Friday Ephemera
Cheeeldren of the niiight. || Enchanted instrument. || You want one and you know it. || Know your moons. || The thrill of surface tension. || Firefighting garments of note. || The Guardian, ladies and gentleman. || Effective, if not always elegant. || It ain’t pretty, but it flies. || If you laugh at this, you’re a terrible, terrible person. || Big beasts. I said beasts. || This is one of these. || Wet hands and Satie, together at last. || Pay slip of note. || On the origins of circumcision. || Remember when the ACLU wasn’t entirely ludicrous and unhinged? || Hey, it could happen. || You may need to give it a minute. (h/t, Damian) || Seafront views. || And finally, while on holiday in France, a family’s luggage goes astray.
He does this better than you do: https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1222164060390617097
Pay slip of note.
Wholesome.
The Guardian
Has anyone else ever thought that Owen Jones has the look of a high-functioning Down’s boy? Or am I a uniquely terrible person?
am I a uniquely terrible person?
I laughed at the fat lady crashing into the stunt pad, so at least you’re in good company.
Well, company, anyway.
a family’s luggage goes astray.
In before the inevitable unfunny Pratchett references.
Some animals are more equal than others
The Guardian, ladies and gentleman.
From the same twitter feed, a lovely story about Roger Moore.
Re This as one of these … Anyone else here old enough to remember PDQ Bach and the Baroque Beatles Book?
|| If you laugh at this, you’re a terrible, terrible person. || Big beasts. I said beasts. ||
Entirely proverbial I See What You Did There . . . .
Anyone else here old enough to remember PDQ Bach and the Baroque Beatles Book?
Not quite old enough for that, but ashamedly old enough to remember Walter Murphy and A Fifth of Beethoven. Took years to get the effing song out of my head.
Seafront views.
Really, there are other ways of washing the windows . . . .
a family’s luggage goes astray.
In before the inevitable unfunny Pratchett references.
Well, unfunny succeeded.
The rest of us can point out that there just aren’t enough legs involved to be the Luggage.
Moving house always involves difficult choices:
https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1288806902369984513
This is one of these.
Love it. 🙂
And finally, while on holiday in France, a family’s luggage goes astray.
Is the BBC calling them ‘migrants’ yet?
Morning, all.
Is the BBC calling them ‘migrants’ yet?
Hush, now. We must welcome our new Eritrean brain surgeons and prepare for enrichment. And what society wouldn’t wish to welcome presumptuous foreigners who imagine themselves exempt from that society’s basic laws – say, regarding citizenship, property damage and theft. Good times ahoy.
Everyone has to start their future career somewhere…
http://twitter.com/FUCKOFFEE215/status/1289096363683323904
From the unhinged ACLU twitter thread:-
Alex L Combs
@alexlcombs
Replying to
@chasestrangio
The British passed laws with the explicit goal of exterminating trans people in India under British colonial rule. It may seem extreme to use this language, as some of the commenters feel shocked by. However, there is a precedent for it– history shows this “tendency” to be true.
Yep. That ticks the unhinged box for me.
That ticks the unhinged box for me.
It’s quite a thing, to hear that the author of the Harry Potter books is “dangerous” and enabling a “genocidal impulse.” But then, this is a person who favours strings of words such as, “The violence of the binary sex,” and “Situating the trans subject and the trans body in the contested discursive space.”
So, not a twat at all, then.
…while on holiday in France…
The new remake of Alien looks scary.
The British passed laws with the explicit goal of exterminating trans people in India under British colonial rule.
Wild-assed guess that this is a pretzel logic reference to the British possibly trying to suppress the practice of castration.
You may need to give it a minute.
LOL. All-natural DIY fertiliser?
“Police were called and a motorcycle unit arrived on scene and when they opened the box they found the two sixteen year old migrants – one from Guinea and one from Eritrea.”
Wait – in the video, the stowaways are seen exiting the roof storage with no police in sight. Is the video a re-enactment or something?
All-natural DIY fertiliser?
At first glance, it does look like the service they provide is to fart on your shrubbery. Which seemed a little odd. Even in 2020. It took a surprising amount of time – several seconds – before I realised that the bare butt-cheeks were actually meant to be hands.
Wet hands and Satie, together at last.
Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie
—For that matter, for the first story in the series . . .
Walter Murphy and A Fifth of Beethoven
That was simply a one-off. The bigger issue is Trans Siberian Railroad and Mannheim Steamroller. The latter of which is the crux of a musical taste standoff twixt me and my sister-in-law every Thanksgiving.
Hey, it could happen.
Groundhog year.
Eritrean brain surgeons
Band name.
Trans Siberian Railroad?
