My Favorite Sport is Spelling Bees

Leave it to the Republicans to mess up sports. They don’t like anybody, and they don’t want anybody to be happy. The word in question is a word: it’s in the dictionary, is used by people, and it makes sense in a sentence. What a story! Peace and good spelling to all. ☮

How the word ‘womyn’ dragged the National Spelling Bee into the US culture wars

In an age of division where authoritarianism is seeping into every corner of American discourse, the Spelling Bee offers up a reminder of what America should truly be

Scott RemerTue 27 May 2025 05.00 EDTShare

We’re living through turbulent times, to say the least. Authoritarianism and fascism threaten the United States. The conspiracy thinking, paranoia and manufactured outrage so characteristic of QAnon and the big lie about the 2020 election have colonized our political discourse like a fungus. Even the National Spelling Bee, a cultural institution which will be celebrating its centennial this year and which is generally exempted from the far right’s paranoid vitriol, hasn’t been immune. Earlier this year, a foofaraw erupted when right-wing outlets reported on the acceptance of “womyn” as an alternate spelling of “women” in the regional-level wordlist which the National Spelling Bee issues each year.

The reason “womyn” was included in the wordlist wasn’t some shadowy feminist plot by the Bee’s organizers. The competition simply allows any word in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged dictionary, unless it is obsolete. “Womyn” is in the dictionary, along with tens of thousands of other words, such as “pointless”, “culture” and “war”.

With zero self-awareness, an anti-trans podcast host raged that the Bee’s uncontroversial decision to allow “womyn” was a manifestation of “fabricated issues” and “totally manufactured outrage.” On Fox News, she snarled, “How lucky are we to live in the United States of America, where the spelling of women, never mind the definition, has become a national debate.” Samantha Poetter-Parshall, a Kansas state representative, joined in the criticism, calling the inclusion of womyn an instance of “crazy indoctrination of our children.” A parent quoted in reportage on the faux scandal shared Poetter-Parshall’s concern, asserting, “This is supposed to be about spelling and language, not ideology.”

George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm, 1984, and the essay Politics and the English Language, would be startled to hear such a complaint. Orwell deeply understood the intimate relationship between language, thought, and politics. He keenly observed how “in our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible … Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.”

In our time, imprisoning and attempting to deport legal residents of the US for their political views and sending legal residents and gay people fleeing persecution in Venezuela – and potentially US citizens – to prisons in El Salvador where torture is widespread based on flimsy evidence from disgraced police officers is called “securing our homeland”. The announcement of economically ruinous tariffs which have wiped trillions off the stock market is called “liberation day.” Orwell believed that “to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration.” To combat the creep of Orwellian language, he argued that we should “recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end,” aiming to always use “language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought”.

In its emphasis on linguistic precision and its heartfelt delight in words, the National Spelling Bee is already political in Orwell’s sense. The Bee also has an implicit politics of appreciation for cultural and linguistic diversity. Though most spellers are American, the competition has an international flavor: it regularly features participants from Ghana, Canada, Jamaica, South Korea, China, and Nigeria, and spelling bees have sprung up in countries like Zimbabwe too. The welcome which the Bee extends to logophiles from all over the world inculcates in kids an appreciation of other cultures and promotes a cosmopolitan worldview. Spellers study words from Latin, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and German; this cultivates their love of linguistic variety. What’s more, the fact that the South Asian community regularly dominates the upper echelons of the competition reaffirms the importance of immigration to our society.

These days, even if many Americans reject the Trump regime’s ugly attitudes and practices, xenophobia and racism are rampant, hearkening back to the bad old days of the Know-Nothing Party and the Chinese Exclusion Act. The US government has become increasingly hostile to international travelers: there have been a spate of horrific stories of tourists, visitors, and legal residents from Germany, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere who have done nothing wrong being arrested, detained, and held for weeks by Ice, or being refused entry to the US and deported. In such a context, the National Spelling Bee’s steadfast commitment to multiculturalism is all the more essential.

