Friday Ephemera

Meet the neighbours
Continuing a topic from the previous thread, I think that boy needs the sort of education that is conveyed by a load of birdshot at close range. Hmmm?

What, it’s Friday again? Already?
For me Phriday Ephemera has always been Thursday night ephemera.

For me Phriday Ephemera has always been Thursday night ephemera.
Me, too. But I have always been willing to be sufficiently “multicultural” to call it Friday–even as I continue to insist that David doesn’t know how to spell aluminum. 😉

Why, I even went so far as to stop offering David very stale chocolate cookies, and started calling them biscuits.
You have no idea how confusing it is to be a person of my age living north of the border. A cookie is a cookie but we don’t have your southern biscuits. Chips are chunky and served with fried fish but they also come in a 200 gram (note the metric) bag with flavours (please note the “ou” in flavours) like ketchup, salt and vinegar, and dill pickle. A chesterfield is something you sit on and not something you smoke, though there are few who use the word anymore.
We’ve been losing our British heritage since the end of the Second World War (note: not World War Two). I fear when our Queen (Elizabeth II) dies we shall lose the Monarch as our Head of State. There’s something to be said for a relatively neutral head of state versus the line of assholes who have been both Executive Head of Government and Head of State. A Chief Executive can afford to be and should be an asshole for the sake of his constituency, but the Head of State should always represent the ideal of His/Her nation.
God Save the Queen!

What was that passage in Niven’s Ringworld where the protagonist is offended at how uniform the entire world has become?
Firstly, the world has hardly become uniform (Spoken like an American). Secondly, why refer to science fiction when the real world is all around us. Though you’re not wrong about living in proximity to the “Ungrateful Colonials.” As far as hanging on to native identity, we have watered down our British identity through immigration. Our great sin is that we didn’t have an identity for the new arrivals to embrace.
Embarrassing as it is to say we “hosers” define ourselves as being “not American.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Great White North.

Inevitable process due to proximity of Ungrateful Colonials?
Trudeau. Both of them.
Dad moves deployed.
The somewhat disturbing thing about that video is that Dad is a significantly better dancer than his teen daughters.
While I realize that nobody cares about indie tabletop roleplaying games (because they’re not really all that important or relevant in the grand scheme of things) I’ve been horrified/fascinated at the speed and extent with which ludicrous identity politics has infested the hobby.
From the RPG Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall:

It is absolutely okay to play this game in private with your group of friends, even if you’re not all Chinese-American/Canadian.

How very gracious of you to permit the gwai lo to play your game. In private.

However, if you would like to do a recorded play of the game and you are not Chinese-American/Canadian, we encourage you to include Chinese-American/Canadian players or ask someone who is Chinese-American/Canadian to moderate the game for you. We strongly believe that representation is important on-camera, when playing this game.

When I met [my co-author] on-line for the first time, I knew we were kindred spirits. We were both Chinese-Canadians (though [my co-author] has long lived in the US for work) and both into tabletop gaming. We were both also irritated by how our culture has been represented in gaming in general.

Oh, my. I’m sure it’s disturbing to see one’s own familiar sense of home and fami…

As a Chinese-Canadian who grew up in Northern Ontario, I am somewhat distanced from my own heritage —there were not a lot of Chinese families in Sault Ste. Marie. Also, my parents grew up in Brunei, having escaped the Japanese occupation of China during WWII. As such, I’ve never really identified strongly with the culture of China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan.

Oh.
I should note that her co-author goes by the nom de Internet “Banana-chan”.
I am torn between never playing this game as hard as possible, and playing a pirated copy simultaneously on Twitch, YouTube and Discord with my 40-something white friends. Doing our best James Hong impressions.

Firstly, the world has hardly become uniform…
I am perfectly aware that the world has not become uniform. Why would you think otherwise? Sheesh.
However, I have read comments by Westerners from earlier in the 20th Century lamenting that Europe and North America were becoming more alike than they had been. So there has been a process of slow homogenization at work, regardless of how far we may think it will go or how quickly.
…(Spoken like an American).
What in God’s name did you falsely infer about the thinking behind my comment?
Secondly, why refer to science fiction when the real world is all around us.
Because in that story the earth of 850 years in the future had indeed become radically uniform–same shops, same foods, same fashions, same fads, and so on. Even a disappearance of distinct races due to centuries of migration and intermarriage. In contrast, today’s world is not uniform, no matter how much we may notice (and praise or deplore) trends in that direction. The story posits a global endpoint.

