Lofty Beings
In the pages of Everyday Feminism, creative colossus Katherine Garcia is attempting to justify her suboptimal life choices and their suboptimal consequences:
I am – and always have been – a daydreamer. There is proof of this in my school records, which contain copious notes from teachers, commenting on the disproportionate amount of time I spent looking out the window, compared to the amount of time I spent paying attention to their lectures. And to this day, I dread anything that gets in the way of my daydreaming.
Hey, I didn’t say she was doing it well. But in short, Ms Garcia regards work outside of her creative endeavours as “very distracting,” chiefly because,
it doesn’t allow me to zone out like I need to in order to reach the level of mental creativity so necessary to my well-being.
A delicate flower in a cruel world.
My creativity has been criticised because it’s viewed as unnecessary, distracting, disrupting, and a waste of time.
Well, in part I suppose that depends on whether or not that creativity and extensive daydreaming – all that zoning out – pays the bills.
I know from experience that it’s damn near impossible to think straight, let alone get anything done, while worrying about how you’re going to pay your bills on an empty stomach.
Ah. Apparently, “society” is deterring life’s daydreamers from “pursuing creative fields – like fine art, film-making, writing, music, and dance.” And there’s an inexcusable “failure to acknowledge the contributions made by creative people in all sectors of society,” which makes said daydreamers feel guilty and inadequate, which is terribly oppressive.
Coming from a low-income family, it seemed more beneficial to pursue a career in business – something that would bring more immediate rewards that I could then transfer over to my family.
Not a trivial point. In financial terms, the lifetime return on an arts degree is very often negative and there’s something to be said for practicality, especially if your background is a modest one. Social mobility presupposes a certain realism, a pragmatism, and making choices accordingly – say, with regard to the costs and benefits of tertiary education, which is for most an expensive one-time opportunity. Perhaps now is a good time to glance at Ms Garcia’s biography:
Katherine Garcia… is a recent college graduate with a BA in Radio, TV and Film, and soon-to-be graduate school student pursuing a Masters in Women and Gender Studies.
As I was saying, pragmatism. Ms Garcia, however, is determined to find fault elsewhere:
Creative work is… something that society infantilises and dismisses as hobbies or something only children do – not as a way to make a living. When this happens, it causes creative work to be severely undervalued to the point that we begin to charge less for our work or even work for free!
The term “severely undervalued” sounds just a wee bit question-begging. A thing is generally worth whatever someone is prepared to pay for it.
This means we are unconsciously contributing to the harmful assumption of the starving artist and exploiting our own work. It’s what allows others to do the same and keeps this oppressive cycle operating.
Note the slyly catch-all term “creative work.” So far as I can make out, the creative people who earn a living in, say, visual effects departments or smartphone design aren’t generally regarded as infantile hobbyists. It does matter what kind of creative work a person is indulging in, along with the skill with which they do it and whether there’s a market for those skills and their results. To bundle all kinds of creativity together, and all levels of expertise, as if no distinctions should be made, as if all were equally valuable, is both woolly and disingenuous. And as for an “oppressive cycle,” I’m inclined to suggest that getting into further debt for a grad school degree in Women and Gender Studies is possibly not an ideal way to help one’s family economically, or indeed oneself.
However, these are prosaic matters and pale beside the grandeur and importance of being a creative person, and thereby hovering on higher moral planes:
Creatives, we are multi-dimensional creatures. Let’s not let our abilities be defined, limited and constrained. Let them flourish like the enlightening work we do… The work we do is important and it is empowering, particularly when it is bringing awareness to social justice issues. Much of creative work does exactly this while other sectors of society refuse to acknowledge the social ills we endure and even erases them.
You see, Ms Garcia, by virtue of being a creative person, is a thinker of profound and important thoughts, a bringer of wisdom, a multi-dimensional creature, one whose oppression is being erased and belittled by society. Possibly on account of her enlightening radicalism.
Lordy, a button. I wonder what it does.
Creatives, we are multi-dimensional creatures.
She’s her own biggest fan.
She’s her own biggest fan.
There is, I fear, a whiff of narcissism. Just a hint.
Coming from a low-income family, it seemed more beneficial to pursue a career in business – something that would bring more immediate rewards that I could then transfer over to my family.
But instead of something useful she’s doing a zero-value degree in Women and Gender Studies. Bet that debt’s really helping her family.
