Monthly Archives: July 2022

Fans of the grotesque dont need to read the stories of Flannery OConnor, or flip through art books savoring the paintings of the great Hieronymus Bosch. Everyday reality will scratch any sane persons itch for the lurid, the twisted, the ludicrous. Sometimes the spectacle is funny, sometimes baffling, but often its genuinely sinister. Especially if you remember the stakes for which were playing, both in this life and the next.

Perhaps the most outrageous recent exchange in our public life took place in Senate hearings, when the pro-family patriot Sen. Josh Hawley was questioning U.C. Berkeley Professor Khiara Bridges. As The Guardian reported:

During the judiciary committee hearing, Hawley, who has previously co-sponsored a bill which would prevent transgender children from competing in sports, questioned Khiara Bridges, a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law who was invited to testify on reproductive rights.

Youve referred to people with a capacity for pregnancy, he said. Would that be women?

Bridges replied: Many women, cis women, have the capacity for pregnancy. Many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy. There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy, as well as non-binary people who are capable of pregnancy.

Hawley said: So this isnt really a womens rights issue. Its its what?

Bridges said: We can recognise that this impacts women while also recognising that it impacts other groups, those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley.

She added: I want to recognise that your line of questioning is transphobic and it opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing them.

We cant just lazily wave at Bridges position and point to it as madness. Of course it is, to you and me. We know with all the certainty of biological science and thousands of years of human civilization, plus the testimony of Scripture, that the divide between the sexes is real, crucially important, and tied to reproduction.

But thats not enough. We face a new ideology that bears all the force of an evangelizing religion, backed by activist billionaires, which has captured all the high ground in our culture.

So we must think through clearly, even ruthlessly, the full implications of the dogmas taught by the Transgenderist cult, which public school teachers are preaching to our children and Democrats are enshrining into law. (Dont worry, Establishment Republicans will be obediently repeating the same superstition, just a few years later. They always do.)

We must follow the truth relentlessly, without flinching for fear of triggering thin-skinned activists. And we absolutely must parry the heavy rhetorical cudgel which Bridges wielded at Hawley. Namely, that some opinions may not be expressed, and must be simply censored, because airing them opens up people to violence.

Let the truth be told, though the heavens fall. We must not live by lies, and cannot let the government uses its bayonets and bullets to cram lies down our throats. Thats how countries end up with gulags, as Solzhenitsyn warned us.

All that by way of background to my central argument, which Ill lay out here in clear, inexorable steps.

Obviously, a whole book could be written, to unpack all these claims. And good ones have been written, such as Ryan Andersons When Harry Became Sally, and Abigail Shreirs Irreversible Damage. I encourage people to read them. And also to listen to testimonies from people who carried the heavy cross of gender dysphoria, unwittingly subjected themselves to medical malpractice at the hands of todays lobotomy doctors, and now regret it. Walt Heyer is perhaps the most eloquent among the ex-trans community.

But for today, I think its sufficient to explore just my first claim, since all the others logically follow from it. If this premise is true, so are the conclusions.

I already wrote a column on this topic to mark the sad transitioning of the gifted actress Ellen Page. Rather than re-invent the wheel, let me quote the key sections here, then add some new reflections.

Let me violate good Gnostic manners and ask a few vulgar questions. Is Page going to have her perfectly healthy breasts removed? Will Page use some crude simulacrum of male genitalia to render her lesbian marriage now suddenly heterosexual? Will Page dose herself with male steroids, and undergo all the health risks? I hope none of the three, for her sake.

But we know that none of these things are necessary for greedy, shameless biological males who wish to scoop up all the prizes in womens sports. Or lurk in their locker rooms. Or leave a male prison where theyre locked up for raping women, and move to a prison full of women whom they can rape.

No, precisely because biology is irrelevant, you need do none of these things to be a trans. You just need to declare it, and everyone else must honor that choice. But what are you choosing, exactly? If youre not making dangerous, destructive efforts to mutilate your body, what are you doing? What are you identifying with, or as, and how?

