Baffled European

Tag: transphobia

  • Nonsense summary

    There’s been an outbreak of e-coli in Florida caused by people drinking raw milk. More cancellations of vaccine and other medical research as well.

    Nebraska is suffering a deep recession, with a 6% contraction in the economy this year so far.

    The Ford Motor Company posted a loss in Q2 of this year. They blame the tariffs, which are expected to cost the company $2billion this year.

    The price of everything is going up, except for eggs. These tariffs are biting.

    Bad weather and people are losing their homes and livelihoods because of storm damage. FEMA shrugs and ignores this. People need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Small government is the future.

    Except when it comes to racism. The immigration mania continues, there’s no way to stop it now.

    Amazingly, the Epstein stuff is still going on. Epstein’s greatest friend has not been able to shake away the story and people are asking questions.

    I’ve been away from this blog for the last month. I simply haven’t had the patience or enthusiasm to follow the experiment going on over in the USA. It’s not that it takes that much time, just that it is greater than zero and therefore more than I’m prepared to waste on watching a convicted fraudster steal hundreds of millions from his adoring followers. It’s all variations on illegal and inhumane stuff. They are inventive, but it gets to be too much.

  • Did anything happen?

    I’ve managed to ignore this nonsense for a week and it’s been great. However, it’s so fascinating to watch this train crash, I must come back to it. What did I miss?

    There was a tragic flash flood in Texas which killed over 100 people, including a group of children on holiday. The agencies responsible for this sort of thing have been gutted by the government and have formed a circular firing squad, everybody blaming each other.

    Nothing going on in the trade war. 90 deals in 90 days was the idea. They have managed one, and it’s not very good. The deadline has extended to August for the time being.

    Grok has restyled itself as “Mechahitler” and is pushing conspiracy theories about how the Jews run the world. Linda Yaccarino resigned as Twitter CEO a day after Grok started posting rape fantasies about her. This AI thing is working out well.

    The army has occupied MacArthur Park because somebody left the cake out in the rain or something like that. Presumably to intimidate the local population.

    Releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files was a big promise. Bondi said she had the files on her desk a couple of months ago. She admitted her mistake last week and now says that in fact these files do not exist at all. Maga are furious about this and have noticed all sorts of other betrayals. Too late.

    All totally insane. I think I’m up to speed.

  • Freedom and liberty

    “What’s your message to communist Zohdan?”

    A question at Tuesday’s press conference.

    How things have changed since January. The new administration banned AP from press conferences because they were insufficiently positive towards the president. They sued against the decision and won. The regime blocked them anyway.

    By now, all recognised press organisations have been banned from official press conferences. What remains are a set of influencers from Twitter and Youtube who agree with the project and will flatter the president appropriately. It’s no wonder he hated the NATO presser so much last week. That was the first time he has faced real questions for ages.

    “We’ll have to arrest him,” came the reply. “We don’t need a communist.” He went on to threaten a number of other political opponents with deportation, some of whom were born in the USA.

    Bondi is on the case, trying to find ways to suppress opposition.

    That’s where we are, less than six months in. The president talks about arresting and deporting his enemies to a tame press and that’s the way things are.

    Then there’s also the reports from Abrego Garcia’s trial, where he describes the harrowing torture the regime put him through. No wonder they tried so hard to stop him coming back. This is another one of the changes we have seen.

    I’m taking a break from this for a week or so. I’ve had enough of these monsters.

  • A white house in a red square

    This might be counted as good news, but for the fact that it is simply undoing an obvious wrong by the government. There was in edict that trans people must have their birth name and gender on their passports. This has been overturned. It is now once again possible for trans people to get a passport with their legal, chosen name, rather than a government mandated name.

    All this name stuff highlights a few inconsistencies. The birth name of the Vice President is “James Donald Bowman”, but he changed this to “James David Vance”. Should he be forced to readopt his birth name? I guess not.

    More concerning is the case of Sergio Gor, the man in charge of appointing and vetting all White House personnel. His birth name is Sergio Gorokhovsky. He claims to be from Malta, but was definitely not born there. His keeps his actual birthplace a secret, but he does confirm it is not Russia. OK. However, being born in 1986, the big happy family that was the USSR still existed. Could that be the “not Russia” that he is talking about?

    At any rate, he has not been vetted for his position and refuses to cooperate with security checks. An imposition, considering all the money he paid over the years to get the job. At the same time, thousands of trans soldiers are being discharged with a black mark on their record, implying they are a security risk.

    There is something very wrong here.

