Time, I think, for an open thread. And while I’m being good to you, I’ll throw in one of these, as a bonus.

Because, yes, it’s 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’s an orange button below 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.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last fourteen years, in over 3,000 posts and over 100,000 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.

Speaking, as we were, of rotundity, here’s a hot intersectional take, delivered with beaming certainty:

Actively not wanting to be fat is fatphobia, and therefore you’re fatphobic. 

You see, while “literally nobody is saying” that you must want to be fat, you should do nothing to avoid it or to delay the unsightly expansion of any body parts. Readers who find this a slim distinction must learn that “there is little to no evidence that we have any control over our size” and must therefore “just stop wanting size changes in general.” Readers who regard weight gain as a “size change,” and not a welcome one, should presumably say nothing and act casual. 

Your ignorance and wickedness thus identified, you must,

Commit to unlearning your fatphobia.

Now just stand there and be scolded, damn you.

Mr William Hornby, whose ponderings are shared above and whose pronouns are announced, is an “advocate, TikToker, actor and singer,” and is soon to graduate from Temple University with a degree in musical theatre. He is, of course, “raising awareness,” a mission that entails steering his followers to a Fat Liberation Syllabus For Revolutionary Leftists, where we learn that,

Fat liberation is a radical anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-state movement that was started by fat Black and Brown disabled queer and trans people.

And where we’re told, quite emphatically, that a reluctance to become fat is,

intrinsically entangled with white supremacy, anti-Blackness, settler colonialism, and capitalism.

And therefore, obviously, really, really bad. The goal, then, for all chubby-and-enlightened people, is to “abolish capitalism and settler colonial states like the US,” along with “abolishing prisons and police,” and dismantling the “fatphobic logic of productivity, discipline, and personal responsibility.” One can only hope that this revolutionary project doesn’t involve stairs or significant exertion.  

Mr Hornby’s list of relevant resources also includes a therapist search engine. Though whether that’s for the weight issues or the revolutionary leftism, I couldn’t say.

“The teacher did not appear to know she was being recorded.”

The inclusive, caring world of sixth grade education.

More here. 

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker. 

The concept of sideways. || The scene of the crime. || At last, high-speed hover cars. (h/t, STG) || “Social justice publishing.” || Related. || Perverse and insatiable, there is no cure. || Rolling with it. || Beer vortex. || If the Moon were a disco ball. A giant, somewhat terrifying disco ball. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Ladies at large. || Felt lemonade. || “A deadly presence.” (Or, when you’re being bullied and you don’t even realise it.) || When hypocrisy is a default. || Seeing-eye shoes. || I laughed and I’m not sorry. || Simpler times. || “Black people can’t be racist,” says big black racist. || Balloon versus orange peel. || A boy and his dog. || Suboptimal translation. || And finally, relaxingly, a foot massage of note.

Ms Kelly’s outlook, seen below, seems rather fraught and a tad contrived.

And so, if a friend or colleague is trying to lose weight, which isn’t always easy, and this friend or colleague makes visible progress, then, naturally, you shouldn’t encourage them. Lest they press on and become happy. You see, according to Ms Kelly, our expert in such matters, “anti-fatness” – i.e., complimenting a friend or colleague for losing weight and achieving a goal – is “a perpetuation and enforcement of white supremacist beauty standards.” Sheer beastliness. If you must acknowledge the accomplishment at all, it seems you’re only allowed to do it in a curiously roundabout way – say, by talking about their shoes. 

Other, perhaps more obvious approaches are of course available. 

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil… I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favour.

A dementedly racist woman, Aruna Khilanani, a woman who happily shares her fantasies of killing random white people, is invited to Yale to lecture the young and credulous. 

She’s a psychiatrist, by the way, presumably with paying patients. 

Note that if you challenge Ms Khilanani’s incoherent rambling, or her wildly arrogant generalisations, or her evasiveness and disregard for actual evidence, this is because you are “defensive,” being white, and are therefore “unable” to process her deep and radical wisdom. Including her conviction that “white people don’t eat bread.”  

Her talk, we’re assured, was “very well received.”

Update, via the comments:

Ms Khilanani is eager for the world to understand that she is a thinker, an intellectual. In large, bold letters, we’re told that,  

I may be one of the only [sic] psychiatrists in the country that has a Masters level body of knowledge in theory on marginalised identities… I majored in English at the University of Michigan, and completed a Masters of Humanities at the University of Chicago focusing [sic] gender theory, race theory, African American Studies, Embodiment, Post Colonialism, Sexuality, queer theory, Culture, South Asian Studies, and Marxism.

