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. 

Time, I think, for another classic Guardian sentence. A headline, in fact: 

How can our future Mars colonies be free of sexism and racism?

The author of this latest ostentatious fretting session, Martin Robbins, is concerned by the “white and male race to conquer Mars.” The rest is pretty much what you’d imagine: 

The first woman to be raped in space has probably already been born.

And, 

The only population on Mars that we know of is a handful of rovers, but no doubt we’ll start a war anyway, before dragging them into some form of slavery or oppression. It’s just what we do.

And so on, and so forth.

When it comes to authoritarian presumption, it seems that leftist intellectuals just can’t help themselves:

Is having a loving family an unfair advantage? Should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring?

So asks ABC’s “educational broadcaster” Joe Gelonesi, before turning for an answer to a mind even loftier than his own:

Once he got thinking, [political philosopher Adam] Swift could see that the issue stretches well beyond the fact that some families can afford private schooling, nannies, tutors, and houses in good suburbs. Functional family interactions — from going to the cricket to reading bedtime stories — form a largely unseen but palpable fault line between families. The consequence is a gap in social mobility and equality that can last for generations. So, what to do?

Dr Swift, whose interests include “sociological theory and Marxism,” starts with the obvious. Obvious to him, that is:

One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.

It’s a bold move, one that’s been suggested many times, typically by people bedeviled by totalitarian fantasies and insatiable spite. Thankfully, our concerned academic shies away from such directness and even praises the family and its “love-based relationships.” Instead, he wants to, as Gelonesi puts it, “sort out those activities that contribute to unnecessary inequality from those that don’t.” Dr Swift’s definition of “unnecessary inequality” will soon become clear.

What we realised we needed was a way of thinking about what it was we wanted to allow parents to do for their children, and what it was that we didn’t need to allow parents to do for their children.

What “we” will allow parents to do. For their own children.

Cornell University’s “protest community” of around 50 or so leftist students decided to celebrate May Day by disrupting a farewell party and sitting in a road and blocking traffic for over half an hour, while sharing their wisdom with the world. Or rather, sharing it with those on whom they could impose their screeching. Among their collective insights, the following: “Destroy masculinity. Fight the straightness… It is not okay to identify as straight.” Apparently, “masculinity and straightness… exist exclusively to marginalise and profit off of other people.” The declarations of profundity are varied and confusing, and get particularly, um, emotional around 2:42.

Previously. 

Start your day with Hasselhoff. (h/t, ac1) // Homemade robots on a budget. // Assorted botanical mazes. // Chicago building age map. (h/t, Coudal) // Johnny Cash machines. // Kaleidoscopic Tokyo. // Add lots of ‘fucks’ to your favourite web sites. // At last, swerving bullets. // Bunkers. // Because you’ve always wanted big, slanting ice cubes. // Animals with cameras. // Old London. // More cardboard sculptures. // Modern drama. // Dogs with their tongues sticking out a little. // It’s a tough tongue to master. // This is one of these. // Virtual aquarium. // Play with gravity. // Promotional ephemera from You Only Live Twice. (1967) // Pretend you have friends. // Tiny food. // 19th century seal fur G-string of note. (h/t, Randall) // And finally, golfing just got extreme, dude.