Friday Ephemera

According to the ladies at Marie Claire, this is now a thing.
. . . . Oh, just keeping abreast of things . . .

Classy as all hell.
Sometimes it works.

And finally, in shiny, revamped product news, you want one and you know it.
Be certain to read the tech manual carefully first.

The fierce and mighty warriors of professional wrestling

In a humiliating blow for Donald Trump on the world stage, the United Nations General Assembly has voted by 128 to nine to declare his controversial decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital “null and void”.”
Also sprach The Independent, which is apparently unaware that the U.N. has no authority to declare our location of our embassy “null and void.” Additionally, query The Independent‘s understanding of the verb “to humiliate” when a) the U.S. Embassy winds up in Jerusalem and b) the U.S. stops writing checks to the U.N. and those nations which threw a fit today?

“…and then decorating your boob to like a reindeer.” (sic)
I’m guessing the copy editor was laughing too hard top properly scan this? Only my stomach really likes reindeer, my boobs don’t really have much of an opinion.

If it’s produced by someone who doesn’t conform to my political beliefs, then it’s not art. At least, that’s the world view of this particular art critic:
https://mobile.twitter.com/jerrysaltz/status/943979103719510016

In other news, Mike Stuchbery is a “writer, broadcaster, educator.”

“The dingle bop is 30% larger”.
Sold.

It allows us to see just how dim and politically dogmatic many of our media gatekeepers really are.
It does rather hold a mirror up to certain sections of society. A mirror which reveals rather more than was perhaps otherwise intended.

Siberian farm cats.
Want one.

Siri to sue for harassment and toxic workplace.

The fierce and mighty warriors of professional wrestling.
Watched it 3 times and I’m still laughing. 🙂

Idea: The U.S. should declare Constantinople the capital of Turkey.

That’s nobody’s business but the Turks. Even old New York was once New Amsterdam.
But there are exceptions for a country like Israel…well only a country called Israel…I’m sure.

“decorating your boob to like a reindeer”
I think I’ll do just one testicle this year, done up like Santa’s bag. If all goes well, next year, I’ll have both dressed up as silver bells.

Perhaps not the best of plans.
The rather sad thing is that those micro-bollards are there precisely to prevent that sort of behaviour.

Theodore Dalrymple is not sanguine about the future of Britain.
Unfortunately, I don’t think he’s far wrong, or far enough wrong, anyway. But then, socialist psychology does tend to have dysgenic effects. Several Londoners have told me that their neighbourhoods are becoming unwelcoming places to live, or indeed visit, as the cultural norms of those neighbourhoods are transformed.

The tortoise teamwork link appears to be dead.
Bugger. It was a heart-warming tale of upturned-buddy-flipping.

During this festive time of year, make sure to talk to your toddlers about fascism.

P.S. One of Slatestarcodex’s questions asked what “gender” I was assigned at birth. I’m pretty sure he meant “sex,” that he does not think all his readers are parts of speech, but since my sex was assigned at conception, not birth, I wasn’t sure how to answer a question about what happened 9 months later, especially since I wasn’t paying much attention at the time; crying, sleeping, eating, and pooping kept me busy. So I skipped that question.
The moral is, don’t write ambiguous survey questions.
What is your opinion of ambiguous survey questions?
—Approve
—Disapprove
—Well, I kind of go one way or the other on that.

What is your opinion of ambiguous survey questions?
—Approve
—Disapprove
—Well, I kind of go one way or the other on that.
If you’re asking if we’re ignorant or apathetic, I don’t know and don’t care.

How do you feel about double negatives?
— no, not never
— yes, not never

No way, no how.

Sargon has some quality commentary on The Last Snowflake: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LPsRp7uUXUk

Sargon has some quality commentary on The Last Snowflake
I gave up on Star Wars after ploughing through Rogue One, on TV, in the vain hope of being entertained. Dear God, it was dull.

Good point, Pogonip. I think it’s time to admit that there are only three Star Wars movies. Lightning doesn’t strike twice. If Lucas himself couldn’t recapture what made them great two decades later, what makes anyone think Disney can now?
I almost made my peace with the prequels, but in the end decided, ”Ah, screw it”. I just don’t care about anything since Return of the Jedi any more. Because it’s not about a “universe” or a “lore”; all that kind of talk misses the point by a mile. It’s about a great cast, a terrific story, and some of the best effects designers who ever lived coming together at a particular moment in time to make three bloody great movies.

From reading the reviews I get the impression they are pitching the movies to feminists.
I was 17 when the original Star Wars came out. No one had ever seen anything like it. It was glorious. #2 was even better; #3 was OK. They should have stopped right there.

Sargon has some quality commentary on The Last Snowflake
Ehn, not really, because . . .
I gave up on Star Wars after ploughing through Rogue One, on TV, in the vain hope of being entertained. Dear God, it was dull.

I had a look at The Next Fiasco. It’s even worse than that last attempt.
It. Is. really. really. really. really. bad.
I do grant that Sargon does have points he’s trying to make, but the reality that he can’t overcome is that the Disney video game designers actually just haven’t given him enough to complain about on a political level.
Looking at TNF, what is even more obvious this time around is that the game designers didn’t even attend any movie production meetings whatsoever. What too clearly happened instead is that the game designers started with a scattering of playing piece characters, outlined a collection of maze puzzles with shooting for the game players to work their way through, then handed off the game design with one short memo that stated more or less:
Take this and pop in that dialogue and script format stuff that you little movie people do. Hurry it up because we’ve already started building the video game extensions and we need the faces of whatever trivial actors you hire so that we can finish the last bits.
At least with this being from Disney, I rather expect that the cast and production staff checks are quite cashable . . . . and that’s pretty much the one—presumed—good point.

On bad box office.

I once got hit with something like $200 in fees because the bank put a check through twice. The snippy Customer Service Representative said, “Well, you really should keep enough money in your account to cover the occasional error.” I said “ What if it was a $2,000 error? Or $200,000?” “Oh, we’d catch that right away.” “So why can’t you catch a $200 error right away?” “Well, that’s such a small amount…”
Not to me it ain’t, bitch. After researching who to threaten the bank with, which in those days involved going to the library, they gave me back all but $50.
And people wonder why, despite 50 years of propaganda, millennials aren’t thrilled with laissez faire. It’s because each parent and grandparent has at least one story like this.