Time To Fire Up The Blessing Generator
Because, yes, it’s time to remind patrons that this rickety barge, on whose seating your arses rest, is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain ad-free, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. And if one-click haste is called for, my PalPay.Me page can be found here. Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.
For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last decade and a half, in over 3,000 posts and over 130,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year-summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.
If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.
As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.
Now share ye links and bicker.
Ping.
there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love
Love’s a bit strong. Appreciation, definitely. 🙂
Ping.
Love’s a bit strong. Appreciation, definitely. 🙂
Bless you, sirs. Should you be on your way home and your subconscious tries to remind you to pick up toilet paper, may it do so unambiguously, such that you don’t instead feel a vague urge to stop and buy something else entirely – say, wine and cashew nuts – which are of no use whatsoever as toilet paper.
Pronoun update incoming. Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.
Welp, we lost but at least the Vols are joining in on the trend:
https://twitter.com/OldRowSports/status/1436814399688294400?s=20
Ping!
Ping!
Bless you, madam. May the glory of a pristine bathroom, with every surface gleaming and deterged, never be cut short by someone wanting to actually use it.
Your competence is troubling.
I guess we all saw this coming?
I guess we all saw this coming?
Where’s Hercules? We need him to clean the Augean Stables that the education system – especially universities – has become. I suspect that so much shit has been impacted in the system that the exeuctioner and cremation is the only solution.
Apology of note.
*hits top jar*
A little something for your trouble, barkeep.
*tip jar* even.
A little something for your trouble, barkeep.
Bless you, sir. May long car journeys be scenic and pleasing, not soporific.
Apology of note
“I ain’t never sold no ass – and if I did, ain’t nothing wrong with it.”
Aside from… well, everything else, I was amused by how Dear Mother maintains that there’s nothing unsavoury about prostitution, which is, we’re assured, perfectly respectable. She’s emphatic on this point – but is even more emphatic in her insistence that she’s never been involved in such not-at-all unsavoury activities.
Your competence is troubling.
Do they realize what they are telling us they believe to be true about blacks and mental ability?
(Likewise about women, etc.)
Strangely quiet today. Is everyone hiding in the bushes?
[ Fetches bush-whumping machine. ]
[ Fetches bush-whumping machine. ]
Suzi here says she kind of likes it.
Meanwhile, in merry old London town.
Aside from… well, everything else
Yeah, “I want to show you guys how serious I am”, and then posts that train wreck. Not exactly the sharpest knife in the marquee.
Your competence is troubling.
Correct.
And that’s a wrap folks. Thanks to everyone for coming out.
Meanwhile, in merry old London town.
Gameplay footage from GTA6 looks lit, very realistic.
Is everyone hiding in the bushes?
Nah. Ordering from Amazon. Per the linkages…
*Ping*
I’m sure you will continue to water down the Night Nurse but *Ping* just the same.
I’m sure you will continue to water down the Night Nurse but *Ping* just the same.
Ordering from Amazon.
Bless you, and bless you. May your significant others understand that butter, however generously applied, is an inadequate camouflage for horribly burnt toast.
Welp, we lost but at least the Vols are joining in on the trend:
Since seeing the Gators kneel in their first game last year, I’ve sworn them off. I did break down to watch the FL-AL SEC Championship game but couldn’t be bothered to pay much attention. I’ve been filling my football fetish with high school games…which thanks to Covid have been iffy. Saw our first one of the season on Friday and even that was in the next closest town across the state line. Local home team’s first home game is this Friday. We had even bought local garb, hats, etc for the occasion earlier in the summer. Upon seeing the last two weeks of various SEC schools, VaTech, a few others putting up something of a fight, I may break my personal boycott and watch some of those games this weekend. But until I see some UF pushback on this by UF fans (especially bringing back the “Gator Bait” cheer…of which I was never much of a fan but the gaslighting on that BS is infuriating), the Gators are dead to me.
