Like apple bobbing. || Modern problems, a possible series. || Limited edition of note. (h/t, STG) || Daddy-daughter time. || Dad moves deployed. || Maximum style points. || Meet the neighbours. || Snowball fights in art. || Life skills. || Flag mystery. || A lot can happen in a minute. || At last, a mushroom colour chart. || Size matters. || Sounds from around the world. (h/t, Things) || A guide to San Francisco’s street faeces. || Heh. || Not unlike eyes. || Butterflies. || He does this better than you would. || It almost sounds like a woke prayer, which I suppose it sort of is. || Why woke comics don’t sell. || Target lock acquired. || Today’s word is trajectory. || And finally, festively, via Damian, ‘tis the season of good cheer.

Another candidate for our not-entirely-suited-to-the-job file:

The elderly couple ordered a “carefully budgeted” $50 of groceries to be delivered to their home last Sunday… Nothing was amiss until they went outside to meet the driver, Tara, for fear that she might struggle with her vehicle in their snow-covered driveway. When they opened the front door, Tara yelled at them… while rocking her vehicle back and forth in the driveway.

It turned out the issue wasn’t snow. 

The ostensible cause of Tara’s mental crisis can be viewed here.

Update, via the comments:

The individual in question, the one swollen with righteousness, is no longer employed.

Via I, Hypocrite, via Darleen. Also, open thread.

Over at The College Fix, Dave Huber ponders the complications of being woke while simultaneously having a good time:

In [Swarthmore College student paper] The Phoenix, economics major Sameer Halepoto points to a pre-Thanksgiving party, hosted by the Swarthmore Queer Union, Swarthmore African Student Association, Swarthmore [Hispanic and Latino organisation] ENLACE, and the Swarthmore African-American Student Society, which had filled up rather quickly.

Filled up quickly. Must be the fun crowd.

Halepoto says “typical [Swarthmore] parties include an outsized number of white students (many of whom are athletes), making it harder for marginalised groups to feel welcome.” As a result, party organisers blared a repeating electronic message through speakers which warned that white people had to leave.

Vibeslayer. Or, as Mr Halepoto, our fretfully woke student columnist, puts it,

As the number of students at the party swelled, however, the organisers decided to clean house over fears of overcrowding. Specifically, it was time to kick out the white people. What followed was a message blaring through the speakers from Google Translate that looped for several minutes on end — telling white students to leave. By the time the message stopped playing, the party’s racial demographics had shifted significantly.

Mr Halepoto goes on to share his fashionable (and fashionably unsubstantiated) belief that being gay or brown or sort-of brown is a state of being “marginalised,” even on a modern, upscale, super-progressive campus, where annual tuition fees are north of $70,000. Being so cruelly downtrodden, such put-upon persons are, we’re told, entitled to “safe spaces.” In contrast, “white people” are defined, rather breezily, as a “non-marginalised group,” all party-going to the contrary. How white students who also happen to be gay should navigate student parties without risking looped and amplified racial scolding, and subsequent ejection, is not made entirely clear.

Yes, a chance to throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with the first great trial of fatherhood; assorted airline safety cards; finding the sweet spot; some cold hindquarters; and things that can happen on a rollercoaster.

Oh, and via Things, a game about an impending audit and hastily shredding documents.

The dishonesty, I mean.

Speaking of which, he’s doing it for the students, you know. And he sometimes turns up to class in full drag. To make it a “safe space.”

Homeschool pic.twitter.com/ZJFj0TvxAi

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 6, 2021

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the second item, Jen quips, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Ah, but you see, it’s “a place for them, by them,” while clearly being all about him and entirely his idea, and entirely dependent on his preferences on any given day. So, sometimes it’s full drag, and sometimes just big earrings, nail polish and wacky tart shoes. To make the children feel “safe.” I somehow doubt that any pupils or parents who find this educator’s behaviour, shall we say, distracting or not entirely reassuring, will be indulged anything like as much as he expects to be.

Update 2:

I suppose the above raises the question of whether you think schoolchildren should be compelled to participate, daily, as a captive audience, in a teacher’s gender-bending psychodrama. Complete with beard, make-up, and ‘fuck-me’ hooker shoes. What matters, we’re told, is that he gets to “look how I wanna look” during office hours, on other people’s time, while teaching other people’s children, and while supposedly setting an example of adult behaviour. And, luckily for him, farcical self-indulgence is just so woke, baby. “I’m here to recruit you,” quips he.

According to our progressive educator, the spectacle of him parading around the classroom in clownish make-up and women’s clothes, his beard offset with stiletto heels – which he just happens to enjoy wearing – will somehow create a “safe space” for gay schoolchildren. All of whom, apparently, aspire to be narcissistic cross-dressers with terrible taste. As someone who was once a gay schoolboy, back in a darker, more primitive age, I have to say, the sight of my chunky, rather stern German teacher striding about the classroom in Joker makeup and five-inch stilettos would not have been particularly affirming, no matter how many Pride flags he waved about while doing it.

