Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Big Data knows if you're pregnant, and therefore the government can, too

2022:

Nearly limitless harvesting of our personal information was always leading to this moment.

In the days since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, there have been gobs of published material and warnings from privacy advocates about how digital bread crumbs might expose women seeking abortions to potential legal jeopardy.

* * *

In a situation in which one company refuses to cooperate, odds are that similar digital information might be available from another company that will. (There’s been some attention around the potential for period-tracking apps to blab to the authorities, but there are more direct sources of similar information.)

— Shira Ovide, "Our data is a curse, with or without Roe," NYT subscriber newsletter OnTech (June 29, 2022).

2023:

"When Grace, whose last name is being withheld to protect her family’s privacy, was sitting in the hospital room waiting to be treated for her ectopic pregnancy, the television was on announcing a new six-week abortion ban in Texas.

That was the first time she asked herself if it made sense to share news of pregnancy online.

Grace’s next pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, and during her third pregnancy, the laws in her politically purple home state changed twice. 'Suddenly, my body is this battleground and my safety and autonomy is not guaranteed,' she says. 'Do I want there to be evidence online that I’m pregnant? God forbid something goes wrong, I don’t want it documented.'"

The new pregnancy announcement is no announcement. (subscriber gift link) More parents are skipping the stylized “We’re expecting!” post in favor of waiting for birth. Fortesa Latifi. Washington Post. December 5, 2023

evil joker character

Even before they knew there was ketchup

Republicans said not to watch the ketchup hearing even before they knew there was ketchup.

fries and ketchup
Fries and ketchup by Fernando Andrade on Unsplash

Yesterday, the House Judiciary GOP tweeted this:

House Judiciary GOP tweets: TV Land is showing a re-run of Gunsmoke at 1:00 p.m. ET. Will be more informative than today's lame January 6th Committee hearing. Just FYI.

It shows a complete lack of messaging strategy. They are telling people in advance of the hearing — which they are not organizing nor involved with, and thus have no prior knowledge of — that there'll be nothing worth hearing. It also shows their intellectual and moral bankruptcy on this topic.

Just FYI, the sixth public hearing on June 28, 2022 was worth listening to. You can learn more about it on the Wikipedia page for the January 6 public hearings, which includes links to watch the video and read the text transcripts. There is ketchup.

Monday, June 27, 2022

Transphobia of the Day alert: You may crossdress as long as you admit you're a "clown"

The Drag Queen Story Hour website says:

"DQSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real."

In "Drag Queen Conservatism" (June 24, 2022), Andrew Sullivan acknowledges that the story hours can be kid-friendly. After all, in his view, the kids may not see them as sexually explicit "trannies" so much as "costumed clowns."

But he claims that nevertheless these story hours amount to "indoctrination in the various precepts of critical gender and queer theory." How? Because he objects to those two sentences on the DQSH website (above). He reads: queer role models. He argues that, since most gay kids have "absolutely no interest in being a drag queen," and because, once upon a time, "drag queens actually made me think I wasn’t gay, because I had no desire to be one" [emphasis mine], the drag queen isn't a role model for everyone and thus should be a role model for no one. He says: "Presenting it as a model for gayness is part of a misguided bid to impose the postmodern concept of 'queerness' on all gay people."

Look here: There's a potential misreading of the phrase "[adjective] role models." It might mean a role model who is [adjective], not necessarily a role model who teaches you the proper way to be [adjective]. For example, though I am not Christian and do not need a role model to teach me how to be Christian, nonetheless I might admire someone billed as a "Christian role model." Likewise, I might be inspired by a "woman role model," though I'm a man.

To say that a drag queen is a "queer role model" doesn't mean that all gay and trans kids, and only gay and trans kids, can be inspired by them. Straight and cis kids, too, can learn something from gay and trans adults about defying sexual and gender norms so the straight and cis kids, too, can be who they are. And if someone doesn't connect with this kind of role model on a personal level, that's OK, too. We learn from other people's similarities and differences. We learn who we are and who we are not.

Will all children appreciate every adult role model? Of course not. Some kids will think to themselves: I'm kind of like this person in one way, but not like them in another way. That we're all unique doesn't invalidate all role models.

Nor does it imply that Sullivan is the proper role model for all gay boys merely because he believes that his own identity/presentation align with whatever he believes the majority of gay boys feel.

He thinks it's necessary for other gay/trans people to diminish or hide themselves so that he, Sullivan, can be openly and proudly who he is. That may be how Sullivan works, but that is not how diversity works.

What Sullivan is doing here is characterizing drag queens and/or trans people as "just men in silly costumes" and implying that they really can't be role models for anyone except aspiring stage performers, because — in his anti-transgender worldview — the way in which they resist gender norms is, paradoxically, creating their own norm and imposing it on others. Just by visibly being who they are, he alleges, they pressure children to grow up to be exactly like them. Why this argument applies only against drag queens and but is invalid when it is used to compel gay men like himself back into the closet, I can't explain. You'd have to ask him.

And the idea that the child will believe that all gay men are drag queens only makes sense if you think the child interprets the drag queen as gay and that the child is unlikely ever to meet an openly gay adult who isn't a drag queen.

Sullivan also says that "bring[ing] up your kids to see cross-dressing as wicked" isn't necessarily "fear-mongering and moral panic." I really don't know what is to be gained from that distinction. Does he think it's good for parents to bring up their kids to see gay people as evil; would he say that's anything other than fear and hate? Then why does he allow for beliefs that it's evil to resist gender stereotypes in clothing, as if such beliefs had any rational or moral basis?

