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For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last eight years, the reheated series and greatest hits are good places to start. There you’ll find coverage of the high-minded arts, along with the blistering insights of leftist intellectuals, and regular bulletins from the world of academia, where WrongThought™ is purged for a fluffier tomorrow and where lust is corrected with feminist pornography. And do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads. 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.

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. 

Further to the second item here, a musical interlude by Oberlin College Choir.

Via College Insurrection. 

From the Southern Maryland News:

A woman from Maryland was arrested last week for allegedly contaminating milk served to family members at her home with shavings of dead skin from her feet. 

And yes, there’s a mugshot of the lady in question.

Via Thomas Pauli, Brendan O’Neill on post-election bewilderment: 

The Twitterati — the time-rich, mostly left-leaning set, consisting of cultural entrepreneurs, commentators and other people who don’t work with their hands and can therefore tweet all day — were especially dumbfounded by the results. Boiled down, their pained cry was: “But everyone I know voted Labour.” […] The real Two Britains… is, on one side, the Britain of the moral clerisy, which is pro-EU, multicultural, anti-tabloid, politically correct and devoted to welfarism and paternalism… and, on the other side, the Britain of the rest of the us, of the masses, of those people increasingly viewed by the cultural elite as inscrutable, incomprehensible, and in need of nudging, social re-engineering and behaviour modification. […] 

The more Labour comes to be occupied by influential but unrepresentative middle-class professionals, the more contemptuous it becomes of the Other Britain, the lesser Britain, the stupid Britain that won’t obediently vote Labour… We have seen this already in the few hours since the results started coming in: Neil Kinnock musing over the “self-delusion” of the electorate; Polly Toynbee, grand dame of knackered Labourism, speaking of the “mind-blowing ignorance” of some of the electorate, who are “weak readers” and don’t know what is in their best interests (which is Labour, obviously).

Ace of Spades takes a big lens to “microaggressions”: 

Now I know it’s the Worst Thing Ever to try to find out if the person you’re speaking to is of Korean or Chinese, or Korean or Japanese, extraction, because, like, You Should Just Know Or Something. These questions are said to be “microaggressing” or “othering” or “exoticizing.” One could also call them a stranger taking an interest in you and your culture… Like most SJW microkvetches, this one is a bit incoherent, insisting, as it does, that Anglos should simultaneously take no interest in Asians’ heritage and also have perfect native-level fluency in cultural differences between Asian cohorts.

And Franklin Einspruch on the virtues of “cultural appropriation”: 

Akira Kurosawa studied American pulp novels, and George Lucas studied Kurosawa. Elvis is unimaginable without black-gospel music, and Jimi Hendrix is unimaginable without Elvis. I could go on. Forever. Where does new culture come from? It is copied, with alterations, from existing culture. The process is reproductive. Sexy, even. So of course, the outrage-as-a-lifestyle wing of the progressive Left wants to dictate rules for its proper enjoyment. 

Demanding constraints on such an ancient and universal process is like trying to turn the tides by yelling at them, but these particular scolds seem unaware of the folly. They have complained about straight women appropriating lesbian fashion, art students appropriating Native American dwellings, couture houses appropriating Native American garb and Latina hairstyles, a Canadian post-punk band appropriating the name “Viet Cong,” non-Asian pop singers looking too Japanese or too Hindu, and white models looking too black. […] As is the case in all examples of political correctness, it is an attempt at control masquerading as an appeal for justice.

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

Bowling in Antarctica. // Bond song on a budget. // Berlin, July, 1945. // Brought to you by Coca-Cola. // You know, that volcano down the road. (h/t, Dr W) // City layouts as rarely seen. (h/t, Coudal) // Lust Be My Destiny and other classic pulp covers. From Playgirl Pad to Orgy Ranch, a spectrum of fine literature. // When pets look at food. // At last, squid ink oven toaster pizza. // Symphonic Pokémon. // Cactus paintings. // Touch pianist. // My mutant hands. // Moon streaks. // Dry dog, wet dog. // WiFi-enabled smartbin of note. // New York World’s Fair, 1964. // Assorted foodstuffs, organised. // Jellies being jelly. // The thrill of castanets. // Self-organising robot swarm. Continue the research. // Instant muscles, only $919. // And finally, the Queen’s hats, a millinery history.