In a shocking plot twist, I’m taking a long weekend and leaving you heathens to devise your own entertainment. To soften the blow, here are some photos of woodland; a suboptimal ceiling fan; the retro pleasures of Poolside FM; a chap who made poor choices; and a documentary about the quest to reach absolute zero.

Oh, and via Damian, a possible caption competition.

Play nicely. Use coasters.

An open thread, in which to share links and bicker.

I’ll set the ball rolling with a clarification of note; some feline curiosity; an augmented cat; via Julia, some contemporary scenes; and via Damian, a wondrous feat involving carrier bags. 

Oh, and as some of you may be shopping from home a little more than usual, please bear in mind that 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.

It helps to keep this place here.

For those in need of further diversion, the Reheated series is there to be poked at. 

Shower music. || Backyard scenes. || Easy on the yeast. || You want one and you know it. || The new order. || It’s not quite what I’d imagined. || Bad news and good news in close proximity. || Stuck good. || You may gasp when ready. || Drive-in rave, Germany. || Smoking is hard. || Today’s word is hankering. || Continue the research. || Creamy filling. || A four-hour discussion of the film Aliens. || Interspecies sports. (h/t, Damian) || Pigeon in UV. || Just like tiny puppies. || The pleasures of rubber. || He brings leaves. || And finally, the sights, and the sounds, of quality time.

Robert Murphy on the pathologies of the leftist campus:   

This is not a matter of “Oh, gee, there’s a bunch of people who have different views about whether health insurance should be provided by the government.” That’s not what I’m talking about. [These are people whose reaction is,] “Oh, there’s a speaker coming to campus and we don’t like that person’s views. We are going to credibly threaten that we will break stuff and hurt people, we will set things on fire and smash windows.” And so, then the school has to cancel because of security concerns. And then that gets spun as “Oh yeah, the reason that speaker couldn’t come here is because he would incite violence.” The kind of mindset that would do that and would see nothing weird about that. “Yeah, the reason the speaker can’t come here is because he promotes violence – by us, his enemies.” 

Which rather calls to mind the tenderly whispered wife-beater’s lament: “Don’t make me hurt you, baby.”

Needless to say, examples abound. And do note the role of their academic enablers.

Cathy Young on Lenin and his admirers: 

Many leftists in places like Jacobin magazine see Lenin as the “good communist” to Joseph Stalin’s “bad communist” — the revolutionary wrongly maligned as an authoritarian. Indeed, Lenin’s birthday this year was marked on Twitter by New York State Senator Julia Salazar, a member of the new crop of young progressive politicians. The “Lenin good, Stalin bad” formula was also popular among Soviet reformers, both in the late 1950s-early 1960s and in the late 1980s. It was wrong then; it is wrong now… As independent Russian historian Nikita Sokolov recently told Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, Lenin’s only consistent position throughout his political career was that “he was a fundamental believer in violence as the solution to any problem.” 

Based on history, and their own writings, it seems entirely possible that devotees of Marxoid fantasy typically start with the ideal of violence and coercion, the titillating rewards of having power over others, and then work backwards in search of a pretext.

Oh, and Dr Jennifer Cassidy is an Oxford University politics lecturer who has thoughts on what kind of books you’re allowed to have on your shelves.

We have of late been neglecting the arts, and that simply won’t do. By way of correction, here’s another chance to behold the feats of the Austrian choreographer and performance artist Ms Doris Uhlich, filmed earlier this year at Vienna’s Rabenhof Theatre. The video of Ms Uhlich’s performance – which, we’re assured, is a “vigorous and critical” work, a “bodily and textual discussion of flesh and opulence” – is presented below the fold. For reasons that may well become apparent.