I Got Nuthin’
However, it occurs to me that in eleven years we’ve never had an open thread, in which, I’m told, readers share links of possible interest and then bicker about them. So let’s try one of those and see what happens.
If all else fails, you can always poke through the reheated series and greatest hits.
For those who are worried about robots replacing humans
The Musk’s career since becoming a celebrity, thus far:
Hyperloop- A hundred year old bad (and dangerous) idea, put to use hoovering up vast amounts of capital to produce, so far, a few rusty pipes.
SpaceX- Another hundred year old bad idea, wherein his employees have succeeded greatly in overcoming the engineering challenges of creating a more expensive and less efficient (and more dangerous) means of reaching and returning from orbit.
Tessa- The latter-day misadventures of John Delorean recreated at a grander economic scale, frosted with electricity, and without the relevant industry experience Delorean had.
Do the henchlesbians ever swing into cathedrals on a rope crying “sanctuary!” …?
My friend Evan’s senior lecture, recently given, focused on microtonality as a tool for enriched musical expression. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbBekBzz21Y Followed by a recital of his musical compositions.
A dirty rat Fawlty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOI8bA3xEJU
Sam,
“It occurs to me that practically every thread I’ve ever read here has turned into one. And that’s why we keep coming back.
But hey, why not make it official?”
Even cats need herding. Occasionally.
“No-one need ever know what’s under the couch, or how long it’s been there, or how it got there in the first place.”
Screwed up little balls of paper thrown for the cats to chase. Dust. And Lego. Even if you don’t have children, there’s always Lego!
Screwed up little balls of paper thrown for the cats to chase. Dust. And Lego.
Cleaning under the couch indeed. That’s a thread you don’t want to pull on. Next it’ll be “Why do the cushions make that crunching sound when you sit on them? Have you been hiding half-eaten biscuits again?”
What? I’m not the one on trial here. Is that my phone ringing?
John Ellis on modern fictions.
From John Ellis’s article: Braasch would smoke cigarettes and sip beer during the changeovers
I love that story! https://www.theguardian.com/observer/osm/story/0,,543962,00.html
Someone ought to make a movie..
I can actually see the argument for women’s tennis being a game with a different aesthetic and indeed I would rather watch a couple of leggy blondes run around groaning than two male heavy servers go at it. But then I am not much of a tennis fan…
I can actually see the argument for women’s tennis being a game with a different aesthetic and indeed I would rather watch a couple of leggy blondes run around groaning than two male heavy servers go at it. But then I am not much of a tennis fan…
Maybe, though tennis doesn’t differ along aesthetic and gender lines to the extent that, say, men’s and women’s gymnastics does. (My knowledge of sports is limited so the longer I talk the more likely I am to fall off a rhetorical cliff.)
What struck me was that the Ellis quote above seems more scandalous, to some, than it should be. And yet while my sisters-in-law will occasionally watch women’s tennis, for instance, the big attraction for them is always the men’s competitions, which, even to my eye, are faster and more demanding. One of my sisters will sometimes watch rugby, quite enthusiastically, but to my knowledge she’s no interest in women’s rugby at all. Though I’ve yet to ask her whether it’s the level of performance that holds her interest or just the sight of burly chaps in shorts.
It’s a diabolical myth spread by the house-proud.
Nothing ever bothers them, and a mess is not allowed?
(And I thought the Friday Ephemeraren’t were the open threads.)
And I thought the Friday Ephemeraren’t were the open threads.
And my hopes of pitching Our First Ever Open Thread™ as a bold and newsworthy innovation continue to burn up in the atmosphere.
Liverpool 5-2 Roma. Bit edgy after Liverpool do what they do, concede late goals to give the opposition a sniff.
I used to find women’s basketball interesting because the game was played differently. More passing, not so much fly-thru-the-air stuff. Not more interesting, just differently interesting. Then it became this Thing To Watch and effort was made to play the game just as men do, with the dunking and such. It looks so lame. I can watch women’s soccer sometimes, if I have to. But I get angsty waiting for them to get to the ball. Women’s gymnastics and figure skating I like better than men’s for reasons stated above. But there are a few sports with women that I like where men do better such as swimming, skiing, volleyball, and pool. May be a few others. Don’t necessarily like them better than men, just about the same.
“One quarter of us weren’t born here and the majority have no link to Anzacs in the 1914-18 war. None.” – What a profoundly stupid statement. First, that is like saying no one alive today has a link to their grandfather (or great grandfather) unless that progenitor is still alive, and the Anzacs had bugger all to do with the shaping of Australia (and New Zealand) as it exists today.
