Friday Ephemera
If at all highly-strung, maybe look away now. || He builds kalimbas. (h/t, Things) || Big cat diary. || Entirely for the benefit of pedestrians. || Today’s word is broken. || Crab treadmill. || Yes, but are they me…? || Riverside living. || Rome’s imperial poisoner. || Pondering canine head-tilting. || Upscale advent calendars. || “It should be really proud of itself for trying on these new pronouns.” || Pies of note. || Parenting of note. || Possible explanation detected. || The thrill of pumping. || The thrill of tea-bagging. || The Nor-277 tapping machine. || Rock, hard place. || It seems health “equity” requires a little contrivance. || An interesting choice of words. || And finally, wings made of water (and a little detergent).
Apparently, Mr. Mehta has since been made to see the error of his accommodationist ways and has joined himself to the warm embrace of the greater screeching lunatic mass.
Yes, this atheist is so ‘friendly’ he’s even compiled a list of other atheists who don’t share his zealousness for the trans person cause. All friendly, like. It is nice to encounter blogs one used to read though.
The Gene Wolfe love-fest has convinced me that once I’m done re-reading Dune I’m going to go back and do The Book of the New Sun series. It’s been too long. I’ve heard his Roman fantasy novels were very good as well. Can anyone confirm?
Can anyone confirm?
Yes.
The Gene Wolfe love-fest has convinced me that once I’m done re-reading Dune I’m going to go back and do The Book of the New Sun series. It’s been too long…
“Such a child eventually discovers, on some low but obscure shelf, The Book of Gold…it is a remarkably lovely book…Then the librarians come—like vampires, some say, but others say like the fairy godparents at a christening. They speak to the child, and the child joins them. Henceforth he is in the library wherever he may be…”
…I’ve heard his Roman fantasy novels were very good as well. Can anyone confirm?
Greek, actually. You are thinking of the Soldier series: Soldier of the Mist, Soldier of Arete, and Soldier of Sidon. It is about the wanderings of a mercenary soldier who, receiving a head injury at the Battle of Plataea, loses his long-term memory and thus his knowledge of where his home and family are. But he gains the ability to see and talk with the Gods. It is written as a diary and begins “Read this every day.” Now that I am pretty much retired, I should re-read them.
Mother of Loudon County Bathroom Rapist Blames Victim: ‘You’re 15. You Can Reasonably Defend Yourself’
And of course she looks like this:
…and it’s time to return to my usual nom de blog for all subsequent comments.
How much stupider will this country get?
https://mobile.twitter.com/L0m3z/status/1456276894664384523
And of course she looks like this:
Throw her in the shark tank. She’s fat enough to defend herself.
And of course she looks like this
Beware of that which seems too good to be true – I’ve seen comments that this is merely an incidental image of someone who attended a school-board session, chosen to accompany the original story in the absence of a picture of the boy’s mother.
Beware of that which seems too good to be true…
Good point. And it is true that I took what appeared on Instapundit as verified.
As Abraham Lincoln himself said, don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
Beware of that which seems too good to be true…
Good point. I verified that the person is NOT the mother, but someone commenting before the school board.
The original story is from the Daily Mail.
As Abraham Lincoln himself said, don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
Indeed, that was Teddy Roosevelt.
The original photo Pst posted seems to have come from here. What happened is that someone probably linked to the site, and because her photo was at the top, the Twitter link creates the impression that’s she was the mother.
Gazer and Uma, thank you for that.
Farnsworth, for your enjoyment:
TIL the Biggest Little City in the World was named after the guy who invented the escalator‘s dad. Also that the word “escalate” apparently derives from “escalator”, and not vice-versa. (Although Abraham Roosevelt’s nostrum applies. I should probably look it up in the OED.)
Also also that their family name was originally Renault.
l’esprit de l’escalator: the thrill I felt as a tiny child when I first navigated an escalator without fear that I might lose my balance.
Depressed Elderly Chicken Wishes to Retire as Indoor Pet Chicken.
I vote the chicken an honorable retirement as a pet.
Tell us a story of your people.
Eric Zemmour’s speech in Béziers is one of the best political speeches I’ve ever heard.
