THIS IS CNN: A guide to neopronouns, from ae to ze.

Some of the most common words in the English language have gender markers, including pronouns. But not all of them are binary. Consider the singular “they,” preferred by some nonbinary and trans people for whom gendered pronouns do not fit.

And then there are neopronouns (“new” pronouns), gender-neutral or nonbinary pronouns that are distinctfrom the common she, he and they. Neopronouns include terms like “xe” and “em,” and some of them even date back several centuries, when they were introduced by writers as a solution for referring to subjects without assuming gender. Now, they’re also commonly used by nonbinary and trans people.

All pronouns indicate identity and can be used to include or exclude people they describe — neopronouns included, said Dennis Baron, one of the foremost experts on neopronouns and their histories and an emeritus professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Neopronouns should be used and respected like any other pronoun, he told CNN.

“People like to have a say in how they’re identified,” Baron said. “Refusing to let people self-identify is a way of excluding them.”

Update Newspeak Dictionaries accordingly, comrade!

BOMB CANADA, THE CASE FOR WAR: This guy came up with a VERY detailed plan to conquer Canada and people are loving it in the replies 🤣.

CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT: No Right to In-Person Cross-Examination of Accuser During Campus Sexual Assault Proceedings.

(Via Small Dead Animals.)

MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE: Economic Expert: ‘Transitory’ Inflation Enters 31st Month, and It’s Not Going Away.

NTTAWWT: Barack Obama told ex, ‘I make love to men daily, but in the imagination,’ letter shows.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Garland Appoints Special Counsel To Cover Up Biden’s Crimes.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Is it a crime to call a police officer a lesbian?

Is it a crime to call a police officer a lesbian? Now there’s a question I never thought I’d have to pose. But following the release of shocking footage, showing a 16-year-old autistic girl being arrested by seven police officers over a ‘homophobic public-order offence’, it’s one that desperately needs to be answered.

Over the past 48 hours, a TikTok video has gone viral showing a distressed girl from Leeds being manhandled and taken away by police. In the clip, the child’s mother, who filmed and released the video, is heard arguing with the officers who have entered her home, pleading with them to leave her daughter alone, who she says is both autistic and suffers with scoliosis.

The mother claims that her daughter said to one of the officers, a blonde woman with short hair, that she ‘looked like her lesbian nana’. ‘You’re going to remove her for what, she said the word lesbian? Her nana is a lesbian, she’s married to a woman. She’s not homophobic’, the mother says in the clip.

The London Telegraph is reporting that “A 16-year-old girl arrested in Leeds after being accused of making a homophobic remark to a police officer will face no further action, West Yorkshire Police said.” But why was she arrested in the first place?

Flashbacks:

● West Midlands Police in England arrest 12-year-old for racist online messages sent to Black soccer player.

● “Police officers were forced to break up barbecues being held in different parts of Britain today as people flouted new draconian powers to disperse crowds of more than two to halt the spread of coronavirus. West Midlands Police officers had to step in to disperse a large group of people having a barbecue in the Foleshill area of Coventry, while another group were doing the same in West Hampstead, North West London.”

● UK Teen Fined, Under House Arrest for Asking Trans Police Officer’s Gender.

● British Cops, on the Lookout for Trolls, Ask Public to Report ‘Non-Crime Hate Incidents.’

In 2018, when British cops were threatening social media critics after the NHS banished 23-month-old Alfie Evans to the Spartan hillside, British ex-pat Charles Cooke tweeted, “Michael Brendan Dougherty pointed out to me that police in the U.K. spend all their time on Twitter threatening people with jail time for frivolous things, and now I can’t stop seeing it.”

As a wise woman once wrote, “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them.”

UPDATE: West Yorkshire Police issue non-apology apology:

(Updated and bumped.)

SELENA ZITO: The fall of a great American city: The societal and political decay that has upended Pittsburgh.