In theory, newcomers to a country should show more gratitude and respect than the descendants of the Anzacs, for enjoying an inheritance that their grandfathers didn’t have to sacrifice for.
In practice, newcomers prefer their own heroic myths about granddad’s struggle against the racist white Australians.
And he’s taking something that has a collective meaning if it has any meaning at all, and pretending that it’s a matter of personal preferences and quirks – as if a bunch of Aussie backpackers died in a tragic jetski accident in the Suvla Bay Club Med resort in 1915, and their relations who still can’t get over it a century later insist that everybody join in their mourning.
Mass immigration really does call into question commemorations of the heroic past and acts of heroism in the service of a hoped-for collective future. People are heroic and make sacrifices for their family home, not for a house that strangers are going to move into.
G.K. Chesterton
This is the difference between watching and looking at rugby…
I used to find women’s basketball interesting because the game was played differently.
Spot-on. My daughter played through-out middle and high school and now plays club ball in Europe. She also coaches a U15 team. The style of play is more deliberate, with emphasis on set-pieces, screens etc. You have to appreciate it for what it is, but it will never be played the same way as the men’s game.
“The Musk’s career since becoming a celebrity, thus far:”
Harsh, but fair. I’m a big fan of SpaceX because it’s vastly preferable to the “traditional” players in that market, but I don’t think there’s much reason to believe that Musk is any better, in absolute terms, at building spacecraft than he is cars or trains. There’s just very little competition right now.
“Even if you don’t have children, there’s always Lego!”
It’s probably mine. I had bucketloads of the stuff when I was a kid, and I’ve no idea what happened to it all.
I used to find women’s basketball interesting because the game was played differently.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/gay-shocker-basketball-star-comes-out/
Some top-level trolling:
Diversity On-Demand
Rent-A-Minority is a revolutionary new service designed for those oh-shit moments where you’ve realized your award show, corporate brochure, conference panel is entirely composed of white men.
http://rentaminority.com/
Further to this sorry episode from academia’s Clown Quarter, another sorry episode from academia’s Clown Quarter:
Apparently, the university’s own policy on student behaviour, which explicitly forbids mob disruption and the shouting down of invited speakers, can be violated without consequence. But only if the mob in question is suitably leftwing.
Previously at CUNY.
My wife has specific sports she prefers to watch. Notably for this thread, men’s tennis. But not all men’s tennis, oh no. Rafa Nadal tennis. That’s the best men’s tennis. Because shorts and ass, in what apparently is the Platonic ideal form.
You’d think that after all these years of lurking I’d have something.
Nope. I got nuffin.
Nope. I got nuffin.
Check under your couch. You may be surprised.
An entire generation of under-couch mystery was ruthlessly wiped out by the advent of Danish Modern furniture. One more thing to blame the Boomers and those Scandinavian Socialists for.
…another sorry episode from academia’s Clown Quarter…
Half of them think they’re above any punishment at all, and the other half have already written their screeds about how the “anti-intellectual” conservatives in the Legislature have no right to replace the administration or to cut the flow of taxpayer dollars that subsidizes the Clown Show.
Lloyd “Lindybeige” is answering the Book of Questions.
An entire generation of under-couch mystery was ruthlessly wiped out by the advent of Danish Modern furniture.
On the other hand, my parents’ old Lane coffee table still bears many of my childhood scrawlings across its underside.
Here’s something!
http://theothermccain.com/2018/04/25/colorado-couple-arrested-for-dog-sex/
I bet they moved to Colorado from Florida. (“Florida” is American for “crazy.”)
Did he think he would get away with it? Not a criminal mastermind:
http://www.fox32chicago.com/news/local/chicago-man-investigated-for-diverting-ups-mail-to-his-address
A medically kidnapped child is being slowly executed, but the current Stasi issue warnings about dissenting social media posts.
“I bet they moved to Colorado from Florida”
Possibly. There are lots of Quebecois snowbirds in the sunshine state.
The phrase is not meant to be taken literally.
Pogonip,
I thought South Florida is American for crazy.
Miami Herald humorist Dave Barry has long claimed that there is a giant “weirdness magnet” underneath South Florida.
Darleen,
Earlier today I posted at Twitchy:
“If I logged into my Twitter account and replied to that with some “1984” quote, would I be “acted upon”?
Question for David and his UK readers: Is it just an NHS thing that if they provide treatment (read: spend money) for a seriously ill child, then determine that the child’s condition is terminal, do they then literally own that child?
