That was not what I was expecting. || Speck at speed. || Pattern detected. || Peekaboo. || Because you like a project: How to make a brass and steel 8-ball. || Old bill. || Jellybean corn. || Boyfriend material. || Meatbird. || Because style points matter. || Frankly, I’m concerned by the lack of legroom. || When you may have joined a cult. || He likes coffee and lives in an abandoned elementary school. || Doll’s house of note. || She’s a lady. || On the evolution of the human arse. || Tiny treehouse kit. || Skeletons in the closet. || A compendium of cheap Irish houses. (h/t, Things) || Highway kaleidoscope. || Mystery solved. || More anarchist genius. || And finally, in prosthetics news, the thrill of receiving your artificial toes.

Heather Mac Donald on the new woke rules:

Sunday’s anti-cop riots in Lancaster, Pa., have made the current de facto rules of engagement clear: Officers may never defend themselves against lethal force if their attacker is a minority. They should simply accept being shot or stabbed as penance for their alleged racism.

Mr Ricardo Munoz, 27, the noble, oppressed citizen in whose name our betters rage, can be seen being lively here. Mr Munoz had a history of involvement in stabbing incidents, including the stabbing of women and children, and a history of resisting arrest. 

The stuff of sainthood, clearly.

One could easily get the impression that as a civilisation we’re suffering the equivalent of kidney failure, in that the toxins that inevitably accumulate are no longer being expelled. We even have a loud and influential demographic, including children of the elite, telling us, quite forcibly, that kidney failure is a good thing, something we should want. Such is wokeness.

Update, via the comments:

The implications of the unrest that followed the demise of Mr Munoz fit rather well with an all-too-common strain of leftist thought – or posturing, at least – according to which, we should not defend ourselves against habitual predation and malevolence, even if our lives may be in peril. And according to which, the creatures violating us, treating us as mere prey, people from whom things can be taken, are the ones most deserving of our sympathy and indulgence. Pretentious sympathy, of course. But still. 

See also the second item here, on leftist theories of crime, and the airy pronouncements of Mr Clive Stafford Smith – a man who believes that the wellbeing of burglars is more important than the wellbeing of their numerous victims, especially if the burglar is a “young black person.” And who regards anger at being burgled and the subsequent sense of violation as plebeian and unsophisticated, while disdaining the victims’ expectations of justice as, and I quote, “idiotic attitudes.”

Update 2, via Ed at Instapundit:

Theodore Dalrymple on pretentious guilt and moral grandiosity: 

But posing and posturing have become a mass phenomenon, the tattooing of our time. Of nothing is this more true than contemporary Woke morality. Whereas not long ago young people of the middle classes sought to express their sympathy for the lower and supposedly oppressed orders by imitating their tattoos and way of dress, imitation being the highest form of empathy available to egotists, they now express the same desire by making Wokeness the touchstone of their morality. They think they are rebelling when, of course, they are conforming. They do not realise that it is more difficult, and more courageous, to contradict a friend than to criticise a society.

Douglas Murray on denunciation hysteria and societal malware: 

It is unsustainable that we are held hostage as a nation by a minority of fanatics, who have fanatical views that we have never voted in… You do not have to pay your tithes to Black Lives Matter; you do not have to pay your Danegeld to the latest LGBT thing. You don’t have to do any of this. […]  

I don’t care if [the media] say [Tony Abbott] is a misogynist. I don’t care if they say he’s a homophobe. I don’t care about any of it now and nor should anybody else. They’ve overused their currency. They’ve hyperinflated – we’re in Zimbabwean situation. And it’s time that we say, ‘We don’t care. Your magic spell-words don’t work anymore.’ […] By the way, it has to be said, if you are Kay Burley and watching this, I’ll play that game back to her. 2009, she throttled a female reporter round the neck until the woman was bruised. Okay? Fine, Kay Burley, want to play that game? ‘No-one should appear in a studio with Kay Burley because she’s someone who throttles women ‘til they’re bruised. And if you appear in a studio with her, you approve of the throttling of women.’

And G. Thomas Burgess on the perverse, dystopian outpourings of Ibram X. Kendi:

I’m not entirely sure what’s happening here. || Plaything of note. || Today’s word is ambition. || A searchable archive of old book illustrations. (h/t, Things) || The village of upside-down boat houses. (h/t, PiperPaul) || Premature greeting. || Snout patting of note. || “Something needed to be done.” || Scenes. || No, don’t thank me. || You’d never tire of this. || Continue the research. || The thrill of the circus. || The thrill of Tesco. || The thrill of mould. || Sounds of the forest and a nature sound map. (h/t, Things) || Struggle session detected. || When the circus comes to town. || Self-censoring font. || Found reading the book laborious, but anyway, this is coming. || Flamingos feed. || And finally, in fly-related news.

Time for an open thread, I think. In which to share links and bicker. 

Oh, and I’ll leave this here.