Thursday Ephemeraren’t
Ah, you didn’t see that coming. As I’ll be away for a long weekend, I’m afraid you’ll have to throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with a puzzle book of note, a brief history of EMI, a game about planets and potatoes, and, obviously, a 3D-printed clitoris.
Phone signal permitting, I may check in later. Play nicely. No biting.
Some medieval illuminated manuscripts of note:
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/illuminated/manuscript/discover
I’d imagine a lot of freeloading goes on in this polyamorous world.
And so a stable, mutually committed relationship (on which lives can be built, and plans for the future, and in which children can flourish) is to be disdained and replaced with arrangements that are likely to be unstable, anxiously competitive, and in which there may be very real fears of being exploited and/or disposable. It’s a high price to pay for appearing radical, and then only to idiots and the terminally immature.
[ Checks liquor cabinet for fingerprints. Reviews security camera footage. Summons henchlesbians. ]
[ Checks liquor cabinet for fingerprints. Reviews security camera footage. Summons henchlesbians. ]
Damn. Someone was supposed to be minding the door to sound “Stand To” when you were spotted.
…replaced with arrangements that are likely to be …anxiously competitive…
That’s the thing. For the very hip Left, all human interactions are zero-sum. My satisfaction necessarily deprives someone else of same. Consequently, everyone carries around a mental book of accounts keeping a running total of emotional debits and credits trying to stay completely balanced. It never works, because everyone overestimates the value of his contributions and minimizes others’ contributions. Any non-business relationship whether marriage or friendship is doomed to failure if it is predicated on that sort of thinking.
… the culture that created cornrows …
Shockingly omitted from Charles Murray’s compendium of human accomplishments.
That’s the thing.
Laurie really wants us to believe that her ostentatious rejection of monogamy and conventional coupling is “revolutionary” and “threatening” to the “social order.” She tells us this several times (and in every other piece in which she mentions the subject). The idea of shocking or upsetting others seems important to her, as if it were intrinsically a good thing, irrespective of the particulars. And yet the few real life examples I’ve known of, and heard of, merely seemed fraught and sub-optimal. Despite the protestations of radicalism, it strikes me as adolescent, impractical, somewhat squalid, and likely to lead to insecurity and unhappiness, to missed opportunities. If anything, it sounds like a rationalised fall-back position. It isn’t so much shocking as hackneyed and sad.
I’ve expanded my comment into a post on my own blog: Penny seems to undermine her own argument in her article. I think the Editor got it right first time.
Also this line from Penny:
So I consider it my duty to her and the rest of the unenlightened to explain what’s different about how the kids are doing it these days.
For sure there appear to be a few very young women doing it – Angela and Penny both being about 20. But I’m not sure how many young men are. Angela’s partners at age 20 were a man of 40, another man of about 35, and a woman in her 30s. I’m about as open-minded as they come, but I couldn’t help thinking there is some exploitation going on here which is doing some serious damage.
to missed opportunities
This is important too. It’s not just about the missed opportunities in your 20s, but the fact that if you decide to quit the practice and try to find a normal, monogamous partner most sensible people would be put off by such a history. It wouldn’t just be the fact that blokes generally don’t want the mother of their kids to have been passed around in such a manner, it’s that romantic life is a bit like a career: you need to build a track record. Anyone who enters their mid-30s without having a track record of being able to hold down a functional, normal relationship for a year or two is going to have a big, red flag waving over their head – and it’s hard enough to find somebody as it is. If I met a woman in her 30s who told me she’d never been in a normal, long-term, steady relationship I’d run a bloody mile.
Ephemeraaaarrgghh.
NSFW unless you work in a psychiatric research center. Man has spent around £46,000 to get his ‘perfect’ face and bum.
I realize “perfect” is subjective, but his name and hat says it all.
I’ve never understood the appeal of the “permanent duckface” (collagen lip injections). Ladies (and apparently some gents), it doesn’t make you look like Angelina Jolie, it just looks horrible. It never, ever looks good. STOP IT!
doesn’t make you look like Angelina Jolie
For the life of me, I’ve never understood the attraction of Angelina Jolie. When she was all the rage I was dumbfounded. Not saying I would kick her out of bed for eating crackers…though not saying I wouldn’t either. I think that was the beginning of my Truman Show suspicions.
Laurie really wants us to believe that her ostentatious rejection of monogamy and conventional coupling is “revolutionary” and “threatening” to the “social order.”
The rejection of monogamy is “threatening” to the social order. Laurie may be striking a radical pose, but the polyamorous rejection of monogamy is a quick route to civilizational collapse, if enough people take it up.
Laurie endlessly peddles the Liberationist Lie – that social institutions – at least in a bourgeois, patriarchal, capitalist society – restrict rather than enhance human life, that human beings can live meaningful lives outside of traditional institutions and that the autonomous individual is in some unspecified way prior to the society that formed him or her.
I’ve never understood the appeal of the “permanent duckface” (collagen lip injections).
Great, now you are fish-shaming.
…the Liberationist Lie – that social institutions – restrict rather than enhance human life.
And they refuse to acknowledge that to the extent they are able to live out their “liberationist” dreams, such is possible only because of the safety net provided by those institutions which constitute civilization.
…they are able to live out their “liberationist” dreams, …only because of the safety net provided by those institutions which constitute civilization.
Quite so. They are parasitic: they live out their bizarre fantasies while drawing on the accumulated social and ethical capital of the civilisation they wish to destroy.
It never, ever looks good. STOP IT!
They won’t. It body disphoria is a mental disorder and it appears a lot of unethical cosmetic surgeons are taking advantage of these people.
My sad prediction is that this young man will be another suicide stat by the time he hits his thirties – or when he runs out of money. Which ever comes first.
I’m sure he has, like a lot of trans people engaged in the same destructive fantasies, a group of enablers who call themselves “friends” who ooooo! and aahhh! over each new surgery (or tattoo) so he continues mutilating himself.
Who wanted to build a wall first? And why is this not mentioned in the MSM?
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/opinions/border-battler-hillary-build-u-s-mexico-fence-article-1.594388
This tidbit may or may not have been posted before. I didn’t see anything in the archives when searching, but it’s not exactly clear what I should have been searching for. Still, it’s practically evergreen bollocks, and will probably be of interest to newcomers:
http://qix.sagepub.com/content/22/3/201.abstract
#FeministAMovie.
It seems hard to imagine a version of her prose – such as it is – unpunctuated every other paragraph by references to her youth, her age, and her generation.
Lol. That.
“why millennials are opting out of monogamy”
*citation needed*
For the life of me, I’ve never understood the attraction of Angelina Jolie.
Oh gawd, don’t get me started on her. The sole purpose of casting her in anything is so that the audience swoons at her supposed beauty. Only the problem is if you think, as I do, she looks more weird than beautiful you’re left wondering how the hell she passed an audition. I avoid stuff she’s in because I know she can’t act for toffee, and I don’t even like looking at her. I always thought Brad Pitt needed his head seeing to when he dumped Jennifer Aniston for her.
Penny in 25 years.
Oh lord, I swear I’m not making this up.
YouTube avatar from Ten’s link.
“Angela’s” Facebook pic.
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin.
Hillary proposed a “smart wall” back in 06.
It’s totes different, see?
Tim
Search for a side by side comparison pic of Angelina vs Steve Buscemi. Thesis confirmed.
Tim Newman (and others), you may find that Vaknin resonates with some of what you experienced.
Modern art insults me. https://youtu.be/sN9iJCZ5Il8
Micro,
it’s practically evergreen bollocks
Iowahawk has a theory of where it comes from:
I call this “Physics Envy.” Humanities look at prestige fields like Physics and see incomprehensible symbols and jargon. Then, like a Cargo cult, they invent their own incomprehensible jargon and expect the prestige to follow.
Angelina did make some good action movies. I hoped she would make a Modesty Blaise film (being a great fan of the late, great Peter O’Donnell) – she is one of the few women actors who could have carried it off. (Only one film was made – with Monica Vitti as Modesty. As O’Donnell said it made his nose bleed to think about it.)
I call this “Physics Envy.” Humanities look at prestige fields like Physics and see incomprehensible symbols and jargon. Then, like a Cargo cult, they invent their own incomprehensible jargon and expect the prestige to follow.
From one of my earliest posts, on the ludicrous “cyber-feminist” Dr Carolyn Guertin:
And from the comments:
The extracts of her work are still quite eye-widening. As is the fact that she’s been employed by at least three supposedly serious institutions.
Been searching fo an hour still can’t find the link to this 3d clitoris.
This may or may not go over our great hosts head.
You’ve gotta love millennials.
You’ve gotta love millennials.
Heh.
Feminist wisdom.
Feminist wisdom.
She’s such a dear.
Meanwhile, in the pages of Everyday Feminism. I can’t help thinking it may be instructive that a publication for modern feminists runs so many articles on coping with personality disorders.
…[A]publication for modern feminists runs so many articles on coping with personality disorders.
One is tempted to believe having some sort of psychiatric pathology is necessary to join the club.
You’ve gotta love millennials.
40 is the new 80. That’s not funny.
Trailer here.
From the comments on that love millennials video…
Putting aside whatever the actual amount of effort involved was, Mr. Lightman (heh… Lightman) did get off his butt and made some effort to get a job, yet he has been socialized to denegrate his own effort. This to me is much more worrisome than those who are much more easily discouraged. That our society, academics, culture, etc. is undermining success even in the minds of the successful, that’s some seriously bad juju right there.
@WTP
Modern leftist thought equates success with some sort of moral failing. “Hard work” is nothing more than being born into the right set of “privileged” circumstances and “privilege” is moral issue, because it is “unearned.” Thus, all success is, by definition, unearned, i.e. “stolen.”
Such a world view is a two-edged sword. It gives the lazy and excuse while filling the successful with guilt.
Modern leftist thought equates success with some sort of moral failing. “Hard work” is nothing more than being born into the right set of “privileged” circumstances and “privilege” is moral issue, because it is “unearned.” Thus, all success is, by definition, unearned, i.e. “stolen.”
Or if not stolen, then somehow arbitrary – and therefore in need of correction by our self-imagined betters. In 2012, while professing his own “belief in social justice” and thrilling to the prospect of “shutting down private schools,” the Guardian’s George Monbiot disdained strangers that he regards as having “undeserved advantages,” by which he means their earnings. Even a person’s salary, and the choices that salary makes possible, are, we’re to believe, entirely unrelated to effort, skill, foresight and good choices.
Like many of his colleagues, Monbiot seems to assume that parents who can afford, say, private education exist as some discrete, unchanging and homogeneous “privileged” class, as if no sacrifice were ever involved, no effort, and no risk of failure. An assumption aired in – and inadvertently disproved by – a typically spiteful article by fellow Guardianista Zoe Williams. An article in which Ms Williams thought it righteous to gloat at middle-class parents whose means and circumstances had changed, leaving them no longer able to afford their child’s private education. An education not unlike Ms Williams’ own.
One is tempted to believe having some sort of psychiatric pathology is necessary to join the club.
Indeed. Of course, members of the club will attribute their psychiatric problems and their moral failings to subsisting under patriarchal and/or capitalist oppression. So rather than take responsibility for at least managing their condition(s), they regard themselves as the walking wounded – noble casualties from the front line – in an endless battle against the system.
WTP and RS
Many achievements are down to hard work and to character; but, equally, many successful people play down the luck and privilege that often helped them to do so well.
When I argue with leftists obsessed with luck and privilege, I argue that hard work and development of character pay off, usually, all other things being equal, but I also explain that any radically egalitarian solution to lack of luck and privilege would be worse than the problem.
Travel complications
Left wing conference complications
—For relatively recent arrivals, or those otherwise uncertain of the last, apparently at some conference, there were issues.
Words from my ten year old after a golf tournament:
“The more you practice, the more luck you have.”
apparently at some conference, there were issues….
From the link above:
I am guessing by “prevalent” whoever wrote that meant, “virtually non-existent”. These people take making stuff up to an art form.
I also enjoyed the background on that Aisling tweet: Fuck Grad School I want to start a Revolution, to which I have to wonder, OK, then, since you haven’t started a revolution that anyone has noticed, why are you still in grad school ?
@Farnsworth: The addition of “black woman” finger snaps and the like to a larger “sassiness” ouevre isn’t completely imaginary, but inasmuch as it’s appropriated by anybody from anything, I think what might be called the Queen Latifah Martial Form is largely a distillation from broader cultural forms… by Hollywood. The notably “sassy” gay drama type-infused Hollywood. Working documentary title: Whose Sassiness Is It Really?
The addition of “black woman” finger snaps and the like to a larger “sassiness” ouevre isn’t completely imaginary…is largely a distillation from broader cultural forms… by Hollywood.
Yeah, the only time I can ever recall anyone anywhere, in real life or elsewhere, doing the like is in a mocking way à la Blaine and Antwoine.
Theo,
The problem is not luck or privilege, or as I prefer to call it “blessings.” The problem is what one does with it. I was blessed to have parents who instilled certain values in me which seem to have paid off over time. I hope my wife and I have instilled the same in our kids along with the various material things which we’ve been able to provide. Nonetheless, those things must be applied in real life. The only reason to feel guilty about luck or privilege is when those things are squandered. See, e.g. all the various feminist Tumblrinas who’ve attended posh, expensive liberal arts colleges on someone else’s dime only to spend their time (and grievance studies degrees) bitching about crappy their lives are because of “patriarchy” or whatnot.
The only reason to feel guilty about luck or privilege is when those things are squandered.
It’s a strange conceit, this notion that you should in effect be ashamed of being raised well by people who made good choices, and ashamed of the fact that you were encouraged to be ambitious or studious, or to defer gratification, etc. And the notion that you should therefore defer to people who made bad choices, or whose parents made bad choices, or to people who simply invoke and appropriate the misfortune of long-dead strangers who had similar melanin levels.