Bubbling detected. || An abundance of ladybirds. || Singled out. || Monkey see, monkey do. || Mahi-mahi. || “It’s mango, don’t you like it?”  (h/t, Ben) || The shadow of the Moon. || Magic show of note. (h/t, Desert Rat) || Signage. (h/t, Perry) || Summon the worms. || Today’s word is uncrossable. || Kiss of life. || I foresee accessibility issues. || Steals car, kidnaps child, when caught invokes victimhood. || As cabin views go, it’s pretty decent, actually. || Treasuring the good times. || Hardcore teacher. || Two types of home security, exchanging looks. || Stealth tech in action. || He was sent to buy curtains. || That’s exactly how I would’ve done it. || How to enhance your viewing of vampire-romance movies. || And finally, via Paul Johnson, when the Space Age met the Stone Age, in 1964.

Oh, and a reminder that I now have a Twitter account.  

Time to revisit the world of “queer studies,” via the academic journal Qualitative Research:

I wanted to understand how my research participants experience sexual pleasure when reading shota, a Japanese genre of self-published erotic comics that features young boy characters. I therefore started reading the comics in the same way as my research participants had told me that they did it: while masturbating.

Hey, I’m just reading what it says here.

In this research note, I will recount how I set up an experimental method of masturbating to shota comics, and how this participant observation of my own desire not only gave me a more embodied understanding of the topic for my research but also made me think about loneliness and ways to combat it as driving forces of the culture of self-published erotic comics.

It’s embodied, you see. And before you go getting any untoward ideas, it’s all being done selflessly, high-mindedly, for the greater good:

Untangling this largely unresearched knot of desires for fictional boy characters will give us a better understanding of human sexuality and provide a more solid basis for policymaking.

Anna Slatz on when an 80-year-old lady encounters the pointy end of transgender ideology:  

When [Julie] Jaman asked… why no signs had been posted informing women that males could potentially be in the locker rooms, she says she was told: “‘We post pride signs, and we assume that lets women know what to expect.’”

What is expected, it seems, is that women who are not entirely comfortable with dysmorphic men using ladies’ changing rooms and showers, and watching small girls undress, should simply pretend that it isn’t happening. As is the custom, a kind of farce ensues, including accusations of “hatred,” bigotry, and being “unscientific.”  

Heather Mac Donald on the woke capture, and corruption, of medicine:

Medical schools and medical societies are discarding traditional standards of merit in order to alter the demographic characteristics of their profession… Black students are not admitted into competitive residencies at the same rate as whites because their average [second year ‘Step One’] test scores are a standard deviation below those of whites. Step One has already been modified to try to shrink that gap; it now includes nonscience components such as “communication and interpersonal skills.” But the standard deviation in scores has persisted. In the world of antiracism, that persistence means only one thing: the test is to blame. It is Step One that, in the language of antiracism, “disadvantages” underrepresented minorities, not any lesser degree of medical knowledge…

Guess he needed some attention around the back end. || He does this better than you do. || Not unstylish sea beastie. || Autonomous, unmanned beverage and snack car. || What do you keep in your drawers? || Delivery detected. || Why dogs don’t rule the… oh. (h/t, Perry) || Greetings, human. || Greenery of note. || Gothic mansion, Lancashire, needs a little work. || Kraftwerk being Kraftwerk, 1982. || Classy funeral do. || What concerns me, though, is the lack of toilet paper. || Middle-school teacher needs your help. || And in mining museum news. || Nightmare scenario. || Jar contents of note. || Meaty scenes. || Tokyo, 1935. || He’s “validating” himself. Other terms are available. || It’s like a Rorschach test. || At last, a flamethrower for kids. || And finally, his telekinetic shield proved somewhat inadequate.

Yes, a subtle layout overhaul. A light dusting. As is the way with such things, there may be one or two glitches to sort out, archived videos that need to be resized, etc. Do feel free to point them out. But overall, the blog should be more legible and responsive to a range of devices. Less squinting, I think.

Also, I now have a Twitter account. By all means follow me there. I mean, you wouldn’t want to miss anything, would you?

And because there’s always, but always, a catch…

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 are buttons in the sidebar 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. And if one-click haste is called for, my PayPal.Me page can be found here. Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link, or for Amazon US via this link, or via the buttons top right, 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 decade and a half, in over 3,000 posts and 150,000 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.

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