Reheated (60)
For newcomers, more items from the archives:
Our betters sail north at taxpayer expense. Gas is released courageously.
Such was the level of inspiration, some of the assembled artists began to work their creative magic immediately: “Tracy Rowledge constructed three series of ‘automated’ physical drawings, mapping the movement of the boat during the expedition.” For readers of a technical inclination, these ‘automated’ drawings involved suspending a felt-tip pen from the underside of a chair, resulting in random scribble on numerous sheets of paper positioned underneath. This feat was “REALLY exciting,” we learn, as it “explored movement, time, place and permanence.” The radical innovation also freed the artist to leave the dangling pen and do something more interesting. According to her two brief blog entries, the sum total of her commentary, Ms Rowledge spent much of this liberated time struggling with Greenlandic place names and making sure her fellow passengers knew how “overwhelmed” she was.
I Don’t Deserve This Shabby Treatment.
On the routine vainglory of the academic left.
Professor Surber’s self-regard continues to tumesce. He has fathomed all of history and it validates him. Liberal-arts professors tend to be leftwing, we’re told, “because we liberal-arts professors… have carefully studied the actual dynamics of history and culture; and we have trained ourselves to think in complex, nuanced, and productive ways.” In short, if you haven’t reached a similarly leftwing conclusion, then you haven’t achieved sufficient complexity and nuance in your thinking, you peasant. Luckily, we can count on Professor Surber and his peers to guide us to the light, such is their benign magnificence. They may be cruelly underappreciated, but by God they’re better than us and they will save us from ourselves.
You’ll Notice They All Wear Shoes.
The unhappy sights at San Francisco’s 2012 radical nude-in:
The standard blather about “civil rights” and “body image” isn’t very convincing. One doesn’t have to have “unrealistic issues of body shame” to find the exhibitionism tiresome or inappropriate. And the denials of any sexual aspect are also unconvincing, especially given that so many of the participants are enthusiasts of fetish clubs and websites catering to people who like public sex and scandalising others, and for whom the whole point is to have an audience, whether titillated or repelled. It’s rather like how the people at last year’s ‘protest’ claimed they just wanted to be left alone - while squealing for attention on a traffic island in the middle of a busy intersection.
Setting aside the issues of exposing oneself to children, the impact on local businesses, etc., what’s objectionable is that random people are being made participants in the exhibitionists’ psychodrama, whether they wish to be or not. For many, if not most, of the ‘activists’, this isn’t even about an enjoyment of being naked per se. It’s about confronting other people with unsolicited nakedness. Being nude in private or among consenting nudists in dedicated bars, clubs, spas, on nature trails, at specialist beaches, etc – of which San Francisco has plenty – doesn’t give the ‘activists’ enough of a thrill because the people there are willing. Hence the demand to display their genitals in front of random passers-by. An audience is required in order to feel transgressive and it’s pretty obvious that’s what matters. They want to be naked near you.
There’s more, should you crave it, in the greatest hits.
Also, open thread.
and a certain amount of redistribution of resources from the richer to the poorer.
Hey, I’m coming around to the idea of significantly higher taxes on inheritance. Not sure how it would actually work out but anything that drains the power from these woke-a-holics who’ve never held a real job but feel it is their “duty” to tell the rest of us how to live is FBM. The bloody Rockefellers should have been the first clue nearly 100 years ago. Meh…goes further back than that even. Andrew Carnegie tried to warn us.
More from The Spectator where Mark Piggott asks why the “free school meals” debate has become so toxic.
(For the benefit of our chums from overseas, in Britain children can eat school lunch for free if their household/parental income is below a certain level. Thanks to the closure of schools during the recent silliness some kids haven’t been getting free lunch because, er, the school was closed. A footballer, Marcus Rashford, has come up with the idea that the free lunches should still be served even if the schools are otherwise closed (including during the various and numerous holidays) thus ensuring that schools would essentially become year-round soup kitchens with an “educational facility” attached (my what’s names). Needless to say, the left have risen up as one to beat the Tories over the head with this. Mr. Rashford earns approximately £10 million per year from Manchester United F.C.).
