Friday Ephemera
200,000 creatures caught on automated cameras. (h/t, MeFi) // Octopus and hatchlings. // PewPewPewPewPew! // Opera house of note. // How to make a laser from a gin and tonic. // At last, the Battleship drinking game. // Kinetic sculptures by Anne Lilly. // Monster prominence, February 24 2011. // Bus passes of Milwaukee, 1930-1979. (h/t, Coudal) // Shanghai. // “This is not Sweden… This is our area.” And some French multiculturalism. // On “outgroups” and “ingroups.” (h/t, Franklin) // In three dee. // Nyiragongo Crater. (h/t, prm) // Farmyard indecency. (h/t, Julia) // Which came first? // Infuse whole fruit with delicious gas.
Farmyard indecency
“When police officers arrived soon after, they found him covered in a large amount of slurry and mud, in a quagmire, surrounded by tissues.”
Who said local news is boring?
That the gentleman brought his own supply of tissues makes the whole affair much classier, I feel.
If only he’d used them to give the muckspreader a quick wipe afterwards, all this unpleasantness might have been avoided.
Re: On “outgroups” and “ingroups.”
“Our favorite item on this menu is ‘unconscious bias’: what a delicious invitation to meddlesomeness that pseudo-category opens up!”
Meddlesomeness is the point, surely?
“Meddlesomeness is the point, surely?”
It does open up new vistas for preening and sadism. The preening being of the sort, “I see something terribly wrong with you – and embarrassing and potentially ruining – because, unlike you, I am virtuous and clever. My ability to see your guilt where others can’t is proof of my virtue and my right to interfere.” (See, for instance, the despicable Jane Elliott.) Aside from the inherent condescension and the opportunity to humiliate and bully one’s victim, there are other benefits for those with the urge to hurt. Sadism is given further license by the difficulties in denying a charge that requires no actual proof, and in which denial and irritation can be construed as confirmation of one’s guilt.
Hence, I suppose, its popularity. Especially on the left.