Activate the dimensional aperture. || Shadow detected. (h/t, Damian) || Deep nostalgia. || “Depression checking,” a thread. || Interactive UK crime map. || Poorly paw. || A comforting presence. || We’re getting one or two sparks. || Some new-phone pornography. Ooh, ooh, he’s peeling the film. || A glimpse of your improved, progressive future. || Harassing random children for woke cred. || More scenes of human cunning. Or are they Cybermen? || Easy come, easy go. || Gents, start your engines. || Those are some of these. || Today’s word is ambition. || Bowling alley tour of note. || Meanwhile, in academia. || Mirage of note. || The thrill of hammer restoration. || And finally, relaxingly, just time for a little TV.

The curriculum recommends that teachers lead their students in a series of indigenous songs, chants, and affirmations, including the “In Lak Ech Affirmation,” which appeals directly to the Aztec gods. Students first clap and chant to the god Tezkatlipoka—whom the Aztecs traditionally worshipped with human sacrifice and cannibalism—asking him for the power to be “warriors” for “social justice.” 

Christopher F Rufo takes a look at California’s proposed ethnic studies curriculum.

The state board of education will vote on this curriculum next week.

Academic standards may not be quite up to snuff, but hey, look on the bright side. The kids can use class time to appeal to unseen demons, thereby bringing about “decolonization” and its “healing epistemologies.”

Oh, and consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Time for a quick flick through Scary Mommy, where left-leaning ladies are “supporting each other through laughter and empowerment.”

I have clinical anxiety.

But of course.

My current fixation happens to be a home invasion… My house is nigh on impossible, according to my husband, to break into. However, I can’t stop thinking about it.

No explanation is offered by the author, Elizabeth Broadbent, as to possible causes, but the fixation with “scary men breaking into my home” entails lots of weeping – “tears and breakdowns” are a recurring theme – and the purchase of many things.

My husband has had to buy any number of security items. A raging liberal who believes no one has any reason to own anything but a permitted shotgun for hunting, I’ve contemplated buying a pistol. These thoughts will not go away… So I down another Klonopin and wait.

Oh, come on. It’s Scary Mommy. You knew some kind of mood-stabilising medication would crop up sooner or later. Other unhappy preoccupations include recurring thoughts of an expired husband:

I laid in bed imagining different ways he could meet his demise.

And,

After the birth of my third son, I became convinced that his head would fall off.

Okay, then.

That’s when… they upped my meds.

At which point, readers may wish to ponder just how often ladies of the left feel a need to list their mental health problems, as if engaged in some kind of competition, while demanding that the rest of us aspire to their greatness, emulate their lifestyles, and do as they say.

Two lefties walk into a bar. 

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

Because I’ve been assured that making your own is always more satisfying. I’ll set the ball rolling with, via Damian, some scenes of human cunning; a search tool for film stills; life skills for ladies; a brief history of ketchup; a museum of antiquated electronic games; and, via Elephants Gerald, the thrill of Lego gear ratios. 

Oh, and this, it seems, is a thing that exists.

The word has done incredible damage to my body.

In the pages of Slate, Emily Duke, a woman who “loves carbohydrates,” shares her sorrows as a professional person of girth:

When New York state announced that Phase 1B of vaccinations would include those who are “obese” or “severely obese,” I knew I would qualify. My heart sank into my stomach. I am fat. I am a fat activist. Like a lot of larger-bodied people, I have embraced the word fat. Doing so allows me to buy clothes that fit, rather than those that could fit if I changed. 

The last three words of that sentence are perhaps worth keeping in mind.

It allows me to exist.

Which, we’re to assume, the word obese does not. It being less fluffy. With the power to send a fat woman into an emotional tailspin. 

Among all the radical self-love coffee mugs I’ve seen, “I love being obese” has never been one of them. The word obese elicits an unparalleled grief in me. 

Well, recognition can do that, especially if belated and previously avoided. And incidentally, if your world is one in which “radical self-love coffee mugs” feature prominently, I’d suggest something may be awry.

When I heard the [vaccination] announcement I had been waiting for, I spent three hours in the grocery store trying to figure out what I “should” have for dinner that night.

Three hours. One might call that a telling preoccupation. Ms Duke then detours, at length, into recollections of being in therapy, parental divorce, the “trauma” of dieting, and the woes of being told she is an “emotional eater.” 

When I heard the good news about my eligibility for the vaccine… I panicked that I was a bad fat activist. I felt like I was just one weigh-in away from losing my chosen identity because I can’t face a number on a scale… I’d need to know my BMI to ensure I qualified, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle it.

No emotional issues there, thank goodness.

Frances Widdowson on the “indigenised” Canadian university, where pretending is everything:  

In 2018, one of the co-directors at my university’s Office of Academic Indigenisation invited an Indigenous elder to give a presentation on “Western Medicine vs. Traditional Healing Medicine.” A member of the audience asked the elder what he recommended for the “gut problems” afflicting her child. In response, the elder stated that the parent should “rub corn pollen on his feet and do a sunrise ceremony.” A number of professors in the Faculty of Science and Technology attending the session acknowledged afterwards that this example of “traditional healing medicine” was completely inconsistent with evidence-based scientific medical techniques (as seems obvious, even to those of us who aren’t doctors). But they remained silent at the event, as did everyone else, out of “respect.”

Not quite the right word, I think.

Readers will note that the beneficiary of this “respect” is the peddler of primitive woo, the one being deferred to as a quasi-magical being, some kind of leprechaun. Not the mother whose child was in need of medical attention. I am, of course, assuming that gastro-intestinal ailments won’t actually be cured by rubbing corn pollen on your feet. But such are progressive priorities. There’s much more to chew, and some noteworthy contortions are performed, so do peruse the whole thing. It does rather convey the unhinged, neurotic atmosphere of woke academia. There are also other gifts of aboriginal piety and “indigenous knowledge.” For instance,

[A]t the University of Winnipeg in 2015… presiding Indigenous elders declared that it was in keeping with their traditions that women in attendance should wear long skirts. (Two years earlier, at the University of Saskatchewan, a poster promoting a similar event instructed women to skip the ceremony if they were menstruating.)

And,

[W]hen I attended an “Empowering Indigenisation Symposium” a few months later, an elder said that his “knowledge” included the belief that trees come out of dormancy in the spring because birds sing to them.

Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Somewhat related: Guardian columnist denounces Western medicine as “outdated,” champions use of bush dung.

Via Nikw211.

Just let the A.I. enhance your doodles.   

Consider this an open thread, in which to share links and bicker.

“A lacquer fixative sees that it doesn’t sag.” || He does this at least as well as you would. || I struggle to understand modern music. || At last, amplified squirrels. (h/t, Damian) || Meanwhile, in Essex. || Practically flirtatious with a criminal mastermind. || Merry old London town. (h/t, Holborn) || London’s alleys and passages. (h/t, Things) || The dance they do. || Nicely done, but good question. || Aqueduct of note. || The thrill of Icelandic quiz shows. || Um. || Things you’ll find on a lesbian dating app. || For big earrings. || A little build-up. || Place your bets. || His beef wellingtons are fancier than yours. || Coffee foam. || Fifteen seconds of art. || And finally, festively, it seemed such a good idea at the time.

Or, His Neck Finally Buckled Under The Weight Of His Hair.

Let us share links and bicker. I’ll set the ball rolling, via Noah Carl, with an ingenious solution. 

As some of you may be shopping from home a little more than usual, please bear in mind that 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.

It does help to keep this place here.

Update: Today’s saucy topics include crime and punishment.

For those in need of further diversion, the Reheated series is there to be poked at.