Hmmm. Not much of a beat to it
At first glance, it does look like the service they provide is to fart on your shrubbery. Which seemed a little odd. Even in 2020.
This is why I like Fridays…
Anyone else here old enough to remember PDQ Bach
A little earlier and different style, the multi-talented Gerard Hoffnung deserves a mention.
That was simply a one-off.
You’re obviously unfamiliar with his follow up work Mostly Mozart. Also in the Top 100 Songs to Ride Elevators By.
before I realised that the bare butt-cheeks were actually meant to be hands.
Didn’t see that until you pointed it out.
Does that make a bad person?
Jones is so beyond sorry that he didn’t apologize (at least not in that tweet fragment).
Ugh. 32°C. Even the feeble breeze is hot.
“You want one and you know it.”
That’ll tell those pesky ChiComs where to get off.
“This is one of these.”
Well, that was a rabbit hole. Hildegard von Blingin’ (best internet name ever) is the master, though.
“Wet hands and Satie, together at last.”
“Cristal Baschet” sounds like a female racing driver. But who is Ondes Martenot?
“Anyone else here old enough to remember PDQ Bach”
I recall the BBC or Classic FM did a series back in the… ’90s? Although that was kind of a “rediscovery”, as far as I remember it. In fact, I think it was one of those one-a-day things across a week, with PDQ as the jumping-off point for a load of other “forgotten” Bachs.
“the multi-talented Gerard Hoffnung deserves a mention”
As often as possible.
“Ugh. 32°C. Even the feeble breeze is hot.”
It never quite topped 28 here, but it’s suddenly become very, very dark. And I hear rumbles of thunder.
And I hear rumbles of thunder.
Same here, though no rain is forecast. I’m considering whether to climb onto the roof and make an offering to the gods.
A cooling downpour is three puppies, right?
Rain!
Ugh. 32°C. Even the feeble breeze is hot.
[ translates to proper human-scale temperature…89.6 ]
White fragility, indeed.
https://youtu.be/LOy2GuaP8Mo
Seeing the reference above to Gerard Hoffnung I encourage anyone unaware of this unique character to listen to this cautionary tale about brick-laying. There are far worse ways of spending 6 minutes.
A cooling downpour is three puppies, right?
Posted by: David | July 31, 2020 at 19:02
Rain!
Posted by: David | July 31, 2020 at 19:17
That’s five minutes a puppy. Someone’s been practicing.
That’s five minutes a puppy.
I have an idea. I just need three oxen, a goat, and a first-born child.
Ugh. 32°C. Even the feeble breeze is hot.
Blessed be St. Wllis Carrier …
It’s 1:06 pm, SoCal – backyard thermometer reads: 105°F/40.5°C and even the 22% humidity isn’t dry enough to offset it.
blah
backyard thermometer reads: 105°F/40.5°C
[ Faints. ]
It’s 84°F (29°C in weird foreign numbers) here. So gloriously cool it feels like Spring.
Ugh. 32°C. Even the feeble breeze is hot.
Assorted monitors tell me it got up to 72F around here, currently back down to 64F.
Projections are of getting to a much more normal high 50s or so, with flurries of coworkers exclaiming OhGhods it’s freezing out there!!!! as I’m occasionally strolling about with my coat left draped over a seat . . .
Here in the midwestern U.S., a relatively cool August is predicted.
Depending on how far west you are , “relatively cool in August “ can mean “not much above 90,” but my little corner of the Midwest is looking at low 80’s next week.
Well, now … no red flags here.
The BBC brings us new art in Trafalgar Square.
Mysteries of a Barbershop
The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3
The BBC brings us new art in Trafalgar Square.
I suppose making something that’s both incongruous and banal is a kind of skill. Not the kind of skill one should pay for, of course, or be coerced to pay for.
If we could spread the rumour that that new work of art is a conceptual interpretation of a slave owner…
Aircraft repair of note.
The BBC brings us new art in Trafalgar Square.
Somewhat related.
The Black fly is feeding off the crowning cherry supported by the White masses!
Racist performance sculpture.
At first I thought it was some sort of bulgy, abstract art. Or maybe an accusatory finger pointing toward…well, something. Then I realized that it was the covering I was looking at and it hadn’t been unveiled yet. TBH, I liked it better my way. Too late to put it back? Pity.
As for no red flags here
No. No you are not aware of such unless you are in a field of somewhat limited, mostly knowable dynamics…such as astrophysics. Of course I’m simplifying, but nowhere near the degree as the author is. And what makes him an “expert” on the way other people should think? Is his expertise in human psychology, history, or even biology? Again, astrophysics. Dynamics. Shut up, Wesley.
This, I believe, is the point at which you say, “Go fuck yourself,” and then take your business elsewhere.
