Friday Ephemera
Female wrestler uses thighs and buttocks to impressive effect. || Mishap of note. || Today’s word is placebo. || Our betters gather. || Vacuum, baby. || One-armed violinist. || Mushroom 11 is a game. || Furong Zhen is a place that exists. || This is one of these. || We are tumbling through the heavens. || How many hamsters would you need to power a typical house? || He is, needless to say, a sociology professor. || Cinema cats. || Chocolate kraken. (h/t, Julia) || Autonomous chairs. || Niche humour. (h/t, Ben) || Oh Waitrose, never change. (h/t, Damian) || Life imitates art. || Add feet to your arse. || “When you domesticate a fox, you don’t make a dog.” || And finally, via Tim, a little project for the weekend.
Re: Female Wrestler
The replay was a nice touch.
“Mushroom 11 is a game.”
“complemented by the ethereal music of electronica legend The Future Sound of London”
I used to be really into them. Mind you, if I’m honest, I think I liked the name more than the actual music.
“Cinema cats.”
And I thought the IMCDB was niche.
Interesting that the friendly foxes shown are typically foxy in color. Belyaev found that breeding for friendliness also produced doglike variety in coloration. Maybe they’ve worked to breed back to foxy colors while keeping the friendliness.
Stephen Budiansky’s “The Truth About Dogs” has quite a bit of material on Belyaev and his foxes.
What did the cat do to end up in jail? It pooped right beside the litter box once too often. 😄😸
(I must say, to be fair to the species, that everybody I know whose cat did that was also forgetful about changing the litter. So maybe the offense is just a voiceless way of saying “Clean the toilet, already!”)
Furong Zhen’s beautiful and all fantasy movies should be filmed there, but imagine the mosquitoes!
We’ve had so much rain this summer that not only are we deep in mosquitoes but today I noticed moss growing on our shed. That NEVER happened before. If you had asked me a year ago what I’d be doing in September 2018, “Spraying vinegar on the shed” would probably not have been the first thing that came to my mind.
Vacuum, baby.
The original image appears to have been yanked at some point, but the commentary hints at a possibility.
Our betters gather.
A first read got me Our bettors gather., and I wondered what was being bet upon . . .
He is, needless to say, a sociology professor.
Oh, he was just being disarming . . .
Hal: 😄
Our betters gather.
Wow. Today’s word is ‘cult’.
Morning, all.
Today’s word is ‘cult’.
It starts off merely pathetic, but the applause makes it creepy.
And the propeller hats were just the icing on the cake.
The replay was a nice touch.
She manages over two per second. That’s not to be sniffed at.
Today’s word is ‘cult’.
Tim Newman has more.
Hardcore weather graphics.
Via Damian.
New feminist outrage detected:
Again: so empowered, yet oppressed by everything.
I bought a 6 Plus precisely because I wanted a bigger screen. Cam’t say I ever found it too big or awkward to handle. Or maybe I just have unfeminine hands?
[ Writes down “Julia has big, manly hands.” ]
Julia’s phone is sexist.
Heh. I won’t buy large phones because they don’t fit in my pockets. Especially now trousers are tending towards tight.
Women, who often use handbags, can have larger ones because of that.
In my view large phones are discriminatory against men. Or at least the sort of man who isn’t prepared to carry his phone in a bag or his hand all day. Actual men, then.
Julia’s phone is sexist.
It’s remarkable how effortlessly Ms Criado Perez and her peers will shift from claims of female omnicompetence and denunciations of any acknowledgement of sex differences, to saying, “I have tiny, girlish hands and can’t operate a phone without injuring myself.”
Wow. Today’s word is ‘cult’.
https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1040135114951290880
Today’s word is ‘cult’.
I can’t help thinking that these people should consider directing their religious urges towards something more appropriate, and less obnoxious, than leftist politics.
We just had diversity training where I work, because there have been (person looks around, voice drops to a whisper) “incidents.” Oh, I hadn’t heard (there are hundreds of employees). So what happened? Person squirms and whispers “Oh, just incidents. YOU know.” (If I knew would I be asking?). So was anyone hurt? I hope not. “No, just [squirm] incidents. People were [looking around] you know [even lower whisper] uncomfortable.”
In my opinion this whole thing is designed to enrich consultants and to make employees in America even more fearful and submissive than they already are [for good reason, I might add]. And not just the employees. You may be sure the big boss has “encourages diversity” somewhere in her job description. By interrupting the busy season for that training she has proved to HER boss that she does indeed encourage diversity.
