Friday Ephemera
Motoring scenes. || Sainthood suggested. || Higher power. || “Community art mural.” || So how do you “embody being neuro-queer”? || At last, bendy ice. || Before “capitalism,” everything was free, you know. || On Columbo and intrigue without mystery. || Milk in coffee is “sexist,” also, “white supremacist.” || London liveliness. (h/t, Julia) || Liveliness 2. || Pool 2.0 || Her pronouns are more complicated than yours. || He does this better than you do. || Shoe stash detected. || Assorted sounds, from data centres to Japanese gardens. || At last, a vintage drum machine listening quiz. (h/t, Things) || Man versus mantis shrimp. || Formerly Norman’s. || Footie fans of yore. || And finally, nommy-nommy-nom.
LARPing the Holomodor, and other assorted commies…
Clicking the Twit links in the comments and notice the Twit sidebar thingie that has the latest greatest “What’s Happening” twit links. Today’s was “Experts say masks are safe and effective against spreading COVID19”. wtf. It’s 2021 and the piles of bodies in the streets still haven’t happened. Nobody’s going door to door clanging a bell and yelling “Bring out yer dead!”. They are really grasping at straws here to keep the panic going. What disturbs me most is that a so-called advanced society is more superstitious and easily-led than the most illiterate medieval peasants. They at least had a clue about survival.
The tictoc videos in the Ephemera links and comments – life is so easy and times so good that these bedlamites have to crawl up their own asses to find shit to whine about. Third person pronouns – the height of narcissistic wankery, and insisted upon by the same people who probably think requiring proper English grammar and spelling is racist.
Men enjoying conversations about sports are merely displaying “how heteropatriarchy harms men too.” Apparently.
[ Added: ]
By the way, Mr Boggs, an assistant professor of rhetoric, and whiner about “settler colonialism,” is quite proud of his smug, incongruous in-butting. Imagining himself as superior to people in “random sports forums” is his buzz, it seems.
Third person pronouns – the height of narcissistic wankery
As I think has been pointed out before, such pronouns are only used when not addressing the performatively mentally ill person directly. They want to dictate how you talk about them when they’re not even in the room.
…Mr Boggs, an assistant professor of rhetoric, and whiner about “settler colonialism,” is quite proud…
Best response:
https://mobile.twitter.com/NHiriteInSouth/status/1416108379521622016
Men enjoying conversations about sports are merely displaying “how heteropatriarchy harms men too.” Apparently.
What a maroon, as Bugs Bunny used to say. I still want to know if that arrogant twit is related to Wade Boggs* or not. I’m gonna bet having that surname is the source of his anger towards men enjoying sports talk, and his urge to drop stinking nuggets of postmodern gibberish into sports conversations.
*For those that don’t know, Wade Boggs is a former American baseball player – think he was with the Red Sox when I was a teen. Traitor went to the New York Yankees in the ’90s and won a World Series.
In or out of context, is there any phrase funnier than “decades of gender/sexuality research”?
Also, can’t you just hear him pronouncing the “/”?
Too long, now Stubble In Dresses, OTOH…
I had a girlfriend from Quebec once that during the summer would let her….
oh, never mind.
…Mr Boggs, an assistant professor of rhetoric, and whiner about “settler colonialism,” is quite proud…
Boggs standard opinionating.
Heh. Boggs always amused me by how his hitting would improve whenever his wife got wind of his dalliances. When Chuck Knoblauch was having trouble throwing to first base, I wondered if the Yankees maybe thought about gettIng him a little strange.
Men enjoying conversations about sports…
This is one of these.
Every man I’ve ever known: “We don’t NEED no stinkin’ social permission!” And that includes the ones uninterested in sportsball. The men of my generation, and the one following, just don’t seem to have an invisible Karen leaning over their shoulders.
I’m starting to think the roots of Woke are threefold.
1). A need for something resembling a religion, with the accompanying thou-shalt-nots.
2). The human need for hierarchy.
3). The essentially feminine mind of the Wokester. This makes item 2 complicated. Male hierarchies tend to be simple—the guy at the top has the most of whatever’s valuable (women, cattle, land, religious authority) and everyone else shakes out accordingly, till at the bottom you have the poor unmarried cowless layman who sleeps under the bridge. Or the guy at the top is the best at whatever’s most important—hunting, fighting, capitalist-ing, negotiating, you name it. Female hierarchies aren’t like that. Female hierarchies are fluid, shifting constantly. Females do not ignore the practical considerations, but those come into play when the group ‘s forming. Men tend to look at other men as parts of a broadly defined group : all the guys I work with, all my neighbors, all the guys I deal with, the teenage boys who hang out on the corner, the guys I hunt with, and so on, and then each member of each group is ranked within its hierarchy. Female groups are much narrower in admittance standards. The wives of the rich guys. The large clan of female relatives. The Woke knitting circle (there actually was one). The top lady is the one who adheres most closely to shifting standards within the group—standards MUST shift constantly because otherwise there’s no way to rank members, since the group is lacking an objective standard like “most businesses owned “ or “most points scored in games “ or “has prettiest, youngest harem.” So, no matter how Woke you are, the standard of Wokeness you must attain will always be out there. Other group members don’t mind because, while they may be kept from becoming Queen Bee, so will most of the others, and there’s always potential for the current Queen Bee to be dethroned. (This kind of behavior is also known as crab-in-a-bucket—If one crab looks like it may climb out, the others pull it back down rather than following it out.)
