And in shoe-related news:

Yes, I know. Another entry for our Thing That Never Happens file.

But first, a flashback:

Don’t ask.

A pattern repeated upon his release, and hence a second, present-day appearance in court. But this time, with added kinks and complications:

Because this is where we are now. Or where the Germans are, at least.

Happily, the court decided that, as the gentleman, referred to only as Klaus, had not yet legally asserted his claim of being the opposite sex, the charges of exhibitionism were indeed applicable. And so, another spell in Bedlam.

Still, I suspect those new silicone pseudo-breasts, acquired between stays, may be some consolation.

Perhaps less happily,

A comfort to all concerned, I’m sure.

After all, what could possibly go wrong when housing with women a mentally ill man who likes to hold knives to women’s throats before stealing their footwear, and hoarding said footwear for sexual purposes? A man who delights in stalking women, assaulting them, and waving his tallywhacker at mothers with their young daughters.

A man who is referred to in the German media, somewhat surreally, as a woman, a she-person, despite being identified via the very male genetic material left at the scenes of his crimes.

Oh, and should you be concerned about the whereabouts of all those stolen items, fear not:

Her treasures, obligingly stored.

Update, via the comments:

Alice quotes this from the bizarrely misleading German news coverage:

She then adds, not unreasonably,

Indeed. And for the women he robbed and assaulted, and the women and girls at whom he flashed his penis, it must be quite odd, and probably aggravating, to hear media reports of some entirely imaginary shoe-robbing, penis-flashing woman.

As noted here previously regarding a not dissimilar incident:

And,

But we live in unhinged times. In which observable reality is something to be ignored.

Time for a spot of downtrodden-minority news:

The Vancouver Police Department, quoted above, are referring, rather coyly, to this chap here:

Happily, passers-by assisted the alarmed mother, and Mr Beekmeyer, who was shirtless at the time, was overpowered and arrested shortly afterwards, before being charged with assault. Unlike the police and several news outlets, including the Vancouver Sun and the CBC, witnesses to the crime were quite comfortable using the words he and man when referring to Mr Beekmeyer.

Apparently, it’s the kind of euphoria that results in one attacking random women and their four-month-old babies. Until a crowd of passers-by pin one to the ground.

If the above isn’t sufficiently Silence of the Lambs, there is more.

He’s going to his happy place. Where the good vibes are:

So nothing of concern there.

Readers with an interest in self-expression and interior décor will find much to ponder in the video below:

🚨A man in Vancouver, Canada, was charged yesterday after assaulting a mother while she was breastfeeding her baby.

Nathaniel “Millie” Beekmeyer, 26, identifies as transgender and made videos about taking estrogen so he could masturbate to himself. pic.twitter.com/W03mw5gpN8

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) May 11, 2024

When not sharing his thoughts on how “super cute” he is, and therefore how sexually aroused he is, Mr Beekmeyer declares himself a saviour who will “fix the world.” Specifically, by transforming men into women. However – and this is perhaps something of a catch – “all women have to be destroyed.”

Mr Beekmeyer adds, “I’m a beautiful person.”

For reference purposes.

Still, at least the public were spared getting what might laughingly be referred to as the wrong idea, thanks to the police and media misleading said public about the identity of a dangerously deranged criminal.

Though it occurs to me that, for the passers-by who intervened and overpowered Mr Beekmeyer, it must have been quite strange to see subsequent reports in which this shirtless man was referred to by the police and the media as a woman. As if their own, first-hand perceptions, from mere inches away, were somehow wildly and implausibly inaccurate.

And as noted by Genevieve Gluck, author of the piece quoted above,

But hey. This is where we are now. Feel the progress.

Update, via the comments:

As noted previously, you have to wonder whether the absurdity above will continue indefinitely, a sort of routine surrealism, or whether it will it just peter out, like any fad, and then be remembered with some embarrassment. As if it were on a par with wearing flares.

And if it does become unfashionable, I wonder how the players below will feel:

I wonder how those journalists, lawyers, and court officials will retrospectively process their very public participation in our current, ongoing clown show. In which, as above, the child molester is flattered and indulged, his pretence affirmed, while his victims are repeatedly insulted. Will they still like to think of themselves as beings of high probity?

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

In the piece linked above, Ben Sixsmith responds to an attempt, by Lukas Shayo, to problematise a much-loved comic strip, one that must now, it seems, be fretted over as both “violent” and “sexist.” Readers familiar with the strip in question may wonder whether complaining in print about Calvin’s mom being, well, a mom, and about the “sexism” of a cartoon six-year-old, should result in some reflection on one’s chosen career, and one’s life choices more generally.

As Ben replies,

I’ve said before, regarding the pop-culture site io9, the more insufferably woke the site has become, the more generic and unwritten its content feels. By which I mean, it was once possible to stumble across lengthy articles on niche pop-culture subjects, often written with an affectionate expertise. Now, however, it’s difficult to differentiate one contributor from another. The content doesn’t read as if anyone in particular wrote it. It’s flavourless, uniform in its politics and ideological assumptions, both pointedly announced, and uniform in its tone. It might as well be generated by an algorithm.

Regarding Ben’s piece, Aelfheld adds,

It’s practically a genre – and a tool for the forging of progressive credentials. Basically, take something that’s very good and that a lot of people like, or have liked as children, and then problematise it, sour it, generally in a narrow, glib, and self-satisfied way. While getting details hopelessly wrong and missing all kinds of subtlety.

Or as Ben puts it, “joyless Buzzfeed-esque finger-wagging.”

See also, certain popular songs of the 1940s.

The author of the joyless prattle, Lukas Shayo – CUNY and Brooklyn, naturally – does rather struggle to find his “10 ways” in which Calvin and Hobbes should elicit regret or disapproval. We’re told, for instance, that,

And we’re informed that the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices – the strip concluded in 1995 – may be “baffling for young readers.”

Mr Shayo also bemoans Calvin spending “too much time by himself,” thereby allowing his imagination to entertain the reader.

We’re told, with improbable earnestness:

Also troubling to Mr Shayo is the thought of our comic-strip protagonist being “unsupervised in an enormous forest.” Or, unregistered by the author, what Calvin perceives as an enormous forest. This, remember, is a six-year-old boy who regularly ventures into outer space and who perceives his stuffed toy as an eloquent, talking tiger. This one reminded me of being six or so myself and, with my cousin in tow, fearlessly exploring a small strip of woodland behind my grandmother’s house, and which six-year-old me chose to see as enormous and therefore a basis for adventure.

Given that the charm of Calvin and Hobbes so often hinges on the mismatch between what Calvin imagines and rather more mundane reality, you’d think that Mr Shayo might entertain such possibilities. But no. Wokeness must be announced, a posture assumed, and things found problematic. Because contrived disappointment, a souring of all the things, is the latest must-have. For a certain kind of person. And everything, especially things that many people have enjoyed, must be judged – and found wanting – by the narrow standards of one’s own self-admiring in-group at this precise point in time.

Update, via the comments:

Aitch adds,

While Dean reveals,

I suppose that’s what makes it grimly funny, in a disappointing modernity kind of way. If you poke through Mr Shayo’s other, numerous contributions, the tone, such as it is, is much the same. There’s no obvious personality – no sense of any particular person having written it – no sense of mischief, and no discernible wit. Mr Shayo is, however, capable of making entirely contradictory claims, on the very same subject, mere days apart.

For instance, in the “10 Ways” article quoted above, Mr Shayo worries that the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices may be “baffling for young readers,” and he bemoans how the strip “doesn’t have any modern technology.” And yet we’re told – days later – that, “the lack of technological influence makes the strip read as a timeless work.” “It always feels that it’s something that could still happen today… the absence of technology is hardly notable.”

Likewise, Mr Shayo insists that “ending Calvin and Hobbes is exactly what saved it,” and praises the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, for refusing to license spin-offs, adaptations, and potentially lucrative merchandise, thereby “living up to the ideals that the strip… championed.” “Ending the strip,” we’re told, “was a good decision” and “there is no reason to tarnish that legacy by adding more to an already concluded work.”

