And it falls from the sky. (h/t, Damian) // The great animal orchestra. // Cardboard cat ark. // I think there’s a story here. // Whatever you do, don’t push the button. // A brief history of sea monkeys and instant fish. // Big determined cat fits in a small mixing bowl. // Jim LeBlanc’s bad day in a NASA vacuum chamber. // Perhaps not. // Radium suppositories. // Good parents don’t let their children waste money on a gender studies course. // 3D-printed pancakes. SD card compatible. // The Amazon grocery store has no queues and no checkout. // He stacks coins better than you do. // A brief history of human population growth. // Stay tuned for deer and the odd raccoon. // And finally, their first mistake was marketing the drink as “bottled spunk.” Then things went downhill.

Attention, rubes, dupes and suckers. Do you pretend to experience crippling racial guilt in order to appear pious and fit in? Is “white supremacy,” “white privilege” and all that other pretentious angst weighing on your shoulders, harshing your buzz? Do you want to empower, or at least enrich, some “black femme freedom fighters”? Do you require monthly “tasks” – and a monthly bill of $100 – to atone for your pallor and “pay reparations” – to prove that, despite being white, you’re not a terrible person, unlike all those other awful white people? 

Then this is for you. 

Via dicentra, who reminds us that the above is not a work of satire. 

Speaking of wordplay, we’re once again being told that Baby, It’s Cold Outside is actually an ode to date rape. As so often, the umbrage-takers display a remarkable level of tin-earedness regarding the sentiment of the song, and a joke about feigned intoxication as an excuse for behaving as one might wish. And as noted in the comments over at Instapundit, “There was a time progressives would have said it was about a woman who obviously wants to have sex, but is being oppressed by slut-shamers through fear.”

Update, via the comments:

From the Huffington Post piece linked at Instapundit:

You’d think that self-styled singer-songwriters would be able to deduce things from lyrics, arrangement and intonation. And it’s interesting how the rather sour, supposedly progressive interpretation, wheeled out every year in near-identical articles, assumes that the woman in the song is somehow passive and a victim, rather than an equal and willing participant. As Darleen puts it in the comments here, the song is in fact a kind of lyrical tango, “an intricate dance where each partner consents to play a part.”

And from a related CNN article, where the point of the song is, again, spectacularly missed:

Somewhere, Mr and Mrs Loesser, the writers of Baby, It’s Cold Outside, are rolling their eyes in unison.

Inevitably, and in keeping with tradition, Laurie Penny also misses the point:

Don't get me started on 'Baby, It's Cold Outside.' A jolly festive tune about ignoring women's sexual agency. I've heard it twice today.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) November 30, 2015

Readers are invited to ponder which party – the songwriters or Ms Penny – is actually “ignoring women’s sexual agency.” A demonstration, were one needed, of how rote feminism can bleach away any trace of subtlety.

To my ear, and plenty of others, the woman in the song is far from passive and is listing the customary reasons for leaving, almost all of which are external social pressures and proprieties – gossipy neighbours, maiden aunts with vicious minds – while very much wanting to stay. The crude feminist reading of the song, illustrated above, is of him trying to coerce her. It’s actually about both of them, together, very knowingly, pushing against the social conventions of the time. Which is probably why the song was once considered somewhat risqué.

Still, one has to marvel at how the default progressive line is not only tin-eared and wrong, but actually an inversion of the songwriters’ intent.

The song isn’t about ignoring or overriding the woman’s preferences, or indeed drugging her – but quite the opposite. Throughout the song, they’re both thinking of ways to delay her departure. Half a drink, another cigarette. And despite the woman running through the list of obstacles to her passion, and saying that she “ought to say no,” because social convention expects her to forego her own preferences, the song concludes with the woman deciding that she’s “gonna say” that she tried to go home but was thwarted by the blizzard.

The two of them then agree, in unison and in harmony, that the weather outside really is terrible.

Because you crave more feminist poetry and Ms Desireé Dallagiacomo feels the need to share:

“My thighs feel upset because you only offered one bite of your Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.” Previously.