Update 3:

But what, I hear you ask, could possibly go wrong? || “I worship myself.” || You have to rotate the ‘w’. || Today’s word is irony. (h/t, DC) || Racism detected. || Christmas lights of note. || For Kubrick enthusiasts. Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. || Big cat music. || I was previously unfamiliar with this concept. || The thrill of fondling state-of-the-art sex toys. (NSFW) || Tiddler detected. || Sharks versus the internet. || Assorted slow-motion microbes. || Glassware of note. || The thrill of Geocities. || She doesn’t look the type. See also. And inevitably. || Trade of note. (h/t, Samizdata) || Challenge accepted. || Today’s other word is snugness. A debate ensues. || And finally, “I was the snowflake consultant for the movie Frozen.”

The bill for gassing, that is. The last one for the year.

Because, yes, ‘tis time to remind patrons that this rickety barge, on whose seating your arses rest, is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain ad-free, there are buttons in the sidebar with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. And if one-click haste is called for, my PalPay.Me page can be found here. Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

So shop ye. Shop ye like the wind.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last decade and a half, in over 3,000 posts and over 130,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year-summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.

If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. 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. And do please join in.

As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.

Now share ye links and bicker.

In juvenile detention, she would write “really radical raps” that rattled her supervisors.

Why, yes, I am reading the Guardian. Where the paper’s Janine Israel is positively gushing over aboriginal rapper Barkaa and her “politically potent” music.

The Malyangapa Barkindji woman… is on the verge of releasing her debut EP, Blak Matriarchy,

You know you want to.

Based in south-west Sydney, Barkaa takes her moniker from the Barkindji word for the Darling River. She comes across as warm and humble,

Warm and humble. An interesting choice of words. And followed almost immediately by:

Earlier this year she played the Sydney Opera House forecourt, the lights of the harbour stretched out before her as she performed her song Bow Down: “They used to look down on me / Look who’s looking up now. Bow down.”

Regarding said ditty, our mistress of the surly pose and monotonous loop informs us,

Bow Down is one of my favourite tracks to perform because a lot of people growing up [were like]: ‘Oh you’re not going to be much, you’re just going to be a lowlife, you’re just going to be a junkie, you’re not going to get anywhere, you’re just going to be in and out of prison.’ It’s kind of like: middle fingers up to them.

Same article, seconds earlier:

Born Chloe Quayle, the 26-year-old rapper was a former teenage ice addict who did three stints in jail – during her last, five years ago, she gave birth to her third child.

Despite three children, no father, or fathers, are mentioned. Well. Perhaps we should move on.

Error detected. || The thrill of asteroids. || Some rumination on fries. || Fortune favours the bold. || He was indeed a big chap. || The joys of public transport, part 4,021. || Simple party secrets. || Plenty of meat on that one. || Those poor darling rapists and paedophiles. || Please report to the correct processing space. || The progressive retail experience, parts 405, 406 and 407. || The thrill of plankton. || Pillow fight. || Woke scholarship. || “That perfect middle.” || The patriarchy trembles. (h/t, Mr Muldoon) || Just one more time. || Motoring scenes. || Motoring scenes 2. || Salvation, you say? || Encouraging sounds. || Signage of note. || Safety first. || And finally, festively, one for the Christmas list.

Noah Carl ponders wokeness and women: 

So, why would the influx of women into academia have contributed to its leftward shift, and to the rise of woke activism in particular? As the psychologist Cory Clark notes, women are consistently less supportive of free speech than men, and consistently more supportive of censorship. Compared to men, they’re more likely to say: that hate speech is violence; that it’s acceptable to shout down a speaker; that controversial scientific findings should be censored; that people need to be more careful about the language they use; and that it should be illegal to say offensive things about minorities…

Women are disproportionately represented in Grievance Studies (i.e., disciplines like Gender Studies and Critical Race Theory), which are often little more than a vehicle for left-wing activism… Almost 80% of bachelor’s degrees in “Ethnic, Gender, and Cultural Studies” are awarded to women… [Academia’s left-wing skew] appears to be greater among female academics than among male ones. In a 2016 paper, Mitchell Langbert and colleagues analysed voter registration data on approximately 4,000 US academics. As the table below indicates, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was “only” 9:1 among men, but it was almost 25:1 among women.

Thanks to Mark Horowitz and colleagues, we also have detailed surveys from two of the most left-leaning disciplines: sociology and anthropology. The table below shows the proportion of male versus female sociologists (from a sample of 479) who agreed and disagreed with various items. Compared to men, women were more likely to say that “Sociology should be both a scientific and moral enterprise,” and that “Sociology should analyse and transcend oppression.” They were less likely to say that “More political conservatives would benefit [the] discipline,” and that “Advocacy and research should be separate for objectivity.”

Needless to say, there are links and charts aplenty.

Update, via the comments, which you’re reading of course: 

Some ladies of the left aren’t happy about Mr Carl’s article. Apparently, he could only have written it because he’s “intimidated by intelligent women.” At least, according to a woman who seemingly didn’t find it necessary to read the piece that she’s dismissing, or to rebut any of its particulars, even in passing. As intelligent women do, of course. I’ve yet to see a substantive reply. So far, there’s been lots of glib, self-flattering toss about how noticing certain things can only be explained by a fear of women, or a hatred of them, some rather dishonest attempts at reputational sabotage, and rumblings about the alleged “fragility” of the “straight white male.”