Neither of these ways of forming hierarchies are inherently wrong—humanity is as it is. But the complicated female method is not as good in running a business or an army as is the relatively simple male method, and this is why Wokesters are so disruptive.
Look away now.
They want to dictate how you talk about them when they’re not even in the room.
The presumption and self-preoccupation are hard to miss. Viewed in terms of consistency, reciprocation, and endless observable facts, wokeness rarely makes much sense. It very often seems contrived and perverse. But if you think of it as the expression of some interior psychodrama, it becomes a little easier to comprehend.
Look away now.
That’s breakfast ruined.
That’s breakfast ruined.
In my defence, I did warn you.
WTP,
Your age is showing. Perhaps you also recall Demot Kelly, Arthur Haines’ one armed dish washer?
John J Macreedy was pretty impressive.
Meanwhile, deeper in the simulation, we are introduced to Brie.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9780673/Campaigner-says-weight-loss-adverts-fatphobic-calls-banned-online.html
She tells us that “weight loss culture can lead to depression, social anxiety, and even body dysmorphia” (non-sequitur?). Of course, all of this fat shaming disproportionately disadvantages black and Asian plus sized models.
She tells us that “weight loss culture can lead to depression, social anxiety, and even body dysmorphia”
Call me indelicate, but it occurs to me that the ultimate cause is more likely to be weight gain than weight loss.
John J Macreedy was pretty impressive.
If we are doing fictional disabilities, hard to beat a headless Thompson gunner.
‘Weight loss adverts are fatphobic in exactly the same way that adverts for gay conversion therapy are homophobic,’
Maybe things are different in Oxford, England than in Oxford, Mississippi, but I am having a hard time recalling any “gay conversion therapy” ads in the media or online on this side of the Atlantic. Unlike the olden days, not like you could be thrown in jail for being fat, but than I guess making yourself feel heroic is more important than fact. Surprised she didn’t compare gyms to the KKK.
If they are “unachievable”, where do the models in the adverts come from ?
Call me indelicate, but there is a tad bit of a difference between “a little overweight” fat and “so big I need a sponge on a stick to wipe myself” fat, and there is no reason to “support” that (unless you are in the business of oversize cast iron toilets).
introduced to Brie
I’d say she was introduced to a whole lot of brie. And more.
WTP,
Your age is showing. Perhaps you also recall Demot Kelly, Arthur Haines’ one armed dish washer?
Yes, unfortunately no. Did look up Arthur Haines (couldn’t find much on Kelley in video) and found a funny bit he did with Michael Cain. Though the accent was a bit much for me only in that it messed with the timing of the jokes.
While we’re covering one-armed men, sportyball, age, etc I was reminded of baseball pitcher Jim Abbott.
At the Vagina Museum we only use gender neutral language.
Honk, but with a diesel locomotive air horn.
It’s nice to see American comic strips join the propaganda campaign by pretending there’s a solution to racist police brutality that didn’t involve “electing” Biden. Irony alert: The police department he’s referring to is the Philadelphia P.D.
Best response:
This one’s pretty good, too.
I hope closing the ital this way works.
we normalise the idea that anyone can menstruate regardless of their gender.
It’s rather nice that the interwebz allows all to see how Aunt Pat and Uncle Bob, who were once isolated in their little abode, actually thought, no?
we normalise the idea that anyone can menstruate regardless of their gender.
Missed this earlier…
Heh.
anyone can menstruate regardless of their gender
*tries to menstruate*
*fails*
At the Vagina Museum we only use gender neutral language…By using gender-neutral language, we normalise the idea that anyone can menstruate regardless of their gender.
Pussy hats, pussy costumes, and now a woke Vagina Museum. I do sometimes wonder what fraction of Western women are, well, bugf*ck crazy.
Meanwhile, we learn that trans people are a disproportionate number of the working class, and an interesting take on getting out of being arrested.
