Chris Tunstall

Non-conformist. Gentile. Am Yisrael Chai. Male. Gender is a category error. Brexiteer. European & Internationalist. Intellectual Property Lawyer. Reflexive.

[Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico]

Trump preferring to buy diesel from Putin to buying it from Canada is a reflection of how nuts American politics has become. How is that decision not something every right-thinking American regards with the contempt it so richly deserves?

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Trump’s diesel deal with Putin makes no sense (it’s also immoral since it will fund the ailing Kremlin war machine).
The US has no need of Russian diesel. It already refines more than enough for domestic demand — with 1.5m b/d for export.
Russia has no diesel to export. Ukrainian drones have taken out a third of Russian refining capacity, turning Russia into a net importer of diesel (from India).
The volumes involved are derisory. The initial Russian offer = 2.2m barrels. The US consumes 3.5m b/d.
The price of diesel at the US pump is between $6/6.50. That won’t change before the midterms. The deal does nothing to help Trump in these elections.
But it bolsters Putin and undermines Ukraine.

[John Spencer @SpencerGuard]

I just watched the roughly 45-minute footage of October 7th at a private screening in NYC. Here are my immediate thoughts minutes after watching it. 🧵

[Chris Tunstall @strontiumpup]

@ZDN052529 @Elliottpluto @SBarrettBar @tescomobile RAS syndrome.

[Colin Wynter KC @QcWynter]

I know some good people who have been on Palestine marches & have stood and watched, whilst waiting to cross the road, some seemingly reasonable people taking part.
However, anyone taking part in today's so called "protest", whether keffiyehed or not, is definitively a scrote.

[Daniel Sugarman @Daniel_Sugarman]

My view is that a new British government with an utterly amateurish grasp of foreign policy completely misjudged how an Israeli government on the brink of an election would react to the sanctions announcement, and is now committing to a retaliatory cycle which will prove ruinous.

[David Frost @DavidGHFrost]

@Telegraph The state seems no longer able to perform its most basic tasks. It cannot control crime and it cannot control the borders. When are the authorities going to get serious? How bad do things have to get before they start behaving differently?

[Chris Tunstall @strontiumpup]

@DPJHodges It will fail.

[Vladimir Kramnik @VBkramnik]

I had once similar episode, when playing Candidates match against Leonid Yudasin, 1993.

He asked me whether I would agree starting after sunset (Shabbat ) one of the games.

I agreed, we started after 5 pm instead of 2 as everyone else.

Frankly, I believe opponents today should have agreed to it, if time of play was reasonable still.

As well as similar situation with hypothetical Muslim or Christian most special holly days. Just as a personal human gesture of respect towards different religions and cultures.

We need such attitude in nowadays polarised and militant world. If politicians can't, we, on personal human level, should try to soften it ourselves when we can.

[Chris Tunstall @strontiumpup]

@top1percentile @SBarrettBar @WeSocialMediaU Cf. The War Damage Act 1965.

[Chris Tunstall @strontiumpup]

@IonaItalia If you're ever in London, visit Palomar restaurant, and you'll see how wrong you are.

https://t.co/RcIIN5UEvC

[Chris Tunstall @strontiumpup]

@Alonso_GD @ArtemisConsort All of them.

[Janet Murray @jan_murray]

I still remember being in a pub garden
when a couple I’d known since school announced some good news.

‘We’re pregnant’ said the guy.

‘Don’t you ever use that phrase,’ I told my husband afterwards.

The expectant dad was a nice guy.
Still is.

Probably thought it sounded supportive - as if he was sharing the load of pregnancy.

But he wasn’t, was he.
She was pregnant - not him.

And I thought: what next? ‘We’re on our period?’

My gut reaction to a bloke trying to own a woman’s body in that way was visceral.

That was over 20 years ago.
And here we are now.

[Colin Wynter KC @QcWynter]

My admiration for Kathleen Stock, already firmly on the record, now knows no bounds.
Not only a crystal clear thinker but a brave one too.
Whilst others issue tearful, performative mea culpas, she maintains a consistent line.
Highly admirable.
https://t.co/thDNfSpOZd

[Jonatan Pallesen @jonatanpallesen]

@nathancofnas This is a disaster for academia. They couldn’t send a clearer message that pointing out plagiarism, lies, and scientific fraud from a non-White scholar will not be tolerated.

