Friday Ephemeraren’t
As I’m still finding my feet after the recent festivities, I’m afraid you’ll have to use the comments to throw together your own pile of links and oddities. I will, however, set the ball rolling with a chap doing this better than you do; a lady clearly determined to do things the hard way; some hardcore embroidery; a fearsome beast’s underbelly; and, via Julia, a shadow of note.
Oh, and via Dicentra, you know it could happen.
As our host would say, ‘our betters’…
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/383065.php
Nailing down the details . . .
Our betters are pontificating again, and they’re coming up with some deep thought:
“The weirdest thing about the electoral college is the fact that if it wasn’t specifically in the Constitution for the presidency, it would be unconstitutional.”
Well, obviously: https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/1167590061719937027
Damn those white women.
A couple of years ago, Ruby Hamad, the author of that article, accused her former friend and colleague, Clementine Ford, of plagiarising a work of hers. She even quit her job over it. I think it’s clear she’s never forgiven Ford.
“The weirdest thing about the electoral college is the fact that if it wasn’t specifically in the Constitution…
Well, yeah. When you think about it the whole damn constitution itself is unconstitutional. Under the laws of the day, we were subservient to Great Britain. We only got them to accept our independence at the point of a gun. Then we go and draw up not one, but two totally unapproved of governing documents. Absurd.
These people are idiots.
These people are idiots.
No, they’re not idiots; they’re ruthless enemies who will use any lie to tear down America and replace it with a communist tyranny.
Or maybe you mean they are moral idiots, in which case I will agree.
These people are idiots.

No, they’re not idiots; they’re ruthless enemies who will use any lie to tear down America and replace it with a communist tyranny.
No. They’re idiots. The problem is that we are even bigger idiots because we know better and yet bend over and ask for it harder. Years ago, I predicted stupidity nowhere near this level. I was laughed at, mocked, kept after diversity training class, and suggested I needed mental health counseling. Things going on today, if I someone else had predicted these things back then, I would have laughed at, mocked, and suggested that such a person may have needed mental health counseling. At what point do we get some backbone and say, in no uncertain terms, this must stop. Look at the comments on that tweet. “Conservatives” try to use reason to address this idiocy. Always gotta be the “adults in the room”. Crazy world don’t give a shit about your reasoning. Crazy only responds to fine adjustments with sledgehammers.
Crazy only responds to fine adjustments with sledgehammers.
That’s a funny way to spell ‘helicopters’.
“The weirdest thing about the electoral college is the fact that if it wasn’t specifically in the Constitution for the presidency, it would be unconstitutional.”
If it weren’t for half the people in the United States, the other half would be all of them
Mr Tim Newman is back.
Another”professor” finds another problematic thing that traumatizes students.
Another “professor” finds another problematic thing that traumatizes students.
You’d think they might at least have the decency to be disgusted by themselves.
You’d think they might at least have the decency to be disgusted by themselves.

It is a given that this prof is so far to the left she makes Lenin his own bad self look like Barry Goldwater, so the $64 question is how many of her no doubt equally leftist students actually go to primitive cis-hetero testosterone displays like sportsball games and actually see the damn mascot, let alone come sniveling to her about how they are “hurt” by it.
The $64,000 question is why ninnies like her constantly feel compelled to have to MSU all the time, other than their delusions of adequacy, of course.
Personally, I am offended because I think the mascot looks like Olivier Gendebien’s Ferrari, which is much more offensive because of reasons.
The $64,000 question is why ninnies like her constantly feel compelled to have to MSU all the time, other than their delusions of adequacy, of course.
And the 2 * $640,000,000,000 question is why do we continue to fund this nonsense? Yes, I’m a broken record on this. But it’s just so bloody obvious where 80% of the BS that threatens to destroy Western civilization is coming from. As the old Pogo cliche goes, we have met the enemy and he is us. Cut the funding and maybe we can save money on helicopter rides. Those things suck up a lot of fuel.
“You’d think they might at least have the decency to be disgusted by themselves.”
“They are made to feel that they are not their real selves but actors playing a role, and their doings a ‘performance,’ rather than as the real thing.”
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951
Choosing a life of habitual pretence, of fundamental dishonesty – which is what wokeness is – must take a toll on the pretender, psychologically. Not that I have any great sympathy for the pretenders – they tend to be much too obnoxious for that, too inclined towards spite. But as a kind of private hell, it must be somewhere on the list.
Related: a very interesting Thread on leaving the SJW cult.
via Damian Counsell
First they came for the ring girls, but if sometime in the future you were thinking of buying a Holden, you might want to reconsider.
if sometime in the future you were thinking of buying a Holden, you might want to reconsider.
From the linked article: “Agarwal told the Herald that the lower bar for women was expected to increase female participation in the programs by 10%. She also emphasized that even though the entry bar was lowered, women would still have to complete the programs just as men do.”
That is, of course, a lie: Lowered entry standards inevitably are a precursor to lowered standards across the board.
Reflections.
That is, of course, a lie: Lowered entry standards inevitably are a precursor to lowered standards across the board
let’s make an equation:
Lowered entry standards + time —> lowered exit standards + time —> deaths.
Whether that’s a bug or a feature depends on your politics.
a very interesting Thread on leaving the SJW cult.
Whoa… I see the name Zoe Quinn featured.
Lowered entry standards inevitably are a precursor to lowered standards across the board
You’d think that female engineers who’d coped perfectly well without lowered entry standards or any other ham-fisted condescension might take exception. Or demand a 10% refund on their tuition, given the potential damage to their professional reputations.
Lowered entry standards + time —> lowered exit standards + time —> deaths.
Agreed.
Whether that’s a bug or a feature depends on your politics.
I think it started out as a bug, but is now a feature:
In the sixties the left (liberals and leftists) demanded “affirmative action” for schools, to give “disadvantaged” kids a chance to catch up. This was supposed to be a temporary measure to undo the effects of pervasive racial discrimination. But the kids mostly did not catch up, so it was necessary to demand lowered grading standards and lowered graduation standards.
The same thing was necessary for universities: let in more of those still-unprepared young men and women. But instead of catching up they continued to lag behind and often dropped out in frustration and despair. So university grading standards and graduation standards had to be lowered, and entire departments were created to cater to these unqualified individuals, departments in which good grades were possible without effort or intelligence, and in which the concern was not on scholarly or technical matters of any kind but rather a wallowing in grievance and resentment.
But what to do with these sadly unqualified university graduates? Companies did not want to hire incompetent or even resentful people, so it became necessary to sue them for civil rights violations: If the racial and ethnic and sex demographics of their employees did not match the general population, this was treated as legal proof of discriminatory policies.
With each succeeding decade the widespread failure of these policies became more obvious, but instead of reconsidering the assumptions behind those policies, the left built ever higher towers of delusional ideas to explain those failures, explanations that (naturally) required the implementation of ever more extreme versions of those policies and ever more extreme condemnations of society. Admitting failure is unacceptable; far better to destroy society.
“the left built ever higher towers of delusional ideas to explain those failures”
This is the Theory Jack built.
This is the Flaw
That lay in the Theory Jack built.
This is the Mummery
Hiding the Flaw
That lay in the Theory that Jack built.
This is the Summary
Based on the Mummery
Hiding the Flaw
That lay in the Theory that Jack built.
This is the Constant K
That saved the Summary
Based on the Mummery
Hiding the Flaw
That lay in the Theory that Jack built.
This is the Erudite Verbal Haze
Cloaking Constant K
That saved the Summary
Based on the Mummery
Hiding the Flaw
That lay in the Theory that Jack built.
. . .
–From “The Space Child’s Mother Goose” by Frederick Winsor and Marian Parry (illustrator)
Published by Purple House Inc. (purplehousepress.com)
http://www.amazon.com/Space-Childs-Mother-Goose/dp/1930900465/
Say again all after hello ? You’re coming in broken and stupid.
OK, it says, “…now Mrs Scottow, 38, will face magistrates on charges of making malicious communications over social media …”, so OK, trolling, which means half the population of the UK, if not the world, should be charged, then.
Not enough trains to haul us all off for regrooving.
so OK, trolling, which means half the population of the UK, if not the world, should be charged, then.
As police and courts fail to deal with serious crime, I suspect we’ll see ever greater fuss about unserious ones – ‘crimes of manners,’ as it were – as if that were some kind of compensation for the abundance of uninhibited muggers and machete gangs.
On the lowering of university entry standards, I am reminded of this study and comment thereon.
…I am reminded of this study…
For those who are interested, but don’t want to drop 35.95 frogskins, you can RTWT here.
What is interesting is that the largest decline is among those with bachelor and graduate degrees. Although the authors list some factors, less time spent reading, cultural factors, demographic changes, for instance, that could explain this, at least in part, there is no evidence that they tried to tease out any differences among degree majors.
When you have entire departments that have comparatively recently sprung up like fairy circles after a rain and either make words up, snatch them out of the ether, or pervert the otherwise established meanings that have been perfectly cromulent for centuries, it is small wonder that hordes of these graduates aren’t wording so gooder, innit.
