For those who missed it in the comments, behold Guardian World, where all things are possible:

I’m sensing mixed messages.

And so, on one page we’re reminded of some unhappy realities:

Prof Jamie Waterall, Public Health England’s national lead for cardiovascular disease, said: “It’s worrying that so many people are at risk of dying unnecessarily from heart attack and stroke. [But] I was unsurprised … given that we have a population that’s becoming more obese and we have major problems with things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, alcohol and physical inactivity.” […] 80% of heart attacks and strokes are preventable, he stressed.

To summarise. Hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, gallbladder disease, stroke, osteoarthritis, joint failure, incontinence, sleep apnea, breathing problems, depression, anxiety, and cancer.

I know. Let’s call it “body positivity.”

However, elsewhere in the Guardian, we’re informed – by “an 18-stone woman who refuses to diet,” a self-styled “feminist killjoy” – of much more pressing matters. Specifically, that obesity tends to limit one’s access to a flattering wardrobe, which is a form of oppression; that taking selfies from above, to minimise double chins, is a form of “fatphobia” and therefore oppression; and that restaurants often fail to provide widened, armless, reinforced chairs in order to accommodate their more girthful customers. Which is, obviously, a form of oppression. The oversized author, Virgie Tovar, helpfully instructs the non-obese in how to change their wicked ways.

Presumably, then, we must avoid becoming heavily overweight while acting as though we’re doing it for no reason whatsoever.

I don’t generally care about how big someone is and I manage to get through the day without making gratuitous remarks about other people’s size. But I have noticed a recurring dynamic, whereby someone will get fat and obviously be unhappy about it, while being intensely reactive to even the most cautious acknowledgement of either their size or its effect on their mood and health. And this defensiveness can lead to all kinds of mental contortion and some quite bizarre behaviour. Not least among self-styled “fat activists.”

And so we see endless articles in which activists bemoan their unhappy lot and the seemingly life-ruining difficulties of being obese, while the most practical solution, the one over which they might exert some leverage – losing weight – is either not mentioned at all – as, for instance, here – or is disdained as both a personal affront and a betrayal of The Cause, i.e., of whatever martyrdom drama the activists in question imagine themselves engaged in. As one unhappy lady put it, “Intentional weight loss goes against everything that I stand for.”

And so rather than changing the situation, they choose instead to shout at the rain. And complain about people who take selfies from above so as to avoid double chins. Because the drama must go on.

Via Holborn.

Wingsuits and a cloud tunnel, above Toogoolawah, Australia. || Elephant Rock, Iceland. || It’s a head-scratcher. || Sea slugs and stolen venom. || Today’s word is inevitable. || Cuttings from the Clown Quarter, #3,096. || For Martian coin collectors. || A map of corruption. || A museum of web design. (h/t, Coudal) || Behold this year’s finalists in World Championship Death Diving. || Dubai’s desert highways. || On the edge(s) of the Universe. || 2001 in tweet form. (h/t, Things) || Spare arms. || Smoothly done, Mr Burke. || Heh. || How to keep the cat downstairs. || Yes, it sagged and was prone to melting, but on the upside, it was easy to lift when hoovering. || And finally, a crafty peek at a butterfly’s genitalia.

Attention, all readers.

Laurie Penny, she of the uneven mind, is no longer an anarcho-communist. 

Now she’s an anarcha-feminist. Which is, like, totally different. 

Please update your files accordingly.

Lionel Shriver on recreational outrage and the corresponding theatre of atonement:

The defence of an infinitely multiplying list of ‘marginalised groups’ is a predatory movement… and its pleasures are those of hunting: spotting your prey, stalking, going in for the kill. Any source of umbrage thus presents an exulting opportunity to score a trophy, stuff it, and hang it on your (Facebook) wall. Mainstream institutions straining to be with-it give credence to this pretence of injury and vulnerability, when no one’s feelings actually have been hurt. So the victory is two-pronged. You take down the sinner, and you humiliate the editors of the Nation by forcing them to participate in an emotional theatre that every-one knows is fake…

When, during that Evergreen foofaraw, a rabid convocation of students cowed the college president into lowering his arms at the podium because they found his hand gestures ‘threatening’, those students didn’t feel jeopardised; they were dominating and emasculating a man supposedly in authority. The students cowering in ‘safe spaces’ don’t feel endangered; they’re claiming territory… Progressives seem especially prone to disguise one feeling as another. Reliably entwined with self-deceit, the problem isn’t solely among the young.

William Ray on the pernicious hokum of “white privilege” guru Peggy McIntosh:

Peggy McIntosh was born into the very cream of America’s aristocratic elite and has remained ensconced there ever since. Her ‘experiential’ list enumerating the ways in which she benefits from being born with white skin simply confuses racial privilege with the financial advantages she has always been fortunate enough to enjoy. Many of her points are demonstrably economic. One is left to wonder why, given her stated conviction that she has unfairly benefited from her skin colour, there seems to be no record of her involvement in any charity or civil rights work…

[McIntosh] simply reclassified her manifest economic advantage as racial privilege and then dumped this newly discovered original sin onto every person who happens to share her skin colour. Without, of course, actually redistributing any of the wealth that, by her own account, she had done nothing to deserve. All of which means that pretty much anything you read about ‘white privilege’ is traceable to an ‘experiential’ essay written by a woman who benefited from massive wealth, a panoply of aristocratic connections, and absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever.

And Heather Mac Donald on Clown Quarter credentials and keeping out the riff-raff:

In the video below, Janice Fiamengo reports on recent events at the University of Chicago, where Rachel Fulton Brown, a professor of Medieval history, dared to suggest, briefly, that, as a notional group, white men aren’t entirely awful, and that Western civilisation isn’t wholly without merit. The professor has consequently been denounced by her peers as a “fascist white supremacist” and a “violent” menace to the wellbeing of anyone whose skin is heroically brown. And do note the number – 1,300, cited towards the end of the video – the significance of which will, I think, become apparent.