You know what to do. I’ll set the ball rolling with some agreeable downwardsness; a state-of-the-art driving simulator circa 1967; hairs hitherto undetected; assorted slime mould; and the thrill of competitive miniature dry stone walling.

Oh, and I think these may be teabags.

For newcomers and the nostalgic, more items from the archives:

Loving Themselves.

Fat feminist students fight the patriarchy by gorging on doughnuts and thick, liquid pudding.

Yes, students with weight issues – issues of such magnitude that they have anger to release – will be encouraged to gorge on doughnuts and thick sugary drinks requiring an extra-wide straw, before hating themselves all over again, while pretending to be empowered and totally okay with it. You see, the way to help overweight people is to encourage the kind of high-sugar consumption that results in weight gain and inviting them to smash objects that remind them of how unhappy they are about being fat. A situation that they’ve just made slightly worse. 

One For The Ladies.

A Guardian writer tries his hand at saucy celebrity news. Things take a strange turn.

Apparently, “gay twink culture” is feeding into straight desire, albeit in ways never specified; and yet, complains our columnist, these ephebophile appetites are “nowhere to be seen in the People [Sexiest Man Alive] list.” Readers will doubtless be shocked by the revelation that the middle-aged ladies who buy People magazine, many of whom have children of their own, aren’t overwhelmingly aroused by the kind of skinny young men whose fame is based on playing skinny 17-year-old boys who get seduced by older men in the kind of art-house films loved by Guardian columnists.

The Psychology Of “Social Justice” Is A Thing To Behold.

Leftist professor advises students to say “fuck you” to potential employers. 

Readers with an academic bent will be thrilled to hear that Dr Strouse’s dissertation is titled Literary Theories of the Foreskin. This work of tremendous cultural and intellectual heft “investigates a school of thought in which the prepuce, as a conceptual metaphor, organises literary experience.” It also, apparently, “demonstrates that, within the school of preputial poetics, the male anatomy queerly embodies the plasticity and multiplicity of rhetoric.”

Should you want more, by all means click here. Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker. 

Applause would surely follow. 

I am a polyamorous, pansexual, lesbian and nonbinary transwoman. I’m also a furry. 

As someone quips in reply to this, “When you give yourself all the roles in the Discord server.” 

When not discussing his mental health issues – a go-to and seemingly inexhaustible topic – or deploying niche hashtags by the dozen, or modelling his assorted looks, from “hot girl summer” to “basic bitch autumn,” Mr Wildcat, quoted above, likes to remind viewers of how startlingly original he – sorry, e/er – is:

I realise my neo-pronouns are a little unique, mostly because… I came up with them. 

Readers will note that Mr Wildcat apparently finds it bewildering that someone – specifically, a female colleague – might not be entirely convinced by his supposedly unassailable womanly status:

She struggled with identifying my gender and it’s like… what? I wear low-cut tops to work.

“It was confusing. It confuses me.”

Update, via the comments:

A miracle breakthrough in child relocation technology. || “My device will prevent the flapping of the breasts.” || Butterfly repair of note. || Burly chap plus one. || Positive thinking. || Steepness detected. || Related, you may wish to tread carefully. || He does this better than you. || And they do this quite well. || ‘Tis the season. || Tom and Jerry. || At last, a robotic masseur. || Incoming. || Carved avocados. || Thaddeus Cahill’s Teleharmonium. || Across The Multiverse, a game. || Women have weird elbows. || Background noise generator. || The thrill of 1980s dashboards. || Incongruity detected. || Ant farm diversion. (h/t, Things) || And finally, because you clearly need to know, a “fun fact about me.”

Kenin M Spivak on the urge to level down:

During the last 18 months, supercharged by events after George Floyd’s death, the radical Left has… shifted its focus to the abolition of testing and standards, the evisceration of math curricula, and indoctrination in our K-12 schools. The following is a necessarily abridged summary of recent developments…

Under pressure from progressive assertions of test bias, over the last few years, many colleges decided that SAT and ACT testing would be optional. Then, to settle a lawsuit alleging racist disparities, in May 2021, the UC system announced it is ceasing the use of ACT and SAT scores. Other colleges promptly followed the UC’s lead. Without scores, there can be no disparities.

In April 2020, citing “equity” and its goal to restructure and dismantle “systems and institutions that create the dichotomy of beneficiaries and the oppressed and marginalised,” the Oregon Department of Education eliminated grades and proficiency in reading, writing, and math as requirements for graduation…

On September 9, 2020, Education Trust-West, an “advocate for educational justice,” announced its study and toolkit for K-12 math, A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In Pathway, Trust-West characterised expecting the right answer, independent practice, teaching in a linear fashion, requiring procedural fluency, and requesting that students show their work, as “white supremacy.” Instead of offering a path for minority students to learn how to do math and come to the correct answer, Pathway instead advocates that schools use numbers to motivate anti-racist discussions of social justice.

On July 14, 2021, the California Department of Education issued a Mathematics Framework based on True-West’s Pathway. Chapter 1 of Framework rejects “natural gifts and talents” and calls for de-emphasising calculus and eliminating classes for gifted children in grades 6-12 to eliminate “inequity.” Chapter 1 specifies that “equity influences all aspects of this document.” The draft Framework directs teachers to use math for political discussions about “marginalised communities” and to move away from focusing on correct methods or answers.

At a time when, despite increases in school funding, almost 80% of black and Hispanic eighth graders have been deemed “not proficient” in maths or reading, it’s unclear how improvements might be made while simultaneously graduating high-school pupils regardless of their performance, or even their attendance, and while shying from the existence of such terribly oppressive things as correct answers.