Friday Ephemera

@ Steve: “I can assure you the neoprene suit is needed for that manoeuver. In a regular bathing suit you’d get a deep water enema.”
Unfortunately my neoprene ski-suit, when bare-footing on Big Stone Lake in Three Lakes, Wis. in 1980 had, unknown to me, sprung some stitches in the nether regions and I did get flushed when finishing my run by throwing back to slide to a halt.

Was anyone arrested in Portland who wasn’t trans? What the hell?

He’s bad.
That’s brilliant.

Pretty sure I went to that club in 1978.
It does evoke the goth contingent of several clubs I stumbled around as a yoot; the dancefloor sticky with beer, and the air thick with industrial-strength hair lacquer.

This Bird gets about a bit.
via Byzantine Emporia

Today’s word is ‘harsh’.
https://twitter.com/harvardgraduat/status/1293660367772516352

This Bird gets about a bit.
The Caspian Sea Monster must have scared it away for part of that time, based on the flight path record.

I think this is what the kids mean when they say TMI.
Hey, we’re forward-thinking, enlightened types here. We don’t judge.
[ Opens file marked NTSOG, adds suspected deviant. ]

Sent 50 quidses…
Bless you, sir. May your enemies’ grocery deliveries rarely, if ever, arrive at the promised time, and always with disappointing substitutions.

If your memory serves you well, this might be a good tune for your non=essential component.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6aJrPbeBfg

..the dancefloor sticky with beer,…
In the club I’m thinking about, there was a back room that had never been cleaned where a crusty pint glass stood on a lonely, filthy table. I picked up the glass and the whole table came with it; and it was a heavy table. The club was called Nuts and Bolts and was very Punk/New Wave, where everyone was “Dancing with themselves.”
Kind of like this place. ;p

Caption competition?
https://twitter.com/GarbyJooman2020/status/1294155166774489089

It’s a Tribble. They’ve invented a Tribble, haven’t they?

Guard your grain bins.

Flying train, 1902.
That reminds me of a funny story told many years ago by the sf writer Larry Niven, known for his serious attention to science: Someone remarked to him that the writer Richard Lupoff had made serious criticisms of the science in Lupoff’s most recent story was “Sacred Locomotive Flies”, at which point Niven laughed and gave no further thought to the matter.

Caption competition?
The Biden mask mandate.

Larry Niven, known for his serious attention to science
Ehhh. I lost a lot of respect for him after I read “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”.

In the club I’m thinking about, there was a back room that had never been cleaned where a crusty pint glass stood on a lonely, filthy table.
In the establishments I used to frequent a ‘back room’ signified something quite different. It’s a miracle I’ve managed to remain so vestal and unblemished.

Mahmoud’s selfie was photo-bombed. RIP, Mahmoud, you will be missed.
Some random interviewer: What can you tell us about the Beirut explosion?
Achmed the Dead Terrorist: New guy.

Caption Contest.
Mamhoud trades three of his wives for an acre of corn. Great trade!!

The Canucks stick giver must have been Sam Gagner from 2019-2019. No one else has worn that number recently. They traded him.

In the establishments I used to frequent a ‘back room’ signified something quite different.
I did once visit a club with what I suppose could be described as a shagging mezzanine.
I’ve been told there was a bar in my city that once had something called the “slurpee bar”–and it wasn’t the 7/11 if you know what I mean.
I’m beginning to think I’ve led a very sheltered and boring life.

” Caption competition?”
Number two, just this once, can we get a nice family photo where everyone is smiling?

I’m beginning to think I’ve led a very sheltered and boring life.
I’m rather glad that I’ve been able to not internalize the many things that lead you to write that comment, despite my knowledge of their existence.

…despite their limited relevance to today
That should read …despite their limited relevance today to those horrible events of yesteryear.
I think you should be able to guess the level of PTSD from such a horror by my inability to accurately describe the events.
hopes nobody sees the shifty eyes

Band name.
I think it could be improved – even more – by adding the definite article – The Shagging Mezzanine. Like The Cocteau Twins or The Teardrop Explodes.
To make it classy, like.

No children were harmed during the making of this music Video.
via Count Dankula

Having been educated at a large state comprehensive school myself, it seems to me that the main advantage of a private over a state school has nothing to do with facilities or with the quality of the teaching staff (and certainly nothing to do with ‘buying’ A grades) but more in who the other children are and how they behave.

That. In skywriting.
Somewhat related.

From Spiked-: “Wokeness: old religion in a new bottle”:
“What I object to is the idea that deep feeling is going to solve the race problem. Or that absurdly utopian ideas like abolishing the police are going to solve the problem. We don’t live in a utopia, and those ideas are only going to cause more problems. The Elect has not been called upon to be responsible. Its members are simply objecting, and they are objecting for reasons that are at least half, and probably more, emotional. Which is to say, they are only objecting to feel good about themselves. To look at that in any objective way, it’s so irresponsible. All it does is create more unhappiness in the name of your own self-righteousness. This is what I call the self-love of self-hatred. It’s ‘I’m such a sinner and aren’t I wonderful for knowing that I’m a sinner’. The irresponsibility comes because they aren’t governing”.