The article is called "Drag Queen Conservatism: A toxic, stupid sideshow is defining the post-liberal right as scolds." Not sure exactly what he means by "sideshow" here &mdash Drag Queen Story Hour or someone's reaction to it. Probably he's happy to leave that ambiguous.

He wrote another article, "Is Obergefell Next?" — i.e., given that the Supreme Court says that states can crimininalize abortion, can they also eliminate same-sex marriage — as his "immediate reaction to today’s [June 24, 2022] Roe decision." That one is for paid subscribers only. In a tweet teasing his article, he says the overturning of Roe is "unrelated" to certain "precedents" but doesn't specify which precedents he's talking about. I won't be paying for a subscription to find out.

Has my previous confidence that the end of Roe was unrelated to these precedents waned? Not really. Here’s why. [Second item/subscribers only]

See also: "121 Things I Want Cis Men to Stop Doing". It's a list of 121 sentences in a different article — also by Andrew Sullivan, still anti-transgender. It's a 44-minute read on Medium. Medium lets you read a certain number of stories for free every month. You may also consider a paid membership on the platform.

Also, no clownery in sports:

Related: Transvestigation

Fixation on supposed differences in trans and cis bodies leads to transvestigation.

"Gender Critical ‘feminists’ will go to desperate lengths to prove that trans women aren’t women, and that includes ‘transvestigation,’ or publicly accusing people of being trans using arbitrary metrics, such as measuring their hands. Sometimes, they succeed in outing trans people. Other times, they shame and mock cis women for having traits they associate with transness."
— Dr. Casey Lawrence, "Vulva Phrenology and the GC Crusade", An Injustice! (Medium), March 31, 2023. This is my Friend of Medium link: unpaywalled for you, earning $ for the author.

One of the knowledge-dominance memes used against trans people (in Spanish)

The associated cartoon image has two children looking inside their own diapers. It's captioned: Soy niño, soy niña

This ridiculous rant has been published for a year and a half, and it has received 101,000 reactions, almost all positive.

Mi opinión es obvia: 
si mi hijo de 4 años me dice que se quiere vestir de princesa, le diré que no, porque él nació niño y los niños son príncipes; voy a tratar que mi hija prefiera practicar un deporte de su agrado o  violín,  pero no voy a apoyar comportamientos masculinos, así como no voy a avalar que alguien le diga que existe un tercer género, le voy a enseñar que no, que hay solamente dos cromosomas, que sí, que Dios creó al hombre en principio fue  Adán y a Eva.
Ahhhh pero 'eres cuadrado, autoritario, legalista, mente cerrada, no le puedes obligar a la criatura'. 
Lo siento (por ti) pero la respuesta es sí, 
así como le obligo a comer verduras, a hacer sus tareas, a cepillarse los dientes e ir al dentista, le obligo también a que duerma a una hora determinada, también puedo elegir qué ropa comprarle. Por qué me cuesta ami, 
 Porque en la vida hay reglas, no se puede hacer todo lo que uno quiere, cuando quiere, como quiere a la hora que se le antoja; y no por eso le amo menos, muy al contrario! Porque le amo lo hago.
Ahora, si después ya siendo un adulto.
 (porque ese era el ejemplo que me daban mis padres y porque esa es la edad legal donde uno adquiere capacidad de hecho) mi hijo viene y me dice: papá,  desde hoy yo quiero ser musulmán, budista, vegetariano, vestirme como mujer, cambiar de sexo, ser espiritista, caníbal, vampiro o un árbol... bueno, ahí será oooootra la historia, pero ANTES mi entras este bajo mi techo no. Antes, no voy a huir de mi responsabilidad de padre/ madre y mi obligación de enseñarle las cosas como son.
Si piensas igual, te invito a que lo expreses  y no te quedes callado si otros gritan sus derechos yo grito los mios.
He dicho!
Aunque se indignen!

This ridiculous response gushes that it's "the best post I've ever seen in my all my life with regards to this theme of damned gender ideology!" It has likewise received 4,000 positive reactions.

un comentarista en Facebook dijo: La mejor publicación que he visto en toda mi vida con respecto a este tema de la m4ldit4 ideología de género!!! (Este comentario, que tiene 29 semanas de edad, ha recibido más de 4 mil reacciones de emoji, todos positivos. Sólo 12 enojados y 4 tristes.)

In my response — not on the original post, but instead on a shared version — I said that the phrase "teach them the way things are" makes it clear that this is not only about how to raise one's own child but about the affirmation that the sex/gender binary is the way things really are. As such, it's a knowledge-dominance display over all trans people. Additionally, warning that a person may say "I want to be...a cannibal, vampire, or a tree..." reduces the concept of being transgender to an absurdity. (It's called the "one joke" of the anti-transgender crowd.) The hypothetical person didn't say they were a cannibal, vampire, or tree; they said they were transgender. That's different. When you immediately equate being transgender with something that is universally understood as immoral or that is physically impossible, all you show is that you are closed-minded to understanding what it means to be transgender. Here, the cis person presents the trans person as a deluded infant who needs to be taught how life really is. They claim they are positioned to enforce it as long as the trans person is their own child living under their roof. But they are also making the wider knowledge claim over all trans people.

Otherwise, why would they bother sharing the meme? They would just privately inform their own child of their opinion.

