Three items presented for your betterment:

First up, “Kids and kink can coexist at Pride in a totally fine way,” we’re told.

You see, exhibitionist displays of fetishes – say, transvestism, sadomasochism, nipple clamps and cock rings – constitute a “justice space” and “kids and youth voices are vital to justice movements.” “Kids,” we learn, “are a vulnerable and marginalised group” and must therefore – yes, therefore – be exposed to narcissistic psychodrama and the penises of creepy, damaged men.

It’s all about those “intersecting identities and oppressions.”

This second item reminds us, inadvertently, of two fairly obvious options. You could, of course, regurgitate pseudo-scholarly prattle in a condescending tone, complete with facial theatre. Or you could just, you know, dial back on the carbs and sugar, and thereby live longer without the serious health problems. Or the mental contortions.

Oh, and somehow, inexcusably, I’ve only today discovered this.

I think it’s safe to say that your cross-cultural interview isn’t going terribly well when the interviewee starts throwing his own faeces at you.

Also, open thread.

Grooming is important. || Dignity intact. || Drain blockage detected. || Dog bed for humans. || He does this better than you would. || It’s a good-news-bad-news thing. || Hobby of note. || Rapid upwardsness. || You will watch the empowering sassiness. || The progressive retail experience, part 435. || Party snack experiment not entirely successful. (h/t, Julia) || A suggestion for crime reporters. || Prepare for robots with living skin. || Robot plays cello. || She really hopes it helps. || Correct answer in physics class “ascribed value by whiteness.” || Traffic noise generator, to obscure actual traffic noise. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus) || Vibrant scenes. || The thrill of cricket. || And in pre-school news, it seems he doesn’t know.

On the subject of ostentatious hair colouring, Emil Kirkegaard has some thoughts:

For those not into memes: the idea is that poisonous animals advertise their dangerousness by [using] bright colours to scare away predators. Humans appear to do the same, as those who are poisonous — mentally ill — colour their hair in bright, dangerous-looking colours. Since this meme was made in about 2014, we’ve seen a strong increase in the number of people with unnatural hair colours. In the same time, we have seen a rise in mental illness in left-wingers…

Is unnatural hair colour associated with mental illness, or are we being misled by a few prominent people with this hair style who appear very mentally ill? We decided to find out using the venerable OKCupid dataset.

Charts and number-crunching ensue.

The full paper – Blue Hair and the Blues: Dying Your Hair Unnatural Colours is Associated with Depression – can be downloaded here. 

When you park the car in Portland. 

Also, open thread.

And in, er, child-molestation-fantasy news:

A professor of Ethics at Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway has called to legalise AI-generated child pornography, claiming that paedophilia should be seen as an innate sexuality that requires destigmatisation. Ole Martin Moen, a gay man who identifies as “queer,” currently serves as a member of the advisory board on Norway’s Patient Organization for Gender-Incongruence (PKI), a social and political lobby group for trans rights. […]

Moen details arguments for and against “adult-child sex” before ultimately coming to the conclusion that “adult-child sex is not categorically very harmful” but may result in “risks” of children being harmed… Moen also argues that paedophiles who do not sexually abuse children should be “praised” for their “admirable willpower,”

Not raping children – so far, that is – but really, really wanting to and thinking about it a lot – is praiseworthy, you see.

Update, via the comments:

If readers will forgive a little paraphrasing:

Frisky Nonce: “I didn’t utterly ruin a small child’s life today. I wanted to, quite a lot, but I didn’t.”

Woke Academic: “Oh well done. Have a sweet. And some more child-abuse pornography.”

We could, I think, paraphrase a little further:

“I didn’t stab any random passers-by in the face today.”

“Oh well done. Here are some pictures of random people being stabbed in the face.”

Farcical as it sounds, the dynamic is not entirely dissimilar.

Update 2: