Friday Ephemera
“The customer’s hair is covered in flammable powder and then set on fire with a lighter.” (h/t, Matthew) // Magnetic spherical chess board. // This is a thing now. // Dog names in New York. // For snack lovers with no self-control. // Busted, baby. // Brazilian caves. // “How to kick ass in high heeled boots,” 1983. // An extensive library of miniature bottles. // Blade Runner 2049. // I too have had this niche problem. // A cappella extraction, a work in progress. // What the pilot sees. // This. (h/t, Damian) // Look at all the humans. // Make your own horror film soundtrack. // Assorted science fiction interfaces. // A feast of quality acting. // Why sci-fi alien planets often look the same. // Six marimbas. // Coming through. // And finally, how to change a car’s ignition coils.
Farnsworth,
the best response to an idiot like this is an air horn to drown her out
Is Air Horn Guy out of jail yet? I think we’ve found a job for him.
Cultural appropriation
I doubt that the editor of the Writers’ Union of Canada magazine resigned; I suspect he was forced to walk. His copybook-blotting proposition was: “the Appropriation Prize for best book by an author who writes about people who aren’t even remotely like her or him.” Think about that for a moment. It’s what every SciFi/Fantasy writer does. As does every travelogue author. Not to mention every historian and archaeologist. Indeed, if any of them write in English, a fair proportion of their lexicon was/is ‘cultural appropriation’. Taking this nonsense to its logical conclusion, I propose we BAN ENGLISH!
I take it you’ve not seen Alien Covenant yet, David? I won’t spoil it for you, but you’ll soon be revisiting your appraisal of the competence of the Prometheus crew and put them up there with Shackleton’s men.
Perfectly phrased
“Virtue signalling, in short, is rather like wetting the bed; in the short term you get a nice warm feeling, but soon afterwards everything starts to stink.”
(Rory Sutherland, Spectator, 19 November 2016)
you’ll soon be revisiting your appraisal of the competence of the Prometheus crew and put them up there with Shackleton’s men.
Heh. After seeing the trailers and reviews, I wasn’t remotely tempted. Diminishing returns and all that. And as mentioned in this review, among others, Scott’s attempts to embellish the creature’s backstory are erratic and unconvincing and only rob it of mystery.
you’ll soon be revisiting your appraisal of the competence of the Prometheus crew and put them up there with Shackleton’s men.
Prometheus is the only film I can recall that left me exiting the cinema feeling annoyed. Not just disappointed, but actually resentful and feeling conned, in part because what I’d paid to see bore little relation to the elaborate publicity material, both in tone and particulars. It’s also the only cinema visit I can think of where you could feel the audience mood change quite dramatically, from amiable anticipation, with strangers smiling at each other, almost like a pop concert, to weary resignation.
And over the years, God knows, I’ve watched some bollocks.
Well, the IMDB commenters are saying of Covenant “even Prometheus was better than this”. So don’t pay to go and see it.
“IMDB commenters”
Did they move the discussion boards to some super sekrit location?
Did they move the discussion boards to some super sekrit location?
Ah, should have said reviewers.
Oh, thanks. Those boards were always a good source of funny and some insight. Boo on IMDb for taking them down. I don’t bother with the site anymore – anyone have good replacement suggestions besides Rotten Tomatoes?
So what’s this King Charles III I’m looking at?
I propose we BAN ENGLISH!
You can’t paint like that! We won’t allow it!
I beginning to believe that high school & college art classes will soon be organized by race … The Euro room will have books on Dutch masters, the Renaissance, Medieval manuscript illustrations, French Impressionists and be stocked with oil paints, canvas, pastels, and other European medium
The North African room will have books on ancient Egyptian sculpture and tomb paintings with medium of the time, including blank walls and papyrus.
The Asian room will have rice paper, silk, inks, jade & only clay from China.
Indigenous people of North America – students will have fun with walrus ivory, hides, antlers and tree trunks
No student can study nor create any art not of their ‘race’ in order to avoid inappropriate influences.
Won’t the world be a better place with racially appropriate art?
You can’t paint like that! We won’t allow it!
Leaving aside that there is no such nonsense as “cultural genocide”, how does using artistic techniques and styles of a given culture kill it, instead of promoting it ? Leftists are as hyperbolic as they are stunningly stupid.
Leaving aside that there is no such nonsense as “cultural genocide”
Sorry, you have to understand a bit of the backstory here. Unlike the United States which tried to simply exterminate their native population before giving up and largely ignoring them, for much of the twentieth century Canada quite literally kidnapped native children from their families and impressed them into boarding schools where they were taught the White Man’s Ways and were punished, often horrifically, for retaining any of their own culture. For their own good, you see, we were bringing civilization to the savages.
So when a Canadian native activist talks about cultural genocide he’s not entirely out of line; the Canadian government really did try to stamp out all indigenous culture. It’s a touchy subject north of the 49th, even if the last “residential school” was closed in the 1970s and anyone even remotely related to anyone who went to one has been given a big fat cheque for their pain and suffering by now.
Unlike the United States which tried to simply exterminate their native population before giving up and largely ignoring them
Really? You mean like the Germans and the Jews? Or like ISIS and the …well, everybody? Tried to exterminate? One wonders why the bothered with all those silly treaties.
the United States which tried to simply exterminate their native population
Assuming facts not in evidence.
One wonders why they bothered with all those silly treaties.
Oh, that’s easy. The silly treaties were signed so that the tribes would allow a modest number of settlers permission to live in their territory. By the time they realized that we’d moved in ten times more people than what was agreed to, we outnumbered them by so much they had no choice but to accept the next round of “negotiations” from a severely compromised position. Think of it as a cross between Darth Vader and CAIR.
But they have slot machines now, so everything’s okay.
Because NA never, ever cheated on those treaties either. Because only white man speak with forked tongue. Look, I’m not saying everything was on the up and up, but the situation was a good bit more complicated than this silly black/white moral posturing implies. One can certainly debate those issues. But it was NOT an attempt by the US government to exterminate NA. Hell, we prolly tried harder to exterminate Jerrys and Japs, if you want to use that language.
Unlike the United States which tried to simply exterminate their native population …
You’re talking here about a patchwork of Iron Age tribes up against (literally) guns, germs, and steel. If the United States had genuinely wanted to exterminate the Amerinds, they would be exterminated. cf. Aztecs vs. Conquistadors.
You’re talking here about a patchwork of Iron Age tribes up against (literally) guns, germs, and steel.
Well, yes we are.