An open thread, that is – our second in 11 years. Feel free to share links of possible interest and then bicker about them.

Our first attempt, a moment of great daring and historic import, included testicle-based snacks, toilet paper shanks, the political flatulence of Patrick Stewart, and whether or not you should clean under the sofa.  

If all else fails, you can always poke through the reheated series and greatest hits.

So anyway, there’s a large, lavish room in which wealthy and statusful people are giving each other prizes. Then, rather incongruously, a particularly wealthy and statusful person steps onto the stage and shouts “Fuck Trump!” At which point, the other wealthy and statusful people rise to their feet, applauding, and whistling, and cheering. As if something terribly brave had just taken place.

And those doing the applauding, and whistling and cheering, seem oblivious to the message being sent by this display. Specifically, that “Fuck Trump!” translates as something like: “Fuck Trump and all of the people who voted for him.” Some of whom, perhaps many of whom, may have grown tired of being openly and gleefully disdained by people much richer and more statusful than themselves, their self-imagined betters, and who may find their only obvious recourse to such disdain is to vote for Donald Trump again.

Via sH2 in the comments.

Do try this at home and let us know how it goes. || Giants among us. || Made of chocolate. || Kitchen contentment. || Cosplay of note. || I can’t be entirely sure, but I think he’s looking at you. || An interview with Heather Mac Donald. || Somewhat unimpressed. || A Muhammadan holy man speaks. (h/t, Damian) || “Khomeini was not Iranian. He was a Hindu living in Britain.” || Today’s word is burn. (h/t, Darleen) || On complicated bin collection. || Metamorphosing beetle of note. || He folds paper better than you do. || A cappella Deep Note. || “It sounds like your ass cheeks are too close together.” || The timing’s a little out, but still. || Intersection. || This happened. || The doomsday bunkers of your dreams. (h/t, Things) || And finally, fashionably, raincoats for your trainers.

Andy Ngo on paying the price for other people’s intersectional piety:

[Portland bakery owner, John] Blomgren’s chronology matches and corroborates [his employees’] version of events. However, having established that his staff had done nothing wrong did not alter Blomgren’s decision to fire them. “In this situation it doesn’t really matter that the two staff members working are not themselves racist because the call they made to deny [student and activist, Lillian Green] service caused her to feel like she had been discriminated against,” his statement explained. “Sometimes impact outweighs intent and when that happens people do need to be held accountable.” The bakery has since deleted this statement and denies firing the employees to “save face or to appease anyone.”

If the word accountable has a perverse and sour ring to it, it should. “Dismantling the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy,” as Mr Blomgren puts it, is apparently something that small eateries should do now, ostentatiously, above all else, and is best achieved, it seems, by firing female employees for the sin of doing their jobs. Mr Ngo covers the escalating drama, and others, in some detail, and none of it is particularly encouraging. But it does reveal quite a lot about who such people are, the psychology in play, and the consequences of prostrating yourself in front of relentlessly spiteful “social justice” bedlamites.

The section on Cameron Whitten, one of Portland’s more prominent “social justice” activists, is also worth highlighting:

“I think he’s actually a sociopath,” speculates ‘Alex,’ a Portland-based social justice activist who has worked extensively with Whitten and witnessed his strategic use of baseless accusations of racism to take down opponents and manipulate allies. Fearful of retribution given Whitten’s growing influence, Alex spoke to me on condition of anonymity but provided evidence of their relationship. “He’s created a chilling effect in Portland. People are scared of him and no one knows how to intervene.” Alex expressed sympathy for Blomgren and said Whitten selects his targets carefully — mainly white progressives who are likely to trip over themselves when accused of racism. Some of them offer him money or career opportunities.

If you think the word sociopath sounds a bit strong, do read the whole thing.

In the comments, Rafi notes that the above bears a striking resemblance to a protection racket, which it pretty much is. It certainly seems to have attracted the kinds of personalities that you’d expect to find involved in one. And if you encourage the credulous to cultivate delusions of collective guilt, and to contort themselves, abase themselves, in order to conform – and if you do it institutionally, systemically, in the name of progressive education – then it’s hardly surprising that moochers, narcissists and marginal personalities waste no time in exploiting it.

Previously, this and this.

“On your interest in young men, particularly on the young male in Western societies… I think that’s your focus – I think it’s fair to say that your focus is on how men feel in society…”

“No, I don’t think that that is my focus…. I think the fact that what I’m doing is being construed in that manner is a consequence of the overwhelming influence of identity politics on our political and philosophical discourse. What I’m doing is constantly being viewed as a manifestation of identity politics, and so people talk about my particular attraction for ‘young white men.’ The audiences that come to see me – and I hate to even categorise them in this manner because it’s part of playing the same game – are very diverse ethnically and with regards to gender. The problem is that the way that our discourse is framed right now, it’s impossible to avoid being shunted into an identity politics box. And I think there’s nothing about that that isn’t reprehensible.”  

“You sound quite angry.”

The Economist’s Anne McElvoy interviews Jordan Peterson.  

The interview is by no means a Cathy Newman-level car crash, and is at times quite interesting; but it does, I think, tell us more about the assumptions of the interviewer, and by extension her peers, than those of the person being interviewed. For instance, about 43 minutes in, Peterson mentions sex differences in antisocial behaviour, and the types of bullying that tend to be favoured by women more than men. This is met with disbelief and indignation, as if this rather obvious and unremarkable phenomenon – the differing ways in which men and women tend to express aggression – were some kind of scandalous affront to womanhood, something one shouldn’t acknowledge, and indeed should lie about.