Friday Ephemera
Twist. (h/t, Holborn) || “Syrian paralysis cheese” and other translation errors. || Scenes from a small planet called Earth, specifically South Tyrol in the Alps. || Today’s word is precocious. Also, turn the bloody phone round. || Ambition. || Berlin, July, 1945. || Existential iPhone unboxing video. || Your self-driving Mercedes. || Morning glory. || Pretty moths. || Swatting flies is hard. || This. || That. || This too. (h/t, Franklin) || “Fuck your laws,” says she. (h/t, dicentra) || “On the third Friday of September, the small village of Binissalem shuts down to have dinner in the streets.” || Owl sneeze. || Kaleida. || Nigerian ladies’ hair, animated. (h/t, Coudal) || 1980s New York, a searchable photo-reference. || And finally, ladies with “manipulative cleavage” and other casting calls of note.
Steven Crowder’s producer infiltrates Antifa, producing results that surprise no one here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmNz2jGzsDA
Kind of erases all doubt that there’s an underground river that conveys the proper messaging to all media outlets and their talking heads, and that they’ve been told both to defend Antifa and to not look too closely at their structure and support systems.
The MSM is not just biased: they’re actively organized like a mafioso family.
Anyone know the Spanish for ‘Lordy, nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen’? Apparently Ms Edith Macias was ‘evicted of [sic] her apartment by a racist white bitch’, leaving her with no alternative but to swallow her immense Latinx pride and beg on GoFundMe for contributions towards a deposit on a new gaff. A previous appeal by her on the site suggests that sub-optimal literacy is the rule rather than exception, hence my shocked face.
Seems like Edith Macias is quite the genius: She was arrested 3-1/2 years ago for causing an accident while DUI and fleeing the accident:
http://www.dailybulletin.com/2014/01/26/montclair-woman-held-after-upland-crash-causes-outage/
“January 26, 2014 at 11:54 pm UPLAND >> A Montclair woman is lucky to be alive after her SUV crashed through two power poles early Sunday morning, causing thousands to lose power, authorities said…The driver ran from the scene of the accident and hid in bushes about a quarter-mile away, where police found her…police arrested the woman, identified as 21-year-old Edith Macias, on suspicion of DUI and hit-and-run, Simpson said.”
I’m sure it was da white man’s fault that she got drunk and crashed her car.
Now that Ms. Macias has made a name for herself and people are beginning to dig up her history–the internet is forever–we can expect all manner of outrage at the violation of her “privacy” and unfairness of dredging up her old sins in a blatant attempt to distract us from the righteousness of her Latinx struggle and oppression by “The Man” peddling white supremacist ideology. Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?
: She was arrested 3-1/2 years ago for causing an accident while DUI and fleeing the accident:
Ah, my office handled her case – good lord, she got a ton of continuances and finally plead in Jan 2016.
https://portal.sb-court.org/Portal/Home/WorkspaceMode?p=0
(I note she is STILL paying her fines to the court)
Oops… I just realized that link might not get to her actual case (I hate our court’s Odyssey Portal system – POS/PIA)
Her case number is TWV1400661
Go here and do the Smart Search – https://portal.sb-court.org/Portal/
Apparently Ms Edith Macias was ‘evicted of [sic] her apartment by a racist white bitch’,
Ms Macias seems keen to denounce others as racist – it’s her go-to position. And yet the only racism we hear falls out of her own mouth, loudly and often. Along with repeated threats of violence, both muttered and in writing, e.g., “Youre [sic] not safe… just saying.” Perhaps that has some bearing on why landlords may be reluctant to have her as a tenant.
The driver ran from the scene of the accident and hid in bushes about a quarter-mile away, where police found her… police arrested the woman, identified as 21-year-old Edith Macias, on suspicion of DUI and hit-and-run,
An inspiration to us all. Again, the odds of Ms Macias reflecting on her own behaviour and assumptions, and how they result in the dramas of her life, seem vanishingly slim.
What a finely-trained Leftist seal, she is. Hand her another fish.
That. It’s remarkable how so many of these creatures, seen in dozens of videos over the last decade, have eerily uniform postures and responses. As if they were incapable of autonomous mental activity, but had been handed half a dozen excuses to memorise and regurgitate.
When I first saw this Tweet on this blog I smirked, with the sorry state of the contemporary arts in mind:
But now, I have just had to step away from Twitter in horror and disgust at the way people on Twitter are portraying the Catalan ‘referendum’ story.
As far as I can see, there are hundreds if not thousands of people wilfully misrepresenting a complex Constitutional issue in childishly simplistic terms of Darth Vader neoliberal storm troopers attempting to crush the plucky socialist rebels of Cataluña. And among those thousands are mainstream media outlets who you would hope would know better.
But apparently not.
The violence committed by the police has been really quite excessive as far as I can tell from the videos, photos and reports – but then we are talking about a region whose representatives have deliberately flouted the law, misappropriated government funds to print advertising for an illegal referendum and deliberately refused to follow directives from their government to prevent polling booths being set up.
Is it conceivable that any other nation would react any differently under the same circumstances?
What if Bavarian officials went through with an illegal secessionist Referendum from the rest of Germany, misappropriating government funds to do so? Or if Normandy did the same from the rest of France? Or California from the rest of the US? Or Cornwall from the UK?
What I apparently cannot get through to these people – mostly British people that is – who are demanding that Rajoy allow the vote to go ahead is that he cannot let the vote go ahead because it has been ruled unconstitutional. Rajoy is not above the law and he cannot simply look at the protests and say – ‘Oh, well, they don’t like that law so – the hell with it! Let them have their vote.’
Mainstream media keep reporting this as ‘Madrid’ having ‘banned’ the vote, thus dumping gasoline on the idea that Madrid is still in the grips of Francoist Fascism putting its boot on the neck of plucky socialist Barcelona and acting undemocratically – which is the most egregious bollocks, quite frankly.
The rule of law is as important as the right to vote – probably more so in many ways.
However passionately Catalans – certain of them at any rate – wish to be independent, they cannot simply seize it by main force, especially while pretending this is all being done in the name of democracy. Especially as, apparently, 59% of Catalans wish to remain part of Spain – at least according to one poll cited by the Financial Times.
What a finely-trained Leftist seal, she is. Hand her another fish.
One of the great “successes” of the Angry Studies movement is its ability to make sub-mediocre thinkers believe they’re elite intellectuals. It’s part of their recruitment success, I’m sure.
The young charges then learn a few buzzwords of the catechism and boom! It’s off to the races with this kind of malarkey.
What a finely-trained Leftist seal, she is. Hand her another fish.
I don’t mind most marine mammals, but I can do without sea lions:
http://wondermark.com/1k62/
Nikw2011: Thanks for posting that. I doubt that many people here in the United States know much about the issue, or its history. I certainly don’t.
“sub-mediocre thinkers believe they’re elite intellectual”
A perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, no?
pst314,
Clever.
(It’s a pretty sad state of affairs that Malki has to post a 5 paragraph explanation of “metaphor”.)
Australia is finally getting around to addressing the really big issues…
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/words-are-hell/news-story/7dfc693980096724a75e13c214e9b917
they cannot simply seize it by main force
Well, they *can*, just not legally, and they can only do it if they can make it stick, which historically has required lots of guns and the willingness to use them.
I have no idea whether the Catalans seeking independence have the intestinal fortitude, or the munitions, needed to achieve their objective.
Given the on-going Islamic invasion of Europe, I’d think the natives would have more important things to worry about.
For anyone interested, the first three episodes of Star Trek: Discovery can currently be watched on YouTube here, here and here.
“police arrested the woman, identified as 21-year-old Edith Macias, on suspicion of DUI and hit-and-run”
So when the good lady says “fuck your laws” I guess she means it?
One can hardly accuse her of being inconsistent then.
‘Fuck your laws’ lady actually does a toddler pout at 1.36 mins.
Rajoy is not above the law and he cannot simply look at the protests and say – ‘Oh, well, they don’t like that law so – the hell with it! Let them have their vote.’
I can see how those riot police felt legally obliged to batter the hell out of the people trying to vote. If only they felt as strongly about the extremist Islamists in Catalonia.
Governments across the world ignore laws when it suits them. Rajoy could have allowed the referendum to take place but made it clear it was not constitutional and no more than a glorified poll. If the FT and other polls were right, the vote would be in favour of the status quo and undercut the independence demands.
I do not believe any nation has the right to deny independence to any part of itself, if a majority of the citizens demand it. Otherwise it is not behaving like a democracy but like an imperial power. The UK gave Scotland the opportunity to vote for independence, Scotland chose to remain part of the Union. This was all achieved without bloodshed.
I do not believe any nation has the right to deny independence to any part of itself, if a majority of the citizens demand it.
That’s a proposition which cannot be discussed in the U.S., simply because the issue is irretrievably tainted by Mid-Nineteenth Century U.S. history. Can you imagine the great wailing and gnashing of micro-aggressed teeth which would occur if such a question were posed in a Poli Sci class at an average university?
MC,
“I do not believe any nation has the right to deny independence to any part of itself, if a majority of the citizens demand it.”
I’ll say at the outset that I really do not know what to think about the Catalan issue, in time I’ll have a formulated opinion. My question with respect to your point though is at just what sub-division does one draw the line?
The county level? Town?
My teenage son would just love to secede from the union called the “Jones” family (as long as he can still have all the goodies of course).
I hope you can see my point.
@Jones
Good question. As I intimated, the proposition is one worth discussing in all its ramifications. (BTW, I don’t have an opinion about Catalan either. I know historically, they’ve chafed under Spanish rule, but the current situation is decidedly extra-constitutional.) Sadly, rational discussion is impossible in the U.S.–not because of any current, realistic threats of secession–but because of the historical baggage of succession.