I’ve translated it into stilted English here. The literary quality is entirely lost in my translation, but some of what he’s talking about might get across.
He’s being presented as a French Trump. He’s not a Trump, he’s a Laurence Auster or a Chesterton. He’s expressed some admiration for Trump as a provocateur, but what he says in that speech about right wing intellectual lightweights who campaign like gangbusters but have no idea what to do once they’ve gained office, who bend like reeds to left wing provocations and moral blackmail … Trump may not be the guy he has in mind, but the brutal evaluation applies.
“Until this summer, I questioned my identity multiple times a day (exhausting and not affirming)…”
I sometimes wonder if someone’s writing these to the ‘Guardian’ to see what they’ll actually publish. ‘Fess up, if it’s one of the patrons!
This is one of these.
Via Holborn.
The death of liberalism?
Trolling Microsoft.
when the left is in power, it applies its ideas; and when the right is in power, it applies the left’s ideas, because it is completely indoctrinated by the cultural power of the left.
That describes many of the self-described conservatives and liberatarians I have known, especially the ones who were fans.
Golly. Now that my eyes have been opened to the reality of climate change I am for sure going to go glue myself to a road now.
“Elite” Ivy League University.
one of these.
I don’t know what movie Day 239 is from, but I hate it. I hate every single person in that frame. I hate the waiter standing by the wall. I hate the clothes they are wearing. I hate the beer they’re drinking. I hate whatever cigarettes/cigarillos/fags that they are smoking. I hate the ashtray AND the box of matches. I hate the color of the paint on the wall. I hate the black stovepipe next to the waiter, I hate their wrist watches. And I’m not too crazy about whatever that business is across the street whose sign you can almost read through the window. I’m OK with the bear so I think that’s it. Again, I’m not sure why…
It’s probably just the haircuts. But they’re contagious.
Day 224 is particularly fine.
…one of these….
If the guy really wanted to be clever, he’d photoshop the bear into something with Jeremy Clarkson.
WTF is a Security Evangelist
It’s easy for people who know nothing about the computer industry to bash on Microsoft; after all, it’s the only computer company they’ve ever heard of.
The truth is that security is not only not the first priority in any company making hardware or software, security never even makes it on to the road map. Take a tour through the various reports of web sites getting hacked and their user databases stolen and decrypted, and the scale of the apathy/incompetence on display is breathtaking. Passwords stored as simple reversible hashes because the user code hasn’t been updated since 2003. Smart home appliances that can’t use anything stronger than WEP. Database connection strings stored in plain text in a web.config file that can be downloaded at http://www.sitename.com/web.config. Databases exposed to the Internet on the default port with an sa password of ‘Passw0rd’. The massive financial and reputational damage from a security breach isn’t motivating people to change their behaviour, so maybe a bit of evangelism is worth trying.
The Drinker just gets better
Ehhh. He’s really just recycling Red Letter Media’s schtick, which itself is not much more than Prisoners of Gravity applied to film. Modern movies suck because most movies have always sucked. Geek movies today are the equivalent of 1980s action movies or 1990s SNL spinoff films. The difference is that the audience will direct brobdingnagian amounts of nerdrage at any film that doesn’t precisely tickle every single one of their dysfunctional coping mechanisms masquerading as geek hobbies. People like the Drinker and Mr. Plinkett are just applying first year film school to popular movies. Good on them; they’ve found an underserved niche and are making a nice little side hustle out of it, but people really need to let this “Disney/Fox/Lucas/Marvel/DC RUINED MY CHILDHOOD” nonsense go. The studios can’t go back in time and change your memories or steal your DVDs off your shelf. The only way they could have “ruined your childhood” is if you’re still in it.
I sometimes wonder if someone’s writing these to the ‘Guardian’ to see what they’ll actually publish
In the salad days of Canada’s National Post I had a running bet with several friends that “Rebecca Eckler” was not a real person, but rather a game amongst the paper’s more acerbic columnists to see who could write the most ridiculously Torontonian column without anyone noticing.
