They’re not sure what it is. || She loves her little figurines. (h/t, Holborn) || Effort-saving measure of note. || 1940s New York. Click a dot, any dot. || They do this better than you. || Bonus points for the dog. || Remember, kids. Antifa are just like normal people. || “The Chinese language, with its 70,000-plus characters, couldn’t fit on a keyboard.” || Cherry-blossom chillfest. || Ventilation malfunction results in chocolate snow. || Charming house with charming basement jail. || Shops for mice. || Highlights from Australia’s Mulletfest 2020. || “The glass allegedly becomes opaque after you lock the door.” || Venn diagram of note. || Vortex detected. || And finally, their décor crisis is probably worse than yours.

Because you crave one, an open thread, in which to share links and bicker.

Oh, and here’s something savoury. 

Best enlarged. 

From the archives, Amy Wax on the contortions of “affirmative action”: 

On the one hand, all good people are for affirmative action. That’s a sign of virtue. On the other hand, to talk about the predicate, the reason that affirmative action is needed, which is that there are these gaps in educational achievement and proficiency, is verboten. So, we kind of twisted ourselves in knots that we have to embrace something but deny the factual underpinning of it.

And Heather Mac Donald on pantomime claims of “systemic racism” and their corrosive and farcical effects:

It has been taboo to hint at the reason that the millions of dollars already expended on campus diversity initiatives have yet to engineer exact proportional representation of blacks in the student body and on the faculty: the vast academic skills gap. Now this truth will be even more professionally lethal to anyone who dares mention it. The highest reaches of the university have declared as a matter of self-evident fact that systemic racism is the defining feature of American society, one that explains every inequality. Fighting against that racism has now officially become colleges’ reason for being…

The dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, pronounced himself “absolutely dedicated” to turning the engineering school into an “anti-racist organisation.” Doing so “crucially includes unconscious bias work we must do within ourselves,” he added. How that work will interact with research on nanoparticles and viral transmission, say, was unspecified… The chairman of the earth and planetary sciences department at the University of California at Davis announced an “anti-racist reading group” for faculty and students. The group’s purpose was to confront the “structural racism that pervades” the field of geology. Such structural racism in the study of igneous rocks is apparently so obvious that the chair did not bother to elaborate further. Failure to attend the reading group would undoubtedly count against any faculty member during his promotional review, as a sign of insufficient enthusiasm for “diversity.”

Worth reading in full. As Ms Mac Donald notes, with the question of disparities in academic performance effectively short-circuited, and “systemic” but unspecified “racism” the go-to explanation, the all-but mandatory conclusion, any hope of addressing underlying behaviour and suboptimal choices recedes even further. Instead, we can look forward to more unearned resentment and grandiose entitlement, quotas for the unqualified, and more pretentious self-incrimination. In the name of “social justice.”

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

An appreciation of snugness. (h/t, Damian) || Who invented toast? || Justified reversal of note. || You may begin feeling ancient… now. || Norwegian kayaking. || Saint-Saëns in his pyjamas, circa 1900. || Burbles, can be stroked, and doesn’t poop. || He’s bad. || The thrill of bread-making. || Flying train, 1902. || This layer cake is more complicated than yours. || Hoss pop. || Antifa are just like normal people and in no way unusual. || Non-essential component detected. || Knitwear of note. || The upscale low-noise massager you’ve always wanted. || Meanwhile, in Sheffield, romance blooms. || Rethink of note. || Bat discotheque caught on camera. || And finally, athletically, an excellent use of the buttocks.

“A can-do attitude,” “striving toward success,” being “results oriented,” and “operating from principles and conscience.” At first glance, these sound like the kinds of qualities one might appreciate among employees – say, among employees at a nuclear research and development lab.

But no, dear reader. How foolish you’ve been.

Apparently, these things constitute, not a basis for workplace success, but merely of “success in white male terms.” Which, we’re told, not only “limits white males’ ability to hear and understand others” and “dampens their curiosity,” but is also “devastating” to “people of colour, gays/lesbians, women, and non-Christians.” You see, expectations of competence, “hard work” – and a concern for whether actions actually produce the desired result – these things are problematic and to be viewed with suspicion, and ultimately undermined. On grounds that they cause “people of colour” to “feel they are living out of context with who they really are.”

If this sounds a tad unhinged, not to mentioned racist, that can only be because you’re insufficiently schooled in “critical race theory” and the ways of the woke. Happily, Christopher Rufo has risked his mental wellbeing by poking through documents issued at a taxpayer-funded, three-day mandatory training session organised by the aforementioned research lab, Sandia National Laboratories, during which white male executives found themselves subjected to some lovely psychological abuse.

An introductory “thought-work session” encouraged reluctant attendees to associate their whiteness and maleness with “white supremacists,” the KKK, and “mass killings.” As one does, of course. With equal obviousness, employees of pallor were expected to recite – which is to say, confess – an extensive list of benefits of their supposed “white privilege.” Benefits including “the ability to dominate language,” and the fact that “no-one is afraid to come to my garage sale.”

A chief benefit of the aforementioned “privilege” is summarised in the documents as, “I don’t wonder if people judge me on the colour of my skin.” This, then, while white male employees found themselves singled out as morally suspect, and while being overtly and triumphantly judged, and by default found wanting. Complete with orders to produce hand-written apologies – based solely on their maleness and the colour of their skin. And the pernicious racial woo of spiteful bedlamites.

Time for an open thread, I think. In which to share links and bicker.

What?

Oh yes, Batwoman. 

It occurs to me that it’s been a while since we marvelled at the mind of Laurie Penny. We must correct that immediately:  

She “earned that pronoun with a lot of hard work,” you know. While also, rather suddenly, becoming a being of indeterminate gender. A they, depending on who’s nearby, and how fashionable they are.

Update, via the comments:

Actual science, people. || Ladder commercial of note. || Lab research of note. || Meanwhile, in Roswell, New Mexico, the visitors are contained. || Today’s word is excavation. || Uncle Tom. || The caring kind. || Consequences. (h/t, Jeff) || I learned a new word today. || Plant nuggets. They taste like chicken, apparently. || GoPro inside a car tyre. || Harry Potter – but with guns. || Musically speaking, a partial success. || Mercedes in peril. || Heh. (h/t, Damian) || Dinnertime negotiation of note. Our place in the food chain is safe, for now. || And how was your day? || She does this better than you. || Often-filmed rock formations. || And finally, a job done, though perhaps not quite as smoothly as one might have hoped.

Heather Mac Donald on post-watershed facts: 

YouTube’s age-restriction policy lists vulgar language, violence and disturbing imagery, nudity and sexually suggestive content, and portrayal of harmful or dangerous ­activities as factors that could lead to an age restriction. None of those categories has any bearing on my talk. I used federal data to show that the claim that police are wantonly killing black men is a product of selective coverage by a politicised press and an elite establishment dedicated to the idea that racism is America’s defining trait. There was nothing racy or ­incendiary about the talk — unless you find criminological ­research titillating — unlike the soft-pornographic and anarchist videos that YouTube allows on its site without age restriction.

Ms Mac Donald’s apparently scandalous video – which was promptly deleted by YouTube and only restored, for consenting adults, following appeals by the talk’s organisers – can be viewed in full here. As Larry Elder adds, 

Not only does [your evidence] give perspective, it’s uplifting. Isn’t it good to know that whatever is going on is nothing to do with “institutional, systemic, structural” racism? Isn’t that good news?

And not entirely unrelated, Coleman Hughes on the life and work of Thomas Sowell: 

Sowell has encountered countless smears, though the usual avenues of attack—accusations of racism, privilege, and all the rest—have not been available. Someone should have told Aidan Byrne, who reviewed one of Sowell’s books for the London School of Economics blog. Doubtless convinced that he was delivering a devastating blow, Byrne quipped: “easy for a rich white man to say.” It’s hard not to laugh at this hapless reviewer’s expense, but many mainstream commentators differ from Byrne only in that they usually remember to check Google Images before launching their ad hominems. The prevailing notion today is that your skin colour, your chromosomes, your sexual orientation, and other markers of identity determine how you think. And it is generally those who see themselves as the most freethinking—“woke,” while the rest of us are asleep—who apply the strictest and most backward formulas.

A selection of videos featuring Dr Sowell can be found here, here, here, and here. 

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

I have chores; therefore, you have an open thread.

You may enthuse when ready.

Oh, and scenes. Sound recommended. A fuller, longer version can be experienced here.