Sensitive readers may wish to brace themselves. Consider this a trigger warning.

Next week, for the whole week, and for the first time in a long time, I will be away on holiday. A proper holiday, elsewhere, doing other things. I realise that for some of you this may be crushing news. Be brave. Dry those tears.

To prevent you from roaming the streets in a daze, consider this an open thread, in which to share links and bicker. To kick things off, here’s an interview with Thomas Sowell, now a mere 93, in which he discusses his latest book, Social Justice Fallacies. Copies of which can be bought via your host’s Amazon portals, here for the US, and here for the UK.

In addition, you could always pass the time by browsing the Reheated series.

Oh, and the edit-comment option should now be working properly.

Play nicely. Use coasters.

“It doesn’t like my wife.” || AI deepfake translation demo. (h/t, Damian) || Insufficiently adhesive. || How to immobilise bees. || Bees and string. || Acid bassline generator. || It’s a job. || Or you could just brush. || Enrichment opportunity. || Stoopin’. || Nice save. || I can imagine your surprise. || Foodstuff disagreeable. || Stealth defecation. || “The 3D-printed surface is made of a material that repels faeces easily.” || Heimsoeth & Rinke K-model Enigma Cipher machine, circa 1940, £120,000. (h/t, Things) || Romantic night in. || Platform reduction in progress. || The progressive retail experience, parts 500, 501, 502, 503, and 504. || Patience tested. || When your children are props. || Not sure about the daylight gap. || On sorting. || One of these things is not like the other. || Today’s word is fondleworthy. || And finally, tremble, all ye enemies of freedom.

If tempted, you can follow me on X / Twitter.

To register with the blog and thereby enable extra commenting options – including @username mentions and live notifications – scroll down to the black ‘Meta’ box at the very bottom of the page. It’s free and quite painless.

One for the totally-balanced-educator files:

Meet DeDe Duffy. A preschool teacher in Cape Coral, FL. She says she teaches her students that if they don’t like their parents, they can find another family.

She also says she teaches them to be gay.

These are the people teaching your kids. pic.twitter.com/e5HJFzMOvD

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 11, 2023

Those pre-school children are in good hands, clearly. Ms Duffy’s pronouns, since you ask, are they and them.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi adds,

Well, it would be nice – refreshing, even – if these people worked out their serious mental health issues on their own time. Rather than, as seems to be the fashion, inflicting them on other people’s children.

Chris G offers the following,

Indeed. Ditto TikTok likes. And yet, as we’ve seen many times, the more scrupulously woke a teacher is, the more likely he is to issue the class instructions to remember his birthday, to use his made-up pronouns, to browse his social media accounts, and to tell him, seemingly daily, just how pretty he is.

Ms Duffy has now locked her social media accounts, so further illumination is, sadly, denied us. But it occurs to me that if I were employed to work with small children, I don’t think I would choose to film myself having eye-widening meltdowns – or to then share the recordings with lots of random strangers on TikTok and Instagram.

But maybe that’s just me. Shy soul that I am.

Azi asks,

The supply of bedlamite educators does seem all but inexhaustible. Such that one might wonder whether schools and universities, those fiefdoms of the progressive, are actively favouring the psychologically marginal. Presumably, there are people doing the hiring who think that emotional instability and pretentious “non-binary” pronouns denote an ideal candidate, an exemplar for impressionable children.

Rather than… well, you know.

Some items from the archives, on a loosely historical theme.

Perfecting The Species.

Professor James O’Flannery’s educational tour of the Chinese Revolution.

Magical Beings.

On replacing natural history with aboriginal woo.

My Kingdom For A Time Machine.

Julie Bindel tempts us with the “good old days of the feminist collective.”

Don’t Oppress My People With Your Public Libraries.

The history of ideas, as seen through the welding goggles of wokeness.

Ms Leung’s ill-tempered mouthings – of which the above is the merest hint – reveal a great deal, perhaps more than she intends, and it may help if you think of wokeness as a kind of rapid-onset morony. One that is applauded, and rewarded, in statusful institutions.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

A reminder that modernity is a helluva thing. || “Poverty simulation event.” The venue, obviously, is a country club. || Incoming. || Question asked. || It’s low-calorie. || Closer to the boss, I guess. || Ungodly bathroom debate. || Because it’s an open wound. || His name is Jezebel Lilith Eve and he is a natural-born lesbian woman. || She uses the time to not listen, while applauding herself. || NASA’s rubber room. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Women in science. || Portland scenes. || Portland scenes 2. || The progressive retail experience, parts 496, 497, 498, and 499. || The progressive learning experience, a possible series. || It’s different when men do it. || Temptress detected. || I believe this is called influencing. || Today’s word is friction. Also wear-and-tear. || I get the feeling it’s not her first time. || Lost and found. || And finally, a feat of automotive derring-do.

If tempted, you can follow me on X / Twitter.

To register with the blog and thereby enable extra commenting options – including @username mentions and live notifications – scroll down to the black ‘Meta’ box at the very bottom of the page. It’s free and quite painless.