Ping!
Ping!
Bless you, sir. May your enemies be faced with the problem of how to dispose of a six-foot-tall euphorbia, the spines of which are numerous and razor sharp, and the sap of which is an earthly approximation of xenomorph blood.
the Gators are dead to me
Welcome to the side of light and truth, friend.
May your significant others understand that butter, however generously applied, is an inadequate camouflage for horribly burnt toast.
*waves to husband*
*points at screen*
P.S. ping.
P.S. ping
Bless you, madam. May you know the pleasure of a new mattress.
Welcome to the side of light and truth, friend.
Actually been on this side quite a while. It’s lonely and desolate out here, isn’t it? I didn’t make a big deal out of announcing it but as friends, even those from rival schools like Auburn and FSU and UGA ask me about how the Gators are doing (or razz me…I actually have no idea except when looking to see if the UF crowd was chanting the F. Biden thing, I accidentally found out they squeaked by FAU/FIU/whatever) and I say I gave up on them when I saw them kneeling last year, and the “Gator Bait” cheer thing, the conversation (texts really) goes silent. Crickets. Haven’t heard back from one very close friend in a year now. And he was more of the conservative…”conservative” type. We used to joke about a mutual friend (former friend to me…by that guy’s choice…he thinks I read white supremacist web sites….like this one) being the horse from Animal Farm. My friend’s wife however…well even she isn’t a bleeding heart but some of the stuff she posts on FB…I can only roll my eyes so many times. But if he’s mad at me for anything I may have said to his wife he ought to be man enough to say something to me about it. Not that I said anything to her that was personally improper. Just things like “George Floyd was a criminal high on drugs”. Stuff like that. Heh…she recently posted one of these “Be anything but be kind” sort of syrupy, passive-aggressive things. I responded in google-translated Chinese, “China doesn’t play that”. Crickets.
Your competence is troubling
They’re wrong for the right reasons:
There’s a very real problem with publish-or-perish leading to the current replication crisis and science being captured by the ideological agenda behind government funding of grants.
oooo! colorful button! what does it do? ping
oooo! colorful button! what does it do? ping
Bless you, madam. When staring idly out of the window, may you spot a crow peering at something that you can’t see in the shrubbery at the edge of the garden, only to be distracted by a squirrel shooting across the lawn and up a tree, followed at speed by a neighbour’s cat, seconds before a fox emerges from the aforementioned shrubbery, prompting the cat to reconsider its options and withdraw at a dignified pace.
#TrueStory
Troubling competence – “Admitting that the normative definitions of success and merit are in and of themselves barriers to achieving the goals of justice, diversity, equity and inclusion is necessary but not sufficient to create change”
Well, possibly. Equally though:
“Admitting that having your brains pulled out through small holes drilled in your head is necessary but not sufficient to create change”
Your competence is troubling
The “competence” in question here is the set of standards by which universities and other institutions award pay raises, promotions, tenure, etc. to professors. The authors want a devotion to so-called diversity to be the main marker of a professor’s worth. Their article in the online journal Inside Higher Education seems designed to conceal their aim as much as reveal it: maybe they haven’t made up their minds whether clarity or concealment suits them better; or maybe they’re just lousy writers.
maybe they’re just lousy writers
Well, obviously they’re lousy writers – they’re University professors who want to curtail payment by merit.
Out: too many whites at the opera.
In: too many whites IN the opera.
That huge and diverse opera audience deserves to see faces that reflect their own, bigots.
Can the residents of Airstrip One translate this for an ugly American? Is this somewhat fair, a silly whinge, or common practice for the envy of the world?
Apology of note.
I will sincerely believe the sincerity of his remorse when some adult male, preferably a relative of the elderly fellow, has the little shit pinned to a wall by his throat. It is the only way to be sure.
