Because You Deserve No Less
An open thread, that is – our second in 11 years. Feel free to share links of possible interest and then bicker about them.
Our first attempt, a moment of great daring and historic import, included testicle-based snacks, toilet paper shanks, the political flatulence of Patrick Stewart, and whether or not you should clean under the sofa.
If all else fails, you can always poke through the reheated series and greatest hits.
Okay, I’ll go first.
Douglas Murray on rape gangs and public-sector imperviousness to normal consequences:
The whole thing is worth a squint, if only to behold the full extent of Ms Simons’ shamelessness, and her capacity to inhale cash confiscated from taxpayers.
Okay, I’ll go first.
Holy shit!
Joanna Simons … had been at the centre of that Council’s ‘care’ programme for nearly a decade: that is, throughout the period in which the mass rape of local girls (subsequently investigated under the name ‘Operation Bullfinch’) was carried on [ … ] At the time that Operation Bullfinch broke, Ms Simons was receiving an annual salary of over £196,000, before other benefits were included. To put this into some context, the average annual salary in the UK sits at just over £27,000. The annual salary paid to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for running the country stands at just under £150,000 per annum [ … ]
In 2015, the Oxfordshire County Council chose to abolish Simon’s role … at which stage she received a pay-off from the Council amounting to the sum of £259,000 [ … ]
But Oxfordshire did not lose Simons for long. Last July, the organisation which promotes tourism in the area — ‘Experience Oxfordshire’ — announced Joanna Simons as the new head of their board.
It would be interesting to compare the reporting of this with the reporting of negligence and wrong-doing of senior management in the private sector. Dick Fuld, say.
So basically #MeToo unless the perpetrator is Muslim? Or Bill Clinton? Then it’s #ShutUp?
I’m looking at what Europe is sacrificing at the altar of Diversity and wondering where are all the screeching purple haired feminists? By looking the other way aren’t these feminists willingly subjugating themselves to the Patriarchy?
Daniel Johnson on sanitising Marxism:
Not entirely unrelated.
This.
https://twitter.com/SargonOfAkkad_3/status/1006515553765167106
And this.
https://twitter.com/SargonOfAkkad_3/status/1006528532095406080
Mao missed his goal by almost 90%. This is what the leftists mean when they say that socialism has never been properly implemented. There always seems to be a failure when it comes to exterminating enough of the wrong sort of people. Stalin might have been onto something when he determined that it didn’t much matter whether you executed your friends or your enemies. But again, Stalin died too soon and didn’t realize his dreams of a Pan-Russia gulag.
Also from the Daniel Johnson piece, this:
The wins keep piling up.
…while a similar number died in the famine created by Mengistu’s policies.
It should be remembered that Mengistu was aided and abetted by the naive policies of Western democracies and useful idiots which launched all manner of aid programs to combat the famine. See, e.g. Geldof, Bob. During that time, I had an acquaintance who was employed by a European government superintending food aid deliveries. He watched pallets of European food being offloaded onto docks and sitting there until Soviet ships arrived to deliver pallets of weapons. Then the Soviets loaded the European food back onto their ships and headed home. My acquaintance recommended stopping all aid, but he was ignored because . . . optics. The fact that people still were starving, aid notwithstanding, was of no consequence apparently.
UK police can’t be faulted for missing all the rapey-rape, they are too busy threatening UK citizens for WrongThink.
An open thread, that is – our second in 11 years.
. . . and second in two months even . . .
Then again, playing with the puzzle pieces on occasions can be interesting—depending on the puzzle pieces and occasions.
Darleen: “UK police can’t be faulted for missing all the rapey-rape, they are too busy threatening UK citizens for WrongThink.”
Well, at least they were real. Over here, even the distant heir to the throne isn’t exempt from the hoplopobia.
even the distant heir to the throne isn’t exempt from the hoplopobia.
In the headline, the word “people” is doing an awful lot of lifting.
I’m looking at what Europe is sacrificing at the altar of Diversity and wondering where are all the screeching purple haired feminists?
