Design flaw detected. || r/Deathladders, a collection of unconvincing support apparatus. || Revving and regret. || V8 street bike. || A tale of Lake Cow Bacon: “Broussard insisted that the creatures were naturally tame and their meat was delicious.” || James Bond comic books from India. (h/t, Tacky Raccoons) || Like aerial ballet. || When you bring home a playmate. || Know your saucepan, 1973. || The joys of public transport. || The progressive retail experience, parts 639, 640, 641, 642, and 643. || Sudden-onset upwardsness. || He doesn’t like talking about his personal life. || She’s a masterpiece evolving. || It’s amazing how quickly the day can turn to shit. || Now is not a good time. || Regarding legroom. || For lovers of never-ending drum solos. || Oh, and finally, fashion choices were made.

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For newcomers, some items from the archives:

Any Widening Of The Eyes Will Result In Detention.

Teacher Appreciation Week, but with ludicrous wigs and big rubber tits.

His Heterosexuality Did It.

The crushing terror of “white supremacy” in middle-school maths class.

Explaining Civilisation.

To those seemingly unfamiliar with the concept.

For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

From the pages of Business Insider, more progressive-woman-lifestyle news:

What those values might be will, perhaps, become clear, if only by implication.

That’s the article’s headline. The star of this drama is Ms Cindy Sheahan, a former real-estate agent. Judging by the tone and triumphant photograph, I’m guessing we’re supposed to regard Ms Sheahan as some kind of inspirational figure. No explanation is offered for Ms Sheahan divorcing her husband, taking half his stuff, and then putting half a planet between her family and herself. There are no mutterings of neglect or infidelity. No hardships of any kind.

The nearest we come to a justification is,

And, er, so,

Again, the whys and wherefores of this radical uprooting remain oddly nebulous. Beyond, that is, the intrigue of unfamiliar food. We are, however, informed,

So says our woman of high progressive principle – the woman who abandoned her husband and family, and her job, seemingly forever, despite promising to return:

Quite what Ms Sheahan’s employers made of this, or indeed her husband and four children, is, alas, not disclosed. Evidently they were deemed of no importance in this tale of progressive empowerment. And so, Ms Sheahan went searching for herself in Cambodia, and in Vietnam. And Laos. And Madagascar. And Turkey and Cyprus. And France and Spain and Portugal and Greece. Indeed, this quest for self – this attempt to find an alignment of values – spanned “nearly fifty countries.”

Before – presumably thwarted – trying Italy:

And as you can imagine, Ms Sheahan is so into authenticity.

And being so authentic, so attuned to higher matters, her days are now spent eating alone in restaurants:

Oh, and grocery shopping. Specifically,

Ah, the inexhaustible romance of buying tomatoes. It’s all about personal growth, you see:

For some reason, the abandoned husband and four distant children come to mind.

Ah.

So screw those guys. Madam has tomatoes to buy.

If the above sounds vaguely familiar, you may be thinking of this.

Via Dicentra.

Discourse was attempted. || It’s all in the tongue, I’m told. || A little snug. || Incoming. || Incoming 2. || Instant immortality, 1970. || A map of light pollution. || On why we might not want to detect, or be detected by, an alien intelligence. Previously, on relativistic weapons. || Splashes in a vacuum. || Suboptimal situation. || A spot of Chopin. || Parenting. || A project for the weekend. || When you forget you’re in charge. || The testosterone makes her sweat. || The thrill of self-touching. || “I studied non-binary identities in college.” || But he was only going to stab y’all. || Keyboard. || Discussion point. || For lovers of equations: “Why can’t you walk through walls if atoms are mostly empty space?” || It would be easier if you quit squirming. || Oh, and scenes of pumping and squeaking.

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In the pages of British Vogue, Ms Hanna Flint is dismayed that new adaptations of works by Emily Brontë and Jane Austen have,

How very dare they.

Says Ms Flint,

Richness and relevance, and imagination, being determined by race, of course.

I’m not at all sure what historical inclusivity might mean, given the racial demographics of rural England at the time of Brontë and Austen, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, what Ms Flint seems to want sounds more like ahistorical inclusivity. And whether incongruous, politically corrected racial casting choices constitute “imagination,” rather than a following of Very Modern Fashion, is a question I leave to the reader.

“Why Is The Next Wave Of Period Dramas So White?” asks the headline of the article, with the obligatory note of disapproval. An understood tutting, one presumed of its readers. Yet I’m struggling to picture Ms Flint making demands that period dramas produced in China and set in the Han Dynasty be adjusted so as to accommodate “excluded or marginalised” actors who resemble Jack Hawkins or Charles Gray.

Ms Flint, “a mixed-race woman, of British and Tunisian heritage,” informs us that, despite her enthusiasm for the genre, “I was left somewhat cold by the news that all these remakes had cast the protagonists as white once again.” Yet this train of thought terminates before reaching the possibility that others, perhaps some larger number, might be left somewhat cold by modish anachronism and jarring contrivance.

It seems to have escaped Ms Flint that, for many, the appeal of period dramas is, as it were, a holiday in time – a brief respite from modernity, its politics and paraphernalia, and perhaps even from those “diverse, multicultural surroundings” that Ms Flint feels should be the foundation of all drama and period-specific programming.

Whatever its merits in terms of modern “workforce inclusivity,” ahistorical, racially ostentatious casting does, for many viewers, risk breaking the spell, making any suspension of disbelief more difficult, while shifting the focus away from then and back to now.

Previously and related, on sex-swapping Bond.