We Seem To Be Experiencing Technical Problems

And must therefore be respected. Indiscriminately, it seems.
Nope.

And needless to say, my tolerance, such as it is, is largely dependent on the fact I recognise that she’s broken.

You will include your pronouns, or your grades will suffer.
The professor, who started academic life as an accountant, is the Bhagwan Mallinath Assistant Professor of Jainism and Yoga Studies, in the Yoga Studies department*, and whose “accomplishments” appear to be getting grants and fellowships, so a serious scholar indeed. However, I imagine anyone attracted to such an intellectually rigorous program will in true ovine fashion go along with the pronoun diktat.
However, those so inclined should check out his link to mypronouns.org.

These assumptions aren’t always correct, and the act of making an assumption (even if correct) sends a potentially harmful message — that people have to look a certain way to demonstrate the gender that they are or are not.

The act of making a correct assumption may or may not send a “harmful message”. Right. Offer not valid in Sector R after curfew.
The pronoun site apparently was founded by this individual.

Sakurai is a transgender person of color and a social justice leader, university administrator, professor, and consultant with two decades of community and professional experiences. They are the founder of International Pronouns Day and the first person in the U.S. to receive an officially nonbinary, X-marker driver’s license.

Apparently has not gotten the memo that Asians are now wipipo. Regardless, it is astounding that someone actually makes his whole life revolve around something as totally inconsequential as a pronoun.
And needless to say, my tolerance, such as it is, is largely dependent on the fact I recognise that she’s broken.
That, to the whole lot of them.
*(Seriously.)

That, to the whole lot of them.
Well, it’s an obvious irony. My forbearance isn’t respect or anything like it, but depends on an understanding that the sort-of neighbour isn’t entirely in her right mind. Otherwise, I might just assume she was indulging in some elaborate passive-aggressive spite – and respond accordingly.
There may, of course, be some overlap.

Scorpion swarms kill 3, injure hundreds in Egyptian city
It’s like a Hollywood movie.
By the way, Steve, here is how to embed your link:
<a href=”https://www.timesofisrael.com/scorpion-swarms-kill-3-injure-hundreds-in-egyptian-city/”>Yikes!</a>
And by the way, whenever you want to learn how to do something you see here, you can select the text that interests you, right-click, and then choose “View Selection Source”. This will display the actual HTML.

By some you mean “a great deal” I take it.
In the case of the sort-of neighbour, I remarked, just once but quite loudly, that doing a thing that’s bizarre, an imposition on others, a waste of everyone’s time, and faintly insulting to boot – resulting in sighs, eye-rolls and audible grumbling – and then doing it again, and again, as if no-one had made their aggravation clear, isn’t a way to win sympathy for one’s “nervous issues.”

I just want to let glit know that thon is valid, that vir pronouns are valid, and that seir identity is valid.
Now they’re just making stuff up.
You will include your pronouns, or your grades will suffer.
Someone had commented wondering if there would be a wrong answer to the pronouns on the homework or exam. I seem to recall a rather popular actress, or an actress in a popular show, who got cancelled for “beep/bop/boop”, so I’m going to go with yes, absolutely, some of your pronouns will be wrong answers. Although with stuff like gleet, tron, vir, and sear, how can they tell?

“thon is valid”
Yes, it is. It’s the neuter singular impersonal pronoun in some dialects of English, said to be a contraction of “that one”.
So today we learn that the pronoun engineers are quite happy with being called “it” as long as it’s via a word most people have never heard before. Which says a lot about them, I think.

My forbearance isn’t respect or anything like it, but depends on an understanding that the sort-of neighbour isn’t entirely in her right mind.
I just moved away from one of those after 23 years of forbearance. My neighbour would turn the hose on people, threaten small children, and accuse female neighbours of carrying on affairs with her husband. She would blare Wagner into the ravine behind her house when she felt any of the neighbours may have gotten too loud. She passively/aggressively stacked her garbage bins and recycling on our lawn days before scheduled pick-up and would call the police for unexplained reasons.
It all makes for a lovely Tinder profile.

Our Rulers.

they make it impossible for anyone to comply
Feature, not bug.

Something actually funny from SNL, poking fun at the woke:
https://twitter.com/nbcsnl/status/1459765930960068611

Rather, he wants to keep his subjects in a constant state of terror by means of the arbitrary
Hence all the innocent people who were arrested by the KGB.

