You’re Itching For One

Also, via Chris Snowdon, some vintage courtroom news:

Members of the public were cleared from the courtroom, amid fears that Scott, who has been known to bite open her own veins and spray blood at people, presented “a clear danger.”

And no, that isn’t the strangest bit.

You should be proud. Evidently, you are the only one (with an assist from Worstell, obvs) who could entice me to read an entire article about wombat crap. Well done.

Letters are scary. Capital ones doubly so. Especially if you’re a journalism student…
https://www.theweek.co.uk/97895/uni-staff-told-capital-letters-could-frighten-anxious-students
https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/19/lecturers-banned-from-using-capital-letters-to-avoid-upsetting-students-8154365/
Leeds University responds:
https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/education/leeds-trinity-university-responds-to-ban-on-capital-letters-1-9453332

No, no, that is far too pedestrian, it is a “lunch hack”…
Wait until he discovers that one can make salads for healthy options. His mind will be blown. In part 3, he discovers that heretofore unused room in his home called “the kitchen.”

Oops!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6409331/Forklift-driver-causes-entire-warehouse-fall-like-dominoes-nudges-shelving-unit.html

Xas7wcrg9e: This isn’t Leeds University (an excellent institution founded in the 1870s), but Leeds Trinity, formerly a couple of teacher training colleges given university status six years ago. It’s currently ranked 108th out of 131 British universities; one can get a place in most of the courses with an average of three Grade Cs at A level(for US readers, that would be a GPA of about 3 or slightly below). It’s also, according to that fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the university at which “students…held the longest running sit-in in the country as a protest against the national increase in tuition fees.”
They specialise in courses such as Applied Social Science; Exercise, Health and Nutrition; Digital Media (Gaming); and Education Studies. No STEM subjects at all.
On the other hand, it does have the second highest student satisfaction rate in Yorkshire, which is presumably because the lecturers are careful not to damage their (not terribly bright) students’ self-esteem by telling them what to do or not to do.

capital letters
They’re not even chagrined when called out on this nonsense! “We follow national best practice teaching guidelines and the memo cited in the press is guidance from a course leader to academic staff, sharing best practice from the latest teaching research to inform their teaching.”
I sincerely hope that somebody is following up with these geniuses to learn more about this “latest teaching research” which is informing the new policy.
To bring it all together: I’m now imagining Leeds Trinity offering a course in sandwich-making. On the one hand, it’s a useful skill that’s easy enough to acquire, even considering the quality of students and teachers there. On the other hand, one knows damned well that they wouldn’t make it through the first session without the usual suspects hijacking the class and turning it into a demonstration against the patriarchy of sandwiches and its manifestation by means of popular sandwich ingredients embodying the violence of toxic masculinity. On the gripping hand, the students will get full course credit either way.

some vintage courtroom news
‘At the time, prison staff were complying with her requests that she should be known as “Mighty Almighty”, or “Obi Wan Kenobi”…’

Who’s a good boy ?
No, not you, Spot, you racist bastard !

What must I do to earn a pickled egg?
Alas, we’re out of eggs. There was a heated exchange between our Movnrovian supplier and a health and safety inspector, whose whereabouts, coincidentally, are now unknown following a mysterious electrical fire.
Can I tempt you with some hump fat?

It’s good for the… skin.

as anyone really tried the hump fat?
Seize the day.

Seize the day
Yes. I’ll tell my friend.
re the forklift accident, looks like bad engineering/design/construction more than a forklift operator’s mistake. From what little I can find it’a apparently from 2016 or so. Some comments I’ve seen say it was at an Amazon warehouse, possibly in Canada, though I see other non-US countries mentioned as well. What’s interesting is that a Google Advanced Search for Amazon warehouse forklift accident on the WaPo site only returns five items. Items which only seem to refer to Amazon in the South American river sense, not the company. Yet do a general google search for Amazon warehouse forklift accident and you will see a number of stories of deaths and such. I also see a good number of (possibly) former Amazon workers commenting that such problems are not uncommon. What’s also interesting is how the WaPo is all over that manager who refused to serve black people for no apparent reason. Democracy dies in darkness. Or so I’ve heard. Say, doesn’t the guy who owns Amazon also own the WaPo? Hmm…

A pattern is emerging here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6405081/Transgender-murderer-serving-life-sentence-granted-gender-reassignment-surgery-NHS.html

Yes, but a daily application takes years off a gentleman’s scrotum.
Quite.
I think I recall an anecdote mentioned by Lyn MacDonald’s book Somme in which a British colonel was leading his regiment down a road singing the song, “Do Your Balls Hang Low.” Unfortunately, Lord Kitchener–pronounced with a reverential “Harumph” following his name– happened along behind the column and was not amused. As result, he communicated with Allenby in Palestine for advice, and from then on, scrotum health was of paramount concern in the British Army.

