Friday Ephemeraren’t

…the no-strings one-time date you’ve always wanted.
I note, the date in quo plans to return to Florida once the current unpleasantness is sorted out. “Florida Man” is becoming an invasive species.

the concept of toxic masculinity in the Western world back to the Victorian era
Games playing and fitness are problematic?
Uh, no.
The infuriating thing about that article is the :::ahem::: toxic mixture of good (strength, physical vigor) with bad (violent) … as if it is all one and the same. BAD …
argh

I gotta say Tim Winton does not look like he knows a whole lot about masculinity, todic or otherwise.

The Victorian era? How about the Spartan era?

Who’s a clever boy?
https://www.thedodo.com/close-to-home/dog-buys-treats-using-leaf

Morning, all.
the date in quo plans to return to Florida once the current unpleasantness is sorted out.
It’s the boggling escalation as the story unfolds, from “Ooh, 500 text messages a day – she sounds keen” to “she wanted to wear his body parts and bathe in his blood.”
So is that what online dating is like, then?

The infuriating thing about that article is the :::ahem::: toxic mixture of good (strength, physical vigor) with bad (violent) … as if it is all one and the same
The repeated failure to acknowledge such distinctions does rather suggest other motives may be in play. See also the last item here.

@Hector Drummond
In fairness, Portrait of the Artist isn’t particularly challenging.

*That’s* not going to be used by scammers straight away, is it?
It does practically invite misuse. I mean, it’s technically impressive (albeit under what I presume are ideal and very limited circumstances), but the issue that comes to mind is trust. As noted here, people may prefer to know in advance whether or not they’re speaking to a human, rather than clever software.

>In fairness, Portrait of the Artist isn’t particularly challenging.
No, but it’s pretty dull. At least Ulysses has some lively sections.

Historians have traced the concept of “toxic masculinity” in the Western world back to the Victorian era, particularly in public schools.
Misrepresenting Masculinity

This has been going on for a long time. This kind of biased positioning is evident in the majority of articles, books and textbooks dealing with masculinity. John Wayne died in 1979, and two of the iconic Marlboro men died of cancer in the early 1990s, but these cliché feminist bêtes noires are still burned in effigy in virtually every mainstream anti-masculinity op-ed.
Over thirty years after Brannon, male feminists still can’t manage to do much more than point and laugh at their own snide caricatures of men, and recommend that men abandon “musty script of masculinity.” Talk about a bunch of guys who are stuck singing the same tune. And, when presented with new, post-Margaret Mead era evidence from evolutionary biologists, that tune sounds a lot like “Nyah, nyah nyah, nyah, I Can’t Hear You.”

She also said that she wanted to wear his body parts and bathe in his blood.
And people say that romance is dead.

The repeated failure to acknowledge such distinctions does rather suggest other motives may be in play.
They shout that they want to rid the West of “toxic masculinity”. Why would one assume it is the “toxic”, rather than the “masculinity”, that they wish to see done away with?
There is no lie like a lie of omission – and that applies as well to the lies one tells oneself.

London’s mayor, a man for whom intellectual consistency is much too difficult and therefore rarely attempted.

London’s mayor . . .
Khan laughs at your philosophical consistency and intellectual honesty. It’s about power over the plebes. The way to make them compliant is to make it impossible to know which is the proper, “woke” path. Thus, they stop thinking entirely and do what the worthies tell them to do without question.

I dream of my novel being given a pulp treatment. All the men must be given moustaches.

London’s mayor, a man for whom intellectual consistency is much too difficult and therefore rarely attempted.
Oh, there’s a consistency there.

Over at Ace’s, delusional landwhale fixated on Harry Potter goes seeking conflict, finds it. Because the fat are *entitled* to *rollercoasters*. Apparently.

