Kevin D Williamson on the strange fictions of Hillary Clinton:

Herself, who speaks in clichés and who gives some indication that she thinks in them, too, says that she is in the van — “Road trip!” she tweeted — because she is “hitting the road to earn your vote.” The Clintons — not too long ago “dead broke,” as Herself put it — have earned more than $100 million since the president left office… That’s armoured-car money, and an armoured car is of course what Herself is riding around in… There is something ineffably Clintonesque in that: She declined the use of the customary limousine because she wanted to appear to share the lives and troubles of the ordinary people, so she rides around in a customized armoured van, having spent a great deal of money — starting prices for such vehicles are comparable to those of Porsches — to avoid the appearance that she has a great deal of money.

Heather Mac Donald on crime, race and shooting: 

Blacks make up over half of all homicide perpetrators [in the US]; in 2013, they were 42 percent of all cop-killers, despite being merely 12 percent of the population. From 1980 to 1998, young black males murdered police officers at almost six times the rate of young white males. According to Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, police officers are less likely to kill a black suspect who threatens or attacks them than they are to kill a white suspect who threatens or attacks them… A 2007 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that police officers were no more likely to shoot unarmed black men than unarmed white men in video simulations of encounters with armed and unarmed suspects. A 2014 simulation study from Washington State University found that officers waited longer to assess the situation when confronted with black suspects than they did with white suspects.

And via Dr Cromarty, James Bartholomew on signalling one’s virtue: 

It’s noticeable how often virtue signalling consists of saying you hate things. It is camouflage. The emphasis on hate distracts from the fact you are really saying how good you are. If you were frank and said, ‘I care about the environment more than most people do’ or ‘I care about the poor more than others,’ your vanity and self-aggrandisement would be obvious. Anger and outrage disguise your boastfulness.

Which may help explain why some signallers of piety make a point of telling us how they “long for the pure, uncomplicated political anger” felt by their younger selves. An odd thing to long for, given the possibilities. Our old friend Laurie Penny is forever romanticising anger and saying, with a hint of pride, that she’s written something that’s “angry,” as if anger were the important thing, the marker of status, as opposed to, say, being coherent or truthful. “It’s getting harder to stay angry,” wrote Laurie, in one of many posts about her fascinating self. “That terrifies me more than anything.” One of Ms Penny’s fans subsequently asked, “Why do you feel it important to be angry all the time?” Sadly, no answer was forthcoming. But it’s interesting to reverse the sequence of ideas. After all, pretending to be angry makes some people feel important all the time. And if anger is hard to muster, there’s always everyday obnoxiousness. That can be a credential too.

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

The modern world is a strange and wondrous place:

A neighbour came home from work around 1 am and found a man staggering around the parking lot covered in blood. When police interviewed the man about what had happened, the man told them he and his roommate had got into a heated debate over whether the iPhone or the new Samsung smartphone is better.

Such was the passion on the subject,

The roommates’ argument escalated and they ended up stabbing each other with broken beer bottles. One of the men smashed a bottle over the back of the other man’s head.

Both men are expected to make a full recovery. However,  

Police did not respond when our photographer asked which phone is better.

Feel free to glass each other in the comments. 

For instance, people such as these:

Stevenson College is apologising to its students for serving Mexican food during [a science fiction event]. In a letter sent out to students, the college apologised for having “a Mexican food buffet,” while also featuring spaceships and aliens.

Wait for it.

The college received complaints saying the combination was racist because of the association between Mexicans and illegal immigrants.

Despite eight years of doing this, I didn’t see that coming. Let’s take a second to check the algebra of umbrage: Science fiction event plus chili and burritos equals racism.

After receiving complaints, Dr Carolyn Golz said that the event “demonstrated a cultural insensitivity on the part of the programme planners and, though it was an unintentional mistake, I recognise that this incident caused harm within our community and negatively impacted students.”

At this point, bear in mind that several students, our fearless intellectuals of tomorrow, have felt a need to publicly articulate some version of the following, rather staggering idea: “Dear Sir or Madam, I have been negatively impacted by your insensitive buffet.”

Naturally, this explosion of WrongThought™ will have to be punished:

As a result, Dr Golz “will require cultural competence training for Programmes staff, in addition to implementing mechanisms for future programme planning that will ensure college programmes are culturally sensitive and inclusive.”

In the wake of this terrifyingly racist punch in the face of decency, expressed via the medium of reheated beans, Dr Golz urges students to report any further incidents of “hate” to the university’s Report Hate website, and thereby “cut down on insensitive events like Intergalactic Night.”

Update, via the comments:

That giant woollen cat head you’ve always wanted. // It takes brains to live in a technological world. (h/t, PootBlog) // Tiny computer. // Robot glockenspiel. // Kissy, kissy penguin. // Responsive sand. // Alaskan Dr Seuss house. // The Sun, its atmosphere and a passing Moon. // Simulacra. // Lenses. // Lab beaker wine glasses. // Tonic water lighting isn’t terribly efficient. // Marionette drummer. // Michael Douglas is shrinking people again. // A tiny English village with a tinier one inside it. // Today’s word is vertiginous. // Plastic bottle sculptures. // Passports. // Big rabbit. // Rapping while deaf. // Indian science fiction films. // The gluten-free museum. // Three-way hammock. // How to hold your smartphone. // And finally, behold the Guild of Evil’s luxury helicopter. 

And yet it isn’t at all difficult to imagine this happening for real. Given sufficient beer.  

Via PootBlog.