Friday Ephemera
I’m not sure what this is, but I think you should try it. || At last, a self-crumpling ballpoint pen. || Attention, ladies. Alice wants to use your bathroom. || A little scrubbing. || It’s a job. || The unblocking did not go well. || The thrill of wearing women’s knickers. || Thieving large objects, a thread. || Anti-theft device of note, 1961. || Intellectual activity, 2022. || Today’s word is serendipity. (h/t, Darleen) || Well, you would, I suppose. || Dancing at 90 degrees. || Cheese trajectory. || Gamer girl. || Giving it everything. || Ready meals of note. || And how was your day, dear? || How to play the piano. || John Peel roulette. (h/t, Things) || And finally, implausibly, the kamikaze porn-star scandal that rocked Japan.
Also, I now have a Gettr account.
ccscientist: ungulates (hooved mammals) – both kosher ones such as sheep and goats, and non-kosher ones such as pigs and donkeys – lack a penis bone too. And those, not primates or bears or whales, would have been the creatures that the ancient Israelites would have encountered most often. So they would really have had little reason to think that human males ought to have such a bone, and likewise little reason to have to create a story to explain why they don’t.
By the way, the translation “rib” isn’t necessarily accurate anyway. The Hebrew word is צלע (ṣelaʿ), which can also mean “side,” and indeed there is an opinion in the Talmud that Eve was originally created fully formed and attached to Adam back-to-back, and then the two bodies were separated.
asiaseen: to a certain extent that view is based on selective reading, and has an agenda behind it – to make the “new and improved” version of Judaism (complete with a new testament) look better.
(There’s an old Jewish joke that’s apropos here: A Christian missionary is trying to convince a Jew of the merits of his religion, with its G-d of love, as compared to the Jewish conception of a G-d of vengeance. To which the Jew answers: you reserve the love for G-d, and the violence and war you keep to yourselves. With us it’s the opposite: vengeance belongs to G-d, and love and concern for the other is our purview.)
I don’t know how much exposure you’ve had to Judaism (the genuine kind, not the ersatz “tikkun olam” junk that’s passed off as it), but for example a central theme of our prayers is about how G-d is ready to forgive even the worst sins through sincere repentance. Which is as far from “unpleasantly bloodthirsty and retributive” as possible. To take another angle on it, Jewish theology sees the creation of the universe itself as the greatest kindness – we say that G-d (being self-sufficient) didn’t need any “other,” but wanted to have creatures on whom to bestow goodness.
Six victims. I’m sorry it’s impossible to execute him six times.
a central theme of our prayers is about how G-d is ready to forgive even the worst sins through sincere repentance
Which is what annoys me when people ask us in the name of Christianity to forgive sinners who have exhibited absolutely no sincere desire to repent.
Alex: thanks for the clarification about penis bones (a sentence I never anticipated writing).
Thugs: why on earth is someone with a long rap sheet (and I don’t mean the music) out of jail? After a dozen felonies, how could they be free? On some of these guys like the wisconsin parade murderer I count a total of 60 years that they are due to serve (a couple of years for each felony and more for the bad felonies).
Thugs: why on earth is someone with a long rap sheet (and I don’t mean the music) out of jail?
I think the chief reasons are (1) to reduce prison overcrowding, and (2) to gratify the perverted and often malevolent desires of “reformers”.
Adam’s rib vs. side vs. penis bone:
Once again we have a reminder of the importance of accurate translation.
By the way, the translation “rib” isn’t necessarily accurate anyway. The Hebrew word is צלע (ṣelaʿ), which can also mean “side,” and indeed there is an opinion in the Talmud that Eve was originally created fully formed and attached to Adam back-to-back, and then the two bodies were separated.
I’m tellin’ ya…we’re all gonna go to hell because of these f’n bastards who simply cannot translate properly.
Chicago police scanner: “Male in a gray coat and black pants came in the store and he is now naked in the washroom. Except for the ankle bracelet home monitoring device.”
Don’t do drugs, kids.
Black Tiktoker tells white women to murder white men.
“As a narcissistic racist, how can I turn this into something about me?”
