Her Friends Have Shattered Brains

While I get my act together.
Hangover?

Guess who.
I think she’s putting the cart before the horse.

..and fascists are wrecking what’s left of democracy.
I imagine this as a Pete and Dud sketch:
” D’you know, I saw that Mussolini down the pub last night. He told me he was going to overthrow the government and institute a Fascist State.”
” Really?”
” Yeah. That is if his gov’ner would give him a couple of weeks off work.”
People like LP are living a fantasy world.

I nominate Mz Penny as a contestant on Big Brother. Either that or The Bachelorette.

…I know comes home from a hard day being ground on the wheel of late stage disaster capitalism…
She stunningly and bravely typed on her 26 horsepower two stroke “Magnetovitch” elctronified typographicon made by proud Soviet workers in 1937 in the Leningrad Elektoworks and Tank Factory #56 “Za Slavu Rodina” and sent via 1200 baud modem installed by British Telecom in 1987.
Meanwhile, this being an open thread, and speaking of deranged leftists, YouTube bans Battle Bot videos because of animal cruelty, despite there being zero animal involvement.

She wants an ‘anarcho-communist’ revolution so she can ‘self-determine’ how much of my salary she can steal. I’d be okay watching her crack up on live TV.
Fair point.

Almost everyone I know…”
Because sane and moral people avoid her.

speaking of deranged leftists, YouTube bans…
Google owns YouTube and isn’t shy anymore about punishing people who it finds distasteful. It’s very annoyed with PragerU and testimony before the Senate so it has upped the number of restricted video as (cannot be viewed on any computer with filters that block “adult” content, including libraries) to 99. It includes such sexual or violent themed subjects as the series on the 10 commandments – just think how awful to expose teens to the idea that it is wrong to steal! History subjects, like the founding of Israel,Churchill’s role in WWII, the Korean and Vietnam wars.

isn’t she the one with…
The self-styled “riot-grrl” and “anarcho-communist” – the one who shouts, “fuck money!” and who claims to dream of living “in the rubble” of toppled capitalism – and who also finds time to appear in celebrity lifestyle shoots for Apartment Therapy magazine. Which is pretty much shorthand for the thing she claims to despise and wishes to see “on fire.”
The exact levels of twattery are hard to calculate.

Though I think watching her inevitable mental disintegration on live television would be a bit much for all but the hardest hearts.
She’s not insane. She’s your garden-variety trustafarian. You could put her on Big Brother, but you wouldn’t get a meltdown, you’d just get temper tantrums, endless pivoting every time she’s pressed on one of her idiot ideas, and likely a great deal of “I didn’t say (thing that there’s video evidence she said)”. Followed by endless moralizing self-aggrandizement on Twitter after her appearance.
She’s an oversized petulant child, but she’s not BPD nuts.

The exact levels of twattery are hard to calculate.
Would have to be expressed in astronomical units, no doubt.

watching her inevitable mental disintegration on live television would be a bit much for all but the hardest hearts
It seems I am a bad person….

Open thread, eh? Excuse me while I Hal up the place a bit.
My company (a large food multinational) is all about the “B-Corporation”, or public benefit corporation these days. Don’t know what that is? Don’t worry, like being vegan or doing crossfit you need merely make eye contact with our powerskirts and they will wax poetic until you slowly back away. What it actually entails is companies whos’ target demo fall into that “basic bitch socialist” sweetspot paying the blood geld to a virtue-signalling middleman (ala carbon credits) in exchange for a “We’re the Good Kind of Huge Corporation” gold star patch so that we’re the last against the wall in the Glorious Revolution.
This morning I get an email from Powerskirt HQ giddily patting themselves on the back for purchasing a NY Times ad that persuasively and in detail extols the virtues of being a certified B-Corp (benefit corporation). Haha just kidding! The ad is a typically vague condescending lecture to all the dinosaur corporations and their outdated notions of business success. It was in the NY Times though, I didn’t make that up. Since I can’t do embedded pics worth a damn here’s the entire text:

Dear Business Roundtable CEOs,
We are part of a community of Certified B Corporations who are walking the walk of stakeholder capitalism. We are successful businesses that meet the highest standards of verified positive impact for our workers, customers, suppliers, communities and the environment.
We operate with a better model of corporate governance – benefit corporation governance – which gives us, and could give you, a way to combat short-termism and the freedom to make decisions to balance profit and purpose.
As you know, with continued resistance from investors on this new definition of business, we’ve got work to do to help them see that stakeholder governance builds trust and builds value.
More importantly, it also ensures that the purpose of capitalism is to work for everyone and for the long term.
Let’s work together to make real change happen.

It’s annoying to have multi-millionaire CEOs tell businesses that are just trying to make payroll about how they’re doing it all wrong, but that’s par for the course in [current year]. What really chaps my ass is how much time and effort Powerskirt HQ spends on this crap when our distribution network is shit and worsens by the week, we can’t meet customer orders, my own portion of the business is dying due to utter neglect, and every admin department is churning people and are in complete chaos. Seriously they can’t even pay people properly.
The amount of smug but disgracefully ignorant pap in that ad is plentiful, but I’ve taken up too much comment space as is. Cheers and congrats again to the newlywed.

It seems I am a bad person….
endless pivoting every time she’s pressed on one of her idiot ideas,
She reminds me of someone I knew years ago, who professed incompatible, often wildly contradictory views depending on the company and the prevailing social expectations. This became something of a problem when, despite his efforts, he found himself in the presence of people from more than one social group, which were themselves not entirely consonant. The air of slightly manic tension was quite a thing and, in hindsight, darkly funny. The image that came to mind was of the Mayor from The Nightmare Before Christmas, the one whose head spins round to reveal either of his two expressions – one grinning, one anxious.

Epic in the sense that few dishes require 12 hours of preparation.
More like four max for anyone who can multitask and is smart enough to get tortillas bigger than the cake pan and cut them to fit.
…aren’t offered as Swanson microwavable TV dinners.
Therein lies the problem, I believe. I don’t think the “food editor”* has ever done anything but microwave. All I know is next block party, I’m borrowing a pot big enough properly to deep fry in and making this mess, frying the slices on a stick in the South Flyoverlandia county fair tradition.
*(I think that probably translates to “Guy who instagrams food in ‘trendy’ dumps”)

I don’t think the “food editor”* has ever done anything but microwave.
I think he also missed an ingredient in the chicken marinade. The video starts with an ingredient (which appears to be paprika, a staple in most bbq rubs and marinades) already in the bowl, then all the other ingredients are listed and added. It’s why his chicken looks so wyte.

blogging after a pause is not unlike lowering your buttocks into a hot bath. Best done cautiously.
Surely your feet are already in the bath so you know what the temperature is.
Unless you are incredibly athletic and use your arms on the side of the bath to suspend your pasty buttocks above the water and slowly lower yourself in

Hi Paul,
We want pictures of Olympic bath-lowering!

We want pictures of Olympic bath-lowering!
I’m sorry but personally, I wait for another family member to start running a bath, rush outside and pole vault naked through the bathroom window, embracing the anticipated kiss of the waters. The only problem is if a family member has already occupied the tub and is hovering above the suds like an athlete on the horizontal bars.

late stage disaster capitalism
You really need to appreciate the irony when this kind of remark is posted on the internet, via Twitter no less.

Fred, did you get rid of your wasps?

The exact levels of twattery are hard to calculate.
Would have to be expressed in astronomical units, no doubt.
If beauty is measured in milliHelens (1 milliHelen launches 1 ship), perhaps the milliLaurie could be the unit of measurement for twattery.

Hi Fred,
Let the exterminator poke around seeking HQ so you don’t end up in the ER.
And his wasp gun full of bug-killing juice is really cool.

anyone know the best way to prepare 20 liters of molten aluminum using common household tools?
Yes.
What?