If the capacity for real motherhood or fatherhood is not part of gender then what is? Lipstick, high heels, and a high-pitched voice on the one hand and lumberjack shirts, work boots, and unashamed farts on the other? By identifying as some gender at odds with your genitals, are you simply indulging a stereotype? If so, must strangers honor that? Must we blow up womens sports, strip women of privacy, and subject some to physical danger (like the fellow prisoners of a suddenly female rapist, or girls on a rugby field mowed down by a 6 3 girl)?

All so that a few mentally ill people can LARP? And we as a society have to nod along with them and agree to pretend to believe them? At this point I insist on saying two things: No, and H***, no! A society that can force us to say that Bruce Jenner is a woman and Ellen Page is a man can force us to say anything at all. Including that 2+2=5.

Nobody asks whether a chicken, or a gorilla, identifies as the opposite sex. Only fallen human beings, with our big, complicated brains, come up with sophisticated delusions like gender dysphoria. Or paranoid conspiracy theories about the Jews. Or bizarre means of mental self-torture like Scientology.

When Transgenderists and their dupes demand that we respect the gender identity of a pregnant man, or a bearded transwoman rapist in prison, what are they telling us to do? Theyre insisting that we must cater to false cognitions, to psychological distortions. That we must remake all of society, and change how we speak and we act, to placate people trapped in illusions who wish to conform to external stereotypes of the opposite sex. And ruin their health, mutilate their bodies, and trample on the rights of others to accomplish that.

Imagine things were different. Visualize a world where Trans ideology applied not to something trivial like the only means of reproducing the human species, but to something really important, such as money.

So people who claim to be billionaires with perfect credit scores and vast assets in real estate and stocks can walk into banks and demand lines of credit worth $500 million. And bankers would have to comply, or else be accused of encouraging violence against the Transfinancial.

People who believe that they know as much as Harvard MBAs can claim that degree on their resumes and employers have to hire them. And so on. Any hobo who puts on an ascot is now a Rockefeller heir, and you must treat him as such or face cancellation. Someones Transfinancial identity must be respected.

Now such things would never happen, because certain subjects are sacred.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of God, Guns, & the Government.

See the rest here:
'Transphobia' is Good, and Should be Official Government Policy - The Stream

Guest Opinion By Mary Keyes Rogers | July 23, 2022

Regardless of your political persuasion, youve gotta hand it to the Democrats for how well theyve presented the Jan. 6 hearings. Every i has been dotted and each t has been crossed, emotions kept in check, timetables explained, and unbiased witnesses called upon to testify. Even if they did get a hand from Hollywood, thats fine by me. Great job, kudos to all involved!

Considering whats come to light in those hearings, it is a shock theyre likely going to lose the House, and maybe the Senate, too, in the midterms.

Let me predict how Republicans will snatch the votes of many moderate Democrats and Independents.

It shouldnt be easy, considering the average voters opinions on key issues compared to the Republican candidates. Most Americans identify as pro-choice. They support a ban on assault weapons and think the government should be doing more to limit the impact of climate change, all causes represented in Democratic-sponsored legislation in the House and subsequently killed by Republicans in the Senate. To be clear, the Republicans are unanimous in their positions on these issues: No, no, and no.

I believe we can all agree that abortion, guns, and climate are not fringe issues.

Democrats should be at a significant advantage in the midterm elections when Republicans are heavily favored to take back the U.S. House and perhaps even the Senate. Only in the most recent weeks, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the Uvalde school shooting, have poll numbers begun to slip a bit for Republicans.

In statewide elections, Democrats, and even moderate Republicans, are poised to be trounced by Trump-whipped, NRA-directed, pro-life, polluting-for-profit Republicans. (By the way, I used to like Republicans when they were a party of free-thinking individuals.)

Considering all that the Republicans are doing in direct opposition to the desires of the American voter, you would naturally believe the Democrats must be doing some genuinely crazy bad stuff.

It may sound minor, but they allowed the tail to wag the dog. Yes, the Democratic party has cowered to its own far, far left, uber-progressive, woke slice of the party pie at the expense of most voters.

So, while closer to the target on these hot-button issues of abortion, guns, and climate, Team Blue went so far to the left on cultural issues that voters are uncomfortable calling themselves Democrats. Moderates and Independents are willing to overlook their differences with the Republican platform as long as their finances are more likely to improve with Team Red.