Where do you find this stuff, David? Her pursuit of enlightenment is best used to bringing awareness to social justice issues; in other words, socialist propaganda.
Where do you find this stuff, David?
I like to keep abreast, as it were, of feminist issues. And I do it all for my dear readers, brave little soldier that I am.
But instead of something useful she’s doing a zero-value degree in Women and Gender Studies. Bet that debt’s really helping her family.
It does seem a tad self-indulgent. Presumably, the notion of “social justice” doesn’t apply to Ms Garcia’s own choices and behaviour. Being a “creative,” a “multi-dimensional creature” doing “enlightening work,” I’m guessing she’s exempt.
So she’s upset that the tribe only needs so many shamans?
I am sorry to barge in like this but this is first time that actually went to Everyday feminism website.Is this for real or is it a masterclass satire?
Note the slyly catch-all term “creative work.”
Indeed, and this is the nut of her delusions of adequacy.
The pharmacological types coming up with new drugs to treat her psychoses, or the physicists pondering subatomic particles, or the automotive engineers developing (surely not “creating”) more efficient motors, or the rocket surgeons making planetary probes, or software engineers, or mechanical engineers, or chemists, or research physicians, and any number of similar types whose work often results in initial failure, may have intangible rewards, take an inordinate amount of time to get a result and may be risky, are mere grinds who do not do “creative” and/or “enlightening work”.
There is, I fear, a whiff of narcissism. Just a hint.
If by whiff and hint you mean being downwind of a full Texas stockyard, you are correct.
this is first time that actually went to Everyday feminism website. Is this for real or is it a masterclass satire?
Oh, it’s very real, though not at all realistic. It’s a dumpster fire of pretension and cultivated neurosis.
See, for instance, this, or this.
And of course this:
“Scholarships available.” How dare you not take these ladies seriously?
“How dare you not take these ladies seriously?”
Sorry…….*self-flagellating face*
Mental masturbation. That is all.
I’m a mining engineer. Part of the job is science: where is the good stuff in the ground, where’s the break-oven point beyond which we start losing money, how strong is the rock and what angles do we design the pit at so it won’t fall in on itself? Part of the job is art: how do we get it out of the ground, where do the roads go, where does the waste rock go, what will the final landforms be once we’re done mining? My take on the difference between an art and a science is whether it is expected that two different people will come up with the same answer when asked the same question. How far a car will go with known speed and acceleration doesn’t depend on who is asked the question. What a sunrise looks like (either painted, drawn, or described) depends entirely upon who is asked – no two results will be identical, but almost all will be recognizable as a sunrise.
Whether I’m any good at my job depends upon getting the art part as right as the science part. Dingbats like Ms. Garcia sneer at my work, and don’t see how the entirety of our society depends upon primary resource extraction and the art of optimizing.
That she survives despite her not contributing to society means that those of us in mining, farming, fishing, forestry, oil and gas, and other primary extractors are so good at what we do that we can afford to support society’s dead weight. The secondary and tertiary processors that take the raw resources and make usable products from them (from cell phones to cities to dinner) depend upon our supplies. If she really wants me to take her seriously, she should try to grow and raise her own food for one year. I suspect she’ll find it’s a lot harder than she thinks, and that it involves a lot more art than she suspects.
Rant over. That feels good. I feel validated. Thanks Ms. Garcia, without the occasional parasite I sometimes don’t realize how good it feels to do a good day’s work. Time to head to the office and see if I should use God’s ice cream scoop on another mountain.
any number of similar types whose work often results in initial failure, may have intangible rewards, take an inordinate amount of time to get a result and may be risky, are mere grinds who do not do “creative” and/or “enlightening work”.
I have this same quarrel with so-called philosophers. They seem to be under the impression that without them doing the thinking about thinking, there would be no one to do the thinking about thinking. The difference being that the any number of similar types have to face the failures of their thinking by actually doing something that can demonstrably fail as well as demonstrably succeed. What is far more irritating about these so-called artists is they create failures but then impose upon the rest of us to celebrate those failures as successes (i.e. demand subsidies for their real “art”). Sometimes I find myself debating which of these species of leeches is worse. Sometimes I just drink.
I was a copywriter in the advertising business for over 20 years. A creative. It’s tough f-ing work involving 10 to 14 hour days (including weekends), and battles against Titanic egos, pretentious hipsters and idiotic social media gurus. Needless to say, alcohol and drugs are a problem for many in the business. But, if you bust your ass rewriting that 7-word headline 50 or 60 times, cram in every point the client wants in a 30 word 15-second radio/TV spot, give up any idea of vacations or time off, after a few years you’re making six figures/year. This snowflake isn’t prepared to do the work to be a successful.
