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.