Friday Ephemera
Beauty water, $24. // A superconductor levitating on a Möbius strip. // ZX Spectrum emulator. // Grieg in 360 degrees. // Patriarchy caught on camera. (h/t, Liz) // “You can’t move, form memories, or – hopefully – feel pain.” // Period Jewellery. (h/t, Paul) // What does your uvula do? // His interstellar vehicle is bigger than yours. // “Penile disassembly” and other delightful mutilation. (h/t, Paul) // A fence made of bees. It deters elephants. // For detecting radar. // Photography in difficult conditions, 1914-17. // Elgar with a chicken on his head and other composers doing normal shit. // The ultimate executive desk toy is too big for your desk. // Apocalyptic commune lives in homes built from trash. // Your turn to carry the octobass. // Insert card as shown. // Now slap Kirk.
Re: Period Jewellery.
Damn, I clicked on that link hoping to see, amongst other things, some of Cartier’s Art Deco creations, such as those exquisite gem-set mystery clocks which blend Aztec, Egyptian and Oriental influences, in ways some modern leftists would now see as improper cultural appropriation. Instead I get… that. Thanks for the nightmares, David.
I slapped Kirk and I’m not sure if I should be ashamed to say it or not but…it felt good. Too good…but then again, I just might be a psychotic… liberal
You folks may have noticed this beauty last month, but I just ran across this wonderful Laurie Penny tweet that defines so many, many things about her and her generation.
https://twitter.com/PennyRed/status/665218411002220544
The comment where I found it was from the “Everything‘s A Problem” twitter feed, who had this fantastic headline-
Beauty water, $24.
It says it will make my skin glow with beautifying trace minerals.
*orders ten*
His interstellar vehicle is bigger than yours.
“Borg cube 3x3x3 m”…? Surely some mistake.
Beauty Water, $24 ?
I’d pay double that amount for “beauty chips”.
Surely some mistake.
I’m assuming that was meant to be kilometres, not metres. Unless the Borg have now assimilated Gallifrey.
Thanks for the nightmares, David.
No refunds. Credit note only.
Bat Labels.
https://twitter.com/BatLabels
Don’t let Paul recommend any more ephemera.
Bat Labels.
They were very thorough in their labelling. I do like the sign pointing thieves “to the hall of fabulous jewels.” And of course the “super molecular dust separator.” And the “gigantic reversing bellows.” Also quite impressed by the aerosol cement.
Don’t let Paul recommend any more ephemera.
I think we should make him eat his lunch on his own, on that table over there.
The Earthship wibble: “Water comes from the sky” says an authority on the matter in the video. Yes, it has been raining a lot lately but I think, lefty loonie, that you’ll find it tends to start out a bit lower down.
This week I have mostly been playing Limbo, a game of dim lighting and quite alarming hazards.
Off topic, (if the Guardian can ever be entirely off-topic):
A ‘Sports Direct’ article morphs seamlessly into a novelty Xmas hair shirt competition:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/10/flipside-online-christmas-miracle-sports-direct
If the Guardian disappears behind a paywall, I would be tempted to buy it still because Comment Is Free is such a delight.
a novelty Xmas hair shirt competition
I don’t think Ms Lawrence quite understands the term Dickensian. But we mustn’t expect too much from her. She previously tightened her moral corset while denouncing large airy supermarkets full of affordable food as a cause of “social destruction.” “We,” said she, should all be dashing back and forth several times a week – clutching a small basket – to corner shops and farmers’ markets, where items are harder to find and/or more expensive. Because this will save us money, apparently.
“ZX Spectrum emulator.”
Holy cow, is that Javascript? And it actually runs slightly fast, if anything. I remember a few years ago a bunch of us on Usenet were speculating that the day would come when you’d be able to emulate a Speccy in a web browser with JS. I didn’t think it would come so soon. (Actually, come to think of it, I probably did. It’s nearly 2016, for Pete’s sake. How did that happen?)
it actually runs slightly fast, if anything
Feel the rush.
ZX Spectrum emulator.
What is it supposed to do? (I’m in my twenties.)
Via Instapundit, Modern Art as Cargo Cult:
https://youtu.be/muCPjK4nGY4
An automatic piano-playing device being used to frequency-match a human voice. Eerie. Unfortunately, the chosen text is the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court, which is utter drivel and so brings down the coolness somewhat. It smacks of… what was that old proclamation for radicals from the early 70s? Got the stench of that all over it.
I still have my Spectrum 48, with Interface II and Microdrives, but I still think about getting the latest one
Sportakus
The Port Huron Statement?
http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/huron.html
Cheers
Dickensian indeed. What these people don’t seem to understand is that no-one works at these crap jobs all their life. They are the job-market equivalent of short-term accomodation. When I was a student I did this sort of shit. It was money when you needed it, and when you didn’t, you said “fuck this” and moved on to something better. If these jobs didn’t exist, there would be NO employment opportunities for people with little or no experience, credentials or dare-I-say abilities.
“I spent most of the evening being lectured on how to be a proper feminist by a 17 year old.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/12045740/Todays-feminists-are-so-out-of-touch-with-how-most-women-live-they-might-as-well-be-on-another-planet.html
I spent most of the evening being lectured on how to be a proper feminist by a 17 year old.