The diversity in my dept. are perfectly nice folks and we like them fine. What annoys us is mgmt harping on the issue, or any other issue for that matter.
While we’re on the subject of Stupidity At Work, every time we get a new person in one of the top 3-4 slots , yet another meeting is called to “introduce” her, and at such a meeting she tells us her entire life history—age, college, hobbies, number and names of kids, blah blah blah. It happens so consistently than I suspect this also is in a queen bee’s job description, but can’t figure out why the uppity-upper-ups would want to make her do this.
I’ve encountered handguns where reaching the trigger was an uncomfortable stretch, but have not yet had any such problem with smartphones.
Caroline Criado-Perez is so brave. I hope they upgrade that OBE to a CBE soon.
We are tumbling through the heavens.
That’s beautiful.
Heh. I won’t buy large phones because they don’t fit in my pockets.
If only there was a solution…
Wow. Today’s word is ‘cult’.
I wish I could take credit for originally pointing out that the whole meeting looked like a bad parody.
That’s beautiful.
Yes. The light on the snow is quite surreal, more like a painting.
A dog on a motorbike chasing a cat. The wonderful world of computer animation.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6167729/This-Morning-Mother-lifts-tin-beans-jar-Marmite-vagina.html
Just give him your stuff and pay all of his bills. Because he’s so fabulous.
@ Mssrs Draws and Muldoon
“In my view large phones are discriminatory against men. Or at least the sort of man who isn’t prepared to carry his phone in a bag or his hand all day. ”
I just ditched a smart phone in favour of a new Nokia 8810. It’s glorious.
I just ditched a smart phone in favour of a new Nokia 8810.
Blackberry Classic for when you need minimal “smart” functions like e-mail and don’t want to drag a proper computer. Fits in a shirt pocket.
If only there was a solution…
I’m surrounded by Luddites and savages.
[ Strokes 6.2” super-AMOLED display. ]
Heck with him, give ME all your money. You can keep your stuff, I have too much of my own.
[Strokes 6.2” super-AMOLED display.]
[Forwards Blackberry to RAZR, slips latter into jacket ticket pocket, actually makes phone calls on phone]
actually makes phone calls on phone
Madness.
And what have you done to upset the spam filter? She’s mad at you.
Am I the only one that thinks the dancing office chair ‘art’ installation is a hoax? Because I’m seeing a lot of artifacts pointing to stop-motion photography, and the necessary batteries, motors, cables, sensors, etc. to make these things ‘dance’ are completely missing.
Anybody in the area that can actually SEE this in person?
Until very recently Farnsworth I had a smaller phone than that (slightly wider, but much thinner). Less flashy though.
I went to a small smart phone only because I have been travelling extensively and I needed map functions I could see to follow. I also needed a decent enough camera.
The Huawei GT3 does everything I could want and is cheap. It also fits my pockets adequately — I don’t use a case though. I rejected quite a few other phones simply on size.
I was happy using my tiny non-smart phone though.
In my view large phones are discriminatory against men. Or at least the sort of man who isn’t prepared to carry his phone in a bag or his hand all day. Actual men, then.
BDU shirt pocket has worked for me. Of course, the one time I stuck my iPhone in my jeans pocket instead while working on my car, I cracked the screen.
Today’s word is ‘cult’.
Cue Dalrymple.
I was happy using my tiny non-smart phone though.
My beef with “smart” phones is, besides the size, twofold.
First, unless you are a savage luddite like me and unlock the bootloader, root the phone, and upload a custom ROM (I mourn the passing of Cyanogen) that removes all traces of google (other than the Android open source kernel), they are nothing but spyware. Whether that is even possible with an AppleCo thing I don’t know, but I am sure it would require a special adapter.
Second, they are lousy cameras, lousy video recorders, lousy computers, lousy maps, and in the rare instances people use them as phones, the call quality is generally atrocious compared to a just plain phone. Yes, it is less convenient to carry the separate items, but just as one size fits all doesn’t, something that allegedly does everything, won’t.
[ Phone fondling intensifies. ]
BDU shirt pocket has worked for me.
If your BDUs were worn properly, they would have been starched to the point where they were only lightly less rigid than a sheet of carbon fiber, and there would be nothing in the pockets…
If your BDUs were worn properly…
As a civilian I have the right to wear them improperly, i.e. functionally.
