In case you missed it in the comments yesterday… 

…where it was followed, quite promptly, by this.

Via Tom J and Muldoon. 

Careful, children. It smells like human. // Tweet of note. (h/t, Damian) // Nosulus Rift. // HDR rocket test. // He wants all the oranges. // Puny Godzilla. // Keep very still. Their vision is based on movement. // A Firing Line compilation. // Kings Road punks, 1978. // Kings Road punks and New Romantics, 1981. // Classical mash-up. // At last, a rotating house. // Jihad interrupted. // The effects of Aliens. // Arrival. // His charcoal drawings are better than yours. // Hardcore victimology: “The idea of health is ableist.” (h/t, Julia) // Face for the paranoid. // And finally, uncannily, a stroboscopic picture frame of note.

Heather Mac Donald on race hustlers and riots: 

For the last two years, President Barack Obama has seized every opportunity to advise blacks that they are the victims of a racist criminal justice system. We should not be surprised when that belief, so constantly inflamed, erupts into violence. Even in his remarks at the memorial service for the five murdered Dallas cops, Obama had the gall to trot out his usual racial vendetta against the police, even though he was fully on notice that cops were being killed because of it… Obama’s indictment ignored, as usual, the astronomically higher rates of black crime that fully explain racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Meanwhile, Obama hasn’t uttered a word in condemnation of the lawless behaviour in Milwaukee, two days into the events. […]

And as important as the political stoking of that hatred is the academic race industry that keeps black victimology at a fever pitch. The 2015–2016 school year saw an outbreak of delusional self-pity among black college students across the country. They claimed to be discriminated against by faculty, administrators, fellow students, and academic standards. Never mind that many allegedly disparaged students were attending the colleges in question only because of racial preferences, despite having test scores that would automatically disqualify white or Asian applicants. Never mind that nearly every waking hour of a college administrator is devoted to the cultivation of a separatist racial consciousness among black students and to dreaming up new racial sinecures for faculty and other administrators.

For an example of that victimology, and the behaviour being excused by faculty and staff, see this surreal episode. Note the impunity and inversion of reality. And note the description, by the university’s vice provost for student affairs, of blatant racial thuggery as “a wonderful, beautiful thing.”

Ah, you didn’t see that coming. As I’ll be away for a long weekend, I’m afraid you’ll have to throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with a puzzle book of note, a brief history of EMI, a game about planets and potatoes, and, obviously, a 3D-printed clitoris.

Phone signal permitting, I may check in later. Play nicely. No biting.

A group of students at the Claremont Colleges in search of a roommate insist that the roommate not be white.

But of course. I mean, it is the twenty-first century.

Student Karé Ureña posted on Facebook that non-white students in need of housing arrangements should reach out to either her or two other students with whom she plans to live in an off-campus house. The post states that “POC [people of colour] only” will be considered for this living opportunity. “I don’t want to live with any white folks,” Ureña added.

[Student] Dalia Zada expressed concerns about the anti-white discrimination. “‘POC only?’ Maybe I’m missing something or misunderstanding your post, but how is that not a racist thing to say?” “This is directed to protect POC, not white people. Don’t see how this is racist at all…” responded AJ León, a member of the Pitzer Latino Student Union.

“People of colour are allowed to create safe POC only spaces. It is not reverse racism or discriminatory, it is self-preservation,” Sara Roschdi, another Pitzer Latino Student Union member, stated. “Reverse racism isn’t a thing.” “We don’t want to have to tiptoe around fragile white feelings in a space where we just want to relax and be comfortable,” commented Nina Lee, a Women’s Studies major. “I could live with white people, but I would be far more comfortable living with other POC.”

“White people always mad when they don’t feel included but at the end of the day y’all are damaging asf [sic] and if a POC feels they need to protect themselves from that toxic environment THEY CAN! Quick to try to jump on a POC but you won’t call your friends out when they’re being racist asf [sic],” noted Terriyonna Smith, an Africana Studies major and Resident Assistant for the 2016-2017 year. “I’m not responding to NO comments and NOPE I don’t wanna have a dialogue.”

Parents and alumni, please take note. This is what identity politics does to a child.

Victor Davis Hanson on borders and the lack thereof: 

Among elites, borderlessness has taken its place among the politically correct positions of our age — and, as with other such ideas, it has shaped the language we use. The descriptive term “illegal alien” has given way to the nebulous “unlawful immigrant.” This, in turn, has given way to “undocumented immigrant,” “immigrant,” or the entirely neutral “migrant” — a noun that obscures whether the individual in question is entering or leaving. […]

What we might call post-borderism argues that boundaries even between distinct nations are mere artificial constructs, methods of marginalisation designed by those in power, mostly to stigmatise and oppress the “other”… “Where borders are drawn, power is exercised,” as one European scholar put it. This view assumes that where borders are not drawn, power is not exercised — as if a million Middle Eastern immigrants pouring into Germany do not wield considerable power by their sheer numbers and adroit manipulation of Western notions of victimisation and grievance politics. Indeed, Western leftists seek political empowerment by encouraging the arrival of millions of impoverished migrants.

