Friday Ephemera
A keyboard drama unfolds. || Cheeeldren of the night. || Heat conductor of note. || Today’s word is Italian. || News to me. || Spare room. || An inexpensive scientific demonstration. (h/t, Noah Carl) || A stretching definition. || The jeans you’ve always wanted. || Just like normal people, a thread. || “Of the 86% of white liberals that have heard at least ‘a little’ about Antifa, 59% think it’s been a ‘somewhat’ (41%) or ‘very good’ (18%) thing for the country.” || Somewhat related. || Bling. || Big leggy. || The displays of Infinity War and The Expanse. || A present for doggo. || Pig versus vacuum cleaner, the eternal struggle. || Meanwhile, in fashion news. || And finally, if they learn to make fire, we’re, like, totally screwed.
*Now with functioning comments.
I won’t take her seriously unless she uses a perpetual Julian calendar, AD, Hebrew, Chinese, and Islamic years, and all time in Zulu.
I’d assumed there would come a point at which the status-seeking contrivance, the game, would be hard to miss and prompt some friendly mockery. Then I realised that her Twitter feed is almost exclusively populated by eerily similar people, all sharing their parallel-universe hot takes, also eerily similar, and declaring their pronouns to the world. And so, the whole thing has an insular, vaguely co-dependent air, in which no-one dares challenge anyone else’s pretensions lest they return the favour.
On banning Memorial Day.
If I’m formally discussing a deadline with higher-ups, I use standard calendar dates, not seasons or moons or harvests or anything else.
But if I say to my co-workers that I think we can get this finished before summer, it’s because it means more than estimating a finish date of ISO8601 week 27. In a European or American context it means we’ll be able to enjoy summer, sit in the beer garden without having this thing over our heads. That does assume European cultural expectations of work-life balance and summer festivity. I wouldn’t hesitate to say the same sort of thing to Australians, because there’s a shared cultural understanding there, an understanding that includes the chi-acking about our seasons being different. I might not say it, for example, to a Bangladeshi contract programmer, if I’m not sure what his situation is.
I’m sure all of this walking on eggshells is worth while when you see the smiles on faces of the differently-latituded. But I wonder in who else’s interest it is that workers use an impoverished language with standardized corporate measures of time, stripped of seasons and festivals and references to a shared culture outside of work.
no-one dares challenge anyone else’s pretensions
Folie à duh.
Thanks @JuliaM, sigh, looks like I may have to give it a shot. I think I’ll need another lockdown for all the serieses I’m accumulating!
A damn fine question.
the back and forth between black men and black women on this thread is absolutely hilarious
I shall have to take your word for it, since I don’t seem to speak whatever language they do.
I don’t seem to speak whatever language they do
*insert “oh stewardess” line here*
“Zulu” time is cultural appropriation.
Report to Shaka’s kraal for reeducation.
Folie à duh.
See also, associate professor P. Khalil Saucier.
As noted in that thread, it’s hard to believe that our educator’s peers have ever seriously challenged his pronouncements, despite them veering into the absurd, before exploding in a cloud of woke sparkles.
“Jive-ass dude don’t got no brains anyhow! Shiiiiit.”
😀
I think I’ll need another lockdown for all the serieses I’m accumulating!
I’m currently working through Chicago Fire. I originally started as research for the Fight Fire RPG, but now I’m hooked. I haven’t seen anything like this on TV in years.
The cast is almost entirely male. The themes of honour, sacrifice and brotherhood are standard in every episode. The drama comes not from petty interpersonal conflict, but the conflict between the demands of duty and family, success and honour, or noble values that cannot be reconciled. Characters will struggle with the same issue across multiple episodes. They occasionally fail, but are supported by their brothers no matter what. The female characters are portrayed with realistic physical capabilities, but no less strong and worthy for it, and they support the men in their lives without fail.
It’s like the Hallmark Channel for men and I’m loving it.
Because the game must never end.
And if no one else congratulates her on her high-mindedness, she’ll just have to congratulate herself.
Swedish behavioral scientist Magnus Söderlund says we should seriously consider cannibalism to fight climate chang. He blames the taboo against cannibalism on “conservatism” and “capitalist selfishness”.
Söderlund may have finally found a use for leftist intellectuals, but it cannot be considered sustainable given the number of years of schooling required to produce an educated jackass.
Söderlund may have finally found a use for leftist intellectuals
Soylent Green is people.
Just like a leftist to read dystopian literature as a how-to manual.
A damn fine question.
Truth be told, I’ve been watching old episodes of Countdown on Youtube and have been caught out by their dictionary not having any number of perfectly good Scrabble words, like the time DISTORTER was hiding on the board. And yet they accept wacky non-words like RORTIEST.
