Razib Khan reviews Charles Murray’s Facing Reality: 

Comfortable white people—“nice white parents” in affluent neighbourhoods who support efforts to “defund the police”—can refuse to look into the data or insist that those data are the product of racist systems and structures. They can “interrogate their privilege” and “confront their white supremacy,” or better yet, demand that others do so. But they won’t be any closer to understanding why poor African Americans and Latinos in inner-city neighbourhoods want more police officers in their neighbourhoods and not fewer, nor why poor African American parents clamour for access to strict charter schools that activists condemn for being “anti-black.” Principled ignorance might be a costless gesture for affluent progressives, but they’re heaping additional injustice onto the backs of those who can least afford the wages of social signalling.

Ben Sixsmith on when paedophilia was avant-garde: 

The German Green party was especially notable for its enablement of child abuse. As the Times of London reported in 2015, “a paedophile network was active in the Berlin branch of the Green party until the mid-1990s, with potentially hundreds of victims.” Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a leading student activist in the 1968 unrest and a prominent member of the Greens, wrote fantasies about sexual contact with children which he later awkwardly described as “irresponsible” and “a type of manifesto against the bourgeois society.” Cohn-Bendit was not, as you might assume, a hair-brained student when he wrote that filth, but 30 years old. Perhaps the bourgeois society had something — at least something — to be said for it.

Hans Bader on woke bigotry and a dishonest news media:

Attention, unwoke people. It’s time to be informed about “nounself pronouns and animal nounself pronouns.”

Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Yes, a chance to be thrillingly creative and throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with a small hole in the ground; some silent props for when your pool balls are too loud; via Julia, an illustration of stereotype accuracy; a realisation of note; a reminder that there’s always a catch; and a right-handed man.  

Oh, and some notable balloons.

“The best thing.”  

Some of the replies may entertain. 

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

MoZaic Care, a cosmetic surgery provider in San Francisco, California, offers a “nullification” procedure that “removes external genitalia while preserving a urethral opening and anal opening.” The same company offers a procedure called “phalgina,” or “penile preservation vaginoplasty,” which allows males who identify as transgender or non-binary to install a facsimile of a vagina while retaining the penis.

In the company literature, the words “gender affirming” are used. Seemingly without irony. 

For those determined to behold the fruits of “nullification,” “phallus-preserving vaginoplasty,” “vagina-preserving phalloplasty” and other surgical adventures, photos can be found. However, needless to say, search at your peril.

And remember, dear readers, “Genital preferences are transphobic.”

Also, open thread.