Never trust a man who takes noisy ‘purity’ interest in other peoples’ genitals…
I mean look, I usually try not to judge folks for doing what they have to do to put bread on the table, but if someone told me they were a middle school penis inspector, I would probably politely recuse myself and never speak to them again. https://t.co/KOCfm8Tgif
— Starfish Who Just Wants To Grill (@IRHotTakes) February 13, 2021
You gotta keep your eye on the ball, and now your hand too.
— Robert Mitchell (@hyperionxix) February 12, 2021
"In hindsight, we probably shouldn't have put such an emphasis on experience when evaluating resumes." https://t.co/FzD2e6ZlyB
— Starfish Who Just Wants To Grill (@IRHotTakes) February 13, 2021
But seriously, *never*:
I'm not saying every QAnoner is a pedophile, but it takes a certain predisposition to think that what rich people want more than anything is sex with kids. https://t.co/4H1a7PIPUl
— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) February 14, 2021
LongHairedWeirdo
I do have to admit, the idea of making everything pedophilia (Pizzagate, Q) *does* sound like projection.
Mary G
I’ve said for years now that somewhere there is a pizza place with a basement where Republicans rape children, because everything they accuse Democrats of doing, they are instead doing themselves. There’s been four of them arrested for kiddie porn this month alone, I think.
RandomMonster
@LongHairedWeirdo: Word.
RandomMonster
@Mary G: A pizza place run by Jeffrey Epstein and frequented by Donald Trump.
Achrachno
@Mary G: Only four? That’s not enough to make a dent in the problem.
Misterpuff
@RandomMonster: That Epstein place has terrible pizza but a wonderful ball pit.
I hear the Donald frequented the Little Princess room.
Kent
Good God. Are they going to inspect EVERY HS athlete’s genitalia? Or just the ones that some parents complain about? This is beyond insane.
Amir Khalid
Inspection of women athletes’ bodies to ensure they weren’t men trying to cheat was once a thing in sports. It was sexist and humiliating, and that’s why it was ended. Not that the attitudes behind the practice have ended — look at Castor Semenya’s treatment.
Martin
@LongHairedWeirdo: It’s non necessarily projection, but it’s close.
In order for it to work, you need to define your opponent as more venal and corrupt as you, and apparently that requires going all the way to drinking children’s blood and wearing their face as a mask. Assume that everything short of that they’re basically okay with.
Mary G
Martin
@Kent: It would be discriminatory to not inspect every pee-pee and woo-woo.
NotMax
They gonna periodically inspect the coaches too?
Origuy
@Mary G: There are comments on that thread to the effect that this price is probably a placeholder used by the automated system. This would happen if there were no rooms available and the system is overloaded, according to the comments.
cain
well considering there has been a slew of charges against former Trump aides charged with child pornography and sex trafficking. Of course, when you add the fact that U.S. Bishops have been talking abuot denying Joe Biden communion because of his abortion and LBGTQ+ position – it’s no wonder that these assholes are in cahoots with other child molesters and the like. They are all peas in a pod.
I hate all these damn wingnuts. They are immoral, fasicists and racists assholes and they need to be stripped of whatever power they have and sent home.
ETA: OH SHIT, #14??!!!! I’ve never had #14 before.. oh lawdy lawdy – thank you jeezus!
cain
@NotMax:
It’ll be end in a coaches rain dance in the shower. ?
HumboldtBlue
Burnspbesq
@Mary G:
‘By tomorrow at noon, you won’t be able to buy a Mophie or anything similar anywhere between Waco and San Antonio.
We lost power for two hours late Monday morning, and currently it’s been out for about 90 minutes.
Delk
Hastert Drool
Burnspbesq
@Amir Khalid:
And before that, Jarmila Kondratchvilova.
NotMax
@Burnspbesq
Gesundheit.
:)
Jay
TERF’s are Nazis.
Mary G
@Burnspbesq: I have something like that that uses solar in my earthquake bugout bag, but probably wouldn’t be much use in a snowstorm.
Jay
@Mary G:
clear the panel/panels occasionally, and it will charge.
if the snow layer is not too thick, panels will make power,
low light, my array made 0.24 kw/hr once under a full moon.
Sister Golden Bear
Unfortunately Georgia is only one of more than a states considering such bills as part of concerted effort to eradicate — I don’t use that word lightly — trans people from public life. They’re being pushed by an unholy alliance of the usual bible humpers and the TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists), although there’s not really feminist about them, they’re actually Feminism-Appropriating Reactionary Transphobes. Here’s a quick summary of the issue from the ACLU.
Naturally all of this is done in the name of protecting girls/women — never mind that genital inspection thing. Never mind that 16 states already trans-inclusive sports without incident, nor that Olympics and the NCAA have trans-inclusive policies (NCAA’s dates back to 2011).