Mark Piggott: “My childhood in 1980s West Yorkshire wasn’t a clichéd mash-up of a Hovis commercial and Kes. For most of my youth we had an indoor toilet, for instance, and though we lived in a cramped terraced house it wasn’t a back-to-back – which meant we could hang our washing in the back alley rather than out front. I did conform to stereotype in one sense, though: until the age of 14 I was on free school meals. I still remember how at my comprehensive school we had to line up separately on one side of the corridor. Unfairly, our dinner tickets had a special mark so that unlike the ‘other half’ we couldn’t flog them for the price of a chip butty. Presumably, the thinking was that we might not get a nutritious meal at home, which might have been the case for some kids, but not for me.
What’s astonishing almost 40 years later is not that campaigners such as the admirable Marcus Rashford still need to explain what it’s like to be poor – but that so many, mostly in the Conservative party, still seem unable to grasp that for whatever reasons, some young people still go hungry.
Blame feckless, absent fathers if you like, but anyone who believes a single mum bringing up kids on benefits has enough money to eat well is at best unimaginative and at worst uncaring. And though it was probably wrong for Labour’s Angela Rayner to shout ‘scum!’ at Conservative MP Chris Clarkson last week, there will now be a lot of people along the Red Wall who would consider the apparently vengeful vote against the provision of free meals to deprived children as exactly that: the actions of the nasty party.
As with so many issues at the moment, the debate over free meals has become over-heated and under-illuminated, with both sides entrenched within their ideological prisons. Yet again – as with Brexit, the pandemic, Trump-Biden and BLM – we are expected to pick a side and stick with it, wilfully ignoring anything that challenges our simplistic worldview. Except life is rarely so cut and dried. Some poor families do fritter their money away; some are genuine saints and angels. Some Tories do consider the poor scum; and some working-class people, in particular in the North, do still consider all Tories to be scum.
Hopefully, I have grown more sophisticated in my thinking over the decades. Partly this resulted from living in London, where I witnessed deprivation far greater than anything I experienced back home. Partly it has been a result of my own gear-change up through the social classes. Mostly, though, it has been as a result of mixing with people from every conceivable background and political affiliation and discovering that most – regardless of their proud political stripe – genuinely want to make the world a better place.
Which is why it’s so depressing that we appear to be more interested in dismissing the views and policies of our ‘enemies’ than wondering how to work alongside them. This reductive, holier-than-thou attitude is not only childish, it’s also counter-productive. The louder voices are raised, the deeper we bury our heads in the sand emerging only to take pot-shots at the other side, the longer children will experience the dreadful sensation of hunger. Surely, as caring, empathetic people, living in one of the richest, safest societies the world has ever known, we can at least come together to combat that?”
My reaction is to say that this was never about having “…enough money to eat well” in the first place.
The argument has become “toxic” because of the twin idiotic echo chambers of social media, Twitter and FB.
I’ve just looked at my FB feed (I cannot stand Twitter and am rapidly running out of patience with Facebook as a tool for keeping in touch with family, old school mates and overseas friends) and sure enough it’s one long litany of middle-class Lefties posturing and preening, where “poverty” is because of the “greedy rich”, the Tories are “evil- go on, Boris voters, refute that one!”, children are “…starving”, etc. etc.
It’s not even an “argument”- it’s just bunch of clowns, many of whom are well-educated, wealthy by any reasonable standards and otherwise capable of rational analysis, blethering away because everybody else is doing it. It’s like watching a group of 15th century wool merchants being ostentatiously pious and humble, chucking a couple of groats they can easily afford at the raggedy people in a vain attempt to impress the bishop as his sedan chair carries him over the festering mire of Shytegate.
It’s pathetic.
(Sorry for banging on at such length today. I think the strain of living through The Age Of Peak Stupid is beginning to tell).
this time in her bathtub instead of a car.
Again, it’s either delusional or it’s performative and pretentious. Neither option is reassuring.
[ Added: ]
If the Supreme Court confirmation of a mainstream conservative reduces you to tearful hysteria, which you then film and share online with countless strangers, despite being in the bath at the time, then there’s probably something wrong with you. If, on the other hand, you merely feel an urge to feign these psychodramas in order to accrue in-group status – by pretending to be hysterical at the Supreme Court confirmation of a mainstream conservative – then… well, there’s also probably something wrong with you.
a Hovis commercial and Kes
Heh. We watched Kes a couple of months ago. No f’n idea WTF they were saying but a good film. Like watching a foreign language file without subtitles. Waking Ned Devine made so much more sense when we turned that on, though I mostly blame the acoustics in our house for that.
