Ah, the wonderment of a child. (h/t, Holborn) || Assorted science-fiction dime novels, circa 1890-1910. (h/t, DRB) || Upmarket scenes. || How to make Korean ice-cream rolls. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Iconic consoles. || Coat hangers, obviously. || She does this better than you do. || Art exhibit of note. || Technically correct. || Woke casting call. (h/t, Allan) || They found his skull and trousers. || Twofold Inc is a game. || If you snigger at this, even a bit, you’re a terrible, terrible person. || Always respect the media. || Mural of note. || More snuggest of snug fits. || Heh. || Effective but inadvisable. || “I am unable to can.” || Upscale construction set. (h/t, Things) || And finally, today’s words are escape velocity.

Via Neontaster comes news of an intriguing technological development. Apparently, the device “makes the patient feel comfortable,” while “the strong currents impact and rub.” Hey, I’m just reading what it says here.  

Oh, and yes, there is a more intimate video. 

Also, open thread.

Should we stop using the word ‘cyclist’?

So asks Laura Laker in the pages of the Guardian, thereby adding to our collection of classic sentences from said newspaper. This is promptly followed by another contender: 

As the repair man rummaged around in my gas oven, I tried to explain something to him about cyclists.

Which perhaps conveys a flavour of what follows.

Stopping using the term “cyclist” has been up for debate since an Australian study last week found 31% of respondents viewed cyclists as less than human. 

Specifically, a minority of motorists have been known to indulge in “humorous references to violence against cyclists,” which is entirely unwarranted, apparently, and must not be allowed to continue.

It is easy to dehumanise people who cycle… because they often dress differently and move in a mechanical way, and drivers cannot see their faces… Public references to violence against cyclists are not uncommon, and rarely given the same condemnation as, for example, violence towards women or bullying.

It occurs to me that cyclists are more likely to be the subject of unkind humour if their behaviour, not their chosen outfit, is causing a problem, or is perceived as such. And note the bold conflation of actual violence with merely joking about it.

Yes, a glorious opportunity to assemble your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. Gracious host that I am, I’ll set the ball rolling with a display of dad powers; why physicists put a ferret in a particle accelerator; more joys of public transport; a pop icon speaks; and some vintage warnings about the menace of body odour.

Oh, and a headline of note.

Dave Huber reports from the bleeding edge of intersectional scholarship:

Rutgers University’s Brittney Cooper… an associate professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies… says that the very concept of time itself is racially biased. In an interview with NPR last week, Cooper said that the way we “position ourselves in relationship to time comes out of histories of European and Western thought”; in other words, “white people own time.”

According to our feminist educator, time “doesn’t feel linear” for black people – all of them, presumably – because, she says, they live with “the residue of past historical trauma.” You see, for “African-American folks,” the present “feels like the past” – specifically, “narratives of race that are rooted in violence and a lack of freedom” – i.e., slavery – “can become our reality again at any moment.”

Somewhat related. 

And John Paul Wright and Matt DeLisi ponder leftist theories of crime: 

Criminologists’ lack of direct contact with subjects, situations, and neighbourhoods—their propensity to abstraction—invites misunderstandings about the reality of crime… The gulf between numbers on a spreadsheet and the harsh realities of the world sometimes fosters a romanticised view of criminals as victims, making it easier for criminologists to overlook the damage that lawbreakers cause—and to advocate for more lenient policies and treatment. Evidence of the liberal tilt in criminology is widespread. Surveys show a 30:1 ratio of liberals to conservatives within the field, a spread comparable with that in other social sciences.

At which point, readers may recall a Guardian interview with lawyer and activist Clive Stafford Smith, who airily dismissed burglary as “really quite inconsequential,” thereby implying that the wellbeing of burglars is more important than the wellbeing of their numerous, often very poor, victims. Especially if the burglar is a “young black person.” According to Mr Stafford Smith and Guardian columnist Decca Aitkenhead – for whom, such things are largely theoretical and not a routine fact of life – anger at being burgled and the subsequent sense of violation are somehow trivial, plebeian and unsophisticated. And so, these enlightened creatures pretend to feel sympathy for career criminals who may prey on their neighbours for years, while disdaining the victims’ expectations of lawfulness, and justice, as “idiotic attitudes.”

Update, via the comments: