Starring David Tennant as Peter Capaldi…

I really shouldn’t, but I have high expectations for Casper Kelly’s segment.

I sat in on a seminar by Advocates for Transgender Equality who explained a lot of key details of receiving transgender medical care.

Their primary message was “you’ll almost certainly get denied initially, and then have your appeal denied as well. That’s when you appeal again, to a third-party oversight board, and that’s where you will almost certainly win.”

The process is arduous and designed to frustrate you to the point of giving up. Don’t give up.

Quite a few resources can be found at https://transhealthproject.org/ including a template for appealing adverse decisions regarding gender confirmation surgery.

This is all hilarious of course, but that sandwich thrower would probably be dead if he wasn’t white.

There’s quite a few of those to be sure, but having been for many years and no longer going, the vast majority of people there are either going mindlessly because it’s part of their personality or folks who’ve never been before and are in search of something.

The originating ideas continue to be intriguing, but I wouldn’t say it’s much more than a pricey escape from the troubling default world. I was lucky enough to be able to enjoy it when the world didn’t quite seem as doomed as it does now.

Also, seriously, everyone there should be wearing an N99 during dust storms. The playa is full of silica dust and silicosis is a real thing and really really bad.

I watched Pritzker’s press conference. You can here. He said no such thing.

He told Trump not to send the National Guard to Chicago; that they are neither needed nor wanted there. And he told citizens that when it does happen to engage in peaceful protest, noting that any guard members that arrive are likely doing so under duress (denying to deploy would risk court martial), and insisting that citizens look to “members of the faith community” for guidance on how to organize.

I don’t really agree with that specific choice, but that’s what he said.

But also, this:

The state of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever at our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights. Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme. To the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man. To any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous, we are watching and we are taking names. This country has survived darker periods than the one that we’re going through right now and eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.

That’s more like it.

To clarify, you’re referring to this portion of the article:

Newsom then appeared on the Shawn Ryan Show, another far-right podcast, where he expanded his rhetoric. He downplayed transgender people’s pronouns, saying, “I’m trying to understand as much as anyone else the whole ‘pronoun’ thing.”

Digging into the detail link gives a smidge more context on the quote, but not much…

Naturally, Ryan’s line of questioning didn’t stop with sports, either. He suddenly turned to the idea of trans kids in general. “Is eight years old too young?”

“The trans issue for me is so novel,” Newsom said. “I’m trying to understand as much as anyone else the whole ‘pronoun’ thing.”

I don’t interpret that as genuine confusion over trans identities and pronoun use. That’s straight-up pandering; doing a pantomime of having a boggled mind to endear himself to the host and his audience.

It’s a transparent falsehood; disingenuous, cheap and ridiculous. These are not qualities befitting of someone seeking the highest office, let alone at a time when the nation teeters on the brink of fascism.

Everything with a 35mm master is getting a 4k scan with a little scratch and color cleanup and getting re-released as a “4k restoration”. Making these titles available to theaters is cheap. Theaters with over a dozen auditoriums and nobody showing up to every-hour-on-the-hour screenings of this week’s new release are happy to drop something like this in for a week here and there.

You were directionally evolved by monsters who resented artists’ ability to create value through pure expression. Mimicking the conjuring of that value was at once a parlor trick, then a means to undercut the livelihood of anyone not willing to explicitly and finitely explain the art they created (thus giving it metric to be measured by and value-assigned).

The wax ring and plumbers putty are set. Keep the caulk dry for 36 hours and try to not touch it or it could crack.

So lying to someone about yourself to get them to engage in sex acts with you… is sexual assault?

That means we’re going to go after ever shady guy who claims to be rich, famous or well-connected to get laid, right? Right?

Practice practice practice.

Say “when”…

Is there not a common understanding in Japan about homage and style parodies? Like, literally the setup for that song was a perfectly realized homage to the first few minutes of Back to the Future. If Robert Zemeckis saw that, he’d be all “lol cool.”

This is their respective Weird Al + Coolio moment. I’d like to believe Science Saru and Yoshiki’s relationship winds up as agreeable as theirs in the long run.

Editor’s note: I adore how underrated this was before it was released. Bravo, Sony…

Don’t let my human rights get in the way of your progress.

In case you weren’t sure how to feel about reading this obit, here’s a handful of this guy’s impact on the world…

• Dobson viewed marriage as a transaction in which women exchange sex for protection: “The natural sex appeal of girls serves as their primary source of bargaining power in the game of life. In exchange for feminine affection and love, a man accepts a girl as his lifetime responsibility-supplying her needs and caring for her welfare. This sexual aspect of the marital agreement can hardly be denied.” — James Dobson, Dare to Discipline (1970)
• Dobson opposed sex education curricula that were not abstinence-only and supported private school vouchers (taking funding away from public schools) and tax credits for religious schools.
• Dobson contended that tolerance and diversity are “buzzwords” that were being misused as part of a “hidden agenda” to promote homosexuality. (citation)
• In 2012, Dobson said that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary (killing 26 people including 20 children) was a judgement by God because of American acceptance of gay marriage and legal abortion. (citation)
• Dobson flip-flopped on his views on abortion, opting for silent support early in his career before changing course to be obstinately anti-abortion, insisting that abortion invites women to reject God, diverts women from their natural role as mothers, and prevents more Christians from coming into the world. (citation)
• Dobson encouraged “daddy–daughter dating” in which fathers and daughters set aside time for special activities together. Because he believed heterosexuality must be cultivated, Dobson intended these romanticized attachments to model proper heterosexual partnership to girls age six or younger. (citation)
• He viewed the gender binary as fundamental to humanity and waxed lovingly about historical periods where being transgender in a bathroom could get you killed. (citation)

I could go on, but I’m feeling the sudden urge to go dance in the street.

Update: for further reading, please have a look at the obituary written by Erik Loomis on the Lawyers Guns & Money blog. It’s outstanding.

Based take from Gabriel Bell.

Who gave this baby an infant to carry?

You’d be shocked, but it does happen sometimes (nurses, through force of habit).

Further reading gives additional context on that.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/costco-asserts-that-it-wont-sell-abortion-pill-mifepristone/

Reportedly, Costco has never carried mifepristone, ever, and according to Costco’s own analysis, there has not been significant demand from Costco members to warrant adding it.

For even more context, mifepristone is only ever meant to be administered under the direct supervision of medical staff. That doesn’t mean a doctor prescribed this pill for you to take at home, it means you only get the pill in a doctor’s office, with the doctor and staff there to care for you.

People I know who have taken mifepristone confirm: it does fuck you up and you DON’T want to take it at home.