Friday Ephemera
An impressive stash. || Hardcore pecking. || The endless acid banger. || She’ll be late for work. || Air worm. || You want one and you know it. || “He ran his experiment by putting a non-toxic lipstick on his cats’ anuses.” || Just like normal people. || Shoelace knot innovation. (h/t, Things) || Always respect the media. || Repent at leisure. || A brief guide to black holes. || Glass barn for sale, $1,700,000. (h/t, Things) || Attempted super-casual door-closing of note. || The sound of fun being had. || A vision of things to come. || Incoming, not outgoing. || “Cat trapped in sofa” and other rescue dramas. || “I wanted to be in a car accident.” || I’ll just leave this here. || And finally, tastily, “I just figured the skin is thick.”
I see Kamala Harris salute as she goes up the boarding ramp, but where’s the plane?
but where’s the plane?
It’s out of scope of the video. Who is Feisty Cat? A troll for conservatives…”conservatives”?
The Bill of Rights is seen as a “Bill of Negative Liberties” by Government Supremacists of the Obama mind. They don’t like that it limits what the government may do – such as interfere with citizens possessing firearms, limit or restrict free expression of political beliefs, conduct warrantless searches, house troops in private residences, etc.
Oh how all laugh at that last one! It just shows how obsolete the Constitution is.
Imagine housing soldiers in private houses! Why it’s preposterous to suggest that the government needs to be restrained from stationing soldiers in houses…hey, wait a minutes!…On second thought, it could be very helpful in keeping tabs on potentially violent insurrectionists, right-leaning bloggers, and Trump supporters. I mean housing soldiers in private homes could be an excellent investment in building safe communities and ensuring domestic tranquility. No?
If you disagree with that idea, you are an unpatriotic conspiracy nut who ought to have troops stationed in your house. For your own protection.
It’s out of scope of the video.
It’s funny, because I usually expect to see a bit of the nose of the plane. But maybe we can make jokes about Kamala’s invisible airplane and lasso of truthiness.
Also from the Dark Continent:
https://twitter.com/TeamAlpha3/status/1388244242691072000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1388244242691072000%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon
Any got a match?
[I didn’t realise petrol pumps had such pressure and, more importantly, range.]
@ Dr Chaotica: “… don’t have a cat. It works for me.”
Cats are Number One target for me [and most Australian ‘varmint’ shooters] when I’m out hunting at night. Foxes are Number Two. I’m always terribly impressed by how much people care for and love their moggies [and also care for Nature], but let their cats roam the countryside killing small animals and birds and then complain when the killers ‘develop’ lead-poisoning.
“Also from the Dark continent”: there seems to be a problem loading this clip.
This link may work: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2021/05/taking-the-initiative.html
They really are barking mad.
David, did the spam filter eat a comment? (I made two attempts with slightly different wording.)
but let their cats roam the countryside killing small animals and birds
I saw some articles, years ago, reporting that a study showed that the average British house cat killed an astonishing number of birds each year. I don’t know how they figured this out, how reliable the data is, and so on–never bothered to try to track down the original study.
LIVESCIENCE: “In just one day, Australia’s millions of cats kill approximately 1.3 million birds, 1.8 million reptiles and over 3.1 million mammals.”
That adds up to over 2 billion kills per year: “… a single pet cat kills, on average, about 75 animals each year.”
https://www.livescience.com/65915-australia-cats-wildlife-killers.html
A stray domestic cat has taken up residence on my farm – I’ve seen it several times, but had no chance to shoot it – and I am seeing piles of feathers in and around bush areas where it has caught and eaten native birds. I could trap it and hand it over to the Shire Ranger. It would be taken to a vet [at a cost to ratepayers], who would check for a micro chip and determine if it was domestic or a true feral. If feral it would be put down. If domestic its owners would be contacted and, after paying a small fee/fine, would get it back if they wished. They would take it home and likely let it out to roam again. That’s why I shoot them.
I seem to remember that Australia has a rather horrible rodent problem (not only rabbits but mice as well). https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/07/australias-mouse-plagues.html
At least in the US, cats will catch, kill, and eat young rabbits. Of course, you could import barn owls (which you wouldn’t because god knows what else they would eat) who appear to eat a mouse every 15 minutes during breeding season. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPXKerSXSwA
you could import barn owls (which you wouldn’t because god knows what else they would eat)
Australia has a long history of importing foreign species to solve the problems created by the last foreign species they imported.
At least in the US, cats will catch, kill, and eat young rabbits.
And rats, and mice, which can cause far more damage by contamination than by simply eating. Providing a handful of cats with a bit of food will make sure they hang around even after they’ve killed most of the vermin. The established group of cats will then both keep other cats from moving in on their turf and also cut down on pests migrating in simply by the presence of their scent.
Farm cats are common in the US for a reason.
Feral cats are a problem but they’re here to stay in Australia now. Nature being what it is, new ecosystems including the cats have formed.
Another feral in Australia is the fox – can’t remember where I read it but there was a story from WA recently where they’d succeeded in eliminating the fox from an area, and, far from improving the biodiversity of the area, it made it *worse*, because the cats moved in to take advantage of an area where foxes had previously been, well, top dog.
[E]xperience and common sense don’t stop the many educational idealists from dreaming of a land that allows children to be truly “creative”, unfettered by old-fashioned subject disciplines with their utilitarian exams, unchecked by pernicious, untrusting inspections, free of all those “damaging” reports that seek to put a grade on ability …
As is well-known, from Scotland to the United States, Finland has been the poster-child for an education system flying in the face of “experience and common sense”.
Demand to learn their secret success was so high that many started charging just to walk through their doors.
They’re quick these Finns!
But since 2013 Finland has moved from A* to C- in the PISA league, and in the last PISA report of 2018, the country has slipped back in every category, and nowhere more so than in the reading gap between boys and girls which is greater now in Finland than in any other PISA country.
Oh, dear.
Never mind.
No doubt that wasn’t “real” creativity and progressivism after all.
Full article on the fading love affair with Finnish schools here. It includes some choice quotes from Hannah Arendt, too, from 1954:
“[C]onservatism, in the sense of conservation, is of the essence of the educational activity, whose task is always to cherish and protect something — the child against the world, the world against the child, the new against the old, the old against the new.”
And
“The problem of education,” Arendt wrote, “lies in the fact that by its very nature it cannot forgo either authority or tradition, and yet must proceed in a world neither structured by authority nor held together by tradition.”
David, did the spam filter eat a comment?
Thank you, David. Do you have any ideas about what sorts of things tend to cause a comment to get stuck in the spam filter? Things we can take steps to avoid?
Australia has a long history of importing foreign species to solve the problems created by the last foreign species they imported.
Is that why you no longer find large colonies of Bruces?
Do you have any ideas about what sorts of things tend to cause a comment to get stuck in the spam filter?
Comments with multiple links sometimes trigger it. Also, just a single bare link with no accompanying text. And for reasons I still can’t fathom, anything by Julia.
What can I say? The damn things has moods.
Australia has a long history of importing foreign species to solve the problems created by the last foreign species they imported.
I’ll just leave this here.
Is that why you no longer find large colonies of Bruces?
The drop bears ate all the Bruces not in captivity. An environmental tragedy. 🙁
Also, just a single bare link with no accompanying text.
Well, my text was pretty minimal. I’ll try to practice logorrhea in the future. Besides, this is respectable establishment where bare naked links are not welcome.
The drop bears ate all the Bruces not in captivity.
Sounds plausible. I’ll be visiting later this year. How can I get a tour of a banana bending factory?
Via Charles Murray discovers the Wild Animal Initiative:
The wild frontier of animal welfare: “Should humans try harder to protect even wild creatures from predators and disease? Should we care whether they live good lives? Some philosophers and scientists
have an unorthodox answer“ say yes. “…The suffering of animals from predators, disease, and starvation is truly massive in scale…” (And the human race has a moral duty to eliminate all that suffering.)The hubristic disconnection from reality is jaw-dropping.
They really are barking mad.
Sad. The pipers are playing “Garry Owen”, and not a single Winged Hussar has shown up. Never around when you need one.