And by trans athletes, they really mean trans girl athletes — just as it’s almost always trans women who are targeted (although some of these bills also exclude non-binary folks). Trans boys/men almost are never mentioned.
Of course trans girls/women are girls/women. Want proof? Men don’t listen our voices any more than they listen to cisgender women. Our bodies are policed as much (if not more) as cisgender women.
Sebastian
@Mary G:
In other words their houses’ isolation was absolute shit and their ACs were cooling the neighborhood. But once the cold came IN it became a problem.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I suppose after all Conservative perving on adult women it should come as no surprise Conservatives do it to teens too, but it does. Yeeech.
Jay
For those who still have power,
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/2021/02/16/electricity-retailer-griddys-unusual-plea-to-texas-customers-leave-now-before-you-get-a-big-bill/%3foutputType=amp
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Martin: Not just Fascism Martin, religious cults have a similar dynamic.
Sister Golden Bear
@Sebastian: In fairness, this is extremely abnormal weather that the houses weren’t designed for — just most houses in California wouldn’t be able to handle 8 degree weather.
(San Francisco has the opposite problem, almost all older buildings lack AC because it’s usually not needed, which is why the abnormal 90-100 degree heat wave we had this summer hit the city especially hard.)
Sebastian
@Jay:
The Invisible Hand of The Freeeeeee Market!
Sebastian
@Sister Golden Bear:
True. I live in an old house in Los Angeles and the cold isolation is terrible. Which makes me wonder how to keep it cool in the summer.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kent: In practice it’s the trans and non-binary athletes who get targeted for this sort of gender policing. But there’s nothing in these bills to prevent cisgender athletes from being targeted as well, all it would take is a whisper campaign that someone is secretly trans.
On a related note, all these cookie-cutter bills are also seeking to enshrine the idea into law that gender is based on the sex you were assigned at birth and can never be changed. Which is step towards banning trans/non-binary people from ever changing their legal IDs, which in turn outs them and makes them targets for legalized discrimination.
Sister Golden Bear
@Sebastian: Beefing up the attic insulation will help, as will adding vents (soffit and top) to the attic. The latter made a big difference in my house.
Unfortunately, adding insulation to the walls is difficult to do without removing the drywall. Although if you have to open up the drywall for other reasons, it’s a good time to add insulation.
Jay
@Sebastian:
insulation, proper attic vents, warm in winter, cool in summer.
on the cheap, Texas A/C.
in Kamloops we go from -40C in the winter, to +40C in summer.
Burnspbesq
Power just came back on after about a 2:45 outage.
Mary G
@Jay: The climate will have to change a lot more before I am snowed on:
Mary G
@Sister Golden Bear: Termites ate my mom’s house where I live now, and I insisted on insulation, and the contractor was rolling his eyes as hard as he could, but it stays cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter here now.
Jay
@Sister Golden Bear:
up here, you can blow in cellulose or pink into exterior walls from the outside. There is a risk of cracking of lathe and plaster.
good windows, doors, weatherstripping and stopping air leakage also helps a lot.
Jay
@Sister Golden Bear:
sadly, most of this is just performative bs, a way to beat up on trans kids, until the “law” gets challenged in courts. Even State Courts are shutting this BS down.
Chetan Murthy
@Sister Golden Bear:
Over at LG&M, they had a thread where they quote bits of the Georgia bill, and yeah, this is *precisely* accurate. It’s a conflation of sex and gender. Even if sex were a strict binary (which It. Is. Not.) this would be a sick, sick law.
Buncha pervs, these old men wantin’ ta rummage around in little girls’ privates
ETA: and SGB is 100% precise to say “sex you were *assigned*”. Jesus, the articles I’ve read about intersex infants having the wrong private parts cut off by some enterprising surgeon ….. *shudder*.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
boys too, the pedo lawmakers really don’t care about gender.
Kent
@Jay: I owned 3 different houses in Texas. They are built perfectly fine for this sort of cold snap with modern HVAC systems, insulation and such. The bigger expense is always AC in the summer rather than heating in the winter. And for that reason they are usually well insulated. Central TX usually gets several cold snaps every year with temps in the 20s or so.
The problem right now is not that modern TX suburban homes can’t heat themselves. It’s that the power is out and most of them rely on electricity for heat. Even if you have a gas furnace as we had, the blowers are electric and without electricity there is no way to get the heat from the furnace in your garage or attic to the rest of the house. In fact, modern gas furnaces have electric controls and I’m not sure you can even hack them to work without power. You might be able to do that with a gas fireplace, but not a gas furnace.