The message makers at Donkey HQ need a reminder that not everything is sexist, racist, elitist, or coming from a place of white privilege or hate. We are a country of evolving, imperfect humans with varying histories and sensitivities, but our right to free speech includes the right to be insensitive and in bad taste. Sometimes, we really are just making a joke. And some jokes are just plain offensive.

The Democratic Party must recognize that they dont have enough woke soldiers to win the culture war. Politically Incorrects liberal Bill Maher has been held up as the darling of Fox News and the Republican Party because hes openly pissed off and poking fun at the woke crowd. Even former President Obama has sternly warned young activists that shaming isnt activism.

Unfortunately, our funniest comedians will no longer tour or perform on college campuses for fear of either being canceled or facing a woke and humorless audience for 90 minutes. Much to my dismay, Hollywood doesnt seem to be making many comedies anymore because they are too politically expensive to produce in this woke era.

Personally, Im not okay with being shamed by a passing 20-year-old for using a plastic straw. And, honestly, I dont want to be called a birthing person or a person with a vagina.

The most progressive members, the trigger police within the Democratic party, have become its de facto standard bearers. In contrast, the average Democratic voter cannot relate to their gripes or their rage.

I hear young liberal progressives within the Democratic party ashamed of their country and citizenship. I understand that our countrys history has been sanitized, but warts and all, average Democrats still love their country.

Mainstream voters think about paychecks, not pronouns. Average Americans wring their hands over funding their retirement accounts, not defunding the police. The woke culture that threatens, You know you cant say that anymore? has exhausted us. Their 15-minutes can end now, please.

Ironically, woke culture may cancel Democratic candidates and, in the process, help to elect Republicans who will block any legislation offering support for reproductive rights, gun control, or reversing climate change.

Wake up to that.

Mary Keyes Rogers, a Traverse City resident of more than 20 years, hosted the daily talk radio show Mary in the Morning, launched Marigold Women in Business, and has held executive positions in many civic and business leaders local, regional, and national organizations.

Read the original:
Will Wokeness Kill the Party? | Opinion - northernexpress.com

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed below belong solely to the author.

As I was working on a Google Ads project for a long-time client, sifting through its automated recommendations for his ad account, something dawned on me:

The way things are today, Google (Alphabet) may not survive another 10 or 20 years.

And its not the only major company that may unexpectedly go down the drain, even if most people think it is too big to fall.

There are many cautionary tales from the past of businesses which seemed so huge and so successful that nothing would be able to dent them and then something, someone, came along and kicked them into the dustbin of history.

22 years ago, Nokia was the worlds largest mobile phone maker and hit a peak valuation of over US$300 billion. AOL peaked at over US$200 billion, Yahoo at over US$100 billion around the time Google was a garage project of two students.

In fact, those two students who are now multibillionaires Larry Page and Sergey Brin, offered to sell Google to Yahoo for a mere million bucks in 1998. They were turned down.

Today, Nokia while still in existence is worth less than 10 per cent of what it used to, has left the consumer phone space, and is getting by on its intellectual property and research in the field of enterprise telecommunications.

Its no longer a household name, even though at one time, most mobile users on the planet carried one of its phones in their pockets.

AOL, the giant that once opened the doors to the internet to millions of Americans, was swept up by Verizon for mere US$4.5 billion a few years ago, along with Yahoo once the front-page of the internet and its most popular search engine for about the same.

Last year, both were dumped again, at another 40 per cent discount.

All of them fell from grace because they have grown complacent and slow to respond to innovation brought out by others. They relied on sluggish, increasingly outdated, inflexible business models which once made them rich and seemingly untouchable.

Until it turned out they werent a realisation that happened very suddenly, unexpectedly wiping them out in just a few years.

And I feel the same is happening with at least three of the modern giants: Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook) and Adobe, collectively worth over US$2 trillion dollars.

Google is regularly ranked among the worlds most innovative companies but, for the love of me, I have no idea why.