Speaking of the museum…
I see your pool 2.0, and raise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsTTXYxydOE
Long, but worth it (for a certain class on engineering nerd)
Long, but worth it (for a certain class on engineering nerd)
I watched the whole thing. Nobody was wearing a mask.
Snark aside, thanks for that. I wonder at the patience of some people to spend weeks at such efforts with no obvious gain on any near term level. I lack the patience to take on an endeavor that either cannot be finished inside of a week or for which I am not getting an obvious paycheck at some point in the near future. That was one of my main frustrations with going to school. Though thinking about it again…I say this having recently worked for a startup that didn’t pay me for weeks/months at a time.
As a pool player, it was a tad painful to watch in places. Liked the “wife mode”. Though as a ex-coder/engineer, I’m wondering how much of that was driven at some level by a desire to have not wasted the code he had written.
I am amazed by the range of skills on display – can you imagine thinking to yourself: “I think I’ll take on a little project that will require computer vision, optical correction, accurate location sensing, some pneumatics, fabricating a six-axis motion base, and augmented-reality video projection. Oh, I’ll also need to program a physics simulation engine (just wait until he tries to incorporate spin), a pool shot-prioritization / selection routine, and a generalized pool-strategy module.”
Though as a ex-coder/engineer, I’m wondering how much of that was driven at some level by a desire to have not wasted the code he had written.
Heh – I think that might’ve been part of it, yes.
Never mind my pronouns. My coordinates are (0,0,0). And don’t you dare miscoordinate me.
“we’ll simply return to the old-fashioned amateur police force”
Ah yes. Privateers, anyone?
*checks ammo supply*
Ah yes. Privateers, anyone?
Likely to include the urban equivalent of Q-ships.
“we’ll simply return to the old-fashioned amateur police force”
Likely to eliminate this sort of farcical justice.
The pool video was awesome. This is a guy who enjoys solving problems and creating stuff. Sure, the debugging part was painful, but he remembers that on the other side is bliss. That’s the essence of faith.
[ Unwraps aromatic waxed paper package ]
Seems like David has gone to bed. Throw those sausage rolls in the trash and have some of this imported German salami. Guaranteed 100% meat…from the approved parts of a named animal.
If you wade through this verbiage
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/86883-booksellers-denounce-aba-promotion-of-anti-trans-book.html
you will find somebody who “identifies “ as a “queer, Latino, fat-bodied person.” Maybe he should add “fat-headed” to the list.
Their wordiness is really annoying. This guy, for example—why does he have to be “fat-bodied”? Why can’t he just be fat like every other non-svelte person? I know, I know, he’s jockeying for feminine status points—but can’t that be done more succinctly? I hate unnecessary verbosity. It’s so pompous.
Oh crap. Nerdish stuff follows. Do not be operating a vehicle while reading/listening to the following.
Well, my second career is software weasel (I personally like that over software engineer, but people will look at you with an odd expression on their face when you use it.) and I have spent a fair bit of my own time writing a Netbeans application that ran under Linux (as written, but could theoretically run on other operating systems that where you could register other implementations of the APIs which defined how the modules communicated with each other) which measured my heart rate from a Bluetooth heart monitor while exercising and showed graphs of how far along I was on exercising within a given target heart rate for the given total period of time.
At some point, you do things like this because those things are interesting to you or they scratch an itch that you may have. (I’m not self-employed, so I’ll point out that anyone who is self-employed may very well view such actions as either frippery or potlach, since every such hour spent on such things could have been billable.)
Now, as a software weasel, my costs are pretty cheap. I’m not buying microcontrollers and I’m not buying cameras or whatever. I am eating disk space and hours of my life (the latter are limited, even though humans tend to act as if that isn’t the case). Even so, I was able to write something that I found useful and did what I wanted.
We should all applaud these three public spirited Irishmen who did their part to reduce crime in Dublin.
We should all applaud these three public spirited Irishmen…
Nice to see the Irish courts are as feckless as most over here, even if they were turning their lives around, aspiring river dancers, going to community college to study astronuclearbiochemical particle physics, etc., etc.
Q-ships were a wonderful way to teach the Germans how to disdain the laws of naval warfare.
“I DON’T HAVE TO BE PEACEFUL!!”
software weasel (I personally like that over software engineer
I’m an actual software engineer, and since I started out in conventional (chemical) engineering I prefer that term over “programmer”, “coder”, or “developer” as it better describes what people who make software actually do.
At some point, you do things like this because those things are interesting to you or they scratch an itch that you may have.
You’d have to, given that you can buy a Fitbit for about $50. That would just about pay for the time it would take me to download and install a hardware SDK.
One of the most pernicious anti-patterns in software engineering is Reinventing the Square Wheel. The perception that because software engineering doesn’t consume physical resources then developer time is free is unfortunately commonplace.