Today’s word is perspective.
Today’s word is perspective.
Thanks for making me feel ancient.
More on the Trafalgar “art”, or more accurately moron, the Trafalgar artist.
The Party of Science!
It ain’t pretty, but it flies
I get a Windmills of your Mind vibe from that – “like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning, on an ever-spinning reel…”
no red flags here
A “science communicator” used to be a personality from middlebrow TV who got you caught up in his dorky enthusiasm for learning about the structure of the atom. But “science communicators” are now part of the infrastructure of managed democracy, where if the people fail to want what the experts think they should want, it’s not seen as a failure of experts but a miscalibration of the communication strategy, to be corrected in the next round of nudging and nagging and psychologizing and prodding.
When I was growing up post-60’s, the hippies seemed to have won the cultural war against the scientific technocrats, and the technocrats had discredited their own conceptions of wisdom and consensus and control by events like the Thalidomide scandal and Three Mile Island. Scientists explaining the atom were accepted and welcomed, scientists with ideas about running society on a more rational and efficient basis were seen as suspect – no less greedy or corrupt than anyone else, intellectually arrogant on top of that, and with a small souled bugman predilection for reorganizing perplexing unruly earthlings into stacks of punched cards.
So in my confused middle age, I’m surprised when the left tells us that the little people should trust the billionaires and technocrats and wheels out BillAndMelinda to give us a lecture. But of course taking a view of history where the 60’s are just one decade among others, the left have always been interested in government by experts and five year plans, as long as they’re the experts who are doing the governing.
Today’s word is perspective.
Pretty car, but the wheel hop shows what a crappy suspension those things really had.
Today’s word is perspective.
Is there a word for the point when a historical film is as far away from our time as the film is from the time it depicts?
For example, Back to the Future depicted 1955 in 1985, so if you watched it in 2015 it was with some sort of equilibrium of perspective.
Gone with the Wind hit the point in the past decade where it was as far away from 1860-1865 as we are from 1939.
Asian Americans striving for Blackface Outrage Parity have been trying to make a scandal of Mickey Rooney’s Jap caricature in Breakfast at Tiffany’s . Recalibrating the years to get a perspective of what was in living memory – Rape of Nanking in 1997, Pearl Harbor around 2001 (around the time when “some people did some things” – funny how closer things can be less vivid than far-away things). Another way of flipping the perspective is that Breakfast at Tiffany’s was 60 years ago, so complaining about it now would be like complaining in 1960 about a sketch that George Cohan performed in 1900.
And what makes him an “expert” on the way other people should think?
I remember back in the day, James Randi’s common refrain was that scientists were easy to fool because they weren’t trained to look for deliberate deception, and were often called upon to judge things outside their narrow domain of expertise.
As advancing age limited his activities, he turned over much of the day-to-day editorializing on his site to Phil Plaint, of Bad Astronomy fame. Plait promptly began banging the OMG GLOBAL WARMING drum on the site and in the forums.
When people pointed out that 1) this was a skeptic site, 2) scientists weren’t trained to look for deliberate deception, and 3) astronomy had nothing to do with atmospheric science or ecology, the apoplexy was epic.
And what makes him an “expert” on the way other people should think?
Did you notice the tagline on his column? “The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.”
And yet he doesn’t want us to go out and discover the universe, he wants us to sit at home and accept whatever the experts say. And if what they say changes tomorrow then we should accept that without pondering why it has changed.
For decades I accepted the “scientific wisdom” that dietary fat was bad and carbs were good, and this led to harm that is very difficult to undo. I had friends who would probably have lived longer if they had not been misled by “experts” peddling this fraudulent science.
Thanks, pst314, I noticed the paradox inherent in “waiting for you to discover it” and “waiting for you to be told what to think.”
Sort of like the Washington Post’s “Democracy Dies in Darkness … but not when we smother the news”
“There are all these forms of torture we subject eggs to and I wanted to remind people that these are potential lives,”
So, a pro-life artist. Perhaps she should stand on the plinth and be the art installation. I’m sure the irony is beyond her.
Today’s word is perspective.
Thanks for making me feel ancient.
In 1980 I had already been alive longer than from 1980 to now.
the left have always been interested in government by experts and five year plans, as long as they’re the experts who are doing the governing.
This
Thanks, pst314, I noticed the paradox inherent in “waiting for you to discover it” and “waiting for you to be told what to think.”
So much of what they say are merely slogans.
There are all these forms of torture we subject eggs to and I wanted to remind people that these are potential lives,
Does she know the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs?
Does she know the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs?
“Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is good, every sperm is needed in your neighborhood.”
Does she know the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs?
One makes chickens and one makes roosters, duh.