I did some googling and apart from six (bad) articles for Everyday Feminism I can’t see any evidence of this creativity she’s bragging about.
I did some googling and apart from six (bad) articles for Everyday Feminism I can’t see any evidence of this creativity she’s bragging about.
Quite. Given the vast stretches of time devoted to artistic daydreaming and thereby achieving transcendental levels of “mental creativity,” I was expecting to find an avalanche of published output. Alas, no. But then, Ms Garcia’s definition of “creative work” seems to extend to just about anything other than chores, regardless of any discernible creativity, and regardless of whether said activity actually warrants the term work.
This being an article for Everyday Feminism, Ms Garcia is obliged to conjure a feminist angle:
Like the rest of the article, there’s an awful lot asserted here, baldly, as if it were unassailably so. But I can’t say I see much evidence that creativity is being feminised by unspecified but dastardly forces. And again, Ms Garcia seems to subscribe to a Marxoid misunderstanding of value – as if staring into space for hours and then typing out some half-arsed, badly-argued polemic is inherently valuable and deserving of cash compensation, simply because it took time to do.
Sorry, off topic:
Susan Sarandon supports Bernie Sanders for president. But if it’s a choice between Clinton or Trump, she prefers Trump because that way the “revolution” will be brought about. And that is a good thing. Apparently.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/29/what-susan-sarandon-said-about-trump-was-out-of-this-world/
I was expecting to find an avalanche of published output. Alas, no.
Come on now, this insight from the fourth of five obstacles described in the article, “4 Obstacles for Latinas in Higher Education…”, alone is worth the price of admission:
More profundity from the same article:
Or:
How do you expect an avalanche of output about, “…LGBTQIA+ rights, domestic violence advocacy, Latinx issues, and mental health awareness, as well as 80s hair metal, used book stores, astrology, and chocolate…” when one has to learn a language to become a graduate student in Women and Gender Studies, have you no pity ?
because that way the “revolution” will be brought about. And that is a good thing. Apparently.
We await news of someone suitably radical smashing down the door of one of Ms Sarandon’s three New York properties, say, that Greenwich Village penthouse, the one worth $1.75 million.
When things “you know, explode.”
Most “artists” are annoying. Some are more annoying than others. Seems to be a reverse correlation between talent and annoying, actually – the talent-less hacks are the most annoying.
Creatives, we are multi-dimensional creatures……
Finding new ways to describe the “Chef’s Special of the Day”
Tenuously related, in terms of photography is art….
Black student assaults white student for “cultural appropriation” of dreadlocks.
http://goldengatexpress.org/2016/03/29/news-brief-video-of-student-center-argument-goes-viral/
Of course, no action is taken…
I bet when she compares her salary to that of a plumber or an electrician, she will talk about the wage gap. Maybe she can do a creative dance to call attention to it.
Meanwhile, it’s Whiteness History Month at Portland Community College:
http://www.progressivestoday.com/portland-community-college-prepares-whiteness-history-month/
I’ll bet this bunch would celebrate that.
Meanwhile, it’s Whiteness History Month at Portland Community College
Ugh. For a second there I forgot that, unlike every other racially categorised month of something or other, whiteness must be mentioned only as a pejorative – as an inherent and corrupting evil, something to scold and atone for, indefinitely.
My apologies – I hadn’t seen RY had already picked up the dreadlocks issue in the previous post…
My apologies
Fear not. This place attracts a forgiving, easy-going crowd.
[ Quietly places revolver back in drawer. ]
“Ain’t we gonna bury ’em, Josey?”
(Josey spits wad of tobacco juice on dead bounty hunter’s forehead)
“Worms an’ buzzards gotta eat too.”
— The Rebel Outlaw Josey Wales
Quietly places revolver back in drawer
I shall now retreat to my safe space and cry about being in pain and fear. At least it wasn’t written in chalk.
#Anthonyslifematters
“This had a long term affect on my academic success”
Uh-huh.
Lordy, a button. I wonder what it does.
Excellent blog. Token of esteem on its way.
Token of esteem on its way.
Much appreciated. Monetised esteem always makes me happy. I’m shallow that way.
NY Daily News has figured it out!