She was aware the entire time that she would most likely be forbidden from riding:
My dear friend Ruha ― who has been a guest on my “Woman of Size” podcast about the discrimination against fat women’s bodies ― wrote: “Heads up. I was kicked off the Hogwarts ride because I didn’t fit. It was humiliating but they gave me front of the line passes to rest of the rides at Universal. Just be aware.”
Followed shortly by:
When I walked outside with my friends, I exclaimed, “Hogwarts would never condone this!” But upon further investigation, the books and movies have only a few big characters and most of them are antagonistic. The Fat Lady painting is obnoxious and bossy. The Dursleys are lazy and entitled. Crabbe and Goyle are both fat dunces who follow the orders of the lithe, vampire-looking Draco Malfoy. So I think I’m wrong! Hogwarts absolutely condones this and so does the general public. (emphasis mine)
So while complaining about the portrayal of fat people in the Potter world, she is literally a collage of some of the more obnoxious and odious characters in the series.
The very best part is her “bite me” photo, in which she poses with a churro and, presumably, a butter beer. So you are ejected from a ride for being too fat and respond by consuming sugar, fat, carbs, and more sugar.
She’s going places, this one. But only places in which gravity will assist because, lets be honest, uphill isn’t going to happen.

Here’s a thing.

because of noise abatement rules
See, now you’re just taking all the fun out of it. 🙂

…now you’re just taking all the fun out of it…
So did the German rules…

I have no idea where to begin with this exercise in studied disregard.
So Kanye West is now “alt-right”? It’s so hard to keep up.

Modern art display.

They let fat women into the balloon basket here in Albuquerque back in 2005.
That is how the once proud Canadian Club Mounty on His proud Black Steed landed in front of my car on the interstate freeway and burned every so slowly.
Sometimes they hit the high power lines. Some land in the Rio Grande.
Occasionly they will drift over the Air Force Base, and fighter jets and Osprey Helios are involved. Almost everything but the balloons seems to have working steering and brakes.
Like being invaded by drunken retards. I have pictures but they say drinking at this altitude can be photogenic.

Like being invaded by drunken retards.
Grew up in the part of NJ where they have that huge annual ballon festival. SOP was that if one landed (i.e. crashed slowly, as that is what passes for landing in a balloon) on your property, the crew gave you a bottle of wine.
So did the German rules…
My question would be: If the Kraut artillerymen are used to training with suppressors, what happens when they need to use their guns for real? I mean, there is a significant difference between merely “holy shit!” loud and “Motörhead playing live five feet away” loud combined with a potentially life-altering concussive wave.

Just a point of terminology.
“Modern” art isn’t what is being produced today. I like quite a lot of Modern art — Picasso, Klimt, Vassarely etc. Modern art is the early moves away from strict realism, but still within bounds of sense and style.
“Contemporary” art, which is what is produced now, is largely a pile of steaming poo.
This is one of the few frictions in my marriage. I am extremely reluctant to go to any Contemporary art, and when my wife tricks me into it I’m quite grumpy about it. She thinks this is borderline Philistinism, to refuse to believe any Contemporary art is good. (I think some is good, I merely refuse to be dragged through all the dross to find it.)
And don’t get me started on “post-contemporary”!

Taxpayers of California, rejoice!

Taxpayers of California, rejoice!
… excuse the expression but Holy Shit …

Taxpayers of California, rejoice!
Absolutely.
The taxpayers of California can rejoice because we do not appear to be paying for those two instances of, as it were, completely shit writing, instead of actual reporting.
With Dailywire and nbcbayarea being what is cited there, if they wanted to achieve any credibility with anyone, they would also discuss the actual topic. They don’t and that pair of articles leaves ’em revealed as idiots . . . contemporary even . . !
That very specifically outlined area is The Tenderloin, where the wannabe reporters add an extra street on the north side to include Union Square, with the corner of Market and Van Ness added to the south so that City Hall can be included.
Reading through both “articles”, there isn’t even one single mention of “Tenderloin” given that what they are very clearly focused on is only The Tenderloin. Instead, the recurring and quite fraudulent attempt is to claim that the sole single very well known problem neighborhood is the entirety of “downtown” San Francisco.
The actual downtown SF area is basically, oh, Broadway, Van Ness, Market, and The Embarcadero. Included in that area is the Financial District, Chinatown, Nob Hill, Union Square, Civic Center and City Hall, and also The Tenderloin. As a further underline of the failure of these “reporters”, compare that map of The Tenderloin with the entirety of San Francisco.
Oh, yes, and Dailywire is attempting to get mileage with a headline of San Francisco Spends $30 Million Cleaning Feces, Drug Needles. Somehow they forgot to add that the San Francisco city budget is in the range of eight to ten billion dollars . . . and that’s with a rounding approximation of two billion dollars . . .

Oy bloody veh. Apparently the comic strip isn’t the joke.

The prophecies, they are coming true!
https://mobile.twitter.com/Hippopeteamus/status/996003168172429312