More than close enough. || The machine uprising, day 3. || A test of manliness. || Meanwhile, in Canada. || Neutralising tremors. || That’s a lot of drag-for-kiddies. || That’s a lot of transgender paedophilia. (h/t, Burnsie) || He does this better than you do. || Songs like X. For finding new music like the music you know. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || One woman’s war on “promiscuous kissing.” || How to make peanut butter glow. || Decent bouncing, better save. || Consolations. || Cross-cultural interaction. || Cross-cultural interaction 2. || Surprisingly casual. || Her gender is “inherently related to teeth.” || Musical interlude. || And finally, following this item, “Attention, children, your role-model adult has arrived.”

At Adelphi University, a curious inclusion:

A private university in New York told students, faculty, and staff to not discriminate against someone based on a history of sexual offences. A poster at the university, obtained by The College Fix, has a list of categories and a statement that “I will not discriminate.” The poster has the university’s name on it. People should “not discriminate” against someone based on sex, race, disability, or religion, according to the poster, nor someone’s “sexual offender status.”

Presumably, students and staff should not regard someone’s status as a registered sex offender as having any conceivable utility or relevance and should never allow this knowledge to influence any decisions they might make about anything. 

An adjacent poster denounces “dating violence,” “lack of consent” and “incapacitated sexual contact.”

Also, open thread.

You know, I don’t recall my middle school’s library being quite this edgy:

A concerned middle school teacher in Loudoun County, Virginia couldn’t let the comments of fellow school employee Stefany Guido slide after reportedly hearing her say some students — the majority of which are 11-13 years old — could be considered “sex workers.” Guido, a librarian at Sterling Middle school, made the statement while defending a library book which said sex work is just like any other job, comparable to a store clerk, an architect, or a journalist. As sex workers, students could benefit from the book’s placement on library shelves, Guido said.

Apparently, eleven-year-olds need to know how to whore themselves – and to know that whoring is, like, totally valid and empowering – because they may be transgender and may have to pay for hormones and surgical mutilations.

Oh shiny tomorrow.

Update, via the comments:

Lest you imagine the above must be an error or some one-off aberration:

Presumably, these other middle-school librarians didn’t find anything inapt about 11-year-olds learning about the glories of prostitution and its general awesomeness. Because “high-end escorts” can “pull in half a million dollars a year.” Though it seems to me that an 11-year-old “sex worker” would be an abused child, a child being trafficked. Not an ideal aspiration for the pre-pubescent. But maybe that’s just me and my uptight stuffiness.

Update 2:

Hardcore cleaning. || All you have to do, they said, is keep very still. || Well, I suppose they’re quite big, yes. || Boat legs. || AntGame. || Gratuitous drama detected. || What are the odds? || “They took what was already there and claimed it as theirs.” || Sprites. || The joys of public transport, parts 4,863 and 4,864. || Add pants, should they be needed. || Sponsor Block, for skipping the ever-lengthening sponsor segments in YouTube videos. || Musical interlude. || The last one. || Discussion point. || Discussion point 2. || Fashion for him, and for her. || Four legs good. || How to fail a drug test. || She’s winning at fatness, so there’s that. || And finally, with some effort, when you really do want your towel back.

At the switched-on woke paradise of Ontario’s Western University:

Western initially stood firm in keeping the picture up, noting it “understood ‘how complex and intersectional this topic is’ and that the ‘imagery may be upsetting to some Muslims.’” However, Associate Vice President of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Opiyo Oloya, announced on Wednesday the picture had been removed.

The pecking order of victimhood is still, it seems, under construction.

Update, two more via the comments:

It’s perfectly straightforward and nothing could ever go wrong.

Setting aside the practical, structural shortcomings of polyamorous entanglements, and the likelihood of insecurity and resentment, there’s also the fact that such arrangements tend to attract a very high concentration of, shall we say, psychologically marginal people. By which I mean, the kinds of people one wouldn’t generally wish to be in an intimate relationship with. Say, the kinds of people who need you to know just how fascinating and complicated their sexual arrangements are, and by extension how fascinating and complicated they themselves must be.

Hey, kids! Come to the library for Pokémon, Lego… and drag queens.

I’m still not sure why proximity to drag queens – i.e., men performing grotesque parodies of women – is supposed to be both imperative and affirming for toddlers. But apparently these things are somehow aspirational and representative, a role model for later adulthood. As if cartoonish transvestism were an unassailable, not-at-all-insulting shorthand for being gay. As if “story time drag queens,” a remarkable number of whom turn out to be registered sex offenders – three in Texas alone – were natural objects of kinship. As if being lurid and grotesque, or mentally ill, would be an obvious ambition. A way to feel good about oneself.

Also, open thread.