Drudge: PAPER: IT’S RIGGED FOR HILLARY!
Rest of World: “Well, DUH!”
PS: Ferals
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2016/03/29/police-seek-four-young-boys-after-septa-outburst-caught-on-video/
“Not a trivial point.”
Indeed not. Who, in this blogpost, comes across as the selfish individualist, and who is, shall we say, sensitive to the collective needs of society as a whole (as expressed – to give you a hint – through market pressures and the price mechanism)?
As my old great-granny is reputed to have said, “I never met a Socialist with anything for giving away”. It’s all conspicuous virtue signalling in public and ruthless back-stabbing when it’s their own necks on the line.
Indeed not.
Well, I can’t offhand think of much that’s more frivolous, wasteful and self-indulgent than spending money you don’t have on a Masters degree in Women and Gender studies – an intellectually vacuous pseudo-qualification that’s peddled to the credulous by dogmatic incompetents and is almost universally disreputable. Practically a shorthand for “chippy mediocrity: do not employ.”
Well, there is a certain market for pretentious academics in colleges, training up the next generation of entitled wankers. But that’s running into that annoying supply/demand thingie.
Why do I suspect her degree in Radio, TV and Film encompassed absolutely no practical skills that could actually help her land a job in said fields?
mojo,
But that’s running into that annoying supply/demand thingie.
Which is why the self-styled “social justice warrior” types have been loudly demanding since the 1970s that these programs be expanded.
Monetised esteem always makes me happy.
More esteem incoming.
If anything I’d say her ‘creative’ ‘work’ is over-valued.
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2015/08/undone-by-her-radical-do.html
Now wanting to undo others’ dos.
http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/careers/dreadlocked-student-assaulted-by-black-woman-for-cultural-appropriation/news-story/83bd60b43610f87adfbd8bc427eb79ec
‘But if it’s a choice between Clinton or Trump, she prefers Trump because that way the “revolution” will be brought about’.
Yep, just like the KPD decided to aid the Nazis in undermining the Weimar Republic, because Hitler’s rule would arouse that inevitable popular revolution that would lead to the triumph of Communism in Germany.
That worked out well.
Meanwhile, it’s Whiteness History Month at Portland Community College
There is no “white” culture, but the category as it used nowadays is a great method for indiscriminately attacking the cultural roots of European peoples everywhere, especially those in America. I’m sick and tired of being boxed in with all the germans, scandinavians, french, and whoever else I have little to no connection with simply so I can be made morally inferior and politely informed that my supposed “white culture” needs to deconstructed, dismantled, and ultimately erased in order to benefit all the so-called coloured people who voluntarily migrated to these so-called “white” cultures that are so problematic in the first place.
These assumptions … conjure up the image of a starving artist living in a tiny condo in the big city, working side jobs to make ends meet, and mooching off friends who have “real jobs.”
As pointed out by CGP Grey just shy of 12 minutes into Humans Need Not Apply “The number of … artists who actually make a living doing their work is a tiny, tiny portion of the labor force … [T]here can’t be such a thing as a poetry and painting based economy.” So it would seem that These assumptions that Ms Garcia is complaining about, are both true and economically inevitable.
I am an artist and nothing tries my patience quite like people who think of themselves as creative, or worse, “a creative.” That’s an epithet for someone to grant me, not for me to grant myself. In the meantime I make things. While what’s-her-name was getting in trouble for looking out the window, I was getting trouble for drawing. She got a Masters in Studies Studies, I got a Masters in painting.
Today an older artist relayed to me advice from one of his teachers from long ago: Just work your ass off. Everything else falls out from that.
One more thing, then rant over: You don’t go into art merely because you’re creative. You go into art because to not make art would be like being dead.
“PS: Ferals”
You see more and more reports of animal attacks. These dangerous creatures are losing their fear of humans, thanks to laws that criminalize shooting them. See “The Beast in the Garden: The True Story of a Predator’s Deadly Return to Suburban America”, by David Baron.
Oh wait–you’re talking about feral humans. Same cause, though.
What is it with progressives and passive voice?
“That she survives despite her not contributing to society means that those of us in mining, farming, fishing, forestry, oil and gas, and other primary extractors are so good at what we do that we can afford to support society’s dead weight.”
I am increasingly of the opinion that we cannot afford to support such corrosively malicious parasites.
“What is it with progressives and passive voice?”