Google Ads are no longer really genuinely helping businesses reach more customers the system is designed in a way that is, by my observation, designed to squeeze out the most money out of advertisers by often suggesting them actions that are not in their best interest.

Its either an example of poor engineering and appalling machine learning or worse, a deliberate policy.

I know this firsthand after observing results from which the supposedly smart algorithms refuse to learn, defaulting to spending more money than is otherwise necessary.

But if thats too niche-specific and not really relatable to you, lets focus on Googles (Alphabets) key, customer-facing product that drives most of its ads: its search engine.

After a quarter of a century, Googles delivery of search results hasnt fundamentally evolved. Its still the same page with links leading to supposedly most relevant results only they still contain a ton of spam or even outright misleading and deceptive sites that continue to outsmart Googles engineers and rank higher than reputable websites or businesses.

It seems that Google has stopped caring about improving its search engine because theres seemingly nobody who could challenge its de facto global monopoly. So, why bother?

At the same time, its advertising that still brings in the vast majority of money 80 per cent of Alphabets revenue, in fact.

In other words, the company is still dependent on 20-year old ideas that it is obviously not intent on meaningfully improving.

Even its venture into the mobile world, where Android is dominating in terms of market share, is ultimately supporting the very same ecosystem of free apps that Google uses to drive people to advertising that it cashes in on.

Advertising, lets remember, that is still largely based on displaying either clickable entries on a search results page, intrusive banners on third-party sites and apps, or interrupts your videos on YouTube and elsewhere (while youre just waiting to skip to what you really came to watch).

How long can a company survive if it depends on a search system that still struggles to provide accurate information and weed out spam or deception, and advertising that is largely an unwanted annoyance for the target audience?

Its quite clear that both are ripe for a shakeup by another innovative startup showing the big, slow elephant that it cant really think forward (in seven years of Alphabets other investments have, so far, failed to provide anything novel, after all).

Facebooks story is largely similar. It wasnt first to the social media market, but it was the first to provide something that glued people to their screens a timeline of activities from accounts and pages within a users network.

Fast forward 18 years and it still depends on just that, fending off challengers who applied a similar concept to other media like images (Instagram, which has since been acquired by Meta) or video (like TikTok).

At the same time, its leadership has obviously grown so self-assured that it believes itself capable of policing thought and speech of Facebooks three billion users, determining not only what they see, but what penalties are imposed on them for sharing politically incorrect opinions or memes, or even having online quarrels with other users.

Not exactly very social after all, is it?

And yet, the next big thing that Big Brother Zuckerberg believes will shape our future is the idea of putting on his VR helmets for hours on end, drifting into the virtual reality of the metaverse that he is so committed to that he has even rebranded his entire company around it.

But have users jumped on the hype? Not so much. While the VR market is growing, it is doing so on the back of improved experiences within existing uses like gaming, not new services that are much more comfortably accessed using legacy technologies which dont induce vertigo or make your eyes and head hurt after an hour or two.

I think its rather telling that these two huge companies have decided to rename themselves and yet failed to produce any innovation under either of the names.

Alphabet has been around for seven years and can anybody name anything that it has churned out outside of Googles brand that would gain global interest?

Meanwhile, Metas VR business is just another acquisition (of Oculups, the original innovators in the VR scene), not an internal development. And by Zuckerbergs creepy launch presentation, it seems that people running the show have, indeed, already lost touch with the real world.

Finally, my personal pet peeve, Adobe. Ive been working as a graphics designer since my early teens 25 years ago. Back then, Adobe was the pinnacle of software engineering in the field and nobody could come close. Even large, complex works were doable on hardware running a tiny fraction of the computing power modern PCs have.

And yet, after a quarter of the century, vast majority of functions (particularly in apps like Photoshop or Illustrator) are exactly the same, yet have a habit of crashing or slowing down even on advanced hardware. I just had Adobe Acrobat protesting removal of a few pages of a PDF file that simply contained a fair bit of outlined text on a Ryzen machine equipped with an RTX3080 and 64GB of RAM.

Adobes customer support forums are filled with mountains of complaints or feature requests dating years into the past that nobody in the company has ever taken care to read, let alone fix or implement.

