the scenes to influence our politicians and companies. They have to work in the shadows because their agenda is so crazy the public would never buy it.
11./ The most immoral thing of all about @glaad , Stonewall and the other creepy gender identity lobby groups who infest our institutions is they are willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of thousands of kids just so they can live a lifestyle they never earned. Nor deserved.
unfold. And now we see the logical endgame, where Haynes and Smith combine to render the very notion of a women’s competition meaningless.
For Oliver and his ilk, the questions are simple. How much more of this injustice are you content to sit back and mock? How much longer will you delude yourselves that it is not happening when the ultimate rebuke to that claim is staring you in the face?
Trans activists pretend that no male advantage in pool exists. Try telling that to Lynne Pinches, who in 2023 forfeited her chance of a national championship by refusing to play Haynes, later turning down a professional contract on the grounds she was at a competitive disadvantage.
Pinches has spelt out the rationale: that men are taller, able to reach further, and with longer fingers necessary to bridge when the balls are clustered. Her arguments are substantiated by Dave Alciatore, a master instructor and author of The Illustrated Principles of Pool and Billiards, who writes: “Men generally have more strength and faster-twitch muscles that make it easier to execute many shots – especially power shots like the break and power draw – with greater accuracy, control and consistency.”
Even without these physical disparities, why are women not entitled to say no to men colonising their sport? There is a reason why the transgender lobby is often characterised as a men’s rights movement, and it is because women are cast, time and again, as unconsenting vehicles in the affirmation of male fantasy.
To anybody still demanding why we cannot all just be kind and inclusive, consider this: the adverse impact of this inclusion drive is endured, without exception, by women. You do not see women trying to make it in men’s cycling, or swimming, or fencing. You do not see women gatecrashing the final of the men’s pool. And that is because basic biology dictates the benefits in sport flow in only one direction, with mediocre males annexing victories and medals once they start masquerading as female.
To listen to Oliver’s justification of this absurdity was to wonder if he had paid any attention these past five years. His deployment of the “Phelps gambit” – the idea of a man’s sporting advantage over a woman being roughly akin to the one Michael Phelps, the 23-time Olympic champion swimmer, enjoyed over his rivals – was especially risible. As Dr Emma Hilton, the developmental biologist, has highlighted, Phelps’s edge over his nearest pursuer in the 2004 Olympic butterfly final was 0.08 per cent. But what about the gap between his time and that of Petria Thomas, winner of the equivalent women’s event that summer? A mammoth 12.62 per cent.
And here's a thread from the organisation that Oliver specifically targeted…
She Won recently made an appearance on Last Week Tonight. John Oliver stuck to his tired recipe: dishonest sanctimony wrapped in a thick coating of self-deprecation (all the easier to swallow), this time about male athletes in women’s sports and specifically about our org. 🧵1/n:
— shewon.org (@shewon_org) April 7, 2025
, As long-time advocates of academic freedom and freedom of speech in higher education, we support the clear and proportionate sanctions imposed by the Office for Students on the University of Sussex (“Universities review trans policies after big fine”, news, Apr 5) . The university’s serious failures to uphold the rights and liberties of its staff are deeply troubling, as are similar incidents elsewhere. Universities must not compel academics to adopt contested positions on matters of public or scholarly debate, nor prevent them from expressing lawful opinions in a personal capacity. Appeals to sensitivity cannot justify the restriction of legitimate academic discourse, and policies aimed at preventing bullying and unlawful harassment must be carefully framed to avoid doing so. We encourage universities with policies similar to Sussex’s to reconsider and withdraw them promptly. Censorship undermines the fundamental mission of higher education.
Amen to that.
nal authority ▲binoculars ▲long-distance recording devices ▲military items ▲printed materials that could negatively impact the country’s political, economic, military, cultural development or social order ▲products made in countries or regions banned from trade.