It’s a form of obfuscation. And they cannot give it up because without lies the left would have no voice at all.
lost a post…
Thanks C_Miner (up thread) – a good contribution and not at all a rant
Meanwhile, it’s Whiteness History Month at Portland Community College
I’m not surprised that they can fill a whole month of hating on whitey. Maybe prospective students to a slightly better post-secondary school such as Harvard can go there to get these ‘requirements’ out of the way.
“I’m not surprised that they can fill a whole month of hating on whitey”
They’re trying to compensate for the fact that we can fill a four-year degree program with the good things that whitey has done for the world. Plus a masters program. And a doctoral program. They can’t STAND that.
“Let’s not let our abilities be defined, limited and constrained. Let them flourish like the enlightening work we do…”
This reminds me of the 60/70’s acid users.
At Ace, runaway italics occasion a trip to a mythical “barrel”. Not sure what David’s punishment is.
“Hurricane style”? Oh dear.
OT, but this guy is not in the running for SJW of the year. (the action starts at 3:30).
h/t Ace o’ Spades
I note her Twitterbio contains the hashtag #BeautifulBrilliantBisexual.
Well, love, two ou…errr, one out of three ain’t bad.
My dad is a very creative type. Has done lots of wonderful drawings and watercolors.
He channeled that right into a very successful career in advertising.
I believe this little twit spelled “shiftless” wrong.
At Ace, runaway italics occasion a trip to a mythical “barrel”. Not sure what David’s punishment is.
[ Cracks knuckles, reaches for butter dish. ]
It’s a dumpster fire of pretension and cultivated neurosis.
I’d never heard of Everyday Feminism but what a discovery. It’s like having every kind of bad argument in one place.
I’d never heard of Everyday Feminism but what a discovery. It’s like having every kind of bad argument in one place.
It isn’t so much a political publication as a mental litter tray from which it’s hard to look away. And it’s perhaps significant that many contributors refer to mental illness almost as a fashion statement, a credential, an in-group identifier. The density of begged questions and factual error is quite extraordinary, though I suppose the site has value as a cautionary reminder of how identitarian narcissism rots a person’s mind.
It isn’t so much a political publication as a mental litter tray from which it’s hard to look away.
From the link, about the author: “Alex-Quan Pham is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism. They are a Vietnamese femme.”
“It” desires to abolish the evil colonial nation-state which the USA, because white people are bad and took this country away from the indigenous folks. “It” pursues these desires as a Vietnamese person who grew up in California and works in the Bronx according to LinkedIn. As opposed to say, Hanoi.
Aaaaand, I think we’re done here.
“It” desires to abolish the evil colonial nation-state which the USA, because white people are bad and took this country away from the indigenous folks.
Ah – so that explains why Saigon was renamed Lyndon B. Johnson City.
This sort of self service is just…
It’s not that she is probably a rent l-seeker – which is a word I don’t like but I think we’ll applies. It’s that she wants us to applaud even if what she produces is crap (which it may well be as nobody seems to want to independently fund it) and then expects our wallets as well to reward her uniqueness as if we owe it to her in gratitude for the risk and effort she put in.
I don’t mind putting money in the hats and cases of performers on the street- sometimes they are good enough to watch and listen to. And sometimes it’s worth rewarding the risks of children even if they aren’t that good as they may become it one day and if not, it’s my choice. The author is neither yet demands where the others offer.
In related news:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/31/stanford-students-demand-nonwhite-transgender-univ/
Part of the demand is also a call to hire “at least 10 tenure-track ethnic studies professors.” Really a transparent ploy to get at least some of the advocates of the changes some employment when they graduate, but at least it shows that they have started to think about their future, so who says their education was in vain?
I don’t mind putting money in the hats and cases of performers on the street- sometimes they are good enough to watch and listen to.
Which reminds me – just added my bit to the violin case that David left lying about.
“WE DEMAND the administration immediately accept the aforementioned demands…
Or what ? (Foot stomping and ululation ensues)
The demand was one of several issued by the group on Tuesday because the university “has failed to address issues of faculty/administrative diversity and curricular, extracurricular, and residential life equality.”
Because Stanford is the only university in San Fransisco, California, or the US, and if the inequality of being a student at one of the allegedly top 1% of schools sucks so bad, they cannot go anywhere else.
Hedgehog,
Really a transparent ploy to get at least some of the advocates of the changes some employment when they graduate…
Exactly… and all too predictable. They think they’re being “progressive” and “revolutionary”, but they haven’t changed their tune in decades.