At least the numbers games are the same regardless of language.
“A teeny-tiny inclusive language thing I’ve tried to get better at this past year is avoiding northern hemisphere-specific seasonal language. Like instead of “this summer,” I say the months I mean, or Q3.”
Cricketers have been talking about the “northern summer” or “southern winter” for decades.
The point being, when it’s necessary, rather than being about sparing the oversensitive from minor offence, this stuff already happens.
“Truth be told, I’ve been watching old episodes of Countdown on Youtube”
Yeah, not a huge TV drama fan myself. Apparently there’s a new series of Shed & Buried starting next week. I can hardly wait.
Hilarity and infighting on the Left:
Our friends in Full Stop Affinity, a youth liberation anarchist environmentalist affinity group of trans people that organises under the Green Anti-capitalist Front and the Youth Liberation Front, have sent us their final statement previous to their disbandment as a group.
…
The London leftist scene has repeatedly treated us like shit. We were not welcomed, only attacked. We called out many groups in the U.K. leftist scene for their shitty behaviour only for us to be attacked and ignored because of it. The left has made it clear that they do not care for us.
We quickly recognised that our politics are quite different from the other groups in the U.K. left. We have stated many times throughout this project that we are not a revolutionary group. We do not care about the revolution. The world around us will be dead before we reach our thirties.
It gets even better…
https://greenanticapitalist.org/fsa-final-statement/
A present for doggo.
There’s that damn salty discharge from my eyes again!
And David the picture of that box you posted the last time did nothing to help stop it, no matter how long or often I looked at it so….
It gets even better…
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit popcorn.
cannot be considered sustainable given the number of years of schooling required
Cut out the schooling for likely candidates – roast sucking longpig
Full Stop Affinity
Their (correct pronoun?) Final Statement is hilarious.
I was reminded of a quote from Christopher Brookmyre’s Country of the Blind
One Trot faction sitting in a hall
One Trot faction sitting in a hall
If One Trot faction should have a nasty squall
There’ll be two Trot Factions sitting in a hall
…and so on
Conflating resistance to eating human flesh with capitalist selfishness, the seminar’s talking points ask…
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.
Hilarity and infighting on the Left
It’s quite funny when these awful, neurotic people complain about how intolerable other awful, neurotic people are, as if they had nothing whatsoever in common that might explain their awfulness.
Speaking of funny, I’d forgotten about this.
Again, you’d think they might have some qualms about their chosen peer group.
I’d forgotten about this
It’s kinda like how nuclear power works, isn’t it? One neurotic canons into a faction knocking a couple of other neurotics free and so on.
It’s kinda like how nuclear power works, isn’t it?
Heh. You’d think there would come a point at which some of the gathered people, a few at least, might notice the high concentration of twitching bonkersness, and then wonder if they’d taken a wrong turn somewhere.
I’d forgotten about this … God help us, there’s more.
It’s a well that never runs dry.
there’s a new series of Shed & Buried starting next week
Sadly, Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson is probably no longer with us.
Right, off to a family bash to be fed and corrupted with oversized glasses of wine.
Play nicely. Use coasters.
Posted by: Jonny S”
Tom Swift > Johnathan Swift…
🙂
One Trot faction sitting in a hall…
I continue to marvel that Christopher Hitchens could, to his dying day, admire and defend Lenin and Trotsky. It greatly undermined his credibility as a genuine defender of human rights and the dignity of the individual.
While only a casual observer of CH, it seemed to me his intellectualism was driven by a craving of attention. His interest in pursuing the truth was secondary. JMNSHO.
While only a casual observer of CH, it seemed to me his intellectualism was driven by a craving of attention.
Alternate hypotheses (I’m not saying you are wrong):
1. He sincerely wanted universal human rights but was too proud to admit that his youthful embrace of communism was a serious moral error which was inherently in conflict with that support for human rights and the the well-being of all people.
2. He really saw nothing wrong with Lenin and Trotsky’s reign of terror, and his stance as a defender of universal human rights was in large part a pose: He attacked religion, especially Christianity and Islam, because religion is a competitor to communism. It is certainly true that communists in general have a long history of pretending to embrace human rights as a cloak for their totalitarian goals.
His interest in pursuing the truth was secondary.
His attacks on public figures involved sloppy research or outright dishonesty. Note that Lenin’s “scholarly” writings were dishonest polemics. Trotsky’s too, I suppose, although I do not know for sure.
Main video via Andy Ngo.
BTW, Andy Ngo, wearing full black bloc, apparently tried to infiltrate an Antifa riot in Portland Friday night.