Inevitably, the issue of naked, often comical hypocrisy becomes hard to avoid:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg offers another case study. The multibillionaire advocates for a fluid southern border and lax immigration enforcement, but he has also stealthily spent $30 million to buy up four homes surrounding his Palo Alto estate. They form a sort of no-man’s-land defence outside his own Maginot Line fence, presumably designed against hoi polloi who might not share Zuckerberg’s taste or sense of privacy. Zuckerberg’s other estate in San Francisco is prompting neighbours’ complaints because his security team takes up all the best parking spaces. Walls and border security seem dear to the heart of the open-borders multibillionaire — when it’s his wall, his border security.

See also, Simon Schama Syndrome. 

This versus that. // There was an awful lot of dancing in 80s movies. // Sweet Dreams, orchestrated. // Wooden skyscrapers and tall timber buildings. // For Weird Tales enthusiasts. // Lift your spirits with levitating glassware. // Candles of note. // At last, a title capitalizing tool. // Old NYC, a Google Street View of yesteryear. // Gender role test. It’s cutting edge science, people. // Ski slopes are sexist. // Sponge holder of note. // Meals made of paper. // Atomically thin transistors. (h/t, Peter) // Art. // Dissolving drugs. // Composite birds. // Elevated bus carries 300 passengers. // His balloon animals are better than yours. // Bespoke joints, only $7000. “What Monet was to Impressionism, Tony is to the art of joint rolling.” // And finally, informatively, how to chop an onion.

In academia, the past will be remembered by erasing any unflattering reference to it:

Yale University has established a new committee dedicated to deciding when and how the school should rename buildings, monuments, and other campus features it believes are too offensive for a modern university.

And over at Columbia University (and Bowdoin, and Barnard, and Wesleyan, and NYU):

Behind these moves away from [admissions] testing is another phenomenon that schools do not appear to have stated explicitly.

But coyness aside, deliberately lowering standards is apparently a good thing.   

And lifted from the comments, meet Olivia Legaspi, a young woman with sense:  

Here’s what I was told during my freshman orientation at Haverford College: “Speak up when you feel uncomfortable. Place your own wellbeing above all other concerns.” In short, the school was ready to protect me from any personal slights or hurt feelings I might suffer. What counted as a personal slight or similar offence was up to me to define. This surprised me. It surprised me because at McDonald’s, where I worked before I started school, acting in this way would have probably cost me my job, a job I needed in order to go to college.

Among other things, Ms Legaspi notes that expecting your own feelings to always be indulged and prioritised, however inconvenient to others and however small the slight, sounds an awful lot like “privilege.”

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

If you are only attracted to able, ‘mentally well’, cis, normatively beautiful people, from class privileged backgrounds, then you are upholding violent norms.

Attention, husbands, wives, lovers, seekers of amour, and the partnered of the world. Student activist and avowed “feminist killjoy” Josefin Hedlund wishes to correct your desires in a totally non-dogmatic, non-presumptuous way:

This myth [of love, marriage and monogamy] still has a powerful hold in today’s Western neoliberal societies. Its most important message is that love is magical and apolitical. However, at a closer look, it is obvious that love actually works to uphold hetero- and cis-normative, patriarchal, capitalist, and hierarchical structures in society. 

Better stow your luggage and strap yourselves in. The ride may be bumpy.

Test yourself: write down the gender, race, class, social, political, educational, and geographical background of everyone you have been attracted to. Do you see a pattern?

Maleness aside, can’t say I do. In fact, I doubt I could recall everyone who’s ever caught my eye. And it occurs to me that if even momentary attraction requires a thorough preemptive vetting of each person’s geographic and educational background, and knowledge of their bank balance and socio-political views, then something’s gone horribly wrong. I should think few of us have time to maintain what sounds like a hugely impractical academic sorting fetish.

If you are only attracted to able, ‘mentally well’, successful (by society’s standards), cisgender, normatively beautiful, slim people, from class privileged backgrounds… you cannot just declare that who you are attracted to is a personal preference.

I feel there ought to have been some kind of explanation here, to pad out the assertion. I’m still waiting for some elaboration on that “upholding violent norms” thing. And it’s not entirely clear to me how my own lifelong coupling, with a chap, is “upholding hetero- and cis-normative, patriarchal, capitalist, and hierarchical structures in society.” Perhaps we’re supposed to enjoy the air of mystery. Still, there’s lots of boilerplate and rote regurgitation:

Patrons are reminded that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love for this low establishment. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. Additionally, any Amazon shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. You can then excuse any reckless purchases as an act of high-minded virtue.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last nine years or so, and in over 2,000 posts, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start. If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.