I have this fantasy (yeah, among various others) that all the “creative people” would be told one day that the state would — at no cost to the ‘artist’ — fully support them, thus freeing them the shackles of jobs, responsibilities, having to get up in the morning and so on. They could henceforth do what they want. However, the state will only do this for the best ten, and the choice would be made via a sort of gladiatorial combat.
“We who are about to die preforming satirical mime salute you!” they would shout from the sandy arena and we could sit back and watch them claw and gouge at each other until we have ten left standing in more or less one piece. I know, it is a creative Hunger Games but as an annual spectacle it would beat the Grand National. It could be televised as “Creativity’s Got Red Blood” and viewing figures would be huge, I bet.
“The exit’s over there, kid. No refunds, though. Sorry. Policy.”
“The unknown is a scary place to be….” and “…multi-dimensional creatures…”.
Woo.
Maybe she should seek tenure at Miskatonic University.
Lancastrian Oik:
Maybe she should seek tenure at Miskatonic University.
Hey, Miskatonic students and faculty are known for their achievements. They’re not necessarily good achievements, but they are attention getters. Is she really in a class with Dr. Herb West or engineer Frank H. Pabodie?
People like this are not merely unemployable but anti-employable, in that their presence in any workforce will lower the productivity of the other employees.
I make complex machinery, from scratch, with my bare hands. I do it by typing, and the machinery is virtual, but it has the dual properties of not having existed in the world before I came along, and doing something tangible. It is not clear to me how recycling (other people’s) tired Leftist tropes can be construed as creative, unless it’s meant to be some sort of bricolage. If so it’s more down the macaroni painting end of things than the Joseph Cornell end.
“Alex-Quan Pham is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism. They are a Vietnamese femme. They are tender and dangerous. They love mangos. They have places to be and people to scare. ” I like that “people to scare” thing. “Oh, I am so special and non-conformist that I SCARE the white settler patriarchy! They’re all SCARED of me!” No. It’s more that no one cares about you one way or the other, Alex-Quan.
Social mobility presupposes a certain realism, a pragmatism, and making choices accordingly
Anyone from a low income family who gets into debt to do a degree in gender studies needs a serious reality check.
Anyone from a low income family who gets into debt to do a degree in gender studies needs a serious reality check.
Spending money you don’t have on a degree of no discernible value, and which will saddle you and your family with further debt, does seem shockingly irresponsible. And yet Ms Garcia seems to expect to be “compensated” for her (unspecified) “enlightening work” – and her suboptimal life choices – regardless of whether that work and those choices have any market value. She rails against the alleged “myths” and “lies” with which “society” oppresses “creatives” like herself – for instance, the “myth” that would-be artists who prioritise daydreaming over chores and humdrum responsibilities often spend time mooching off friends and being dependent on others.
But it seems to me that the more pernicious myth, the one that Ms Garcia appears determined to overlook, is the self-flattering conceit that by virtue of calling herself “a creative” and invoking “social justice,” she’s playing “a significant role in society,” irrespective of the particulars of what she does (or doesn’t do because she’s so busy daydreaming and thinking highly of herself). The conceit that by virtue of how she imagines herself, and flatters herself, she is therefore somehow entitled.
Nothing, it seems, is ever her fault, a consequence of her choices. And hence the socialist blather.
Prof. John Carey notes that all intellectuals have to wrestle with the secret knowledge that they are no use.
We await news of someone suitably radical smashing down the door of one of Ms Sarandon’s three New York properties, say, that Greenwich Village penthouse, the one worth $1.75 million.
When things “you know, explode.”
All my ammo will have reached its best-before-date before this much promised revolution kicks off, or I will have reached decrepitude. These revolutionaries ain’t what they used to be.
The Times had an April Fool story today about student campaigning to change the name of Imperial to Gaia University. The story only really became totally over the top when it referred to a university administrator apparently pushing back against the motion – a truly preposterous idea.
All my ammo will have reached its best-before-date before this much promised revolution kicks off…
Hmm, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be quite so sure. As someone who remembers 1968, I don’t like the look of things.
What is the best-before-date on that ammo?
Because I’m reminded of an example I have from Moldbug about how fast things can go wrong. Approximately year 405 – the collection is dated then, but particular poems may have been written earlier – the Roman poet Prudentius wrote:
In 410, the Visigoths marched into Rome and sacked the city for three days. So much for Prudentius.