Although he was not physically identifiable, someone recognized his voice. A mob pursed him, tackled him, slammed his head into the concrete and beat him. He escaped, and ran to a hotel several blocks away, pursued by the enraged mob. The mob was blocked by hotel security, fifty cops showed up to keep the mob from overwhelming hotel security, and Ngo was taken from the hotel in an ambulance.
He has not been heard of since – he has not posted on Twitter, and his usual media outlet, the Post-Millennial, is unable to contact him.
Portland Antifa is rejoicing over their administration of “revolutionary justice” to the hated Ngo, of course.
https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/05/29/portland-protesters-chase-tackle-and-punch-someone-they-believe-to-be-andy-ngo-until-he-hides-in-the-nines-hotel/
A mob pursed him, tackled him, slammed his head into the concrete and beat him.
All communists are vermin. All. Not just the thugs, but also the oh-so-smooth communists you meet in faculty lounges.
While only a casual observer of CH, it seemed to me his intellectualism was driven by a craving of attention.
Theodore Dalrymple has said something to that effect about George Bernard Shaw.
Classics majors at Princeton University will no longer be required to learn Greek or Latin while studying Ancient Greece and Rome.
That seems a bit odd – one would have thought a minimal requirement for the study of a foreign culture would be an understanding of its language?
Director of undergraduate studies and professor of classics Josh Billings said “…we think that having those students in the department will make it a more vibrant intellectual community.”
Well, I think we can certainly anticipate two of those three.
Classics majors at Princeton University will no longer be required to learn Greek or Latin while studying Ancient Greece and Rome.
“School officials cite the purported need to combat racism.”
Because it would be raacist to hold black kids to the same standards as white and Asian kids. Leftists ruin everything they touch…as do black “anti-racists”.
Because it would be raacist to hold black kids to the same standards as white and Asian kids.
Yeah, but think how vibrant those angry, resentful, thick black kids are going to be!
Classics majors at Princeton University will no longer be required to learn Greek or Latin while studying Ancient Greece and Rome.
That’s nothing – just wait until they announce that English majors will no longer be required to learn English.
That’s nothing – just wait until they announce that English majors will no longer be required to learn English.
One example of that ship having left the dock.
We’ll ignore that there is damn little literature in that era that “relates” more than tangentially to that nonsense.
one would have thought a minimal requirement for the study of a foreign culture would be an understanding of its language?
At some point, invoking some nebulous “systemic racism” will no longer be an adequate fig leaf for the actual causes of the disparities that they’re pretending to solve. But by then, the entire institution will be so badly degraded, so farcical, it may be irretrievable.
Is there a word for something that has the power to shock while simultaneously being completely predictable?
Need to to describe 90% of replies to this post. (Awful lot of pronouns on display).
Unrelated:
I’m here to interview the cast of Channel 4’s new musical comedy, a six-part series following the exploits of an anarchic all-female, all-Muslim punk band setting out to make some noise [ … ] The series is loosely based on screenwriter Nida Manzoor’s own life navigating the diverse creative collectives of London.
Makes me wonder what the qualifications are for becoming a producer at Channel 4 (UK).
English majors will no longer be required to learn English
Yes, and people who cannot even speak English will criticize the English of people who do. Unless they are Wokels, in which case all massacring of the language will be OK, even praised.
From a discussion about plant based “milk”, which is why I put vodka on my cornflakes.
all-Muslim punk band
few of the cast actually identify as Muslim or have Muslim heritage
So that’s a double whammy for the Sharia court.
So that’s a double whammy for the Sharia court.
The Sharia court will have difficulty passing sentences for each defendant: Chop off head? Throw off building?
@JuliaM: So these Fringe agents. Do they ever figure out that if they all run together into one entrance of a building their suspects will just run out of another?
a minimal requirement for the study of a foreign culture would be an understanding of its language?
It’s so you can read the original works in the original language (which is why Classics majors learn koine Greek rather than modern Greek). This is important; I own three different English translations of The Iliad which are so different from each other as to be equivalent to the difference between Mallory’s Le Morte d’Artur and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
This is important; I own three different English translations of The Iliad which are so different from each other as to be equivalent to the difference between Mallory’s Le Morte d’Artur and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
I used to be jokingly paranoid about this but as censorship ratchets upwards and the information space has exploded with the internet and given how much outright lying goes on, well has been going on in journalism for decades, how words get redefined, often maliciously, and thus what that means when translations of even contemporary communications are done, I begin to wonder at what point it all breaks down. The biblical story of the Tower of Babel haunts me in a number of ways.