I don’t think I’ve posted this one here before:
What’s hoplophobia, the fear of bunny rabbits?
Image didn’t appear, and trying again it’s too big, so here’s the link: http://martianmagazine.com/comic/fundamental-change/
What’s hoplophobia, the fear of bunny rabbits?
Fear of weapons, more generally used to denote fear of shooting irons.
ComputerLabRat,
I’m looking at what Europe is sacrificing at the altar of Diversity and wondering where are all the screeching purple haired feminists?
Claiming there is no rape crisis, no crime wave, and the sad-faced refugees are far more peaceful than local “neo-nazis” “attacking” them. You see, it’s a hoax, cooked up by Fox/Sky News and the Daily Mail, if social media is anything to go by.
Alert! Alert! UnPC opinion! Activate shunning mode!
https://twitter.com/Mslexia/status/1006531886569656322
Alert! Alert! UnPC opinion!
“Although we welcome open debate…” Funny how the people making women look ridiculous are so often feminists.
Activate shunning mode!
Thought I should let you know I’m almost certainly going to steal that one.
Why Democrats Hear a Secret Racist Dog Whistle and Republicans Don’t
Activate shunning mode!
Yep, this reads just as I would suspect.
Where do I even begin?
Yep, this reads just as I would suspect.
And again, if you were to base your estimation of women on the blatherings of feminists and the “social justice” contingent, you’d likely assume that women are insufferably neurotic and dishonest. Happily, the women I know tend to look on the woke sisterhood with something between dismay and amused bewilderment.
If the SJWs want to shun us, I’m all for it; the problem is that they don’t.
Oh, hoplo-phobia. I read it as hooplaphobia – fear of exaggerated celebration.
In the interests of an open thread, and as the subject of publishing novels and such has been raised, I have a very impertinent question that has been burning in me for decades now but I’ve never had the temerity to raise in polite company…or even here…(ahem)…isn’t the degree to which books, novels and such, have become fetishized more than a bit worrisome? Especially the volume of such that has been churned out in the last century or so. Especially as literacy has accelerated? The degree to which many writers of the mid-wars and couple decades post WWII, or perhaps I should say writers who were considered viable to publish, have very much shaped what has become Teh Narrative, I find a little disturbing. I speak not just of the content of the books themselves (many turned into movies), each of which taken individually not such a concern, but the exceptional praise heaped upon so many of them and their writers being significantly out of proportion to the value added. Not to sound defensive (which of course I now do) but I am a moderately well-read person. About 15-20 years ago when the web was available to more easily cross reference such, from lists of “100 best books” of any reasonable context and historical breadth, I had probably read 20-30 of them. Which as written doesn’t sound like so much but the lists of such that I observed were fairly diverse. And I am, after all, a troglodyte engineer.
Also, an across-the-pond curiosity…Did y’all in UK (and Oz/NZ/Canada/etc.) have Les Miserables foisted upon you with the same sanctity as Dickens and Twain as was done here in the US? Anyone else find that story just a little over the top? Not that it’s bad, per se. Just a bit…mmm….overdone?
OK, no link cuz it’s a homegrown thing but … has anyone else ever tried putting copper pennies in the cat/dog waterbowl to keep the mold down between changings?
I did, and the results are night and day good. And yes, I made sure to dig out old pennies still made of real copper, though I presume I could have also just gone to my local home-improvement store and bought a little bare copper wire for this purpose.
Oh, and to clean the pennies first – they’re usually pretty tarnished when they’re that old – I just tossed them in a vinegar and salt solution for a few minutes and they came out like new.
Growing up in Northern Ireland, I had to read Dickens (Hard Times) and Twain (Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn) in school. I seem to remember enjoying Twain. Dickens was hard work, but not as hard as Thomas Hardy. We never had to read Les Miserables – my first experience of that story was the film of the musical, which was so spectacularly overdone that Russell Crowe was an oasis of restraint and understatement, like Michael Kitchen in a cast of Brian Blesseds. Not often you get to say that about Russell Crowe.
