Including a bouncer’s lament; a liturgical Barbie; when your balls take the brunt of it; some intrepid adventurers; and an innovation ill-suited to enthusiasts of pornography.
Fake Tears And Hissing
Despite the competing feats of Olympic-level hyperbole, two formal investigations by the university uncovered no evidence of racism or indeed violence, whether colonial or of some other kind. However, the social work department – this bastion of “equity,” “diversity,” and “decolonisation” – was described in one of the reports as an intimidating and hostile workplace, with one witness favouring the phrase, “cliquey, scary, and tense.”
His Master’s Voice
When given the question, Gemini responds that one should not misgender Caitlyn Jenner to avoid a nuclear apocalypse.
A test for AI wokeness and ideological distortion is demonstrated.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including the Creepy Peepies from Whicker’s World, circa 1967; encounters of hot and cold glass; the thrill of Star Trek polyester; how to pack a suitcase in a manly way; and a fine example of some unfortunate timing.
Sales Will No Doubt Rocket
Presumably, the way to “redress the visual narrative that LGBTQIA+ people look a certain way” is to celebrate the existence of dysmorphic and autogynephile men who are also devotes of bondage and sadomasochism, and who like to share photos of themselves posing with sex toys while flashing their collection of ladies’ knickers to random passers-by.
It also seems that the way to become more authentically “queer” – to express one’s true, inner self and who one really is – is to elaborately accessorise and play dress-up, and to pretend to be something that, by definition, one isn’t.
Other John Lewis employees highlighted in the Identity Project include an in-store nursery advisor and enthusiast of the ‘pup’ and ‘furry’ communities, and who is helpfully pictured wearing a bondage harness. Because that’s the mental image you want when shopping for baby paraphernalia.
A Territorial Struggle
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a chair-cum-earthquake-helmet; Chesterton’s bicycle; a terribly progressive “detoxifying” project; some apposite use of a shovel; and a game, the rules of which are not entirely clear to me.
Yes, But They Didn’t Steal *My* Car
Perhaps it would be ungentlemanly to wish on dear Nora some first-hand experience of the crimes she so merrily diminishes when inflicted on someone else, someone who isn’t her. Though it is, I think, tempting.
Habitual car theft is a “victimless” crime. Says Nora the socialist.
One For The ‘Everything It Touches’ Pile
Apparently, San Francisco’s elementary-school children are expected to have, or at least regurgitate, strong opinions on the Israeli military.
Many young children are of course accustomed to being given a “word of the day,” though I would guess that such highlighted words don’t usually include “strike,” “ceasefire,” and “protest.” Nor, I suspect, would third-graders often be tasked with “disrupting whiteness,” which seems somewhat ambitious and just a tad question-begging, or with imagining “a world without police, money, or landlords.” Yet here we are.
Beware The White Robots
A professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh recently expressed concern over the lack of diversity among the robot population.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a makeover via robot; bird-and-mammal-identifying smart binoculars; some transgender head-tilting; a tongue-operated trackpad; and the perils of dining on squid.
The ‘S’ Word
Attention, heterosexuals. The word ‘straight’ has been deemed oppressive. Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including things incoming; a king of the jungle; an all-terrain wheelchair; dressing in layers; and some level-ten pretentious guilt.
Just Like Us, Only More Oppressed
If you’ve watched the reality series Cops or Live PD, pathological selfishness is very much a staple, a defining attribute of the assorted misfits and predators. I remember one lengthy pursuit of thieves who’d robbed a store at gunpoint, terrorised its owner, and then fled the scene in a stolen car, and whose bid to escape did costly damage to other people’s property, and caused other road users to veer and crash, resulting in serious injury.
When finally apprehended, the thieves, themselves unharmed, were entirely unconcerned by the horror and destruction left in their wake, or the fact that it was all but miraculous that no-one had been killed. Instead, they were loudly indignant, as if they were the victims of the drama, heatedly objecting to the discomfort of handcuffs, and demanding to know why their phones had been confiscated. While, within earshot, injured children were being rushed to hospital.
Scenes like the above, of which there were many, may explain why progressives disliked the series, dismissing it as “copaganda”… I suspect the actual objection is not so much, as claimed, that the series portrayed the police in a sanitised or flattering light, as the officers were rarely the focus of the viewer’s attention.
The stars of each episode, if that’s the right word, were usually the lawbreakers. They, not the police, held the attention. They were generally the ones driving events, whether those events were alarming or farcical. And so, the series offered a glimpse into the mindset of the criminals – the recurring patterns of malevolence and selfishness – in their own words and by watching their own actions.
And obviously, we can’t have that. It makes pretentious sympathy much more difficult to muster.
On crime, criminals, and progressive unrealism.
The Accessorising Didn’t Quite Do It
Man thinks his purse makes him a woman.
And so, you must accept and affirm his rejection of himself.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a display of flexibility; the legend of Bum Farto; a misfit with airhorn fantasies; a chance to feel your age; and a not entirely affirming approximation of a penis.
And It Will Be On The Test
No, don’t run away. She wants to tell you about herself.
The Thrill Of Word-Policing
Apparently, the word collision is, for Dr Madrid, much too brutal and masculine when referring to the convergence of two galaxies, and the subsequent merging of the supermassive black holes at their centres – an event that will entail the sling-shotting of countless stars and their orbiting planets, and which may release energy equivalent to around 100 million supernova explosions, and to subsequently be detectable halfway across the universe.
Come, let’s pay a visit to the publication laughingly referred to as Scientific American.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a promptly validated judgement; hawk versus kitten; lion relocation; recovered Kodachromes of New York in the Fifties; and ice-cream scoop insertions and other medical emergencies.
A Mystery For Our Times
Guardian columnist mystified by men not wearing skirts.