Heh. You almost have to admire the chutzpah. Likewise, the conceit that well-heeled middle-class lefties who frequent the National Theatre are being egregiously oppressed by The Patriarchal Hegemon.
“A witch! A witch! BURN her!”
Yes, the Port Huron Statement was what I was thinking of. When a statement like the European enviro court one starts by saying “as educators” when pretending to be addressing a matter of criminal importance, it sets a note of farce for the whole thing.
I can’t imagine being so inserted up my own fundament that my first use for a robot that calls forth a voice from a piano would be to use a child solemnly reading navel gazery and tripe about human responsibilities. Because “humanist vision” or something.
Don’t miss Dinesh d’Souza’s dressing-down of a polite yet misguided Amherst student.
Poor college students: only a few years into the life stage where they realize how screwed-up the world is, so they earnestly insist that “we need to acknowledge” certain types of systemic inequality, as if “we,” who are 3-4 decades past that stage, are as oblivious to the world as that kid was only 5 years ago.
He may never twig to the fact that those who pronounce the system guilty, so the system must be destroyed, are NOT the ones who are primarily interested in helping the disadvantaged.
Too bad he won’t actually yield up his seat to a disadvantaged kid, then content himself with trade school (with which one can earn a living that is comfortably above the poverty line). He’ll end up being Yet Another Limousine Liberal who jets to Paris to complain about other people’s contribution to the carbon cycle.
Sporkatus
As we all understand, if it was Ronald Regan reading the Declaration of Independence you will never work again. Because, diversity.
Reagan, dammit.
In that d’Souza vid, I don’t fault the college kid near as much as the couple of boomer aged people encouraging him. Yes, he’s old enough to be responsible for himself, but who led him in this direction? Who “educated” him? Who subsidized that education without questioning what was being done with those dollars?
Don’t miss Dinesh d’Souza’s dressing-down of a polite yet misguided Amherst student.
I was tempted to use the word ‘earnest’, but I’m not sure that’s what we’re seeing. I mean, can one earnestly indulge in self-flattering theatre, cramming in all those buzzwords and begged questions that signal one’s class status and elevation above the herd? Can one earnestly demand that others sacrifice their so-called “privilege” while being utterly dumbfounded by the notion of doing first what one demands of others? Such that attending Amherst (tuition $80,000 a year) to ingest “social justice” dogma is excused as a matter of mere “survival” and therefore exempt from socialist redistribution? Can one earnestly pretend to be earnest, while never picking up the tab?
It seems to me that what we’re seeing, yet again, is the basic manoeuvre of leftists, the first one they learn, the fundamental dishonesty.
I don’t fault the college kid near as much as the couple of boomer aged people encouraging him.
I’m wondering if the overbearing woman in the pale cardigan, the one giving prompts, is a lecturer. Certainly she seems heavily invested in the disingenuous blather. Perhaps her pay cheque depends on it.
I must say I was rather pleased by the ever so small smattering of applause at Amherst no less.
Restoring the original Star Wars series. An epic fan project!
I must say I was rather pleased by the ever so small smattering of applause
Though you could also watch it and think, “This student is getting massively in debt for his statusful education. And yet, having been taught what to say and which buzzwords to use, and even while being prompted, he struggles with the very basic notion that when professing moral imperatives and making demands of others, it’s best not to make ludicrous excuses for why you should be exempt from those very same imperatives and demands.”
I mean, if you think you’re smart enough to moralise and remake the world, it helps to have a grip on the really basic stuff.
Restoring the original Star Wars series
A “despecialised edition.” Heh. I’m not sure which is more peculiar – George Lucas’s endless faffing with the films, cluttering every scene with CGI that now looks pretty ropey, or the people who get terribly upset about the faffing.
I’m wondering if the overbearing woman in the pale cardigan, the one giving prompts, is a lecturer.
Could is be that she’s related to Adèle Mercier (she’s the woman being rude to Janice Fiamengo) by any chance?
I think we should be told.
About that d’Souza video:
It is encouraging that d’Souza is permitted to speak, and that the exchange is civil. No doubt there are many institutions where d’Souza would be either banned outright or allowed to stand on a stage in order to be drowned out by howls of moral certainty.
Having said that, it is intriguing that d’Souza’s response to the questioner is to present a really quite simple argument challenging the young man’s assumptions. Everything that d’Souza says ought to be pretty much chapter one of any introduction to politics. Yet the assembled company seems to struggle with it. I’m certain that this isn’t because they’re stupid. It seems more likely they only want to take d’Souza down a peg or two by making him admit that IT ISN’T FAIR!!!
Everything that d’Souza says ought to be pretty much chapter one of any introduction to politics. Yet the assembled company seems to struggle with it.
Why, it’s almost as if he’d been taught what to think, not how.
“Why, it’s almost as if he’d been taught what to think, not how.”
Well quite. It seems that history has left us with a difficult situation here. We can either:
a) acknowledge this and work on ways to improve our current lot, or
b) grandstand about the fact that we acknowledge this and invite applause.
Whether we choose a or b might well indicate our level of maturity.