Mary G
A Texas guy who does AGENDA FREE TV has been posting videos people send him – a house in Austin where the water pipes burst, a house with no running water, a gas station with no gas, a truck stop full of trucks because there’s no gas. And stuff like this:
Sister Golden Bear
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah, I’ve heard from real horror stories from intersex folks.
The sad case of David Reimer (not intersex but “reconstructed” and raised as a girl after a botched circumcision in infancy) was one the major proofs that sex and gender are different things.
Mary G
Jay
@Kent:
even some of the gas fireplaces, won’t fire with out power.
that’s where a generator comes in handy.
the house in Kamloops is net zero, passive solar.
Body heat keeps the house warm-ish.
Jay
@Mary G:
when I was a kid in the Maritimes, we would lose power and heat, a couple of times a winter.
Dad would shut off the water and drain the pipes.
Us kids would build a blanket fort in the living room, Dad would dig out the campgear.
Kent
@Jay: Yeah. I expect it is probably possible to hack a gas fireplace by forcing the valve open manually and lighting it up with a match. I think they just have a simple solenoid controlled gas valve in those fireplaces. But one would want to know what they are doing. But a gas powered HVAC furanace? No way. I’m not sure how many amps those big blower units draw. You might need a pretty big generator to keep the heat on in a home, even with a gas furnace.
Mary G
This woman is a CBS reporter:
The city of Austin is refusing to disclose to her where all the warming places are because they don’t want them to fill up unevenly? She’s taking heat in the comments from people who haven’t had luck calling the government. Two people have been found dead by a roadway today. What a mess.
LesGS
@Sister Golden Bear: John Money really messed David and his brother up.
mrmoshpotato
@LongHairedWeirdo:
@Mary G: The Rethuglicans do project like a porno* theater over and over and over again.
*Couldn’t pass up being specific.
Geoduck
@Mary G: One nice thing about living in hilly western Washington state is that the water supplies are all gravity-fed. Eventually yeah, you need to pump more water into the tanks on top of all the hills, but I’ve gone through two or three day power outages and the water keeps flowing.
Anne Laurie
Some 15-20 years ago, we had a local company cut drinking-glass-sized ‘ports’ in our drywall to blow some kind of shredded-paper cellulose insulation into the interior wall spaces. (It really helped!)
Not sure that process still environmentally approved, but as a solution to those of us with older homes (ours is ‘only’ mid-1950s, a cookie-cutter split level slapped up on the cheap) it might be worth researching…
Martin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yeah, but this is fascism.
Martin
@Mary G: I have to imagine a lot of people are going to die. 4 million without power is unreal.
Repatriated
@Jay: Echoes of Enron. If blackouts and insane power bills were enough to get Davis recalled, shouldn’t Abbot get booted out?
(No, I have no idea if TX has recalls.)
opiejeanne
@Repatriated: Enron. We lived in Castro Valley* during those rolling blackouts, and the first one shut down the power to the local hospital for two hours and all surgery came to a halt. They also shut down several fire stations in the SF area.
The idiots managing it promised to exclude fire stations and hospitals from the blackouts, and for some reason we never lost power at our house even though we weren’t near any of those things. We just slipped through the cracks, somehow.
*Castro Valley is in the east Bay Area of San Francisco, between Hayward and Oakland. Rachel Maddow graduation from CV HS, I think she was valedictorian.
prostratedragon
An article from the Texas Tribune, 2011 (h/t rawstory):
JWR
May have been mentioned earlier, but look who’s back, with another hosting company:
So I guess “private judgment” is the new free speech.
Soprano2
I think part of why these people push these bills is because they’re terrified their daughters might see a penis. And they’re terrified of trans women.
It’s -11° here in SWMO this morning. I’ve got to go outside to go downstairs and stoke the fire in the furnace before I go to work. Last night I saw a van towing a kid on a sled at 10:30 P.M.! It was -7° at that time. Sheesh….
Kathleen
@opiejeanne Beshear made sure back up generators were available where vaccines were stored because of pending ice storms in KY. I see Abbot made no provisions. But no difference between the parties //s
satby
Here in S. Bend I woke up to just under 9 inches of new snow on top of what was already on the ground (±6 inches). Drifts are going to make some areas impassable until plows can get through, so I’m stuck at home until later today even with a 4wd vehicle. This will disrupt vaccinations in this area, as it will across the country. Bad, bad news just as significant progress was being made.
Kathleen
@satby: Stay safe! We ended up getting more sleet than snow.
Uncle Cosmo
@Mary G: I recall how, quick to jump on an opportunity for profit!!, hotels hear Heathrow doubled their room prices to accommodate all the Yanks who were stranded after 9/11.**
I also recall, as someone stuck halfway home in Iceland at the same time, how the folks at the Keflavik airport called us all together to inform us that the largest hotels in the Reykjavik area had agreed to cut their prices in half for us until US airspace was officially reopened and they could fly us home.***
Moral: Sometimes it takes a disaster to discover who in the world are decent people – and who aren’t.
