The Guardian champions Teen Vogue:

“We’re a woke brand and our readers are woke too.”

Orwell & Goode: 

“The best of Teen Vogue.” 

That is all. 

Update: 

In one year, Teen Vogue’s readership has nearly halved. Less than 5% of their audience consists of actual teenagers.

Oh dear. 

Hey, it was this or nothing at all. But by all means throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with some balloons in Albuquerque; a dog that’s mastered invisibility; immune cell migration in the zebrafish inner ear; Nanjing, China, circa 1929; conversational robots; and, via Julia, some pulp cover treatments of classic novels. 

Oh, and the no-strings one-time date you’ve always wanted. 

Jonah Goldberg on “cultural appropriation” and pretentious outrage: 

Nearly every meal you’ve ever eaten is the by-product of centuries of cultural appropriation, to one extent or another. This column is written in English, a language that contains hundreds of thousands of words appropriated from other tongues. Just under two-thirds of our language derives from Latin or French. About a quarter is Germanic in origin. And about a sixth comes from Greek, Arabic and other languages… We are living through the greatest period of poverty alleviation in all of human history right now because countries in Asia and Africa have appropriated many economic policies and practices — free markets, property rights, etc. — that began as quirky artefacts of English and Dutch culture.

Douglas Murray on race and casting: 

In an era that is witnessing the politicisation and polarisation of absolutely everything, the realm of fiction and art – one of the great barrier-breakers we have – is also becoming a battle-ground for racial exclusivity and racial exclusion… Perhaps those who are attempting to push such agendas will at some point wake up to the fact that they are heading towards an almighty logical crash. For the same logic that saw Sierra Boggess [hounded] off West Side Story [for not being Puerto Rican] can just as easily be used to insist that all future Prince Hals or Isoldes should be white. Casting can either be colour blind or colour-obsessed. It cannot be both.

Kristian Niemietz on the media’s tongue-bathing of Marxism: 

If your ideas require impossible standards of purity in implementation in order to work, then maybe your ideas are not as great as you think they are. A good idea will still work out okay even in a distorted and poorly implemented version. That, arguably, is a big part of what makes a good idea good… Political and economic theories are never implemented in pure form, and their adherents are rarely impressed by politicians who claim to be inspired by them. That’s just par for the course. Marxists, however, are pretty much the only thinkers who accept no responsibility whatsoever for real-world approximations of their ideas. 

And the late Leszek Kolakowski on Marx’s knack for being wrong: 

What in the twentieth century perhaps comes closest to the working class revolution [predicted by Marx] were the events in Poland of 1980-81: the revolutionary movement of industrial workers (very strongly supported by the intelligentsia) against the exploiters, that is to say, the state. And this solitary example of a working class revolution (if even this may be counted) was directed against a socialist state, and carried out under the sign of the cross, with the blessing of the Pope. 

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

Yes, it’s time to remind patrons 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, and remain ad-free, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. And if one-click haste is called for, my PalPay.Me page can be found here. 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.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last decade or so, and in over 2,500 posts and 80,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start, and where you’ll find things like this, and like these. 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. 

Indecisive motorist of note. || When tumbleweed attacks. || Underwater choreography. || “Cultural appreciation.” || What your tongue does when you talk. || Did Thanos kill you? || Incoming, duck. || Crushing crayons in a hydraulic press. || Hercules and Arnold fight over dung. || Sour dill pickle gummy gherkin. It’s warty, got girth and tastes of dill. || Lake traffic, Myanmar. || Some good grapes, man. || Gorgeous Teacher, 1965. Hormones, hotties and “Holy mackerel.” || Silent, kinetic sand-drawing machine. || Not, I think, moving at maximum speed. || Heather Mac Donald on campus psychodrama. || Little people. || Giants. || Snap. || Buddhist temples of note. || Before and after, 1906. || Tim Newman on toxic feminism. || And finally, from far away, here’s a snowstorm on a comet.