Andy Ngo reports from Seattle’s super-woke world of tomorrow:

Those unfortunate enough to have homes or businesses within CHAZ — an estimated 30,000 residents — have no say over their new overlords. Residents have discreetly voiced their concerns to local media. Gunshots and “screams of terror” at night have been reported… Every business and property inside CHAZ has been vandalised with graffiti. Most messages say some variation of “Black Lives Matter” or “George Floyd,” but other messages call for the murder of police. Most businesses are boarded up. “ACAB” — all cops are bastards, an Antifa slogan — is written over them.

Needless to say, there’s more, much more, including armed warlords, triumphant racism, bomb-making, and the sexual assault of deaf women. But hey, we mustn’t judge. After all, we’ve been assured that it’s a precursor, a blueprint, of a brighter, kinder, more liberated world.

Snack treat of note. || Modern woes, a possible series. || Ah, Waitrose, always giving that little bit extra. || For Julia, luminous gin. || Vegan leather. || Our betters at large. || Our betters project. || Our betters vent their brains. || Hurling their bodies into the void. || Icebreaker. || They do this better than you. || Sea beasts of the canyons. || Assorted snaps. || Pie Town. || More joys of public transport. || Implausible contact sport. || Inevitable consequences. || Always respect the media. || Modern religion. || Nightlife. || Assorted Lego computers. || Delivery-related mishap of note. || Flatulence-related headline of note. || And finally, via Things, because you’ve always wanted a second-hand liposuction machine.

Via Mr William Shatner, I’ll just leave this here. 

What was I saying? Oh yes, open thread. Share links and bicker.

Because you’ve missed her terribly, more of the Earth-trembling talents of Ms Sandrine Schaefer. First up, a brief performance piece titled Action: Book – Vertical to Horizontal, the profundity of which will doubtless become clear:

In the new, progressive pecking order: 

I just saw a notice go out to the alumni of Caltech, saying we had to eliminate anyone who still resisted these measures to increase awareness of our terrible bigotry. And quite honestly, the key problem that we’re facing here is that we are all for some reason terrified of telling the black community, “you’re wrong.” The black community that is behind Black Lives Matter is frequently wrong… They make terrible arguments… [But] if you contradict [these terrible arguments] then it must mean that you don’t think black lives matter… and that’s not how science works… If a person says, “Two times three equals a chicken,” that person is wrong. I don’t care how trans they are. We have to have the ability, inside of a free society, to treat each other as equals. And if I can’t tell you you’re wrong, you’re not my equal.

Eric Weinstein pokes at academia’s deference to Black Lives Matter. Via Rafi. 

It’s worth noting just how often professed egalitarians delight in overt hierarchies. Of which type of person matters, and does not.

Update, via the comments. The point made above, but in slightly more direct terms.

Also, open thread.

Night Monkeys. || An alternative to fly spray. || Pipeline jam. || Explanation of note. || Neighbours of note. || The North of yore. || Inspector Gadget. || Giant squid. || The thrill of globular springtails. || Orderly bear. || Teddy bears on a roller-coaster. || Behold the 1959 Curtiss-Wright Model 2500 Air-Car. || Clearly, it’s a skill, but when am I going to use it? || Life is full of complications. || Somewhat related. (h/t, Darleen) || How to trap a python. (Chicken’s opinion not known.) || When you want to remake Alien, but you don’t have a lot of money. || Indigestible facts: “I’m getting angry. I don’t want to talk anymore.” || His folding chess set is better than yours. || And finally, Love Will Tear Us Apart (again).

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

I’ll set the ball rolling with some sporting scenes, via Mr Newman.

[ Added via the comments: ]

A reminder that, like all good citizens, one should always respect the media.

And the end of a TV series that seems to have been on air forever, but which was nonetheless often interesting, not because of the behaviour of the officers, but because it revealed the behaviour (and demographics) of the criminals.

And expecting applause. In the pages of Vice, a moral lecture, delivered from on high:

How to Talk to Relatives Who Care More About Looting Than Black Lives.

As an exercise in question-begging and dense, self-satisfied presumption, it’s quite a thing, that headline. It’s very now.

Among those of us deemed insufficiently woke and therefore suspect, questions may arise. For instance, in what way will those “black lives” be improved by the destruction of local infrastructure, local businesses, and the subsequent, perhaps dramatic, reduction in trust and goodwill? And what if the stores and homes in question – the ones being smashed, stripped of their contents and set ablaze – are owned by people who happen to be black, as has often been the case?

What if the places being looted and vandalised with abandon, indeed exultation, are depended on by people who also happen to be black, whether as customers or employees? After the razing and ruin of their places of work, should these people be pleased to be former employees? Unemployed people who now have no local grocer, or garage, or pharmacy?

Alas, such considerations appear to have eluded the keen mental processes of the article’s author, Ms Rachel Miller, a young woman who dutifully declares her pronouns and boasts of being a “Buzzfeed alum.”

If you’re not Black but want to support BLM, having fraught conversations with your kinda (or definitely) racist loved ones will likely not be fun, but it’s a very worthy undertaking.

Right from the off we’re informed, firmly, that any perceptible reservations about looting and rioting, or reservations about the Black Lives Matter movement – say, regarding its demented far-left agenda, its racial tribalism, and the stated goal of abolishing capitalism, prisons and the police – must be taken as an indicator of being “kinda (or definitely) racist.” Wokeness is not, it seems, a recipe for cognitive subtlety.

“Some people,” we’re told, “appear to be far more worried about the fate of a Nordstrom or Target store than that of the actual human lives of protesters.” Again, one might deduce that only those protesting with, shall we say, physical enthusiasm have “actual human lives,” unlike their victims, whose hopes and livelihoods can be gleefully destroyed as an act of righteous liberation. From local amenities.

Via Min in the comments,

Arlene Dávila, a professor at NYU and founding director of the Latinx Project, believes that looting, theft, and destruction are all part of this essential tapestry of protest. She writes, “Anyone surprised that protests include looting of luxury stores in Soho & elsewhere doesn’t know the 1st thing about racial capitalism & luxury consumption. Racial exploitation is at the root of consumer capitalism built on the commodification of black bodies through slavery.”

Those with a taste for adolescent nihilism tarted-up as woke theorising can head over here for more of the same. There, you’ll learn that sweatshops exist and that “advertising is one of the whitest industries in corporate America,” and that therefore – yes, therefore – people who recently found their businesses and neighbourhoods violated and ablaze should just quit complaining and suck it up, baby.

One can only hope that Professor Dávila returns home one evening to find that it too has been chosen as a target of ‘protest’, i.e., robbed of anything valuable and merrily on fire. Possibly as a result of parents belatedly registering the kinds of people now entrusted to educate their children. Or would that somehow be unfair? I ask because, stripped of its rote contortions, Professor Dávila’s reasoning seems to be, “I am unhappy, therefore I am obviously entitled to smash whatever I choose, terrorise whomever I choose, however arbitrarily, and to destroy the hopes and livelihoods of countless random people.”

Because – magic words - social justice.

Readers may note just how often leftism is functionally indistinguishable from sociopathy.

Update, via the comments: 

Note too that Professor Dávila carefully sidesteps the countless scenes of feral violence against random people, including elderly women, even terrified animals, and wants us to imagine that the rioting and looting and arson have been neatly confined to “luxury stores” and is therefore, somehow, acceptable, even righteous. Something to applaud. Of course, this is a lie, as hours of video footage demonstrate. But it’s interesting how our dishonest woke educator, our teacher of other people’s children, seems to believe that the property of the owners of those stores, and the livelihoods of the people they employ, and the ongoing nightmare for the people who just live nearby or in the same smashed and burning buildings… well, they don’t matter.

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, use of which almost certainly earns you a place in heaven. 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 thirteen years, in close to 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. Also, open thread.