** To his credit, Tony Blair jumped on that immediately & shut it right down.
*** They’d sent planes out the day before on the rumor that it would be reopened, & those planes had had to land in Canada – at least one at an airstrip near a town so small the local HS gymnasium had to be opened as a temporary shelter for the passengers. See moral above.
O/t: The biggest PITA about having to post or edit in Text mode (FarFawks!) is how Text mode fucks up the text, requiring yet more edits to straighten it back out. On number 4 right now. Ptui!
Geminid
The attacks on the rights of trans atheletes and of trans people in general are poltical scapegoating. When the Supreme Court vindicated the right of gay people to marry in 2015, the political preachers and their lay allies were outraged. But when they looked around, they realized that there was little prospect of broad political support for overturning Obergefell and the Windsor case that preceeded it. There are just too many gay Americans, and they have even more allies.
So the smaller population of trans Americans has become the target. The bigots will never be satisfied, though, until Obergefell is overturned. This is why they use “Originalism” and “First Amendment freedoms” as codewords for their reactionary agenda, and in the meantime try to whip up hatred and fear of trans people.
trnc
And who will inspect the inspectors? Hm? Hmmmmmm?
Uncle Cosmo
In fact their houses were warming the neighborhood. As do all A/C units – which actually generate heat in the process of moving heat from where it isn’t wanted (indoors) into the ambient environment (the neighborhood).
Google up “ground-source heat pumping” for a heating/cooling process that achieves energy savings by replacing the outside air as “ambient environment” with the ground below ~2 m, which remains at a more-or-less constant moderate temperature year round.
Geminid
@Geminid: A sidenote to the Windsor case mentioned above: The result vindicated the right of Edith Windsor to claim the Federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses. Winsdor married her life partner in Canada in 2007, but had been denied the tax exemption under the Defense of Marriage Act.
Windsor’s attorney was Robbie Kaplan, who now represents the plaintiffs in Sines v. Kessler, a case that arose out of the disastrous Charlottesville rally of August 11, 2017. In Sines people injured in the deadly car attack are suing the organizers of the larger event. The case has not yet gone to trial, but has already put organizations like the League of the South and Richard Spencer’s Identity Evropa under financial duress. Sines v. Kessler may provide a template for civil action against those organizing the January 6 insurrection.
Barry
@Sister Golden Bear:
“Unfortunately, adding insulation to the walls is difficult to do without removing the drywall. Although if you have to open up the drywall for other reasons, it’s a good time to add insulation.”
They can spray it in. My sister in law’s condo had breezes in the winter, not just drafts. Spray in insolation helped quite a bit.
Woodrow/asim
Damn straight — a stunt they learned with the Abortion rights war; they aren’t just about eliminating Abortion, but Contraception, as well.
And I’d not bet on state courts throwing these out — and even if they did, the terrorism these laws, and the surrounding rhetoric, is still a brutal issue on the hearts and minds of Trans folx, and those who love and care about ’em
boatboy_srq
@Mary G: True story: I attended a certain conservatist university undergrad, and I started classes before my 17th. My freshman year, one of my professors abruptly assigned me counseling, with no indication why. I sat with the counselor for about an hour, talked about FSM knows what, and that was that. I think the counselor and I both left that counseling session mystified. In hindsight, it occurs to me that the prof hit on me, and me (the underage, trained to respect educators as authority figures) didn’t catch on – and despite the fact that she attempted a relationship no doubt sexual with a minor in her charge, since I did not react as expected the fault had to be mine. But she stayed the entire year and left with no blemish on her record.
I have no conception of the depth of depravity in modern conservatistism; I’ve seen enough from decades past not to want to delve into that cesspool.
HinTN
@Kent: Blower is 1/3 or, more likely, 1/2 HP so between 2.2 and 3.4 Amps.
HinTN
@Uncle Cosmo: I have one of those and it’s keeping me quite toasty right now.
Sister Golden Bear
@Anne Laurie: @Barry: Good to know. Thanks!
Sister Golden Bear
@Geminid:
Absolutely.
@Woodrow/asim:
It is. Although it’s the latest in a long line of attempts to eradicate us from public life, so I’m someone inured to it. But I fear for today’s trans kids, who already have an attempted suicide rate that’s 4x that of cisgender teens (78% of transgender youth have been bullied, and/or physically attacked, and/or sexually assaulted.)
dnfree
@Jay: if the interior is old lath and plaster, blown-in insulation may retain moisture from outside and cause the plaster to get wet and peel right off the lath.