Nice cartoon. On the surface it seems very crudely done, and yet it works very well as a caricature of a political type.
I’m tellin’ ya…we’re all gonna go to hell because of these f’n bastards who simply cannot translate properly.
Just ask the German Coast Guard. What are you sinking about?
Crimes he committed while out on felony bail: “13 armed robberies, beat people with a baseball bat, and killed a father who was hanging Christmas lights”
Extenuating circumstances: “Mendiola allegedly told police that he regrets participating in the violent crime spree, but Christmas was around the corner, and he had no money for his kids.”
I would give his kids–and the city–a very special Christmas gift: their father on death row.
Employees who deliver more and more quickly tend to find themselves rewarded in the short term despite the fact that the inevitable skimping on quality very often results in a long, slow decline in standards, reputation, and success of whatever organisation they are working for.
Fun story: I once worked for a company that instituted metrics-based compensation for its tech support staff, and the metric chosen was “average time from initial pickup of call to customer hang up”. This torpedoed morale, as the call volume was far too high and the problems too complex to troubleshoot quickly over the phone. Everyone was missing their targets by a country mile, except for one fellow who consistently came in under target week after week.
After a month or two the manager decided to covertly observe him to see what was going on. What he was doing was keeping an eye on the average call time dashboard, and if it creeped up too closely to the threshold he would take down the customer’s phone number, tell them he was escalating the issue, and that a senior engineer would call them back shortly to gather more information. When the call queue dropped down to zero, he’d call them back and finish the issue – and since he was calling out, those calls were never included in the metrics.
A fine lesson on making sure that you’re actually measuring the right thing, and the economic laws of incentives.
Yep, that will work!
https://twitter.com/ListComesForAll/status/1500525823241203718/photo/1
How professional people, people of any substance at all could approve of such a thing shocked me.
It’s not just professionals, either. A cow-orker of mine used to be a Public Works Director for a city of around 180,000. He described looking into the maintenance garage and seeing four guys in their fifties drinking coffee and playing cards, while a couple of younger guys were turning wrenches, cleaning up the shop and updating the inventory system.
“The Finance Director saw that the maintenance department was way overstaffed compared to other cities. He cut my budget for the following year. Guess which two guys I had to lay off?”
“Guess which two guys I had to lay off?”
No need to guess. 😉
A system designed to protect the lazy and the incompetent. A system designed by and for parasites. No wonder my liberal friends like it.
The creation of Eve from one of Adam’s ribs in the Hebrew story may be a memory of a pun in the Sumerian myth ‘Enki and Ninhursag in Dilmun.’ In that story the goddess Ninti is born of Ninhursag in order to cure a disease in Enki’s rib. ‘Ninti’ means ‘Lady of Life’ or ‘Lady of the Rib,’ and ‘Eve’ means ‘Life’ in Hebrew. Ninhursag is also known as Ki or ‘Earth’ and ‘Adam’ probably derives from the Hebrew for Earth.
The Sumerian myth is not especially concerned with the creation of mankind so the connection between it and the Genesis myth is hard to explain, yet it contains several other elements which seem to be related to aspects of the Genesis myth, so perhaps it was just a favourite with the Hebrew mythographer.
“”Guess which two guys I had to lay off?”
No need to guess. 😉
A system designed to protect the lazy and the incompetent. A system designed by and for parasites. No wonder my liberal friends like it.”
The thing you miss here is the way things work out in the real world; those two younger guys who were actually working? They were “paying their dues”, and would likely join the older guys sitting around playing cards when their time came. That’s how the dynamic goes, in these situations. It’s a natural progression, not necessarily the product of “lazy government worker”.
The real issue is that the whole structure is prone to this sort of crap. Human beings tend to set themselves up into hierarchies and “structures” whenever they encounter problems. Then, the hierarchy and structure becomes a permanent thing, an entity unto itself. These things actually have life-cycles you can observe, if you look at them in close enough detail. Every single agency of the government has sub-elements that now seem permanent, yet were once set up to deal with some crisis. Thing is, the crisis passed decades ago, and now that sub-element still exists, having long since dealt with the problem it was meant to.