And it works! Banning imports encourages local production:
[R]eports indicate that carbonated beverages labeled “Coca-Cola” are being sold within North Korea, suggesting the country may be importing these products through alternative channels or selling products that appropriate the name.
Free Palestine or Pride, which is it going to be? pic.twitter.com/vgy67tMzw4
— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) April 6, 2025
Brutalism in Washington, from architectural photographer Ty Cole.
Largely built in the 1960s and 70s as the federal government expanded, Washington DC has numerous brutalist buildings built by leading architects including Marcel Breuer.
Cole photographed the most prominent ones as part of the Capital Brutalism exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington DC, which he co-curated with University of Oklahoma professor Angela Person.
"I'm a huge fan of both modernist buildings and the architects that built and designed them," said Cole. "Brutalism is essentially sculptural and it photographs beautifully."
Robert C Weaver Federal Building by Marcel Breuer (1968)
Hirshhorn Museum, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (1974)
Hubert H Humphrey Building by Marcel Breuer (1977)
James V Forrestal Building by Curtis and Davis Architects and Engineers (1969)
DC Metro Stations
[Photos: Ty Cole]
The brutalist contingent is only a small part of Washington's architecture, of course. The overwhelmingly dominant style, round the White House and the Capitol and the National Mall, is neo-classical. Very neo-classical. It was meant to echo the Republican virtues of Ancient Greece and Rome, but nowadays it's not hard to see the more bombastic side, with, well, echoes of a more fascist aesthetic.
pt”>Defense Minister Israel Katz reveals an intelligence document showing that Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif sent a letter to Iran’s IRGC Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani in June 2021 seeking support for the terror group’s plans to invade Israel, which was ultimately carried out on October 7, 2023.
“I am presenting a document here for the first time, which was found in the tunnels of senior Hamas officials in Gaza, which proves a direct relationship between Iran and Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif, as part of Iran’s support for the Hamas plan to destroy Israel,” Katz says during a visit to the Military Intelligence Directorate’s so-called intelligence collection and technical spoils unit — known by its Hebrew acronym Amshat.
“In the document, they ask of the commander of the [Islamic] Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force to transfer $500 million for destroying the State of Israel,” he says.
The document shows that Hamas demanded $20 million per month from Iran over two years, “to achieve these great goals, through which we will change the face of the world.”
“We are confident that by the end of these two years, or during them, God willing, we will uproot this monstrous entity, and we will end this dark period in the history of our nation,” the letter reads.
Saeed Izadi, the head of the Palestinian Division in the IRGC, “accepted the request and replied to them that Iran, despite its difficult economic situation and the plight of the Iranian population, will continue to funnel money to Hamas, because the struggle against Israel and the US is the top priority of the Iranian regime,” Katz says.
The defense minister adds that “the conclusion is clear: Iran is the head of the serpent, and despite all its denials, it is also funding and advancing terror in all areas, from Gaza, through Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria [West Bank] and now with the Houthis in Yemen, under the desire to destroy Israel.”
Yes, we knew that. Still…the destruction of another country as a government's top priority is something to think about. And we're still wondering what on earth Obama was thinking of when he decided that the US should cold-shoulder Israel, abandon Syria, and base their Middle-Eastern foreign policy on being nice to Tehran.
Trevor Phillips in the Times this morning on the parlous state of free speech in the UK, comes round to the universities:
And finally, the education secretary appears at last to have found better advice about the wildfire running through our universities and colleges on this issue and decided to allow the Office for Students to do its job of protecting freedom of expression on campuses. As a result, last month the University of Sussex was hit with a fine of £585,000, mainly for its sheer spinelessness. The academic bosses there had allowed student and faculty activists to bully the philosopher Kathleen Stock out of the university because of her refusal to bow to fashionable but entirely bonkers minority views on sex and gender. The fine has triggered a scramble across higher education to quell the rampage of gender ideology and critical race theory. It will take time to expunge the stain of cowardice that has taken hold of much of Britain’s intellectual life.
Yep.
