Friday Ephemera
A beginner’s guide to snake removal. || Just a little bit of give. || Bees want your tears. || Cobalt tarantula. || Lucille Ball demonstrates the Sonovox, 1939. || Backfire is a game. || Thug life. || Some very Guardian thinking. || Ping, pong and spin. || Step aside, puny humans. (h/t, Dicentra) || Opal uncovered. || When it’s too much effort to fold paper and throw. || “To prove their mousy worth, they’ll overthrow the Earth.” || Evaporating horse sweat. || Isle of Wight attraction of note. || Using wood. || Why cats don’t rule the Earth. || Always respect the media. || You don’t often see them. || Meanwhile, in sporting news. || Not cake. || And finally, via Damian, I’m not entirely sure what the protocol here is.
Not really, because you have to check the date of the publication in that case. It’s one of those things that was a good idea at the time, but has dated badly as we move away from 1950. Now it’s inertia that keeps it in place.
OK, again…and this is my fault for not providing the original context of what sent me to BP…here, let me quote exactly what I was reading in regard to THE HISTORY OF WALES…ahem…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales?wprov=sfti1
Now in this context, of what use is “Before Present” relative to “years ago”? But then again rereading your last post, maybe we kind of agree here. Back in the 1970’s, as a teenager, the terms “modern” and “contemporary” as so applied seemed stupidly problematic. But I was just a dumb kid and these terms were presented to me by the “adults in the room” (admittedly my new favorite whipping boys) so I played along and STFU about it. I do agree with you that IF I am reading Islamic history by an Islamic scholar, whether he is a good jihadi or a fallen bacon eater, I need to understand that the year zero is 762 or wtf it is, I really don’t want to pretend to care enough to look it up. But what sent me down this rabbit hole was that I was reading in a western language article about the prehistoric HISTORY OF WALES and thus BP +/-69 years in the context of a range of 10,000 to 12,000 years really doesn’t f’n matter. Now if perhaps “before present” was itself being used colloquially as a synonym to “years ago” and thus not been linked to this whole other article, I never would have noticed the whole BP thing to begin with. But sadly, stupidly, I clicked there. 1950. Just dumb. But then again, I think that we kind of agree it’s just that we don’t.
“have you consulted your plant consultant ?”
I’ve recently been reading a collection of AA Milne’s columns during the Edwardian era for, I think, the Morning Post. One of them is about caring for a bonsai tree he was given as a present. Of course, this being the Post, he instructed his maid to actually do the work, but he gave her the little card of instructions which came with it. The only one I can remember off the top of my head is, “On no account attempt to feed it buns”.
I don’t know much about houseplants myself, but I hope young Mr. Cutsumpas is aware of this essential caveat.
“I like RSS.”
Me too. Including YouTube channels and our esteemed host’s, I have about 100 feeds in my reader. I was genuinely surprised a few years back when I was told it had fallen out of favour. It works. There’s nothing wrong with it. Why drop it?
“It stopped “Modern Art” at 1980, and anything after was “Contemporary”.”
I thought Contemporary was what we had in Britain in the ’50s instead of all that foreign Modern muck. It’s all so confusing.
Now in this context, of what use is “Before Present” relative to “years ago”?
I hate to be pedantic, but 1) very old things are generally dated using radio carbon dating, and 2) the explosion of multiple nuclear warheads since 1945 has permanently screwed up our ability to date artifacts that originate after that time using radiocarbon dating.
That’s why the term “BP” was invented, and that’s why they chose 1950, and it’s why it’s never going to change unless you can figure out a way to unexplode a nuclear device.
Sam Duncan, I believe one of the main issues is discoverability. Chrome, I believe, has never had first-class support for RSS – no way to detect it is in the LINK tag inside a page header, and no clean view of it if a user stumbles across RSS code. Firefox removed their RSS icon in the URL bar years ago after a misinterpreted UI study, and IExplorer just doesn’t have the reach. Users just don’t know it’s there, and so they don’t use it. Without users, companies don’t see the need to support it. It’s lucky WordPress supports it natively, as that gets you perhaps 1/3 of the internet instantly supporting web feeds by default – even if they don’t recognise it themselves.
Hence, why I created You Need Feeds. Of course, I’m actually struggling to get people to visit You Need Feeds in the first place. Bootstrapping is tough! I know I’ve put David on the starter packs list, but I’m pretty sure he’s actually getting a LOT more traffic than me.
I haven’t tried a promotional effort on Reddit yet though, or paid ads, so there’s still some remaining options for growth…
I vacillate between amusement and annoyance that Penny seems convinced that a man doesn’t marry because of love, but out of a dark, nefarious motive of oppression!
You can read Laurie’s threads and feel you’ve lost several pints of blood. I’m still pondering her claim that “more and more women” are “saying ‘fuck it’” and choosing a life of captious, supposedly liberated singledom, and that this is “terrifying to patriarchy.” As if “patriarchy” were some monstrous, grinning thing, crouched in a shadowy corner.
It’s a claim she’s mouthed before, at length, and no more convincingly.
I vacillate between amusement and annoyance that Penny seems convinced that a man doesn’t marry because of love, but out of a dark, nefarious motive of oppression!
As usual, Laurie frames coupledom and marriage as little more than a power struggle between “patriarchy” and noble, put-upon womanhood. Which suggests she’s been doing it wrong. Or as she puts it this time, “The new trophy wife… [is] the most brilliant, accomplished woman you can get to give up her career to have your kids.” The children being only his, apparently. Not theirs, his.
An odd wording, I think.
But this is someone who struggles to comprehend that the disintegration of the family structure, a disintegration that she champions – “fuck marriage, fuck monogamy” – is likely to result in an unsustainable welfare bill, and social and economic ruin. To say nothing of the human cost, not least for women and young girls. The very demographic that Laurie pretends to care about.
I’m still pondering her claim that “more and more women” are “saying ‘fuck it’” and choosing a life of captious, supposedly liberated singledom, and that this is “terrifying to patriarchy.” As if “patriarchy” were some monstrous, grinning thing, crouched in a shadowy corner.
The Patriarchy, as a hedge, has bought shares in catfood companies.
With all that fucking of civilization, has Penny ever enumerated what emerges? What are the top ten benefits revealed by her revolutionary philosophy? Five?
Given progressivism’s core, which is leftism’s signature, remodeling force inexorably applied against a target civilization for both their righteousness and good, what is that good?
Or is that impertinently obtuse? I suppose it’s possible unappreciative normals lack a self-evidence gene.
what is that good?
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating:
You have to wonder – what would have happened if Laurie’s own parents had pursued a similar vision – scorning monogamous commitment and family stability as a thankless chore, an inconvenience best avoided?
It seems pretty obvious that Laurie’s own status and career would have been much less likely without the very same bourgeois values she claims to despise and urges others to reject. If instead of a stable, rather comfortable middle-class upbringing she’d been raised in keeping with her own professed values – say, by a welfare-dependent single parent with multiple transient partners and no stability or commitment – I somehow doubt she’d have been able to spend time at Wadham College finding herself politically and playing “riot girl.” And I doubt she’d now be able to flit around the world while tweeting about how oppressed she is.
And does she believe that her parents’ marriage and relationship were merely “a systemic lie designed to manipulate women into lifelong emotional labour”? If so, did she tell them?
Take That Universe!
I’m just glad it wasn’t Take That Universe.
It’s true. We’re all terrified.
Ten: What’s it all about, if not the betterment of civilization?
Paraphrasing David: I wonder that would have happened if society scorned monogamous commitment and family stability as a thankless chore, an inconvenience best avoided. If instead of a stable, rather comfortable middle-class upbringing kids were raised in keeping with progressivism’s professed values, say, by a welfare-dependent single parent with multiple transient partners and no stability or commitment.
In other words, progressivism has, in the space of just a few decades, corrupted its own values and taken the profoundly illogical view that in order to fix something you have to ruin it – the social safety net has gone from crutch to cudgel, and with it we’ll have, by force, the moral virtue of a “justice” meted out by reducing people to a state and condition that only that justice can redeem.
And this goodness – this virtue which shall replace all virtue gone before – delivers benefits that cannot be enumerated. They can’t be identified and listed, say, as a standard of living or a spiritual state or a cultural resurrection or a regained trajectory or any betterment or improvement of the like, because progressive goodness is axiomatic, this bleating against a civility and order as insultingly traditional and morally defective as apparently the more realized of them are.
How this is determined is not stated, nor how the replacement will better the status quo. But collective force is the way progressive assumptions about humanity shall be administered because that is the way of goodness. Force.
Well. Then progressives seem incapable of a degree of personal and social optimism sufficient to recognize their dystopian phantoms – which to them everything civil must be – as the fevered fiction of a delusion. To them is it really all life as passive victims of heinous, imaginary villains? Does that explain the proud-and-loud activism; the self-styled courage and truth-speaking? The “standing for” and the “standing together” and “taking back” and all that?
