Friday Ephemera
One man and his hummingbird. // LED baby strikes back. // Bag-snatching thief with previous convictions encounters “social justice.” (h/t, Kate) // Giraffe in a storm. // Storage jars of note. // Hardcore stare down. I’ve seen this happen. // “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” // Magnetic dunking device. // Defend against atom bombs with vigorous dusting. // It’s about this deep. // Poly-spandex poncho. // Zwipe. // Popsicles of note. // Organic, vegan, genderless gingerbread persons. (h/t, Robert Hale) // The science of voice recognition. // The sky is not blue. // Hoverboard, baby. // How to move furniture. // You know you want a swivelling selfie hat. // Huge sphinx unearthed in California. // And finally, James Spader is a very bad robot in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Hummingbirds. This one’s been doing the rounds for a while…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvrcdQWzH-8
Denver refurbishes its old train station. Writer bitches because not enough non-whites visit. Apparently the architecture is somehow racist.
(That’s probably better-suited to the Elsewhere thread, but that’s got enough comments that this probably wouldn’t be noticed.
Magnetic dunking device.
Meh.
Non magnetic dunking device(es).
Poly-spandex poncho.
Just the garment for those rainstorms that stop just above the waist, like all rainstorms do. As if one would ever need an actual raincoat.
Organic, vegan, genderless gingerbread persons.
But are they made from real vegans?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/canada
You guys should check the various articles dealing with the recent shooting in Ottawa. The pussyfooting around The Religion of Peace is quite comical.
Bag-snatching thief with previous convictions encounters “social justice.”
A feel-good video. 🙂
A feel-good video.
Well, it made me smile. You don’t often get to see verminous little shits getting their comeuppance quite so quickly. And by comeuppance I mean a light clubbing, public humiliation and almost immediate apprehension by the police. What’s not to like?
Denver refurbishes its old train station. Writer bitches because not enough non-whites visit. Apparently the architecture is somehow racist.
Wow. That article is racist in all sorts of ways.
Apparently the architecture is somehow racist.
Damn those racist chandeliers and that racist polished marble. Damn it all to blazes.
It’s good to see that identitarian dogma and obsessive racial bean-counting in no way encourage condescending stereotypes and neurotic stupidity.
The tips about defence against an atom bomb attack are reminiscent of the Beyond the Fringe sketch about civil defence, which included the question from a member of the audience: Following Armageddon, can you tell me how quickly normal public services will be resumed? (The answer mentioned that it would be something in the nature of a skeleton service).
James Spader is a very bad robot in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
I bet Spader had fun doing this.
Cyanide and happiness just published their own view on the starting-contest meme;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_qOy7BXVHU
Also, does listening to Lil Wayne make you dumb, or does being dumb make you want to listen to Lil Wayne?
http://musicthatmakesyoudumb.virgil.gr/index.php
Clearly something to ponder for the weekend.
Oh, and weekend! finally.
Hugs,
-S
I bet Spader had fun doing this.
It’s a neat bit of casting. And I like the motion capture of his body language. The head tilt at the end reminded me of Reddington telling one of his stories in The Blacklist.
You don’t often get to see verminous little shits getting their comeuppance quite so quickly.
Growing up in Leeds, the bus drivers had a fearsome and well-deserved reputation for keeping order on their vehicles.
I personally witnessed one tackle a gang of vicious thugs, wrestling the biggest of them into submission before throwing him bodily out of the doors. The others, cowed, slipped off meekly (naturally, they set up a riot of curses and death threats as soon as there was a safe distance between them and the now moving bus).
Another time, I was on a bus when it suddenly lurched to a halt. A bag-snatcher who had knocked an old lady to the ground and made off with her handbag was immediately pursued by a bystander. As the two were struggling, the driver of the bus saw this, leapt off, dashed across the road and piled in, knocking the thief flat to the ground. More men joined them, and they sat on the cursing, hollering bag-snatcher until the police came and arrested him.
That time has long gone.
Not only are the ‘yoof’ more dangerous in the sense that they are likely to be carrying knives that they are just itching to use, but they are also more likely than before to pursue a vendetta to the very bitter end.
That, and of course the fact that the bus driver, should he dare to intervene, would likely find himself prosecuted for assault and lose his job as a result.
Whether that is true or not, that is what is widely believed to be the case. And so now no one intervenes like that any more, that impulse to get involved having been co-opted by a Law that has failed to put any alternative means of protection in its place (what with the police being both understaffed and overworked).
