Kevin D Williamson on New York City Council’s perverse choice of heroes: 

The Communist movement worldwide murdered some 100 million people over the course of the 20th century. The Soviet enterprise specifically, to which Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were fiercely committed — they are described as “devoted” in the Soviet literature — had at the time of the Rosenbergs’ recruiting already intentionally starved to death some 8 million people in Ukraine for the purposes of political terror. I do not wish to include them here, but put “Holodomor” into Google images if you want a visual indicator of this. 

Janice Fiamengo on toxic feminism: 

Repeating the [‘male privilege’] mantra is a hazard to your mental and emotional health. If you come to believe it, it requires your shame as a man.

John Galt on leftist thuggery and tantrums: 

So inured are we to the childish, yet violent behaviour of the left, that for the most part we are more disgusted than surprised, but could you imagine the opposite happening? A bunch of sneering Young Conservatives turning up to protest at the Labour Party conference? No – me neither. This is the fundamental problem at the heart of the left – that when their arguments are rejected by the electorate, they don’t seek better arguments, they just reach into their grab-bag of socialist solutions for what has worked in the past and try and apply that. The problem being that strikes and sit-ins and the rest of the panoply of student union politics seldom works in the real world for the simple fact that the real world is not made up of 20-somethings who’ve never had a job and have too much time on their hands. As the left crumbles, expect more intimidation and “Direct Action,” but the more they do it, the more the general populace will become alienated by it and contemptuous of those who practice it.

Regarding the above, our dear friend Laurie Penny offers her wisdom. 

And added via the comments, Matthew Hennessey on “progressive” priorities: 

How else to explain the decision earlier this year to allow 33-year-old Rebecca Wax to graduate from the Fire Academy despite having failed the Functional Skills Test five times? The FST was designed to mimic the conditions of an actual fire. Probationary fire-fighters are required to complete a gruelling six-floor obstacle course while hauling 50 pounds of gear and breathing through an oxygen tank. Wax succeeded in completing the course on her sixth try but took nearly four minutes longer to do so than is typically permitted. Nevertheless, she was allowed to graduate and was assigned to Engine 259 in Sunnyside, Queens. FDNY commissioner Daniel Nigro admitted at a city council hearing in December that the department had lowered the fitness bar to allow more women to pass the test.

Dramatically lowering standards of competence puts lives at risk, both of fire-fighters and the public, but apparently what matters is that we mustn’t have a fire department that’s mostly male.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.

I’m heading out of town for the weekend, a long one, for a wedding, so I’m afraid you’ll have to throw together your own pile of links in the comments. Oh, come on. How hard can it be? I’ll set the ball rolling with these: a good deed of note, why you can never tune a piano, and a close encounter with some trees. 

Phone signal permitting, and festivities permitting, I may check in on you at some point. So play nicely. And don’t get any stains on the upholstery. 

Sweat-shaming is when someone points out your sweatiness as a way to signal disapproval. Like its counterparts, slut-shaming and fat-shaming, sweat-shaming is aimed mainly at women, who are actually not supposed to sweat at all.

Well, it’s been a while since we’ve had a classic Guardian sentence, let alone a reminder of just how many brickbats and indignities our brave feminists must endure. The sentences above are courtesy of Ms Amy Roe, who, as you’ll see, has been terribly violated (and is therefore heroic and righteous in her ire). 

Let the full horror of the episode wash over you:

I was ordering coffee when I noticed a well-dressed woman staring at me. “You look like you just did a class,” she said, giving me the once-over. I had no idea what she meant so I said nothing. “Or swimming?” she offered, with a tight smile.

Well-dressed. Tight smile. The bitch.

I’d just run 12 miles and the hair sticking out from under my hat was wet. It took me a moment to formulate an answer. “Um, running,” I mumbled finally… Rather than challenge sweat-shaming, I played right into it, conceding that I “sweat a lot.”

Tight-smiling woman is obviously a hired goon of The Patriarchy. Her mission, to stamp on the self-esteem of hitherto fearless Guardian columnists. 