[Chris Tunstall @strontiumpup]

@DavidVaian47732 @Seanchuckle It's a common mistake even in native speakers, but your first sentence contains a dangling modifier. "As a teacher ..." should refer to the main subject of the sentence, so should be followed by "I have seen that .." etc.

[Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley]

I have a modest suggestion for fans on how to respond the next time that Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton shows up for a basketball game after verbally abusing girls supporting Sophie Cunningham's stance on transgender athletes... https://t.co/AcJlp3ysyW

[Aja ♀️🇬🇧 @AjaTheEmpress]

Dear corporate PR teams:

You were told backing women who defend women's rights would destroy your brand.

Instead, Sophie Cunningham's Adidas release sold out in under 24hrs.

Turns out the loudest people on Twitter aren't your customers. Women are. Maybe it's time you remembered that.

[Matthew Blair @ThrimbyFarms]

💥💥💥 Please share 💥💥💥

If you see a lamb like this stuck, rather than try find a farmer just quietly pop it out. If you can’t get it out then please let someone know. This is the worst time of year for it, the lambs still have small enough heads to push through and their horns are quite springy. Anyway, if you do see one, please do something about it. Thank you

[Read some Piaget please! @prof_curiosity1]

An open letter to Baroness Cass ref the case of this child, whose situation needs to investigated by social services. This indeed is not a political matter but one of child protection.
https://t.co/XOTCtPq8tZ

Dear Baroness Cass,
I am writing in response to the case you described of the eleven year old boy socially transitioned by his parents at two and a half, now living stealth, afraid to attend school as either sex, and increasingly withdrawn and physically deconditioned as a result. I wanted to set out why I think this case illustrates something more specific than the question you posed about whether politicians or doctors should decide what happens to children like him.

The case is, on its own terms, a clear demonstration of premature identity foreclosure. A child of two and a half has no capacity for the kind of abstract, exploratory self reflection that genuine identity formation requires, on any developmental account from Piaget through Marcia. What happened to this child at that age was necessarily a decision made on his behalf and then sustained around him, not a discovery he himself reached. Bronfenbrenner's ecological model describes exactly the mechanism by which that early decision then becomes self perpetuating: once a social transition is established in the home, it is carried into school, peer relationships, and eventually clinical contact, each system reinforcing what the previous one had already settled, with no point at which the original premise is revisited. By the time this child reaches adolescence, an identity adopted before he could speak in full sentences has become something he now actively conceals and fears having questioned, which is a strange and telling outcome for an identity supposedly discovered rather than constructed.

The detail you raise of weakened bones from inactivity rather than from medical intervention is, I think, the most important part of the case, because it shows the harm operating through an entirely social pathway. A child too afraid of being outed to attend school is a child whose ordinary developmental environment, peer contact, physical activity, the everyday testing of self against the world that Erikson and Marcia both treat as necessary to identity formation, has been closed off by the position he has been placed in. This is not a side effect of any drug. It is the direct consequence of a foreclosed identity that has left him with nowhere safe to be a child.

I would push back on framing the central question as one of medical versus political authority over decisions like puberty blockers. The decision that produced the harm you describe was not a medical one at all. It was a parental and social decision taken years before any clinical pathway became relevant, and the clinical system he now exists within is managing the consequences of that earlier decision rather than the cause of his distress.

Given that he is now isolated, school avoidant, and showing physical signs of neglect of his basic developmental needs, I think it is also worth asking plainly whether this is a case that ought to have come to the attention of children's social services on ordinary safeguarding grounds, independent of any question about gender identity at all. I would suggest the more pressing question your case actually raises is what support and recourse exists for a child in his position now, given how early and how thoroughly the foreclosure already occurred, and what should change about how social transition in early childhood is approached so that fewer children arrive at eleven in a position this difficult to unwind.

Yours sincerely,