Many moons ago I house-shared with a sportswriter for a big city newspaper. He he used to bring home occasional letters “to the editor” too surreal to print. But there was also an ongoing betting pool among the staff to see who could write and get printed the most ridiculous letters. Their main target was “Dear Abby” (what I think y’all call an Agony Aunt?). Sex perversity was always the underlying theme.
(Of course, that stuff gets printed as straight news these days…)
Knowledge of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect is your friend.
The massive financial and reputational damage from a security breach isn’t motivating people to change their behaviour, so maybe a bit of evangelism is worth trying.
Meanwhile in a boardroom in Redmond, Washington…
That same day, down on the factory floor, the millennial and Gen Z nebbishes put the final touches on
PintoYugoWindows 11…The only way they could have “ruined your childhood” is if you’re still in it.
[ Slides free napkin along bar to Daniel. ]
Prisoners of Gravity
I see where some episodes are posted at YouTube but links to the full series at TVO archives appear to be dead.
“Rebecca Eckler” was not a real person,
Oh she’s a very real person and even more insufferable in person than in print–think Canadian JAP. These days she’s reinvented herself as the doyenne of motherhood. Once again, we live in an irony free zone.
WTP: I don’t know what movie Day 239 is from, but I hate it.
As soon as I saw it, I said, “That must be a Wes Anderson movie, but which?”
Google Images reveals it as from “The French Dispatch,” his newest movie. Now in theaters.
It’s promoted as “a love letter to journalism.”
You are correct in your hate, and that guy’s brilliant.
The only way they could have “ruined your childhood” is if you’re still in it.
Didn’t “ruin my childhood” because I was never into comic books in the first place, my childhood having been almost entirely comic-book-free. Thus, the characters and themes were new to me when I saw the movies. My annoyance was that geek friends kept saying “lets go see this great new movie” which turned out to be crap made by children for children, and my friends could not understand my reaction.
News of the weird: Man bursts into flames after officers use Taser on him
More weird: German man runs up enormous water bill by letting taps run for a year. This is merely a much more extreme form of wasteful behavior I have seen, such as turning up the heat in the winter and then leaving a window open.
Man bursts into flames after officers use Taser on him
Oh dear, and in my hometown of all places.
“a love letter to journalism.”
There are these things. I feel them in my bones. I cannot explain these things. This is why I have trouble sleeping at night. OTOH, the batteries for the remote on our Sleepmaster Adjustable Bed died and the setting went from 95 down to somewhere south of 50 before we noticed. So maybe that was it. If I had to bet though, I would say it’s that first thing. Assuming an objective observer exists somewhere. Aaaand we’re back to square one. And the bottom of this bottle.
Posters saying “It’s okay to be white” have sparked a police hate crime investigation. Are England and America going mad? Or only our ruling elites?
German man runs up enormous water bill by letting taps run for a year.
Well now, that’s not very German.
“Are England and America going mad?”
The police will whine and wriggle and claim their hands are tied by ‘hate crime’ legislation, and they have no choice if someone makes a complaint.
And it’ll be a bald-faced lie, as anyone putting up a poster saying ‘It’s OK to be black’ and then getting a friend to put in a complaint about it could prove in an instant.
How not to elicit acceptance.
Truths that liberals refuse to see: They’re homeless because they’re clueless: Homeless man sprays puppy with bleach to clean it.
Well now, that’s not very German.
Only insane or criminal Germans do that, but perfectly sane immigrants from Third World countries sometimes do that, because they do not understand modern plumbing and see water coming out of a spigot as sort of magical.
@pst314: I thought cases like that poor pup was why US cops kept a ‘throwaway’ gun on hand at all times. The temptation would be too great for me.
The temptation would be too great for me.
I’m guessing that the perp has an IQ of about 65 and a drug problem too. Not evil per se but too stupid to be allowed on the streets. If my supposition is correct, our hatred should be directed at the Wise and Caring activists who prevent such people from being institutionalized.
Professor has thoughts: But God forbid you say that programming is hard. Because that would be racist.
A Twitter thread ranking all known surviving Imperial Faberge easter eggs:
https://twitter.com/grnpointer/status/1457097340788121600
Your own rankings may vary.