I am in a shared student house and think a lot about the plugged-in devices we have continuously charging or on standby. How terrible should I feel, and what can I do?

Because it just wouldn’t be Sunday without a display of piety. 

The cost of recharging a smartphone is a few pennies per year. How much pretentious agonising that justifies, I really couldn’t say.

Another Observer reader helpfully points out,

Telephone chargers use pathetic small quantities of energy.

And adds:

If you really want to cut down on electricity usage during the night you should unplug your fridge before going to bed.

Here endeth the lesson. 

Enormous 3D collage made from repurposed books. // More drama with ducklings. // “A great, simple idea.” // Crocodile versus sneaker. // At last, holographic rainbow chocolate. // On margarine and other ersatz foods. (h/t, Kurt) // An archive of spurious correlations. // The periodic table of storytelling. // “The suit circled the Earth twice.” // Quarries, cheap blasters and Servalan’s heels. The low-budget glories of Blake’s 7. // A very brief history of visual effects. // Leather goods. // Glacier and glass. // Clever octopus. // These are parrots, not women. // Predictive robotic arm. // Punks in Myanmar. // Pogo-stick parkour. // Geometry is fun. // Coffee maker of note. // And finally, do you yo-yo? Well, this little boy does.

Bowing and fingering by Eimantas Belickas. Hair by Tadas Maksimovas. 

You may now resume your duties. 

Or, When Anarchists Gather. Or, Tremble, Ye Patriarchs.

Further to the shocking news that narcissists are distressed by public contradiction and the apparently fashionable claim that “debate is violence,” Bart steers us to footage from Portland State University’s 5th Annual Law and Disorder Conference, a gathering of self-styled anarchists, feminists, anti-capitalists and other radical titans. And which, it turns out, was a little disorderly.

“You shouldn’t be given the space to speak.”

Heather Mac Donald on the assumptions and pathologies of a “racialised worldview”: 

According to the Supreme Court, the only reason why schools should be allowed to discriminate against more academically qualified applicants in favour of less qualified black and Hispanic applicants is that those “underrepresented” minorities will bring otherwise missing perspectives to the classroom and cafeteria. But if each individual is in fact sui generis, then there is no reason to believe that selection by skin colour will lead to a non-random introduction of additional viewpoints.

Ah, but race goons and “diversity” hustlers do seem to regard minorities not as individuals but more like spices. And all those exotic brown people taste the same, apparently.

Michael Totten on the glorious Havana that tourists never see: 

In the United States, we have a minimum wage; Cuba has a maximum wage — $20 a month for almost every job in the country… Even employees inside the quasi-capitalist bubble don’t get paid more. The government contracts with Spanish companies such as Meliá International to manage Havana’s hotels. Before accepting its contract, Meliá said that it wanted to pay workers a decent wage. The Cuban government said fine, so the company pays $8–$10 an hour. But Meliá doesn’t pay its employees directly. Instead, the firm gives the compensation to the government, which then pays the workers — but only after pocketing most of the money. I asked several Cubans in my hotel if that arrangement is really true. All confirmed that it is. The workers don’t get $8–$10 an hour; they get 67 cents a day — a child’s allowance.

And Tim Worstall on a certain Guardian columnist and his deep, deep guilt about “our pointless hyperconsumption”: 

Sadly, George Monbiot has gone off on one again. Decrying the fact that we neoliberals in the Anglo Saxon capitalist style world don’t feel guilty enough about despoiling Gaia. The poor in other places, being as they are not Anglo Saxon and also sanctified by their being poor, care a lot more. We are sinners as a result.

Tim goes on to note some important ways in which Mr Monbiot’s feelings are misplaced. And readers may wish to ponder George’s urge to romanticise poverty and pre-modern living, an urge perhaps best expressed in his claim that “we” should be more like the peasants of Southern Ethiopia, who “smile more often” than we do and whose fields “crackle with laughter.” These noble, laughing peasants may live in homes constructed from leaves and packing cases, and they may have Stone Age sanitation and alarming child mortality, but at least they’re not being “isolated” by sinful material trappings, like dentistry, double glazing and TV remote controls. Think I’m kidding? Think again.