Are you neurotic, insecure, easily preyed upon? Or maybe just pretentious and desperate to participate in some fashionable agonising? If so, this exclusive online seminar – So… You Have White Guilt. What Now? – is just the thing for you. During the seminar, you’ll be taught how to “avoid acting out the guilty, white stereotype” by “channelling” your white guilt “through a healthy and productive anti-racist stance.” Provided, that is, you already have the all-important “white guilt,” without which no channelling can occur:   

You’ll receive guidance that will help you cultivate a “both/and” mindset that will allow you to hold the tension of being complicit with racism and white supremacy while simultaneously cultivating a healthy, white anti-racist identity.

Yes, all this and more can be yours. But first you must confess. And hand over $35.

We’ve been here before, of course. 

Sshh. Art is happening. Today it’s the art of Ms Nika López, seen below, as she “establishes an intimate relationship” between herself and nature. Specifically, an indoor pile of dirt. Thereby, of course, permitting us to behold,

You see, Ms López describes her mission as nothing less than “expanding the consciousness of human beings.” As will doubtless become clear.

Other, equally deep and riveting works by Ms López can be found here.

Mark Bauerlein on Jordan Peterson and the hive-mind media: 

These cases typify what we might call the Peterson Effect. Peterson brings social science findings to bear on thorny matters of men and women. Those findings run against the progressive goal of eliminating male-female differences. The journalists are unaware of the science, but they are steeped in [progressive] ideology. It’s an obdurate mix of ignorance and certainty.

As we’ve seen, more than once. And which may in part explain why Peterson’s interviews often strike a chord with a wider public, in that they tend to reveal an eerie uniformity of assumptions and begged questions, and vanities, among the media class. 

Heather Mac Donald on “diversity” and dishonesty: 

Every remotely selective college is desperate to admit as many underrepresented minorities as possible, and brags openly about its diverse student body in marketing literature. Application forms solicit students’ racial identity not to exclude underrepresented minorities, but to favour them… Far from being a handicap, being black or Hispanic is usually worth at least a standard deviation in test scores and GPA in admission to selective colleges… At Harvard, test scores and a GPA that would give an Asian-American applicant only a 25 percent chance of admission provide a 95 percent admission guarantee to a black high school senior, according to data in an ongoing discrimination lawsuit against the university.

Victor Davis Hanson on calculations of “white privilege”: 

[In the world of “diversity,”] politics had something to do with skin colour, but how and why was inferred rather than defined. If a white-looking second-generation Arab American put on a head scarf and declaimed against U.S. policy, and if she had a name that was clearly not European in origin, then she too was a “minority” and could advance claims against “white privilege.” But should she dress in assimilated fashion and voice support for the state of Israel, then she probably possessed “white privilege” and joined the victimisers rather than the victims.

And Matthew Blackwell on the megalomaniacal horrors of the Khmer Rouge: 

On second thoughts, maybe not. || Mosquitoes say hello. (h/t, Damian) || Are you wearing your anti-motion-sickness spectacles? || Something overhead. || Teeny, tiny tentacles. || Two phenomena, possibly related. || Ah, those simpler times, before white people arrived. || River bottom findings. || Continue the research. || The percentages of air in various bags of crisps. || Plaything of note. || Chinatown, New York. || “Queen of nuance.” || This is one of these. || “Why did the rescuers have to be white people?” || So much unbearable whiteness. || The eternal struggle. || At last, a Gregorian chant generator. (h/t, Things) || It’s a surprisingly versatile product. || And finally, his patience tested, Zeus shoots back.

Acting is about pretending. It’s also a business in which investors want to know ahead of time that they have a bankable star in the leading role. There may be other actors or actresses who would suit this part better, but I doubt many of them have had major roles in the Avengers films. Like it or not, that counts for something.

So writes John Sexton, steering us towards today’s pressing moral conundrum:

Is Scarlett Johansson too female to play a transgender man? 

Answers on a postcard, please.