And so,

I took the paper cup of drip coffee and hustled past the condiment bar. Screw the half-and-half; I’d drink it black. Once safely inside my car, I threw off my damp running cap and flipped up the hood of my sweatshirt in embarrassment.

Harrowing stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. Ms Roe is what we must henceforth refer to as a sweat-shame survivor.

Happily, however  - and despite the misogynist violence of having one’s copious perspiration acknowledged by someone standing next to you, possibly closer than they might wish – Ms Roe’s drama ends on a note of empowerment and feminist defiance:

I’ve got another long run this weekend and afterward, I’m going to sit down with my coffee, all sweaty and transgressive. The stigmas surrounding women’s bodies are powerful, but they’re no match for how powerful I feel after running.

Hear her roar. And fetch towels. 

Thomas Sowell on affordable housing and its opponents: 

Nowhere has there been so much hand-wringing over a lack of “affordable housing” as among politicians and others in coastal California. And nobody has done more to make housing unaffordable than those same politicians and their supporters… One of the first things taught in an introductory economics course is supply and demand. When a growing population creates a growing demand for housing, and the government blocks housing from being built, the price of existing housing goes up. This is not a breakthrough on the frontiers of knowledge… When more than half the land in San Mateo County is legally off-limits to building, how surprised should we be that housing prices in the city of San Mateo are now so high that politically appointed task forces have to be formed to solve the “complex” question of how things got to be the way they are and what to do about it?

Old Holborn steers ladies to the radical lover of their dreams. Seriously, brace those loins for impact. 

And Mick Hartley quotes David Brown on the Shoreditch “anti-gentrification” protesters and their class war credentials: 

Adam Barr, 23, the editor of Freedom News, a left-wing online newspaper, dismissed criticism of the protest as “reactionary bourgeois drivel” on a blog post on his website yesterday. “The Cereal Killer café is a legitimate target for protest as a symbol of the invading hordes that have taken over Shoreditch,” he added. Mr Barr, the son of a company director from East Yorkshire, could not be reached for comment.

In short, it seems the protesters are the usual clumping of middle-class academics and charmless misfits. The nearest thing to an actual member of the downtrodden proletariat seems to be the self-described “class warrior” and “rebel ethnographer” Dr Lisa McKenzie, currently blunting minds at the London School of Economics. Readers may recall Dr McKenzie from this video here, in which she explains that her academic role entails “not trying to find out something.” Instead, her purpose is to “challenge” the “negative stereotypes” of rough council housing neighbourhoods. Curiously, Dr McKenzie attempts this by proudly showing us graffiti – sorry, “muriels” – that actually confirm those stereotypes – of gangs, vandalism, car theft and, as she puts it, “young people who have died on the estate.” And Dr McKenzie does all this, quite earnestly, while a police helicopter rumbles overhead.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for. 

Behold the modern campus, home of deep thought and cool intellects: 

The incident happened Tuesday night, when students thought they found several nooses hanging from a tree. Word quickly spread as campus officials swiftly released a statement condemning the foul hate crime. But come morning, police said a short investigation had led them to conclude the “nooses” were really just the remnants of paper lanterns from an event held all the way back in June. 

In the video linked here police chief Patrick Ogden calmly explains what a paper lantern looks like, and the fact that a paper lantern isn’t actually a symbol of racial hatred. 

Yes, I know. It’s almost funny. But then,

Unperturbed by the truth, students launched an assembly following the incident to speak as though the hate crime really did happen. According to the News Journal, a local paper, the assembly was held “to find ways to change the campus climate” in the wake of the bad atmosphere apparently exposed by a fictional hate crime… One administrator said the climate of hate at Delaware was exposed by the mere fact he could even believe the alleged hate crime occurred.

And so,

The University of Delaware’s vice provost for diversity Carol Henderson… said the college is planning to launch a new “diversity action plan” as soon as it’s approved by school officials.

With so many witch finders now in business, witches will be found.