Look away now. || I laughed and I’m not sorry. || Maybe a bath. || Giant cat roams British countryside. || Today’s word is suboptimal. || Does both ends, you know. || He does this better than you do. || High drama. || Kinship detected. (h/t, Julia) || The thrill of fertilisation. || Modern fretting. || Wait for it. || You want one and you know it. || At last, an hour of whale probe ambience. || First-person parkour with balloons and monkeys. || Tape recorders of yore. (h/t, Things) || Light and layered glass. || More glamourous than thou. || It has “autonomous steaming technology.” || Snow in Nagano. || Not a lot happened, then quite a lot did. || And finally, the heroic intervention didn’t go entirely to plan.

A third-grade teacher at R.I. Meyerholz Elementary School began the lesson on “social identities” during a math class.

But of course. You see, for some primary-school teachers, conveying the basics of arithmetic and fractions isn’t sufficiently sexy or particularly statusful. Marxoid pronouncements on “power and privilege,” however, and sermons on how straight white men are oppressing everyone else, are much more flattering to the ego of a leftist educator.

And after all, those pretentious resentments, the ones you hope to exploit, won’t cultivate themselves. Oh, and apparently, transgenderism and “nonbinary sexuality” are suitable classroom topics for the modern eight-year-old.

What, you didn’t know?

Nor did the parents.

Update, via the comments, where Karen adds,

Today’s word is ‘fraud’.

Given the apparent indifference to parental approval – one might call it subterfuge – you do have to wonder exactly how much class time has been wasted on ‘projects’ of this kind. Or would have been, had parents not discovered what their children were actually being taught instead of mathematics.

And it is, I think, interesting just how often these things occur without the knowledge or consent of the parents whose children are being indoctrinated and psychologically abused, as if such details didn’t matter. As if the children weren’t theirs.

Note too how readily parental umbrage is framed as “divisive.” As if the problem were the parents, not the ideologically possessed educators.

She chose to share, and thereby impress. Pronouns, obviously.

Update, via the comments:

Given Ms Vilkomerson’s ostentatiously woke outpourings elsewhere, I think we can assume that, whether true or fabricated, said tweet was intended to both amuse and be met with approval. A bit of peer-group positioning, The key part being the modish dismissal of “white boys.” (Sort of, “See, I’ve taught my daughter to disdain whiteness and masculinity. How brave I am.”) That said tweet conveys other things, and unintended ironies, seems to have escaped Ms Vilkomerson.

As public boasts go, it’s quite a strange thing. I mean, you can imagine a proud parent announcing that their fourteen-year-old had passed a chemistry exam or reached piano grade three or something. But wanting to announce that your fourteen-year-old has internalised pretentious disdain for white people, and white men in particular, seems… obnoxiously unhinged. That this is apparently something statusful, a basis for applause, or at least in-group belonging, does not make it seem less so.

Via Rafi.

Or, Our Betters Breathe Deeply – Into A Paper Bag: 

Mr Tiedrich tweets about Donald Trump many times, every day. And Ms Vee meditates, you know. 

Update, via the comments:

Jen quips, “They’re going to miss him.”

Well, I suppose that if your peer group is one that requires endless, competitive signalling – via breathless claims of how monstrous and fascistic the current incumbent of the White House is, and how mentally debilitating even thinking about him is, which you nonetheless do, every day, of course – then the prospect of losing that object of hate, and status, must be a cause of… mixed feelings. Though it’s quite odd how the people who imagine themselves our political betters, the ones to whom we should defer, are very often neurotic monomaniacs whose minds seem bizarrely fragile and forever on the verge of coming undone. 

Update 2:

It didn’t go as planned and was a tad embarrassing. || Bee rears. || A brief history of peanut butter. || Goldfish playing football. || Formal wear, I guess. || Indoor weather detected. || When the delightful scenery attacks you. || And who here wouldn’t? (h/t, Julia) || “We hope you are as excited as we are.” || Today’s words are “angry cock energy.” || Assorted background noises. (h/t, Things) || Upmarket scented bubbles. || At last, a Rubik’s Cube movie. || Modernity is a hell of a thing. || The thrill of car park security footage. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || The joys of public transport, part 276. || Tokyo’s museum of parasites. || A brief history of the violin bow. || Noisy birds. || And finally, activate black polo-neck.

And so, as the novelty wears thin, and we once again daub our doors with lamb’s blood, let us share links and bicker. 

I’ll set the ball rolling with a woke prayer, some emotional scenes, and a reminder that size matters. 

As some of you may be shopping from home a little more than usual, please bear in mind that any Amazon UK shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

It does help to keep this place here.

For those in need of further diversion, the Reheated series is there to be poked at. 

As we gingerly lower our buttocks into the hot bath of ’21, spare a thought for the Guardian’s Afua Hirsch and her statusful associates:

A conversation I had recently with a black woman who wields enormous power in the TV industry sums it up for me. She and I were meeting from our respective bedrooms in the now familiar, strange intimacy of a one-on-one Zoom meeting. She has developed a massive rash all over her boobs.

The cause of this rash? Well, this is the Guardian. And so, 

“It’s years of bullshit – racism, micro-aggressions,” she told me in a matter-of-fact tone. “I have never had any eczema before. My doctor said it’s erupted now because I’ve finally given myself permission to acknowledge the toxic stuff I’ve been putting up with during all these decades of my career.”

Readers are invited to ponder whether a reputable GP, one fit for employment, would actually diagnose racist microaggressions as the most obvious cause of boob eczema. Rather than, say, suggesting a change of bra or detergent. It does sound both improbable and awfully specific, as if tailored to the preoccupations of a tiresome monomaniac. But clearly this is something that Ms Hirsch is quite eager to believe, or at least have us believe, and is presented as damning evidence of both “structural racism” and, simultaneously, the urgent need to pathologise “whiteness.” It’s also, apparently, a reason to denounce a government minister who dares to question whether pretentious victimhood is an optimal life goal.

For Ms Hirsch, microaggression boob rash “sums it up.”

Via the Lancastrian Oik.