Fascinating. Hump Fat apparently contains Conjugated Linoleic Acid, so it’s quite a grammatical product.
Please, sir, may I have another cocktail for remembering to close the italic tag?

I would have thought a Camel-Hump-on-the-Beach was more appropriate.

…just one big humble brag.
If it happened at all. Owning multiple electronic devices is not particularly unusual. Further, if the conversation took place in a security line, who spends his time examining other people’s stuff instead of making sure one’ on pile is organized for easy retrieval once one gets through? Finally, who (other than busy-body Leftists) spends his time making snarky remarks to random people he meets? At worst, it was someone trying to make benign conversation while standing in line for a security check and not a metaphor for universal toxic masculinity.

The lady in question’s LinkedIn page.
For someone who graduated this spring and has literally never had a real job (“Insight Data Science” is a post-grad training program to help people with theoretical degrees learn how to perform real-world jobs) she seems awfully snippy.
Oh, and her “artificial intelligence work” is a “tunable movie recommender”.
What was it David called these people? “Chippy mediocrities”?

This is a question apropos of nothing usually seen here, but one for y’all over in the UK –
Here in the US&A, largely owing to the lack of originality of the writers and the fact that they think the only cities in the US are LA or NYC (honorable mention, Chicago), most cop shows take place in those cities. Of course they are crime ridden, so that helps, but I digress – “Des Moines Vice”, just doesn’t have a lot of pizzazz.
Now it may be bias based on what is available over here, but it seems most of the England UK cop shows are set somewhere in Yorkshire, usually North Yorkshire. Is there any particular reason ? I don’t see Leeds or Sheffield being perceived as the only cities in England. Are Yorkshiremen more inherently criminal than the people in Kent ? Do they get a tax break for setting stories there ?
Just curious, from my sample, it makes East St. Louis look like a rest home.

It’s more that those cities are where the TV/movie industry is…
Which is why Breaking Bad was set in Albuquerque. They had grants / subsidies to shoot in New Mexico, and chose Albuquerque, intending that it would stand in for LA. They quickly realized that it was going to be a major pain to either use CGI to erase the Sandia Mountains, or arrange every shot to avoid them catching them in view; they threw in the towel and revised the script to change the setting.

The politicians and Hollywood go through a thing every so often to fool the rubes in Flyoverlandia into thinking they’re gonna become Hollywood East. I’ve seen Central Florida (because Disney and Universal of course) and Pittsburgh and yes Georgia (basically every place I’ve lived or get considerable news from…wife and I were extras in a movie in GA). I pretty much figured damn near every locale in the US and Canada has had their pockets picked by Hollywood under the premise that the studios are looking for a low wage, low cost alternative to CA for the “long term” and thus sucker the stupid voters into thinking their short term subsidy will pay off in the long run. Because nobody questions what makes themselves so special. Schmucks.

Are Yorkshiremen more inherently criminal than the people in Kent?
They are more inherently criminal than La Cosa Nostra, and cheap with it.

… they’re not as monolithic a setting as all that…
Given the size of the US&A and the number and variety of the big cities, they certainly are monolithic, especially given how a successful series was shot in as boring a town as Albuquerque.
Regardless, I am more and more disinterested in the lazy and unoriginal LA dreck which is why I find myself puzzling over the fine folks of Yorkshire.

There is, or used to be, a big belly dance festival in Albuquerque called Shake and Bake. I always wanted to go but never managed.

on LinkedIn, under “experience,” she lists her Instagram account.
Apparently that’s because part of her personal brand as “AstronomerAmber” is mentoring women and girls in astronomy and astrophysics. I can’t help but feel that if I were a young girl interested in the sciences I’d want a mentor who had actually done something in the field.
I know, I know. I’ll report for regrooving.

…they think the only cities in the US are LA or NYC (honorable mention, Chicago), most cop shows take place in those cities.

Of the American cop (or coppish) shows I watch with any regularity, only about half fit that.
LA/NYC:
Brooklyn 99, Castle, NCIS: LA
DC based, but travel:
Bones, NCIS
Sacramento based but travels state wide:
The Mentalist
I occasionally watch the new 5-0 of its on at something else I’ve watched and can’t be bothered to change
Maybe British FTA TV buyers filter out a lot of the clones, or maybe I just haven’t been grabbed by any of the other LANY shows.

Speaking of crime and drama:

Over the weekend a couple of readers alerted me to a video that was doing the rounds on Twitter of what looked like a couple of diminutive British police officers patrolling downtown Mogadishu. Inevitably for that part of the world, a bunch of hooded thugs gave the two – a man and a woman – a good thrashing. I later learned that the incident happened in London… Oddly, forty-three hours of diversity training followed by a week-long seminar on unconscious racial biases didn’t adequately prepare these two officers for encountering actual diversity and vibrancy on the streets…
The police have spent years elevating themselves to special status whereby only they can have weapons, only they can protect you, only they can do X, Y, and Z and ordinary people “must not take the law into their hands” but instead wait for Plod to show up three days later. Yet here they are whining that they don’t want to come to work if the public won’t join them in hand-to-hand combat with a bunch of feral thugs the very same police forces won’t let us criticise.

