Hewn from marble, some 400 years ago, by a 23-year-old. || Gentleman of the road. || I do believe it’s Mickey. || London’s medieval murders, an interactive map. || Are you using “anti-animal language”? || There’s always a catch. || At last, an intersectionality score calculator. || Cat-proof Christmas tree. || Scenes. || Enrichment. || These chocolates are fancier than yours. || Wing of note. || Not quite grasping how it works. (h/t, Darleen) || Today’s word is hominins. || How to wrap gifts without tape. Patience not included. || An archive of downloadable historical maps. || Meet the Mellotron, 1965. || Mouse housing. || Designer spinning tops. || And finally, his horizontal-bar back-flip is way better than yours.

The Wizard of Oz is a grotesque predictor of Trump’s America.

It says so here, in the Guardian. Specifically,

Oz is first wondrous and revelatory, then sinister and suspect, a good trip that goes wrong… It’s this lurking inner wrongness, the darkness at its edges and the emptiness at its core, that speaks to me now. 

The author of the above is Bidisha, a mono-named entity who may be familiar to long-term readers, and who describes herself, unironically, as a “non-white angry political female.” One who seems determined to find yet another staple of Christmas both ghastly and problematic:

It’s impossible to watch the newly crowned ‘most influential film ever’ without seeing the parallels to the sickly US of today.

Oh, ye doubters. Madame Bidisha has her reasons.

We can read the catastrophic effects of climate change into the tornado that sets the narrative off,

I didn’t say they would be convincing.

see the opioid crisis in the characters’ drugged sleep in Oz’s Powell and Pressburger-esque poppy field, and empathise with the mangy Lion, rusty Tin Man and under-stuffed Scarecrow’s search for organ donors and reliable medical support in an Oz without a solid welfare state.

If you think our Guardian columnist is perhaps overreaching a tad, I feel I should point out nothing that follows is likely to disabuse you.

“Are you willing to die for YouTube shit? That’s what’s gonna come, man. Death is coming to you, dude. Real shit. Feel that energy? That’s why your heart’s pounding.”

At an Antifa gathering in Seattle, Andy Ngo makes new friends.

“I’m known to do this shit for real,” an antifa protester said to me. “Are you willing to die for Youtube shit?…Death is coming to you.” pic.twitter.com/bhK2wWkMBD

— Andy Ngo 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) December 2, 2018

The clip above is from this longer video, embedded below the fold:

With the season of bonhomie fast approaching, patrons are reminded that any festive shopping done via the following Amazon links – here for the UK, and here for the US – results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

Write a list. We wouldn’t want you to forget anything, especially if it’s expensive.

Also, open thread.