Time for an open thread, I think. Feel free to share links and bicker.

Best to watch the leash, madam. || Beverage of note. || Ah, Blighty. || They do, er, this better than you do. || Their difficulties were a mystery. (h/t, Fay) || On the matter of mincemeat. || Strange times. || Ancient ruins, reconstructed. || Pete Drake and his talking guitar, 1964. || At last, vegan Christmas dinner, for gamers, in a can. || Get a load of this guy. || These origami cicadas are better than yours. || Itsy bitsy. || The Maginot Line. (h/t, Things) || Visualising Moore’s Law in action, 1971 – 2019. || Close enough. || What could possibly go wrong? || “You can’t have Christmas without Star Trek, right?” || Unpriced goods on aisle four. (h/t, Damian) || And finally, the humans have some kind of force field.

Oh, and via the comments: 

But please, spare a thought for all those leftwing poets.

Via Holborn, and from the pages of the communist Morning Star, a headline of crushing cultural import: 

115 Poets Back Labour.

Yes, with an election looming, the full weight of the nation’s leftwing “poetry community” is being brought to bear, no doubt decisively. Inspired and uplifted by these leftwing poets and their immense cultural gravity, “our austerity-scarred society” will be “healed” with the balm of “social justice.” Being leftwing poets, there are of course demands attached, including an entirely selfless call for even more “state support for… producers of the arts and culture” – half a billion or so a year being deemed insufficient, you see – along with a “universal basic income pilot,” and “an end to the political scapegoating of the unemployed.”

No tittering at the back.

Readers who can recall a line of verse by any of the signatories will receive a drinks voucher.

And if searing leftwing poetry is your thing, you may wish to gargle the radical outpourings of Mr Roy G Guzmán.

The ideal of social justice does not complement the ideal of education. The ideal of social justice replaces the ideal of education.

Lifted from the comments, David Randall on academia’s “social justice” infestation:

“Social justice” was everywhere in higher education. It was the slogan of student activists, the raison d’etre of many academic programmes, the research focus of scholars in many fields, part of the formal mission statements of many colleges, and a phrase that rolled off the tongues of sophomores as the smug answer to virtually any question about public policy. Looking for a definition of the term that fit its ten thousand applications proved futile. “Social justice” may have meant particular things to particular people, but in general it signified only an emotional disposition… When someone says “social justice,” he need not spell out the underlying propositions. The ideas and the temperament are taken for granted. By contrast, any critique of the social justice ideology will be familiar to hardly any students and very few faculty members.

It’s a long read, but one with much to chew.

My own attempt to define “social justice,” the contortions it entails, and the kinds of behaviour to which it gives license, is reposted below:

“Social justice” entails treating people not as individuals but as mascots and categories. And judging a person and their actions based on which Designated Victim Group they supposedly belong to and then assigning various exemptions and indulgences depending on that notional group identity and whatever presumptuous baggage can be attached to it, with varying degrees of perversity. And conversely, assigning imaginary sins and “privilege” to someone else based on whatever Designated Oppressor Group they can be said to belong to, however fatuously, and regardless of the particulars of the actual person.

Which is to say, “social justice” is largely about judging people tribally, cartoonishly, and by different and contradictory standards, based on some supposed group identity, which apparently – and conveniently – overrides all else. It’s glib, question-begging and pernicious. Cargo-cult morality. Viewed with a cool eye, it’s something close to the opposite of justice. And yet, among our self-imagined betters, it’s the latest must-have.

Scenes from Guild of Evil headquarters, moments ago:

“Hello?”

“Hello, I’m Simon and I’m canvassing for the Labour Party…”

[ Muffled laughter. ]

“Er, no thanks.”

Also, open thread.