(Admin, can you perhaps restore the linebreaks in that poem?)
Done.
Comments are behaving strangely here. I have seen 6 or so comments appear here three times only to find them gone a few hours later. They come and go.
Early this morning David’s 4/1 comment from 8:04 was the last comment. Three or four hours later it was gone, and my comment from 3/31 was the last, with several others above it from the same time. Now they are gone again. This is what I saw on my second visit, about 9:30 AM Pacific Time:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/4f43ef475348139
Not a big deal of course, but probably not intentional either.
It’s perhaps worth noting that the retweets of Ms Garcia’s article – by self-styled “activists,” “poets,” “witches” and “mad wordsmith scientists” – are unanimously approving. None of those doing the retweeting have remarked on anything dubious or self-flattering in the article. Apparently, Ms Garcia’s worldview and immense sense of presumption are not at all controversial.
It’s perhaps worth noting that the retweets of Ms Garcia’s article – by self-styled “activists,” “poets,” “witches” and “mad wordsmith scientists” – are unanimously approving.
Indeed, and as this tweet (parody or not) sums up, one must “…STAND UP! BE HERD!”
I agree with C_Miner. I am a software developer. I conjure logic and structure out of anarchy and chaos. Unbeknownst to a large number of folks I encounter, this is a supreme act of creativity and requires as much art as it does science.
I actually contribute to society. My creations still function in the oil industry, the electrical regulation industry, and now the sector of the economy that provides health care. I have been told that my solutions and ideas have been innovative and uniquely suited to specific problems.
I work hard and resent these folks who seem to think that I should value their desire to take value (my taxes mostly) and produce nothing that has any tangible result in return. And to top it off, I am ridiculed by these same folks who somehow think that my acts lack any creative spark.
In the real world, the value proposition involves a negotiation between the consumer and producer. The producer does not dictate a price and can sell only items that have value to the consumer.
To be fair, I have been paid for advice, where the only tangible result was the fruit of my cognitive abilities. But even here, the consumer was looking for quantifiable expertise that was outside of their experience.
As with C_Miner’s response, this is a bit of a rant.
In the real world, the value proposition involves a negotiation between the consumer and producer. The producer does not dictate a price and can sell only items that have value to the consumer.
And hence the pretension and resentment. How dare the public not appreciate her “enlightening work” and self-imagined brilliance? She’s a “multi-dimensional creature,” a creative Brahmin, goddammit.
“mad wordsmith scientists”? W T F? These so-called creatives lurve to feel important and make up impressive titles for themselves, huh? Probably took some time to make that phrase up. Should have been practicing their coffee and cream artistry instead.
These so-called creatives lurve to feel important and make up impressive titles for themselves, huh?
I just got in from a lunch where we migrated to some nearby coffeeshopIsh which had a surreally detailed list of Stuff. I commented to associates of being reminded of the tactical differences between, on one hand, the Associate Lefthand Alternate Assistant Janitor For Washbasins, and on an other hand, King.
Microagression has reached a new level of absurdity.
(I thought it might be parody, until I scrolled down their Twitter feed. Oh dear lord.)
Instead of choosing something that would help out her family she wasted money on a degree in gender studies. And this is society’s fault?
Instead of choosing something that would help out her family she wasted money on a degree in gender studies. And this is society’s fault?
By making bad choices and being self-indulgent with other people’s money, a debt she seems unlikely to repay any time soon, Ms Garcia is somehow the victim of dark forces, an “oppressive cycle.” The level of unrealism and mental contortion is quite impressive, and practically a default among writers for Everyday Feminism.
All I can guess is that these ladies graduate with their gender, race, or LGBT degrees and then have nowhere else to go for desperately needed affirmation but to Everyday Feminism. That’s why all these articles read like rehashed college papers written to please teacher.
Sad, really. Can you imagine spending days, no doubt, writing a 1600-word essay explaining why you cut your hair?
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/white-feminist-with-dreadlocks/
Can you imagine spending days, no doubt, writing a 1600-word essay explaining why you cut your hair?
But they want us to know how fascinating they are.
But they want us to know how fascinating they are.
Well, it is quite an emotion-filled journey—from the heights of pride to the depths of white shame where she ultimately finds the path to enlightenment, virtue, and beatification—so there’s the “can’t look away from the wreckage” kind of fascination. Then again, that seems to be the template for every essay over there.