Larry Ceisler, a Washington County native who has offices in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, was staying at the Even Hotel and came upon the scene moments after the police arrived.

Ceisler said he had just left dinner down the street when he attempted to enter the hotel and found out quickly why he could not immediately do so. He penned a letter to the editor at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, writing that what he saw happening at the hotel was an extension of a city he saw in decay after spending the week doing business.

“In all my years of living in and visiting Pittsburgh, I have never seen the Downtown look so bad. Empty, dirty, and unsafe. Personally, I experienced an attempted homicide in the lobby of my hotel on Forbes Avenue and was accosted twice walking to my office in Gateway Center,” he wrote.

In an interview with me Thursday, it was clear the respected media pro and prominent Democrat was rattled by the city’s descent, particularly because it was upending its very heart — “A city is only as strong its core.”

A drive throughout the city in mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and in the evening found a city in decay. Homelessness isn’t hidden; it is prevalent. Patches of open-air drug markets are brazenly conducted, the smell of urine and feces is prevalent, and reports of small businesses calling it quits grow in frequency.

Two weeks ago the once acclaimed women’s clothing boutique Peter Lawrence, a hopeful anchor for what city officials hoped would be a women’s shopping district along Wood Street, announced it is closing five years after it opened, with the owner telling the Pittsburgh Post Gazette his workers were “scared to work there a little bit” because of the frequent homelessness and drug trafficking.

The businesses that are not fleeing, yet, are not requiring their workers to come into the city to do their jobs, which has led to a whopping historic high 22.5% vacancy rate, according to a report conducted by real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

At the center of this collapse is Mayor Ed Gainey, who after taking office in January of 2022 has done little to nothing to address the city’s collapse. He is surrounded by people who are so wedded to ideology and the social justice movement that they failed to realize that you actually have to govern to run a city.

* * * * * * * *

Campaign finance filings show the SEIU spent over $350,000 to elect Gainey, more than all of the other contributors to his campaign combined.

Gainey has steadfastly refused to meet with the largest employer in the city, UPMC, unless they agree to allow the SEIU to represent hospital workers, according to a detailed report done by KDKA investigative reporter Andy Sheehan. It is a curious decision to refuse to meet with the largest employer in the city and makes you wonder if he is the mayor of Pittsburgh or the mayor of SEIU.

To ask the question is to answer it. Incidentally, Pittsburgh’s last Republican mayor left office in 1934.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND, PART DEUX: Police failed to solve a single burglary in half of English and Welsh neighborhoods over the last three years, data reveal amid warnings of ‘no consequences’ for committing crime.

But the British police will strike down with furious vengeance upon any autistic teenager who calls a policewoman a lesbian.

THANKS, FIDEL! How Cuba lost its Cigar King of the World crown to the Dominican Republic.

Cuba is no longer seen as the source of the finest cigars thanks to the increasing dominance of its near neighbor, the Dominican Republic,

This year, Habanos SA – the Havana-based business that oversees all Cuban cigar sales – reported 2022 revenues of $545 million, a 2 per cent increase on the previous 12 months (a figure helped considerably by skyrocketing prices of Cuban cigars).

The Dominican Republic, however, broached the $1 billion mark almost three years ago and exports are still growing, making cigars its fifth-largest export after gold, electrical products, textiles and medical equipment (who knew?).

As the late P.J. O’Rourke wrote in 1992, “You can’t get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That’s all you need to know about communism.”

REMY: Try That in a Large Town (Jason Aldean Parody). New video from Reason TV:

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Penalty Kick Schadenfreude Edition.

CHANGE: FDA Sneakily Announces Doctors Are Allowed To Prescribe Ivermectin.

The FDA snuck a major announcement under the radar. Yes, doctors CAN prescribe Ivermectin to Covid patients.

Remember back in 2020 and 2021 when the media, Fauci, and the CDC were so insistent that Ivermectin didn’t work? That it shouldn’t be prescribed, and in fact livestock feed stores had to put it away behind lock and key? I do. Others do as well. Heck, the FDA even tweeted about it.

* * * * * * * *

However, yesterday, during 5th Circuit court proceedings involving the case of the federal government working hand-in-glove with the social media companies to suppress information they deemed disinformation or misinformation regarding the Covid narrative, this little gem dropped into everyone’s laps.

Where does Joe Rogan go for his apology?

Flashback: Joe Rogan’s Dust-Up With CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta Exposes the Narrative:

Rogan continued to ask why the network would lie about a Nobel prize-winning drug that had cured blindness due to a parasitic infection in millions of people, suggesting it was only used in animals. Rogan asked, “Does it bother you the news network you work for out and out lied? Just outright lied about me taking horse dewormer?” Gupta responded, “They shouldn’t have said that.”

That’s what Gupta told Rogan while in his studio. The following day, however: CNN’s Effort to Clean up the Gupta Train Wreck Interview Proves Joe Rogan’s Point:

CNN’s [Don Lemon]: “It is not a lie to say that [Ivermectin] is used as a horse de-wormer. I think that’s important. And it is not approved for Covid.”

[Gupta]: “Correct … If you look at the data, there is no evidence that it really works [against Covid].”

This is CNN. “But that’s the problem with CNN in a nutshell, and it’s the point that Rogan was making,” Red State’s Nick Arama writes. “They don’t care about the truth; it’s all about narrative.”

And CNN wonders why they’re not trusted in flyover country.

OUT ON A LIMB: Oppenheimer Was a Communist.

In addition to his bewildering behavior about the Chevalier incident, over the years Oppenheimer lied on numerous government security questionnaires. He flatly denied that he had ever been a party member, admitting only that he had been a left-winger with numerous Communist friends and a contributor to causes also supported by Communists. When he faced a hearing on the revocation of his security clearance, Oppenheimer could have taken the option of being honest and candid about his Communist past and explained why he had dropped out. After all, many Communists of the time became ex-Communists and even anti-Communists. But his record of lies might have cost him his security clearance in any case. Perjury is obvious grounds for the denial of a security clearance, since it opens up the perjurer to blackmail—or prosecution. Oppenheimer might have hesitated about getting friends and relatives into trouble, or deeper trouble. Or he might have been reluctant to give ammunition to the many enemies he had made among military leaders and such physicists as Edward Teller by opposing development of the hydrogen bomb after World War II.

Just as important, admitting past false statements may have been particularly psychologically difficult for Oppenheimer, whose arrogance was considerable and whose tolerance for those he regarded as fools was very limited. (Haakon Chevalier wrote a thinly disguised novel about him with the title The Man Who Would Be God that provides glimpses of Oppenheimer’s imperious nature.) Whatever the reason, confessing to lies about his political past was not a step Oppenheimer was willing to take. In the end, he made a particularly poor witness and his testimony did not help his case to maintain his security clearance. In the movie, Kitty angrily confronts Robert for refusing to fight back more strongly against the attacks on his character and actions. Left unexplored is whether his knowledge of his own deceit helped paralyze him.

Knowing what we know now, America’s public interest would have been best served if Oppenheimer had been able to continue in his role as a consultant to the government on various atomic projects. The evidence by the mid-1940s was that he had left his earlier Communist allegiance behind and was anything but a party sympathizer. But one of the major contributing factors to his loss of security access was his own unwillingness to provide a candid and honest account of his earlier Communist ties and why he had put them aside. If he continued to lie about such matters, how could he now be trusted?

None of this detracts from the greatest achievement of Oppenheimer’s life and one of the great scientific and engineering achievements in human history. It does, however, complicate the morality-play version of his life. Unquestionably, the hearing that denied the renewal of his security clearance (and that is portrayed so powerfully throughout the movie) was stacked against him. His archnemesis, Lewis Strauss (played by Robert Downey Jr.), orchestrated a dishonest and biased attack, deprived Oppenheimer and his lawyer the opportunity to see key evidence, and distorted some of his views and behavior. But Oppenheimer’s lack of candor made him a contributor to his own destruction. That truly makes the story of his life a Greek tragedy. As good a movie as it is, Oppenheimer would have been richer still if it had plumbed these deep waters.

There are great moments in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster new movie (seeing — and hearing — the film’s recreation of the Trinity explosion on the big screen is worth it alone), but this is what happens when your source material is a book written by leftists from Nation magazine: Hollywood Shocker: The Authors of the Book Behind Nolan’s Oppenheimer Were Both Editors and Writers at The Nation.

THIS IS CNN: CNN Gets a Shock When They Venture out of Their Bubble and Talk to the American People.

CNN doesn’t seem to understand what the American people think.

They showed that again during a segment featuring John King talking with Americans in Iowa. The description from King shows just how clueless CNN is about the American people and what the support for former President Donald Trump is about.

King acknowledges the people don’t like CNN and that there’s “reverence for Ronald Reagan.” But then he paints them all as though they believe what they believe because they are somehow caught in the thrall of Trump.

WATCH: CNN reporter visibly stunned into silence after Iowa Trump supporters take turns shooting down CNN, Biden Regime Psy-Ops to his FACE🤣

"A few days here makes clear Trump's grip is very strong." pic.twitter.com/D2UspRNTws

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 10, 2023

“Reagan’s optimism, replaced by Trump’s grievances.” One guy says we have to find a way to take care of ourselves. King’s reaction? “Reagan’s disdain of big government replaced by Trump’s distrust of just about everything.” How dare they think that the prosecutions of Trump are politically motivated just because they’ve seen how everything has rolled out since the Russia collusion hoax? For shame, you silly cultists! The capper that shows how delusional these folks are? Not one hand goes up when he asks if they “support Ukraine in the fight against Putin.”

* * * * * * * *

Listening to Republican voters who are skeptical of support for Ukraine is “like watching the open of an old Tucker Carlson show,” King said.

He said some on the left want to call them “deplorable” — but “there are millions of them!”

“They’re good people…They go to Church! But they believe things that would break our fact-check machine,” King despaired. “And they don’t trust us! They think we’re part of the problem!” Bingo.

Yes, why on earth would people distrust CNN?

IT’S COME TO THIS: California Moves to Confiscate Power from Your Electric Car Battery.

“Lawmakers in Sacramento are helping to move things along,” the report says. “For example, Senate Bill 233 would make bi-directional charging mandatory for all new electric vehicles.”

In fact, San Diego already has “a pilot program with school buses using bi-directional charging that feeds into the grid at the end of the day.”

“It’s a gigantic unharnessed, untapped power source that can be used. Most vehicles are sitting parked, unused 95 percent of the time,” Kurt Johnson of the Climate Center said. He adds that “125 plus vehicle-to-grid projects are going on globally.”

This does not create even one extra kilowatt of power.

All it does is drain your car battery’s power, which is power you are going to have to put right back into that battery. And how exactly will the grid remain stable when millions of electric vehicle owners are all in a panic charging their cars at 6:30 a.m. so they can get to work?

Worse still for electric vehicle owners, recharging your battery is what kills your battery, and once your battery is dead, it’s cheaper to buy a whole new car than to replace it.

California has long been a Potemkin energy state, but in the past, that meant getting electricity from other states to keep the lights on. Now California is looking to both make electric cars the only game in town – and to punish drivers for buying them.

MARK JUDGE:  Talk to Me Is a Horror Film That Warns How the Occult Leads to Hell.

OUT ON A LIMB: Face It — Women’s Soccer Just Isn’t Very Good.