The snowflakes’ resulting lawsuit is in progress.
This reminds me of the co-worker who became livid, almost hysterical, as a result of his annual employee evaluation.
What did the evaluation say that triggered him? “Meets expectations“.
That was it. Nothing negative, nothing insulting, no criticism at all. He was doing the job he was hired to do, and they thought he was doing it well.
So what was the offence?
“I’ve been in the industry for 15 years, and I’ve never once had an evaluation of anything less than ‘above average’!”
The snowflakes here seem to be of the same cut. Having been patted on the head and given shiny awards for nothing more than the ability to show up on time, they’ve come to believe that they are uniquely talented, above all others. Not only do the plebes not give them proper adulation, they actually criticize! So off to the lawyer they go.
It should also be noted that the audience was not being rude without reason. From what I can see of Crown Sterling’s presentation, it’s based on the idea that occult numerology will disrupt, or already is disrupting, cryptography. Also, they claimed to have “discovered” the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Given the number of mathematicians in the audience, it’s not a great shock that they weren’t taken seriously.

Heh. Aluminum. It’s fun to say. ah-LOO-mih-num. heh-heh.

She’s basically cut and pasting John Lennon now:
It’s been a hard day’s night, and I’ve been working like a dog.
I’m just sitting watching the wheels go round and round.
I read the news today oh boy.
Oh Species!! If you leave me…..

Compare the angst of a thirty-three year old Laurie Penny with a 25 year old Dorothie Feilding MM, swanning about Belgium in 1914:
I don’t mind running risks for our men or the French but I’m blithered if I’m going to have holes put in me by a bally Teuton while I pick up their men.

I’ve killed lots of wasps nests. The secret is Carboryl.
You dust their landing spot, just outside the hole, and they drag it inside for you. The whole nest is poisoned in a day or two. Generally they will drag it down and kill the queen. Sometimes there’ll be a second wave as the new recruits hatch, but they are soon poisoned too.
If it’s a serious nest I’ll blow a decent amount down the hole. That requires knowing the entrance and a night time operation, but is invariably effective.
I even killed a nest recently without knowing the hole. Enough powder dusted around seemed to work.

Heh. Aluminum. It’s fun to say. ah-LOO-mih-num. heh-heh.
Someone fetch the hose.

And let’s not forget this one, which is typically dense with self-flattering implications:

Presumably, Laurie imagines that her own theatrical tantrums and endless, pretentious whining make her interesting, which I suppose they do, though only in ways she doesn’t seem to comprehend and would most likely not appreciate.

I’ve killed lots of wasps nests. The secret is Carboryl.
You dust their landing spot, just outside the hole, and they drag it inside for you.
Another pest control method you may find useful: if you sprinkle it around where they are burrowing, for instance under a slab foundation which can lead to cracking, used cat litter keeps armadillos away.
That is all, carry on.

@Sam, re his company’s ad in NYT: “Let’s work together to make real change happen.”
There’s the problem right there. Yes let’s, but none of us have the faintest idea how we are going to ‘work together’ for any end. Even all-out wars have so many misfires (pun intended) it becomes touch and go whether one can even survive let alone win. Even the word ‘real’ is open to question. And at what point does ‘happen’ actually get recognised as, er, having happened?
The devil, as they say, is in the detail. But at least it’s free to say “Let’s work together to make real change happen” and thus feel good, briefly.

Farns,
This USain learned to drive in a 49 MGTC and owned a MGB.
Your remark triggered me. I am literally shaking. I am much angrier inside.
(Also, I now own a Toyota)

used cat litter keeps armadillos away.
A tip that all Brits will find useful.

A tip that all Brits will find useful.
They crossed the Mighty Mississippi, you think the puny Atlantic will stop their invincible* horde ?
*(Why did the chicken cross the road ? To prove to the armadillo it could be done)

English (Simplified)
Heh.

I owned an 1967 MGB-GT…
I will concede that they look good till the federally mandated bumpers, but everything suffered from that, and when they ran fun to drive because they seemed to be going fast, but that is also the thrill of a Trabi. Well, that and the thrill from the sense of impending doom.
For full disclosure I am a owned by Teutonic crates, and TBF, I believe it is in German law, perhaps the TüV codes or something, that for any number of nuts or bolts greater than one, there will be one, and not more than one, that either cannot be removed, is inaccessible, can only be removed with a manufacturers Special Tool, or any combination of the above, and that there will be one thing, preferably very hard to access, no matter how brilliantly the rest of the thing is engineered, that is so incomprehensibly stupid even the Soviets wouldn’t have done it.

her own theatrical tantrums and endless, pretentious whining make her interesting, which I suppose they do
That’s a funny way to spell “tedious and predictable”.

