I’m not entirely sure what it is, but you should buy some anyway. (h/t, Damian) || Cardboard piano. || Pretty good fingering. || Classical musicians react to K-Pop. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || At all times, dignity. || The eternal struggle. || Ordia is a game. || Signs of cultural decline, #3,004. || Always respect the media. || They have bodies. || He has a business card. (h/t, Holborn) || Miracle breakthrough. || He was embarrassed, you see. (h/t, Dicentra) || Magnetic construction kit of note. || Question answered. (h/t, Orwell) || With nails and a single thread. || OK Soda was not a success. || Amplified cat. || Honey, Queen and Bumble are here to help. || And finally, the faces of dogs after eating bees.

David Solway on the feminist enthusiasm for fatness: 

In a speech on the topic of “radical fat liberation” jointly sponsored by the Women and Gender Studies Department and the Centre for Equity and Inclusion at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, the prodigiously overweight Sonalee Rashatwar, a self-proclaimed Fat Sex Therapist, compared fitness trainers to Nazis, defined child dieting as sexual assault, attributed the Christchurch shooting to ‘thin” white supremacism, and condemned science as “fataphobic” for “promoting the idea that certain bodies are fit, able and desirable.” She wonders, rhetorically, “is it my fatness that causes my high blood pressure, or is it my experience of weight stigma?” She goes on to blame the Reagan administration for having refused to provide “social supports that also help me to subsidise my food costs.” 

When not equating routine health advice with eugenics and “Nazi science,” Ms Rashatwar claims that “diet culture and fat phobia are forms of sexual violence.” Mr Solway is the husband of Janice Fiamengo, whose own probing of feminist pathology has been mentioned here before.

Heather Mac Donald on cooking the books for “diversity”: 

The average white score on the SAT (1,123 out of a possible 1,600) is 177 points higher than the average black score (946), approximately a standard deviation of difference. This gap has persisted for decades. It is not explained by socioeconomic disparities. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported in 1998 that white students from households with incomes of $10,000 or less score better on the SAT than black students from households with incomes of $80,000 to $100,000. In 2015, students with family incomes of $20,000 or less (a category that includes all racial groups) scored higher on average on the math SAT than the average math score of black students from all income levels… 

Those who rail against “white privilege” as a determinant of academic achievement have a nagging problem: Asians. Asian students outscore white students on the SAT by 100 points; they outscore blacks by 277 points. It is not Asian families’ economic capital that vaults them to the top of the academic totem pole; it is their emphasis on scholarly effort and self-discipline. Every year in New York City, Asian elementary school students vastly outperform every other racial and ethnic group on the admissions test for the city’s competitive public high schools, even though a disproportionate number of them come from poor immigrant families.

Somewhat related, on racism as an excuse. And related to that, on the absurd and rather sinister Implicit Association Test.

With unrelenting racial divisiveness:

According to her own publicity material, Ms Rao studied law at the University of Virginia and NYU, and is “one of the country’s strongest voices for social justice, equity, and inclusion.” Which may explain the self-satisfied double standards, the paranoid hyperbole, the pronounced cognitive dissonance, and the daily epithets about “white people” and their many, many faults. And the next time you hear sweet cooings about “social justice, equity and inclusion,” you may want to bear in mind the kinds of creatures most attracted to these things. 

As noted before, many times, “social justice” is antithetical to expectations of reciprocity. And so, despite the theatrical piety, it corrodes the moral senses. Quite quickly.

Update, via Greg in the comments:

Ms Rao invites you to an evening of dinner and pretentious racial scolding. And you’re paying.

Woman versus tentacles. What could possibly go wrong? || Cross-cultural scenes. (h/t, Dicentra) || Ancient prophesy of note. || New York in the rain. || Kansas tornado. || On everything and nothing. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Moveable concrete. || Sugar cloud coffee. || The complicated contraptions of William Heath Robinson. || Bolts. || Bit steep. || “The balls are going to be a little lopsided.” || Life in Paris, in colour, circa 1890. || Designer inhalers, with healing power and herbal hemp extract. || The tactical backpack you’ve always wanted. || Scooters. || Some cornering. || Assorted charts. (h/t, Damian) || Tiny drama. || His skills were enhanced by nudity. || And finally, via Obnoxio, a conspiracy is revealed.

If you think of communication as an exercise in respect for the other, you don’t repeat yourself. Repeating yourself suggests that you’re either demented or that you just don’t care about the other person’s response; you’re prepared to override it and say the same thing again and again. There’s no way in which a chanted slogan invites an answer.

Douglas Murray and Roger Scruton discuss the future of conservatism, why the left wins the culture war, architecture, Twitter mobs, the importance of apologies, and the “institutionalised fraudulence” of woke academia.

Also, open thread.