Prostate cancer is a first-world problem.

Alex Manley, writing in the campus newspaper of Concordia University, Montreal: 

Let me be clear — I don’t want anyone to get cancer. I don’t think a man getting cancer is less tragic than a woman getting cancer.

However,

The [‘Movember’ prostate cancer awareness campaign] is just a really well-disguised tantrum that guys are content to throw to make it seem like prostate cancer research is as important as research towards curing women’s cancers.

And,

Prostate cancer is a hallmark of privilege. Deal with it.

Because he cares, you see.

Via Ace. 

Bill Whittle and Stefan Molyneux discuss peak political correctness, cultural confidence and being the bigger dog.

One for a quiet hour and a tall glass of something.

Over little toys and little boys:

A kindergarten teacher in Bainbridge Island, Washington, actively denies her male students the opportunity to play with Lego blocks in order to encourage her female students to play with them. Karen Keller bars the boys in her class from playing with the colourful blocks, even going so far as to lie to them about their opportunity to play. “I always tell the boys, ‘You’re going to have a turn’ — and I’m like, ‘Yeah, when hell freezes over’ in my head,” Keller told the Bainbridge Island Review.

Because “unstructured play time” must be structured to conform with “promoting gender equity.”

Lego and “social justice.” We’ve been here before, you know. 

Via the pages of Everyday Feminism, Rachel Kuo instructs the dull masses on how to avoid “cultural appropriation” while eating: 

When we talk about “ethnic” food, we’re not referring to French, German, or Italian cuisine, and definitely not those Ikea Swedish meatballs.

I suspect few people think of German cuisine as particularly mysterious and alluring. There are, I fear, very few German restaurants beyond the borders of Germany. Good cars, though.

Usually, we’re talking about Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Ethiopian, and Mexican food – places where food is cooked by the “brownest” people.

As is the custom with articles in Everyday Feminism, the density of assumption in what follows is quite high. For instance, when my family ventures out for a meal, table for twenty, I can say with some confidence that the choice of restaurant isn’t determined by the melanin levels of the people cooking it.

What happens is that food becomes the only identifier for certain places. Japan reduced to ramen and sushi, Mexico reduced to tacos and burritos, India reduced to curry, and so on.

Again, note the loadedness, the questions begged. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten, say, chili while convinced that said meal was an adequate distillation of the entire population of Mexico and Texas, past and present. Nor can I recall “fetishizing the sustenance of another culture.” Or “subsuming histories and stories into menu items.” It’s a meal, not an attempt to absorb world history or to flirt with some notional brownness. Yet this is asserted as “what happens,” as some universal fact. And then promptly contradicted:  

Eating food from another culture in isolation from that culture’s history and also current issues mean [sic] that we’re just borrowing the pieces that are enjoyable – palatable and easily digestible. 

Um, isn’t that rather the point? You know, tastiness without baggage? Isn’t that what makes foreign cuisine commercially viable, a livelihood of millions? Or is ordering takeout only acceptable following lengthy, brow-furrowing investment in each and every vendor’s ancestral culture and current politics? Should every visit to, say, a Pakistani restaurant entail a stern lecture on the pros and cons of European colonialism and a lifetime subscription to the fever dream of Islam? Would that aid digestion? Stated plainly, it sounds a little silly. But Ms Kuo wishes to appear concerned, deeply concerned, that people of pallor might enjoy falafel and a spot of hummus “but not understand or address the ongoing Islamophobia in the US.”

Sail away, sail away, sail away. (h/t, Damian) // At last, a self-operated mechanical hugging machine. // Selfie arm extensions. // An interactive self-updating history of the world. // Shazam your beer. // Slackline walking, it’s not for everyone. // He folds paper better than you do. // Portable and discreet. // At last, videos for pets. Look, Fido. Squirrel! // In fairness, new shoes cheer me up too. // A tall chap in wartime, 1944. (h/t, Kristian) // Tip of Fuji. // 57. // Give the gift of life skills. // Loudspeakers of note. // The eagle hunters of Mongolia. // Assorted Bond interiors. (h/t, Things) // This. // Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity explained in simple terms. // Cup of penis. // 230-foot Croatian sea-organ. // Someone fetch Mulder and Scully, there’s oddness afoot.