No soy caníbal, vampiro ni árbol y tampoco lo he dicho jamás. Que no reduzcas mi género a un absurdo. La razón que algunos se indignan por el discurso (como el autor predice al final) es que no contiene ninguna lógica. Si se dice que hay que 'enseñarle las cosas como son,' eso ni siquiera se restringe a la crianza de los hijos; es más una exhibición de dominio sobre toda la gente trans y sus autoconocimientos, acusandoles de ser falsos por definición desde el principio. Esa actitud se basa en ignorancia sobre la gente trans y propaga el odio. Si no quieres conocer cómo vive una persona trans y no estás abierto a considerar que también conocemos verdades, desconectaré nuestros perfiles aquí. Chao.

Saturday, June 25, 2022

What would SCOTUS do with a fetal personhood case?

See: An earlier post on this blog about evangelicals praying with the U.S. President

To read the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade: "The Dobbs v. Jackson Decision, Annotated" (New York Times)

Earlier in 2022, the Dobbs decision was leaked to the press. The Supreme Court's internal investigation of the matter announced in January 2023 that it failed to identify who had leaked it. Robert Reich, on his Jan 20, 2023 Substack post, speculated that it was Justice Samuel Alito:

"First, it’s unlikely any of the justices was interviewed. The report said all witnesses were told they could be dismissed if they refused to answer questions. That’s a dead giveaway: Supreme Court justices cannot be dismissed from their jobs.

Second, Alito had a motive for leaking. He wrote the draft in Dobbs and got four other justices to tentatively sign on. He presumably wanted to lock them in. Leaking the draft was a way to do so.

Third, Alito is already under suspicion for leaking another draft Court opinion that he authored [Hobby Lobby], which marked another triumph for the religious right."

How the US compares to the rest of the world on abortion (CNN)

What comes next?

Mary Papenfuss, "Rachel Maddow Predicts 'Fetal Personhood' SCOTUS Case Will End Abortion Nationwide", HuffPost, June 25, 2022:

“A fetal personhood case ... would give this court a path to not just let individual states ban abortion, which is what they did today. ... A fetal personhood case could be their vehicle to impose a nationwide ban on abortion, on the order of the United States Supreme Court,” she said.

* * *

“The conservatives have the power on this court, and they will now wield it however they want, to achieve whatever outcomes they want, to change the country however they want without restriction — and you must do what they say,” she warned.

Maddow told viewers to begin watching for new cases that will challenge the rights Justice Clarence Thomas has already warned will be next on the chopping block: same-sex marriage and birth control.

“Watch for a county clerk somewhere to refuse a license to a couple trying to get married,” she said. “Watch for somebody who works at a health facility somewhere to refuse to process a prescription or an order for contraception. ... Watch for Texas or another Republican-controlled state to bring back its sodomy law.”

“For them, the dam has burst,” she said of the justices.

“What do you see in their behavior that would give you any reason to believe that they see a reason to stop?”

Also by Mary Papenfuss, please see "Decision Destroying Roe Threatens Legal Right To Interracial Marriage, Experts Warn," HuffPost, June 24, 2022:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested Friday in a solo concurring opinion that the court should reexamine other rights protected under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

“We should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote. “Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”

Thomas sidestepped the Loving case, which, if overturned as Roe was, could threaten his own interracial marriage. That doesn’t mean other justices wouldn’t toss out protections, despite any protestations they might make. Some of the justices had previously claimed they believed that Roe v. Wade was settled law.

Mary Ziegler wrote for the New York Times on June 24, 2022: "The fight to undo Roe, then, has been a fight to remake our country — and it has succeeded. That fight seems even more ominous when one looks around the globe: Other countries that have recently undone abortion rights are backsliding democracies." ("Roe’s Death Will Change American Democracy")

Since most of the country supports abortion access, this may hurt Republicans in the November 2022 midterm elections. "Trump Privately 'Sh**ting' On Roe Reversal, Fearing GOP, Midterm Backlash: Report," Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost, June 25, 2022:

GOP strategist John Thomas also moaned to Politico about the Roe ruling: “This is a losing issue for Republicans.”

This is “not a conversation we want to have,” he added. “We want to have a conversation about the economy. We want to have a conversation about Joe Biden, about pretty much anything else besides Roe.”

It’s like the “dog that caught the car,” quipped Sarah Longwell, a GOP strategist who became a supporter of Biden in 2020. While battling abortion is good for campaigns, ending abortion rights loses voters.

In Texas, for example, residents are unhappy with the state's ban on abortion ("Texans are seeing what a post-Roe world looks like. The GOP may regret it," Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, July 7, 2022):

"If forced-birth activists thought this situation would be popular, they have greatly miscalculated. A new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds only 37 percent of the state’s residents support the new law; 54 percent oppose it. Contrary to the new law, the poll reports, only 8 percent and 13 percent of Texas voters would ban access to abortion in the cases of rape and incest, respectively."

"Constitutional protection of unborn children as equal 'persons' under the law remains the movement’s ultimate — if elusive — goal," writes Erika Bachiochi, a conservative legal scholar who supported the overturning of Roe v. Wade, in an opinion for the New York Times on July 1, 2022.

Update: On 11 Oct 2022, SCOTUS declined without comment to take up a fetal personhood case.

In El Salvador, women have faced harsh punishments for miscarriages.

