It seems to be some kind of budding process.  

Kevin Williamson on lifestyle leftism and class disdain: 

Progressivism, especially in its well-heeled coastal expressions, is not a philosophy — it’s a lifestyle. Specifically, it is a brand of conspicuous consumption, which in a land of plenty such as ours as often as not takes the form of conspicuous non-consumption: no gluten, no bleached flour, no Budweiser, no Walmart, no SUVs, no Toby Keith, etc. The people who set the cultural tone in places such as Berkeley, Seattle, or Austin would no more be caught vaping than they would slurping down a Shamrock Shake at McDonald’s — and they conclude without thinking that, therefore, neither should anybody else… There is no meaningful evidence that organic foods are more nutritious or safer, but the lifestyle progressives who run the Boulder schools insist on them, along with yoga. What’s banned? Chocolate milk.

And Charles C W Cooke on leftist in-fighting and the endless search for ideological purity: 

“I am out of ideas,” the socialist blogger Freddie DeBoer admitted yesterday afternoon, before inquiring rhetorically what he is supposed to conclude when he sees so “many good, impressionable young people run screaming from left-wing politics because they are excoriated the first second they step mildly out of line?” Among the things that DeBoer claims lately to “have seen, with my own two eyes,” are a white woman running from a classroom simply because she used the word “disabled”; a black man being ostracised for suggesting that there is “such a thing as innate gender differences”; and a Hispanic Iraq War veteran “being berated” for using the phrase “man up.” Worse for him and his interests, perhaps, DeBoer also claims to have under his belt “many more depressing stories of good people pushed out and marginalised in left-wing circles because they didn’t use the proper set of social and class signals to satisfy the world of intersectional politics.” What, he asks in exasperation, is he supposed to say to them?

I daresay that if I had been in any of the situations that DeBoer describes, I would have walked happily out of the class. Why? Well, because there is simply nothing to be gained from arguing with people who believe that it is reasonable to treat those who use the word “disabled” as we treat those who use the word “n***er”; because there is no virtue in arguing with people who refuse even to entertain the possibility that they might be wrong.

If you want to find bad faith theatrics and unshakeable idiocy presented as virtue, head for the Clown Quarter of the nearest university. It’s where you’re most likely to find the word “privilege” deployed as an ad hominem device. A way of saying, “Your opinion doesn’t count (or doesn’t count as much as mine) because you have a certain level of melanin, or a penis, or the wrong kind of upbringing, or an insufficient number of hang-ups and fashionable pretensions.” Think of it as a kind of Maoist snobbery, in which, as Jesse Walker notes, the unwary are denounced for the rhetorical equivalent of using the wrong cutlery.

In my experience, the personalities to which such things appeal aren’t terribly interested in civility or justice, “social” or otherwise. What they seem to be interested in is opportunist scolding and one-upmanship, that all-important social positioning. And so what you see, and see quite often, isn’t concern for the supposedly vulnerable; it’s an assertion of status and a pay-off for all that wound-up dogmatism. It’s how professed egalitarians let us know they’re better than us. Because they really do have to let us know.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.

A Western Screech-Owl. One of these. Photographed by Brad Wilson. Via PootBlog. 

Apocalyptic weather forecast brought to you by AccuWeather. // Candy carpet. // Catherine the Great’s erotic cabinet. // Sex device patents of note. // Some first-time experiences of virtual reality porn. // Pocket operator. // Unboiling eggs now possible. // Leather and paper. // Leather-bound, shock-absorbing designer crutches. // Alaskan native snow goggles, circa 1900. // Everyone remembers that sad Saturday. // Snow plough of note. // 1.4 explosions per minute. // Playing cards of yore. (h/t, drb) // Monks and sand. // Shooting New York from above. // 18 everyday objects photographed up close. // Big rings. // Board game of note. // “What if everything were cheap?” // When women draw vaginas. “Oh God, wow.” // And finally, scientifically, how to draw mushrooms on an oscilloscope.

Man accused of having sex with a Shetland pony was found “smelling strongly of horses.”

Oh, there’s more:  

Police say Alan Barnfield was “sweating profusely” and had several cans of Lynx in his bag on the night he was seen leading two ponies into a dark wooded area.

That is all. Carry on. 

Franklin Einspruch on art, censorship and impossibly delicate feelings: 

On December 8, in response to a conversation with the artist in which he expressed contrition but not enough for her liking, [third-year doctoral student, Kayla] Wheeler cried out, “The artist triggered me again. I’m hyperventilating. I literally can’t breathe right now… I’m being verbally attacked by this man. I’m shaking and crying. Please make it stop.” 

Kevin Williamson on private life versus pseudo-moral grandstanding: 

The profoundly stupid “black brunch” protests, during which racial-grievance entrepreneurs disrupted meals at places that seemed to them offensively Caucasian (“white spaces”) are a different species of undertaking… The message these protests send is that there is no private space — and, therefore, no private life — so far as this particular rabble is concerned… That the people at brunch have no real direct connection to the events motivating the protesters is beside the point. They were targeted on racial grounds: These were detestable “white spaces,” and the people there were to be punished for being white — even if they were not, in fact, white, their presence in “white spaces” makes them guilty by association. That the protesters were themselves largely white goes without saying: Protests of this sort are a prestige performance for stupid white college kids, mainly. 