Even worse, some basic features that are present in one program may be completely absent in another, even though they would be most welcome (and applicable). Heck, even mere copying of content between them is often difficult, buggy or downright impossible.

Why is that? Not because Adobe cant do it, but because it doesnt want to and doesnt have to, as theres nobody to threaten its position.

Its not a company that is any longer driven by engineering milestones, but by financial ones.

Like Boeing, where accountants running the business decided to cut corners so much that two new 737 MAX planes crashed killing a few hundred people on board. All because Boeing wanted to save a bit of money and time on proper licensing procedures that would require retraining existing pilots.

Two years ago, Adobe made a blunder of a similarly catastrophic scale (in proportion, of course) in its own market after a buggy update to Lightroom irreversibly deleted photos and crucial software presets of millions of users of the software on iOS devices.

The dominance it enjoys has culled progress almost entirely, so much so that there are no benefits that it can (or wants to) derive from modern hardware in virtually all of its programs except for video editing perhaps, but it is largely because in the video space it still has some competition to deal with.

Other than that, its simply cheaper to not improve much. Where are the people going to go anyway if Adobe products are not only a global standard, but pretty much a requirement in visual arts and design?

And yet, this is precisely what makes it and other big names so vulnerable. They think they are beyond competition and have strangled innovation in the process, because they just cant be bothered.

Why improve if youre so good that you pretty much own the market? And then, one day, someone comes along and shows the old guard that they are no longer good enough. But that lesson typically comes too late.

Excerpt from:
Why tech giants Meta, Google and Adobe are likely to collapse within 10 to 20 years - Vulcan Post

With record-breaking temperatures hitting the country this week, here in Coventry we've seen schools closing, restaurants shutting and even roads melting amid alerts over safety. Yet for some residents, actions to tackle the unprecedented heat are a sign of today's namby pamby snowflake culture.

You just need to wheel back a few years to get a different perspective - even if it is rose-tinted. For many older Coventrians, the tarmac in their day was made of tougher stuff, and schools closed for nothing, not even the safety of youngsters and the current heatwave is a doddle in comparison to the long hot summer of 1976.

Granted, the heatwave of that summer wasn't a couple of days, but almost a solid two months of blistering sunshine. But how did the city stay cool in the face of such heat back then?

READ MORE: Hour by hour forecast on hottest day of the year in Coventry

We've had a look back at the archives to see photos from that summer that show ways residents tried staying cool. This included teens frolicking in well-known fountains, including the popular one outside the Belgrade Theatre.

There was also an attempt to summon some much need rain over in Rugby with what would now be considered a slightly politically incorrect Indian Rain Dance, which included a man dressed in Native American gear. Other images show children splashing in paddling pools.

July of that year saw the Coventry Evening Telegraph reporting on hosepipe bans due to "the demand for water soaring to unprecedented levels". But those naysayers who say schools carried on as normal back in their day are actually wrong.

According to our archives, some city schools switched to 'continental class-hours in an attempt to beat the heatwave'. Sam Bentley, head of Burton Green Primary in the city, said the move "worked marvellously".

Do you remember the summer of 1976? How did you stay cool at the time? Let us know in the comments.

READ NEXT:

More here:
Images of how Coventry tried staying cool in the 1976 heatwave - Coventry Live

When Kshama Bindu, a 24-year-old woman from Gujarat, announced early last month that she was getting married to herself, I didnt pay much attention. But when she told the world that she was going for her honeymoon to Goa, I could no longer ignore her. I will spend time at Arambol beach where I can wear a bikini without anyone ogling at me, she said, promising to capture all my special moments on my mobile phone. She added that she was well equipped to handle questions about her spouse.

Well, I have no questions about her spouse, but had a few questions for her spouse. So, I sat down for an imaginary interview with Kshama Bindu, spouse of Kshama Bindu. Uninterrupted by calls from her spouse, she spoke. Excerpts:

Do I call you Kshama or Bindu? And what do I call your spouse?

Call me Kshama. As I am my spouse, you can call her, who is me, also Kshama.

Thats helpful, Kshama. So, how was it being your own bride and how does it feel being newly married?

