Friday Ephemera

“We have to find a way to re-regulate white people.”
Perhaps instead we need to find a way to re-regulate leftists.

At the bar: He: ‘Hi there.’ She: ‘…’

Mutants!

Spam that’s making the rounds: “A powerful new healing modality…Our sun is a conscious being that’s been with us for billions of years…a divine healer…The 12 Solar Rays are transmitted by the sun…Activate EACH one of these 12 Solar Rays in your magnetic field…Each Solar Ray is powerful to cleanse the 7 chakras and the subtle bodies…Because of the current situation in the world right now, this is what the world needs…if you want Early Bird Prices and the mega fast acting bonus that expire in 48 hours, you need to jump in quickly…”
I sometimes regret not maintaining any contact with the New Age idiots I used to know, just so I could know what forms of amusing idiocy they’re up to now.

That’s exactly how I would’ve done it.
Thank you, Mario! But our princess is in another castle!

The walking dead.
Just too sad for words. It is not compassion to let people live like that.

Morning, all.
Holiday cheer.

Holiday cheer.
I saw “Le tits Now”, also. But shouldn’t it really be, “Les tits now” ?

For a minute there I was worried…
By the chap who brought us this wondrous feat.
As noted in the earlier thread, if you’re interested in chemistry, his videos can be quite entertaining. Though I can’t help wondering if he’s one lab mishap away from becoming a super-villain.

Walking dead
People used to have jobs and families but then the government sent the jobs abroad and ended marriage. Thanks, government!

Holiday cheer.
Reminds me of the Take That song about French boob polish. Le tit shine…

Cultists.
It does suggest a degree of what Jordan Peterson refers to as ideological possession.

And it was ready for another wiener
Remember – that’s what goes on in your stomach…

There will be a bidding war for this and I’m not kidding.
It’s the assumption that six-year-olds – presumably, the age-group the book will be aimed at – are somehow deeply fascinated by gentrification, transgenderism, chronic illness, colonialism, “enacting change,” and all the rest of the lengthy, rather laughable menu of super-woke talking points*. Not pirates or astronauts, or football, or magical dogs or whatever. But gentrification and transgenderism.
*I say talking points. I should say begged questions regurgitated wholesale and ideally without much thought. As seems to be the custom among such creatures.

Like Soviet art, children’s books exist today to instruct, not entertain.
Well, indeed. I suspect it’s going to be one of those books that children won’t generally be enthralled by or have high on their Christmas lists, but which a certain kind of adult will want to put on the shelf prominently, where their equally pretentious peers can see it. Likewise, I imagine the tale won’t bear much relation to the world as it is, but will reveal quite a lot about the author’s own rather niche preoccupations. And by extension, what they think children are for.

And by extension, what they think children are for.
That.

any idea what’s going on there?
[ Visits SDA. ]
Can’t see a problem. Seems fine to me.

The progressive retail experience, Parts 405 and 406:
Pretty decent review of what Frisco is up to with Boudin. My quibble is the idea the limit between misdemeanor and felony theft now at $950 is exclusive to the city. It was a state-wide change under Proposition 47 in 2014 and a complete disaster. Good thing the perp was greedy enough to exceed the limit on 8 of her liberation of goods or we would still be looking at only misdemeanor citations – no jail time.
This, too …

The DA has reportedly dismissed the cases against 113 out of 131 people busted for felony domestic violence in the last three months of 2020, according to the Chronicle.

… at least one of those released went on to murder a child.

SDA.. she has posted she seems to have been having problems on and off for the last month.
It’s ok for me right now too.
Try switching browsers and reloading.

More white supremacy on display.

SDA is only loading the frames for me.
They’ve been having issues on and off for several days. Just keep trying. They seem to eventually get it fixed.

“Dysregulated white people…”
Sigh. dysregulation is a neuropsychological term. It means that a person’s brain has been modified under severe or repeated stress so that certain sensory inputs and situations are processed only in the primitive, emotional, pre-conscious portions of the brain, causing prompt reactions. Think of the shell shocked veteran who drops to the floor upon hearing a firecracker.
It’s an explanation for behavior problems among children raised in abusive families, etc. There are therapeutic techniques helpful to restore the brain to normal (re-regulation). Brain “plasticity” is important in all this.
I first ran into this in a book which suggested in passing that such dysregulation might be inheritable, and that the stresses from black slavery in the US might have been inherited by current generations. The author (a research neuropsych) was clearly sympathetic to this possibility. The “educator” has clearly latched onto the term for its pr value. “Regulated” thinking and behaving, in this schema, is essentially synonymous with all those lists of “whiteness thinking” we’ve been seeing all year, i.e. rational over emotional.
The educator is confused. Or stupid. Or evil.

