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“Girl protagonists outnumbered boys by a ratio of 2 to 1. Some categories, such as realistic fiction and mystery, were especially lopsided, she told me, with ratios of more than 3 to 1. "Girls are taking over!" she said, with a laugh.”
With a laugh…
Young boys are being discouraged from getting into reading—and it’s because more books are missing one key element, @sophiah_n reports: theatlantic.com/culture/2026…
PiqueABoo retweeted
This has been going on forever
My own son, now age 32, complained about the girls always beating the boys in cartoons back when he was in 4th grade! (It wasn't just cartoons, either. District teachers promoted the girls over the boys)
My neighbor's son asked her "How come misogyny means hates women and that's bad but feminism means hates men & that's good"
Good question, middle school boy
PiqueABoo retweeted
Back on votes for 16 yesterday - inevitably, schools and teachers are being dragged in to 'help' 16 year olds make informed decisions when the law changes and they can vote. But herein lies a danger of politicising education - party politics could turn citizenship lessons into propaganda, resulting in toxic rows. And I am not convinced it won't compromise teacher impartiality. Just imagine which parties will be smeared. The minister interrupted me half way saying that the law already says schools need to be impartial. I reminded her that the Department for Education was only recently forced to clamp down on sectarian, pro-Gaza teachers.
PiqueABoo retweeted
On Russell Brand, this is spot on: The midwits and lightweights of both left and right built an altar to this one-trick carnival act. ... They saw a guru who would lead Britain to revolution or America to Christ, where the rest of us just saw a twat and a predator.
spiked-online.com/2026/11/05…
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Leader of grooming gang to be released early to make room for Russell Brand.
Satire.
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90% believe women are scarce in STEM and paid less mainly because of sexism and conditioning. Data shows the opposite: large average sex differences in interests (men prefer things, women people; d=0.93) appear early, hold worldwide, and widen in the most egalitarian countries. Those preferences, not discrimination, drive most of the gaps.
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Women were more willing to deactivate a malfunctioning robot, thereby erasing its memories, even though the robot pleaded with them not to do so.
As robots become increasingly integrated into everyday life, evolved psychological mechanisms originally adapted for human social interaction may shape responses to artificial agents in ways that are no longer functionally appropriate.
Drawing on an evolutionary psychology framework, the present study examined how anthropomorphism, empathy, and systemizing influence decisions involving a humanoid home robot. Participants then read a scenario in which the manufacturer instructed them to reset the malfunctioning robot, thereby erasing its memories, while the robot pleaded not to be deactivated. The reset was requested because a manufacturing defect had been identified, although its potential consequences were unpredictable.
Stronger anthropomorphic tendencies predicted lower willingness to deactivate the robot, whereas higher systemizing predicted greater willingness. Empathy did not predict the decision itself but was associated with greater anticipated discomfort, together with anthropomorphism, while systemizing predicted lower discomfort. Participant gender also influenced willingness to deactivate the robot, with women showing greater willingness than men, although no gender differences emerged in anticipated discomfort.
[The paper explicitly notes this result was contrary to the authors’ expectations based on typical gender differences: women generally score higher on empathy and anthropomorphism (which predicted lower willingness to deactivate), while men tend to score higher on systemizing (which predicted higher willingness). In the introduction, the authors raise the possibility that gender differences in threat perception, risk assessment, and decision-making strategies could lead women to prioritize functional/instrumental considerations (e.g., the manufacturer’s warning about unpredictable risks to the household) over relational ones when faced with a pleading robot. However, the discussion simply reports the gender difference in willingness.]
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I have no idea whether any of this is right, but it's a riveting read
"I taught the Lear 60 to other pilots and mentored them. I told them... this airplane has a soul and it's trying to kill you. Do not ever try to top the weather."
Long post worth the read. I have a close friend who flies private jets. He flew Lear 60 for over 15 years and now flies a Gulfstream. This is a copy and paste of his response to me asking him if I thought Ice was the issue.
“We always fly in ridiculous cold temperatures.”
“Usually you get the bad ice when the temperatures are like 0 to negative 20. Believe it or not, there's a point where it gets too cold for ice. At negative 40, you pretty much can't get ice. Besides that, the airplane is equipped with hot wings and hot tail.”
“I flew the Lear 60 for like 15 years. It's a no joke airplane and probably the most dangerous airplane I've ever flown. It has a super critical wing. The airflow has to be perfect. When it gets into rough air and turbulence, it will easily stall. It has stalled on me at 41,000 feet just because we got into some turbulence. (On the way to Palm Beach as a matter of fact. ) we recovered and got her flying again around 30,000 ft. Scary
But here's the problem. This airplane has a terrible coffin corner. (At high altitudes) what that means is, you fly in a really narrow window where if you lose 20 knots, it stalls. And if you gain 20 knots, it goes into overspeed. The air goes supersonic over the wing and it goes into a high speed stall, or worse, a Mach tuck.
So if you stall, the normal recovery is to push the yoke forward to lower the nose and gain air speed again. At low altitude, you can push really hard and recover quickly. But in the 60... if you push hard, it will gain air speed and go into a high speed stall, it doesn't take much. It's very sensitive. The 60 has super short wings that don't make much lift. So then you high speed stall, and the computer is yelling at you... OVERSPEED! So then you pull back and enter a low speed stall. And you go back and forth trying to keep it in the air speed window.
This whole thing is pretty scary. And you should recover basically by using your finger tips using super small corrections. You can't over do it. If you try to muscle the recovery, she gets mad and will become unrecoverable. If she enters a mach tuck. You're done.”
“I taught the Lear 60 to other pilots and mentored them. I told them... this airplane has a soul and it's trying to kill you. Do not ever try to top the weather. Don't go over a thunderstorm. Go around it. If it means a half hour longer, then do it. Going over the thunderstorm will go into turbulence that you might not recover from.
These pilots went right over a thunderstorm. I think it stalled which caused them to drop down into the thunderstorm and ended up in mach tuck. They picked up so much speed that it ripped off the horizontal stabilizer. At that point... chuck Yeager can't fix it.
These same pilots did something similar a couple months ago. ATC got mad at them. They poked the bear one too many times.
This is not a beginner airplane. The Gulfstream would never do this. It has HUGE margins of error and won't stall like that. But then again... it's got HUGE wings. It's a pussy cat.
The Gulfstream is like driving a 4 wheeler. The Lear 60 is like riding a uni cycle.”
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I see John Lewis have released a helpful public information film explaining why Boomer grandparents refuse to babysit their grandkids.
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Our concern extends to those who are lied to: when strangulation is hidden behind ‘breath play’. You understand you may die, so that is your choice. Did these children?
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Just 18% of individuals who responded to the government's consultation were British citizens. Three quarters were migrants here on a temporary visa.
Our immigration policy is now being decided by those who are not even citizens of this country.
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Afghan migrants followed schoolgirl, 14, onto train before sexually assaulting and raping her in the toilets, court told trib.al/zXrrGaD
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Here's me thinking the government wanted 14 year olds to learn vocational skills...
A Hampshire couple have been fined £600 and ordered to pay a further £6,000 in costs for allowing their 14-year-old son to work on the family's mobile food trailer.
Dexter, their son, enjoys it and has a passion for it.
That’s typical of the laws in this country. Encourage the work shy and penalise the hard working.
As if the stress on this family weren’t enough the family said they were tackling the dispute with the council while supporting eldest son Oskar, 17, while he received treatment for blood cancer.
@darrenpaffey @laboursatvir @carolinenokes
Parents fined for employing teen son in food trailer bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8vg…
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It’s like looking at the results of an intelligence test.
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