for a person but a really old dog who was wearing a crown and he was old and fucking adorable and I love this city

Sparing you a click, LLMs always make everything up, based on statistical correlations not of knowledge but of amount, order and proximity of words in stolen text they ingest for training.

It’s literally what they are designed to do.

It just sometimes happens to be correct.

A 🩷🤍💙 positive article, with a good bump for @nionwomen.bsky.social in the process.

Love to see it.

Abortion bans kill pregnant people because abortion is healthcare.

“I’m a walking ad for what’s wrong about knee surgery dogma”

(The regret rate for transition is at least an order of magnitude lower than for most major surgeries).

Transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination. Discrimination based on sex is expressly prohibited under Montana’s unique Nondiscrimination Clause––“[n]either the state nor any person, firm, corporation, or institution shall discriminate on account of . . . sex . . . .” Thus, Article II, Section 4 is unequivocal in its intolerance for discrimination based on sex. Because sex discrimination involves a fundamental right under Article II, the appropriate level of judicial review is strict scrutiny. Snetsinger, ¶ 17. ¶28 Being transgender is also a suspect class under the Equal Protection Clause of Article II, Section 4,––“[n]o person shall be denied equal protection of the law.”

MONTANA SUPREME COURT: “Transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination,” and is subject to strict scrutiny under the Montana Constitution.

All the demeaning ways Home Office expects LGBTQ+ migrants to 'prove' themselves With comments suggesting LGBTQ+ asylum seekers are pretending to be gay, how do you successfully prove your sexuality to the UK Home Office?

In light of the BBC claiming that asylum seekers are falsely claiming to be gay in order to gain asylum, here is an article about the difficulties and humiliations LGBT asylum seekers have experienced trying to prove their identities.

www.bigissue.com/news/politic...

According to Oxford Daily, this is Donnington Bridge. We have no words

An AI-powered clickbait news website has launched in Oxford (…🤔). Oxford Daily is operated by the mysterious Times Intelligence Media Group, which already runs similar suspect sites in North London. The AI model regurgitates content from BBC News, the Oxford Mail and even the Clarion.

Zack Polanski pledges to end the affordability crisis and 'normalisation' of foodbank use The Greens have called for a raft of measures to tackle the 'affordability crisis' and end the 'normalisation' of food banks

Leader Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social and deputy leader Rachel Millward @rachelmillward.bsky.social announced the plans at a Community Fridge

Polanski - it’s far easier to fall into poverty than become a billionaire

#VoteGreen May 7th

www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/...

People ask me all the time for my favorite Onion headline, and there are like 200 of them, but my favorite recent print headline is easily this:

Nigel Farage earns over a million pounds a year.

Still claims £160,900 in expenses (benefits)

Moans about people abusing benefits.

But not himself, of course.

BREAKING: A jury has found Live Nation and Ticketmaster to be an illegal monopoly that overcharges fans.

After the federal government settled the case, 34 states kept pursuing the giant ticket and concert company.

Now, the states have won.

People who suddenly feel like their transphobic “jokes” and “fairness in sports” takes are a bad look while the government forcibly detransitions people don’t get to say “oh that’s not what I meant!” You did mean it! People told you what it meant and you did it anyways!

The slaughter, the horror has to end.

Two impressive peace campaigners
#Israel
#Palestine

#TheFutureIsPeace

The ISS Transits the Moon apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap26041...
Nope, that is not an alien spaceship landing on the Moon! This is an image of the International Space Station (ISS) as it begins to transit in front of the Moon.

Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought Scientists say finding is ‘very concerning’ as collapse would be catastrophic for Europe, Africa and the Americas

Can we not just focus on the climate crisis.

BREAKING: The U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine just issued a formal statement defending Pope Leo XIV's teaching authority on just war doctrine — less than twelve hours after JD Vance told a Turning Point USA crowd the pope should “be careful” talking theology.

This is a serious escalation.

Also consistent with the frog boiling experiment as you’d have to be practically decerebrate to outsource your thinking to LLMs in the first place.

This country will never be safe for minoritised people until the last fragment of the legacy media has been shuttered.

Green surge continues as party overtake Labour in latest polling There's been yet more positive results for the Green Party after they overtook Labour in YouGov's latest polling data.

More polling puts the vile “Labour” Party behind the Greens.

Voting Labour will let Reform in.