  • Nothing’s gonna stop us now

    I was thinking of writing something about the imminent start of World War III, but it has been postponed for 14 days. Maybe in that time the disorganised mess of US government structures will have sorted themselves out.

    Instead, let’s look at another setback for engineer extraordinaire Elon Musk. The latest test of Starship resulted in a spectacular explosion on the test stand. Not only was the rocket destroyed, but most of the test facility as well. I guess Musk won’t be going to Mars in 2026.

    SpaceX aren’t even trying their “partial success” story for when a rocket blows up. This time it’s a “serious anomaly”.

    Unsurprisingly, morale among SpaceX employees is rock bottom. It’s not just the run of failures, but also the poor working conditions and dissatisfaction with Musk’s foray into extremist politics. Many engineers have left this year, even when considering the high personnel churn at Musk’s companies. A wall of NDAs is in place to stop people from talking, but that just makes things worse.

    It’s amazing just how things are unravelling for Musk. In the past you could look at Tesla and SpaceX and they were undeniable achievements. No matter what you might have thought of him personally, he delivered. Now it looks like all of it was built on sand. There’s no culture, no institutional knowledge in his companies, they are just hollow shells. This slow-motion implosion is spectacular in its own way.

  • RFK again, oh no

    RFK is a reliable source of lunacy and pseudoscience. Trouble is, it’s all a constant drip-drip-drip of stupidity. Every day, he comes up with something new and it just blurs together. So many small things that add up, it’s difficult to make a big issue out of each individual point.

    Take the development of a new vaccine. Moderna received a government grant last year to develop a new mRNA vaccine against pandemic flu viruses, including possible crossovers from avian flu. Early trials are looking positive and the company wants to continue work.

    RFK has stopped the funding with a set of standard anti-vaxx nonsense. OK. He’s wrong, he’s delusional, we know that. But this is at least consistent. We would expect him to do this, it fits the pattern.

    Now we get to a second story about an outbreak of avian flu in Canada. A flock of 400 ostriches are infected and are due to be culled to prevent the disease from spreading. RFK wants to “save” these birds by bringing them into the USA to “study” and “test” them.

    Let’s get this straight. RFK wants to import avian flu and incubate it. At the same time, he’s going to prevent development of a cure for the disease, should it make the jump to humans.

    Words fail me. He’s so irresponsible, so reckless. Fortunately for everybody, the Canadian authorities are unlikely to play along. They are sensible.

  • Fallen star

    Energy Star was set up in 1992 to reduce the energy requirements of computers. Its success led to similar standards for lighting, heating and other appliances. Loads of numbers are thrown around to show its effectiveness: TLDR; it costs little and saves a lot.

    Obviously, maga denies climate change as part of their general rejection of reality. However ignorant and irrational, it is at least predictable. For some reason, they are also rejecting energy efficiency measures as well. Presumably the two issues are so tightly linked in their brains, they are unable to see any difference.

    They are cancelling Energy Star in the name of government efficiency. There will be no further drive to reduce energy consumption of equipment, nor will there be any further ratings of new products. This will hit all consumers, business as well as private.

    What is striking about this is the extravagent, willful waste of it all. It’s not enough for them to convince themselves that reality is a left wing conspiracy, they have to behave in the most inefficient way possible.

    Surely even those who hate environmental politics must recognise the value of lowering your outgoings? Is it about owning the libs? Or is it because the country is being run by oligarchs who don’t care about the cost?

    Whatever, they think they can outperform the rest of the world by being less efficient and having higher costs. It’s an interesting idea. See how it works.

  • The Democrats capitulate

    Star Wars fans are difficult to please. While the original films from the 70s and 80s are universally loved, the fans hate everything since then to a greater or lesser extent. Maybe there is a limit to how many times you can tell the story of space wizards and space nazis chasing a MacGuffin.

    Even on its release, the prequel trilogy at the turn of this century had a generally negative response. It tells the story of the rise of Darth Vader and the fall of the Galactic Republic. While its depiction of space politics has been widely derided as boring and ham-fisted, some of its aspects are interesting in retrospect.

    The old republic is portrayed as tired. It still appears to have the glory of the past, but it is riven with factional fighting and disputes. The old institutes appear to uphold the old traditions, but even they are a shadow of what they once were. Procedure takes the place of action even in crises; complacency and arrogance prevent them from noticing the reality of their decline.

    Palpatine, one of the space nazis, exploits these weaknesses and divisions, enabling him to declare a Galactic Empire. A lightsabre fight between Palpatine and Yoda destroys the Senate, symbolically indicating the end of the republic and democracy.

    They should have used chainsaws.