"The next Republican president could effectively ban most abortions through a simple policy change at the Department of Justice, experts and advocates on both sides of the abortion debate say. ... At issue is the meaning of the 1873 Comstock Act... A Justice Department memo issued last year contends that the law doesn't prohibit mailing abortion drugs when the sender expects them to be used lawfully. A new administration could easily change that interpretation, experts say, and not just restrict patients from receiving pills at home — but also stop pharmacies and health care providers from getting shipments." — How the next Republican president could stop most abortions without Congress, Caitlin Owens, Axios, November 15, 2023

Images for 2024: New Year, New Fight: The year ahead in the ongoing battle for reproductive freedom. Aubrey Hirsch. The Audacity. January 26, 2024

"Arizona Republicans Refuse To Even Consider Basic Birth Control Protections": "Not once have any of my bills been heard in committee or reached the floor,” one of the bills' authors said. Lydia O'Connor,Mar 14, 2024

Abortions outside medical system increased sharply after Roe fell, study finds: Researchers report that volunteer-led networks distributing abortion pills helped drive a rise in ‘self-managed’ abortions. Caroline Kitchener and N. Kirkpatrick, Washington Post, March 25, 2024

eerie greenish photo of a woman

Thursday, June 23, 2022

Amazon deforestation: Comments from Gustavo Petro, president-elect of Colombia

"Gustavo Petro Wins the Election, Becoming Colombia’s First Leftist Leader," Julie Turkewitz, New York Times, June 19, 2022:

"Gustavo Petro, a former rebel and a longtime legislator, won Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday, galvanizing voters frustrated by decades of poverty and inequality under conservative leaders, with promises to expand social programs, tax the wealthy and move away from an economy he has called overly reliant on fossil fuels.

His victory sets the third largest nation in Latin America on a sharply uncertain path, just as it faces rising poverty and violence that have sent record numbers of Colombians to the United States border; high levels of deforestation in the Colombian Amazon, a key buffer against climate change; and a growing distrust of key democratic institutions, which has become a trend in the region."

Also from that article:

"Mr. Petro, in an interview earlier this year, said he believed he could work well with the government of President Biden, adding that his relationship with the United States would focus on working together to tackle climate change, specifically halting the rapid erosion of the Amazon.

“There is a point of dialogue there,” he said. “Because saving the Amazon rainforest involves some instruments, some programs, that do not exist today, at least not with respect to the United States. It is, in my opinion, the priority.”"


"Chicken from Tesco linked to deforestation in the Amazon" Adam Vaughan, Times UK, April 13, 2023

Colombia declara un nuevo Parque Nacional Natural: Serranía de Manacacías, El Espectador, December 2023

toucan
Image by Heike Hartmann from Pixabay

Monday, June 20, 2022

On compromising with fascists

Some people say that "identity politics" causes the left to lose elections and that the left should compromise away the interests of certain groups to attract more centrist voters so they can win elections.

It's wrong on principle:

Which may signal either that the leaders don't actually hold these principles or that they expect their voters don't:

artistic representation of the word NO

If you do hold principles in support of trans people, then compromising them is wrong for pragmatic reasons:

Noah Berlatsky wrote on June 30: "You can’t save democracy by letting fascists pick their victims."

Thus, here's a recommendation that you have conversations with people. (Of course, consider whether it's safe for you to do so and if it won't be a total waste of your time.)


Unfortunately, sometimes the conversations can't be productive. It's not that they don't know facts. It's that they have different values.

The anti-trans message is that the state owns your body

Kara Dansky, the co-founder of the Women's Liberation Front, went on Tucker Carlson in 2017 "to make common cause with the far-right against what she calls the 'Transgender Agenda,'" as explained by someone who has since made their Twitter account private and then deleted it. This person noticed in 2021 that Dansky "was actively involved in the UK anti-trans crusade as the president of the US chapter of Women's Declaration International" and is connecting the anti-transgender platform (Dansky calls these supporters her 'terven,' according to the person's Twitter thread) "with the Christian nationalist far-right." "There is a plainly obvious direct line from anti-trans bigotry, to hate and lies directed towards drag queens, calling trans and gay people 'groomers,' and Neo-Nazis showing up at Pride events with violent intentions," the person says. And, of course, anti-trans initiatives "harm not only trans people, but gay people, and women who do not conform to gender stereotypes," as well as "girls who want to play sports free from invasive exams into their sex and gender." Dansky "has never acknowledged how her activities relate to the growing fascist movement."

By the way, as Naomi Klein wrote in Doppelganger (2023): "let us not forget Tucker Carlson's 2022 documentary in which he recommended that men regularly tan their testicles with a special infrared light in order to increase testosterone levels in preparation for the 'hard times' ahead."



Esther Wang wrote in 2019: "As the trans writer, activist, and scientist Julia Serano wrote recently, “We are now living through the biggest anti-trans backlash since the 1970s.” She added, “It’s not just Republicans or evangelicals — it’s coming from numerous fronts.” ("The Unholy Alliance of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists and the Right Wing," Esther Wang, Jezebel, May 9, 2019)


But also, as Roger Pielke Jr. tweeted on June 16, 2022: "The most visible academics pushing to ban trans women from womens sport have hitched their work to the far right fringe in the US"


Racheline Maltese, in their Twitter thread:

See the thread for some examples, like:

The anti-trans message is that the state owns your body.

