Snow scene, Hokkaido. Photographed by Tak. Via Tim.

As is the custom here, posting will be intermittent over the holidays and readers are advised to follow me on Twitter, which will alert you to anything new as it materialises. Thanks for another 1.5 million or so visits this year and thousands of comments, many of which prompted discussions that are much more interesting than the actual posts. Which is pretty much the idea. 

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Curious newcomers and those with nothing better to do are welcome to rummage through the reheated series in search of entertainment. You may, and probably will, find things you’d missed. And this, needless to say, is an open thread. 

To you and yours, a very good one.

Further to this recent drama, more overseas toilet-dispute news:

It turns out that a summer dress doesn’t make you a lady.

A female student at the University of Brasilia, the one being harangued and threatened, was seemingly unaware that the university has organised its bathrooms by “gender identity, not sex,” and so lively scenes are to be expected. The gentleman in question, Tulio Henrique Carvalho dos Santos, has, we learn, a history of difficult behaviour. Including hair-trigger aggression and denouncing any interruption of his loud and lengthy pronouncements as “transphobia,” akin to “racism,” and therefore a basis for legal action.

The University of Brasilia has subsequently issued a statement declaring the campus a “tolerant and plural place that values the richness and potential of diversity and respect for differences.” Which would presumably explain all the shoving, screaming and threats of violence.

Update, via the comments:

Lifted from the comments, Elizabeth Weiss attends the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association:

What she finds, it turns out, is in large part a gathering of the pretentious and neurotic, the casually incompetent, and the ideologically addled. Among whom, audio recordings of interviews are equated with colonialism and strip-mining, and therefore neglected in order to disavow an “extraction mindset,” and for whom “scepticism is violence” and “asking for evidence… plays to ‘right-wing pundits.’” Oh, and among whom, “anthropology of the self” is The New Hotness. Yes, these titans of rigour and fearless enquiry.

Via Darleen.

His, as you can see, is considerably bigger than yours. || And face it, his outfit is better than yours. || Blockage detected, chap comes running. || Narrow bars. || Two illustrations of small effects, amplified rather dramatically. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Plant life. || You shall not pass. || Prosthesis of note. || Puppy drama, with background here. || Breakfast bangers. || “Within 100 light-years, things get bad.” || So how was your day? || Can confirm. || Incoming. || The thrill of Argos catalogues, 1973-1991. || No good deed. || Woke and biased, yes, and also incompetent. || A Japanese museum of mistranslated phrases. || Norwegian snowfall. || Look away now. || I’m sure I’ve seen that face before. || And finally, a tale of curiosity, temptation, and unfriendly natives.

Or, Grifters Gonna Grift.

At Montreal’s Concordia University, even light is being “decolonised.” Because “colonialism in contemporary physics” is a thing, you see. No, really, it is. A thing that must be “countered” in the name of piety. By people with salaries and lots of taxpayer subsidy:

The project occupies the time of “equity, diversity and inclusion advisor” Tanja Tajmel and Associate Professor of First Peoples Studies Louellyn White, and draws on the magical almost-brownness of Donna Kahérakwas Goodleaf, a member of the Turtle Clan from Kahnawà:ke, and who was hired by Concordia to “facilitate anti-colonial training.” Combined, their efforts will be,

I suspect this is where the words bad whitey will be inserted. After all, there ain’t no grift in a context that isn’t heaving with pretentious guilt.

Apparently, “all physicists and other scientists” should divert time and effort from their actual work, the important stuff, the thing that pays the bills, in order to become familiar with indigenous “bodies of knowledge.” Presumably, on grounds that one simply can’t do physics or astronomy without a detailed knowledge of magical talking beavers and rival chiefs stealing the Moon.