Yes, you’re getting an open thread, in which to share links and then bicker about them. Because I said you are, that’s why. I’ll set the ball rolling with a compendium of modern headlines. And yes, the one about Bigfoot erotica jokes “normalising white supremacy” is, in fact, real, as is the one about Indonesian teens getting high on “boiled tampon juice.” Needless to say, some of the content is rather salty.

Oh, and here’s the toilet door you’ve always wanted. 

Should you find each other insufficiently entertaining, you can always poke through the reheated series and the recently updated greatest hits.

Lower voting age to six to tackle bias against young, says academic. 

It’s a Guardian headline, since you ask. 

The head of politics at Cambridge University has called for children as young as six to be given the vote in an attempt to tackle the age bias in modern democracy. Prof David Runciman said the ageing population meant young people were now “massively outnumbered,” creating a democratic crisis and an inbuilt bias against governments that plan for the future.

Children and teenagers are of course renowned for their conscientious forethought.

In the latest episode of his podcast, Talking Politics, he said lowering the voting age to 16 was not radical enough to address the problem. He said: “I would lower the voting age to six, not 16. And I’m serious about that. I would want people who vote to be able to read, so I would exclude reception [age-children].”

Ah, a voice of moderation.

“What’s the worst that could happen? At least it would be exciting.”

Professor Runciman has, we’re told, pondered other options, such as giving extra weight to votes cast by the adolescent – in effect, allowing them to vote twice or one-and-some-fraction – but has dismissed these suggestions as, and I quote, “insane.” Given the professor’s desire to enlist an army of the credulous and hormonal, allegedly to save the world from the elderly and middle-aged, readers may be raising eyebrows as to his motives. And indeed, an alternative explanation does in fact present itself:  

Runciman suggested the Brexit vote might not have happened with a radically lower voting age.

And,

“If 16- or 17-year-olds voted in the 2017 general election, there is a chance that Jeremy Corbyn would now be prime minister.”

And then, quite suddenly, all became clear. Well, when we’ve done fretting about the catastrophic unfairness of primary-school children being unable to vote in general elections, perhaps we might turn our attention to the number of leftist educators who wish to exploit the unworldliness of your children in order to further their own socialist preferences.

Hewn from marble, some 400 years ago, by a 23-year-old. || Gentleman of the road. || I do believe it’s Mickey. || London’s medieval murders, an interactive map. || Are you using “anti-animal language”? || There’s always a catch. || At last, an intersectionality score calculator. || Cat-proof Christmas tree. || Scenes. || Enrichment. || These chocolates are fancier than yours. || Wing of note. || Not quite grasping how it works. (h/t, Darleen) || Today’s word is hominins. || How to wrap gifts without tape. Patience not included. || An archive of downloadable historical maps. || Meet the Mellotron, 1965. || Mouse housing. || Designer spinning tops. || And finally, his horizontal-bar back-flip is way better than yours.

The Wizard of Oz is a grotesque predictor of Trump’s America.

It says so here, in the Guardian. Specifically,

Oz is first wondrous and revelatory, then sinister and suspect, a good trip that goes wrong… It’s this lurking inner wrongness, the darkness at its edges and the emptiness at its core, that speaks to me now. 

The author of the above is Bidisha, a mono-named entity who may be familiar to long-term readers, and who describes herself, unironically, as a “non-white angry political female.” One who seems determined to find yet another staple of Christmas both ghastly and problematic:

It’s impossible to watch the newly crowned ‘most influential film ever’ without seeing the parallels to the sickly US of today.

Oh, ye doubters. Madame Bidisha has her reasons.

We can read the catastrophic effects of climate change into the tornado that sets the narrative off,

I didn’t say they would be convincing.

see the opioid crisis in the characters’ drugged sleep in Oz’s Powell and Pressburger-esque poppy field, and empathise with the mangy Lion, rusty Tin Man and under-stuffed Scarecrow’s search for organ donors and reliable medical support in an Oz without a solid welfare state.

If you think our Guardian columnist is perhaps overreaching a tad, I feel I should point out nothing that follows is likely to disabuse you.

“Are you willing to die for YouTube shit? That’s what’s gonna come, man. Death is coming to you, dude. Real shit. Feel that energy? That’s why your heart’s pounding.”

At an Antifa gathering in Seattle, Andy Ngo makes new friends.

“I’m known to do this shit for real,” an antifa protester said to me. “Are you willing to die for Youtube shit?…Death is coming to you.” pic.twitter.com/bhK2wWkMBD

— Andy Ngo 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) December 2, 2018

The clip above is from this longer video, embedded below the fold: