It’s a bank holiday hereabouts, so before doing other things, I thought I’d share this guide to online advertising.

Provenance unknown. Also, open thread.

Because it takes practice, a chance to throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll kick things off with an answer to the age-old question of whether eyeballs bounce; an obliging doggo; a job that’s perhaps not for everyone; an inn of note; scenes of wartime London; and why a non-lethal knockout is harder than you might think.

Entertain me, I dare you. 

Heard in class: 

“Can everybody look up from their phones? Hello, you guys, look at me.”

As someone quips in the replies, “Is this on the test?”

Mr Zoa is a “performer and educator” who uses the word black as if it were a credential, an obvious accomplishment. Preferred pronouns, because of course, are “she/they/he,” and areas of expertise, of which there are so many, include “loving myself,” “hair micro-aggressions,” and gyrating in heels like a stripper. Readers may note how these daringly individual people – the ones so busily, and so loudly, being themselves – so often default to the same tedious cartoon.

Update, via the comments:

Mr Zoa also thinks that employers shouldn’t object to him going backless at work, on account of his non-binary fabulousness. Which, it has to be said, doesn’t suggest an encouraging set of priorities, or a mind focussed on the task for which said person is being employed. The imagined right to parade around the workplace in a cloud of self-absorption, forever on the cusp of voguing, in some backless, strapless ensemble is a strange hill to die on. For a high-school teacher.

But Mr Zoa seems to regard his hashtags – #lgbt #nonbinary #gay – as amulets of some kind, as protections against criticism, while seeking ever-greater indulgence.

Also, open thread.

Or, She Works With Children.

Whiteness…. is hostile, it is violent… it is annihilating… That is something we always need to be mindful of as white people.

A reminder that woke anti-white woo doesn’t have to be convincing or coherent, just signalled often, regardless.  

Note the implication that “whiteness,” being white, equals racism and is therefore by default a thing to be discussed in terms of pathology, a thing to be cured. “Colour-blindness” – i.e., not being weirdly fixated by race – is, it turns out, deeply problematic, and must give way to deconstructing “the whiteness=greatness fallacy in white psyches.” Which is what “white psyches” are all about, you see.

This self-confessed “white lady,” Natasha Stovall, is a child psychologist, a stater of pronouns, and an avowed “anti-racist,” which is to say, a seeker of woke status. And hence the racism, of course.

Dr Stovall “specialises in warmth and empathy.” Her rates are between $120-$250 per hour. In case you were tempted. 

Update, via the comments:

Dr Stovall tells us that she is terribly progressive and a child of progressive parents – presumably, the Less Bad White People – and is therefore “part of the solution.” Though one can’t help wondering if the phantom bigotries she invokes and then casually ascribes to others, seemingly based on their pigmentation, may have more to do with her own racial neuroticism – what with her being so terribly progressive and a child of progressive parents.

Commenter sH2 asks, “What the hell is ‘psychic energy’?” – a term, one of several, deployed as if self-evident. Alas, with all of the nebulous rambling and unfinished thoughts – all the y’knows, likes, and kind-ofs – it’s hard to be sure. Beyond the claim that this energy is a thing being “drained” by “whiteness,” a malevolent phenomenon, and which in turn is like a “ghost.” Or something.

Readers who watch Dr Stovall speak, in her area of alleged expertise, may not be given an impression of mental clarity, or of ideas that have been thought through and subjected to stress, even of a routine kind. It seems we must make do with a series of disjointed pronouncements surrounded by rhetorical gas. Such that, were Dr Stovall to sit there chanting “Bad Whitey” over and over again, the dogmatism and idiocy might be slightly more obvious, but the informational content would remain much the same.

The University of Utah has formed an “Anti-Racism” committee which will be tasked with “improv[ing] the overall campus climate regarding issues and events of racism across all intersections of identity.” The video, however, only mentions one race. 

It’s an “intergroup dialogue,” you see, spanning “all intersections of identity and bias.” And in which only one notional group is implied as by default chronically victimised, albeit in ways that are somewhat mysterious. The term “anti-Blackness” is deployed many times. Though particulars of this alleged oppression are not immediately forthcoming, indeed entirely absent, as if such details were unnecessary – possibly on account of the time spent needlessly declaring pronouns, and repeating the words “equity,” “diversity” and “folx.” Students are, however, steered towards a course on “whiteness privilege,” during which people of pallor can feel suitably ashamed for their collective skin – sorry, sin.

We are told, 

The Anti-Racism Committee recommends and evaluates measures to ensure that everyone enjoys a campus free of racism and hate. 

And this feat will apparently be achieved by singling out The White Devil as uniquely defective and deserving of correction.

Update, via the comments:

Given the supposed gravity of the supposed problem, such that it requires committees and an ever-expanding infrastructure, you’d think these keen, colossal minds might share at least a hint of what it is they’re planning to “interrogate” and purge from the Earth. Alas, in page after page, we get only airy waffle about “systems… policies and processes,” none of which are specified, even in broad terms. The university itself is mentioned as allegedly a venue of seething racial bigotry, but again, no particulars are offered – none whatsoever. The claim, and what it implies about students and staff – which is to say, the insult - is simply presented as in no need of explanation, or examples, or any supporting evidence.

The video features Dr Bryan Hubain, the associate vice-president of student development and inclusion – a man who boasts of being a “black, gay immigrant” as if this were a credential, an accomplishment, a triple whammy – and a reason for our eternal fascination – and whose LinkedIn profile tells us he is schooled in “critical race theory.” So, no reasons for suspicion there.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.