David, if you and the phone wish to continue this fondling, please get a room. You are setting a bad example for the pickled “eggs.”
I have the right to wear them improperly…
Well, OK, I guess it was that or Air Force.
Second, they are lousy cameras, lousy video recorders, lousy computers, lousy maps, and in the rare instances people use them as phones, the call quality is generally atrocious compared to a just plain phone.
ISTR we’ve had this conversation before, but they don’t have to be best in breed at everything. They just have to be good enough. Very, very few people have the technical proficiency with photography to make use of any camera more sophisticated than what’s in a midrange smartphone. As for computers – I can do more with my 2017-vintage Samsung A5 than with the first five or so computers I owned.
Call quality is really more a function of your local cell provider. I get orders of magnitude better quality from VOIP calls, even over my phone’s packet radio, than the cell radio.
Marginally on topic: I carried the same flip phone for 12 years. I only recently got rid of it because the battery would no longer hold a charge and I coudn’t replace it. Bought an older iPhone model for a song and immediately deleted all apps, set the settings to avoid sending data anywhere, and prayed for the best.
Some years back, I had a client who asked for my cell number “in case I need it.” I refused. “Why,” he asked? My answer:
“Because I don’t want to talk to you outside my office.”
The bugger was too flummoxed to fire me.
What kind of pervert uses a phone to *call* people?
You might think the maps aren’t good, but are you suggesting paper ones? I’ve travelled to places that I could never have in the past — where would I have got paper maps of minor Bulgarian towns from? And the cost, even in France I used to spend a minor fortune for visiting small towns.
And I don’t take photos. I take snaps. Better quality would be wasted.
…I guess it was that or Air Force.
An organization that considers frick an acceptable substitute for the word fuck? Come on, man. I grew up in New Jersey.
…but they don’t have to be best in breed at everything.
True, unfortunately, they are among the worst of breed at everything, and have brought us various curses such as Instagram “filters”.
As for computers – I can do more with my 2017-vintage Samsung A5 than with the first five or so computers I owned.
Granted, you don’t have to feed punch cards into a phone, but OTOH, you can’t do anything more serious than email on the things.
…but are you suggesting paper ones?
Yep, you can write on them, trace them, copy them, draw routes on them, you can show friends where you have been, hang them on your walls, you can look at one part without losing another, they never run out of batteries, they never record where you have been and send it back to the google/Appleco mothership, and you NATO members can get them that cover the entire world from your friendly local government printing offices – or from the local gas station equivalents which also gives you the chance to learn snips of foreign alphabets and languages.
Telephones could increase to be the new boombox.
Like a whole booth, but personalized with grafitti and such.
With goldfish.
Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A cockatiel wants to say hello…
https://m.imgur.com/t/aww/4XpZfxF
David,
Please tell Ms. Spam Filter that phat means good, and that I was not body shaming her, and she needn’t keep holding comments in durance vile.
Thank you very many
Hardcore weather graphics.
Nope. Not even close.
Once, I accidentally recorded over the isobar animation for the 6pm news.
Thirty years later and I still remember the reaction of the director upon hearing that particular piece of bad news.
Now that was hardcore.
And graphic.
Galaxy Note 9, because I like to draw.
Rich-bitch worry du jour:
https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/yoga-cultural-appropriation/
Is there really such a thing as traditional African YOGA? Various religions, of course—but YOGA?
I find it odd that an article discussing problems with people who don’t know what they’re doing trying to practice yoga had not one word to say about kundalini. I bet that paragraph was accidentally left off. We know that Everyday Feminism writers are experts on their topics and research diligently, so it can’t be that she didn’t know how dangerous kundalini is.
Rich-bitch worry du jour:
I’ll see your worry, and raise you “non-inclusive” ice cream.
As this is an important tradition, how the Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Kwashiorkor afflicted students have managed to deal with the gross discrimination of not eating ice cream is not discussed.
Hi Piper Paul,
I like to draw too. What does Galaxy Note 9 do?
I haven’t found the toast function yet, but it’s new.
Advanced toast technology!
Granted, you don’t have to feed punch cards into a phone, but OTOH, you can’t do anything more serious than email on the things.
I rather suspect that your definition of “serious” and my definition of “serious” are not in the same ball park. It’s a 2GHz eight-core ARM hand computer with 3 GB of SoC RAM. And it’s a cheap phone. Among other things, I manage an entire back-end cloud infrastructure for a medium sized health-care provider on it. With HIPAA-compliant security.
