Including the thrill of 1970s carpeting; a mushroom claw machine; an archive of manuals and missing instructions; the thrill of dryer lint; and when failure is not forgiven.
Vanity Is A Powerful Drug
Woke librarians want us to know just how radical they are, and therefore important:
Our Ivy League librarians insist that their “ultimate goal” is, and I quote, “the complete abolition of law enforcement… everywhere.” Because “a world without policing” will somehow, rather conveniently, be a world without crime.
Clearly, we should put these people in charge.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a switched-on blonde with bagpipes; lights made of bread; selfie cake; an unconvincing excuse; and the arrival of an escalator in a Cameroon shopping mall.
Brown Women Go For Walk, Applaud Selves As Heroic
On the British countryside as an allegedly problematic “last bastion of whiteness,” and the oppression caused by an insufficient number of brown-skinned rock-climbing instructors.
The Thrill Of Giving
It’s fundraising week over at my place. Last one of the year. If you’d like to help keep a blog afloat, by all means do.
Not Walk, Run
“I hope we can create some kind of trend, that actually people are going to run to the parks and start complaining to the trees. This is one way of healing at this moment of our history.”
Acclaimed performance artist shares her deep, deep wisdom.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a record deal simulator; scenes from a wildlife overpass; a prototype photocopier from 1803; a giant anamorphic toilet; and paranormal scenes of not-quite-levitation.
You Are Now Entering Clown World
On Seattle’s ‘progressive’ alternative to policing and prison:
You see, predatory sociopaths with histories of violence and robbery will be “liberated” by “healing circles” and “narrative storytelling.” Because, we’re assured, these things, when combined with burning sage, will “increase empathy.”
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a transplant drama; a display of precision work; a very modern gaffe; some stabilised hurdling; and the bulletproof bras of WWII.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including pondering holes; hazards of the highway; a moment of doubt; an airbag for the elderly; and the definitive guide to the Doctor Who theme.
Mental Twitching
“As far as I know, none of my friends are actively racist. But I also know that I’m not around them all the time.”
From the progressive parenting site Scary Mommy, some paranoid psychodrama.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including man’s best friend; a small project with magnets and a battery; a mobile bowling alley; an unlikely moment of triumph; and some ladies pondering the issues of the day.
Mommy Dearest
Another visit to the pages of Scary Mommy, where progressive parents share their mental dramas:
It turns out that the world of woke parenting is one in which nine-year-olds are not only naturally fascinated by politics but are also animated by the thought of doing violence to people who may dare to differ in their voting preferences. Utopia must surely follow.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including an unusually big one; a bit missing; some unexpected bending; a Letraset database; and when an attempt at belly-rubbing proves unwise.
How To Harm Children
Ohio social studies teachers – and by extension, their students – will learn that having brown skin is some kind of accomplishment, a basis for applause and favours, unlike being white, which is apparently the opposite, a basis for atonement. In order to achieve “absolution” – and yes, that term is used in the recommended literature, with all that it implies – the “stone idol” of “whiteness” must be “smashed to pieces.” Students and educators are also informed that insofar as “white people” have any culture at all, it is merely one “of colonisation, of genocide, of taking,” “a deep, dark hole of grief and of loss,” in which “envy and fear” are defining features. It is, we’re assured, “the culture of death.”
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a trip to the Ningaloo Canyons; a construction site mishap; a celebrity fragrance; a warning to housewives; acting under pressure; and a giant slow-motion balloon-pose-off.
Our Betters At Work
On “equity” and race-hustling in San Francisco’s public high schools:
A preference for academic rigour and admission by ability is “racist,” you see. Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly. Note that the board decision was “unanimous,” while the views of local parents – those directly affected – were somewhat more complicated and deemed “divisive.” Note too the implication that the feelings of those who work hard and show ability should be trumped by the feelings of those who do neither.
Trust Me, I’m An Educational Bureaucrat
Behold the new and thrilling “equity” policies in San Diego schools:
The practices being confronted – i.e., excluded from consideration in academic grading – include “turning work in on time” and “classroom behaviour.” Abandoning such standards is, we learn, an “accountability measure.” On grounds that acknowledging tardiness, unreliability and a lack of diligence results in “racial imbalance,” which, in the land of the bedlamites, simply won’t do.
Oh, and then there’s the problematic issue of disparities in cheating.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including augmented reality for dogs; gardening gloves of note; an angry bird; and – should the need arise – how to move the solar system.
A Scandalous Development
Philadelphia Weekly, one of the city’s most venerable leftist “alternative” newsweeklies, has rocked the local journalism scene with its announcement that, starting next year, it will provide Philly readers with a different kind of alternative: it will change its editorial outlook from hard-liberal to conservative.