There are lots of cameras though.
So that’s alright then.
Presumably.
To someone.
Ted S.
Ray Mark Rinaldi’s Did diversity miss the train in Union Station’s architecture? (subtitled: The urban playground at Union Station isn’t drawing people of color and it may be the building’s fault) has to be one of the most egregiously stupid and offensive articles written by anyone, anywhere at any time.
And considering he is a fine art critic and Comment is Free does this kind of thing regularly, that is quite some claim.
But seriously, it’s almost a marvel of literary engineering to manage to pack that much dumb that small a space.
I’m truly aghast.
Ted S. – I really liked that article, thank you.
How can the new cultural jewel of our city — where 47 percent of the population is minority — draw a crowd that is 98.2 percent Caucasian on a bustling, buzzed Saturday night?
I’m guessing black and latino folks were watching TV, out clubbing, or getting laid.
We’re not perfect, certainly, and the city has its share of streets where only one sort of family lives, bars where people hang out with their own kind. Sometimes that’s segregation; sometimes it’s just folks being themselves among themselves, celebrating common stories
It’s segregation (boo!) when whites do it. When brown people socialise with other brown folks it’s “celebrating common stories” (yay!).
Union Station is a neo-classical mix of styles — European styles. The symmetry, arched windows, ornate cornice and stacked, stone walls have their roots in the glory days of France, England, Greece and Rome, in empires that were nearly absent of ethnic minorities and who felt fully at ease invading, exploiting and actually enslaving the people of Africa, subcontinent Asia and South America.
Wait… the British Empire was nearly absent of ethnic minorities? The Roman Empire too? Lols.
More brown people would have shown up, but they hate that cracker neoclassical architecture.
As evidenced by the classic N.W.A. rap song, “Fuck Tha Cornice”.
The gilded chandeliers have been rewired, the marble polished, but there’s no nod to the present, no interior walls in the bright colors of Mexico, no Asian simplicity is in the remix. There are no giant sculptures by African-American artists bonused into the lobby, no murals on the basement walls.
And note the racist absence of rickshaws, goats, and people clinging to the roof of the trains.
The present restoration harkens back to Union Station at its height
They should have restored it to look like Union Station at its nadir.
something is missing. There’s no traditional Mexican restaurant, no soul-food restaurant
He’s not a racist, but… you know those beaners and coloured folks only eat burritos or fried chicken and collard greens.
RTD had a thousand choices when it was rehabbing the station. It could have put in a farmer’s market or a suite of micro-offices. It could have let its imagination run wild and installed a basketball court or a rec center
Or a pinyata. Or a breakdancing area. You know those black folks love the breakdancing.
More brown people would have shown up, but they hate that cracker neoclassical architecture.
And the wheels of his mind didn’t fall off by accident. They were loosened and removed.
Fuck the Cornice…
pure gold
bravo
I think there is a distinct possibility that at least one answer to the question posed by Mr Rinaldi is given a clue right at the beginning of his own article:
Thursday, 1 p.m.: 186 whites, 1 black, 4 Latinos, 4 Asians.
Friday, 6 p.m.:647 whites, 6 blacks, 6 Latinos, 7 Asians
Saturday, 11 p.m.:693 whites, 4 blacks, 2 Latinos, 7 Asians.
I mean really, would you be inclined to go to a place that apparently has a potential racist serial killer wandering round with this iPhone keeping a score of everybody’s ethnicity?
Honesty, what a knob.
Nick, do you think he actually counted 700 people on a Friday and Saturday, or do you suppose he just made those numbers up? This is American journalism. Consider the history.
WTP
Heh, well, you know it could go either way.
I mean, having read the article, he’s clearly not right in the head which would make anything possible.
And also, if he did lie about it … what kind of a fruitcake thinks it’s cool to lie about doing that?
On the other hand, he’s a Fine Art critic so I’m guessing he doesn’t really have a lot else to fill his time with.
And now I think of it, as a Fine Art critic, he probably also thinks it’s edgy in a kind of Samuel Beckett Molloy kind of way (“I had say sixteen stones, four in each of my four pockets these being the two pockets of my trousers and the two pockets of my greatcoat. Taking a stone from the right pocket of my greatcoat, and putting it in my mouth, I replaced it in the right pocket of my … etc. ad nauseum”). They love that scene, those PoMo critic types, they really do.
Anybody’s guess really.