Hence all the innocent people who were arrested by the KGB.
Most of the heavy lifting had already been done by the Cheka, the OGPU and the NKVD. As a result, the KGB could rely on subtler means to keep most of the population in line. Communist Russia was an authoritarian police state from the outset–just as Marx had called for–and it was taken to new heights by Lenin and perfected by Stalin. The apologists who suggest Soviet Russia was on the right path before Stalin don’t know their history.

Most of the heavy lifting had already been done by the Cheka, the OGPU and the NKVD.
True, although I tend to just use one of those names to stand in for all of them.
and it was taken to new heights by Lenin
I did know leftists who tried to put all the blame on Stalin.

I did know leftists who tried to put all the blame on Stalin.
And the latest trend is to say Stalin was right all along (see also Mao, if you wanna make it with anyone anyhow). Meh. Whatever works. I’m sure it’s gonna be alright.

Uh … NOT Babylon Bee

A new trigger-warning detector which sound alarms when it detects offensive speech has been unveiled at Dubai Design Week.
The Themis is a lamp-sized device intended to ‘moderate’ debate in classrooms and universities and ‘manifest political correctness’ into a product.
The small device could even be used to police language at dinner parties and family gatherings and its developers have said it hopes that Themis will encourage ‘self-critique’.

Dear God.

Dear God.
Triggered

I accuse pst314

The stupid, it burns.
https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2021/11/15/omg-apparently-rittenhouse-trial-ada-thomas-binger-attended-the-alec-baldwin-school-of-firearm-safety-and-usage-photos/?utm_content=bufferf15fe&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer&fbclid=IwAR3L3kRvNiz4QNhPLw5iaNY9dUSjbl4jfk-JiuL-Y3rAquD0ntMBySr7Jok

The end was a bit messy (and you’re right it needed more Father Paul at the end) but I enjoyed it.
It was worth watching, certainly. It’s just that if I think of the more outstanding bits – the rowboat-at-sunrise scene; the use of Neil Diamond; Hamish Linklater’s performance; the confrontation between the girl and the drunk who crippled her… almost all of them come in the first five episodes, not the final two. Even in terms of the big monologues, mentioned in the RLM video, the first one, halfway through the series, is interesting, but the one at the very end sounds a bit woolly and a needless repetition. I’m sure it’s hard to wrap these things up neatly, but I did notice a drop in my engagement after episode five. I suppose it’s partly an issue of pacing. The first five episodes unfold leisurely and there’s plenty of time for character, atmosphere and odd little details. The slowness and the oddness sort of work together. But when the mayhem begins and everyone’s running about, not so much.

The stupid, it burns.
Maybe the attorney is angling for a career as an “expert” on CNN.

These people are not sane.

These guys are evil.
You’ll get no argument from me.

How to patronise black people.
Pronouns, obviously.

does this establishment offer charitable sustenance to itinerant and indigent posters ?
[ From stock room, muffled laughter. ]

“These people are not sane.”
I always try to avoid casting aspersions on the sanity of people I disagree with politically, but some of these bozos make it really difficult. If you’d photoshopped something like that two years ago, nobody would have known what the hell you were smoking. Yet here we are.
The last two years remind me of nothing so much as the Brass Eye “Paedogeddon” special. It’s more uncomfortable to watch today than it was twenty years ago, given some of the things we’ve learned since (not that it was ever easy; it received a record number of complaints to the BBC as it sailed majestically over the heads of the viewing public), but it still makes the point. It’s not hard to imagine Kate Brown talking “nonce sense” on that show, or in the earlier sketch, warning of the dangers of “Cake”.
Yes, there’s a problem here. But people are being whipped up into an unthinking mob mentality over it, and that’s not the way to deal sensibly with anything.
“itinerant and indigent posters”
Is there any other kind round these parts?

a performance of toe-curling, backbone-dissolving, nuts-shrivelling self-abasement.
I’m struggling to comprehend what the supposed problem was, and how anyone might be “hurt or affected” – indeed “damaged” – by it. Details that, curiously, neither the press release nor the subsequent article provide.

Statement released by Irish band Girl Band (no- me neither)
Will the Violent Femmes also be reassessing their name?

And here’s me… down to my last wafer… does this establishment offer charitable sustenance to itinerant and indigent posters ?
Here, have the packet, Oliver Twist, still half full.

A prescient Walt Kelly from 1958

Uma: Well, it was 1958…

Here, have the packet, Oliver Twist, still half full.
‘Ere, Fagin, you can’t fool me. It’s actually half empty !
Uncle Xi says no social credit points for you.

Will the Violent Femmes also be reassessing their name?
Gordon Gano of VF is a notoriously banal and predictably boring by the book lefty. Some feministas should read his lyrics to Add It Up to him and ask him if he finds them “problematic.”

Gordon Gano of VF is a notoriously banal and predictably boring by the book lefty.
Is there a string in his back that you can pull to hear him recite Marxist cliches?
I confess that I know almost nothing about the band. I only remember the name became because my Wisconsin and Illinois liberal friends from long ago talked about it a lot.

I was impressed with how the cabbie locked the bomber in his cab.

Good to see NY has all their real problems sorted.

To a transgender individual, being confronted with their dead name is extremely distressing and traumatic.

It seems to me that, insofar as being reminded of one’s “dead name” may be upsetting to some trans individuals, this is largely because it undermines the pretence that’s being indulged in. And if any acknowledgement of reality, even a name on a utility bill, can result in trauma – as opposed to, say, mild irritation – then the problem may not be the name printed on a utility bill.

Good Lord, microcontamination from microplastics on microstickers.
I am microalarmed.

“Is there a string in his back that you can pull to hear him recite Marxist cliches?”
More or less. It’s the typical tripe you hear from the likes of David Cross, Alec “Six Shooter” Baldwin, Vincent “Private Pyle” Donofrio, et al — wholly unoriginal, banal, predictable tropes about “Republicans are fascists” etc.
“I confess that I know almost nothing about the band.”
Their first, self-titled album is quite original and good but they never measured up to it. They scored some royalties later when songs from the album landed on sountracks to shows like How I Met Your Mother. If you showed your average lame-o proggy feminist type the lyrics to the song “Add It Up” they’d have a conniption fit.

The perfect thing for your next holiday, David.
Hey, it’s Dyna Moe! I commissioned a piece from her for my lovely bride, back when she was doing her Hipster Animals and Man Men stuff. Small world!

It seems to me, too, that,

insofar as being reminded of one’s “dead name” may be upsetting to some trans individuals, this is largely because it undermines the pretence that’s being indulged in.

That.
And

if any acknowledgement of reality, even a name on a utility bill, can result in trauma – as opposed to, say, mild irritation – then the problem may not be the name printed on a utility bill.

That too.
And feu de mort, what they call trauma is just what we used to call hissy fit. Almost never not faked.

That.
Well, in much the same way, when someone has a meltdown or fit of depression because they’ve seen a spider in the bathroom, the real problem isn’t likely to be the spider. Likewise, if a trans man, i.e., a biological woman, finds it “very traumatic” to have a period, which tends to happen to women as a matter of routine, then the problem may not be the period.

Macroidiots
Well, yes. Their premise seems to be that we can live without producing garbage or that garbage will magically disappear or we can make our garbage somebody else’s problem.
Landfills bad. Okay, let’s burn it. No carbon bad. Okay, let’s ship it to Asia, where, of course, they promptly burn it or dump it into the ocean.
How much carbon is released when stupid burns?

I poked and stroked ’til my wrist got numb, but I still didn’t hear no Dinah Moe Hum.
[ Narrows eyebrows ]
Keep it clean: This is a family establishment.
[ Looks around ]
On second thought…

what they call trauma is just what we used to call hissy fit. Almost never not faked
As I’ve pointed out before, for the vast majority of sexual dysmorphics the dysmorphia is a self-destructive coping mechanism for childhood trauma so severe that they’re at high risk of suicide.
Interfere with the coping mechanism and you’re indirectly threatening their life, because the coping mechanism is the only thing staving off their suicidal ideation.
So no, it’s not “almost never not faked”. Presuming that the severely mentally ill are having you on for some kind of lark isn’t a helpful way of looking at this issue; it also plays into the hands of the people using the severely mentally ill as levers to disrupt society. “Ooh, they’re just faking for attention” isn’t a good look when you examine the suicide rates. Heathers was a work of fiction: people don’t actually commit suicide for attention.

If anyone’s getting aroused by this thread, I’m summoning a constable.
Everything’s out of control
We can dance, we can dance
They’re doing it from pole to pole
We can dance, we can dance
Everybody look at your hands

Daniel Ream: Agreed. We must distinguish between the crazy people and the sane people who use them for evil purposes.

By the way, now that I’ve finished Midnight Mass, any suggestions for late-evening viewing would be welcome.

any suggestions for late-evening viewing would be welcome.
Prometheus?
*ducks*

The Bureau. I binge*-watched the first series of this French TV spy saga a couple weeks ago. Best thing of its kind since Alec Guinness in Tinker Tailor.
[ *If you can call ten episodes in five nights a binge. ]