Erin Reed, Aug 28, 2023: Never forget that the anti trans movement is not about bathrooms, or about kids, or about sports. It's about a genocidal wish for complete eradication of trans people from public life. Quoting Matt Walsh: Yes, ban them before 18. And then ban them after age 18.

It's part of the fascist agenda.



Well, maybe not quite so effective in the 2022 midterm elections in the US:

This comment by Matt Walsh is aging like milk.

Anti-trans candidates are failing across the country tonight, especially in local school board races. pic.twitter.com/owFd1IgHog

— Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) November 9, 2022



'We can always tell' if you're trans?

Elaine Scattermoon tweets: As has been pointed out by friends, these seem to constantly happen to women with short hair, suggesting not only can transphobes not tell who is trans and who isn't, but that they have a deeply simplistic traditional view of gender that even mandates things like hairstyles
I've had a bunch of transphobes on here comment that my hair is a wig because they just have such a simplistic understanding of sex and gender that they assume those assigned male most always have short/no hair and those assigned female must always have long flowing hair.
They're not gender critical, they're the fucking gender police.

art of dead-eyed person

Saturday, June 18, 2022

Bruno Latour's reaction to climate denialism (a 2018 article)

A 2018 feature in the New York Times Magazine:

As early as 2004 he [Bruno Latour] publicly expressed the fear that his critical “weapons,” or at least a grotesque caricature of them, were being “smuggled” to the other side, as corporate-funded climate skeptics used arguments about the constructed nature of knowledge to sow doubt around the scientific consensus on climate change.

But Latour believes that if the climate skeptics and other junk scientists have made anything clear, it’s that the traditional image of facts was never sustainable to begin with. “The way I see it, I was doing the same thing and saying the same thing,” he told me, removing his glasses. “Then the situation changed.” If anything, our current post-truth moment is less a product of Latour’s ideas than a validation of them. In the way that a person notices her body only once something goes wrong with it, we are becoming conscious of the role that Latourian networks play in producing and sustaining knowledge only now that those networks are under assault.

— Ava Kofman. "Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science." New York Times. October 25, 2018. (This is a gift link from my paid subscription that gets you around the paywall.)

For the second year in a row, a self-declared “leader” in the fight against global climate change will host the Super Bowl of climate change denial.

In February, the right-wing Heartland Institute is scheduled to convene its three-day “International Conference on Climate Change” at the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista hotel, near Walt Disney World Resort. The Illinois-based think tank is unwavering in its dismissal of established climate science and has a long history of cheerleading for the fossil fuel industry and fighting environmental regulations and renewable energy projects.

* * *

The event is wildly out of step with Hilton’s stated climate and environmental pledges.

— "Self-Proclaimed Climate 'Leader' To Host Annual Climate Denier Conference," Chris D'Angelo, Huff Post, Nov 23, 2022


2020 U.S. coup attempt: Consensus reality broke long ago

“Watergate” was “a mytho-poetic perversion of governance whose real and symbolic betrayals helped feed the paranoia and disaffection with consensus reality that form the ambient political background for high weirdness.” (As described by Erik Davis. High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies. London: Strange Attractor Press, 2019.)

The 2020 coup attempt

We know that Eastman sent an email on December 24, 2020, saying that Trump was unlikely to win on the "legal merits" of his position, to which another lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, replied that the Supreme Court Justices might be pressured to rule in Trump's favor if they "start to fear that there will be wild chaos on January 6".

USAmericans were already paranoid and disaffected, yes, but there was no longer any consensus reality to break. It was broken long ago.



Happens in other places too: 7 Dec 2022...

Headline: Germany arrests 25 over far-right coup plot

Related: See this February 20, 2023 Twitter thread about the narrative in the Dominion Voting Systems legal brief.

In April 2023, Elie Honig says Fox is 'headed for a full-blown journalistic and legal disaster'. (CNN video)


Update on Eastman: John Eastman (see the Eastman memos) and Jeffrey Clark (see the Clark letter) were both indicted in GA. They were also named as co-conspirators in the federal case, and they could eventually be indicted federally, perhaps after a verdict is delivered on Trump.

"The proceeding against Eastman in California is only one effort across the country where disciplinary authorities are seeking to compromise the law licenses of attorneys who assisted Trump after the election. Attorneys who worked for Trump in Michigan have been sanctioned, Rudy Giuliani’s law license is currently suspended, and he and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official under Trump, are facing their own ongoing bar disciplinary proceedings. On top of those efforts, the criminal charges against Eastman, Giuliani, Clark and others in Fulton County, Georgia, could lead to their inability to practice law, if they are convicted."
CNN, November 3, 2023

U.S. Capitol building

Friday, June 17, 2022

Darkling beetle larvae can eat Styrofoam

Pranshu Verma in the Washington Post today ("This Styrofoam-eating ‘superworm’ could help solve the garbage crisis"):

In a paper released last week in the journal of Microbial Genomics, scientists from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, showed that the larvae of a darkling beetle, called zophobas morio, can survive solely on polystyrene, commonly called Styrofoam.

* * *

...the scientists will study those enzymes to see how well they can digest polystyrene on a large scale — modifying them if necessary to become more effective. “We want to not have gigantic superworm farms,” he said. “Rather, we want to focus on the enzyme.”