. . . It could have put in a farmer’s market . . .
As noted a couple of posts back or so . . .
I wonder if for these people finding the most new hilariously, pretentious, patronizing, condescending ways to racialize just about everything trivial thing is some sort of game to them (referring to the racist Union Station). It’s almost like psychological warfare.
A feel-good video. 🙂
Latin Americans go after thieves all the time, because there’s no use relying on cops to help you: there’s not enough to get there on time, if they get there at all.
When I was hiking in the hills above Cali Colombia with American & Colombian friends, a couple of tipos held us up with a shard of broken glass and an afro pick. My friend tossed his camera bag over a grassy slope but the thief got to it first, and when we began to shout “¡ladrón! ¡ladrón!” a guy in the neighborhood (a fancy one, no less) got on his moped, chased the guys down, and recovered the camera bag.
It’s not unusual for caught thieves to get body slammed to the ground and beaten by bystanders. Might as well: there aren’t enough fancy lawyers down there to connive to charge the bystanders with assault; people don’t see any reason NOT to dish out street justice on the little punks.
One thing I hope the Latino influx brings with them.
It’s not unusual for caught thieves to get body slammed to the ground and beaten by bystanders.
Given that criminals are often quite stupid and have impulse control issues, it seems a good idea for hubris – in this case, thuggery and criminal predation – to meet nemesis pretty sharpish, to maximise the connection of action and consequence.
In other news, a teacher tasked with “student behaviour modification” was arrested for carrying brass knuckles, a knife and a meth pipe.
Given that criminals are often quite stupid and have impulse control issues
Many of the criminals I vaguely know about in my area tend to be junkies and they really are comically useless criminals, constantly getting caught, sometimes seeming to get caught on purpose.
There are presumably those I don’t know about, who are a bit better at what they do. There was an amusing story in the book “Wasting more police time” about a thief who picked on old ladies (and kept getting away with it) breaking into a martial arts expert’s house and having a rather difficult hour or so before the police arrived to cart him off.
a thief who picked on old ladies (and kept getting away with it) breaking into a martial arts expert’s house and having a rather difficult hour or so before the police arrived to cart him off.
Heh. Not that I think being somewhat dim is a basis for mitigation or anything approaching sympathy. Smarts or not, the malevolence is hard to miss. And the consequences of their behaviour are no less real for those on whom they prey.
A few years ago, while idly staring out of the kitchen window, I spotted someone breaking into my former neighbour’s back yard via a passageway that ran behind the houses. The intruder, a gormless-looking chav in his late teens, was obviously looking for opportunities. When he glanced up and realised he’d been spotted, his expression was priceless. The youth dodged out the way he came and I assumed he’d be keen to make himself scarce. But our thieving friend took the time to break down a sizeable branch from a nearby tree, return to my neighbour’s yard and then throw the branch at my window. There was no damage, but his gesture of contempt and look of hatred was remarkable. As was his apparent fearlessness. Evidently, he felt in no immediate danger and at no risk of being caught, and so felt free to assert his position in some predatory food chain of his own imagining.
I was at the Rockefeller Center ice rink in NYC last night and I counted 17 female skaters to 4 males. Why does Rockefeller Center hate men and boys?
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=3343
Ottawa under attack by gunmen yet in Canberra the ACT Govt sponsors a drama production “Kill Climate Deniers” specifically portraying an armed siege of the Australian Parliament
it seems a good idea for hubris – in this case, thuggery and criminal predation – to meet nemesis pretty sharpish, to maximise the connection of action and consequence.
Alas, crime is still a huge problem in such cities. All of the homes have iron bars on their windows on the first (and sometimes second) floors, metal doors, and shards of glass and metal embedded in the walls that separate patios.
Gubmint corruption tends to trickle down: when the chief law-enforcement officers (and governors) are like Daley’s Chicago crew (now featured in the White House) and gaming the system becomes the system, there’s not much motivation to be a good citizen yourself.
The Latino street criminals are often junkies but usually just punks. Even without a welfare state, these thieves are NOT Jean Valjean, stealing (from the poor) to feed his family.
They’re just rotten people who don’t give a rip about the people they’re victimizing. Sociopaths, either in actuality or just functionally.
‘Avengers: My Ultron Will Go On.’
http://vimeo.com/109840921
jimmy – I thank you (bows)
ac1 – “Kill Climate Deniers”.
Fascinating. I see that the folks behind “Kill Climate Deniers” are snarking at politicians who criticise taxpayer money being spent on a play called “Kill Climate Deniers”, because they predicted that would happen, you see:
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/kill-climate-deniers-perfectly-predicts-brendan-smyths-outrage-20141002-10p4cp.html
ACT Arts minister Joy Burch said she found it amusing the playwright’s had predicted Mr Smyth’s response so accurately.
“The playright behind Kill Climate Deniers actually has Brendan Smyth pegged as a cheap political shot against the community artists here in the ACT,” she said.
It’s as if someone made a play called “Kill All The Darkies”, and somehow got taxpayer funding, and then politicians complained about it. Then the people making the play tried to make it look as if they’d been extremely clever and meta, because they knew someone would be offended, and included a scene where offended politicians criticise the play. Those darkies are so predictable.
And imagine being so dim as to think a play called “Kill All The Darkies” was about killing all the darkies?
Director of ‘Kill Climate Deniers’ Julian Hobba said on Thursday their full application had stated clearly and explictly there was nothing in the work that encouraged or endorsed violence. “The work is a reponse to the paralysis around proper action to address climate change and it explores some dangerous ideas. However it does so satirically, playing with the tropes of the hostage-crisis action film genre,” he said.
Y’see? “Kill All The Darkies” is satire and explores dangerous ideas.
There’s nothing in the work that encourages or endorses violence though – I don’t know what kind of idiot would get that idea from a play called “Kill All The Darkies”. You’re just paranoid if you think people making a play satirically calling for you to be murdered means they want you dead. It’s art, plebs. You wouldn’t understand.
Just because they repeatedly fantasise about murdering you and your kids, you think they want to murder you and your kids? Christ, you’re so stupid somebody probably should murder you.
Just because they repeatedly fantasise about murdering you and your kids, you think they want to murder you and your kids? Christ, you’re so stupid somebody probably should murder you.
Yes, it’s strange just how readily and often professions of planetary virtue lead to fantasies of violating other people and ridding the world of its human population. My favourites include the “biocentric” conservationist Paul Watson, a man who’s happy to describe humanity as a “cancer” and who tells us that, while vegan diets are a good thing, “curing the biosphere of the human virus will require a radical and invasive approach.”
If that sounds a tad sinister, almost Bond villain-esque, there’s also the environmental crusader Dr John Reid, whose plan to save the world from human beings entails putting “something in the water” – specifically, “a virus that would… make a substantial proportion of the population infertile.” And while the good doctor is happy to share his view of all human life as an extraneous infestation of an otherwise pristine Earth, he’s also insistent that “affluent populations should be targeted first.”
“It’s as if someone made a play called “Kill All The Darkies””
Well, not really. The analogy doesn’t work because ‘darkies’ is an offensive term all by itself and black people are a different category from climate deniers (one being a group of people defined by their genes, the other a group defined by their beliefs). A better analogy might be ‘kill all the racists’, which doesn’t seem so far fetched, so long as its intention was satirical.
Minnow – stop othering me with your offensive hate speech.
The term “climate deniers” is a loaded term of abuse which, like “greedy Jew” or “kulak”, carries its own toxic payload of hateful assumptions and stereotypes aimed at humiliating a group of people as evil outcasts and psyching up the in-group to attack them.
There is only one race – the human race – so ‘satirically’ (wink, wink) calling for people to be murdered because they are less credulous about catastrophic global warming is morally equivalent to leftwing racists like Hitler or the KKK ranting against “The Darkies”.
“The term “climate deniers” is a loaded term of abuse which, like “greedy Jew” or “kulak”, carries its own toxic payload of hateful assumptions and stereotypes aimed at humiliating a group of people as evil outcasts and psyching up the in-group to attack them.”
Nah.
Minnow – Don’t make me get out the big guns.
Spanish TV shows from the 1970’s.
Nah.
Best riposte EVAR.
Steve, I’m concerned that your hash avatar has changed within a two-hour span. Did the earth’s magnetic field finally flip?
Did the earth’s magnetic field finally flip
Damn…my bad. Flux capacitor/multiplex demodulator interfaces should come with clearer documentation. Gimme a few…
btw, nobody flush nothing ’til I get back…
Invert the left hand vacuum interface and that should trigger a reset of the Heisenberg activator.
Dicentra – I don’t even smoke hash. The last time I did, it made me think “Meet The Fockers” was hilarious. Never touched it since.
The documentation is being tweeted in real time, for those interested.