Are you bregant or pergert? // “Have you got clouds stuck in your tongue?” // Conveyor belts. // Grim London. // Tiny, swarming robots. // Robots make tiny springs. // Sad chairs of academia. // When your problems multiply. // Mardi Gras Indians. Not known for toning it down. // African visitors to the Tower of London, 1949. // In search of Steve Ditko. // A six-year-old’s drawings brought to life. // Made with old newspaper. (h/t, Julia) // 10,000 things of possible interest. From the tree goats of Morocco to the Icelandic witchcraft museum. // How to bake Icelandic volcano bread. // Earliest known depiction of improper broom use. // Don’t look now but there’s something under the porch. // And finally, via Jen, and as it’s almost Hallowe’en, The Thing With Two Heads, 1972.

Or Doctor Strange in forty words.

There are the usual origin story tropes to get through and the inevitable exposition, but once things start cooking, the lysergic imagery and unhinged action more than compensate. IMAX 3D viewing strongly recommended. And do stay for the mid-credits sting.

But they don’t want to pay for any of it: 

Students at the University of California, Berkeley held a violent protest on campus Friday to demand additional segregated “spaces of colour” for non-white students. A video of the protest shows demonstrators repeatedly heckling white passers-by, barring them entry to a key bridge on campus by forming a human chain while simultaneously allowing students of colour to pass unmolested. Time and again, white students and professors were denied entry to the bridge as they were surrounded by aggressive protesters shouting “go around!” At one point, the video shows a protester refusing to allow an older white man to cross the bridge, eventually directing him to cross by way of a creek that flows underneath the bridge.

Because what could be sweeter than forcing people deemed too pale to literally walk through dirt?

But why such high passion, you ask?

When protesters were asked about the motive for their demonstration, they refused to be recorded, leaving little to no explanation for the rationale behind such an aggressive protest.

If you can endure this five-minute video of the protesters being theatrical and unpleasant, you may discern the usual inchoate rumblings of oppression, and outrage at the unfairness of being expected to pay one’s bills as agreed in writing. Apparently, the entire campus and surrounding streets now belong to them, i.e., a tiny subset of leftwing students, which conveniently excuses all manner of exciting behaviour, including harassing other students, to whom the campus presumably doesn’t belong. There’s also some anti-capitalist fervour aimed at local businesses and the on-campus student store, the mere existence of which is deemed an affront to socialist piety, prompting threats of further disruption, escalating in vehemence, “with the goal of eliminating any revenue generation.”

Such kind and lovely creatures. Not narcissistic at all.

However, the heaviest, most pressing grievance appears to be this:

Protesters were angered because one of their “safe spaces” was relocated to the basement of a building where it had previously occupied the fifth floor.

If, being sane, that doesn’t sound like something that could credibly justify two hours of shouting, shoving and screaming, let alone the obstruction of traffic, both on campus and at a nearby public intersection, to say nothing of thuggish behaviour and blatantly racist harassment, then you may be missing the point. Which is, that these things allow vain, vindictive mediocrities to exert power over others. All while cloaked by the moral anonymity of the mob dynamic, which allows those so inclined to behave in antisocial ways and get away with stuff. Everything else is window dressing. Including the protestors’ claims that the failure to provide a “safe space” of suitable commodiousness, befitting their self-imagined importance, is “part of the structural racism of UC Berkeley.”

And that word you’re looking for is “expel.”

Patrons are reminded 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, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love for this low establishment. Debit and credit cards are happily 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. Think of it as a way to turn that filthy consumerism into an act of piety.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for – blimey – close to ten years, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start. There you’ll find, among other things, a guide to rationalising sub-optimal life choices in the most grandiose way possible, and a feminist intellectual who tells us that “a curfew for men” and “an end to masculinity” are necessary and “make sense.” Along with some exhilarating performance art involving hand dryers, an artistic release of gas, and an unpopular leftwing novelist explaining why unpopular leftwing novelists deserve nicer homes than yours. 

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. 

Niall Gooch on free speech and its enemies: 

Free speech, like the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence, is a procedural virtue, which is why fanatics and revolutionaries hate it… Defenders of free speech are arguing not only for free speech as an abstraction, but a wider culture of honest debate, factual argument, respectful disagreement, and civilised co-existence with people who see the world very differently from us. Complaints about attacks on free speech can be seen as proxies for concerns about the maintenance of this culture, particularly in the context of the university. So in a sense, free speech isn’t one thing. It’s many things. It’s a whole network of overlapping norms about the exchange of ideas. One thing that people commonly mean when they say “free speech” is “if I’m invited to give a talk somewhere I should be allowed to do so without intimidation, interruption or threat, and people who want to come and listen to me should be able to do so.”

Well, obviously, we can’t have that. 

Ed West on things you mustn’t laugh about: 

There are plenty of subjects that merit satire today – the diversity industry, with its shakedowns and professional bullshit artists is a rich seam, as is the transgender movement. But these areas really are too edgy for satirists, most of whom – like the vast majority of influential people in the arts – hold quite uncontroversial (left-liberal) political views and also fear the next wave of revolutionaries more than they do the ancien régime. That’s why they make jokes about the ancien régime. In fact there is plenty of edgy comedy these days – but it tends to be told in private.

Jonah Goldberg on the leftist leanings of the establishment media: 

According to a just-released study [by the Centre for Public Integrity], more than 96 percent of donations from media figures to either of the two major-party presidential candidates went to Hillary Clinton… Anyone who has spent a moment around elite reporters or studied their output knows that they tend to be left of centre. In 1981, S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman surveyed 240 leading journalists and found that 94 percent of them voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, 81 percent voted for George McGovern in 1972, and 81 percent voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976. Only 19 percent placed themselves on the right side of the political spectrum. Does anyone think the media have become less liberal since then? None of this means liberals — or conservatives — can’t be good reporters, but the idea that media bias is non-existent is ludicrous.