Correct
As if the whole point of merit as a basis for judgement were to prevent shysters, shitheels, grifters, rent-seekers, psychos, parasites, and morons from becoming the lords of our institutions. That is silly.
Is this somewhat fair
I recently tried to get a prescription re-filled.
Does this shit answer your question?
Some choice highlights:
“If I die it will be your fault”
“The Practice is only offering a telephone appointment system.”
“DO NOT COME INTO THE SURGERY!”
etc…
In: too many whites IN the opera.
Same thing is happening in symphony orchestras: Blind auditions are now racist because not enough blacks get hired when the judges cannot know that they are black.
As if the whole point of merit as a basis for judgement were to prevent shysters, shitheels, grifters, rent-seekers, psychos, parasites, and morons from becoming the lords of our institutions. That is silly.
Replace “silly” with “evil”. These people are evil.
That huge and diverse opera audience deserves to see faces that reflect their own, bigots.
There’s a *thing* I discovered — there’s a whole classification of videos on YouTube devoted to “reactions” — like “Irish people try American Bourbon”. I’ve noted there’s a whole slew of young black people, from teens to 30 somethings, reacting to music no one ever exposed them to — Sinatra, Elvis, Righteous Brothers, Animals, Tom Jones … and they are SHOCKED at how 1) good it is 2) how much they really like it
I also note I’ve yet to see such a video of a 60 plus white woman listening to rap for the first time.
I keep thinking, hoping?, one of these days good music performed by actually talented vocalists will make a comeback.
Blind auditions are now racist
I wish someone would then propose “no more tryouts” for any sports team. Let’s see how people like watching games between teams based on their melanin level not their skills.
I used to hope that the collapse of the music industry’s revenue due to cheap copying and widespread bootlegging would lead to a resurgence in quality local live music and the return of roving minstrels.
Sigh.
Remember that black guy who made converting actual KKK members his life mission? He starts small and works his way patiently through preconceived notions, acknowledging the fears and angers of the bigoted person on the path of common understanding.
The real danger of the internet is that physically distinct peoples of various backgrounds could come together over shared experiences, eventually noticing the actual source of civil strife and discontentment. That’s why it’s not allowed to happen under any circumstance.
Let’s see how people like watching games between teams based on their melanin level
Well, the Brits didn’t seem to enjoy it much at the recent European Cup final 😂
a whole slew of young black people, from teens to 30 somethings, reacting to music no one ever exposed them to… I’ve yet to see such a video of a 60 plus white woman listening to rap for the first time
The authentic first reaction of black teenagers is authoritative and sought-after, (especially in music and dance, where whites don’t even know what beat to clap on). The less these oracles know about the genre they’re reacting to, the better it is for “keeping it real”. Whites bring their quaint cultural offerings (say, Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush) in the hope of getting the highest form of approval – she sings so well I thought she was black. The comment section then feels all racially harmonious.
The authentic first reaction of whites is problematic and suspicious, and they need to interrogate their prejudices, do the work to educate themselves, and bury their authentic reaction under a ton of footnotes and self-disqualifications. This would especially be the case for the first reaction to rap videos by anyone who has a moral compass.
Ping! You deserve a treat David, here spoil yourself.
Theft of note.
Let’s see how people like watching games between teams based on their melanin level
Outside of hockey, would much change?
I am living in an alternate universe – it is the only possible explanation.
https://www.vogue.com/article/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-met-gala-2021
Love expressed via the medium of PayPal.
Ping!
Bless you, madam. May your laundry hamper fill gradually and predictably, not in huge, seemingly random surges.
Love expressed via the medium of PayPal.
Bless you, sir. Should you be bought a swanky new device for your anniversary, may the set-up process be swift and effortless, or better yet, done almost entirely by the giver of said gift.
I am living in an alternate universe – it is the only possible explanation.
Imagine the level of narcissism and neuroticism in that room.
felicity: I am living in an alternate universe – it is the only possible explanation.
That is fucking hilarious. Not in a good way.
