This really isn’t the time to be having trouble with your roof rack. // Erotic dining. // Edison films Twain. // Hamster-powered hamster-drawing machine. // Harryhausen’s Martians. // Queen of Mars, 1924. // Space dashboard. // Ooh, I don’t like that cracking sound. // This rarely works with cats. // Harry Connick Jr corrects audience clap-along. // A brief history of evil twins in soap operas. // “Scientists draw eyes on cow butts to protect them from lions.” // A brief history of the bra. // Bookstore. // Bananas. // How big is yours? // If architecture grew. // Recapping Thrones. // Razor-less post-mortem shaving powder has “no offensive odour.” // Miracle breakthrough in high-tech armpit cooling. // And finally, probingly, “Scientists have accurately recreated the feel of a rectum.”

Because of my race, I can eat at a fancy restaurant without the wait staff expecting me to steal the silverware. 

The psychological abuse of children by leftist educators continues: 

The video of the 14-year-old student’s slam poem at his school has gone viral in the midst of heated national discussions regarding race and privilege. Performed at a slam poetry competition in May at The Paideia School in Atlanta, Royce Mann’s winning poem offers a reflection on the privilege he feels he has been automatically awarded as a result of his being white and male… Royce said that he knew about white and male privilege for most of his life, but never knew how prevalent it was in society until he attended a class called “Race, Class and Gender” that opened his eyes.

Because when a credulous 14-year-old is encouraged to declare that all white males are “scared of what it would be like if… I didn’t have my white boy privilege safety blankie,” this is now an aesthetic and political triumph. And when that same child says, “It is embarrassing that we still live in a world in which we judge another person’s character by… the colour of their skin,” while judging millions of people by the colour of their skin, and doing it proudly, this is something to applaud as both brave and insightful. Behold the makings of a morally corrected citizen.

The poem in question can be heard in full below:  

Menstruation is universally referred to as your “moon time”; there is a Moon Lodge with a “Moon Blood Earth Altar” where we are encouraged to offer our “Holy Menstrual Blood to Mother Earth” with prayers and intentions. 

Marisa Meltzer ventures into the sisterly world of braiding circles, “water healing,” and ayurvedic breast massage:

“We have created — and are creating — a community of mothers, sisters, daughters, grandmothers,” Spirit Weavers’ founder and trademark owner, Amy Woodruff, says into a microphone. She has long brown hair and a deep tan. In 2011, a photo of her doing a naked headstand while simultaneously breastfeeding her daughter Naia went viral. (“I was just doin’ my daily flow when the little sweet pea came to sneak a suckle,” Woodroff wrote at the time on her blog, Daughter of the Sun, where she also sells juice cleanses, incense, and “organic baby bootie balm.”) A Kundalini yoga teacher, Woodruff used her newfound fame to pivot into a kind of nexus for the sort of women who are drawn to water births and food-fermenting workshops. 

Oh, there’s more. Much more. And yes, there is a photo.

Via Alice.

Thomas Sowell on the displacement of blame: 

It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a “socialist.” He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism. What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector…

Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favourable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the “greed” of the insurance companies. The same principle, or lack of principle, applies to many other privately owned businesses. It is a very successful political ploy that can be adapted to all sorts of situations.

Dave Huber on racial favouritism in college admissions: 

Although the US Supreme Court recently upheld the legality of using race as a factor when considering college admissions, a substantial majority of Americans disagree… Perhaps the most interesting aspect of a new Gallup Poll on the topic is that a majority of black Americans believe that merit, not race, should be used for admission to a university.

And Heather Mac Donald on the escalating dysfunction of black Chicago: 

Fatherlessness in the city’s black community is at a cataclysmic level — close to 80 percent of children are born to single mothers in high-crime areas. Illegitimacy is catching up fast among Hispanics, as well. Gangs have stepped in where fathers are absent. A 2012 gang audit documented 59 active street gangs with 625 factions, some controlling a single block. Schools in gang territories go on high alert at dismissal time to fend off violence. Endemic crime has prevented the commercial development and gentrification that are revitalising so many parts of Chicago closer to downtown; block after block on the South Side features a wan liquor store or cheque-cashing outlet, surrounded by empty lots and the occasional skeleton of a once-magnificent beaux-arts apartment complex or bank. Non-functioning streetlights, their fuse boxes vandalised, signal the reign of a local gang faction.

There’s more, lots more, but it’s not for the faint-hearted. 

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

And then this happened. // Thunderstorm at 37,000 feet. // French horn and chair. // Atomic Filmmakers – Hollywood’s secret film studio. // An auction of space history paraphernalia. (h/t, Things) // Inside Porton Down. // Protozoan Pac-Man. // Jellyfish portraits. // Japanese billiards. // BearCam, Katmai National Park, Alaska. // 3D Calvin & Hobbes. // Handmade omni-capable wheels. // Captain America: Civil War – how it should have ended. // Just swipe, they said. // New wave club night, California, 1986. So much moody, so much hair. // UK media influence. // Bookcase Tetris. // Gardening bras. // The Sequence is a game. // And finally, via Paul, it’s a good-news-bad-news thing: “Passers-by found him sitting in the rain with steam coming out of his body.”