Heather Mac Donald on the farce and scope of UC Berkeley’s cultivated victimhood: 

UC Berkeley’s Division of Equity and Inclusion has hung vertical banners across the main campus reminding students of the contemporary university’s paramount mission: assigning guilt and innocence within the ruthlessly competitive hierarchy of victimhood… “I will acknowledge how power and privilege intersect in our daily lives,” vows an Asian female member of the class of 2017. Just how crippling is that “intersection” of “power and privilege”? The answer comes in a banner showing a black female student in a backward baseball cap and a male Hispanic student, who together urge the Berkeley community to “Create an environment where people other than yourself can exist.” A naïve observer of the Berkeley campus would think that lots of people “other than himself” exist there, and would even think that Berkeley welcomes those “other” people with overflowing intellectual and material riches. Such a misperception, however, is precisely why Berkeley funds the Division of Equity and Inclusion with a cool $20 million annually and staffs it with 150 full-time functionaries: it takes that much money and personnel to drum into students’ heads how horribly Berkeley treats its “othered” students.

Jade Haney on blatant indoctrination and replacing facts with pretentious guilt: 

Jack Flotte, a member of Regis University’s Social Justice and Spirituality Committee, opened the session by scolding his white peers and professors on their state of “white fragility,” saying, “Like it or not, we are already accomplices. The question becomes: to what end are we partners in the crime of continuing to perpetuate these systems that dehumanise and oppress people?” Flotte also advised white students and faculty to “spend less time being upset about accusations that you’re complicit and that white people are bad and spend more time being mad at the racism and suffering,” adding, “Stop changing the subject when race does come into a conversation. Not that you understand this concept of white fragility. You’re going to be made uncomfortable as white folks when the conversation of race comes up. But, just get over it and then channel that energy. Channel that guilt into activism.”

See also, Laurie Penny. 

Speaking of dehumanising people, and added via the comments, here’s Black Lives Matter Toronto co-founder Yusra Khogali being every bit as charming as you’d imagine. What’s particularly endearing – after all the boasting of genetic superiority, and her claim that “melanin directly communicates with cosmic energy” – is when she asks Allah to give her the strength “to not kill these men and white folks.”

Saucy. // At last, a sorting-Skittles-by-colour machine. // How large would a building need to be to store 7.4 billion human beings? // On the origins of tosspot, ramsquaddled and booze. // Bachelor pad. // When baby tortoises attack. // WWII aviation photographs. (h/t, Damian) // Fingers of steel. // Your fake tan is oppressing me. // Feminist fantasy and reality. // Reading room. // “For readers who disagree with the message, the comics portray them as the enemy.” // Improvisation. (h/t, dicentra) // Have you met my eleven puppies? // Cover version of note. // Single-use shaving cream sachets. // Steam turbine of note. // Good deed. // I suspect his dog is better behaved than yours. // And finally, via Obo, if you laugh at this thing here, then there’s something wrong with you.

Yes, as of today, this blog is officially ten years old.

I have to say, back in February 2007, I had no idea what I was doing and no expectation that I’d still be doing it a decade later. Much as I’d like to applaud my own obstinacy, the fact that I have a slightly better idea of what to do, and am still doing it, is due in very large part to you heathens. Without readers and commenters, and feedback and inspiration, and links to news items about exploding toilets, I doubt this disreputable establishment would still be here.

So, er, group hug.

And now that we’re all feeling warm and fluffy and well-disposed, I’m going to slyly remind patrons that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, and insert a coin for the dancing monkey, there are buttons 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. Additionally, any Amazon 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 decade, and in over 2,000 posts and 60,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start. 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.

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. 

Meanwhile, in other twenty-first century news, 

A family in Bangladesh has been arrested after using a fake penis to trick villagers into believing a genie had performed a sex change on their teenage daughter. “The girl and her parents have set up a profitable business promising to heal people with a genie,” Monzur Murshed, the local police chief, said. As news spread that the girl had not only been transformed but undergone a mystical circumcision, villagers flocked to seek the genie’s intervention with their own medical woes.

Via sk60.

Following the recent scolding by her crab-bucket comrades, Laurie Penny wishes to reassert her leftist credentials: 

All very pious. Though it seems to me those credentials were amply visible immediately after the rioting and thuggery at UC Berkeley, covered here, when Laurie was letting her followers know just how brave she is for mixing with conservatives and college Republicans, i.e., the people under attack, who are apparently “vicious and vengeful.”   

Well. Here’s an interview with Kiara Robles, one of the “far right” women surrounded and assaulted, repeatedly, by the righteously left-leaning Berkeley ‘protestors’. It seems that merely wearing a hat with the words “Make Bitcoin Great Again” is enough to make you a “Nazi,” a “fascist,” and therefore a target of physical abuse. And here’s an interview with another woman – sorry, “Nazi” – who was repeatedly assaulted at UC Berkeley, along with her husband, who was severely beaten with metal bars.

These ladies, then, are some of the people of whom Laurie Penny is, and I quote, “fucking terrified.” 

Update:

Meet Yvette Felarca, a middle school teacher and one of the organisers of the Berkeley rioting. “The left has been far too timid for far too long,” says she. 

Update 2: 

Here’s Yvette Felarca and her goons getting ‘hands-on’ in Sacramento. And again, watch the police.