“I’ve watched soccer for 30 years,” said Cooke. “I’m a fan of the game, and the difference between the strength and skill and pace between the men’s game and the women’s game just makes the women’s game unwatchable for me.

“The U.S. women’s team could be and in fact was beaten by an average high-school boys team. It’s not good sports. I love watching women’s tennis, for example, because although there’s a power differential, the skill level is so high that it makes it equally entertaining.”

He added, “And I read recently that Megan Rapinoe is in favor of men playing in women’s soccer now, and for once she and I agree — that is what it’s going to take to make it interesting.”

Rapinoe went out of her to sabotage her team while she was on it, so saying she’s in favor of men playing on it is the perfect going-away present.

DOOCY REVEALS FUNNY BACKSTORY TO EXPLOSIVE EXCHANGE WITH BIDEN — AND THE WH RESPONSE:

Doocy joked it was a “middle of the road” question but that he knows that they “don’t want to talk” about this scandal. He did give Biden credit for calling him over, but I think that’s part of Biden’s psyche, too — he thinks he can handle any reporters, even though his staff knows differently. As Biden special assistant Michael LaRosa admitted to Fox’s Howard Kurtz, the Biden team lives “in a bunker mentality often, they treat the press as a threat, as a hazard and not as an opportunity.” We’ve seen explosive responses from Biden before, including when Biden called Doocy a “stupid son of a b**ch.”

Biden must have plenty to hide, since he’s considered reporters as “a threat, as a hazard” for decades, which is an extremely curious stance, since the vast majority are his party’s operatives with bylines.

UPDATE: The Most Interesting Man In The World.

QUICK, EVERYBODY FIRE UP THEIR SUBURBANS AND F-150s: “Experts” Claim the Diminished ‘Ship Track’ Clouds From Pollution Cuts Added to “Global Warming.”

I’M SURE THIS IS PURELY A COINCIDENCE:

Biiiiiiiig yikes here pic.twitter.com/kinsf6oh30

— Jake Schneider (@jacobkschneider) August 9, 2023

AI IS NOW WRITING CLICKBAIT ARTICLES: G/O Media’s AI ‘innovation’ is off to a rocky start. The company, which owns outlets like The AV Club, Gizmodo, and The Onion, announced last week it would begin experimenting with AI tools.

Over on The AV Club, a list called “The Biggest Summer Blockbusters of 2003: 10 Can’t-Miss Movies” is credited to the outlet’s bot. The article contains almost no writing or analysis, but its construction suggests that the piece is an attempt to attract cheap search traffic. The piece was also syndicated to Yahoo Entertainment.

It is unclear how the articles were assigned, generated, and if they were edited at any point by a human before going live. G/O Media didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s questions about its editorial process and oversight of AI-written stories.

The company, which also owns publications like Deadspin, Jezebel, and The Onion, is far from the first media outlet to utilize generative AI software to produce content. From BuzzFeed to CNET, publishers have turned to AI tools to churn out material like explainer articles, quizzes, and lists, selling the pivot by saying machines would not replace human writers but instead would free up staff so they could work on more ambitious projects.

But for all of the benefits of AI tools media companies extoll, there are glaring issues — for one, the material produced is often bad or plainly inaccurate. After a litany of errors in stories produced using AI systems, human CNET staffers did the work of going back and rewriting dozens of articles. At Men’s Journal, AI-powered articles contained errors in stories about health and science that had to be corrected after publication.

At the moment, The AV Club is warning readers that they’re reading AI generated content, but how long will that last?

Related: G/O Media Vows to ‘Dismiss the Trivial’ Backlash in Memo to A.V. Club Staff About AI-Generated Stories.

HAWAII WILDFIRES: At least six dead as Maui wildfires overwhelm hospitals, sever 911 services and force people to flee into the ocean.

MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Democrats’ J6 Committee failed to preserve records, has no data on Capitol Hill security failures, GOP charges.

RIP: Robbie Robertson, Leader of The Band, Dies at 80.