Back in the dark days of the 1970s, before they invented Safety™, our local kids’ playground had something like that on a much smaller scale…
So they did. I’d forgotten about those.
[ Drifts into reverie. ]

More white supremacy on display.
Yep – the fact that the entire news story only mentioned “teen girls” attacking, but described “Asian students” being attacked tells you all you need to know.
People of no description keeping the world vibrant, and of course, wipipo are to blame.
I wonder if the reason the Rittenhouse jury showed a sliver of sanity is because on all counts, only wipipo were involved. I am surprised that after that little fact came out the very rabid left still were crying for a murder charge.

I am surprised that after that little fact came out the very rabid left still were crying for a murder charge.
Because for the rabid left it isn’t really about Rittenhouse at all. I can’t put it any better than Larry Correia

This trial isn’t about this trial. It’s about how the left simply can’t abide the idea of regular people not putting up with their shit. (snip)
Crazy violent temper tantrums (fueled by a helpful lying ass media) are useful to the left. Without their gang of useful idiots being able to destroy shit with impunity, who else would scare the shit out of juries? Who else would ensure everyone trapped in cities always toes the line?
Mob based political violence has been a tool of dirtbags since mankind invented politics. Quit pretending that the left doesn’t do it now.
It’s the same reason when after a summer of their continual fiery rampages with billions of dollars in damage and many lives lost, when the right got a little uppity on January 6th, the left absolutely lost their shit. That’s their game. That’s their tool. The left don’t share. So their rioters are heroic champions (even when they are arsonist child rapists who got out of the loony bin that morning) while ours are insurrectionists who need to get immediately shot by the cops (the one time they don’t want to defund the police, go figure)

(whole beautiful rant at link)

So their rioters are heroic champions
“Our violence is speech. Your speech is violence.”

“The BBC is very unhappy.”
Heh.
“I wish to binge.”
Well, we’re watching the verdict. Again and again. With bourbon.

I wish to binge.
The only shows I can stomach watching anymore are old, so my recommendations may not suit. My last bingeing included the original Hercule Poirot shows before they got all dark and woke (when Hugh Fraser and Miss Lemon left), Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett by Granada TV, Jeeves and Wooster with Fry and Laurie, and for American fare, Magnum P.I. (go ahead and laugh).
For non-fiction I’ve found myself glued to YouTube videos that I think I originally found in one of the Ephemera (or Ephemer-arne’t) awhile back: some guy (in N Europe somewhere?) who restores old metal tools (I think a big vise was the first I saw) and objects in his workshop. There’s not a lot of chatter, or even a musical soundtrack, just captions and the sound of the various tools. I don’t know why I am captivated by those videos, but they’re satisfying to watch.

But the prosecution was a fucking travesty.
I think they should be treated like Nifong.
I only worry now if Merrick Garland is now bored with siccing the FBI on uppity parents and will now move on Rittenhouse.

SDA is only loading the frames for me.

Oh, and I’d absolutely love to volunteer as Rittenhouse’ libel lawyer right about now. Given the number of times the facts have been presented, there’s no reason why the usual lefty blowhards should still be shouting falsehoods at this late hour, except if they’re deliberately trying to ruin the young man’s reputation and stir up trouble.
Hopefully he and Nick Sandmann will have fun playing with all the really nice toys CNN is forced to pay for.

For non-fiction I’ve found myself glued to YouTube videos…
I’ve fallen down that rabbit hole in a big way myself.
My latest distraction is a tugboat driver moving barges around New York Harbo(u)r. I was complaining about how stressful it is to get a 40-foot sailboat into a marina slip when the breeze is up, and one of my sailing buddies pointed me to TimB and told me to count my blessings that I’m not trying to land a 300-foot barge alongside a pier with wind and tide both conspiring against me.

I’ll let you know if they shed any light on the apparent contradictions!
“He shouldn’t have been there … muh!”
I’d absolutely love to volunteer as Rittenhouse’ libel lawyer
Not just media, but every leftwing politician is screaming … from Gavin Newsom to Deblasio … and saying the same things shown to be false at trial.
And media personalities are melting down right before our eyes.