I like to draw too.
Pogo, as you may have noticed, I am a believer in dedicated tools for specific jobs, so if you are into digital drawing, look into Wacom products and Corel Painter. The Wacom Cintiqs with Painter are slicker than owl crap and even with the cut down $36.99 version of Painter you can do stuff you’ll never be able to do on a phone without ruining your eyes with their mobile version.
Thanks, Farnsworth!
So Tim Newman is in Australia? Well get along to the AFL Finals football tonight at the MCG. You will be welcomed to country of course before the national anthem is performed. I know you want to!
I love how you think I could find paper maps of places like Bulgaria, on the spot and for little money. I can’t help feeling you haven’t spent much time in rural Bulgaria.
A few months back, my wife and I decided to visit some of Northern Cyprus the next day. We’d have needed the town maps of the two towns, plus a map of the country.
Even if we could find them, in Turkish, they’d have taken much of our day and not been free. Our phones did the job beautifully. They also instantly find where you are and what direction you are pointing, a feature few paper maps have.
Weve never been lost even for a minute, which is unlike my previous trips to Europe. We’ve been able to take walks in forests without fear of getting lost too (the compass feature did come into play a couple of times).
I’ve mentioned a couple of times to my wife that we simply could not have done our trip in the past. We’d have been forced into expensive planned tours. We’ve done it at a third the cost as a result (AirBnB, cooking ourselves, public transport).
It translates on the fly (You can’t use paper dictionaries, even if you were mental enough to want to carry them — do you know the alphabet order in Hungarian, because I don’t.)
I needed a battery for my phone. A picture of it off the net to a couple of people and it was done in 15 minutes. I can explain to a taxi driver where I want to go, in Arabic.
They are a marvel of engineering. I don’t expect perfection because it only cost $50 US. It has literally allowed us to travel freely and spontaneously.
(One thing we have noticed is just how pervasive modern phones are. It’s not a rich Western thing. Jordanians love the maps as the local roads don’t have names. Mexicans are glued to them.
They’re one of the first things a person buys if they have money to do so.)
Those Toilets with threatening Aura: Instant Constipation.
“He denies doing anything wrong.” But apparently, the phrase “whiter than white” has “racist undertones.”
Shakespeare could not be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, in Birmingham, they wanted his bike.
And Simon Schama could not be reached for comment.
Those Toilets with threatening Auras
I can’t help thinking there’s a story behind this one.
“do you know the alphabet order in Hungarian”
I seem to recall some sort of phrasebook you can buy…
When “social justice” Mao-lings review the new Spider-Man game, it goes pretty much how you’d expect.
I don’t pay much attention to gaming journalism, but even I’ve noticed that many reviewers now spend more time bitching about the allegedly problematic politics of a game – in this case, a superhero helping the police to catch criminals – than they do telling you about anything you might actually want to know.
Seems like the Australians are awfully culturally insensitive to the Japanese.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-thwarts-japan-bid-to-end-32-year-commercial-whaling-ban
I sometimes look stuff up in Russian. I actually know the alphabet order in Russian. But it’s still a tedious letter by letter puzzle, like when kids first learn.
Having a guidebook beside you seems like it would be easy to scan through the letters in Hungarian. It isn’t.
Hungarian has a letter “d” and a letter “z”. But it also has a letter “dz”, which is not d followed by z, but a separate letter. You mistake a “e” with accent for an e without and you are never going to find your word in a dictionary. The phone usually fixes it for you.
I’ve travelled the non-Latin alphabet world before and after Google Translate and the like. It’s quite a different experience.
I work with a Romanian and tested the voice translation app on my phone with him. It seems to work pretty well, except for that hovercraft full of eels part.
Every time I have a conversation in Spanish, in the back of my mind is the fear that I will goof up and say something like “I would like to marry your lawnmower with Cujo the pickled ‘egg’ officiating.”
They are a marvel of engineering.
Because I’ve nothing better to do*, I’m now using my phone’s camera to translate, in real-time, the comments here into German. The translation is… actually, not bad.
*Nothing that I want to do, that is. Ironing doesn’t count.
I can’t help feeling you haven’t spent much time in rural Bulgaria.
No, not Bulgaria, but in part of a former neighboring country I did learn the basics of the Cyrillic alphabet, how to read signage, and a map I picked up that allegedly came from a commie gas station. I would expect BP is doing better now.
