Friday Ephemera

The olden days: We had enough sweaters.

Florida Woman links the devil, 5G, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, “the pedophiles” and the deep state.
—Surely she could have also fit in kumquats, tribbles,
custard recipes, and Lampchop—the puppet—, but apparently she ran out of time.
—I tend to ignore videos, so much faster to skim through text, but yes, when checking this one for the details, she does hit every item.

Is it possible that just about anything could be a band name ?
(e.g. “Is It Possible”, “That”, “Just About Anything”, “Could Be”, “A” and “Band Name”)

Sshh. I think I hear something in the woods.
Plot twist!

Morning, all.
Style tip: You just can’t be fashionable without some neurotically pretentious self-flagellation.
The woke rewards of nakedly racist spite. One might almost call it privilege.
And for those who missed it yesterday, via Connor: Who knew sociopathy involved so much whining?

always respect the media.
They’re activists not journalists.

Brave Reg hack spends a week eating airline food grounded by coronavirus crash

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8461387/Dont-throw-away.html
Health Secretary Matt Hancock threatens to CLOSE beaches and re-lockdown local areas after ‘major incident’ is declared in Bournemouth, thousands of Liverpool fans celebrate title win and police come under attack from revellers for second night
Decisive words on the part of the Minister and police.
I wonder why the crowds felt they were under no real moral obligation not to congregate
I wonder why the “revellers” felt no fears about chasing the police away.
And I wonder why, in this case, the Minister and police even criticised the crowds and, in Dorset at least, tried to disperse them?
It’s a mystery- no doubt about it

Good merging. 🙂
A year or so ago, the ‘Half and I were driving through the grounds of Chatsworth House when the entire deer population, numbering four or five hundred, decided to amble, in single file, from one side of the park to the other, which entailed crossing the road right in front of us. It was quite a sight and it wasn’t obvious what had prompted this mass relocation. I think it was one of the better traffic hold-ups I’ve been in.
Not, I grant you, as unnerving as a migration of hefty bison, but still.

“We were skipping maybe two meals a day”
The choice of photo isn’t helping to elicit great sympathy, I fear. I say this as someone who, despite being svelte and gazelle-like, also eats two meals a day. As opposed to six, or whatever number would be considered ideal by the ladies in question.

Remember, loyal citizens, always respect the media.
” I was radicalised by reality your Honor.”

[ Nibbles on corner of a chicken salad sandwich. ]

Media meets an uncomfortable truth
“We’re going to have to leave it there…”

Of course the way to dissipate any remaining bad blood [over historical racism, sexism, etc] would be to visibly and consistently strive to appoint people to positions based on their merit, confident that in the course of time people of ability will rise to the positions which they deserve. But what would be the most divisive way in which to go about trying to address such inequalities? Well, that would be to very visibly and obviously create and institute a mirror version of the old system: to attempt to carve out special privileges for people who look like those who suffered discrimination in the past, and to treat with a special disdain and contempt the people who look like they might have once benefited from discrimination…
Cambridge University has carved out a racism-allowance for Gopal where she can act in a manner in which others would not. She is literally privileged… Like all really successful twenty-first-century privilege-wielders, Gopal knows how to play the game. You pretend that you are in a position of weakness and vulnerability, when you are actually in a position of power. You present yourself as a victim as soon as people call you out as an aggressor. And you pretend to be the offended party after going out of your way to cause maximum offence yourself.

Douglas Murray on the malevolent goblin Priyamvada Gopal.

It really is a cause for despair. Adam Boulton, say what you will about him – and God knows I do, isn’t a stupid man but he’s able to completely ignore reality.
A psychotherapist–Jordan Peterson, I think–once said in an interview that it can be much more difficult to help highly intelligent and educated people because they can cleverly find reasons to justify and excuse everything that they say and do.

You just can’t be fashionable…
Thomas Sowell has a particularly apt comment on the same thread.

The woke rewards…
And I thought I made it clear when I said that requires a trigger warning. I lost a perfectly good part of my breakfast clicking that link.

