Sarah Marsh alerts Guardian readers to yet another workplace hazard, i.e., the dangers of cake: 

It’s 10.30am on a Monday and already the smell of cakes is wafting towards your desk. The colleague, who usually does a spot of baking over the weekend, has been up all night making cupcakes and an email has just flown around about their latest goodies.

Yes, it’s a tale of horror.

Later in the day another email pings into your inbox, this time it’s an update – there’s still some cake left and also sweets have been purchased. 

Sweets? A second email? Why, it’s practically harassment.

And it’s always the same people who bring in the treats (you know the ones I mean).

Those bitches, trying to make the day a little more fun by sharing baked fancies with their workmates.   

They are not trying to make you overeat, but they are making it much harder to stay healthy. Arguably you don’t have to take the snacks, and, as an adult, you should be able to say no.

I fear the word arguably is doing an awful lot of work here.  

However, there is almost a reverse guilt around not accepting the baking of your colleagues. You feel bad for turning down a cake they’ve made to share together. The whole office frowns on you as if you’re some sort of killjoy when you decline to even taste Michael’s prize gateau.

The whole office, you say? It’s strange how the empowered, progressive ladies at the Guardian seem forever at the mercy of every small social expectation, however trivial and weightless.

What’s more, some people (myself included) simply do not have the willpower. 

As I was saying, empowered ladies.

For those who are genuinely struggling with their weight and trying to diet, the office baker wafting croissants around is their worst nightmare. Added to that the fact you’ve had a hard day, burdened with loads of extra work, and it’s even more difficult to resist.

Oh, that this world should have such woe in it, such vile temptations. We must recalibrate the term “worst nightmare” to include the offer of a small bun.  

Farnsworth M Muldoon steers us, once again, to the pages of Everyday Feminism:

The urge to pull at your hair or pick at your skin – does this sound familiar to you or anyone you know?

Can’t say so, no. Compulsively tearing out one’s own hair and ripping one’s own skin like an unhappy parrot, which is what we’re actually talking about here, isn’t the most common way to while away the evenings.

But a thought does occur. Given that the publication in question addresses subjects of this kind with extraordinary frequency – covering a thrilling spectrum of neuroses and personality disorders, even delusions of witchcraft and clairvoyance – it’s hard to avoid the impression that the readership of Everyday Feminism, and certainly its staff, is largely made up of people with quite serious mental health issues.

Next week, an article for readers who spend their evenings eating tissues by the fistful and then being sick behind the sofa. #GirlPower!

Kevin D Williamson on work and earnings: 

The median salary for a women’s-studies professor is more than a hundred grand a year. The average hourly earnings for a graduate with a women’s-studies degree? Eleven bucks an hour, well less than you’d make working the car wash at a Buc-ee’s convenience store.

Marlo Safi on unknown history: 

US history is not a staple course for history majors at most top universities, according to a new report from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni… Less than 20 percent of surveyed students could accurately identify in a multiple choice survey what the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation was, and one-third of college graduates were unaware that FDR introduced the New Deal.

Not entirely unrelated, Peter Wood on the fashionable conformity of student life:

Excluding people from a debate because you disagree with their views is an odd conceit, but odder still is that the practice has rapidly gained credibility on both sides of the Atlantic as morally valid.

Jonathan Haidt on the anti-rational rhetoric of “social justice” activism: 

There are many beliefs [on the “social justice” left] that are so central, so foundational, that when you try to argue against them, we see students saying that this would “invalidate” their “existence.” So if you were to try to argue that some cause of prejudice or racism was not real, or that disparities by race or gender had other causes, some would take this as an existential threat, an existential attack. You would be trying to “invalidate” their “existence,” which is “an act of violence.” So your very efforts to persuade with reason are, they say, “violence.”

And Paul Sperry spots an upscale, ‘progressive’ middle school that’s probably best avoided: 

Behind the scenes. (h/t, Damian) // Boneless hamsters. // Bitty ribbit. // How to swim backwards. // A century of Holmes and Watson in cinema and TV, including Korean and Chinese interpretations. // Assorted 70s porn soundtracks. Brace for sleazy wah-wah. // You want one and you know it. (h/t, Peter) // Prism is a game. // Whatever happened to Kelsey Grammer? // Why grammar is important. (h/t, Julia) // Stock photo reconstructions of famous paintings. // 3D-printed zoetrope. // A million dots. // At last, Nadkins. // Ultimate nerf gun is exactly like you’d imagine. // Frankenstein, 1910. // All the cats. // Loud cat. // An hour of cat TV. // A tale of two small spacecraft named Voyager. // This is one of these. // And finally, alarmingly, your toilet paper is shrinking.

Retail giant Hammerson is now taking down mirrors from its Birmingham Bullring, Bristol Cabot Circus and Croydon Centrale malls in a bid to boost the confidence of female shoppers. Alex Thomas, regional marketing manager for Hammerson, said: “One of the main reasons people come to our shopping centres is to buy clothes, whether that be a brand new wardrobe or a one off item for a special occasion. We want to ensure that everyone feels comfortable and confident when trying on clothes, so that’s why we’re trialling banning the mirrors.”

Yes, you read that correctly.