Window detected.
Behaving in class is “white supremacy,” apparently.
You see, paying attention and not being disruptive, so that things might actually be learned, is “passive” and a product of “white culture.” And expecting basic standards of behaviour – say, respecting other pupils who are trying to hear what’s being said – is “the definition of white supremacy.” And therefore bad, obviously.
He’s an educator, you know, a high-school teacher. A bringer of wisdom.
Him: OK y’all, PBIS is white supremacy with a hug.
Students: OK, teach.
[ Half the students get up and walk out of the room. ]
Him: Wait, y’all! Hey, wai-
[ One student slaps him hard across the face, knocking him to the ground, while two others rip down his pride flag from the wall and set light to it while laughing ]
Coda
Police are called to quell the disturbance and investigate assault and battery claims.
Very much related, this clown here.
Police are called to quell the disturbance and investigate assault and battery claims.
Parents are often reluctant – emotionally reluctant – to acknowledge the scale of the dysfunction, its pervasiveness, and the dogmatic perversity of many of those entrusted to teach their children. And yet evidence abounds and these things are declared. With a self-satisfied grin, no less.
Vogue this https://mobile.twitter.com/neontaster/status/1437566132647510020
Vogue this
Are y’all insultin’ tha Jesus Chicken?
{narrows eyes, quietly picks up shotgun . . .}
Window detected.
Mock if you will but when the internet goes down whoever owns that will still be able to tweet via pigeons.
Mock if you will but when the internet goes down whoever owns that will still be able to tweet via pigeons.
It’s the ratio of frame to glazing. A bold aesthetic choice.
It’s the ratio of frame to glazing.
You are missing the point, it is only for signalling when a tweet is sent.
Vogue this…
Again mockery. That dress was made by an immigrant.
From Toronto.
Again mockery.
Apparently, Ms Occasional Cortex imagines that her wardrobe solution will “kick open the doors at the Met.” Because declaring one’s own imagined radicalism – via the medium of gown-wearing – is so terribly brave, you see. As if she hadn’t been invited with a free ticket, saving her a tidy sum, and as if the place wasn’t filled with other status-fixated types, and as if her pretensions somehow aren’t the pretensions very much in fashion.
I mean, if the witless bint had turned up in a frock bearing some other, rather different slogan – a country without borders is doomed, say – then she might have had the crumb of a point. But no. No status points there.
Are y’all insultin’ tha Jesus Chicken?
Apropos.
Mock if you will but when the internet goes down whoever owns that will still be able to tweet via pigeons.
…which reminds us that the maximum length of a Tweet derives from the carrying capacity of a WWI era pigeon. Would I lie?
…as if her pretensions somehow aren’t the pretensions very much in fashion.
…as if her pretensions somehow aren’t the pretensions very much in fashion.
Part 2, QED.
Not entirely unrelated.
…as if her pretensions somehow aren’t the pretensions very much in fashion.
Part 3.
Part 4.
But, but, Chiquita Khrushchev is so brave breaking down the fourth wall with her blue collar sisters.
Right on, can you dig it?
Part 2, QED.
Remember when feminists pretended to regard all rape as evil?
Remember when feminists pretended to regard all rape as evil?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
I am not at all sure what is happening here.
I saw a picture of the gown Ms Occasional Cortex wore: I was going to say that I saw it but to do that I would have had to be both very rich and very much in America. Neither are true.
However I did read the gown’s message* as ‘Tax Rich,’ and for a while pondered on who that Rich was. The late Richie Benaud sprang to mind but he was as far as I know never called Rich, but there must be others. So, any clues, chaps and chapesses?
*I believe Marshall McLuhan created the slogan, “The medium is the message.” What then am I to make about a slogan in slash-like blood red on a wedding gown?
AOC: Everyone look at meeeeeee!
Everyone: [ looks ]
AOC: [ Smug Grin ]
She’s gonna be president someday, isn’t she?