Ah, the haplodiploid fowl.
“Does she know the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs?
One makes chickens and one makes roosters, duh.“
I assume that’s a subtle beekeeping joke because that kinda is how drone bees come about!
I saw The Subtle Beekeeping Jokes open for Heart in Vancouver in 1979.
So, a pro-life artist.
Presumably, given her wasted lives opinion, she is either perpetually pregnant or amenorrheic
Correction of note.
Via Damian.
An excellent essay by James Lindsay on why the ‘Woke’ refuse to debate their own ideology, and why all of their demands are entirely non-reciprocal.
Read the whole thing Here
“The Critical Social Justice view of their conversation or debate partner is literally someone who is willfully, actively, or perniciously misunderstanding and misrepresenting all of their arguments in order to preserve their own dominant status and the system in which they are unjustly granted that dominance.”
someone who is willfully, actively, or perniciously misunderstanding and misrepresenting all of their arguments in order to preserve their own dominant status
[ Whispers: ] Lefties project.
“In fact, theirs advances itself rather parasitically or virally by depending upon us to play the liberal game while taking advantage of its openings.”
That.
Can it truly be a world view if its existence depends on the existence of another dominant world view? It’s sole reason for existence is to overthrow and remove all traces of the existing world order. We never learn what the new world will look like because even its proponents don’t know. It’s precisely why real communism has never been tried–because there is no clear statement of what real communism is; just a set of steps to get to what is apparently unattainable.
Can it truly be a world view if its existence depends on the existence of another dominant world view?
It is not an ideology that offers solutions; it can only critique what already exists.
Thanks Jonathan, that was quite the read. As I have long suspected, Wokeness is a cult in all the classical descriptions. But rather than going off to find their own Guayana Esequiba to establish a closed society well stocked with Kool-Aid, they do, indeed, ride like parasites on a society still geared to liberal thought including logic, reason, scientific method, meritocracy and free trade.
Not one of those cult members would ever submit themselves to having heart by-pass surgery performed by someone who had gathered their knowledge by “other ways knowing” or drive across a bridge designed by someone who rejects “objective reality”.
They are primitives dressed up as academics.
There were a lot a rumors about the “protest” in Austin on Saturday that it was to be used by Antifa to seize some blocks for an “autonomous” zone.
But even Austin, TX isn’t Portland or Seattle. Things didn’t go as planned.
Wokeness is a cult in all the classical descriptions.
As noted here a while ago,
Links aplenty in the original.
If you thought your day was bad:
Today’s latest example of cluster b personality disorder.
wrt to Bullitt, it’s not “crappy” suspension, it’s perfectly good suspension with crappy technique; more clutch less power– don’t try to go beyond the limitations of the machine. Given McQueen’s rep as a driver, I like to think the stupid wheel hop was at the direction of the filmmakers.
Thousands of sex-mad monkeys overrun city and eat themselves to death as cops admit they are powerless to control Them.
So another day in Portland then.
But even Austin, TX isn’t Portland or Seattle.
They never expected to face a cavalry charge.
They never expected to face a cavalry charge.
We can dream, can’t we….
wrt to Bullitt, it’s not “crappy” suspension
Stock 1960’s American “lets build it cheap” solid axle & leaf spring, crappy.
Meanwhile, how millennial are you ?
1 for poke, but in olden times was stationed for a bit in Hawaii where it is a close second to Spam.
Neil Oliver: “We’ve lost any meaningful concept of what it means to be happy”. (Right at the end. But it’s worth watching/listening to the whole thing.)
Meanwhile, how millennial are you?
I was expecting/hoping for a zero, but then saw rosé. Does that really belong on the list? I think of lovely Lambrusco as quintessentially 80s, arguably one of the best things about that decade.
cluster b personality disorder.
I’m astonished (and not a little disappointed) that these creatures rarely seen to encounter much more robust responses.
Meanwhile, how millennial are you ?
I saw poke, which is a salad?, and thought polk salad and Tony Joe White (not at all millenial). “A wretched, spiteful, straight-razor totin’ woman!”
1 – cauliflower rice
OK, 2 if you count the rosé. What can I say? It was more of a dare.
Either way…Cancel my azz. Please.
“Meanwhile, how millennial are you ?”
Eaten them? I haven’t even heard of half of them.
Oh, wait… is “overnight oats” referring to the only canonically correct method of making porridge, and “bone broth” ditto for soup? ‘Cos if so, that’s a “2”, because I’m not a bloody barbarian.
Maybe there’s hope for these kids after all, although they may never know the radioactive joy of a can of Quatro and a Wham bar.
Yes, indeed, “enlightening”.
But LOOK OVER HERE, this is MOAR important.
. . . how millennial are you ?