Tim Newman on the ongoing decline of British policing.
See also Natalie Solent, here.

…a town with a decent climate, fine Tex-Mex cuisine and multiple metric butt-loads of outdoor stuff to do within a two-hour radius–(a little longer for better skiing)…
So basically Jackson, Tennessee, but with a AA ball team with a cooler name…

Doc Martin was filmed in Des Moines, Iowa for the tax breaks.

Jackson, Tennessee has a AA baseball team: The Jackson Generals.

I believe Farnsworth references the AAA, not AA, Albuquerque Isotopes. Cooler is a bit problematic, in a baseball sense anyway.

but Albuquerque has The Isotopes
Yeah, but what’s their half-life?

Some people have a rather strange approach to impending family gatherings. As if the people who’ve travelled to be with them should be treated with almost a default contempt, and as if the whole thing were just a vehicle for their own adolescent hectoring.

Seems just a little sad.

In her case, it might just be lots of drugs, insanity, and/or an IQ slightly lower than a pickle.
And it’s practically an annual Twitter ritual – people declaring their plans to turn up for dinner and then promptly start arguments about politics, especially with any known or suspected conservatives, thereby revealing their own staggering brilliance.
Ms Berg is supposedly a grown woman and yet, like so many of her peers, her attitude seems juvenile. Apparently, before attending a Thanksgiving family meal, you should psyche yourself up to argue about intersectional politics and then school relatives in the latest woke pieties. Because, goddammit, they all need correcting by someone who imagines herself much smarter than they are.
It’s as if these vain, unpleasant people never get over their first year of university, when they felt a need to inform their relatives that they now, quite suddenly, know absolutely everything. If nothing else, it seems rather at odds with the spirit of the holiday.

but with a moral code based primarily on feminine principles.
Oh goody, there’s going to be a cat fight.

Nothing says baseball like a small, yappy Mexican dog.
True, though they’ll take a bite out of the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, but would be battered by the Montgomery Biscuits.

Gaah! You’ve found the motherload of cringe.
You can’t say I didn’t warn you…

Abandon all hope Ye who enter here.
These “Good Men” are somewhat reminiscent of Fred Saberhagen’s Goodlife.

David until you get the pickled egg situation sorted out I’d like to suggest a ballsy alternative:

The humble prairie oyster.

Ideal for dipping.
In Camel Hump Fat. Or frying in CHF. Then sprinkled with some bacon bits and served over arugula. With a ranch dressing. Or so I’ve heard…
I never cease to be amazed at what these ninnies find to take the vapors over.
As I (sort of) said on the other thread, we reward them for getting the vapors. The louder and more obstinate that they are, the more we concede. Ostensibly to shut them up, but it really doesn’t work that way. It really shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Except maybe to the “grownups in the room”.

Can’t speak for anyone else;
She went to Jared.

As if the people who’ve travelled to be with them should be treated with almost a default contempt, and as if the whole thing were just a vehicle for their own adolescent hectoring.
The DPRK News Service Responds…

“Re-becoming human”
In a saner world, these malevolent little clowns would be chased out of town with nail guns.

Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Yanks! 🦃

From Farnsworth’s link:
…it is essential that we focus on changing the voice of The Patriarchy that is whispering in our sons’ ears…
Here is what we need to encourage:
Empathy
Caring
Consensus
Dreaming
Openness
Sense of Community
Nurturing
Equality
Appreciation of Beauty
Importance of Self-Expression
Living Sustainably
Caring for Mother Earth
Respect for Women
A Strong Sense of Self Worth
And of course we still expect them to be the ones who collect our garbage, mine our resources, log our forests, build our roads and bridges, drive our long haul trucks, fight our wars, extract our oil, fix our sewers etc. All for the privilege of experiencing a 300% to 400% greater likelihood than the matriarchy of being killed, or maimed on the job.

@ R.Sherman
Kipling, my mother’s favourite author.
“East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”
I can’t tell you how often those words fell from my mother’s lips.
They informed my being.

It’s as if these vain, unpleasant people never get over their first year of university, when they felt a need to inform their relatives that they now, quite suddenly, know absolutely everything.
https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1065072417112911872
Heh

Reminds me of my misspent youth as an evangelical Christian, and the youth groups I went to that told us how to talk to our non-Christian friends and relatives about Jesus. Evangelical lefties are just as annoying and self-righteous as teenage born-agains, and if anything, less likely to be embarrassed about it.

For a nice break from our home grown socialists trying to ruin the meal, Thanksgiving dinner with North Koreans*.
*(It wasn’t real socialism…)

#spaceshipthings
https://twitter.com/egeusz/status/1065353068454260737