A display of leftist piety. And one man’s extraordinary patience. 

Via Jonathan.

It’s my bag now. // The Boston molasses flood of 1919. // The history of a meme. (h/t, Damian) // Happiness imminent. // Leia snails. // Hardcore shoe repair. // Gad Saad chats with Douglas Murray: “Islam is the slowest kid in the class.” // Swelling, wheezing and other dangers of kissing. // When warriors weep. (h/t, dicentra) // “It’s wheels stuck to your butt.” // It would happen and you know it. (h/t, Peter) // With pen and ink and patience. // There aren’t that many newspapers on New York City newsstands. // This. // That. // Dogs. // Drone countermeasures. // And finally, harrowingly, a robot rampage horror story.

In this push for ethnic, sexual and racial diversity – which I think is just a mask to enforce ideological homogeneity – there’s no understanding that ideational diversity is the only relevant value for a university. The rest of it is all predicated on the assumption that if you select people because of their ethnicity or racial background or gender, that will, in and of itself, produce diversity of ideas - which is really pernicious… The idea that you’re going to get a diversity of ideas because you have a diversity of classes of people assumes that ideas and identity are the same thing. And that’s an absurd proposition. In fact that’s an essentially racial – and racist – proposition.

Joe Rogan chats, at length, with psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson. 

It’s time to turn, once again, to the pages of Everyday Feminism, where Ms Hannah Brooks Olsen wants to educate us about “the real face of poverty” – specifically, Millennial poverty, as experienced by herself: 

As a white, 22-year-old college graduate in a second-hand dress, I did not look like what we think of as “poor.” Of course, at that exact moment, I had, yes, a college degree and a coveted unpaid (because of course it was unpaid) internship at a public radio station. But I also had a minimum wage job to support myself, $17 in my bank account, $65,000 in debt to my name, and $800 in rent due in 24 days.

It’s not a happy tale. This is, after all, Everyday Feminism.

I was extremely hungry, worried about my utilities being shut off, and 100% planning to hit up the dumpster at the nearby Starbucks… I had no functional stove in my tiny apartment because the gas it took to make it work was, at $10 per month, too expensive.

Such, then, are the hardships of “Millennial college grads,” whose suffering, we’re told, often passes unremarked:

Through college debt, we are minting a new generation of people with fewer opportunities, rather than more. Even if you glossed right over the teachings of Thomas Piketty…

the teachings of Thomas Piketty

…you probably know that those who begin poor are more likely to stay poor… New grads no longer start from zero  –  they start with a negative balance.

Well, it’s generally the custom that loans have to be repaid. And so choosing a degree course, or choosing whether to take one at all, is a matter of some consequence. Such is adulthood.

Many college graduates are worse off than they would have been if they’d directly entered the workforce debt-free.

And so, as in many things, one should choose wisely. Ms Olsen goes on to ponder the woes of “Millennials of colour,” and the alleged “gender pay gap,” before wondering whether all university education should be “free” – which is to say, paid for by some other sucker. Say, those who would see no benefit in being forced to further subsidise the lifestyle choices of people who end up writing for Everyday Feminism.

And then, eventually, we come to the nub of it:

On those fattening mirrors that all ladies’ clothes stores secretly use. 

Click and listen. // Cats wearing hats made from their own hair. An allergy nightmare but a fashion triumph. // For a limited time only. // Valaida croons, gets groovy. // Incongruity. // Swapperoo is a game. // “For everyday essentials, like brandy, teabags and Tupperware.” // The Fondoodler also has a “cheese propulsion valve.” // What fungus does in the dark. // This. // That. // A bit of the other. // Canned whole chicken. Because it can be done. // Educators of note. // So ladies, is this ageism or body-shaming? // “When the bass drops, so does the dance floor.” // OK Go. // On poverty misconceived. // The things you can do with some laser-cut paper and patience. // More joys of public transport. // And finally, “Cherry pits and one hazelnut were visible with the naked eye.”