Animal welfare
Predators Lives Matter – or do they?
Housing for all homeless animals and Clap for the Natural Health Service
“…The suffering of animals from predators, disease, and starvation is truly massive in scale…” (And the human race has a moral duty to eliminate all that suffering.)
I’m pretty sure the predators are animals too, so you’re not allowed to make them suffer by killing them or preventing them from eating their prey. And starvation may be massive in scale, but any attempt to alleviate it will involve helping the animals eat more other animals, or more plants (which, I assume, also suffer when eaten). As for disease, don’t germs suffer when you kill them? This business of eliminating suffering is a lot more complicated that you might think. Assuming that you do think.
I’m pretty sure the predators are animals too, so you’re not allowed to make them suffer by killing them or preventing them from eating their prey.
Among the suggestions were to genetically modify the predators to be herbivores, and to use birth control chemicals to limit how many animals are born so that most of them won’t starve. I wonder if the problem with these Deep Thinkers is that they live such cloistered lives or that they just have damaged brains.
…and Clap for the Natural Health Service
Gonorrhea? How about syphilis and Hepatitis?
let their cats roam the countryside
My two are strictly indoors.
Coyotes.
The suffering of animals from predators, disease, and starvation
Um … if I remember from my un-awoke childhood, predators improve the lives of herd animals by removing the diseased and weak, thus helping the herd avoid starvation.
Where DO these people come from?
Where DO these people come from?
All the loony people
Where do they all come from?
All the loony people
Where do they all belong?
Where DO these people come from?
The BBC.
“She”. OK, it is the BBC, but seriously, one would think even the wokiest would hoist high the bullshit flag sometime.
“The pipers are playing “Garry Owen”, and not a single Winged Hussar has shown up”
Say, isn’t that Henry Fonda over there?
“She”.
The BBC chooses to pretend, and to become absurd.
Clap for the Natural Health Service
They gonna rate your record high
Clap for the Natural Health Service
You gonna dig ’em ’til the day you die
Two can play that game pst314
The BBC chooses to pretend, and to become absurd.
and an accomplice.
Two can play that game pst314
I’m losing the game, then, because I do not recognize your reference.
https://youtu.be/o_JPqeZyRNY
Hm. Errol Flynn, perhaps? 7th Cav?
John Lewis: I had completely forgotten that song, although it was on the radio often enough when I was in school.
It always reminds me of the scene in American Graffiti when a young Richard Dreyfus meets the real Wolfman Jack.
Where DO these people come from?
Lack of predators.
Your glorious future life in the tech industry: You will live in a pod, eat bugs, and own nothing. But nobody will ever get your pronouns wrong.
“Hm. Errol Flynn, perhaps? 7th Cav?”
That’s Captain Kirby York.
It always reminds me of the scene in American Graffiti when a young Richard Dreyfus meets the real Wolfman Jack.
Me too. I always thought of Wolfman Jack being really old. When I see him in American Graffiti I’m always amazed at how young he was when that movie came out.
… because I do not recognize your reference.
That’s okay you can’t be expected to remember every band from the Great White North. Although Clap for the Wolfman got a ton of airplay in the US. It did well for the Guess Who for a throwaway novelty song.
If you’re interested in music movies Randy Bachman put together a show where he tells stories about and sings the songs from the Guess Who and BTO. It’s called Vinyl Tap and is streaming on Amazon. (Although it may not be on the US Amazon). It’s a great show. He did it live in my home town as a charity benefit concert. A very talented, engaging man.
Drama in three acts.
https://twitter.com/concretemilk/status/1388847392347365378
Steve,
Randy’s son Tal writes some excellent articles on the Mark Steyn website.
Your glorious future life in the tech industry:
A steal, I read elsewhere, for a low, low, 2700 frogskins a month – why, if it was half as expensive, it would be twice as cheap. I am still wondering where the can (down the hall?) and kitchen (aka microwave, dorm fridge, and hotplate) are.
Randy’s son Tal writes some excellent articles on the Mark Steyn website.
I did not know that. I always think of She’s So High when I think of Tal. A song that sounds like it could have been performed by Oasis.