A few thoughts:
- It’s all too convenient for Christians to look at this video & say “These are not real Christians!” And to move on without self-examination or acknowledgement of the church’s failures in the last 4 years (or 400 years for that matter)

I think the UK trans debate has teased out the sticking points for feminists, and it might be useful to lay them out given that the battle in the US, with a very different legislative environment, is just starting.

The GRA of 2004 gave trans people the ability to change legal sex via a GRC, but only if they had a psychiatric diagnosis of dysphoria and only after having lived in role for 2 years. The spousal veto gave spouses a chance to annul or obtain a favourable divorce.

While this ultimately created the loophole in women's rights that we've been fighting against in the last few years, it catered for a tiny number of dysphoric transsexuals and so did not have an enormous impact.

Discussions with trans friends and allies make it clear that, although surgery wasn't a requirement for a GRC, the diagnostic procedures were expected to trap and exclude males who did not want surgery, thereby preventing fetishists and opportunists from exploiting a GRC.

The Equality Act of 2010 defined the various protected characteristics, including both sex and 'gender reassignment', and provided for sex-based exemptions, under the auspices of which it is legal to exclude trans people from some single-sex spaces and services.

I have just received information about a family that has locked up their child at home in isolation because she complained of some aches in her body. They suspected the child as having C19. She was tested and after a couple of days, the test came out negative. 1/n

The girl has already been in isolation for 4 days. Now they are waiting to do another PCR test today to check again because they fear that the first test was done too early and it didn't detect covid. So this little girl will remain in isolation for at least another 24 hrs. 2/n

This is idiocy. Insanity. Ignorance. Cruelty. Simply a crime against children.
The stupid fear and the stupid policies are driving parents to abuse their children. 3/n

Children are not the main source of C19 transmission.

"transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from children under 14 years of age was minimal in primary schools"

1/14 How do e-cigarettes (ECs) affect cigarette smoking among youth? My new paper with @FloeFoxon simulates each scenario and finds out which one best matches actual trends... https://t.co/dBB7kcnTls @jgitchell @mikepesko @SwitchFinder @jkelovuori @TobPolicy @Clive_Bates

2/14 First, let's talk about why this question is so difficult to answer: COUNTERFACTUALS. We can't know the alternate-reality answers, like which smokers would have never started in a world without ECs, and which nonsmokers would now be smoking without ECs as an option.

3/14 So, the best we can do is use fancy/sophisticated methodologies to estimate what would have happened to youth smoking rates in the absence of ECs. In our case, simulation modeling

4/14 First, we look at the declining smoking trends *that were already happening* before ECs came (~2010), and project them into the present. This is our BASE-CASE SCENARIO about what smoking trends would be if ECs were never invented. Actual trends were LOWER than this base-case

5/14 Side note about terminology: We use the term “catalyst” instead of “gateway,” because “catalyst” is more precise about the claim we are modeling (that ECs are used first, and then causally lead to smoking). Whereas "gateway" can include other mechanisms like renormalization.

This has been going around, links to support. At this point we should all be digging!

(1) “TEXAS something is not sitting right with me with Texas and it’s not just the weather.
I mean it really bothers me these millions of Texas families are suffering.
I couldn’t sleep actually...

(2) So I woke up this morning, made coffee and got to researching.
I started pulling Biden’s EO’s this morning and I found something buried in the Keystone Pipeline EO..... way towards the end of the doc.

(3) It turns out that the same day Biden shut down the Keystone Pipeline, he also lifted the security on our power grid for 90 days (Trump’s EO the year prior secured our power grid by giving China no access.)

(4) Here below is the snippet buried in Biden’s Keystone pipeline EO.
“c) Executive Order 13920 of May 1, 2020 (Securing the United States Bulk-Power System), is hereby suspended for 90 days.

When I was 25, I worked as a legislative assistant in the Missouri General Assembly.

It was a dream job, honestly.

But that dream dissipated the day the #MoLeg decided to name Rush Limbaugh as an “honorable Missourian” and place his bust in the “Hall of Famous Missourians.”

1/

The Hall of Famous Missourians sits in the Missouri State Capitol.

There are busts of Mark Twain, Dred Scott, Josephine Baker, Harry Truman and other legends of history.

The day I learned Rush Limbaugh would join their ranks, I thought it was a joke.

2/

We received phone calls from constituents appalled that Missouri would honor a man who had become infamous that year for calling a college student a “slut.”

And who just that week had continued spreading the racist birtherism lie about our then-President, Barack Obama.

3/

What I learned that day is that it wasn’t *despite* his racism, but because of it that he received this award.

It’s because he created a universe where it was permissible to lynch with language America’s first black President.

4/

Several State Representatives and their staffers intended to protest the vote and the selection.

By the time we made it to the doors of the House Floor, we weren’t allowed in. It was Republicans only. The doors were locked and secured by the Highway Patrol.

5/