Simpler times. (h/t, Damian) || Trophy malfunction of note. (h/t, Julia) ||  “No Trump supporters.” || Getting to grips with a foreign tongue. || Snug. || Ideal gift for Julia. || Next best thing. || Now, about that bad day you’ve had… || Our betters impart their wisdom. We need reminding, you see. (h/t, Darleen) || Our betters impart their wisdom 2. || Unsupervised potatoes. || Pedal-powered at 590 feet. || Hardcore headline. || Crane use of note. || New York, 1930s. || Nommy nommy nom. || Nature sound map and wild ambience. (h/t, Things) || Bolero, on one cello. || These are some of those. || The thrill of sea slugs. || Silent-era film effects. || And finally, understandably, she feared its mighty power.

Consider this an open thread, but with a catch. Due to my infinite cunning.

Because, yes, it’s time to remind patrons that this rickety barge, on whose seating your arses rest, is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain ad-free, there are button in the sidebar with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. And if one-click haste is called for, my PalPay.Me page can be found here. Additionally, 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.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last fourteen years, in over 3,000 posts and over 100,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year-summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.

If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.

Now share ye links and bicker.

Because you crave one, it’s time for a thrilling adventure in the world of detergent.

My husband does the laundry. No one asks him to, and often no one thanks him for doing it. But somehow, every week, our clothes, our kids’ clothes, the towels, the sheets; they all get cleaned. And with each load, the jealousy grows.

Should readers be confused – and I quite understand – the jealousy is that of Erin Hendriksen, a contributor to Scary Mommy.

Throwing the piles into the washing machine is definitely the easy part. From there, he sorts them into mounds of hang-dry vs. dryer items, hangs the clothes, folds the towels and clothes, and puts the fresh sheets on the beds. A couple of times per week, I walk into our bedroom to find a tidy little pile of my clothes. They are folded with tenderness, neatly stacked, and grouped by category. 

What glorious man-creature is this?

I know he would put them away, too, if only he knew where they went.

A flaw. Thank goodness.

That is not even close to all he does around the house either. He’s the dishwasher, the grocery collector, the garbage remover, and the maintenance man. He follows behind us all, picking up the thrown socks, crumbs, and toys, somehow managing to maintain some sort of order within the chaos.

Ms Hendriksen’s husband also entertains the children with “nightly horsey rides, weekend swimming lessons, and stories before bed.” However, this is Scary Mommy, where progressive ladies bare their souls. And so, complications, and notes of sourness, must forever loom.  

I know that I am lucky to have him, he is a saint — but does he know how lucky he is? My husband… gets to leave the house… He ventures out into the world… taking in the fresh air, talking to someone other than me, and focusing on things that don’t involve our family. Sometimes he meets a friend for a socially distanced coffee. He often returns with a spring in his step, a spring that hasn’t been in my step for months. No wonder he has the energy to do the laundry… I resent that he can walk away, head downstairs, or off to work and take that vacation.

A vacation at work, that is – earning money to pay the bills. Not least, for detergent and fabric softener.

Noah Carl on fashionable indignation versus probity and thinking: 

There are several things to notice here. First, the signatories use the word ‘revisits’ – rather than say ‘examines’ or ‘investigates’ – to imply that the theories in question have already been disproved, and hence that [economic historian, Gregory] Clark is engaged in some sort of futile exercise. Second, so far as I’m aware, ‘naturalization’ refers to the process of becoming a citizen of another country. I presume the signatories meant ‘naturalization’ in the sense of “nature versus nurture,” but it’s a very odd word to use. Third, the signatories refer to the “vast amount of research” that supposedly refutes Clark’s thesis, but don’t actually bother to cite any.

The unhappy signatories do, however, mention race and racism repeatedly – as, it seems, is the custom – despite the offending paper referring to race precisely zero times. 

Not entirely unrelated.*

Regarding the above, it occurs to me that if people are obliged, on pain of social exclusion and near-immediate career destruction, to mouth pieties that are illogical, blatantly question-begging, and which jar with observable reality, this will tend to result in an erosion of probity, a habit of pretence, and perhaps a kind of neuroticism.

Speaking of academic standards, an Ohio resident shares her displeasure with woke educators and their niche preoccupations: 

“Now, the residents with kids who did find out about your deviant curriculum, they pulled their kids out as fast as they could. More are withdrawing their kids because the school has lost control of the classroom environment,” she said. She took a moment to collect her thoughts, and then went on to say that “in the document for critical race theory, the stated goal is to make children activists in their own home. What does that mean?” She asked. “Why are you trying to create an adversarial relationship between parents and child when that is the relationship that needs to be strengthened?”

And somewhat related, Christopher F Rufo shares a conference for North Carolina’s public school teachers: 

At the first session, “Whiteness in Ed Spaces,” school administrators provided two handouts on the “norms of whiteness.” These documents claimed that “(white) cultural values” include “denial,” “fear,” “blame,” “control,” “punishment,” “scarcity,” and “one-dimensional thinking.” […]

For parents-to-be. || Empath. || Oh, brave new world that has such widgets in it. || The young in love. Or in heat, at least. || The thrill of wood steaming. || Fiddlesome games. || Difference noted. || Just like normal people. || Shopping mall scenes. || Unattractive sofa. || SR-72 rumours. “Anywhere on the planet, in an hour, or less.” || Spanish village of note. || Sperm whales 360. || Sticky situation. || Questions exchanged. || An aesthetic statement. || For devotees of the Clown Quarter and its wonders, this is one of these. || Critters. (h/t, Noah Carl) || Scenes of hardcore waitressing. || Only hiring the best, I see. || Error detected. || And finally, somewhat alarmingly, the humanoid equivalent of the Venus flytrap.