Ah, the bride part was tough. A local BJP leader made a fuss over my sologamy being against Hindu practices and threatened to stop me from getting married at a temple, so it had to be a private affair. Yet it went off well. Its a wonderful feeling to be married, you know, especially to yourself since you are married to someone you know and someone who understands you.

Are you planning to have children?

Children are cute, and I err we definitely want to have them. With advances in ART its possible, but its too early to think of that. For now, I want to enjoy my married life. The best part of marrying oneself is that I can do everything travel, movies, eating out for half the price of a couple. Isnt that cuter than changing diapers without help from an extra hand?

I may be politically incorrect, but I have to ask this: Have you considered the possibility of a separation or divorce?

Not a problem. Ive thought it through. Though I am married to myself, I can have disagreements with my spouse who is myself. And I am not being philosophical here. But one thing I am certain, I will not fight with my spouse in front of our children. I think the chances of a divorce after sologamy are less, but it can happen. In the unlikely event of incompatibility and divorce, I swear I will not make it ugly. I will just divorce myself. And there would be no custodial battle for children. If my spouse, that is me, has to visit my children, I will make sure I make myself a seven-course dinner to be shared with the kids as the Madras high court has suggested. Anyway, I dont have a better half; the married me just feels full. Now that I am planning my honeymoon, I am all excited, and so is my spouse who is me.

That sounds a bit like Nithyananda

I get your attempted sarcasm, but here it is: I am not the first one to do this; sologamy has been around in the west for many years. The Netflix show Anne with an E might have inspired me to marry myself, but I wasnt being a copycat. I was being myself. What else explains I marrying me and I being happy with me? Well, if that sounds like Nithyananda, he had a point which you guys never understood.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

Go here to see the original:
The woman who married herself: An interview with Kshama Bindus spouse - Times of India

Hong Kong reported over 4,100 new Covid infections yesterday amid warnings that daily counts could eventually surpass 10,000 cases.

Contrary to the panic gripping the city at the start of the fifth wave, people seem to have largely got used to living with the numbers without being in a state of fear.

Apparently, the city has reached a new milestone in its pandemic fight.

Yesterday, The Standard's sister paper Sing Tao Daily carried a report saying the government was expected to shorten hotel quarantine for international travelers from seven days to either five days at a quarantine hotel plus two days of restriction outside hotel or four days in a hotel plus three days of restriction.

According to the report, a decision is expected within one or two weeks.

No matter which plan is adopted, people finishing their hotel quarantine will be given a yellow health code to restrict their movements for the rest of the specified period.

It is not yet absolutely clear if people who have completed the shortened hotel quarantine would have to self isolate at home or whether they would be free to go out but not allowed to visit certain premises, including restaurants, where customers are allowed to remove their masks.

But any small step in the direction of enabling the public to resume normal living is to be welcomed.

Of the two options - "five-plus-two" or "four-plus-three" - the second would be preferred since it would at least be one day closer to relatively normal living.

Hopefully, the shortening is only another step down the road, with more easing steps to follow until all quarantine and social distancing restrictions are lifted.

Signs have been promising even though development has been regrettably slow.

Just the day before, four local medical experts, including Yuen Kwok-yung and David Hui-cheong, took the lead to advocate a need to shift our current pandemic policy to one of mixed immunity that is currently the most common strategy practiced in the world. Mixed immunity is not a new concept. Whether it's called mixed immunity, herd immunity or even living with the virus, it means the same thing.

Were all these sensitive phrases in use during the preceding months? Back then, it would still have been impossible and politically incorrect for anyone in or near the establishment to publicly advocate such a policy shift.

That several of the city's best-known experts - as well as former Hospital Authority chief Leung Pak-yin - have spoken up to stress the need to face the reality that Covid won't disappear from the world could be a sign.

It is hoped that Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau will heed their calls and bring the policy up to date with a view to creating an exit roadmap.

Executive Council convenor Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee mentioned the other day that Hong Kong may have no choice but to open its international borders to normal travel before its borders with the mainland.

Despite her pledge to uphold Exco confidentiality, could Ip be hinting that normal international travel will resume sooner rather than later?

Read more here:
Time to step ahead without fear | The Standard - Hong Kong Standard