A neighbor of a test pilot i knew in Surrey owned a MGC-GT. Straight six motor. Pretty exciting to drive. The pilot decamped with family to France many years ago. His son, whom I knew as a gangly teen, married a beautiful French girl and produced a passel of beautiful French daughters.
Where was i going with this?

that is so incomprehensibly stupid even the Soviets wouldn’t have done it.
I believe it was the Soviets who designed the stowage of spare tires on modern (US and Japan AFAIK, but probably universal by now) vehicles to only secure one way such that the valve stem on said tire is on the bottom. Therefore the spare must be entirely removed from its storage location in order to even check the pressure, let alone inflate the damn thing.
Guess what I did this weekend…
I’m not exactly Joe Mechanic, but I’m not terribly inept either. I’ll fix the occasional household product, minor electric work, or futz around with minor stuff in the car. I generally hate to throw out something that can be fixed (probably a product of Depression-era parents). But I absolutely dread doing something new on a car that I haven’t done on that car before or did once so long ago that I have to figure out how to do it all over again. It’s not so much figuring out how to do the thing, it’s the “WTF was the engineer thinking when they designed it this way”. Which usually leads me to suspect that there’s some stupid regulation behind it. Yet then I also suspect that someone wanted to address That Thing That Will Never Happen to show off how smarty smart smart they are. Though these latter people probably go into government work. It’s kind of a symbiotic relationship.

“It was worth it to see the looks on my colleagues faces when I told them I was taking this jar of motor oil to the parking lot to top up my carburettors.”
Hah!!
Which reminds me, I’ve got to reclaim my SU tuning manual from the fellow I lent it to – for an MGB rebuild, as it happens.

WTP, I think Lindy’s knowledge is from books and asking questions, though I must add that I have seen commenters claiming military experience agree with him, or perhaps offer reasoned disagreement.
Of course, spear and sword work, armour etc is not exactly current knowledge and practice.
A few months ago, Bloke on the Range, who does certainly know his stuff, took Lindy to the range to show him which end of a gun goes bang. Bloke’s guest certainly enjoyed himself, and I think it telling that Mike took the trouble. A mark of respect.
The “Lindy” part refers to the Hop.

Where was i going with this?
‘I don’t reckon them times will ever come again. There never was a more bullier old ram than what he was. Grandfather fetched him from Illinois –got him of a man by the name of Yates–Bill Yates–maybe you might have heard of him; his father was a deacon–Baptist–and he was a rustler, too; a man had to get up ruther early to get the start of old Thankful Yates; it was him that put the Greens up to jining teams with my grandfather when he moved west.
Seth Green was prob’ly the pick of the flock; he married a Wilkerson–Sarah Wilkerson–good cretur, she was–

Lindy’s knowledge is from books and asking questions
This. He LARPS and does some HEMA, and he’s notable for actually going out and trying stuff for real rather than taking the historians’ word for it. But he’s kind of like the medieval MythBusters, as likely to go confidently wrong as not.

Thanks Jeff & Dan. His videos that I’ve watched on infantry combat and similar dovetail quite well with what my father told me in much detail in his later years and also significantly with others whom I have known who saw real combat at an infantry level. There’s a degree of understanding that you don’t get from even military guys who never were “shot at in anger” as dear old Dad used to say.
I’ve always wanted to ask that in a job interview. “Have you ever been shot at on a daily basis?” Such people know things. It’s like being a fox and a hedgehog, simultaneously.

Hal, I recently re-read Roughing It.
I was startled by Twain’s recounting of how he and a partner started a large forest fire on the northeast shore of Lake Tahoe. I had just been i the area east of Incline, which must have been about the same place as the fire.
Living in California these days one gets pretty nervous about fires.

Speaking of Lord Lucas, Prince of Darkness, I still have two quarts of oem electrical smoke for a Rover I once owned.

Don’t forget that Thoreau set the woods around Waldon on fire, too.