Yes, a chance to be thrillingly creative and throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with a small hole in the ground; some silent props for when your pool balls are too loud; via Julia, an illustration of stereotype accuracy; a realisation of note; a reminder that there’s always a catch; and a right-handed man.  

Oh, and some notable balloons.

“The best thing.”  

Some of the replies may entertain. 

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

MoZaic Care, a cosmetic surgery provider in San Francisco, California, offers a “nullification” procedure that “removes external genitalia while preserving a urethral opening and anal opening.” The same company offers a procedure called “phalgina,” or “penile preservation vaginoplasty,” which allows males who identify as transgender or non-binary to install a facsimile of a vagina while retaining the penis.

In the company literature, the words “gender affirming” are used. Seemingly without irony. 

For those determined to behold the fruits of “nullification,” “phallus-preserving vaginoplasty,” “vagina-preserving phalloplasty” and other surgical adventures, photos can be found. However, needless to say, search at your peril.

And remember, dear readers, “Genital preferences are transphobic.”

Also, open thread. 

Trainee pilot + total engine failure. || Assorted vintage ray-guns. || Salvage operation. || Mighty dad powers. || Day at the beach. || Zoe is terribly complicated. || An educator speaks. (h/t, Darleen) || Careful now. || Airstream funeral coach. (h/t, Things) || The California retail experience. || On stars and nearly stars. || And it was all going so well. || I wonder why no-one wants to read woke Iron Man comics. || Not entirely sure what’s happening here. || Heh. || How to impress the ladies. || The painted knees of flapper girls. || Yorkshire Sugar Gliders. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Glass octopus. || Fiddlesome filing. || New friend detected. || And finally, the lamp you’ve been itching to get your hands on. Only £3,500.

Robert Schmad spots more Clown Quarter contortion:

An assistant professor at Appalachian State University recently argued that enforcing behavioural standards in public high schools is rooted in racism and unfairly affects Black students. In the article “‘Press Charges’: Art Class, White Feelings, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” [assistant professor of art education, Dr] Albert Stabler writes that the desire to punish students for violating school rules, especially when the police are involved, is the result of “the overvaluation of White feelings.”

The article, which you can poke at here, contains many wonders, generally of a kind only the woke can conjure into being. It begins with the obligatory confession of innate wrongness – i.e., “I am a white teacher” – and includes much gushing about non-white students’ “life experiences and cultural knowledge,” before which our educator is eager to prostrate himself, and which have apparently resulted in Dr Stabler’s own “learning and growth as a person.” Particulars on this point – the deep insights of teenagers – are, alas, unclear. And amid the gushing, there are notes of disharmony:

There were many students who regularly received in-school and out-of-school suspensions for what were perceived as disruptive actions.

Not actually disruptive, you see. Merely perceived as disruptive. For no reason whatsoever.

While my classroom materials and my dignity were sometimes damaged by rambunctious behaviour, more dire consequences were regularly enacted on students by school officials (not to mention parents).

We’ll get to some of that “rambunctious behaviour” in a second.

“In… schools,” we’re told, “the desire to punish is racialised,” and “white people’s feelings often have outsized consequences on People of Colour.” The example given to illustrate this alleged phenomenon is of a white, female art teacher – Dr Stabler’s immediate predecessor – who “was said to have wept at the end of every school day” and who pursued assault charges against a black student who forcibly cut said teacher’s hair. This assault, presumably intended to humiliate the woman and assert dominance over her, is passed over with remarkable ease by Dr Stabler, as if the “white feelings” of the teacher, and the implications of such behaviour – and its accommodation by leftist educators – were unworthy of exploration.