Friday Ephemera

“Lucas has been captured.”
You and your cute spider videos. You do not want to see what popped up in the recommended thumbnails for me after that. Nor, for that matter, do I. I’m just going to pretend it’s a model made out of pipecleaners and pincushions.
(But here’s the link anyway for the masochistic (or arachnophile) among us. *shudder*)
“Owl buddies.”
Yeah, right. The birds have quite clearly started breeding attack dogs. The first couple of pictures are just to lull you into a false sense of security. Keep scrolling down. That little guy with the green eyes is obviously the ringleader. We’re doomed.
“Bathroom scenes.”
Oh, come on…

One day I overheard Son of Pogonip saying sternly, “Bob! Stop blowing bubbles and come over here and eat your Betta Bites!”
Son runs a tight ship.😄

The mothership wasn’t the first thing to land there.
But the aliens were more organized.

“Bathroom scenes.”
Oh, my…!

Heh.

Cue the surf music
God knows, they need to do something, though I’m not convinced that Mr Tarantino is the way to go. I’m actually surprised the Star Trek film series is still a thing, given its hit-to-meh ratio is quite dismal.

Chapman and Cleese demonstrate the new L1A1.

It tells you quite a lot about who they are.
I would place a substantial bet that most of the people involved with the clean-up were guys so they probably feel quite justified.

Just chillin’.
https://youtu.be/bpojDpZ4m7Y

Hɐddʎ ∀nsʇɹɐlᴉɐ pɐʎ¡

Hɐddʎ ∀nsʇɹɐlᴉɐ pɐʎ¡
For a second there I thought it was Hebrew.
It’s all Greek to me.

That BBC Archive link may be the end of my productivity for today. Having just watched this little 2-minute gem on a diver defusing an unexploded mine in the West India Docks, I learned two interesting things: the meaning of the phrase nap hand, and the yawning chasm between an English diver in the 50s and an English academic in the 10s.

“I felt like my hands were just too big for this task.”
Well done.
When I was about 10 years old, my mother managed to raise a scrub jay hatchling. I think he liked us too much, because it took almost 2 years for my parents to convince him to fly away with the local flock that came by almost daily (even when they’d get him to fly outside to join them, he’d fly back into the apartment once the other birds went on their way). As one might expect, my brother and I wanted to keep him as a pet, but my father was dead set against it. The bird was quite demanding of attention, and rather noisy – and took a liking to my dad, much to my dad’s annoyance.

Racist! Sexist! RAPIST!!!
The indignant younglings seem to imagine that we’re supposed to admire the sheriff in The Man With The Golden Gun, and empathise with him. Despite him being a caricature, deliberately unappealing, and the obvious butt of the joke.

It tells you quite a lot about who they are.
Those aren’t trashed streets, that’s an Art Project.

I was in a WebEx meeting (sort of a video-enabled conference call though the computer) a few hours ago and accidentally shared my screen. Operations Manager of course immediately asked about shaved babies.

“I guess they just want books filled with blank pages and movies that are nothing more than series of landscape shots.”
Behold the future. (Since 1988, believe it or not.)
“https://pjmedia.com/trending/amazons-alexa-will-no-longer-tolerate-sexist-abuse/”

This is not a societal problem, because, again, Alexa isn’t a woman. She’s a cylindrical computer that sits on a table and misunderstands you.

It. It is.

In today’s episode of Dubious Science, your sammiches are causing global warming climate change…

The study also explored how the information on the carbon footprint could be combined with nutritional data to assist consumers in making more informed food choices…The average impact from the home-made option is around two times lower than the impact from the ready-made equivalent with the same ingredients…The greatest improvement opportunities lie in reducing post-consumer waste; however, these are most difficult to realise as they involve changing consumer behaviour.

…and there you have it, sammiches are wrongfood, and eating them wrongthought.

My wife found me in the kitchen with a handgun. She asked me “why?” I said, “stealth killer robots.” She laughed, I laughed, Alexa laughed. So I shot Alexa. It was a good day.
Tee-hee. That ought to bunch some panties.

we have achieved Peak California:
SHUSH… you’ll only encourage them.

::cough:: Fair-trade.
(>_<) (Dammit, messed up my carefully-thought-out-but-not-as-funny-as-it-seemed joke.)

They’re not even standards. They’re weapons.
Well, they’re certainly not principles, which, pretty much by definition, would have to be reciprocal, and therefore inconvenient. But among the self-styled woke, apparently what matters is playing Gotcha!, even if this means behaving in a way that’s stilted and neurotic, and, as in the case above, being laughably and predictably inconsistent.
It’s a strange way to go through life – assuming an entitlement to scold strangers, and the world at large, for not automatically knowing the rules of a made-up in-group status game – rules that are forever changing, seemingly at random and with escalating absurdity, and which change almost daily precisely to make following them all but impossible.

Why dogs don’t rule the… Oh bugger.
The knowledge is spreading…
https://twitter.com/smallthunderdog/status/957173930288209921

Experts don’t recommend using a butcher knife to cut cheesecake. A sharp, thin-bladed slicing knife or a hollow-edged knife dipped in warm water reduces drag and makes a cleaner cut. Unscented dental floss is also recommended to get a clean cut.