Please for the love of God!

Mistral for black serial killer who targeted elderly people because four jurors did not want to send a black man to prison for the rest of his life. The jurors all agreed he was guilty. Some of them refused to convict him simply because he was black.
Liberalism is a disease. Leftism is stage four cancer.

I am perfectly aware that the world has not become uniform. Why would you think otherwise? Sheesh.
If I have misunderstood what you were implying, I apologize. I tried to soften the comment about “Spoken like an American” with my follow on comment.
However, your “defence” immediately refers to homogenization based on comments from “Westerners.” So what am I to think? A McDonalds on one corner, with a Starbucks and KFC on two others anywhere in the world may imply commercial homogenization. It does not, however, mean cultural homogenization.
Perhaps my ignorance of your Niven reference should have tempered my comment. It’s still not clear what side of it you propound. When you quote from modern fiction (which can be interpreted from different positions) it’s not necessarily clear which interpretation you’re putting forward–Poe’s law and all that.
To be honest, I found it all a little condescending. But that’s more a comment on me than you.

Unfortunately that attitude has found its way down to the hoi polloi who, with no evidence, think they’re better than our cousins.
This article dates back to 2004; my experience has been that the attitude this woman encountered has been endemic in Canada from the 1990s up to today.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200517134106/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/11/28/before-you-flee-to-canada-can-we-talk/878044e8-18e6-4648-8efb-d2894be29ef5/

TypePad seems to have difficultly with archive.org URLs (the current URL is behind an annoywall)
I used the last part of the link and it arrived at the article with no pay wall. Copy and paste.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/11/28/before-you-flee-to-canada-can-we-talk/878044e8-18e6-4648-8efb-d2894be29ef5/
This does capture the zeitgeist, but I think it predates the 90s. In the 60s and 70s I think Canadians looked down their noses at Americans (without reason) while sporting a greater British sensibiltiy than they do today. This came from some misplaced feeling of superiority. Starting in the 80s, maybe the 90s, it seemed to come more from a place of envy and disdain.

Target lock acquired.
BOOM

Morning, all.
The somewhat disturbing thing about that video is that Dad is a significantly better dancer than his teen daughters.
Yes, the young ladies really need to up their game.
BOOM
It does, I think, get to the nub of things.

How does a chicken break into a house?
Maybe the house is in a co-op development and the chicken doesn’t know what punctuation is.
It kinda offers one explanation for the road crossing question though.

Ha, ha. No.
It’s the first time I’ve seen the term “poop heat map.”
But then, I wasn’t previously aware that ‘child’s toe’ is the standard unit of chocolate measurement.

What surprises me is it managed to drop an egg 8ins or so on to a metal door without it breaking (the egg I mean)
A while ago, I learned that you can throw an egg onto a lawn from about thirty feet up and it won’t break. Most of the time.

It does not, however, mean cultural homogenization.
The difficulty is that it is happening, it is a slow process, it generally flows only one way, and we are not exactly exporting our best “culture”.