While, one week earlier, “Calvin and Hobbes needs to be an animated show.” Because “an adaptation or continuation is essential.”

These, shall we say, inconsistencies, among many others, aren’t a result of some cunning AI spoof, some infinitely deep intelligence. This is just the standard of writing, and thinking, now deemed good enough.

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

At our glorious state broadcaster, that beacon of human progress:

Hiring the very best, I see. Ms Queva has also denounced her employer as the “Bigoted Broadcasting Company.” Don’t worry. I’ve hired a truck to help shift the pile of ironies.

Peter Saunders on forgotten knowledge, now all but taboo:

Noah Carl on the “diversity” trilemma:

And in technological news:

The educator in question, Mark Paterson, worries that black children “could end up interacting with white robots.” Specifically, “robots with reflective white surfaces.”

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Come, dear reader. Let us visit the publication now laughingly referred to as Scientific American. In particular, an “analysis” piece by Juan P Madrid, in which we’re told,

Dr Madrid, an assistant professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, begins his attempt to persuade with a tale of poetic drama:

I know. The very stuff of amazement. Brings a tear to the eye.

Apparently, the word collision is, for Dr Madrid, much too brutal and masculine when referring to the unstoppable convergence of two galaxies, and the ultimate merging of the supermassive black holes at their centres – an event that will entail the sling-shotting of countless stars and their orbiting planets, and which may release energy equivalent to around 100 million supernova explosions, and subsequently be detectable halfway across the universe.

A mere hug, you see. All that kindness.

Here, Dr Madrid’s own use of language – specifically, the word reconsider – is somewhat misleading and just a little coy. The reconsidering he has in mind would of course be enforced by those suitably enlightened, much like the author himself – as hinted at with enthusiasm later in the piece:

So, not so much a reconsidering, then, as a coerced neuroticism. A mandatory affectation, on which career progress may very much depend. But hey, where’s the fun in being a pretentious and neurotic scold if you don’t have the power to make others jump through hoops?

And so, when not detecting neutron stars and gravitational waves, astronomers will be expected to submit their findings to someone of “a different gender or ethnicity” to sift out any language that may conceivably cause distress to those determined to seek it out. “This type of conscious engagement,” we’re assured, “can only be beneficial.” And not, say, a farcical waste of time that’s better spent elsewhere.

Terms deemed “needlessly vicious,” and which render Dr Madrid indignant and reaching for tissues, include cannibalism, harassment, starvation, strangulation, stripping and suffocation:

It’s all terribly oppressive – for the implausibly faint of heart, I mean. And should a colleague carelessly refer to a planet being stripped of its ozone layer by a catastrophic gamma-ray burst, this is obviously “misogynistic language” and a basis for the sternest of hands-on-hips chiding.

Given the unequal distribution of interest, aptitude, and cognitive wherewithal, one might wonder why. Alas, as so often, the mystery persists.

The implication being that hearing an occasional use of the word cannibalism or stripping in reference to astronomical phenomena will somehow, in ways never quite specified, deflect an otherwise promising astronomer from their calling, despite an uncommon focus and years of study. Because female astronomers, and brown astronomers, and especially female brown astronomers, are so immensely delicate and likely to be traumatised by such descriptive terms.

At which point, readers may wish to ponder whether the best people to be doing astronomy, or teaching astronomy, or to be making workplace rules for astronomers, are the kinds of people who mouth dogmatic assertions without any trace of supporting logic, and who are distracted, even distressed, by hearing the word collision being used to describe a collision.

The strange trajectory of Scientific American has been mentioned here before.

Update:

Before anyone quibbles, the phrase “halfway across the universe” is merely a figure of speech. The actual estimate for how far away the gravitational waves could be detected by beings with technology comparable to our own is 3.25 million light years. So, for a hug, plenty of oomph.

Via Darleen, in the comments. Which you’re reading, of course.