In case you missed it, via Rafi in the comments: 

“The performative shit is done,” says she, performatively.

Richard Bledsoe on high culture: 

Pity the poor Hirshhorn Museum. They occupy a prime piece of real estate, right on the National Mall in the wretched hive of scum and villainy, Washington, DC. And yet, as a museum dedicated to contemporary art, the institute just doesn’t seem to get much love or respect… An article about a recent acquisition the Hirshhorn made may give some insight as to why they lack esteem. Smithsonian.com is eager to explain it in this article: Why the Artist Ragnar Kjartansson Asked his Mother to Spit On Him.

As you’ll no doubt want to behold this artistic spectacle, this feat of aesthetic phlegm projection, here it is. 

Glenn Reynolds on campus radicals’ bad counsel: 

Deriding the bourgeoisie is de rigueur in the academy… But this contempt is doubly hypocritical since the academy exists largely because others still embrace bourgeois virtues of hard work, education, and upward social mobility. Relatively few students at the University of San Diego Law School are there solely to improve their minds, I suspect. Rather, they hope that they will improve their lives if they work hard and try for success. The faculty — and dean’s — salaries are paid by this phenomenon. If students only went to law school out of intellectual curiosity, there would be a lot fewer law schools. […] These same [bourgeois] behaviours… are even more valuable to people whose social and economic status is poor. Upper middle class families have a lot of social and financial capital to draw on when a kid flunks out, loses a job, gets pregnant outside of marriage, or gets in trouble with the law. For people with less, these experiences are likely to be disastrous and life-ruining. To suggest otherwise is to engage in a monstrous and damaging deception.

See also this. Examples of the aforementioned deriding, and a full-on gale of fashionable hysteria, can be found here and here. 

Or, Hysterical Woman Is Hysterical:

Hate speech… makes one wish one was dead or worse had never been born, the ultimate existential black hole. Hate speech is a speech act that can harm the central nervous system, it can result in PTSD, and when used by police and jailers to humiliate prisoners hate speech is psychological torture, a civil rights and human rights violation. In short, hate speech is an act of violence. 

So writes Nancy Scheper-Hughes, an anthropology lecturer at Berkeley. She’s referring, of course, to the recent visit by Ben Shapiro. Though quite why Mr Shapiro should be mentioned alongside psychological torture and the violation of human rights remains unclear, and Dr Scheper-Hughes takes care not to offer even a single direct quotation by way of evidence. Instead, we’re treated to some inventive ventriloquism, to the extent that readers are expected to believe that Shapiro has somewhere referred to black people, all of them, as “criminally inclined, drug addicted, homicidal losers.” Those familiar with Mr Shapiro’s actual output may find this a little bizarre. Almost as bizarre as the claim that Shapiro is not only “racist, sexist” and “misogynist,” but also “very dangerous” and a “physical threat” to students.  

Perhaps Dr Scheper-Hughes has some thoughts on whether publicly and hyperbolically defaming people – accusing them of racism and misogyny, and of being a physical menace to students, for instance – also constitutes “violence” and a cause of post-traumatic stress disorder.  

It’s a good-news-bad-news story: 

Several Hurricane Irma victims called a 1-800 number for help and were offered phone sex instead of hurricane relief assistance.

It’s very kind, I’m sure, but perhaps now isn’t the time.

The Miami Herald reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Region 4 office accidentally tweeted the number Wednesday, which offered assistance to people dealing with damaged roofs. The number was supposed to be a “1-888” number, not a “1-800” number.

Via Sam.

“This Fall, lightning strikes three times!” || This. (h/t, Julia) || That. || A bit of the other. || At last, a miracle breakthrough in atomised butter consumption. || Always respect the media. || Merging, self-healing ‘bots. || Man’s best friend. || The tasty parts of pigs. || Japanese slot machines of yore. || ESL students learn new gender pronouns. || Sweet dreams. (h/t, dicentra) || On nickel weeklies and dime novels. || Today’s word is mindset. || Meanwhile, in Sweden, love is in the air. || Sport is too competitive and must be reformed, says feminist academic. || A brief history of gated reverb. || Shredding golden slime. || And finally, a little-known episode of space travel history: “Pieces of faecal matter free-floated around the command module for several minutes.” A whodunnit ensues.