If I have misunderstood what you were implying, I apologize.
Thank you. Reaching understanding is paramount.
Your Niven comment
In Larry Niven’s story, set 850 years in the future, the entire Earth has become homogeneous, thanks in part to transfer booth teleportation technology. The 400 year old protagonist finds this intolerable–he wants the stimulation and pleasure of variety and so is glumly wondering if it is time to take another “sabbatical” and go exploring in interstellar space. The author did not go into a great deal of detail, which is just as well as at the time he was still young and that was only his third novel: He wrote what he knew so the earthbound scenes were in California which passing references to other cities around the world.
It’s pretty obvious that cultural mixing is going in many directions, and it seems that immigration from South Asia and Africa is a chief driver in one direction while exports of TV and movies and books and music are chief drivers in the other direction. And then there’s China and Japan…
However, your “defence” immediately refers to homogenization based on comments from “Westerners.” So what am I to think? A McDonalds on one corner, with a Starbucks and KFC on two others anywhere in the world may imply commercial homogenization. It does not, however, mean cultural homogenization.
Think about the spread of rock and roll, heavy metal, death metal, rap, and so on. I have read laments by French writers over the decline of chansons, replaced by American-sounding pop music genres.
I occasionally hear radio stations broadcasting Mexican bands, which are refreshingly different–less drums and you can hear the voices over the instruments–but it remains to be seen if native-born Americans will be influenced.
I have read that many very local languages and dialects are dying out around the world–which is perhaps inevitable with rapid wide communication and broadcasting.
It is certainly true that in spite of rock music in clubs and American ghetto graffiti on bridges, France remains culturally very French. But I think that a Frenchman from 100 years ago would see various ways in which France has become more like America. And an American from 100 years ago would see ways in which America has become more like various other nations.
But then there are also the self-imposed ghettos: Many Muslims immigrating to Europe self-isolate and refuse to assimilate. What will this mean in another 50 or 100 years? And that brings up the matter of undesirable cultural imports, from Sharia Law and religious intolerance to various sorts of criminal gangs. And undesirable cultural exports, such as gangster rap and much of the rest of our whorish entertainment industry.
So what will the world be like in 100 years? I don’t know, but I suspect more uniform. And all those smaller nations seem the ones most likely to lose their distinctiveness, something which I would hate to see happen. The populations of the Scandinavian countries are each much smaller than their continental neighbors–only about the same as metropolitan Chicago’s–and their history/art/culture/etc have value. And haven’t some Scandinavian political or intellectual figures said that Scandinavians do not have have their own culture and thus have nothing to preserve? (!!)

We don’t forget Texas is there.
Mainly because like NY and CA they won’t shut up.
Meanwhile, it is uncertain if two of those were originally called “The Boris”.

If for no other reason (legion though they may be) this is why no one should pay any attention to the FDA.

this is why no one should pay any attention to the FDA.
The FDA’s tweet is actually the least disturbing thing that I see there.

no one should pay any attention to the FDA.
Unconscionable tweet considering we are in a Pandemic of The Fatinated.

Where/how is the “true” negative or “true” positive determined? The tests can only be verified by other tests.
That’s a BFO, and, mirabile dictu, the way medicine works for damn near anything short of maybe a commininuted fracture.
…but then they throw a considerable just-in-worst-case cheat factor on top.
Yes, in much the same way we have CI intervals.

…Sensitivity from individual studies ranged from 37.7% (95% CI 30.6–45.5) to 99.2% (95% CI 95.5–99.9)…

The numbers come from an actually good and balanced paper, my main quibble being they refer to PCR as “the gold standard” though it was never designed to be diagnostic, nor is it immune from numerous false positives from the previously known coronavira.

“What, it’s Friday again? Already?”
Why yes, yes it is. That’s why I wait until this time to catch up on the Friday Emph…ermph… er, stuff.
“Mainly because like NY and CA they won’t shut up.”
Ok, then. Meet at High Noon. At Buc-ee’s.

“Unfortunately that attitude has found its way down to the hoi polloi who, with no evidence, think they’re better than our cousins.”
Sounds a lot like a large number of my fellow Scots with our own cousins to the south. The only difference being that the direction of travel is reversed: the attitude started at the bottom and has gradually worked its way up to the alleged “elite”.
“Just be sure you know what ingredients are in your chocolate first.”
Yeah. Sure. I’ll… I’ll get right on that.

My backpack with the laptop and my wallet were gone, as were letters I’d kept for the past seven years, ones I had no intention of anyone ever reading.
She kept 7yr-old letters in her car?

“She kept 7yr-old letters in her car?”
That’s nothing compared to what some leave in their cars.
Trust me, I’ve seen things…
*shudders*

She kept 7yr-old letters in her car?
She does raise cluelessness to a stratospheric heights, though.

I asked family and friends to spend their Thanksgiving morning driving around Portland in search of my Subaru. It was, after all, just 145 square miles of city to cover.

Only 145 square miles, or 6 times the area of Manhattan, or Brooklyn and Queens combined. A mere bagatelle.

They had left a hooked iron tool in the passenger seat that curved gently on one end. This tool appeared to have been used to pry open the window…

Anybody can be a neurosurgeon or rocket scientist if they just apply themselves.
However, it appears as the twig was bent, so grew the tree…

My dad trailed behind me, in socks and slides, ankle-deep in mud.

I am guessing that socks and sandals may not be the best footwear to go looking all over town for a stolen car in the winter in the famously hot and arid Pacific Northwest. I could be wrong, though, maybe it is pandemic required footgear.

“As Canadian as possible under the circumstances.”
What a lovely legacy.

What a lovely legacy.
Indeed. Thank you for posting that.
She lived at a time when left and right in Canada could still be civil to one another. Peter Gzowski was a raging progressive but he could at least make a cogent argument and would back it up with his view of the facts. I’m not sure today’s progressives could be as thoughtful and create such a nuanced aphorism. Today the left’s strongest argument is Shut Up. And to be fair, far fewer people on the right can be so positively introspective than in the past.

I can think of some appropriate responses to such attacks: Muslim ‘migrants’ attack Polish border guards, shout ‘F*** your mothers, racist f***s!’

classicist vs. some TikTok nutter
Perhaps it is time to track down these liars and trolls, and expose them to their families, friends, neighbors, and employers.

Firstly, the world has hardly become uniform
There are increasingly large parts of it that are in many ways.
I play GeoGuessr, and there are some very obvious “tells” about where you are. But the list of things that are the almost exactly the same everywhere is staggering.
See a guy in a NY Yankees cap? Could be *literally* anywhere. I don’t buy traditional souvenirs, but I do like to buy T-shirts from where I visit with interesting pictures and preferably a small bit of the local language. I travelled Eastern Europe a bit, and it was extremely hard to find them — basically all the shirts had writing in English, or something rude in the local language.
See a burger joint or pizza place? Literally anywhere. Kebabs too now, for a bit of “diversity”, but buying local street food is increasingly difficult.
Poor African man on the street selling tat? Anywhere.
90% of the cars are the same. 99% of the clothes. Most of the movies — they don’t even bother taking the titles out of English now half the time.
You see a new housing development and you have to search for minor details to tell even the continent.
We all use the same computers and phones, playing the same games and using the same software.
The one thing holding the tide back is language. But as all the world heads to speaking English, even that is breaking.

Dangerous thing detected.

(Tiny) warp drive discovered (sort-of, in theory, maybe).

Funeral procession of note.
Could have been written by Terry Pratchett.

Oxford
And won’t those academics pushing for increased wokeishness be surprised when they find themselves being cancelled.

Other way round – so many of the weird things in his books happened in real life
Has Terry talked about the weird things that inspired his books?

Good: The court…decided that administration officials could be personally liable for violating the First Amendment.
Making individual officials suffer is key to ending leftist oppression.

(Tiny) warp drive discovered (sort-of, in theory, maybe).
Here’s another graphic of someone making a tiny warp drive.

Question asked.

Question asked.

And those who identified as agender, queergender, or non-binary – indicating they identify as neither male or [sic] female – were mischaracterized 100% of the time.

Whoa. Mindblowing and shocking. We will never achieve true gender equity in The Glorious World of Next Tuesday until facial recognition software can correctly guess someone’s imaginary pronouns and flag.

Professor of color denied funding for failure to pledge support for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

My grandparents lived near a crematorium (no wisecracks, thank-you). That kind of thing is surprisingly common.
Must be a regional thing. I’ve always lived near funeral parlors and have never seen anything so eccentric.

Is it a lifestyle thing?
When I lived in the city it was a combination of “high density urban neighborhood” plus “right off mass transit to downtown jobs”. Likewise for my parents. And when I moved to the suburbs it was a “walking distance to commuter train station” thing, which put me across the street from a funeral parlor and within a mile of two large cemeteries.
But come to think of it, I overstated the case: It was true in my hometown, but not when I moved to another large city, and then became true again when I moved out to the suburbs.
But if you’d like to believe it’s a lifestyle thing then please post the Charles Addams cartoon of your choice. That will guarantee a laugh from me.

The many omicrons of Trek.

Oh dear, it appears I quite mangled that link.
[ Un-up-bargles horrifically up-bargled link. ]

I’ve always lived near funeral parlors…
My grandfather was mortician and when my mother and her brother were little, they lived in the apartment over the mortuary. They moved into a nice suburban home when he was hired by Forest Lawn (the original, in Glendale, CA … the placed mocked by Evelyn Waugh in The Loved One), He was there over 40 years moving from mortician to memorial counselor.

[ Slurps indecently large gin and tonic. ]
I hope that doesn’t mean you’re still not fully recovered, David.