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.
…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.