Today is this blog’s birthday. Fourteen bloody years. And the damn thing’s still here. Just sayin’.

Oh, and you may want a moment to process this.  

Consider this an open thread, in which to share links and bicker.

In the Los Angeles Times, a tale of high roads not taken:  

Oh, heck no. The Trumpites next door to our pandemic getaway, who seem as devoted to the ex-president as you can get without being Q fans, just ploughed our driveway without being asked and did a great job.

The author of the above, Ms Virginia Heffernan, not only has a “pandemic getaway,” which must be nice, but also neighbours sufficiently thoughtful to clear her drive of heavy snow. Inevitably, this induces not gratitude or warm feelings, but fretting and resentment, such that the aforementioned act of kindness is framed, disdainfully, as “aggressive niceness.” Exactly how Ms Heffernan’s neighbours were being aggressive is unclear, but it seems that we, the reader, are expected to dislike them, quite intensely, on account of their being insufficiently leftist.

Of course, on some level, I realise I owe them thanks,

On some level, says she.

I’m not ready to knock on the door with a covered dish yet.

As readers may be a little confused by the air of displeasure, I should point out that no history of neighbourly rancour is offered as an excuse – no disputes over hedges or noisy pets. Nothing of that sort is mentioned at all. Ms Heffernan’s neighbours are, it seems, to be frowned upon, indeed despised, in print, in a newspaper they may well read, simply for failing to vote for Mr Biden.

I also can’t give my neighbours absolution; it’s not mine to give. Free driveway work, as nice as it is, is just not the same currency as justice and truth.

Absolution, indeed. What a grandiose creature she is. And so, instead of the customary thanks, Ms Heffernan extends to her neighbours – via the medium of a newspaper column intended to shame them – an ultimatum of sorts:

Unforeseen consequences. || My money’s on the little guy. || He made his own. || New neighbours detected || Forming spheres. || Fun with sand, some rubbing. || Electro-pop. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus) || Today’s word is suboptimal. || She’s an educator, you know. || Modernity is a hell of a thing. || See also. || Screams stopping abruptly, a thread. || Reverse your videos. Or pretty much any video. || “Very disturbed people.” || Branding, baby. || Being woke, she is of course enraged. || Eye-catching, yes, but a bugger to dust. || A collection of found paper aeroplanes. (h/t, Things) || Today’s other words are lubricant and pen torch. || A love like no other. || Clouds. || And finally, some behavioural correction.

Via pst314 in the comments, a tale of crime and punishment. Well, crime, anyway:

A man who was carjacked at gunpoint while he shovelled out a parking space in [West Town, Chicago] on Tuesday night is refusing to press charges in the case, according to Chicago police. The victim “felt sorry for them” and felt that the four people Chicago police found riding around in his freshly-hijacked Lexus have had a rough life, according to a source. He also reportedly told investigators that the hijackers probably just needed a car.

They just needed a car, while already in a car – specifically, a tan Ford Fusion. So, a second, more statusful car was needed, along with anything else of value the victim happened to have. The use to which this additional vehicle might be put does not appear to have troubled our big-hearted Lexus owner, who wishes us to know how forgiving he is, how gushing with compassion.

No charges will be filed against any of them in connection with the matter because the victim refused to prosecute, police confirmed Wednesday morning. [One of the carjackers,] John Daniels of the South Shore neighbourhood, is being detained on an outstanding warrant in a different matter.

But of course. Not the first brush with the law, then, and almost certainly not the last. Carjackers, most of whom menace their victims with firearms and/or knives, having some of the highest rates of recidivism, close to 80%, and with the stolen vehicles frequently being used to commit other serious crimes, including robbery and, very often, drive-by shootings.

And so, because of this clown’s self-imagined altruism – which is to say, his preening and moral cowardice – the armed carjackers will learn a perverse lesson about violating the law-abiding, at gunpoint, and getting away with it. They will be emboldened further and incentivised to see others as mere prey, people from whom things can be taken. And their next victims, whether of carjacking or something else, something worse, will not have figured in this man’s lofty theatre of forgiveness.

In the clown-shoe world of San Francisco public schools, honking ensues:

The director of the district’s arts department told local ABC7 news that a decision has been made to change the name of their department, “VAPA,” which is short for visual and performing arts. The new name will be SFUSD Arts Department. “We are prioritising antiracist arts instruction in our work,” the director, Sam Bass, told the network.

I’ll give you a moment to process the notion of “antiracist arts instruction” and how one might prioritise this feat over more mundane matters. Say, encouraging competence. To say nothing of students of the visual and performing arts who apparently struggle with the words visual, performing and arts.

“The use of so many acronyms within the educational field often tends to alienate those who may not speak English to understand the acronym.”

At which point, readers unmoved by wokeness may be inclined to point out that a way to overcome alienation – here, it seems, a euphemism for ignorance – is via students learning things, perhaps even words. Which is, I gather, what takes place in schools, theoretically, even those in San Francisco.

However, the fretful and enlightened educators wish us to know that unremarkable terms that are not “proactively chosen” by minority students – including departmental acronyms – are “damaging” and “oppressive,” and actually a symptom of “white supremacy culture” and “white supremacy thinking.” Albeit in ways not entirely obvious, and in an environment where the imagined feelings of non-white students, or those who claim to speak on their behalf, seemingly trump those of everyone else.

And if a punchline seems in order:

It was not clear whether SFUSD was also considered a racist acronym.

Via Darleen.