You just can’t be fashionable without some neurotically pretentious self-flagellation.
See this response:
https://mobile.twitter.com/michaelmantzmd/status/1276372779265167360
See also: the dhimmi mentality.
See also: the unstable backgrounds of so many (usually female) Westerners who are successfully groomed into converting to Islam.
See also this psychopath:
https://www.thecut.com/2020/02/larry-ray-sarah-lawrence-students.html

You can, in an advanced society, ignore reality for quite some time but it will eventually bite you on the arse.
As Adam Smith said: ” There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.”

The Red Guard is holding sway, Jonathan Chait spends a lot of words exposing them here
https://web.archive.org/web/20200625015531/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/white-fragility-racism-racism-progressive-progressphiles-david-shor.html
in a group of ostensible data analysts…and yet ends the reporting of the beheadings and struggles sessions thusly

It would be inaccurate to take the overall tenor of this discussion as representative of the views of progressive data analysts in the group. Indeed, the opposite seems to be true. Seeing one of their peers fired from his job and then banished from their professional network after being accused of racism, and then other members similarly accused merely for questioning the fairness of this response, surely dissuaded many people who disagreed from speaking up.
“Reasonable people are not commenting, and the reasonable people are afraid for their jobs,” one member told me, adding that several peers had sent private messages objecting to Shor’s mistreatment that they felt afraid to share with the list.
Elite institutions like “Progressphiles” deserve credit for attempting to grapple with the crisis of institutional racism, a task many institutions have not even bothered to undertake. Simple color blindness is not enough to make women and people of color feel welcome and fully equal in spaces in which few of them have been admitted. These institutions need to develop norms of conduct that allow underrepresented groups to feel truly equal while accounting for human complexity and permitting people to express themselves in natural language rather than academic jargon.
The protocols they are using now do not work. Liberals must find better ones.

Really? REALLY??

I’ve gotten a bit short with friends who’ve trotted out the “400 years of privilege/slavery” nonsense.
Choosing to be steeped in tribal grievance – which very often means pretentious, vicarious grievance, invoking strangers long dead – is not a healthy way to live. It doesn’t seem likely to result in a happy life. Or a personality that isn’t repellent and insufferable.

ARGH … WTH??? The preview version did NOT look like that!!
Here’s the original link
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/white-fragility-racism-racism-progressive-progressphiles-david-shor.html
if you can’t read it, go to web.archive.org, plug it in and read the article.
SHEESH

Really? REALLY??
Havel’s greengrocers:
https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165havel.html?fbclid=IwAR1_2x1jgiiJ0XZv_CbwmcFkhbM2uloAzpZEwcp94Jex4D54IITGhBxK6Co

Here you go … cha-ching … let this help catch up on my bartab.
Bless you, madam. May hot weather result in no more ironing than usual.

Sowell on Marx.
Thanks for that, David. A very informative essay.

Is New York Democrat Jerry Nadler our own Hal 9000? Jerry Nadler Says Antifa Is Imaginary.

It isn’t an enormous stretch to think of much of Marx’s output as an elaborate attempt to rationalise his own rather awful personality […] That Marxism has subsequently attracted so many narcissists and sociopaths is hardly surprising.
See also:
https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Muhammad-Psychobiography-Allahs-prophet/dp/0980994802/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=understanding+muhammad&qid=1593200808&sprefix=understanding+muh&sr=8-3

I’m wondering what a “holistic, health-based” approach to armed robbery or rape looks like.

I’m wondering what a “holistic, health-based” approach to armed robbery or rape looks like.
I’m sure it won’t be pretty. They say:

“Under the plan, “licensed police officers” would work for the Division of Law Enforcement Services, which would be part of the Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention.”

Although approaches toward using the wrong pronoun or refusing to toe the BLM/Antifa line will probably lead to a more hands on approach.
This is about who controls the police. Ultimately, when control ends up in the wrong hands “Community” policing becomes the NKVD, the Stasi, or the SS.

Ultimately, when control ends up in the wrong hands “Community” policing becomes the NKVD, the Stasi, or the SS.
Minneapolis liberals voted for this, and they deserve to get it good and hard.

Minneapolis liberals voted for this, and they deserve to get it good and hard.
Indeed. They’re about to learn why Oscar Wilde said: “There are two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” Oh well.

Is there such a word as self-defenestration?