None of this is to discount real problems, which are deep and broad, but since the progressive misfit can’t itemize those either, we find ourselves in a situation where the eminent engineers of social justice at civilizations expense take as granted that none of the real issues and none of the real benefits of revolution are so much as visible. That’s an odd philosophy. Historically it’s been a dangerous one too, this aspect of a goodness so wonderful that force has been its sole delivery mechanism. We shall overcome indeed.
What is the world to the progressive misfit, anyway, that it needs all this holy remodeling against its will? Or is the progressive core just simple clinical dysfunction; because with all the projection, gaslighting, and theft it shares a load of the apparent symptoms thereof.
A helpful Dictionary for those of us puzzled by modern usage.
And does she believe that her parents’ marriage and relationship were merely “a systemic lie designed to manipulate women into lifelong emotional labour”?
Penny likes to extrapolate from the thinnest of observations. Her “new trophy wife” rant isn’t even hers, it’s a story brought to her second hand that causes her latest AHA!! Men Bad!! scribble.
All healthy personal relationships are ones of negotiation in good faith. Marriage adds commitment to a relationship. Penny appears to lack the qualities for any personal relationship, let alone marriage, so wishes to denigrate it whenever she can.
She is the little kid at a classmate’s birthday party, jealous the celebration isn’t about her, so she finds a way to destroy the birthday cake.
A helpful Dictionary for those of us puzzled by modern usage.
Heh.
She is the little kid at a classmate’s birthday party, jealous the celebration isn’t about her, so she finds a way to destroy the birthday cake.
Which reminded me of Laurie’s advocacy of “spite” as a guiding progressive principal, as if this were a new and novel development, both on her part and more widely.
Emoji Snake.
You heard me.
via Emil Kirkegaard
legitimately terrifying to patriarchy.
It’s true. We’re all terrified.
We should be. “Patriarchy” means “rule by fathers”. If men can no longer be confident of our paternal status because women won’t commit to legally binding, sexually exclusive relationships with us, if maternity remains naturally obvious but paternity becomes a matter of opinion, then men will no longer have any significant emotional stake in the futures of our own communities or nations. Without that long-term investment, men will be less likely to take on the dirty, boring, dangerous jobs necessary to maintain and protect the civilizations bequeathed to us by our fathers and fore-fathers.
I leave extrapolating the likely consequences as an exercise for the reader.
I would not consider that a “bad” Brexit result:
https://twitter.com/timeshighered/status/1099581446874894336
Interesting.
Another example of being conservative rather than merely right wing:
Kansas lawmaker’s daughter condemned his sponsorship of anti-LGBT bill. He apologized
Paper dart folder and thrower? Heath Robinson lives!!!!!
UNEXPECTEDLY.
The Zman:
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=16618
Of course, leftism has always been about dysfunction overthrowing order. To survive normals need a strategy and a tactic. Is there one?
UNEXPECTEDLY.
No-one could have foreseen this. Ever.
It sure came as a surprise to me.! 😉
David, can we have a new topic? This one’s getting awfully long. It’s been at least 12 hours, so SOME stupid thing must have happened since then.
Or, in non-stupid things, Wallace’s giant bee has been (re)discovered. Check out the pincers on that critter!
I feel the same way about transgender athletes as I felt in the 1980’s about East German athletes other than Katrin Krabbe and Katarina Witt. I have an aesthetic objection, and I change the channel.
I don’t have any strong feelings about fairness, competitiveness, or the pursuit of excellence in women’s athletics. I’m interested in women’s athletics only to the extent that it shows off the femininity of feminine women. I believe some athletes, naming no more names, are more feminine than others, and some sports (tennis and volleyball, for example) are more feminine than others (soccer, for example).
Obviously I’m a creepy man and a terrible human being, and my opinion doesn’t matter, as a superficial fan who’s quick to change the channel. The important issue is that girls who are thinking of taking up sport also have strong feelings about wanting to be feminine. I suspect that the collapse of the Eastern Bloc drug programs was good for the takeup of sport among young girls, because there were fewer Rosa Klebb types to be seen on Olympic podiums.
Being a tomboy and excelling in traditionally male arenas has high status at the moment for girls, and it’s something that parents like to brag about because it shows them to be enlightened and committed to female empowerment. Dalrock suggests that transgender acceptance may change the stakes of this cultural game – the tomboy wants to beat the boys at their own game, but doesn’t want to be mistaken for a boy. So if transgenders become a thing, tomboyish girls may retreat to conventional femininity.
Laurie Penny’s latest outrage rather seems to omit the possibility that women who give up their high-paying job and raise children while their husband continues earning money might actually *want* to do that.
a woman who works tech told me this two years ago and it still haunts me.
It’s haunting, isn’t it – the fear that someone might want to do something other than be a slave to a nine-to-five job, might want to actually have a family, contra the dictates of the Penny Revolution ™.
So if transgenders become a thing, tomboyish girls may retreat to conventional femininity.
The issue becomes that MTF trans LARPing mimics drag … stereotypical, hyper-feminized hair/makeup/dress.
And as a tomboy in my youth, I never questioned my own girlhood, as it were. The only time I felt “uncomfortable in my skin” is when I grew 7 inches in one year and couldn’t get out of my way.
I always just wanted to have the opportunity to try what interested me and to see what *I* was good at. I was more in competition with myself than any other person, male or female.
Femininity is nothing one “retreats to.” It’s just an aspect, more or less expressed, of every woman.
Oh for pity’s sake, just stop now.
leftism has always been about dysfunction overthrowing order. To survive normals need a strategy and a tactic. Is there one?
Helicopters.
Darleen, that guy in the long black dress reminds me of Mrs. Danvers.
Oh for pity’s sake, just stop now.
Shouldn’t there be some sort of intersectional, racist, and cultural appropriation caterwauling about a black dude wearing a cross between a butler’s uniform and an antebellum hoop skirt while sporting a Fu Manchu moustache ?
Oh for pity’s sake, just stop now.
The link has moved. For the late arrivals, the image originally referenced is now #8. One Billy Porter. Whoever TF that would be.
For the late arrivals, the image originally referenced is now #8.
VFR direct to Billy Porter, (whoever TF that is), in his butler’s hoop skirt.
The other question is why none of the men (and I use the term loosely) in the other photos have never heard of a tailor.
Farnsworth, I’d say there should be applause. That guy’s costume has to have garnered him at least 100,000 diversity points. I’m almost sure he’s blown the other competitors out of the water.
And, possibly, other places as well. (Couldn’t resist. 😄)
(Cue Olympics music)
I have triumphed! Except for the ninja, I have “collected” all the rare cats in Neko Atsume! The ninja did show up, as he does monthly, but I wasn’t looking at the phone at the time. (The cats don’t count unless you photograph them.). I’ll get him next month.
After you photograph them, you have to get each one to reappear repeatedly until, at some point, the screen will darken & he’ll walk out and give you a “memento.” When you get all the cats and all the mementos, you win and can rest on your laurels till the game updates with new cats.
I like this game because you can play it without spending real money and play in bits and snatches of free time. Is anyone else playing it?
“The Patriarchy That Lives In Laurie’s Head”
I think the avatar algorithm might be a feminist.
“Is anyone else playing it?”
I’ve been playing The Witcher 3 for at least an hour every day since January 3rd. Still not finished. I heard of one guy the other day who took three years to plough* through it all. Send food.
*Heh. Witcher gag.
Sam, I’m not familiar with Witcher 3. Tell me about it.
David, this topic is growing longer than the last thing Laurie dragged out of her nose. Can we start a new topic?
Quite windy here. Just saw a lady with a carpetbag and umbrella go sailing over our shed in the windstream.
“OK, I got a rant. When did this shiite start? After I went to bed last night?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present?wprov=sfti1“
So there was a section on ‘Other Dating Conventions’. It didn’t say anything about who pays on the first date. Are there some other dating conventions I need to know about? I need to pass the information along to a friend…
I heard of one guy the other day who took three years to plough* through it all.
Skyrim claims 200+ hours without the DLC, and there are people still finding new things in the original GTA: San Andreas (which is allegedly the best of the originals, but since the theme doesn’t grab me I never bothered).
I work in the software industry and I have friends still working in AAA game development and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that we’re in the twilight of video gaming as a serious adult pasttime. There are some few greats out there this generation, but the economics just aren’t there to support the kinds of narrative blockbusters of only ten years ago.
If you like the Witcher series, give Kingdom Come: Deliverance a try.
Pogonip: Witcher 3 is a Western[1] fantasy rpg for modern consoles. If your jam is cat collecting games on a phone it doesn’t seem like it would be up your alley, but have a look at the trailer and see.
[1] by which I mean “not-Japanese”, a genre which has very different conventions
Thanks!
I’m sensing you want an open thread. Here you go.