Range precipitated the wildfires, apparently
Girls, eh? They’re merely to not be trusted. Eve ate that apple; Pandora opened that horrible little field; and now girls are responsible for the devastating wildfires in California. I do know that appears like a ridiculous factor to say, but it surely’s what Elon Musk, one of many brightest minds of his era – and one of the vital highly effective individuals on Earth – is saying, so it have to be true.
In line with Mark Zuckerberg, one other of the world’s biggest thinkers, factchecking is now passé. Nonetheless, I’m going to be terribly old style and factcheck myself right here. Clearly, I’m being facetious once I say that Musk is blaming the wildfires on girls. Clearly, it’s extra difficult than that. To be extra exact, the tech billionaire can also be blaming the disaster – which has left not less than 11 individuals lifeless and destroyed greater than 10,000 constructions – on minorities, range initiatives and numerous different scapegoats. Every part however the local weather disaster, principally.
On Wednesday, for instance, Musk took a while out from obsessively tweeting about whether or not the US ought to “liberate” Britain to proclaim that the Los Angeles fireplace division (LAFD) “prioritized DEI over saving lives and houses”. He has continued to put up spurious claims about range initiatives (for instance, “DEI means individuals DIE”) for days now, together with posts insinuating that if LAFD’s fireplace chief weren’t a girl, then issues can be very totally different.
Musk is just not the one one making an attempt to hyperlink wildfires to “wokeness”: all of the regular suspects are at it. Donald Trump Jr has additionally been busy making uninspired jokes about DEI which means DIE. The rightwing actor James Woods and former Fox Information host Megyn Kelly have railed concerning the fireplace division selling range. Even CNN commentator Scott Jennings blamed the wildfires on DEI insurance policies.
After all, this isn’t the primary time that the Maga crowd have blamed DEI initiatives for a tragedy. Round this time final 12 months, they had been all busy claiming that Boeing planes had been falling aside due to DEI initiatives. Musk even amplified a staggeringly racist tweet suggesting college students at traditionally Black faculties and universities (HBCUs) have decrease IQs and due to this fact shouldn’t turn out to be pilots. “It would take an airplane crashing and killing tons of of individuals for them to vary this loopy coverage of DIE,” he mentioned on the time.
Rightwing agitators, who by no means let disaster go to waste, additionally used the assassination try of Donald Trump final July as a chance to criticize DEI efforts at the Secret Service. “There shouldn’t be any girls within the Secret Service. These are speculated to be the perfect, and none of the perfect at this job are girls,” the conservative political commentator Matt Walsh posted after the assassination try.
Ideally, we’d simply ignore these individuals and their bigoted – and completely baseless – assaults on DEI (that are simply thinly veiled assaults on girls and minorities). Alas, we don’t have that luxurious as a result of the rightwing campaign towards DEI is working alarmingly properly. Corporations at the moment are slashing their DEI budgets and slicing their DEI insurance policies in response. So we’re compelled to argue time and again that girls and minorities are simply as proficient as white males. We’re compelled to level out many times that, moderately than being the persecuted minority a few of them appear to assume they’re, research present that the concept white males as a gaggle have a more durable time getting employed now could be demonstrably false. Certainly, per one Wharton economist: “If something, feminine and minority candidates are being penalized relative to White male candidates.”
Nonetheless, whereas we are able to’t ignore the correct’s obsession with attacking DEI, we additionally want to make sure that we don’t get distracted. Trump and his numerous allies, in any case, are masters of distraction. They need us all divided and engaged in tradition wars to allow them to wage a stealth class warfare. And in the case of the wildfires, they need us centered on the assorted conspiracy theories and misinformation they’re peddling so we don’t concentrate on the moderately extra inconvenient concern of local weather change.