I think Tax Rich was married to Peg the Patriarchy. They divorced after their son became a vicar and their daughter came out as straight.
Behaving in class is “white supremacy,” apparently.
Historically, yes. There was a dominant culture that was confident about the rightness of imposing its own standards in its own country, and may even have immodestly believed its own standards to be objectively good. The school system, putting considerable heat under the melting pot, taught diverse immigrants how to behave like the founding Anglo protestants – don’t spend the schoolbook money on liquor, impose a domestic discipline for the kid to turn up washed and fed and well-rested every morning, don’t speak out of turn, respect the teacher, sustain the effort over the years until the kid is literate and credentialed and socially mobile.
I didn’t enjoy sitting still in a classroom, and neither did most of my white classmates. It was just one more thing that grown-ups made us do, like brushing our teeth and writing thank-you notes. Most of us could be made to understand that when there are 30 kids crammed into a room there’s no such thing as a quiet chat – every disruption ripples and multiplies. And the teachers appreciated that we couldn’t keep it up for very long, so they let us out every couple of hours to whoop and holler in the fresh air.
Despite the impression given by films where Robin Williams plays an inspiring teacher, the chances are that when students are climbing on desks, it’s not because they’re engaged in “active learning”.
Anyway, most learning at that age is conventional and passive. You just memorize the stupid French conjugations and then you know them for ever, it’s futile trying to make it interesting and inspiring while you’re grinding through it – it’s a matter of discipline and time preference and being able to imagine yourself being able to speak to a French girl without stumbling over your words. And certainly, all of those capabilities are part of white culture, handed down by white parents to white children. Cultures that have a problem sitting still in a classroom (and he’s not talking about the Chinese, is he?) should be allowed their own schools that they can run as they see fit (though that was segregation, and that was a bad thing), but why should white and Asian kids have to put up with classroom shenanigans from a group that, according to its own advocates, is incapable of sitting still and being quiet?
To the limited extent that students have the prerequisites and mindset for independent or active learning, it requires an undistracted brain and being able to hear yourself think. We’ve been propagandized that active learning looks like an Apple ad where a racially mixed group enthuses around an electronic whiteboard. But often it looks like a pre-1970s English grammar school or an academic high school along central/eastern European lines – disciplined, chalk-and-talk, monocultural (or at least a consensus about the culture that’s worth teaching) and close to monoracial.
I am not at all sure what is happening here.
The guy on the right is going to have a very nasty headache – or would have if he has a head left.
Our elites meet and greet – I never paid any attention before to the Met Gala thing Chiquita Khrushchev was at, but marone, poke around this hot mess.
Do click through the pictures and watch a couple videos, you’ll never find a greater hive of bad taste and insipidness, at least till next year.
The woke are all about colorful ethnic cultures. They think it is charming that in Africa people still live in grass huts–ignoring the toll disease takes in such villages, that at night it is totally dark, and that such charming villagers flee to the city first chance they get.
It is fine if you want a culture where people don’t show up for work, fight (with fists) with co-workers or customers, and can’t read, but don’t expect the financial rewards that come from being civilized. Also it is unjust to impose that on white and asian (and middle eastern) students.
However I did read the gown’s message* as ‘Tax Rich,’
“Tax the Rich.” “Eat the Rich.” “Kill the Rich.” So many synonyms for “Envy.”
that at night it is totally dark
In his travelogue Zanzibar to Timbuktu, Theodore Dalrymple described African towns which were wonderful to visit in the daytime but deadly dangerous at night when, in the pitch-dark streets, robbers would waylay and murder the unwary for what little they possessed.
deadly dangerous at night when, in the pitch-dark streets, robbers would waylay and murder the unwary for what little they possessed.
That could be quoted directly from “At Day’s Close,” Ekirch’s book about night in Europe before electricity. See also pedestrians falling into sewage ditches and canals, often with fatal results.
They think it is charming that in Africa people still live in grass huts…
Readers may recall the Guardian’s George Monbiot claiming that we should be more like the peasants of Southern Ethiopia, who “smile more often” than we do and whose fields “crackle with laughter.” Yes, these noble, laughing peasants may live in homes constructed from leaves and packing cases, and they may have Stone Age sanitation and alarming child mortality, but at least they’re not being “isolated” by sinful material trappings, like dentistry, double glazing and TV remote controls. You see, “wealth causes misery” and is therefore bad for “us” – by which of course he means bad for you.
Mr Monbiot, lest we forget, was schooled at Stowe, an imposing boarding school in Buckinghamshire, where annual fees are a mere £36,000.
That could be quoted directly from “At Day’s Close,” Ekirch’s book about night in Europe before electricity.
Yes indeed.
By the way, should readers assume that Mr Monbiot is some laughable one-off, the archives have plenty more.
Edward Skidelsky, for instance, made similar noises, fretting at length about pre-washed salad, before telling Guardian readers that the state should “create conditions favourable to simpler, less acquisitive modes of living.” Pre-washed salad is bad for our souls or something, says this sociology lecturer, and so the state should make more of an effort to tell “us” how to live. Mr Skidelsky’s father, Robert Skidelsky – that’s Baron Skidelsky, of Tilton – went further, with eye-widening obliviousness.
And let’s not forget the New Economics Foundation, whose blueprint for utopia is similarly, um, bold.
“create conditions favourable to simpler, less acquisitive modes of living.”
What a nice-sounding way to say “jackbooted tyranny.”
What a nice-sounding way to say “jackbooted tyranny.”
The reliance on vagueness and euphemism – see Skidelsky senior, for instance – is quite a thing. As I said regarding the fantasies of architect Jacque Fresco:
As Steve 2 said at the time, “I blame Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
I got your new ringtone right here.
Warning: Autoplay.
Source: Just a list here. No autoplay.
I blame Star Trek
Or H.G. Wells and his chums…
What a nice-sounding way to say “jackbooted tyranny.”
It is the dream of ennobled savagery. We get to live like savages, they get to be the nobility. Their status as our enlightened and essential betters will, of course, retain for their uses whatever sinful indulgences of security, sanitation, and luxury that remain.
Chartered flights for me, bicycles and public transport for thee.
the witless bint
Although I do like Commie Spice, Chiquita Khrushchev and Occasional Cortex, I think “witless bint” is the gold medallist.
For my own part though, I am actually quite glad that AOC’s ‘people’ persuaded her to put on that Tax the Rich gown.
Not for what it says about her, or at least not so much, but what it says about every single other guest at the event and any sponsors it may have had.
Surely there can be no clearer or more obvious sign of their lack of probity, absence of sincerity, and total and utter contempt and disdain for everyone else?
It’s one thing for an elite to be indifferent to the population at large; it’s really quite another to advertise that indifference with the expectation that it will be viewed in a positive light.
As Steve 2 said at the time, “I blame Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
Indeed.
In that comment thread David wrote: “Heh. Absolutely. Given that so many of the writers, producers and actors have stressed how we, the viewer, should desire their moneyless one-world scenario, it’s odd that those same writers, producers and actors never got round to explaining, even notionally, how it could possibly work.”
That reminds me of another impossible socialist utopia, Iain Banks’ Culture series. Fans seem to like it, but as best I can gather it relies on impossible technologies and sociological hand-waving. (But life is too short to waste time reading all those thousands of pages.)
The woke are all about colorful ethnic cultures.
Yes, it’s surprising how many seemingly “progressive” people appear to have a fetish for cultures which have remained largely stagnant and unchanged for several thousand years. Cultures in which there is a demonstrable lack of the very thing they claim to admire.
Or H.G. Wells and his chums…
And to think that Chesterton wrote those words over a century ago.