The nearest thing I can compare Les Miserables to is Revenge of the Sith. Operatic, story all over the place, characters that don’t make a lick of sense, but somehow glorious in its meaningless bombast, admirable in its determination not to be run of the mill, formulaic multiplex fodder, even if not necessarily in a good way. (I’ve also been listening to a lot of Queen lately.)
“Open thread…”. Ah. THIS is where we come to get a refund!
Hooplaphobia: fear of brightly colored plastic hoops!
Hiplophobia: fear of hipsters
Inspector Javert’s nuts. Jesus, man, it’s a loaf of bread! Give it up already!
The Honest Trailer for Les Miserables is pretty on point.
@WTP,
Never had Les Miz. In high school, we read Molière. I rather enjoyed The Misanthrope as did most of my junior literature class, which happened to be taught by the French teacher who’d been seconded to the English Department due to a hasty exist by her 23 year predecessor for a reason which is still unclear.
It was the mid ’70s in the bowels of the Ozarks. Still, we were fairly well-read, I think.
Douglas Murray on rape gangs and public-sector imperviousness to normal consequences:
I think it’s time we introduced a public sector version of the Company Director’s Disqualification Act. It’s not right in my view that if you’re a council boss on a salary many times that of the average wage, and you screw up as badly as Ms. Simons, you should get away with it and be kicked upstairs/shunted sideways/given a golden goodbye. You should be barred from holding similar posts of responsibility in any public sector body – councils, quangos, charities. The lot.
This.
Directors shouldn’t have an apostrophe in it. Stupid computer second guessing me.
I made sure to dig out old pennies still made of real copper
…assuming we’re talking US context…that stupid new penny they introduced a few years back STILL looks to me a lot like the play money I used as a child. And given inflation and nostalgic novelty, the play money would probably be worth more today.
Jesus, man, it’s a loaf of bread! Give it up already!
Exactly. Who was this guy’s boss? And checking wiki now…Perhaps I knew this and forgot but apparently the thing goes on for over 2500 pages. Apparently we got the abridged version. It is moments such as this that I feel reassured that just maybe there is a God and that he is good.
No, Shriver implies that the publishers won’t care if the writer is any good, so long as they can tick off the appropriate demographic boxes. The fact that the critic cannot or will not recognize the distinction leads me to believe that one’s identity as a “queer Iraqi non-binary Brit” doesn’t grant one stellar powers of argument, nor even reading comprehension.
…has anyone else ever tried putting copper pennies in the cat/dog waterbowl to keep the mold down between changings?
Now I am not a veterinarian, but, with all due respect, if you are changing the water so infrequently that the bowl is getting moldy, you might not be changing it often enough (like daily). Offer does not apply if you live in a rain forest where mold may be an instantaneous phenomenon.
WTP —
I think the novelists are following the same path that jazz musicians trod decades ago. They’ve taken a medium that provided joy to the masses, and they’ve decided to make it “challenging” to the point where nobody wants to listen to it any more.
Of course, jazz musicians often possess extraordinary talents, so one can almost see where the appreciation of skill could make up for the lack of aesthetic appeal. With the writers, the skill is too often lacking — it’s all just virtue signalling, as the Sad Puppies episodes so ably revealed.
We use a “fountain” bowl and change daily. But you can change the water all you like, the filter and the motor still fill up with mold at fast-forward speeds. The copper penny solution fixes the problem without having to clean both of those each time; much better.
The ancient world touted copper for storing water and keeping it clean, now supported by modern science. The salt and vinegar is remembered, of course, from elementary school science projects, back when science still meant, well, science. One day I put the two together….
I read the usual Twain in school (Finn, mostly). (Dating myself – I’m sure Finn has been officially non-PC for decades.)
As an adult I read his “Letters from Earth”, which was an eye opener.
Recently I read his “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc”. I think it may be his best work.
American schools’ choices can make any author boring. It’s a skill they’ve been carefully taught.
We use a “fountain” bowl and change daily.
In that case, the question is whether the stuff is mold or really bacterial, because if it is the latter, it comes from the animals saliva and the only way to deal with it is frequent cleaning of the the thing with bleach solution and regular replacement of the filters. Mold/algae, soapy water and frequent filter changes.