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/news/20180119/fight-over-cheesecake-portion-leads-to-arrest

Unscented dental floss is also recommended to get a clean cut.

“Banks said he was asked for his opinion on whether the piece of cake was big enough for a grown (expletive) man,” the paper reported. “He said he thought it was.” According to court records, the older brother, 24, was still holding the butcher knife he used to cut the dessert when they began arguing about the portion size. The victim told police his brother punched him in the face and busted his lip.

I think we need a picture of the portion size to determine whether violence and knife-wielding was justified.

WTP,
Yep, we may have achieved Peak California – although Darleen seems to think saying so will only encourage them to invent some even more outrageous crisis – but they will anyway, because the Democrats in Sacramento are a competitive bunch (even if the object of their current scorn does not have “the shoulder thing that goes up”).

https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/01/the-guggenheim-joins-theresistance-offers-gold-plated-toilet-to-white-house-instead-of-requested-artwork/
Proper response: “l thank you for your offer, but I already have several that are in working order.”

Proper response: “l thank you for your offer, but I already have several that are in working order.”
As I often say, consider the psychology. They’re prepared to publicly insult the First Lady, the office of the President, and more importantly, everyone who voted for him – half of the nation they supposedly serve – in order to signal their own self-imagined edginess. Do they imagine their display of disdain will help the wider cause of arts funding or encourage the kind of broader public interest that such organisations claim to want? Or were they too busy admiring themselves to think of such details?

What motivates the hate aimed at Jordan Peterson from ‘intellectuals’? Basic human resentment

Once the dozen-plus years of compulsory schooling comes to an end, some young people pursue their success outside of the school framework and do so quite well. People who got poor or mediocre grades in school go on to become successful businessmen and women and accrue wealth. Even more, they accrue influence. They may be intelligent but their intelligence manifests itself better in the business world than in the schoolhouse.
Meanwhile, the intellectuals who spend years in graduate school go on to do well, put together their theses and their presentations, get their professorships (sometimes at prestigious universities!) and still fail to accrue much wealth. Even worse, outside of their small intellectual fiefdoms, they fail to accrue influence. Save the occasional Peter Singer or Jordan Peterson, few academics acquire influence outside of the academy.
When you spend so many years growing up in a system that tells you that you will be at the top of the dominance hierarchy and then you’re not, your expectations are violated. This violation of expectations manifests itself as resentment. You followed the rules, you did things as you were supposed to, and some guy who runs a construction company or built an app gets more influence and respect than you.
Peterson brings an additional level of resentment to the table for these academics and intellectuals who envy his success in their own hierarchies. Not only did he win at their own game with professorships at Harvard and Toronto and more citations than most of his peers get in a lifetime, but he also succeeds in the game of influence outside of the academy. To use his own analogy, he’s the largest lobster in their own circles and a big lobster in society at large.

Meanwhile, in the Michigan Clown Quarter, we find that yoga practiced by honky cracker mofos, are guilty of ‘power, privilege, and oppression’, because of course they are.

To truly honor yoga, writes Michigan State University professor Shreena Gandhi, white Americans should understand its history, acknowledge the cultural appropriation they engage in, and possibly reduce the cost of yoga classes for poor people, a group that often includes people of color and “recent immigrants, such as Indian women to whom this practice rightfully belongs.”

One wonders why Indian women need classes…
However, a quick search reveals that Miss Ghandi has been peddling this rhubarb since at least 2012, which goes again to show a Clown Quarter career can be built on nothing.
It appears, though, Miss Ghandi and reality are ships passing in the night.

Upon moving from Uganda to Great Britain, Gandhi’s father was unable to become employed as a surgeon because of the color of his skin…her parents moved the family to Haverford and later to Wisconsin. Gandhi labeled her experience in Wisconsin as “traumatizing,” as she, for the first time, was surrounded almost solely by white peers who ostracized her for the color of her skin.

A) She ain’t that old, I know several Indian surgeons who trained in the UK (and later moved to the US) 40+ years ago, so I am thinking a lack of qualifications was probably the real reason; b) the people in Wisconsin are second in politeness only to Minnesotans which qualifies them as honorary Canadians, and if they were in Milwaukee, POCs haven’t exactly been unique in the history of the town.
Or were they too busy admiring themselves to think of such details?
Yes, and just like the gold toilet yahoos, so are the “academics” who are so ignorant of the rest of the world outside their spheres, they think everyone will buy their malarkey.

Hi Darleen,
I ordered the sample, which was mostly the foreword. Are you finding anything in the book that he didn’t already say on Youtube?

Indian women? Indian men aren’t allowed yoga? What about women who aren’t from India but identify as such? 😉. These asshole SJWs always want everything both ways.
Yoga appears to be a huge subject. There are many different kinds. Some of them are dangerous to the uninformed. This being the case, information ought to be more, not less, available to everybody.

Millenial SJWs find Bond problematic

What?

