Here’s an open thread, in which to share links and bicker.

I think it’s time we elevated the tone with some coverage of the arts. Beginning with the colossal creative talents of Ms Sandrine Schaefer, whose collected Goose Studies are presented below. The opening extract, a site-specific installation, was performed in New York in October. The organisers of the event, titled Performance Is Alive, tell us that in order to avoid being “vapid,” they curate only “the best projects based on the merits of the work.” They are, we learn, presenting “art that’s critical and progressive and transgressive.” 

For those prone to erotic inflammation, a word of caution. The following video does contain traces of obligatory boobage.

Yes, a chance to throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with the power of gift bags; a girl who’s got volume; cows and VR, together at last; and a great question of our time: Snake and Tetris – can you play them simultaneously?

Oh, and a perfect illustration of how to be cool about it.

I don’t often comment on the particulars of party politics, but it seemed unfair to deprive you of a chance to witness this 30-minute BBC interview, in which the leader of the Labour Party has a spot of bother. Of particular interest is the final question, around 25 minutes in.  

Those seeking reassurance can of course turn to the words of Laurie Penny. 

“My oppression is not a delusion.”

So chanted students at the College of the Holy Cross, a private, and rather handsome, liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts, and for which parents fork out $54,000 a year in order to have their children brutally oppressed. In this case, by a talk by Heather Mac Donald.

Being righteously engorged, the protestors disrupted Ms Mac Donald’s lecture, refused repeated offers to engage in debate, and prevented would-be attendees from entering the venue, telling those outside that the guest had left the building, when in fact she hadn’t. This being what righteous people do, you see.

The demonstrators… left, yelling: “Your sexism is not welcome!” “Your racism is not welcome!” “Your homophobia is not welcome!” “YOU are not welcome!”

Evidence of said vices was not, it seems, forthcoming.

Needless to say, the protestors denounced Ms Mac Donald’s alleged “privilege,” while somehow not noticing their own air of entitlement and obvious leverage, deployed with recreational glee, and their own, seemingly routine expectations of impunity. And again, as so often, it’s worth noting the protestors’ mix of vanity and casual spite – choosing lies and mob coercion in order to cheat other students of their chance to hear Ms Mac Donald and ask her questions. An overt display of disdain for those who might dare to demur. And who, by extension, are presumably unwelcome too.

Update, via the comments: