And in crime-news news:

There’s no way @7NewsAustralia thought they could post this with the comments off and not have anyone say something.

Is this clip farming? pic.twitter.com/ADp8nx9jfV

— What’s News!? (@Whats_Newsss) April 21, 2025

I have to say, I didn’t see that coming. 

Via Rod Dreher.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Via Muldoon in the comments – and the pages of Psychology Today – the evaporating standards of “affirmative psychotherapy”:

Sharp-eyed readers may have registered the seeming absence of curiosity, of enquiry – say, regarding very common causes of the phenomenon in question. Readers may also wish to ponder the inevitable tensions between affirmation and investigation – and to place bets on which will be dispensed with in favour of the other. In this Yes, You Are Napoleon school of psychotherapy, where the unwell must always be told whatever they want to hear. Possibly before being steered towards irreversible mutilation and lifelong pain.

That gender-affirming care.

Readers may also wish to ponder how a similarly affirming approach might fare with other mental health issues – such as anorexia, with alarmingly cadaverous young women being told, “Yes, dear, you are every bit as fat as you imagine and should definitely continue starving yourself.”

A consequence of all this affirmation and declared solidarity is a hasty jumping to conclusions. A begging of questions. For instance:

The author of the above, Tess Kilwein – PhD, pronouns “she/they” – would have us believe, and would have her patients believe, that the most pressing and fundamental causes of woe are “bias,” “microaggressions,” and “anti-trans bills” – among which, laws that restrict women’s changing rooms and other intimate spaces to use by actual women, rather than delusional and/or predatory men.

And yet, a person with sexual dysmorphia – someone vehemently alienated from the physical reality of their sex – would presumably still feel that way even if stranded on a desert island. Just as they do now, when alone – say, in the shower or when making tiresome TikTok videos. Seems to me it ain’t the world that’s causing the problem.

This willingness to pretend – and to then applaud oneself as righteous and heroic – is, I’d suggest, a less than ideal tendency for a mental health professional. Someone to whom a person’s wellbeing, or hope of wellbeing, has been entrusted. Likewise, the rush to externalise all causes of misery. While social interaction – knowing that other people are likely to perceive you as you actually are, not as whatever it is you wish you were – may amplify the existing dissonance, such interaction doesn’t cause it. It isn’t the root of the problem.

That’s an, as they say, you thing.

In this supposedly therapeutic context, the words affirmation and validation translate as a willingness to lie. A willingness to indulge obvious bollocks and play along. And so, one might wonder how Dr Kilwein might affirm and validate some of the chaps seen here. Or this merry bedlamite, who violates women’s toilets and pushes his phone camera under the doors of occupied stalls in order to livestream to his admirers, all those affirming fans, the protests of his latest victim.

But, says Dr Kilwein, we must “validate without hesitation.” Because this practised, habitual dishonesty is, she says, “justice” and “courage.” And therefore, a basis for in-group status. At which point, the nakedly partisan activism of such people – and the abandonment of anything approaching detachment and objectivity – even basic curiosity – appears jarringly at odds with any claims of professionalism.

We are, however, assured that Dr Kilwein is a proponent of “bold storytelling.” Which is just what a patient needs when their perceptions of reality are wildly unreliable.

A tale of tax, utopia, and human faeces:

The fragrant sentiments above, mouthed by Danish couple Flemming Hansen and Mette Helbæk, concern their creation, in Sweden, of a “forest resort” named Stedsans, one met with much acclaim:

Dish magazine hailed the project as “Seasonal, sustainable, organic, artisanal, waste-free, foraged.” While readers of EasyJet Traveller magazine were told that the resort is “A new way of living that’s as sustainable as it is delicious.”

For Ms Helbæk and Mr Hansen, the name of the resort, which is Danish for “sense of place,” reflects “which direction we need to go as a society.” The couple, who refer to themselves as “soul-driven entrepreneurs,” shared their vision:

All terribly inspiring. Scenes of this idyll can be savoured here.

However,

The output of those sixteen charming cottages, one assumes. I’ll let any passing enthusiasts of arithmetic have fun with that one.

Ah yes. “A way of living that respects all forms of life.” Conjured into being by “soul-driven entrepreneurs.”

According to an investigation by Dagens Nyheter and Politiken, Ms Helbæk and Mr Hansen had left Denmark owing “millions of kroner in debt to Danish tax authorities,” before moving to Sweden, where they accumulated further tax debt of six million SEK.

Sustainability, baby.

You may now resume your humdrum, unenlightened, non-artisanal lives.

Via Samizdata.

Or, The Cronenberg Chronicles.

Below, Peter Boghossian and Mia Hughes, author of The WPATH Files, discuss the twisted history of transgender ideology. Topics touched on include the audacious propagation of pseudoscience; social contagion and the capture of institutions; experiments on children; and the psychology of doubling-down.

It’s two hours long and dense with detail, but much of that detail is likely to widen the eyes. It’s possibly worth noting, as Ms Hughes does around 01:16:00, that as the trans phenomenon has flourished – if that’s quite the right word – rates of anorexia and cutting have fallen, suggesting some correlation. Perhaps some shifting fashion, a swapping of self-harm signals. Given the subject matter and its realities, the squeamish may wish to proceed with caution.

A continuation of the discussion above – covering the abandonment of rigour and basic professionalism, surgical horrors, and the “insane experiment” of puberty suppression – can be found here.

Previously: The Bedlamite Contagion. From which, this:

This, then, is where we are. Doesn’t seem a good place to be, frankly.

Speaking of spite as progressive pseudo-piety:

Odd message to send, really.

For people who imagine themselves the good guys in their own mental drama.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading, of course.

Consider this an open thread.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi adds,

Yet apparently it needs saying.

And setting aside for a moment the weird random malice, there’s the more mundane oversight. A Tesla has eight external cameras which record any untoward activity while alerting the owner. The odds of being identified, in high definition, and consequently prosecuted, are fairly high. Yet the people doing the keying and daubing tell us, loudly and quite often, that they’re the smart ones. Our moral and intellectual betters.

It’s not just the conceit that vandalising some random person’s car is a thing one should do as a good person, as an act of righteousness. Bewildering as that is. It’s the idea of doing that to a make of car that’s famed for its ability to record anything that approaches. Which suggests a level of emotional dysregulation, of total impulse control failure, that’s quite hard to relate to.

Via Aitch, another one. With man-bun bonus.

More deep thinkers of a progressive persuasion.

I fear we’ll be at this at all day.

Oh wait.

We may have a winner:

Deranged leftist scrapes his own butt hole and smears it on a cybertruck.
pic.twitter.com/RFuRW0yIq3

— The Daily Sneed™ (@Tr00peRR) March 19, 2025

As so often, one feels obliged to say, “You know this isn’t how well-adjusted adults generally behave, right?”