Notices by Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖ (christineburns@mastodon.green), page 5

Am I alone in thinking that Trump has single-handedly ruined every TV drama, every film and every novel about the US government’s prowess that we’ve consumed over the last eighty years. Secrets aren’t guarded in vaults but lie stacked with dirty washing in messy closets. The west wing isn’t a well oiled machine under a Bartlett but a chaos machine under Trump. There are no ‘00’ agents, or Ethan Hunts to blow away the bad guys with extreme prejudice but failing pillars of state.

Pleased to see that @goatsarah and Zoë are close to land now at the port of Cherbourg after sailing their boat 14 hours across the busy channel from Gosport. They are not far off their original ETA. https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:3886856/zoom:9

@goatsarah They appear to be tying up in the marina! (1 knot speed, 180 degree reversed heading)

@goatsarah @fishidwardrobe They’d do better turning the residual assets into a theme park.

Peter Osborne: The Conservative Party is FINISHED for good.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=TADeOmCVo_s&si=Xa_R9n-sd9NV4cDt

@goatsarah Well, they’re not very good political debaters. It’s a source of constant amazement that most pols haven’t yet formulated the way to deal with the infantile gotchas of the GC-Press-ERG nexus in the way I’m sure the last generation of actual statesmen could. It doesn’t help that they’re so afraid of the mere idea of trans that they have never done the basic homework to blow off the nonsense lies. Instead they look like they’re caught in the headlights.

@katiefenn @goatsarah Judged by how it has spread within the chattering classes of North London (which explains the press/SPADs/ middle class bubble concentration) I think it is spread through inadequately sanitised private dinner parties. It’s something you have to affect belief in to be assured of continued invites. It’s a classic example of a groupthink contagion and the danger lies in the power of the people who get the mind virus.

Green Party’s Carla Denver: “ Trans rights don’t threaten my rights as a woman”

https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/06/20/green-party-carla-denyer-trans-general-election-2024-lgbtq/

Jo Maugham presents the receipts for his assertions about a trans youth suicide explosion and NHS management attempts to cover it up. The gender criticals kidded themselves they were on the right side of history and shutting down a conspiracy in trans care. As anyone could have predicted, their ideology, snatching the prospect of timely care from young trans people, appears to have produced an actual tragedy.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1803729360731406489.html

Erin Reed: In a major move, UN Women, the United Nations Entity tasked with women's equality and protection from violence, has called the gender critical movement an extremist "anti-rights" movement.

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/un-women-calls-gender-criticals-an

@ryanc Is this a Gendersql Injection attack?

@ryanc Or an Old Buffer overflow?

OSF Preprints | CRITICALLY APPRAISING THE CASS REPORT: METHODOLOGICAL FLAWS AND UNSUPPORTED CLAIMS

https://osf.io/preprints/osf/uhndk

A diesel Parcel Force van just rattled past me with some greenwashing nonsense emblazoned on the wing, claiming they were turning their “Red vans green” with some nonsense called “eco start delivery”. No guys, it’s a diesel van and the lie about it being in any way ‘green’ belongs in the late 1990s where it began.

Viral disinformation: How 51 million watched a viral video featuring a bogus doctors’ group pushed by Elon Musk, against trans care that is approved by the real professional association they pass themselves off as. And, yes, of course the Cass review is now part of the weapons arsenal.

The rank dishonesty of the movement targeting trans folk should be all you need to understand.

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/bogus-doctors-group-pushed-by-elon

I’m a technology geek. I’m sure everyone knows that. First degree in Computer Science 50 years ago. Masters the year after. That was my profession for nearly 30 years, during which time I evangelised lots of new and exciting stuff. But I watched Apple’s WWDC announcements for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, MacOS etc… and my heart sank. Apple are now bloating the tech with stuff we weren’t asking for, at the cost of making it harder to understand. These are the first updates I’ll resist installing.

Honestly, which of us hasn’t already got workflows to use the individual tools to achieve things we want? We trust the results because we watch the steps. But to use a sexed up Siri to piece together context by going into all our apps introduces a realm of uncertainty for actions that I, for one, would want to cross check. And if I have to cross check then I might as well have done what I want in the time honoured way. I want my devices to help me, yes, but not take over and get things wrong.

Just had my first Shingles vaccination. There’s a ‘part 2’ to come in six months too. I had chicken pox back when I was about six years old and the virus stays dormant in the system for life, waiting for your immune system to become weaker with age, so I’m not messing with that risk. A nice introduction to a chatty practitioner associate too.

Halfway across the Irish Sea yesterday I ventured out on the stern of the Dublin Swift. The Swift, as the name suggests, is built for speed — taking 2.5 hours to do a crossing that larger conventional ferries take 3.5 hours to do. The craft uses water jet propulsion rather than conventional propellers to get up to 33 knots and I wasn’t expecting to see these great plumes of water billowing up behind us.

New restrictions on puberty blockers - GOV.UK

How can a drug be withheld from one specific group of patients for reasons of ‘patient safety’ whilst continuing to provide it to those already receiving it and anyone who needs it prescribed for anything other than being trans? And how is that even managed on the ground? How are pharmacists supposed to deal with scripts? Government has gone full mask-off.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-restrictions-on-puberty-blockers