Grammar and proof-reading are not, one assumes, among Ms Khilanani’s many, many areas of focus and expertise. And curiously, the result of all this fierce rumination is a woman who struggles to support, or sustain, any kind of argument, and who appears unable to think in straight lines, such that one thing follows from another. Evidence is reliably absent, as is logical connective tissue. Instead, we get a series of bald assertions, quite a lot of blathering and deflection, and unrelated fragments of what can only be described as a bizarre conspiracy theory. We’re told, for instance, that expectations of racial reciprocity, mutual civility, would be a “false equivalence,” though why remains unclear, beyond the claim that white people are inherently defective, are “psychologically dependent on black rage,” and “have five holes in their brain.”

Notice of note. (h/t, Holborn) || I am the night. || Gracious in victory. || The inventor of karaoke. || Vibrant diversity in street and park. || Place your bets – will advocaat carbonate? (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Quick and tasty snacks, plus patting. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Interloper. || Portals. || One pack or two? || Today’s word is parasites. || She calls it prayer rape. Because of course she does. || Cleavage detected. || A labour of love. || When you really channel that bad mood. || Jam session of note. || Jigsaw puzzle. || Just like normal people. || “You have to, you do.” || Woke art, woke artist. || Woke blathering level 9: “Fat-phobia is a direct result of anti-blackness.” || And finally, you want to and you know it.

For newcomers and the nostalgic, more items from the archives:

The Sound Of Wringing (2).

The Guardian’s Theo Hobson sticks pins into his eyes, rhetorically.

Despite Mr Hobson’s claims, rejecting “liberal guilt,” as manifest all but daily in the pages of the Guardian, doesn’t require an indifference to, or denial of, real injustice, merely a dislike of pretension and dishonesty. As, for instance, when Mr Hobson’s colleague Guy Dammann looked at the stars and howled, “Am I fit to breed?” Or when Alex Renton told us, “Fewer British babies would mean a fairer planet.” Some Guardian regulars declared their plans to make us “better people” by making us poorer and freeing us from the “dispensable accoutrements of middle-class life,” including “cars, holidays, electronic equipment and multiple items of clothing.” While others chose to agonise over peanut butter residue.

And then there’s Decca Aitkenhead’s classic piece, Their Homophobia is Our Fault, in which she insisted that the “precarious, over-exaggerated masculinity” and murderous homophobia of some Jamaican reggae stars are products of the “sodomy of male slaves by their white owners.” And that the “vilification of Jamaican homophobia implies… a failure to accept post-colonial politics.” Thus, readers could feel guilty not only for “vilifying” the homicidal sentiments of some Jamaican musicians, but also for the culpability of their own collective ancestors. One wonders how those gripped by this fiendish dilemma could even begin to resolve their twofold feelings of shame.

Apocalypse Averted With Collective Juddering.

Just another day at the Guardian.

The paper’s leader writer, Susanna Rustin, is very much troubled by thoughts of impending catastrophe and is keen for your routine shopping – for groceries and maybe a pair of shoes – to be replaced, “painlessly,” with forms of “artistic expression and creativity.” Like dance lessons. It would, of course, be “a reordering of society.”

Passionate Attachments. 

The strange, tearful world of “water-bottle separation anxiety.”

Or, Being One Of Our Betters, She’s Risen Above Such Things.

Apparently, her mother is the one “making the world a miserable, miserable place.” 

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker. 

A keyboard drama unfolds. || Cheeeldren of the night. || Heat conductor of note. || Today’s word is Italian. || News to me. || Spare room. || An inexpensive scientific demonstration. (h/t, Noah Carl) || A stretching definition. || The jeans you’ve always wanted. || Just like normal people, a thread. || “Of the 86% of white liberals that have heard at least ‘a little’ about Antifa, 59% think it’s been a ‘somewhat’ (41%) or ‘very good’ (18%) thing for the country.” || Somewhat related. || Bling. || Big leggy. || The displays of Infinity War and The Expanse. || A present for doggo. || Pig versus vacuum cleaner, the eternal struggle. || Meanwhile, in fashion news. || And finally, if they learn to make fire, we’re, like, totally screwed.

*Now with functioning comments.