Here’s another question. What about where the “parent” wishes to secede from the “child?” In the U.S., we have any number of states which have taxed, spent and borrowed themselves into penury, all with the hope I’m sure of some sort of federal bailout. In other words, Illinois desires to conscript North Dakota (and the rest of all those 2016 “red” counties) to pay its debts. What about the rest of us saying to the “blue model” states and locations, “You’re on your own. Via con Dios.” In other words, who’s seceding from whom?
@MC
I can see how those riot police felt legally obliged to batter the hell out of the people trying to vote.
Thanks for the clever-clever snark there, but please note I was quite clear in stating “The violence committed by the police has been really quite excessive”.
Governments across the world ignore laws when it suits them.
So you’re suggesting that Kim Jong-un of the DPRK is a fine example of a functioning government?
Great.
Also, incidentally, it was the Catalan authorities ignoring the Law that has done much to bring about this violence. This does not excuse the excessive use of force by the police, but it does need to be acknowledged how the police came to be there in such numbers in the first place.
Rajoy could have allowed the referendum to take place but made it clear it was not constitutional and no more than a glorified poll.
You don’t need polling booths for “a glorified poll” nor do you need to invite every voter in the region to take part.
I do not believe any nation has the right to deny independence to any part of itself, if a majority of the citizens demand it.
I fully agree.
The UK gave Scotland the opportunity to vote for independence, Scotland chose to remain part of the Union. This was all achieved without bloodshed.
You will note, of course, that Scotland’s vote was therefore legal and given a mandate by the UK parliament.
Things would have been quite different indeed if it had been discovered that Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond had been siphoning off government funds to use to promote an illegal referendum vote and then – against an express ruling of the courts – proceeded to defy the courts and administer the vote illegally.
To see it from your point of view, one would have to consider Spain to be something like the popular rejection of authoritarian one-party Communist state rule by the peoples of Central and East Europeans in 1989/1990 – such a comparison is absurd.
Militant Trotskyite Paul Mason has already drawn an explicit comparison between Rajoy and Mubarak of Egypt – as if the government and nation of Spain is comparable to that of Egypt c. 2010-11.
The violence should be rightly condemned, but it is farcical to turn this into a story of an anti-democratic Fascist state – the more so when no major news outlet that I have seen so far has filmed let alone interviewed the Catalan citizens counter-demonstrating on the streets waving the Spanish, not the Catalan, flags.
Nik,
What you said.
Also, I believe that the Pres of Catalan has just declared a UDI.
What interesting times we might shortly be living in. Juncker had better sober up sharpish.
@Nikw211
Governments across the world ignore laws when it suits them.
So you’re suggesting that Kim Jong-un of the DPRK is a fine example of a functioning government?
Strawman. I won’t even bother…
Scotland’s vote was therefore legal
The Catalan independence referendum could have been made legal. All the evidence seems to suggest that this would have resulted in a ‘no’ for independence, thus undercutting the nationalists. Just like in Scotland. Instead, Spain chose to treat Catalonia like a subject nation and to set heavy handed coppers on people who didn’t like that.
Or Spain could have let the referendum go ahead but made it clear that it was illegal and that the result could not stand. It could then sue the separatists for the cost of the referendum and arrested them if they declared UDI.
I don’t really care what Mason has to say about anything. I like cake. I am sure Stalin also liked cake; this does not delegitimise my fondness for a Victoria Sponge.
it is farcical to turn this into a story of an anti-democratic Fascist state
I am not claiming that Spain is a fascist state. However, states that don’t use riot police to beat the crap out of peaceful protestors are less likely to be mistaken for fascist regimes.
To see it from your point of view, one would have to consider Spain to be something like the popular rejection of authoritarian one-party Communist state rule by the peoples of Central and East Europeans in 1989/1990 – such a comparison is absurd.
When you start a sentence with “to see it from your point of view” it is best to subsequently refer to my point of view, rather than what you imagine my point of view might be.
@Jones – if a town or a village wished to secede, let it. But make it clear well in advance that secession means an end to the national systems that protect said town, the use of the national currency and the risk of increased electricity prices. Same argument would work for your son!
“Same argument would work for your son!”
Yup, that would be my stance too but I’m not sure I’d win it……
The sooner I can send him down the mines to earn his stale-bread money the better. Or up chimneys, matters not.
UDI? Unidentified Drinking Inquiry?
https://www.internetslang.com/UDI-meaning-definition.asp
WTP,
No, the definition of UDI is “Unidentified Drinking Injury”.
It’s the nightclub steps wot did it.
My teenage son would just love to secede from the union called the “Jones” family (as long as he can still have all the goodies of course).
Your son is Quebec?
“Your son is Quebec?”
Does self-entitlement count?