Michael O’Leary is a real life shitposter who plays the press like a fiddle, and here he is doing it again.
We live in a time where anyone could do a quick check to see if a 737-8200 could reach Rwanda from the UK (ok, fuelling stops are possible but it seems unlikely that would be favoured), and confirm that, no, it cannot.
But “journalists” don’t apparently bother to actually investigate … anything.
So O’Leary gets his name in the media again for free. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-24/ryanair-ceo-says-he-d-happily-offer-rwanda-deportation-flights?embedded-checkout=true
Ryanair CEO Says He’d ‘Happily’ Offer Rwanda Deportation Flights
Ryanair Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer Michael O’Leary weighed into the UK’s controversial plan to deport refugees to Rwanda, saying he would “happily” do the flights if he had the available aircraft.Kate Duffy (Bloomberg)
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EDIT: View @magmaus3 's reply. This is apparently misinformation that originated on 4chan. The same still applies, though, don't tell journos about DIY. Just that in this case The Guardian is not working on an article about it.
DO NOT TALK TO JOURNOS ABOUT #DiyHRT !#TheGuardian has been emailing people asking if they do DIY. Even if the article presents it in a positive light (unlikely) conservatives will leverage the article to make the materials harder to access.
#trans #transgender #mtf #ftm #queer #gsrm
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I think ALL the UK's problems could be solved if we could only deport the entire Conservative Party.
It's what they'd want. There's an element of compassion, after all.
https://wandering.shop/@cstross/112320405368436157
Sunak claims there is 'element of compassion' to Rwanda policy because it is meant to stop dangerous Channel crossings:Hypocritical bullshit like this convinces me that Sunak is cynically playing to the Tory membership base because they won't let him fix the actual underlying problems.
And Starmer is just as bad, beating the English Nationalist drum for all he's worth.
Sunak claims there is ‘element of compassion’ to Rwanda policy because it is meant to stop dangerous Channel crossings – UK politics latest
Prime minister says that deaths of five people attempting to cross the Channel shows need to stop boats and bill is intended to stop people smugglingAndrew Sparrow (The Guardian)
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Content warning: Spoilers for Fallout and Silo
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@rachel and scones
National Trust defends vegan scone recipe after ‘wokery’ criticism
Charity says plain and fruit scones have been dairy-free for years, but can be ‘enjoyed with butter or cream’Caroline Davies (The Guardian)
@Katie Fenn @Rachel Lawson WHY DO THEY CARE?
Jesus Christ. What utter fucking weirdoes.
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Algarve air is just indescribably wonderful after spending 2 weeks in the uk cultivating asthma attacks.
Deep breaths, because I CAN.
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Content warning: Cass review
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They are resestablishing an old lake as close to my back yard as at all possible - some of it may actually end up IN my back yard. So this is to let you know I'm joining the YIMBY-movement.
Yes In My Back Yard
I want solar panels on every last house in the village.
A big communal battery in the rooms (plural!) where my wood pellets go now.
And many windmills in my pastoral landscape - they always give me hope.
It might even be YIMBYP
Yes In My Back Yard Please!
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Just as a friendly reminder for anyone not aware:
The British press is not our friend. They, as a rule, do not publish anything, ever, favorable about trans folks, because those who control their content would very much prefer that we didn't exist.
So, if a reporter for, say, The Guardian wants to talk to you?
Don't.
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I would also highly recommend before even starting an interview to do some serious googling about their history of journalism, controversial pieces they've authored, and whether you feel like they can be trusted to fairly represent your point of view in the story. I mean, ALL journalism is going to involve making a thesis for your story, collecting evidence that fits the thesis, and writing it out in such a way that you convey the story you want to tell to the readers. But some journalists do pretty dodgy shit to try to make the sources and evidence imply shit that was never said.
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@Ghostynn @OftOverthinking this sounds somewhat similar to what Amsterdam UMC has published (the ones who started the "Dutch protocol"):
https://www.amsterdamumc.org/nl/vandaag/een-reactie-van-amsterdam-umc-op-de-cass-review-over-transgenderzorg.htm
It's as if they picked out all the positive parts of the review, and ignored all the negative/wrong parts except for one thing: they don't agree that the use of puberty blockers needs more evidence. But they don't say anything about the Cass recommendation of only starting treatment at 25 for example.
Een reactie van Amsterdam UMC op de Cass review over transgenderzorg
Amsterdam UMC over de Cass Review: aanbevelingen voor zorg die sterk lijkt op zorgvuldige transgenderzorg aan jongeren in Nederland. Zorgen over haalbaarheid en ethische aspecten.www.amsterdamumc.org
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She's a transphobe. She knew exactly what she was doing.