There are, to be clear, numerous nuanced points which have contributed to the wildfires spreading with the ferocity that they’ve. However the local weather disaster is clearly a significant factor. In line with one 2021 research, local weather change has been the principle driver of the enhance in fireplace climate within the western United States. Greed and hubris are different elements: speculators hold constructing homes in areas which can be susceptible to flooding and wildfires. There’s a much-cited essay from 1995 by city theorist Mike Davis known as The Case for Letting Malibu Burn that later grew to become a chapter in a guide known as Ecology of Worry. In it, Davis argues that spending hundreds of thousands saving properties in areas by no means meant for neighborhoods and energy strains isn’t just silly, however a waste of public assets.
“I’m notorious for suggesting that the broader public shouldn’t need to pay a cent to guard or rebuild mansions on websites that may inevitably burn each 20 or 25 years,” Davis informed the LA Occasions in 2018, when the Woolsey fireplace broke out in Malibu. “My opinion hasn’t modified.”
The fires in California are a horrible tragedy. They need to even be a wake-up name. We live in a world on fireplace and, except we take our altering atmosphere significantly, then we’ll proceed to observe the planet burn. Alas, it appears unlikely that the incoming administration – and its de facto advisers like Musk – will deal with the disaster in California with the seriousness it deserves. Slashing DEI departments is much simpler than fixing actual issues.
Jamie Lee Curtis faces backlash for evaluating Palisades fireplace to Gaza
“[T]he total Pacific Palisades appears like, sadly, Gaza, or one among these war-torn international locations the place terrible issues have occurred,” mentioned Curtis. Making such a flippant comparability to what many consultants have termed a genocide is horrific. Not less than 74 kids had been reportedly killed within the first week of 2025 in Gaza. It’s unclear simply how many individuals have died in Gaza now however a brand new report within the Lancet medical journal estimates there have been 64,260 deaths as a result of traumatic harm between October 2023 and the tip of June 2024. And that doesn’t even depend all of the individuals ravenous or freezing to demise. Curtis, by the way in which, has made her disdain for Palestinians clear earlier than: she beforehand posted a photograph of terrified kids being bombed, claiming they had been Israeli, then deleted it when she discovered they had been Palestinian.
Why feminine artists use screams to specific feminine rage
In the event you really feel like screaming into the void proper now, you’re not alone. In Artsy, Emily Steer considers the way in which wherein guttural screaming has appeared in lots of works by feminine artists because the mid–twentieth century, from these by Marina Abramović to Religion Ringgold and Tracey Emin.
Malawi’s spiritual leaders combat for authorized abortions
Unsafe abortion is a number one reason behind maternal mortality within the nation – which has one of many world’s strictest abortion legal guidelines – contributing to as much as 18% of maternal deaths. Now some Christian and Muslim clerics have joined forces to attempt to overturn colonial-era abortion legal guidelines.
Individuals are transferring out of US states which have restricted abortion
Seems lots of people don’t like dwelling in states that deal with girls like strolling wombs.
French police arrest founding father of web site utilized by Dominique Pelicot
The web site, coco.fr, was shut down by the French authorities in June 2024 after being linked to greater than 23,000 crimes together with rape, homicide and paedophilia.
World’s first blood check for endometriosis may very well be on its method
Endometriosis is a debilitating situation that impacts roughly 10% of reproductive-age girls and women globally. Regardless of how frequent it’s, nonetheless, it will possibly take “on common seven years for a girl to obtain a prognosis” and detecting the situation can contain invasive procedures. Now, a easy new blood check, developed by a workforce of Australian researchers, is within the works. If profitable, it could imply extra girls may very well be identified far earlier.
The week in pawtriarchy
It’s getting chilly in south Florida, which suggests its time for iguana-dropping alerts. As soon as the temperature drops under the mid-40s, iguanas – which could be as much as 6ft lengthy – go right into a cold-stunned state and may generally fall out of bushes. In the event you do come throughout a cold-stunned iguana, the recommendation is to disregard it. Like numerous us, they get very cranky once they first get up.
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