But to your more relevant point, re Some poor families do fritter their money away; some are genuine saints and angels. Some Tories do consider the poor scum; and some working-class people, in particular in the North, do still consider all Tories to be scum.…
I will repeat this until my last dying breath, the greatest problem we have economically is the ignorance, widely believed and often buried in academic gibberish, that for one person to get richer, another person must get poorer. This belief undermines effort, re-enforces defeatism, and probably does more to create class divisions than anything Marx ever dreamed of. Damn near every economic problem we face, and 90% of our social issues, could be resolved with a much broader understanding of this economic fact. Virtually every socio-economic issue being discussed is time wasted without this understanding.
Also, knowing nothing about European “Football” but is this guy any good? Or is this a parallel to ColKap? A guy whose time is passed and is using victimization to hold on?
Again, it’s either delusional or it’s performative and pretentious.
I would be prepared to bet a considerable amount of money that it’s performative and pretentious. I’d bet the bloody house on it.
I would be prepared to bet a considerable amount of money that it’s performative and pretentious.
And as noted above, that’s scarcely less neurotic. Feeling compelled to pretend these things, publicly and competitively, in an attempt to achieve the most gratuitous woke meltdown and thereby in-group status, doesn’t exactly suggest mental wellbeing.
Is this in line with what you crazy foreign peoples in God forsaken lands…
Nope. In Canada we have three types of election, federal, provincial, and municipal. Each is separate from the other. During federal and provincial elections we fill out one ballot, selecting one individual to represent us in federal or provincial parliament. There could be any number of people running for the job, but we only select one.
We don’t vote directly for the federal or provincial leader. So if you want John Smith to be the Prime Minister and John Smith belongs to the Conservative Party, then in order to make this happen you have to vote for Jane Doe, the Conservative Party candidate in your riding. But even if Jane Doe gets elected it does not mean that John Smith automatically becomes Prime Minister. Smith’s party-associated colleagues must win at least a plurality of ridings (which represent seats in parliament) in order to become the Prime Minister. While on the surface this would appear to simplify things, it prevents voters from having finer control over their governments. For example in the US, you could be a Democrat but you might really dislike the Presidential candidate. You could vote for a Democrat in the senate and the house and vote for a Republican for president.
In municipal elections we have several more selections to make. We vote for a mayor, we vote for a councillor to represent our ward, we vote for a school board trustee and in some regions we vote for a regional chair. All other positions: judges, dog catchers, police, sheriffs, fire services etc are appointments or employees.
I can agree with this, depending on the definitions of ‘certain amount,’ ‘richer,’ and ‘poorer.’ And of ‘public services.’ There are some things (police, firefighters, roads/bridges, etc.) which I have no issue with being publicly funded. But the left does far too much ginning up of imaginary rights (abortion*, healthcare, not-being-offended) and demanding they be paid for out of the community purse. They also do far too much ‘othering’ and scapegoating of ‘rich people.’ I also have no problem with said purse supporting those who are objectively permanently disabled through no fault of their own, or temporarily those who are in dire financial straits — again, through no fault of their own. This business of productive members of society being forced to foot the bill for irresponsible layabouts needs to stop.
* I am pro-choice, up to a point (a point which falls somewhere past the first trimester). What I am not is pro-subsidy. It’s an elective procedure. If you want one, pay for it yourself or hit up your friends and family (or rabid pro-abortion partisans).
…and demanding they be paid for out of the community purse.
Not only do they want it paid for out of the community purse, they want the community to run it through some sort of government bureaucracy or crown corporation. Sometimes that’s okay and works. But too many times it doesn’t.
For example, Toronto has been “revitalizing” it’s main train station for 10-years. It was supposed to be completed in six-years. The project is still not complete and it’s way over budget. It is going to continue well into this decade. A developer would have finished the project long ago or gone out of business and somone else would have finished it off.
Toronto is also replacing its streetcars. The original supplier screwed up the contract and the city just completed a lawsuit against the company. Oh, but they turned around and re-awarded the contract to the same company. Ottawa, which suffers very cold and very snowy winters ordered LRT cars that weren’t designed to operate under these conditions. You can’t make this stuff up.
Private companies screw-up all the time too, but problems tend to be surfaced and resolved much more quickly than when a government bureaucracy is in charge.
On final thing that I do feel I ought to add is that all this is very much about the woke. The woke are not synonymous with the left.
See, such as:
Narcissist.
But I think that for most here it simply makes me someone with a different view who can be disagreed with and engaged with respectfully.
See, such as:
But I think that for most here it simply makes me someone with a different view who can be disagreed with and engaged with respectfully. . . . . . .
For example, Toronto has been “revitalizing” it’s main train station for 10-years. It was supposed to be completed in six-years. The project is still not complete
Ask me about California’s “High Speed Rail” aka as the Browndoggle (after former governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown)
In my little slice of Heaven, the bleeding hearts on the School Board determined that with the schools closed, they needed to continue paying the kitchen staff to make meals for the poor kids, and paying the school bus drivers to drive the food from the schools into the neighborhoods where the kids live.
Never mind that the nice ladies in the local churches could feed the kids in their area for five bucks a head, rather than spending thirty bucks a head to have crappy school lunches delivered in big yellow buses. Never mind that the neighborhood programs would be funded by charitable neighbors banding together to take care of each other, while the school programs are funded by every resident through coercion, whether they can afford the expense or not. (Also never mind how many of these ‘poor kids’ are teens who have better cell phones, shoes and weed than what I can afford for myself.)
But God help you if you advocate for low-profile, low-overhead charity rather than top-heavy central planning and entitlements. If you do that sort of thing, it’s because you’re a horrible excuse for a human being who hates children and wants to see them starve.
@Hal
Maybe I’m being dim but I have absolutely no idea what you’re saying there.
@George,
Not to worry, he doesn’t either.
“Toronto has been “revitalizing” it’s main train station for 10-years. It was supposed to be completed in six-years”
Not even a Train Station, but the bicycle rack for one.
Government run project to make a cage for bicycles… 3 years over and $1.9M vice planned $600K
https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2020/02/15/dc-metro-has-spent-3-8-million-and-five-years-on-two-unfinished-bike-racks-that-were-to-be-ready-in-2015/
Farnsworth +1
@Hal
Maybe I’m being dim but . . . .
Welll, as the comment notes, . . . very much about the woke. The woke are . . .
See, such as:
Narcissist.
. . . and in turn . . .
. . . a different view who can be disagreed with and engaged with respectfully.
. . . being, quite certainly, . . . a different view who can be disagreed with and engaged with respectfully. . . .
Not to worry, he doesn’t either.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon
Of course, poor FM doesn’t just have an ongoing hatred of reality, more particularly, there is that vehement hatred of being reminded of reality, particularly when having no way to refute either reality or the one providing the reminder . . .
Instead of seeking solutions to improve reality, he prefers to remain a little girl with a diary.
@George
Well, I’m sure that last comment from @Hal clears things up.
Sadly, Hal thinks we all hear the same voices he hears in his head.
Sadly, Hal thinks we all hear the same voices he hears in his head.
Better to just skip over Hal’s comments than waste time trying to decipher his meaning, since “what did you mean by that?” just results in more gibberish. Too bad.
“Not even a Train Station, but the bicycle rack for one.
Government run project to make a cage for bicycles… 3 years over and $1.9M vice planned $600K”
I’ll just leave this link here, I think.
Having seen this particular flavour of logorrhea before, I do wonder if lithium (or the lack thereof) isn’t involved.
I would have commented upon @Hal’s signal to noise ratio, but I believe that noise to signal is a better metric for his/her/its posts.
In most cases, his/her/its comments are similar to the old punch-drunk boxer that I saw in the late 1970s in New York City muttering things that perhaps made sense to him but not to anyone else listening.
@Hal has occasionally provided something interesting to read here. Reading his/her/its comments are not always fruitless; somewhat like the YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/DrainAddict, there is the occasional kernel of corn that you see when you are working, but you might have to wade through a bit of shit to get it. (If you’ve never watched his videos, you probably should not watch that channel within 1 hour of consuming food.)
At any rate, our host tolerates @Hal. (Our host tolerates me for that matter.) All hail Mr. Thompson and his better half for allowing all sorts of people to comment here.
All hail Mr. Thompson and his better half for allowing all sorts of people to comment here.
In thirteen years, and 14 million pageviews, I’ve blocked and banned barely a handful of people, maybe seven or so. Which isn’t bad going, all things considered. I like to think it’s the classy tone that does most of the work.
What?
Looking back to when I went to art college years ago, I can now see I was useless. I actually drew and painted and never, ever thought of being praised for hanging a pen from the underside of a chair.
But then Watford art college didn’t shake that much, though I am happy to believe Hertfordshire now lies on the edge of a tectonic plate so may be subject to tremors.