Oh, the world is getting very dark. Here, have a palate cleanser:
http://twitter.com/backt0nature/status/1276421335980400640

It isn’t an enormous stretch to think of much of Marx’s output as an elaborate attempt to rationalise his own rather awful personality
See also Sigmund Freud

Me, reading This Twitter thread

“Simple color blindness is not enough to make women and people of color feel welcome and fully equal in spaces in which few of them have been admitted.”
Yeah, that’s a handy excuse, isn’t it? War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Colourblindness is Racism.
None of this makes one jot of sense until you understand that certain groups are actively trying to reopen racial divides in the west in order to weaken us.
“This is about who controls the police. Ultimately, when control ends up in the wrong hands “Community” policing becomes the NKVD, the Stasi, or the SS.”
In the Soviet case, that’s precisely what happened:

The name [Militsya] originates from a Provisional Government decree dated April 17, 1917, and from early Soviet history, when both the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks intended to associate their new law enforcement authority with the self-organisation of the people and to distinguish it from the czarist police. The militsiya was reaffirmed on October 28 (November 10, according to the new style dating), 1917 under the official name of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Militsiya, in further contrast to what the Bolsheviks called the “bourgeois class protecting” police. Eventually, it was replaced by the Ministry of Internal Affairs

… i.e., the MVD, later to become the NKVD.
“Minneapolis liberals voted for this, and they deserve to get it good and hard.”
Note that in Russia it was the pre-revolutionary Provisional Government which started the ball rolling. Whether through sympathy with the Bolsheviks or in an attempt to appease them I don’t know, but Lenin inherited the Militsya/MVD; he didn’t have to create it.
Oh, and let’s not forget, returning to that last point, that the Russian revolution was fomented by Germany to get the Russians out of WWI.
“Is there such a word as self-defenestration?”
The thread is priceless. “Good luck finding the talking dog”.
“A contrast in temperaments.”
“Waaaaah! It’s so unfair! I hate you! Uuuuurgh!”

One more time. Always respect the media.
Via Damian.

Not being overly interested in a person’s race is, in the real world, as good as it gets.
The usual whine that “color-blindness” is Evil Racism(tm) is the claim that “but I don’t see your race, I see you” is all about “race” in that statement, not the “you”.
Of course I *see* the “race” of someone I meet for the first time. I’m introduced to someone new at an office meeting, I’m told their name “A” and I see their sex, height, hair color, eye color, clothing – all quick sketch notes for I can then identify “A” and remember them at the next meeting or in the office. But if I start spending more time with this person – working on a project together, or becoming friends – ALL those characteristics fade into the background as “A” becomes a familiar part of my life and I learn all the other things that make “A” a unique individual with unique likes/dislikes, interests, skills and life experiences.
Leftism is dedicated to wiping out those relationships – from destruction of the family to dictating who/where/how is acceptable socialization.

Praise Zeus. I was getting angst.

Hmmm. Interesting tech commentary:
Journalist’s Phone Hacked: All He Had To Do Was Visit a Website. Any Website.

There is also a locust plague…
Details, details . . . .

My conspiracy theory is that time travel IS real & someone keeps trying to fix 2020 by changing something but every time they do, they unwittingly make it worse. How else do you explain the sudden disappearance of murder hornets? They saved us from those but at what cost?!?!

“Is It Possible”, “That”, “Just About Anything”, “Could Be”, “A” and “Band Name”
“Everything’s A Song Cue”
https://www.gocomics.com/culdesac/2010/04/26

Remember, she’s an educator.

Cambridge University, which refused to defend Jordan Peterson remember, actually promoted this headcase.
They also refused to defend Noah Carl when he had his issues with the outrage mob, and in fact dismissed him from his research post. The cynic in me can’t help wondering if not defending those two gentlemen was a deliberate ploy by Cambridge University precisely for this reason. This way, Cambridge can say “Look, we took on board what you guys said about freedom of speech the last time this happened, so why aren’t you happy?” In a perverted way, I’m glad they are defending her on freedom of speech grounds, even if the speech in question is abominable. I’d just like them to extend the same courtesy to those academics who aren’t passengers on the woke train. But I suspect that that’s too much to hope for.