Despite its unfortunate Covid-induced cancellation in 2020 and some turbulence from rule changes and regional sponsor attrition in 2021 and 2022, the National Spelling Bee has been a relative constant for students in an age of extreme dislocation and upheaval. In these politically polarized times, it offers Americans an opportunity for joy and collective uplift. It celebrates education, attention, focus, dedication, and quiet, patient effort. It teaches students grit, discipline, and linguistics. It reminds us of the importance of the human in an age of AI. It reinforces the importance of good sportsmanship and fair play. It promotes respect and friendship towards humanity at large. It invites us to honor and remember the values that ought to unite us all. The National Spelling Bee is a reminder of what America has been – and what it must continue to be.

Scott Remer is a professional spelling bee tutor, freelance writer, and the author of the textbooks Words of Wisdom: Keys to Success in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Sesquipedalia!: A Rigorous Vocabulary Study Guide, Regional Bee Ready!, and A Few Final Words of Wisdom.

Last pictures of me bald

Recently I shaved my head due to frustration managing my hair. But Ron told me a few days ago that he did not like the bald look and would really like me to grow my hair back. So these are the last pictures I took of me bald. Hugs

New punishment device, a stepper thingy. I could use your advice.

So below I will add the pictures of the torture device my husband insisted I needed. We have not been walking like we used to. There seems to always be a reason why but my husband worries about how thin my legs have gotten and that I have started to have swollen ankles and feet sitting at my desk so much. So

we got this device.

Now comes the punishment part. The first time I tried it I did 3 sets of 5 minutes of stepping, rested 10 minutes between sets. Two or three hours later as I was doing the dishes my legs started to really hurt and get stiff. I couldn’t bend my legs. My thighs were swollen. I was in agony so bad I couldn’t finish the dishes. I have not used it since. Can anyone tell me the proper amount of time to use it and how many minutes to rest between and how many sets to do. Thanks. I do want to get healthy and build back up my legs that have atrophied but I don’t want to die doing it. Hugs

HUFFPOST: ‘Deranged Lunatic’: Critics Blast Trump After ‘Utterly Unfit’ Holiday Rant

I am sitting at the kidney doctors office waiting in an exam room. Hugs

‘Deranged Lunatic’: Critics Blast Trump After ‘Utterly Unfit’ Holiday Rant
The president spent Memorial Day firing off grievance-filled messages.

Read in HuffPost: https://apple.news/Au6r-XDNzSry9KpUsZUM9jw

Shared from Apple News

Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie

More Republican “Greatness”

Trump and Pete Hegseth inspiring Islamic State recruitment propaganda

Experts say president’s dismantling of world order, rapport with Netanyahu and choice of Pentagon chief benefiting IS

Donald Trump has a long and colorful history with the Islamic State. He incorrectly blamed the founding of IS on his predecessor, said its infamous leader “died like a dog” while announcing his assassination, and rallied an international coalition that successfully ended its so-called caliphate.

So far, in his second presidency, his administration has much less to do with IS. But the terror group has still benefited from him.

Experts tell the Guardian that IS is capitalizing on Trump’s dismantling of the international order, his affinity for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel, and most of all – his most controversial cabinet appointment – in its recruitment propaganda.

In the US, IS supporters consuming that online messaging have become bona fide security threats in recent months, with a string of incidents dating back to before the presidential election.

On New Year’s Day in New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a 13-year veteran of the US army, used a truck to kill fourteen partygoers in the name of IS. Earlier in May, Ammar Abdulmajid-Mohamed Said, 19, an ex-national guardsman, was arrested and charged with plotting a mass shooting at a military base near Detroit, on behalf of the group.

“The January 1 New Orleans attack and subsequent IS-linked arrests in the country demonstrate the continued influence the organization can project into the US,” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, who has tracked the terrorist group for several years.

“These incidents also highlight how IS leverages the online space through social media and messaging applications to spread its ideology and inspire supporters to plot attacks.”

Part of that, as Webber explained, was persistently defining the US as a “crusader” state – the name jihadists have long used for all western countries.

But secretary of defense Pete Hegseth’s tattoos, referential to those pan-European medieval invaders, have fueled IS propaganda dispersed on Rocket.Chat – a recruitment platform the terror group uses to communicate with its followers and recruits.

An April IS-article, titled Clear Evidence in Ink, zeroed in on Hegseth’s ink, which features crosses associated with crusaders and another on his arm that reads “infidel” or “non-believer” in Arabic.

The term also became better known among war on terror soldiers, who, like Hegseth, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a pejorative for themselves.