Peter Wood on leftist academics who find violence titillating: 

Eric Linsker, an adjunct professor of English composition at [the City University of New York], was arrested on December 13, after he had carried a large garbage can onto a walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge, apparently in an effort to drop it on the heads of police officers below. Linsker was ordered by the police to put it down but fled the scene, dropping his backpack, with two hammers inside, and, among others things, his CUNY ID. Cindy Gorn and Zachary Campbell were among the academics arrested for assaulting police on the Brooklyn Bridge in an effort to help Linsker escape. Gorn is a graduate student at Columbia University… Her “areas of work” are “geography from the perspective of Marxist philosophy, social movements, autonomous labour movements, health, and the environment.” 

Somewhat related, Jim Treacher notes the lively goings-on at a concert for non-violence. 

And further to this, Robert Tracinski on dishonest narratives and apologies not forthcoming: 

But it’s clearly time to apologise — for every activist and journalist (but I repeat myself) who bought into the simplistic, self-serving “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative and broadcast it far and wide based on false testimony; who reflexively dismissed [police officer, Darren] Wilson’s side of the story as preposterous and unbelievable; who doggedly upheld a wider narrative that slanders police officers across the country as murderous racists. Don’t apologise because I shamed you into it, or because I’m trying to sell you on my advice for how to avoid debacles like this in the future. Do it because if you want to hold others accountable for their action, you need to first make sure you are accountable for your own.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for. 

Nunchucks, baby. // Frozen bubbles. // Flowers in ice. // Where fairy tales could happen. // 1940s Detroit. // Dashcam footage of note. // The epiphanies of Jessica Fletcher. // Popeye loops. // “Given the choice between 20 lashes spread over 5 days or 3 years in prison, which would you choose?” // Cinema etiquette circa 1912. // Ionising radiation and where to find it. // Haulage. // Owls. // Big beasts of the sea. // “The estimated cost for dropping four beavers from a plane was around $30 in 1948, that’s about $294 in today’s dollars.” // Adopted dogs. // Designer chocs. // Exciting new product from Weyland-Yutani. // The truth is out there. // This is not a UFO. // Unapplauded skillz. // Tools. // And finally, via Simen, Succulent is an interactive game involving hairy men and lollipops.

Or, Another Packed House. Or, The Hours, They Flew By.

Strap yourselves in and crack open the booze because, yes, once again, I bring you jewels from the world of performance art. Specifically, the deeply melodious, mind-shattering creations of Ms Eames Armstrong, whose collaboration with Matthew Ryan Rossetti and a being named Kunj was happily captured on film for all of future time. Said performance, titled Through Bush, Through Briar, was recorded at the Atlantis Gallery, Richmond, VA., in November 2014. Regarding Ms Armstrong’s piece and her aesthetic practice in general, we’re told, 

I am not an entertainer.

Instead,

I perform actions that reflect and complicate everyday life… I challenge preconceptions of performance, destabilising visibility and invisibility. 

Naturally, Ms Armstrong is also,

Transgressing conventions.

You see, she’s

shifting our perception of the world.

This feat is achieved by means of,

Oral fruit play… binding breasts in tape… kissing with black lipstick… spitting in your mouth… having visions of the underworld.

And if further intellectual heft is needed,

Through Bush, Through Briar is loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

As will no doubt become clear in the following video of highlights from the hour-long performance:

Speaking, as we were, of dramas that must never end…

Note that Laurie, who likes to remind us she’s a Journalism Fellow at Harvard, apparently thinks newspapers have an odd number of pages.

Keili Bartlett reports from the cutting edge of Canadian academia: 

Women should be heard first in the classroom, a forum on misogyny at Dalhousie University heard on Thursday. “Men should not be allowed to monopolise these forums,” management professor Judy Haiven said.

Readers are invited to see if they can spot any male persons on the non-monopolistic panel in question.

Her idea that women should always speak first in classroom discussions and at public events was brought up several times during the forum. Haiven said she already tries to apply this idea in her own classroom… “In the management department, women get to speak first.”

How chivalrous. Though of course the professor means male students aren’t allowed to speak first. Because gender condescension is the path to utopia. 

Haiven’s idea was met by a round of applause,

Of course it was.

but not everyone agreed with her suggestion.

Oh, calamity. Do I hear a rumble of dissent?  

“I think that women of colour should speak first in class,” [gender and sexual resource centre outreach co-ordinator, Jude] Ashburn said.

Whew. That was close.

Sadly, however, Total Ideological Correction™ remains just out of reach. Perhaps more panel discussions are needed. Panels in which stern and pious ladies confuse gender with temperament and depict women as timid, delicate creatures who struggle to raise their hands and can’t quite master speech. In a cosseting environment where women are a majority. 

Update, via the comments: