Quirky, kooky, a joke … but why is Marianne Williamson so popular with the young?

Marianne Williamson, the self-help author who is making her second bid for the presidency, has a history of saying things that can be characterized as either "deranged" or "quirky" depending on how charitable you're feeling. Some of her greatest hits include:

Tweeting that the "power of the mind" might have changed the course of Hurricane Dorian and stopped it from hitting the US in 2019. (She later deleted the tweet.)

Saying that she would "harness love" to defeat Donald Trump during her closing statement at the Democratic presidential debate in 2019. We all know how that one worked out.

Unsurprisingly, Williamson's presidential campaign isn't being taken remotely seriously by the media or the White House. The Biden administration has laughed off any idea that she's a proper contender - when the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, was asked about Williamson's political aspirations in March she joked about not having "a crystal ball".

It's certainly easy to make fun of Williamson but, while she's said a lot of questionable things, it's wrong to dismiss the author as a joke. When she's not talking about the "power of the mind" Williamson has a lot to say about institutional inequality, the need for universal healthcare, the problems with capitalism, the importance of cancelling student debt, and the complacency of the Democratic establishment. And guess what? An awful lot of young people are listening. Williamson's very left-leaning videos draw millions of views on TikTok and her speeches often go viral.

"If engagement on TikTok is any indication, a Democratic presidential primary held today among people under 50 would result in a landslide for the bestselling author now making her second bid for the nomination," the Intercept recently noted. And it's not just TikTok where Williamson is popular: the Intercept further notes that "a recent poll found Williamson hovering above 20% with voters under 30". Which is a lot better than she was doing in 2020 and is pretty impressive when you consider what a political outsider she is.

Then again, of course, it's the very fact that Williamson is a political outsider that makes her so popular among young people. Williamson has an energy and urgency that is severely lacking in the Democratic party. And she's not shy about calling the Democrats out for their complacency.

Even without a crystal ball, I think we all know that Williamson has zero chance of being in the White House - and I'm certainly not advocating that she should be. But wouldn't it be nice if the White House adopted some of her energy and a few of her ideas about structural reform? Williamson's popularity on TikTok isn't some insignificant online phenomenon - it's a sign of how disillusioned young people feel with the current system. Establishment Democrats have long preached incrementalism as the only way to move forwards but, when it comes to things like women's rights, we only seem to be moving backwards. Marianne Williamson isn't the answer to America's woes but her TikTok popularity should have the Democrats asking a lot of questions.

"Dense breast tissue is simply tissue that is thicker and glandular, hasn't turned into fat over time, and it puts women at an automatic four times higher risk of cancer," Elizabeth L Silver writes. If you have dense breast tissue then a mammogram alone will have a hard time detecting cancer - you need additional screenings such as an ultrasound or MRI. "Yet the decision to supplement a mammogram with this additional screening is, shockingly, one of the largest controversies in women's health," Silver explains. "[T]he question has essentially been left to the patient, who knows little about it."

"Women who come forward, one of the reasons they don't come forward is because they're always asked, 'why didn't you scream?'" Carroll retorted. "He raped me whether I screamed or not." As Amanda Marcotte writes, Trump's entire defense in the E Jean Carroll rape trial seems to rest on shameless misogyny.

Chris Evans and Ana de Armas star in a new action-romance called Ghosted with some dire reviews and misogynistic tropes. "What's sold as a love story, based on following your heart, presents us instead an entitled man who won't take no for an answer," Jess Bacon writes in the Guardian. "Sadly, this is nothing new."

A Frankfurt court found "the usability of the rented property was not impaired by the plaintiff sunning himself naked in the courtyard".

However, there are 60 James/Robert/John CEOs compared with 41 women, according to Bloomberg.

It is currently illegal to sell sex toys in Thailand although that obviously doesn't stop it happening. Now the country's Democratic party wants to change that, arguing that they're missing out on lots of taxes. They also came up with some social benefits for legalization: "Sex toys are useful because they could lead to a decrease in prostitution as well as divorce due to a mismatch of sexual libido, and sex-related crimes." Not sure that vibrators are going to stop sex-related crime, but it's certainly a creative argument.

"It looks like a mermaid with two silicone breasts and, above all, a huge arse never seen before on a mermaid," one critic complained. "At least not any I know."

Video phone calls are for the birds. Or, to be more specific: the parrots. A new study has found that parrots that are allowed to make video calls to other birds seem to become less lonely. Now we just need to get them on Twitter.