The Shagging Mezzanine
The All-Comers Shagging Mezzanine?
Not yet.
First The Shagging Mezzanine will release several albums and go on tour, individual members will release solo albums, there will be at least one greatest hits album.
Finally, in the manner of Ringo Starr And His All Starr Band, and noting Elton John and Leon Russell’s The Union, only then will there be The All-Comers Shagging Mezzanine as the final climax.

A theory of snowflake formation

[Young people] are merely doing what young people have always done: testing the resolve of their elders and seeking the limits of their tolerance. The problem is not with the students, but with those who are supposed to be in authority over them, who cannot bear to see themselves as elders.
Once upon a time, something like a university was run by men and women in grey suits who set out rules and boundaries for those in their charge. From their offices on the second floor, they looked out on the quadrangle and rapped terrifyingly on the window when observing misbehavior or incivility. Now, it seems, they work with the curtains drawn while their students run amok. This is the snowflakes problem.
… Today’s university students seek to apply the most natural and tried method of young people since the time of Cain and Abel, by pushing their elders until someone lets a roar of “Enough!” But the “Enough!” never comes, nor the rapping on the second-floor window, and so the young must choose between effecting a coup d’etat or plunging further into petulance, puerility, and waywardness.
… The sibling society stands in contrast to what preceded it: the father-organized society in which authority was unafraid to speak or to be despised by the young for so doing. A working definition of authority might be: the capacity to endure unpopularity in the interests of the good.

That
Exactly. Beat me to it. So many of my otherwise ‘conservative’ or at the very least, apolitical friends have children that failed to launch. It’s something that is often difficult to overlook when discussing current events with so many of them. The number of times I have to bite my tongue. And it’s mostly, as I see it anyway, that 10-15-20 years ago or so the stories they would tell of the stupid thing their kid did to which they laughed off or excused away out of fear of “becoming my mother/father”. And I of course bit my tongue back then as well. It’s all my fault, actually.

“Like The Cocteau Twins”
[Gnnnnrrrgh… must… resist… pedantry….]
Acksherly… they, very pointedly, didn’t have the definite article, because reasons.
[Phew. I think I got away with it by introducing sarcasm. Hey… am I actually typing this out? Yipe!]

That is a very important observation,
The failure, or refusal, to grasp how intelligence seems to work causes all kinds of complications.
[ Added: ]
Quite old now, but somewhat related.

those who are supposed to be in authority over them, who cannot bear to see themselves as elders… A working definition of authority might be: the capacity to endure unpopularity in the interests of the good.
It’s the definition of parenting, too. There is no one way to parent as every child, even siblings, will respond differently to parental authority. However, that authority must be present to begin with. Love, bond, but don’t be your child’s “friend.” You can be “friends” when they’re 30 and parents themselves.
Parents shouldn’t sweat the small stuff and a good marker of success is the ability to listen to one’s child entering the throes of adolescence screaming “I hate you! I hate you! I wish I was never born!” without dissolving into a puddle of goo.
Too many Boomer parents gave up their authority to their children and it’s created brittle adults who can’t handle any manner of adversity or inconvenience. Tantrums is how they got stuff from their parents and they feel it’s still a legit strategy.

That is, things like general building, maintenance, and repair knowledge, skilled trade know-how…
My grandmother would hire a tradesman once. She would watch him like a hawk and learn how to make the repair so that she could do it herself the next time it needed fixing. Thanks to her cajoling and ability to fix things, I can perform repairs and do maintenance around the house and on my car.
I’ve tried to pass these skills on to my kids with limited success.

I’m rather glad that I’ve been able to not internalize the many things that lead you to write that comment, despite my knowledge of their existence.
I have no idea what that means, but FWIW, my comment was nothing more than a throwaway joke.

”Charles Murray, co-author of “The Bell Curve”, has written that many social institutions of the 1950’s and earlier served to facilitate the mixing of social classes: people of all sorts belonged to the same country clubs, supper clubs, service organizations (Moose, Elk, Eagle, Rotary) and so on, and thus a well-to-do man with a bachelor’s or master’s degree might meet and marry a secretary with a high school diploma. Today, however, with the decline of those organizations (due in part to attacks from the left), there is much less mixing.”
My own parents were exactly that: a lawyer and a typist from a council estate who met through an operatic society. Two things strike me about this: first, as you say, such organizations are thinner on the ground these days, but also it’s far less likely that someone from my mother’s background would be interested in that kind of music in the first place.
There’s a cozy myth, largely on the Left, that classical music was “middle class” and exclusionary until arts subsidy brought it to the masses. But I’ve seen with my own eyes that, if anything, precisely the opposite is the case. Hell, Enrico Caruso, the first man to sell a million records, was an operatic tenor, not a music-hall act.

Is American Buddhism Really “Too White”?