Now we’ve got this absolute piece of inhuman shit chiming in.
This is one of the replies. Serious or satire? It’s so damned difficult to tell:
https://twitter.com/myhunt1972/status/1461779601139679237

The only shows I can stomach watching anymore are old, so my recommendations may not suit.
Same here. We mostly watch classic movies on TCM. Someone here recommended that Russian 2015 remake/series about WWII women AA gunners. We watched the first episode last night. It was good but hard to follow. Most foreign films that we have watched move kinda slow. Maybe it’s age but we found it a bit hard to keep up with the subtitles while trying to follow war action. I wish movies like this would be dubbed. I get that it’s hard/expensive to get right, and I generally don’t mind reading the subtitles (and a few Irish and UK films could be helped in this regard…looking at you Kes) but I fear it’s the snob factor that drives such a decision. I remember 20-some years ago staying in Prague, got back to the hotel room as wife was turned, so I turned on the TV and some good American film was on…forget which…and I was surprised (based on said snob factor) that the film was dubbed in Czech, which made it too bothersome to watch. I found the irony rather thick.

LOL, always a reliable anti-woke circle-jerk here.

Somewhat off-topic, but a living example of why “wokeness” needs to be in the next revision of the DSM (DSM-6 ?) : https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1461808173447266309

Bingeing
How about Thames TV’s World at War?
26 episodes, enough to keep you binged for 24 hours, allowing for 90 minutes of popcorn-bucket recharging and the occasional pee.

I’d hate to see inside this guy’s mind – talk about contradictory.
Another lunatic comment.

Something I am mulling over in my mind – are we seeing the decline of the 5th Amendment? I noticed that with Kyle Rittenhouse, the Ahmaud Arbery case, and the Theranos trial, defendants are taking the stand. In Kyle’s case, his defense team used mock jurors beforehand and concluded that he plays well and the Midwest zeitgeist is that folks want to hear his side of the story. My thought is will that become a norm? Frankly, I don’t see how Travis McMichael is a sympathetic character but then, I am not privy to seeing the jurors’ faces.

How about Thames TV’s World at War?
Having seen the entire series, and having recommended it here some years ago, while noting the sometimes harrowing content, I’m not sure I’d want to watch it again shortly before going to sleep.

tips for late-evening viewing
This may not be your cup of tea, but I’ve just this morning finished Episode 3 of Amazon’s latest, Wheel of Time.
Almost in spite of myself and a little to my surprise, I’ve actually found it quite enjoyable and it’s almost worth it just for the many panoramic shots of the world its set in, some of which are very striking indeed.
However, and it must be said, there are several occasions when you get to experience what it must have been like to be television-viewer in the former Soviet Union.
In other words, there are a number of very irksome interjections of what the Critical Drinker refers to as “the message”.
These are so ubiquitous now that I find myself, probably like many of those Soviet Union viewers, simply screening them out while they gibber on about the power of strong women and the evils of weak men or when they show petite five-foot nothing actresses improbably working the bellows in a blacksmith or easily defeating eight-foot tall raging orc-beasts that whole groups of armed warriors have trouble taking down.
But if you can screen those out, along with some clunky direction*, it’s actually not too shabby.
Not a ringing endorsement, no, but then it’s not by any means a superior production.
* One scene during a battle scene in the first episode is literally laugh-out-loud ludicrous.

In theory, if someone in California steals >$950 of stuff without particular worry, then why can’t there be some waiting outside the door to steal what was just stolen from the original thieves?

I’ve never heard of the thing.
It was released on Prime only yesterday.
Though, it has to be said, you’re not really selling it.
Well, what can I say?
It’s one thing to screen out “the message” as a viewer, but as any kind of review, you feel obliged to mention it.
It’s really a question of how intrusive it is, not whether or not it will be there – that’s a given.

*fans self*
[ Turns up air conditioning. Puts newspaper under Julia. ]

*fans self*
Heh.
Well, yes, to the extent that I’m in a position to judge such things on behalf of others, I would say Marcus Rutherford has ‘giant puppy’ appeal and Josh Stradowski will strike a blow for gingers everywhere as a taller, younger version of Ryan Phillipe.
* Masculine throat clearing growl *
‘Course the birds are fabulous, too. That Rosumand Pike’s a top bit of posh tottie, ain’t she just? etc.

although there is only one Poirot, there are a million Marples. From the sublime Joan Hickson to Americans.
I’ve seen the Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie runs twice. I think of Marple as comfort TV. Yes, there’s quite a lot of poisoning and questionable will-altering, and bodies piling up everywhere, but it’s oddly comforting.

I think it’s the knitting.
I’m not quite sure what it is, but my two attempts to get into Poirot have failed. I don’t dislike it as such, and I remember being entertained by The ABC Murders. But as an ongoing series, I just didn’t find it as charming.
Maybe it’s the fact there are more homicidal lesbians in Marple.

there are a number of very irksome interjections of what the Critical Drinker refers to as “the message”.
How does it compare to the original novels?

It’s one thing to screen out “the message” as a viewer, but as any kind of review, you feel obliged to mention it.
Which is one of the things that distinguishes you from all too many professional reviewers.