You are not going to convert me, nor I you, but paper still works in places where there is no cell signal, you don’t have a satellite link, and make rural Bulgaria look like midtown Manhattan.
Changing the subject from phone addiction, hatred of soda is class snobbery and fatphobia.
This charming young miss says so.
Completely unrelated, a socialist running for congress displays her humble wardrobe.
Why am I not surprised that Mean Fat Girl has a skirt covered in cats?
On the humble wardrobe’s BB pumps—look more like fuck-me pumps to me. 😄
…[P]aper still works in places where there is no cell signal…
While cell phone navigation apps have their utility, I still use paper maps, especially when I’m out in the weeds. Sadly, navigation with paper maps and a compass is a skill which is fading away. I made sure my kids learned out to do it at a young age when we hiked all over the west.
hatred of soda is class snobbery and fatphobia.
I hadn’t realised that sugary, carbonated drinks are the kind of thing one might hate. I mean, you might not like them, or not drink them very often, but I’m not sure I could generate enough emotional interest to hate them. Strange how everything in their lives has to be comically overrevved and peppered with the word fuck.
Because they’re so really, really serious.
This charming young miss says so.
Oh. Large cartoon cats on her skirt and half-sleeve tatoos.
What a surprise.
and a compass is a skill which is fading away.
I learned and practiced with a compass in Girl Scouts. Unfortunately, contemporary Scouting seems to be more about cookies and social justice than exploring the wilderness.
Sad.
This charming young miss says so.
Little Miss Charm School’s Twitter feed is what you’d imagine. Hyperbolical drama, sneering at “whiteness,” fits of victimhood, economic illiteracy, a preposterous sense of entitlement, and general sourness towards the world. Our self-described “fat activist” tells us, more than once, that she loves herself. And yet her own written outbursts suggest something quite different.
Hey, to love yourself is the greatest love of all. ‘Tis true. I heard it in a song once. Also in regards to music, I call dibs on Perpetrating Stigma as a band name.
I call dibs on Perpetrating Stigma as a band name.
Regarding this ultimate mega-band we’re one day going to form, can anyone here actually play anything? Or are we going to rely on haircuts and stage presence?
Little Miss Charm School’s Twitter feed is what you’d imagine.
Speaking of which, why would you take a selfie in a latrine ?
Because she’s as intelligent as she is charming?
Because she’s as intelligent as she is charming?
In Springfield, Missouri, there is the Hotel Vandivort, which inadvertently made public latrines with near perfect studio lighting and a nicely painted wall, and which has pretty much ceased to be a latrine for all the selfies, but to shoot yourself in front of a bank of stalls does take a special kind of stupid, lack of awareness, or some combination thereof.
Or are we going to rely on haircuts and stage presence?
We have that in spades, and with things like “Band in a Box” and autotune,that is all that is needed and has already made fortunes for today’s popstars.
’I don’t pay much attention to gaming journalism..’
Wise. Most of the biggies have gone full SJW. Independent reviewers on YouTube is the way to go.
Things go off the rails after Number 1.
Granted, I am no expert on makeup, but is that really a consideration with orange hair, blue lips, or iridescent magenta or indigo eyeshadow applied a la raccoon ?
If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me and I’ll coax them out of the spam filter.
“I don’t pay much attention to gaming journalism, but even I’ve noticed that many reviewers now spend more time bitching about the allegedly problematic politics of a game – in this case, a superhero helping the police to catch criminals – than they do telling you about anything you might actually want to know.”
I could almost have guessed which sites it was without looking (Deadspin? The sports site?). I’m actually beginning to think Kotaku is a deliberate parody.
“Or are we going to rely on haircuts and stage presence?”
Awesome album titles.
“Independent reviewers on YouTube is the way to go.”
Until the EU’s ban kicks in.
Regarding this ultimate mega-band we’re one day going to form, can anyone here actually play anything? Or are we going to rely on haircuts and stage presence?
I’m OK on keyboards – I’m quite adept on a piano, but I suck on an organ.
Badum-tisshhh.
[ Summons henchlesbians, who drag Captain Nemo’s table over towards the gents’. ]
It was worth it.
@Farnsworth
Something to add to Springfield’s tourist brochure, along with cashew chicken and the Bass Pro mother ship.
I don’t pay much attention to gaming journalism
The most interesting thing about GamerGate is how trivial and silly the whole thing was, and ultimately inconsequential.