It’s an unfortunate fact, but we humans do hierarchy and organization very, very badly. I can’t think of a single one in my lifetime experience that hasn’t had significant “issues” stemming from this–Careerism, mis-guided missions, excess costs, being run to benefit the organization, rather than the mission… It’s all there, whether you look at a company or a government agency.
Just like a lot of issues, it’s entirely self-inflicted. Solving the vast host of these problems that we suffer from in this realm demands one thing, and one thing only: Grow the hell up. Quit sloughing off responsibility–You see a guy on your left or right in the company structure that’s not doing right? Do something about it. Most people that go on to be disasters as the “in charge” people in their organizations didn’t get there because they just started demonstrating dysfunction on the day they were put in charge of it all–There were signs. Which were ignored by their peers and supervisors.
Do something about it. Most people that go on to be disasters as the “in charge” people in their organizations didn’t get there because they just started demonstrating dysfunction on the day they were put in charge of it all–There were signs. Which were ignored by their peers and supervisors.
This. But one thing that I think you’re missing, or perhaps left out for brevity sake, is that the kind of people who like to do real work do not aspire to management type positions. At least not for the prestige and such by which those positions are generally sold. The good, productive, successful ones tend to be the type that see positions of power as ways of multiplying their own abilities. But that comes with significant baggage as well.
@WTP,
Oh, absolutely: The parasites wind up in charge because that’s what they are. Meanwhile, guy that just does his job winds up just doing his job.
Which leads to the slack in the realm of “boss” to be taken up by the parasite, who delights in lording it over everyone else.
It is a vanishingly rare human being who combines the traits of “good at job” and “wanting to run things well”. Most of the ones who aspire to “run things”, as I point out, are precisely the wrong sort of people to put in charge of anything, to include handing out toilet paper in bathrooms.
It’s just like with police; there are those who are attracted to that job out of a sense of doing right, and then there are those who are attracted to the job because it allows them all sorts of petty powers over others, enabling them to get their jollies through state-sponsored bullying. Frankly, my take on all that is that if you want to be a cop, you’re probably absolutely unfit for the job, for one of two reasons: You’re either a wannabe thug/bully, or you’re dangerously naive about the world we live in. Either way, the job is better done by the pragmatic types who would generally want nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, it’s rather hard to coerce those sorts into the job in the first place…
Personally, I’m kinda leaning towards a conscription model for policing: Similar to jury duty, your name goes on a list, and if it comes up, well… You’re gonna do a tour as a cop after suitable training. Watch what happens, afterwards, to all the bleeding hearts that complain that the police are “brutal”. Buddy, you spend a couple of years doing what the average cop does, having to put up with the BS the general public hands them…? LOL… Watch what happens.
“Lemme see… You stole a car, got drunk, wrecked it, killed two innocent people including a kid, then fought with the police who came to deal with all that…? Now you’re complaining that they beat the crap out of you while trying to get you under restraint?” (Former conscripted cop on jury thinks, remembering his years as police…) “Yeah, I say hang the sumbitch…” “But… he wasn’t up for the death penalty…” “Who cares? Hang him anyway…”.
If anyone’s having trouble with comments not appearing, email me, top left, and I’ll poke about in the spam filter, which is being temperamental again.
and I’ll poke about in the spam filter
I hope you’re not running low on rubber gloves and hip boots.
The thing you miss here is the way things work out in the real world; those two younger guys who were actually working? They were “paying their dues”
That may be one of the justifications that union people gave me, back in the day. They had various other justifications for workplaces in which half the people are always idle.
But one thing that I think you’re missing, or perhaps left out for brevity sake, is that the kind of people who like to do real work do not aspire to management type positions.
How academia became overrun with parasitic administrators: Here is a complaint that I was hearing back in the 70’s when I was a student: Academia traditionally relied on professors taking turns doing various administrative tasks. But they didn’t like being expected to do this, and over time they were permitting more and more administrators to be hired to do those jobs. And so we ended up with armies of administrators whose interests are different from the professors’.