If someone else is willing to pay for treatment elsewhere, why does it concern them so?
It concerns them because, if the child were treated elsewhere and recovered, it would be both embarrassing to them and instructive to the proles.
If this strikes you as a hopelessly insufficient reason to condemn the child to certain death, well, now you know just how much bureaucrats and their boot lickers truly care. These ones, at least.
P.S. I’m not a UK reader, as you requested. I’m Canadian, though, so maybe kinda sorta.
I vastly prefer women’s volleyball to men’s. The males get too much height and smash it so much harder that rallies are almost non-existent.
Not beach volleyball though. Supposedly it’s better because the women are worth perving at. However, I have discovered a well hidden thing that gives you any amount of perv power, called “the internet”. I actually watch women’s volleyball for the volleyball.
That and wondering where countries can assemble whole teams of women taller than me. Often quite a lot taller.
I respect ANZAC day, as a time to remember all soldiers.
It does bug me though when people go on about “our ancestors” and forming our nation.
Firstly Australia pulled away from Britain at least partly as a result of WWI. NZ did not. It’s importance has been confected from the Aussies.
Secondly, the vast bulk of non-Maori in NZ have majority ancestors that arrived after WWI. The Maori weren’t permitted to serve at the front at that time, even though they volunteered in big numbers.
I looked around my workplace last time someone went off about how “special” Gallipoli was. Half the people were immigrants. Some were races that weren’t allowed to serve – Fijian, Samoan. The Taiwanese and Chinese blokes had no idea what he was rambling about. One lady is German, so her ancestors fought on with the Turks!
The bizarre thing is that NZ fought to save the Empire. This bloke is descended from Irish Catholics. His ancestors would have been unlikely to be fully in support of the British Empire.
So, while I pay my respects at war memorials, I really do not like the whole Gallipoli thing. It’s fake history.
I’ve coached basketball, both girls and boys at a reasonably high level and I find that womens basketball is about equivalent to 14 and 15 year old boys of the same level (so a club level women’s team is on about the same level as a club 14 and 15 year-old-boys team, and so on). Except not quite.
You see, for the first 5 minutes, the game is fairly equal. Indeed the women generally have a slight but clear advantage on the scoreboard. But if you watch you notice that the boys are always back on defence early while the women are just getting there. To compensate, the women start defending closer and closer to the basket, while at the same time, the boys push further and further up the court.
And then the fast breaks start.
Douglas Murray on the fear of black conservatives.
Also this:
Via Dicentra.
“it would be both embarrassing to them and instructive to the proles”
But they’ll claim it’s because: “If we allow this everyone else will want and expect ‘special treatment’ also.”
We’re not all UKians, many are in America’s Hat/Attic.
Also this
That! 🙂
That! 🙂
I’ve long since become accustomed to celebrities whose work I appreciate – whether actors, directors, comedians, musicians, or whatever – signalling politics that I find fatuous, hypocritical or obnoxious, but which are very much expected of their caste. And more than that, signalling these things incongruously and in the most vehement terms, such that they openly disdain vast swathes of their own audience on account of them being insufficiently leftwing. It’s the norm for me, and presumably for countless others.
Tim Newman on history and character.
And my hopes of pitching Our First Ever Open Thread™ as a bold and newsworthy innovation continue to burn up in the atmosphere.
No refunds; credit note only.
[slides jar of pickled eggs over to David]
Am I doing this right? 🙂
Am I doing this right? 🙂
Make yourself useful. Put these gloves on and drag those bodies out to the back door. They collect on Thursdays.
[ Takes down dusty “Help Wanted” sign. ]
While we’re on the subject of nothin’, here’s something that should be somethin’
I think I got this from over at Ace. Not positive. This woman’s a lawyer and she went to Brandeis and has a JD from Georgetown Law. She oversaw the ethics panel at the Port Authority. And boy, if you wanna study you some ethics, there’s prolly no better place than the Port Authority of NY/NJ. The kids are Yale and MIT students. PhD even.
I think the root of this problem is that for all their (presumed) brains, her parents didn’t know how to spell Karen.
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/04/the_top_20_moments_of_port_authority_commissioners.html
Now this Karen has better ethics, I’m sure. Of course her husband, friends, colleagues are all like…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voDqfVthTpA
now ex-Commissioner Caren Turner.
The highlight for me was when she mentioned “decency.”
Mark your calendars now! Also, you’d better get your hotel reservations made quickly