As far as the copper pennies goes, dogs and cats can have serious problems if they ingest pennies (obstructively or from toxicity), and if you are not using distilled water, any copper that might leach into the water could conceivably cause a chronic toxicity issue.
Easiest thing is a plain stainless steel bowl, change daily. I suspect the fountain bowls are more for human consumption, after all, cats and dogs will be more than happy to drink from ponds, mudholes, potholes, hollow logs, and toilets.
What’s hoplophobia, the fear of bunny rabbits?
Fear of bunny rabbits with guns.
(Hoplo- means weapons, from the same Greek root as hoplite.)
they are too busy threatening UK citizens for WrongThink.
Come back, Luftwaffe, all is forgiven.
I read the usual Twain in school
I’ve read a good bit of Twain. A bonus was that I found reading him greatly improved my writing, that being just emails and such. Though it even helped with documentation to some degree. Most useful in this regard were the collections of essays of his. Alas, I’ve lapsed in my reading in the last 5-10 years or so. Partly because I’ve read about every book I was ever curious about and lost much curiosity about many of the rest. I get impatient with the one-way flow of information. Burning questions come to mind when reading and if I or others have no means of raising them in context, I get kind of subconsciously frustrated and/or distracted. But back to Twain, probably my favorite piece is his philosophical essay, What is Man?. Oddly, I seem to recall starting Letters from Earth a few years ago but never got back to it.
I think the novelists are following the same path that jazz musicians trod decades ago
If you’re speaking of the likes of Jamaldeen Tacuma, I feel ya. My musicianship is weak and mostly childhood infused, but I could sit down and listen to that sort of stuff, feeling out the patterns and such, as an intellectual exercise but it sure wasn’t relaxing. And after doing 8+ hours of coding, I’m more in the mood for some dumb than any hard smartz. Maybe on a Sunday…meh.
re The Misanthrope, I remember seeing this on the A&E channel when A&E was first available. I really enjoyed the play and I thought, wow, a non-PBS option for arts and such. Kind of Catcher in the Rye-ish. I recall of that channel they were rerunning Yes, Minister on A&E. Then the laws of entropy set in…
Jesus, man, it’s a loaf of bread! Give it up already!
Javert’s monomania stems from his own birth and childhood in a jail, to a prisoner. It’s really about his own self-loathing and the extent to which he’s psychologically divided the world starkly into Law and Chaos as a way of affirming his own self-worth – prisoners and criminals are Always Chaotic Evil, so if he’s Always Lawful Good then he’s a good person, not a bad one like his mother and his childhood confreres. You really have to understand the extent to which the people of the time considered social class to be essentially genetic, not a product of individual choice or institutional structures.
That’s why when Valjean reveals the falsity of his rigid worldview Javert has a psychotic break and ends up committing suicide.
Also, to get an idea of how Javert is thinking, the next time you see a mob in an US inner city smashing and looting stores, say to yourself “Jesus, they’re just Nikes!”.
But they are going out
swingingwhining.:::snort:::
You really have to understand the extent to which the people of the time considered social class to be essentially genetic, not a product of individual choice or institutional structures.
Who knew a literature class would break out?
Spot-on observation, BTW. It’s not the loaf of bread which drives the novel; it’s Javert’s psyche…and Valjean’s. Valjean is as much a victim of the times as Javert.
Oh, hoplo-phobia. I read it as hooplaphobia – fear of exaggerated celebration.
Fear of basketballs?
I always thought it must have derived from “hoplite.”
“A hoplite (from ta hopla meaning tool or equipment) was the most common type of heavily armed foot-soldier in ancient Greece from the 7th to 4th centuries BCE, and most ordinary citizens of Greek city-states with sufficient means were expected to equip and make themselves available for the role when necessary.”
A hoplite would have been the building block of an armed and determined populace, fighting together as one. Hoplophobia, then, is simply an occupational necessity for brutal dictators and their wannabes and hangers-on.