I don't want to be uncharitable but she signalled at the beginning that she was a terf, she confirmed it with the interim report and now she's nailed her colours to the mast.
Hopefully she's wrecked her career as a consequence and that's why the damage limitation exercise.
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Transphobes are basically the same as anti-vaxxers and those weirdoes opposed to antidepressants.
Their motives don't really matter. Maybe they're just puritanical religious freaks. Maybe they're right-wing political hacks.
All that matters is they're wrong. Trans healthcare has been part of the scientific and medical mainstream for decades. But as long as they can publish fake studies and get op-eds in the New York Times, we will have to suffer the reactionary backlash.
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E.g. Someone, who didn't think he should get the COVID vaccine, explained to me: it's because he didn't think there was enough safety data (at the time). "Other anti-vaxxers told me: yes, you too are anti-vax! And I said, You don't understand! I'm NOT on your side! I want MORE science, not less!"
So it would be a mistake to lump these together.
I think it's worthwhile finding out: WHY do they disagree? Not necessarily just an oversimplistic "They must be #antiscience!"
UK new builds: the builders will tell you that the toilet flushes are “European style” to save water.
This is a lie. I live in two new build flats. One in Portugal and one in England. The toilets they put in in UK new builds are just shit at flushing. The ones in Portugal flush properly.
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So, Ukraine, right.
They gave their nuclear weapons to Russia. Bit of an error perhaps.
But they have nuclear power stations, so presumably have access to plutonium.
You see what I’m saying, right? They’ve got to be trying. If it were me, I would …
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Also it's hard & expensive & they have more immediate things to do with their resources.
Famous American murderer from the telly, O J Simpson, has been in the news recently for dying. Here are some lesser known facts about him:
O J was known by his fans as "The Juice". This is because his full name was Orangejuice Jorangejuice Simpson.
King Edward VIII of England was forced to resign because he wanted to marry him.
In addition to being good at rugby and murder, O J was also the first man on mars.
He was acquitted after his lawyer, who was one of the Cardasians from Star Trek, convinced the jury that there were five lights.
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He wasn't even called Simpson, I saw a documentary once and he was an accident-prone cop called Nordberg in real life
And he wasn't in the Simpsons
Answer me that
In case it matters to anybody who might be looking at safe havens as the British political system slides towards fascism with a side order of transphobia, Germany has just relaxed its gender determination laws *significantly*
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68801392.amp
Germany eases gender change rules
Adults can now declare a change to male, female or diverse without undergoing a psychiatric assessment.BBC News
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Covid booster means I’ve been vaccinated against seven things in less than a week (measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, polio, diphtheria, Covid).
Done now. Feeling a bit sorry for myself b
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Readers of a certain age may remember a fun but flawed vertically scrolling progressive shoot ‘em up game from the mid 80s called Slap Fight. I played it loads on the C64.
I today found out it was called something entirely different in the US, and I feel like part of my childhood was a lie.
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Like, trans girls who are allowed to be girls growing up are really pretty normal? They like clothes and makeup, they have crushes, they play volleyball, they make friends. Nobody even notices them most of the time.
That's what people are so scared of?
Meanwhile, it can do irreparable damage to force someone to act contrary to their own nature by threat of violence.
But that's fine?
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I'm using trans girls as an example because that's what I'm most familiar with, obviously, but the same rules apply to trans boys and non-binary kids. Adults project all their weird hangups and fetishes and obsessions onto trans kids who just wanna do normal kid things.
It's the adults who are the problem.
I remember being in the closet. Everybody thought I was sad, catatonic, and damaged in some way they couldn't explain.
And kinda girly, honestly.
But when I came out? Everybody suddenly thought I was funny, sweet, lovely, and able to talk them to death about electrons.
And the only difference is there wasn't a gun to my head making me hide my normal personality and behavior.
That's what people want to deny us.
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It also reveals a lot about their assumptions about kids in general.
That children couldn't step outside norms without being misled by some evil adult.
That children couldn't defy their parents' wishes, because they assume every parent is rigidly cruel in enforcing their will on children.
It's not just the viewpoints I don't like. The people pushing them are nasty.
the problem with trans people having a say in our own destiny is people in power starting from the assumption there is something gross, wrong, broken and criminal about us. We can say we have a right to decide our own destinies and to them it sounds like criminals professing their own innocence demanding not to be imprisoned or fined.
Trans rights therefore, seem to me to rely on deconstructing the very concepts of deviance, brokenness, crime and punishment at its foundations
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The audacity of transphobes outing themselves on Mastodon today, do they know who writes the code for these places?
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Some day, I will get around to writing at least a three-part blog essay on the nature of power in online spaces.