While we are on the topic of lowered standards…
A disturbing account/rant about an extended visit to Sweden:
https://twitter.com/moldbugman/status/1167485529040007168
How accurate is it? Can anyone on this blog confirm it?
Link found via one of the Ace of Spades contributors:
https://twitter.com/Weirddave0
I have heard of Mencius Moldbug and the Dark Enlightenment, some of it rather, um, disturbing, but have no idea whether this blogger is a generally reliable reporter.
As police and courts fail to deal with serious crime, I suspect we’ll see ever greater fuss about unserious ones – ‘crimes of manners,’ as it were – as if that were some kind of compensation for the abundance of uninhibited muggers and machete gangs.
The police will not, of course, monitor mosques for speech inciting hatred of non-Muslims.
Women in STEM, sorted.
A five o’clock shadow on a woman does add a certain je ne sais quoi.
A five o’clock shadow on a woman does add a certain je ne sais quoi.
It’s a bold look. Not everyone could pull it off.
pst314, I’ve been to Norway, and I would assume Sweden is very similar, and my take is that the moldbugman’s thread is pessimistic but not wrong. Shared washing machines, booked in advance, in giant block apartments are definitely real in Norway, although the last such block apartment I visited had advanced with the times and now you could book a washing machine time slot via website.
Women in STEM, sorted.
Deleted. I wonder why.
Microbillionaire: Thank you.
Deleted. I wonder why.
I’d imagine the university’s media bods discovered that a transgender faculty member demanding to be referred to as “she” on account of being “a woman” – while bearing a striking resemblance to the actor Mark Strong, bestubbled, and in a rather, shall we say, voluminous lady wig – wasn’t entirely persuasive.
…but if sometime in the future you were thinking of buying a Holden, you might want to reconsider.

Holden ceased to manufacture cars in 2017, which is a shame:
Didn’t Calgary use to be in Alberta or one of the other sane parts of Canada? I’m usually pretty good with geography.
Damn you people and your vacations.
…shall we say, voluminous lady wig – wasn’t entirely persuasive.
I know you have said you don’t have much experience in these matters, but the tennis balls in a training bra aren’t helping either. If, OTOH, that is some plastic surgery, someone needs to be, as you say on the far side of the pond, struck off, because those ain’t fooling Stevie Wonder at midnight at 1000 yards.
I can buy the broken brain bit, but one can find blow up dolls that are more “natural female”. Fortunately, being an academic, no one will actually have to rely on anything designed by zer.
Even though living my natural female self is effortless for me
He’s NOT female…so “feeling” that as natural is as effortless as the schizophrenic who finds The Voices “natural”.
…so “feeling” that as natural is as effortless as the schizophrenic who finds The Voices “natural”.
You are just not woke. Just because there is no way in hell, being phenotypically and genotypically male, that he could ever have done more than imagine what it like to be female (or an aardvark, a shoe tree, or anything else than what he is), is no reason to deny his lived experience, which, as we all know, is more important than facts or other annoying bits of reality like having to shave as often as Richard Nixon on a bad day.
A disturbing account/rant about an extended visit to Sweden:
https://twitter.com/moldbugman/status/1167485529040007168
How accurate is it? Can anyone on this blog confirm it?
I haven’t been to Sweden, or anything in Europe north of London or so in years, but when reading through the twit series there . . .
. . . all I’m getting is a horrified shriek of a hipster in an adult environment who’s basically screaming Where are the hipsters like me, why are there so many adults around??!?!!
He’s noticed that he’s in the northern latitudes . . .
—While noting . . .
. . . . What I’ve noticed over time is that multiple writers from Paul Fussell to Jilly Cooper to Kate Fox, among several others, are rather uniform in noting that the more adult variety of people, more patrician variety, rather tend to have a rather recurring view of Yes, I have Stuff and I do Stuff, but why would I expect someone else to fixate on me??!?!? . . . . Whereas the more peon, hipsterIsh variety are the ones demanding to be seen at the center of the universe, where such a view can not be questioned, and anyone like that—him in this particular—is required to be catered to in all senses . . .
—A particular bit . . .
. . . followed by more examples of the same lack of coddling or so . . .
So to speak, Rather than actually expect me to be an adult and demonstrate the capabilities of an adult, I wanna have everyone around me do everything for me . . .
. . . so a summary seems to be that rather than being a review of [name of location], he’s complaining that when he went there, he didn’t have everyone holding his hand and leading ‘im about all the time . . . .
One must remember those important anniversaries . . . .

Sorry, Hal, I read the same thread and what I’m getting is that the author was merely taken aback from what an American would expect from normative travel.
Have you stayed at any hotel where YOU change the sheets?
Dave. My mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m…afraid.