If the research proves successful, Rinke said waste managers could collect and grind Styrofoam materials and put them into a liquid solution made with the superworm enzyme. The solution would ideally dispose of the Styrofoam or digest it in a way that allows new plastic products to be created, thereby reducing the need for new plastic materials, Rinke said.


styrofoam
Image by Sebbi Strauch from Pixabay

The Republicans were given to understand there would be no diversity here

Thomas Zimmer writes in The Guardian today, "The January 6 hearings aren’t acknowledging the elephant in the room":

"And how are the people the hearings present as Team Normal, as standing up to Trump’s coup attempt, dealing with all this? Take Bill Barr: he’s on record saying he would vote for Trump in 2024. In his testimony for the committee as well as in his book, Barr has left no doubt that he believes Trump is either willfully pushing treasonous conspiracy theories or is completely detached from reality – yet Barr is still willing to help put him back in the White House.

Barr’s ability to rationalize this astonishing balancing act is the main reason I am skeptical that the hearings, by focusing narrowly on Trump, could succeed at turning Republicans away from him. When confronted with how he could possibly still support another Trump presidency during his book promotion tour earlier this year, Barr replied: “Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic party.” There it is: after everything we have been through, conservatives still see the Democrats (or progressives, or liberals, or the left – they see them as interchangeable) as the biggest threat.

This is the perfect encapsulation of the permission structure that governs conservative politics: anything is justified in defense against what they constantly play up as a radically “un-American,” extremist “left” that has supposedly taken over the Democratic party."

That "progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic party" is maybe not most widely understood as a what, but rather a who. What I understand from this is: Republicans will vote to end U.S. democracy rather than accept that certain kinds of people exist.

All kinds of people exist.

What we have now is a gunman who advocated "sav[ing] ammunition" to target people who support "gender transitioning." (Three months later, he died trying to attack the FBI.)

gauzy photo of lavender flower

Plastitar: A new kind of pollution

"...plastic and tar have combined into a new form of pollution—“plastitar,” as it’s called in a scientific paper on the novel blight. Scientists on the Spanish Canary Islands found plastic-spotted balls of hardened tar scattered across several beaches."

— Robert Wright's Nonzero Newsletter, June 17, 2022


"The "micro" prefix in the word microplastics might lead one to think that these tiny plastic particles, by definition less than 5 millimeters in length, are harmless trifles. And though microplastics are sometimes intentionally manufactured, more often these tiny slivers are created by accidents or the ravages of time, ending their life as pollution in our environment. When that happens, they are far from harmless — rather, they pose a threat to most life on Earth.

* * *

...researchers at MIT have developed a silk-based substitute for plastics for certain industrial products — specifically, industry systems that currently use plastics for microencapsulation processes. Microencapsulation is process via which tiny particles or droplets are covered with a substance that turns them into a pill-shaped object, one that protects its core from degradation through things like air or moisture exposure. While this silk-based substitute would not entirely solve the microplastics problem, it would indeed provide certain businesses with a planet-friendly alternative to microplastic-producing products."

— Matthew Rozsa, "Could silk take a bite out of humanity's microplastic problem?," Salon.com, August 1, 2022

Alarming Level of Microplastics Found in Fish — Eating It 'A Personal Choice', Jess Thomson, Newsweek, Sep 22, 2022

Microplastics have officially been found in human breast milk for the first time in a new study that detected the contaminant in 75% of the samples tested after we also found microplastics inside the lungs and crossing the blood-brain barrier. This is our generation's lead paint. Tweet by Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) October 11, 2022

A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required Marcus Eriksen ,Win Cowger,Lisa M. Erdle ,Scott Coffin,Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez,Charles J. Moore,Edward J. Carpenter,Robert H. Day,Martin Thiel,Chris Wilcox. PLOS One. March 8, 2023

“Microplastics in our sea now outnumber the stars in our galaxy five-hundred-fold.”
Leah Penniman. Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations With Black Environmentalists. Amistad, 2023. Chapter: "One Blue Planet."

Here's how much plastic enters the ocean each year, New calculations astound scientists, Angus Chen, Science, 12 Feb 2015

Silent spring in the ocean Boris Worm, PNAS 112 (38) 11752-11753, September 1, 2015

Microplastics discovered in the body tissues of whales, dolphins and seals – sparking concerns for human health too. Samantha Garrard. The Conversation. August 23, 2023

Microplastics could trigger cloud formation and affect the weather, new study suggests. Mary Gilbert, CNN Meteorologist, November 15, 2023

Microplastics were found in D.C. rivers. Researchers want to find why. Study of pollutants in Potomac, Anacostia rivers could impact clean-up efforts. Justin Wm. Moyer. Washington Post. November 27, 2023

This book argues that chemical exposures affect sperm counts: Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race. Shanna H. Swan. Simon & Schuster, 2021.

Nylon

"From clothing to carpets to seat belts, Nylon-6 is found in a variety of materials that most people use every day. But, when people are done with these materials, they end up in landfills or worse: loose in the environment, including the ocean. According to the World Wildlife Federation, up to 1 million pounds of fishing gear is abandoned in the ocean each year, with fishing nets composed of Nylon-6 making up at least 46% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch."

But a potential solution:

"The catalyst harnesses yttrium (an inexpensive Earth-abundant metal) and lanthanide ions. When the team heated Nylon-6 samples to melting temperatures and applied the catalyst without a solvent, the plastic fell apart — reverting to its original building blocks without leaving byproducts behind."

New Catalyst Completely Breaks Down Durable Plastic Pollution in Minutes, Northwestern University, SciTechDaily, December 3, 2023

Archaeologists are now finding microplastics in ancient remains, Jack Guy, CNN, March 25, 2024

plastic trash on a beach

Thursday, June 16, 2022

The 'Rainbow Scare' is a cruel falsepanic, and it is upon us

Keep the concept of a "moral panic" in mind:

"For right-wing and far-right politicians, the anti-gender movement offers a way to stir up what is known as a 'moral panic.' A moral panic is a widespread but exaggerated fear that a group, person, or concept poses a threat to society."
— Kate Walton "Opposition to gender equality around the world is connected, well funded and spreading. Here’s what you need to know about the anti-gender movement," CNN, March 2024

I also share the term "Rainbow Scare".

From Allison Hope's opinion essay in CNN today: "Americans are facing a Rainbow Scare — and it may get worse before it gets better" (June 16, 2022)

We have entered the era of the Rainbow Scare.

The Rainbow Scare has haunting echoes of the Red Scare and related Lavender Scare (as historian David K. Johnson coined it) from the mid-20th century, when fears about the spread of communism during the Cold War emboldened Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and others in the US government to persecute and ostracize people who were deemed to be "communist sympathizers," cavorting with the Soviet enemy. LGBTQ+ people were among them — fired from their jobs, forced to undergo psychiatric treatment and institutionalization, including electric shock treatment, and prosecuted as security threats to the nation.

This was the era when then-President Dwight Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which helped fuel a national witch-hunt to purge queer Americans from the federal government. Around 5,000 federal agency employees lost their jobs on the basis of their sexual orientation. McCarthy and other leaders used LGBTQ+ people as a wedge issue and scare tactic to justify state-sponsored discrimination, just as right-wing leaders are trying to today.

See also: "Comparing the 'Lavender Scare' With the Current 'Trans Scare': The so-called “Red Scare” was said to have been saturated with lavender: the color associated with homosexuality at the time." 9 min read, by The Good Men Project, published in Equality Includes You, May 18, 2023


5 June 2023 tweet by Alejandra Caraballo @Esqueer_: 'We didn't care about Pride until you started going after kids.' You have literally said LGBTQ people have been going after children for decades. This is Anita Bryant in 1977. This level of gaslighting is insane. (showing a black-and-white photo of Anita Bryant in front of 'Save our children....' posters)


Update, later in 2022

Please read: Libs of TikTok and Bomb Threat on Boston Children's Hospital: Libs of TikTok has gone too far. Now a children's hospital has been threatened with a bomb. All platforms need to drop Chaya Raichik and Libs of TikTok. Erin Reed, August 31, 2022

On December 27, 2022, Raichik gave this one-hour interview on Fox. By doing so, she "revealed her face for the first time," Erin Reed points out; Raichik used "dehumanizing language such as calling LGBTQ+ people and allies 'cockroaches' and a 'poison,' and revealed her role in anti-trans legislation via Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida. She even revealed that Gov. DeSantis offered her the governor’s mansion guest room for 'as long as she needed it.'"

This 1:45 video clip was shared on X. I transcribed it:

T. Carlson: How— What is going on here? Do you have any theories?
Chaya Raichik: I think there’s— there’s something so unique about the LGBTQ community has become this cult, and it’s so captivating, and it pulls people in so strongly unlike anything we’ve ever seen. And they brainwash people to join, and they convince them of all of these things, and it’s really, really hard to get out of it. It’s really difficult. And there are studies on this. Like, there’s been a lot of reporting on this, about people— Parents who are like, you know, my child is starting to say, you know, that they’re nonbinary or transgender or whatever and: What do I do? How do I stop this? And it’s really, really difficult. It’s, it’s, it’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen, I think. It’s extremely poisonous.
Carlson: Do you see a spiritual component to any of this?
Raichik: Um. (laughs)
Carlson: You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want.
Raichik: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know.
Carlson: Well, I do, I do. I don’t think this makes sense at all.
Raichik: No, it doesn’t make any sense. And I think, I think they’re just— I think they’re evil. And sometimes we try to, we try to‚ to break it down a lot and we discuss like why this is happening, what’s happening, and whatever and I think sometimes, like, the simplest answer is: They’re just evil. They’re bad people. They’re just evil people, and they want to— And they want to groom kids. They’re recruiting.

Alejandra Caraballo: Chaya Raichik went on Tucker Carlson and said the 'LGBTQ community has become this cult... It's extremely poisonous.' She later says 'They're just evil people, and they're out to groom kids. They're recruiting.' This is one of the most bigoted interviews I've ever heard.


The word "desistance" to describe kids who stop identifying as trans implies that trans identity is criminal.



The term "falsepanic" is mine, coined for the sake of this blog post's title. It's not a real, diagnosable anxiety. It's a falsehood. The people who express anxiety about queer/trans people may indeed feel some kind of fear, but they also likely know it's on a false basis.

Brynn Tannehill:

"The basic operating definition [of a moral panic] is 'public mass movement, based on false or exaggerated perceptions or information that exceeds the actual threat society is facing. Moral panic is a widespread fear and often an irrational threat to society's values, interests, and safety.' One of the seminal piece's of research into the taxonomy of moral panics was Stanley Cohen's "Folk Devils and Moral Panics." He defined it as "a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests." The impetus for this book was the UK media taking a short series of tit-for-tat acts of petty vandalism between (drunk) mods and rockers in the early, and convincing the public this was an out of control gang war, and over-policing over-reaction ensued. Cohen saw 3 characteristics of a moral panic:

1. Media singles out a group of people and makes them "devils": something all good people should despise
2. The actual threat is somewhere between little and none
3. Concern about the group explodes seemingly overnight.

* * *

Similarly, later scholars listed the characteristics of a moral panic as:
1. Volatility: Sudden identification of a group of people as threatening deviants
2. Hostility: the "deviants" are regarded with intense hostility, and labeled as an existential threat to society.
3. Measurable Concern: can be measured w/ polls
4. Consensus: Significant portion of the public believes the threat is real and serious
5. Disproportionate: Reaction is disproportionate to the size of the group and the little or no danger they pose"

* * *

...the worst possible outcome is when an authoritarian government comes to (permanent) power on the basis of some sort of moral panic. This one of the times when conditions are ripe for genocide.

Which is why the timing of a massive moral panic over trans people couldn't come at a worse freaking time. It's zero coincidence that the same people calling for turning the US into a Christian Republic are also flogging the trans panic.

* * *

And you have the GOP that made this one of their top talking points during the 2022 election. They dumped truckloads of cash into ads about trans people. They hammered away at us on the stump. They win primaries with moral panic

* * *

One could make the argument that the Holocaust was the result of a confluence of a moral panic stoked by a political party which simultaneously managed to seize permanent dictatorial power.

As it is, we're dealing with a moral panic, stochastic violence, modern Sturmabteilung, mass shootings, Twitter boosting those responsible for both the stochastic violence and the moral panic, and people are already starting to sell everything and flee red states.

— Brynn Tannehill, Twitter, Dec. 11, 2022



See also this tweet

For the past several days, I've been writing about this...

Anti-Trans Bills Encourage Far-Right Violence
That may be the intent. It sure looks like the outcome.
Jun 15 — 3 min read

Why is the Far-Right Ever More Intensely Anti-Trans?
Because they’re bored by finally winning against abortion rights
Jun 14 — 3 min read

How the Far-Right Comes for Trans People
Violent far-right U.S. groups are ‘hugely and deeply’ anti-transgender
Jun 13 — 4 min read


In response to Owen Jones, Scott Long said:
"When I was coming out (back in what feels like the Axial Age), it was axiomatic even in more conservative parts of the LGBT movement that parental authority was a wellspring of oppressive abuse. It wasn't neutral or apolitical. Curtailing it was where politics began. ... When we were finalizing the Yogyakarta Principles, the leader of one international LGBT group questioned whether the Principles should condemn intersex surgeries performed on children. "As a parent," she said, "I would always want the power to make that decision for my child." ...what interests me about that statement isn't "as a parent." It's "I want the power." ... When gays like Bari Weiss (prospective parent) or Andrew Sullivan (not a parent, but it won't stop him talking) praise parents' power to control or detrans transgender children, they are laying claim to abusive power that could easily have been used against them. Weiss and Sullivan must have feared power once, in their bones. Which is why they identify so completely now with the power to oppress. LGBT liberation is about resisting power, not grabbing some for yourself." — Scott Long, Twitter, 6 April 2023


Zinnia Jones tweets: This exact type of attack on minorities keeps happening because these groups follow a moral panic-to-fascism playbook that can be used against any group in society, over and over again, until there's enough panic to move on to fascism. You might hate trans people. You might hate queer people. You might hate furries. Do you hate yourself enough to volunteer to be some politician's dupe, now that you know they're just using you?

Noting that her 2022 sarcastic tweet "I won’t rest until every American child has been trans’d" was taken seriously by KLA TV (religious transphobes), Natalie Wynn gives a 2023 update: "We should not rest till we’ve trans’d God."

A 2022 tweet by Natalie Wynn: “It’s time to go on the offensive. I won’t rest until every American child has been trans’d.” KLA TV (religious transphobes) takes it seriously. Natalie Wynn gives a 2023 update: The tweet didn’t go far enough. We should not rest till we’ve trans’d God.

Alex DiFrancesco on Twitter: At this time every day, my dog freaks out about the mailman, and I have learned that if I try to calm her it doesn't work, but if I yell, 'OMG, the mailman! Do you think he's coming in! WHAT SHOULD WE DO?' she's like, 'Finally, someone is taking this very real threat seriously!'

a young person, smiling
Image by Tammy McGary from Sulphur Springs, Texas © Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Wikimedia Commons.

A trans person existed & thereby ruined your day? It did not happen to you

One of the major transphobic tropes is that hypothetical trans people run around causing fictional chaos and thus all actual trans people must be banned.

The chaos isn't real. It's a falsepanic. The harm to cis people is invented.

June 6, 2023 celia tweets: Not a single one of you cis women transphobe bigots can provide me an actual example THAT HAPPENED TO YOU of a trans woman being 'innapropriate' in a 'woman's space.' I don't want a link to the same article we've seen before from your shitty websites. I don't want random video.
John Leavitt June 2, 2023 tweets: I’m sure there’s some sociological term for “a society that is becoming hysterical about unreal threats they made up because actually addressing real threats would upset the power structure too much so they’d rather die” but all I know is that it sucks

Leavitt adds that it's "an accumulation cycle," perhaps the end of one, "but never before has the cycle been this global, with nowhere else to expand into, with actual civilization ending threats looming."

See also my article: "Transphobia, the Interrupting Cow". It's a 12-minute read on Medium. To read it, buy a paid membership on the platform.

Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong blasts anti-trans moral panic, LGBTQ Nation, January 2024

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