It won't be this day, but your comment makes me wish I had time to make it this day. 😁
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Worth emphasising that the Heritage Foundation Tories and their useful idiots, are primarily going after trans rights to remove bodily autonomy arguments so they can then go after abortion.
Cis folk, wake the hell up. The USA has shown us exactly what their game is.
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Now the UK has used “no medical care for trans people before 25 because brains not developed”, they’re gonna push for 40, “because fertility”.
I would actually put money on them doing that.
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That's pop psychology at its worst.
Yes, there is still some development in "the brain" up to the age of 25, but it's mostly to do with the areas of the brain that deal with impulse decision making. The areas of the brain that deal with considered decision making are more or less fully developed at 15.
And despite how things look in transphobic fantasy-land, nobody is transitioning on a whim.
Just had vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria and polio.
On Friday it’s Covid.
My immune system is gonna have fun.
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People seem to think that hormones fundamentally don’t really feel like anything, that they just change your body and nothing else. Nothing is further from the truth.
Getting on HRT when you’re trans feels like you’ve been wearing shoes two sizes too small for your entire life and you’ve just got a pair that fits. Getting on HRT when you’re not has the opposite effect: instead you’re taking a drug that will cause crushing depression. It’s even on the side effects list!
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I kind of forgot while saying this that in their mythology we’re embarked upon a sinister project to propel cis kids through transition.
Obviously fucking not, dickheads. We recoil at the idea of someone being pushed to transition as hard as we recoil at the idea of them being pushed not to. It’s always self-led. How dare you accuse us of the same monstrosity that you are so determinedly perpetrating yourselves.
Wouldn't it be easier to just refer to HRT as 'meds'? Like if you take epilepsy meds, you will have a bad time.
It seems easier to explain 'trans men do not produce the right hormones for men, so they need these meds'.
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Dear UK residents. I’m sorry to be tedious, but I’m going to do the trans Cassandra thing again.
The government is now moving towards regarding trans people as effective children until the age of 25.
This will be established as precedent and then used to screw over any and all young adults who can’t escape from abusive parents, especially young women.
If you want to do anything about this, you need to fight for trans people. Yes, you. Now.
We all know that isn’t going to happen to any significant extent though.
As you were.
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@crocket2001
I think it's easy to underestimate how far most people have moved on this already. (Not that *most* makes it safe). There seem to be two groups pushing this:
1. boring folk who moan about the metric system, car parks, youth of today, ULEZ, "they're all as bad as each other", immigrants, etc.
2. Westminster-y policy type people, both left and right, professional dinner-party attenders, columnists, writers, wonks, essayists, student union types.
The (dangerous) difference now is that these groups -- our society's loudest, most boring, dull, dim, and reactionary, who only differ in social class -- are united on one subject.
The public don''t need to "come round".
People think Guardianista idealists lay out liberation's groundwork -- surveyors going ahead. But they're just apologists hanging on the coat-tails of emperors, minting excuses for comfortable lives at court. The powerful, their "clients", are moving right, so they're representing them, coining theories and writing reports.
Sweet pepper is the most disappointing vegetable (yes, I know it’s a fruit).
It’s like someone was, “what if chilli, but shit?”
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After watching Oppenheimer the other week, I just rewatched Dr Strangelove.
For the love of god, will one of the nuclear powers announce it’s destroying its hydrogen bombs? These things are psychotically evil. Just get rid of them. Now, before the kill us all.
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Charlie Stross
Unknown parent • • •@mindpersephone @fallen_angela Actually, maybe we could send them to establish a test colony on Venus?
NB: not in gas bags floating in the Venusian stratosphere, I mean *on* Venus, at surface level. Tell them it's a new tropical resort owned by a Russian oligarch or something.
Angie B
Unknown parent • • •Persephone
in reply to Angie B • • •Genevieve.Cogman
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Rachel Rawlings
Unknown parent • • •Oh, if Elon and his buddies want to rapture themselves off to Mars on a SpaceX rocket I'd rather they do it sooner than later, so we might still have a chance to recover Earth.
But I also had an idea based on the immigrant barges on the Thames: Take the Icon of the Sea, go over it from stem to stern to make sure there's no black mold, remove the engines and communications equipment, and put the Tories there, in some unknown part of the North Atlantic.
Arthur Copeland
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •THIS is what the Falklands are for!
Fazal Majid
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •a Golgafrincham Ark would be appropriate.
That said, they are elected by a significant proportion of the English electorate, for whom cruelty is the point, and who are leaving the Tories for Reform because the former are not rabid enough, so you should treat the Tories and the Neo-Thatcherites f.k.a. Labour as a symptom, not a root cause.
Nefarious Celt
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •won’t anybody think of the children… of Rwanda.
It is against their human rights to have to live with the deported MPs.
datarama
Unknown parent • • •Marc Etienne
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •