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September 2021

Reheated (65)

For newcomers and the nostalgic, more items from the archives:

Loving Themselves.

Fat feminist students fight the patriarchy by gorging on doughnuts and thick, liquid pudding.

Yes, students with weight issues – issues of such magnitude that they have anger to release - will be encouraged to gorge on doughnuts and thick sugary drinks requiring an extra-wide straw, before hating themselves all over again, while pretending to be empowered and totally okay with it. You see, the way to help overweight people is to encourage the kind of high-sugar consumption that results in weight gain and inviting them to smash objects that remind them of how unhappy they are about being fat. A situation that they’ve just made slightly worse. 

One For The Ladies.

Guardian writer tries his hand at saucy celebrity news. Things take a strange turn.

Apparently, “gay twink culture” is feeding into straight desire, albeit in ways never specified; and yet, complains our columnist, these ephebophile appetites are “nowhere to be seen in the People [Sexiest Man Alive] list.” Readers will doubtless be shocked by the revelation that the middle-aged ladies who buy People magazine, many of whom have children of their own, aren’t overwhelmingly aroused by the kind of skinny young men whose fame is based on playing skinny 17-year-old boys who get seduced by older men in the kind of art-house films loved by Guardian columnists.

The Psychology Of “Social Justice” Is A Thing To Behold.

Leftist professor advises students to say “fuck you” to potential employers. 

Readers with an academic bent will be thrilled to hear that Dr Strouse’s dissertation is titled Literary Theories of the Foreskin. This work of tremendous cultural and intellectual heft “investigates a school of thought in which the prepuce, as a conceptual metaphor, organises literary experience.” It also, apparently, “demonstrates that, within the school of preputial poetics, the male anatomy queerly embodies the plasticity and multiplicity of rhetoric.”

Should you want more, by all means click here. Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker. 


A List Had Been Prepared

Applause would surely follow

I am a polyamorous, pansexual, lesbian and nonbinary transwoman. I’m also a furry. 

As someone quips in reply to this, “When you give yourself all the roles in the Discord server.” 

When not discussing his mental health issues - a go-to and seemingly inexhaustible topic - or deploying niche hashtags by the dozen, or modelling his assorted looks, from “hot girl summer” to “basic bitch autumn,” Mr Wildcat, quoted above, likes to remind viewers of how startlingly original he – sorry, e/er - is:

I realise my neo-pronouns are a little unique, mostly because… I came up with them. 

Readers will note that Mr Wildcat apparently finds it bewildering that someone – specifically, a female colleague - might not be entirely convinced by his supposedly unassailable womanly status:

She struggled with identifying my gender and it’s like… what? I wear low-cut tops to work.

It was confusing. It confuses me.

Update, via the comments:

Continue reading "A List Had Been Prepared" »


Friday Ephemera

A miracle breakthrough in child relocation technology. || “My device will prevent the flapping of the breasts.” || Butterfly repair of note. || Burly chap plus one. || Positive thinking. || Steepness detected. || Related, you may wish to tread carefully. || He does this better than you. || And they do this quite well. || ‘Tis the season. || Tom and Jerry. || At last, a robotic masseur. || Incoming. || Carved avocados. || Thaddeus Cahill’s Teleharmonium. || Across The Multiverse, a game. || Women have weird elbows. || Background noise generator. || The thrill of 1980s dashboards. || Incongruity detected. || Ant farm diversion. (h/t, Things) || And finally, because you clearly need to know, a “fun fact about me.


Your Manners And Competence Are Deeply Problematic

Kenin M Spivak on the urge to level down:

During the last 18 months, supercharged by events after George Floyd’s death, the radical Left has… shifted its focus to the abolition of testing and standards, the evisceration of math curricula, and indoctrination in our K-12 schools. The following is a necessarily abridged summary of recent developments…

Under pressure from progressive assertions of test bias, over the last few years, many colleges decided that SAT and ACT testing would be optional. Then, to settle a lawsuit alleging racist disparities, in May 2021, the UC system announced it is ceasing the use of ACT and SAT scores. Other colleges promptly followed the UC’s lead. Without scores, there can be no disparities.

In April 2020, citing “equity” and its goal to restructure and dismantle “systems and institutions that create the dichotomy of beneficiaries and the oppressed and marginalised,” the Oregon Department of Education eliminated grades and proficiency in reading, writing, and math as requirements for graduation…

On September 9, 2020, Education Trust-West, an “advocate for educational justice,” announced its study and toolkit for K-12 math, A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In Pathway, Trust-West characterised expecting the right answer, independent practice, teaching in a linear fashion, requiring procedural fluency, and requesting that students show their work, as “white supremacy.” Instead of offering a path for minority students to learn how to do math and come to the correct answer, Pathway instead advocates that schools use numbers to motivate anti-racist discussions of social justice.

On July 14, 2021, the California Department of Education issued a Mathematics Framework based on True-West’s Pathway. Chapter 1 of Framework rejects “natural gifts and talents” and calls for de-emphasising calculus and eliminating classes for gifted children in grades 6-12 to eliminate “inequity.” Chapter 1 specifies that “equity influences all aspects of this document.” The draft Framework directs teachers to use math for political discussions about “marginalised communities” and to move away from focusing on correct methods or answers.

At a time when, despite increases in school funding, almost 80% of black and Hispanic eighth graders have been deemed “not proficient” in maths or reading, it’s unclear how improvements might be made while simultaneously graduating high-school pupils regardless of their performance, or even their attendance, and while shying from the existence of such terribly oppressive things as correct answers.

Continue reading "Your Manners And Competence Are Deeply Problematic" »


Time To Fire Up The Blessing Generator

Because, 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. 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 decade and a half, in over 3,000 posts and over 130,000 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.

Now share ye links and bicker.


Friday Ephemera

“Why is your mouth making that noise?” || 83 metres. || Today’s word is meaty. || The thrill of teapot-making. || Meanwhile, in fairness and inclusivity news. || The fine dining experience. || “The longest fart ever is over two and a half minutes long.” || You’re embarrassing him, you see. || Two-bed flat, Islington: “The underground bunker is very spacious.” (h/t, Things) || Rinse and repeat. || The thrill of tunnels. || How to hypnotise a crab. || And what do you do with your surplus pieces of wood? || Scenes from progressive utopia. || Progressive law enforcement. || A coincidence, I’m sure. || Customer feedback. (h/t, STG) || The wife will love it. || And finally, while it’s hard to be sure, I think fun is being had.


She Knows What You Need To Do

My daughter’s father called her “princess” yesterday and I had to lecture him… again.

It’s a short video, but quite a lot is implied. Not all of it, I think, intentionally.

Update, via the comments, where Burnsie adds,

Watching that, I can certainly understand why her “daughter’s father” is not her daughter’s mother’s husband.

Well, quite. “We do not use that term in this house,” says our Queen of Indignation and Overreach. It’s a “harmful word,” we’re told. Though I’d imagine rather more harm is being done to said daughter by her having the kind of mother she apparently has.

Also, open thread. Have at it, me hearties.


In Which The Word ‘If’ Does A Lot Of Work

If what I’ve been saying is true, then you could say, within the white cultural racist imaginary, black bodies are different, black bodies can suffer, black bodies should suffer.

I wonder if Dr Derek Hook, the agitated educator quoted above, the one mentioned here recently, needs to lower his dosage. Or up his dosage. Or to smoke some entirely different kind of bathroom cleaning product. Either way, “whiteness,” or “the white big other of the racist domain,” appears to be pressing on his nerves. When not suggesting, in a bizarrely circuitous and somewhat manic way, that white people, as some collective entity, secretly fantasise about harm befalling random black people, via “damage” and “mutilation,” Dr Hook apparently endorses the idea that “white people should commit suicide as an ethical act,” in order to “castrate whiteness.”

So, no concerning patterns of thought there, obviously.  

And in other educational news.

She’s “challenging a broken system,” you see.

Needless to say, if you poke through the archives, you’ll find countless examples of educators whose racial neuroticism and mental contortions, often with racially sadistic overtones, are quite remarkable. And again, it’s not just that the ideas on display - and very much in fashion - are obnoxious, or contorted, or morally deranged, or a blueprint for ruin; it’s that the kinds of people who find such things titillating or life-consuming, as Dr Hook and his peers evidently do, tend to be… psychologically marginal. Which is to say, the kinds of people you wouldn’t generally want anywhere near your children.

And yet.