“This takes us back to the media stir just days ago when the American ‘crusader’ secretary of defense published photos of himself with the word ‘kafir’ written on his arm in Arabic, alongside other explicit phrases glorifying the crusades!” said the IS propaganda, amid a backdrop of Hegseth’s tattooed chest and arms.

“Events like these, orchestrated by Allah’s wisdom, serve as warnings and clear evidence of the true nature of the war waged by Jews and Christians against us – it is a deeply rooted religious war.”

On Rocket.Chat, pro-IS users fervently responded.

“What more do you want as proof that they want to wipe us all together?” wrote one user underneath an image of Hegseth’s tattoos.

Other fodder tapped for its digital propaganda, is Trump’s associations with Netanyahu and the IDF’s continued flattening of Gaza, which several experts and governments have called a modern-day genocide.

IS images and articles call for “revenge for the Muslims in Gaza” and the war, which has become one of its most valuable recruitment topics.

IS also sees the stream of international tariffs unleashed by the Trump administration as a sign the west and its power structures are unravelling. As another IS article described how “the reckless Trump has repeatedly claimed victory over jihad, yet now he is preoccupied with fighting German cars and Chinese goods” and stoking “commercial wars” that would lead to the demise of “kafir nations”.

Combinations of these topics are mainstay recruitment hooks that IS and its predecessor organization, al-Qaida, have used for years attracting men into its ranks. IS is in a rebuilding stage as Syria – once a base for its most successful era – has vowed to banish the group and other jihadist elements from operating within its borders, as the nascent government seeks rapprochement with the US.

But other IS chapters have shown they are attracting Americans, foreigners, and locals to their cause, by peddling anti-US messaging.

“Trump and the US have been monitored by [IS-Khorasan] Pashto, Urdu and Farsi channels specifically referring to developments in Syria and Afghanistan,” said Riccardo Valle, the director of research at the Islamabad-based publication the Khorasan Diary and an expert on the group’s Afghan wing.

“[IS-K] continue to foster the idea that there is no difference between Afghanistan and Syria trajectories and that both are puppets in the hands of the US, Russia, and China.”

The IS-K branch has shown its reach inside the US, too. An Afghan national and a co-conspirator were arrested in October, after the FBI disrupted an IS-K sponsored plot to attack a mass gathering on election day.

The justice department also described in 2024 court documents that IS-Somalia, an upstart branch which has become the intense focus of Pentagon airstrikes, had attracted an American foreign fighter who was in contact with their recruiters.

“IS-Somalia is becoming more internationally ambitious in its recruitment, associated online propaganda, and incitement efforts,” Webber said. “Pro-IS Somalia outlets are creating media content focused on US policy in the region and support for governments in the area.”

Milky Way News-

The Milky Way Has a Mysterious ‘Broken Bone’

Galactic bones, filaments of radio-wave-emitting particles, run through our galaxy, and one of them has a fracture. New analysis suggests collision with a neutron star may have caused it.

A photo of the galactic bone known as The Snake. Photograph: NASA/CXC/Northwestern University

If you look at the Milky Way through a powerful telescope, you’ll notice that close to the center of the galaxy there are elongated filaments that seem to outline its spiral shape. Scientists have a nickname for these structures: “galactic bones.” Recently, astronomers found that one of the Milky Way’s bones is “fractured,” and they believe they’ve now found a possible culprit: a neutron star that may have collided with it.

According to NASA, these bones are huge elongated formations of energized particles that spiral along magnetic fields running through the galaxy. The particles release radio waves, and so are detectable using radio telescopes.

Scientists have found several such bones in the galaxy, but one of the most striking is called G359.13142-0.20005, also known as “the Snake.” It is a 230-light-year-long filament that appears to have a fracture. It is also one of the brightest. One of the first explanations was that some as yet undetected body had disturbed the filament.

A study by Harvard University, published in the journal Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society, set out to test this hypothesis. The research team involved found signs of a pulsar, a neutron star spinning at high speed, in the same region as the broken bone. These stars are extremely dense, and are the small remnants left after the explosion of a supermassive star.