You may wonder what all of this has to do with Buddhism. Was the Buddha interested in “unpacking whiteness”? Did Dogen have an officer in charge of Cultural Awareness and Diversity at Eihei-ji temple? Was Bodhidharma a champion of inclusivity? If you were to attend many of our larger American Zen centers without any prior knowledge of Buddhism you could be forgiven for believing these were major concerns of Buddhist thinkers throughout the ages.
Spoiler alert: They weren’t. The Buddha was against the Indian caste system and he allowed women to join his monastic order, which was very uncommon in his time. Dogen railed against the anti-inclusive sexist practices of some Zen Buddhists in Medieval Japan. But that’s about as close as you can get.

—For reference, Dogen . . .

Clown World is a strange place.
And just a little creepy.
Via Julia.

The English:

Which one are you?

Any chance of finding the link, David?
It’s a good job one of us keeps track of these things.

Caption competition (better late than never).
Cat Stevens and family on staycation.

Robert Warshow was an American writer in the postwar forties and fifties. His death at an early age was greatly regretted. A number of his best esays were gathered in a book called The Immediate Experience. Lionel and Diana Trilling had befriended Warshow; LT included this reminiscence in his Introduction for the book:

He on his side and we on ours were in articulate revolt against the dominant “progressive” ideas of child-rearing. We felt them to be charged with a scarcely concealed animosity to parents and an essential malice toward children which lay hidden under the manifest child-partisanship, an impulse to deprive children of their dignity by underestimating their powers. The three of us joined in repudiating the conception of life — safe, simplified, unimpassioned — that was implicit in almost everything that the experts were saying. We confessed to the most retrograde desires for our sons, that they should become men of firm and responsible character; and adventurous, even heroic, in their quest for happiness and even for pleasure; and, into the bargain, intellectually distinguished. We went so far as to think we had the right to influence them to have such intentions for themselves; we were willing, God forgive us, to commit the ultimate sin of “putting pressure” on them.
One conversation that I especially remember occurred in the company of others, of whom some expressed surprise and dismay at the line that Warshow was taking, and he, with great fervor made an appeal to history, choosing an example that would have quite confounded almost any truly progressive mind. He said: “When Charles I was in prison, awaiting execution, he had his youngest son, Henry, brought to him. The boy was nine years old. The father told the son what was going to happen, and explained that when he was dead there would be some people who would want to make Henry king, but that the boy must never consent to this because his oldest brother was rightfully the father’s successor. Then he kissed the boy and sent him away. That was how a father once expected he could talk to his nine-year-old son.”

That is a very important observation,

Well, it’s interesting how the contortions being performed in order to deny the obvious are most common among middle-class lefties. The people I know from working-class backgrounds generally seem much less agitated or offended by the fact that some people are smarter than others and were born that way. Unlike, say, Andrew Adonis, the former Labour Party schools minister, whose own education entailed boarding schools and Oxford, and who insisted that, “There is no genetic or moral reason why the whole of society should not succeed to the degree that the children of the professional classes do today, virtually all getting five or more good GCSEs and staying on in education beyond 16.”

This is an extraordinary claim, a bizarre supposition unmoored from reality. As I said in an earlier thread,

Has Andrew Adonis actually met a selection of children from across the entire ability range? Has he met them gathered in one room? I suspect not. And if he were to, would he close one eye and pretend that the child at one end of that spectrum… is inherently as capable as the child at the other extreme? Or would be if not for the evils of capitalism and “social privilege”?

Again, there’s the assumption that an IQ is something you can just pour into a head, any head, given a sufficient number of years spent being bored in a demoralised and demoralising state comprehensive school. (Which I suppose is another way for leftist educators to flatter themselves and overestimate their own importance – by in effect taking credit for someone else’s ability.)

At my state comprehensive, the span of ability ranged from a girl who’d memorised the entire periodic table, and could happily discuss it, to people who didn’t know their own postcodes and couldn’t be relied on to find out, or to retain the information until the following day. Their inability to do this, or other simple things, didn’t seem to have much to do with capitalism or “social privilege.” And the conceit that these extremes are interchangeable, and that the latter group could easily be enthusing about the properties of iridium, or parsing Chaucer, is ludicrous.

And this, remember, was Labour’s Minister for Schools

This is an extraordinary claim, a bizarre supposition unmoored from reality.
That very unmooring from reality is why the left is trying hard to make it impossible to do research into the genetic basis of or heritability of intelligence: noone interested in such questions should be hired, or if hired given tenure. Those who do such research should be harassed and persecuted and fired on trumped up charges.

Instructional video.

Saturday 106F/41.1C
[ Rummages in freezer. Gives hastily-unwrapped Magnum a thorough tonguing. ]

“In other news, ludicrous educator still ludicrous.”
I often wonder whether this is just pure slander or if these idiots genuinely don’t know what fascism is. One thing’s for sure, they don’t want the people they’re “educating” to find out.

They’ve been programmed to think that national socialism and international socialism are so different as to be incomparable with each other.
That, and they suffer from Humpty Dumptyism when it comes to the meaning of words.

“When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

…accept the obvious explanation that she’s a nasty female dog with racial and personal inferiority complexes that can never be assuaged no matter how much hollow success she may achieve.
There are few things more tragic than a thoroughly ugly woman.