Hi Pogonip,
So far I’m getting a mixture of familiar but also new stuff. It’s hard to pin down because I haven’t watched all his YouTube lectures. However, I’m enjoying the concise writing and how he’s distilling it down, even for himself.
The chapter right after the Foreword is “Overture” … and I learned that this 12 Rules book sprang from a list of maxims he had quickly posted in Quora about 5 years ago.

It’s a strange way to go through life – assuming an entitlement to scold strangers, and the world at large, for not automatically knowing the rules of a made-up in-group status game – rules that are forever changing, seemingly at random and with escalating absurdity, and which change almost daily precisely to make following them all but impossible.
It may not be coincidence you just described teenage behaviour.

Do they imagine their display of disdain will help the wider cause of arts funding or encourage the kind of broader public interest that such organisations claim to want?
Broader public interest probably doesn’t include the deplorables. You don’t want them around upsetting the luvvies.
Not sure about the funding. Maybe they’re hoping this will attract some from rich lefties rather than the govt. Or maybe they just didn’t think it through as you suggest.

Or maybe they just didn’t think it through as you suggest.
As they have shown, it is not thinking it through, but as you suggest, they just don’t give a damn about anyone outside their bubble.

I suspect the triangle train is a rolling ad, like the Weinermobile.

I suspect the triangle train is a rolling ad, like the Weinermobile.
Nah, too expensive to make a real but useless train. I googled it and Jalopnik reckons it’s a photoshop. So do I, nothing makes sense about it.

Nah, too expensive to make a real but useless train.
All y’all are overthinking it a bit, I think…

I take it you have never been to California. 😀
Heh. Moonbeam’s next project…

…and no, it is not a photoshop.

If they learn to make fire, we’re screwed.
Whatever happens we have got, opposable thumbs, and they have not.

If they learn to make fire, we’re screwed.
You were saying?

Meanwhile, in Florida, students hold a “bleed in” for free menstrual products.
Although it was pointed out they can already get free stuff through something called the “Field and Fork Pantry”, this isn’t good enough because being able to snag a bag of eight tampons, five pads, and five liners per week is “too limited” (32 tampons/month is limited – maybe for a ruptured aortic aneurysm). However…

“Heteronormativity is rampant on this campus,” complained Sophia Ahmed, one of the organizers of the “bleed-in” protest. “Today I held a little protest for free menstrual protects. If you saw my butt that was evidence. And I say menstrual not feminine because menstruation should not be gendered. Some men get periods.”

You knew that last bit was coming.

I only used tampons when pads weren’t available, because the tampons were so uncomfortable, so I don’t know how reasonable the tampon quota is or isn’t. However, I will say that for the last 18-24 months of my menstruating life, I was changing heavy “overnight” pads at least every 3 hours. At bedtime I would line my underwear with several overnight pads in a row and wear Depends over that, all of which would be soaked in the morning. Heavy periods can involve a shocking several days of gushing. My heart goes out to women who deal with this every month for 30 years.

“If they learn to make fire, we’re screwed.”
Well, at least they might learn to throw off the owl tyrrany.
Unless… what if… the owls are teaching them?
Uh-oh…
“Under Calderon’s law, a waiter who serves a drink with an unrequested straw in it would face up to 6 months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.”
Were I a waiter in California, I think that’s the point where I’d go Galt. If they’re going to outlaw common courtesy, then they can get their own damn drinks.
“When you spend so many years growing up in a system that tells you that you will be at the top of the dominance hierarchy and then you’re not, your expectations are violated.”
Sometimes I’m actually glad I burned out and suffered a nervous breakdown at 17. Sure, it wrecked my life (or, at least, the one I thought I was going to have), but I learned the lesson early: book smarts – although useful – ain’t everything, life’s a bitch sometimes, and good grades don’t mean you can expect to have everything handed to you on a silver platter.
“This non-pointy train…”
Aww. Shame. I was hoping there’d be a really interesting reason for it.

I don’t think she knows the meaning of the word “irresponsible”
No it must be all the young man’s fault, because patriarchy. I have seen many young fathers do all the hard work to keep the baby and lady cared for and looked after. It seems to me she is a heroine just for having unprotected sex. At no point reading the article, in my opinion, was May ever put in danger or not cared for.

“Universities, once oases of civil, free and wideranging discourse, succumbed easily and early before the ­cohorts of the closed-minded. The proliferation of so-called safe places where student snowflakes can retreat from challenging discussion of ideas makes a mockery of the very tenets of education.”
Piers Akerman takes aim at our universities, amongst other things in his column for the Telegraph.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/2017-a-year-aussies-all-took-a-stupid-pill/news-story/828eb0706340d95840f39a49c9bad5a4

…[E]xperience will count for something, that you will change, hopefully grow, and that whatever it is that seems incredibly important now – peer pressure or whatever – may seem laughable or irrelevant as you develop.
Of course, that’s true for all of us at all stages of life. The people who seem the most content are the ones who have the ability to distinguish what’s truly important in the long term from everything else which competes for their attention and to not be troubled by the latter in the slightest.

Heh.