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which orbits Earth, along with the MeerKAT telescope array in South Africa and the Very Large Array in New Mexico—two systems that detect radio waves—scientists found what appear to be traces of a pulsar in the filament. Based on data from these observatories, they estimate that this pulsar impacted the bone at a speed of between 1,609,000 and 3,218,000 kilometers per hour. The suspected collision is thought to have distorted the magnetic field of the bone, causing its radio signal to deform.

A photo of the galactic bone known as The Snake.

The structure G359.13, with the fracture visible on its right-hand side. Photograph: NASA/CXC/Northwestern University

In the above image provided by NASA, the Snake can be seen, and there is a body that appears to be interacting with the structure, in the middle of its length. It is possibly the aforementioned neutron star.

Pulsars are alternative versions of a neutron star where, in addition to being compact objects, they rotate at high velocities and produce strong magnetic fields. At the moment there is no instrument that can see them directly due to their size and distance, but radio telescopes can detect the electromagnetic waves they emit and hear them by converting these into sound.

This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.

A Bit Of A Sojo Article I Read Earlier

of interest here. Opinion Politics Democracy, Voting, and Governance

The Church Can Offer Trans Refuge From Bad Theology and Bad Legislation

By Oisín Rowe

Snippet:
In the book The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, theologian Jon Paul Sydnor argues that even the apostle Paul calls for an allegorical reading of Genesis by citing his letter to the church in Galatia. In Galatians 4:21-31, Paul explains the significance of Sarah and Hagar. In verse 24, he tells his audience, “These things are being taken figuratively: the women represent two covenants.” If Paul didn’t read Genesis literally, then I think that permits Christians to interpret Genesis from a more open perspective when it comes to gender and sexuality.

I hold out hope that the Bible can be interpreted in such a way as to make room for me and other trans people. I grasp on to the idea that there is a Christianity out there that is safe and committed to fighting anti-trans legislation. Perhaps to my own harm, I even sometimes find myself hoping that fundamentalists and the Far Right can be persuaded. Persuaded to care, persuaded to see the shared humanity between themselves and transgender people, persuaded by their own good book to protect my community and change their ways. Though I know this is unlikely, I continue to cling to hope. As I am literally fed and cared for by a Christian community, I gain a better understanding of what faith looks like. Today, I am choosing to have faith in my identity as something beautiful and chosen, and good.

In Transgender, Intersex, and Biblical Interpretation, theologians Terese J. Hornsby and Deryn Guest write, “The trans body is not a minority exception to a two-gendered system; it is not an anomaly or a body that exists in the margins. The reality is that there are no margins.” This limitlessness, this abundance, is not only good theology, it is safety, it is belonging.

Oisín Rowe

Beware!

It’s A Trap by Clay Jones

For my fellow Star Wars kids Read on Substack

The entire world has come to know that the Oval Office is now a trap.

When Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House, Trump sprang a trap on him that included veep, JD Vance, who definitely doesn’t fuck couches. I’m glad we cleared that up.

Trump used JD as a pitbull to start the attack, and for him to come in from behind. Zelensky can be scary, yo. And it was smart as Zelesnky picked apart JD’s attack of “Why haven’t you tried diplomacy?” Zelesnky calmly gave JD a thorough history lesson.

JD and Trump were raising their voices, shouting at Zelensky as though it was his fault Russia illegally invaded his nation, and Ukraine had failed to use diplomacy to avoid it, just as Poland had failed to use diplomacy against the Nazis. Haven’t we learned anything from history?

At some point, Trump and JD realized they were embarrassing themselves and the nation, and they kicked Zelensky out of the White House. I can’t wait until we kick Trump out of the White House. Again.

In April, Trump was interviewed by Terry Moran of ABC News in the Oval Office, and Trump bullied Moran, trying to get him to accept that a fake photo was real.

“MS13” had been superimposed onto the photo Trump was showing of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man Trump illegally deported to a Salvadoran prison, with the text clearly typed on top of his knuckles. Oddly enough, Trump had shared the same photo a week before without the text superimposed. Our president (sic) is a moron.

Moran tried to direct the conversation away from the silly photo, probably trying to save Trump some further embarrassment, but Grandpa wouldn’t let it go. He kept insisting that Moran believe the obvious lie.

Trump did it again last week, springing an Oval Office trap on the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa.

Trump was showing Ramaphosa photos and videos, often of the wrong places and without context, insisting that White genocide was taking place in his nation. It’s not. (snip-MORE)