Friday Ephemera
A situation had arisen. || Can you guess ten seconds? (h/t, Things) || The concept of sideways. || Smooth operator. || Temptation. || Patient dogs. || The joys of public transport, part 4,865. || The progressive retail experience, part 434. || They hunt in packs. || I’ll tell you when to stop. || Ladies, is this true? || Gummi bear lovers, look away now. || The collected kitsch of Siegfried and Roy. || At last, a chocolate giraffe. || The sex robots are coming. || “Distinct transitioning odours.” || Sandwich filling. || Three hours of Norwegian snowfall. || Tight dress, big breasts. || It’s a job. || Social gaffe detected. || If you could dance on the Moon. || And finally, please write down and memorise her fashionable complications.
Join us now for another exciting episode of “Today in Racism™”, cheap sandwiches.
A new feature, David’s Puzzle Corner, one of these things is not like the others! Can you spot it?
Join us now for another exciting episode of “Today in Racism™”, cheap sandwiches.
Madame Defarge says that she is running out of yarn.
Does this count as “social justice”?
Once upon a time there would be no question. Today I think it’s fair to at least consider the possibility that she may have shit in his bed. These things happen, you know.
Can you guess ten seconds?
Do we have to get *exactly* 10 seconds?
Annals of
AmericanProgressive justice: Geico ordered to pay $5.2M to woman who claims she caught STD during sex in car. Link courtesy of Iowahawk.Do we have to get *exactly* 10 seconds?
Anything less than three decimal places would be anarchy.
Anything less than three decimal places
Yeah but is it metric time or old-fashioned racist, imperial time?
10 seconds: 10.223. I’ll take that.
(Oh, hell… who am I kidding? No I won’t. That’s my weekend ruined.)
“Not if it has a flush toilet.”
It probably wasn’t as bad as you think. The Romans didn’t have flush-on-demand toilets, but they did have running water. Here’s the latrine at the fort of Housesteads, on Hadrian’s Wall, for example. The water ran along either side of the building, with seats placed over the top. The basin that looks a bit like a modern toilet was for the, er… sponges. On sticks.
Hey, I didn’t say it was brilliant, just better than you might expect.
“cheap sandwiches.”
“Simply racist”. Yet no evidence of racial prejudice is provided.
10 seconds: 10.223. I’ll take that.
(Oh, hell… who am I kidding? No I won’t. That’s my weekend ruined.)
My work here is done.
To be “that akshually guy”…timing to the 1/1000th of a second gets problematic for a number of reasons. World records for distinct/objective/discreet events such as swimming are only recognized at the 1/100th level. The systems will report to the 1/1000th but unless it has changed (somewhat) recently I don’t think they officially differentiate 1st/2nd place down to that level of accuracy. It’s been years since I specifically looked into it so I could be wrong on the latter part. Either way, there are arguments there.
THREE DECIMAL PLACES.
Can you guess ten seconds?
10.165 secs good enough for government work?
A-LOOOOOOO-mi-num. And now I’m getting nonplussed again. Literally. See what you did?
racist sandwhiches: it is actually the other way around. In LA for example, they passed zoning to prevent any new fast food in poor areas, because poor people can’t be trusted to choose good food. So they are forcing poor people to eat more expensive food. Yeah. Regs that forced fast food restaurants to offer healthy food like salads have led to food being tossed because no one orders it. So prices rise. Same thing when NYC forced small groceries (bodegas) to offer a full selection of fruits and veggies. The ruling class wants everyone to be forced to live as if they were rich.
WTP: Good point. Motorsport only started using thousandths in the ’80s, when electronic transponders became accurate enough. At 200mph you travel an appreciable distance in that time (off the top of my head, it’s about three inches), so it’s worth doing.
That said, in qualifying for the 1997 European Grand Prix at Jerez, Jacques Villeneuve, Michael Schumacher, and Heinz-Harald Frentzen all posted exactly the same time: 1:21.072. I seem to recall some talk about going to ten-thousandths, but it was decided not to be worth the expense. Which seems to have been the right choice. Although they still happen occasionally, identical times are extremely rare.
With a manual stopwatch, it’s barely worth doing decimal places at all. The average reaction time is about 200 milliseconds; by the time you see something happen and stop the watch, you’re looking at an accuracy of about a quarter of a second, so even measuring tenths is pushing your luck a bit. Of course, when the thing you’re timing is actually going on in your own head, that probably doesn’t apply.
Probably. Now I come to think of it, I’m not sure. Anyone?
10.223. I’ll take that.
10.165 secs
I shudder to think how slapdash your cooking must be.
How to escape being kidnapped
Very reminiscent of the excellent black comedy series “The real McCoy” from 20 or so years ago.
Not sure whether Distinct Transitioning Odours or Tight Dress, Big Breasts upset me the most… I’ll get back to you once I’ve finished this bottle.
10.165 secs good enough for government work?
If it’s for a warhead than yeah, good enough for me.
She told me it didn’t smell like what I described it as and it just smelled like vagina. I tried asking my mother about what it could be and she couldn’t give me any answers because she’s not informed on this topic.
Paraphrased “Mama don’t know nuffin about backhole front holes”
See. It is always the parents fault !
(for raising that imbecile in the first instance).
I shudder to think how slapdash your cooking must be
My cooking technique is based on the ILAR principle – It Looks About Right. So, indeed, shudder away.
[ Starts weighing individual grains of salt. ]
[ Starts weighing individual grains of salt. ]
The only sure way to get an accurate measurement. This teaspoon thing just doesn’t work for salt. Certain salts are denser than others. You could end up with an over or under salted dish.
Smothers Brothers in real life.
Fashionable Complications
I didn’t give it my permission to use my name as it’s pronoun.
Tight dress, Big breasts……..
I had to look at her twice to see her once.
Ukraine trolls Russia. Again.
…and Lithuania joins in.
Kyiv was founding by Vikings, the Rus. Russia was a Viking kingdom. Sweden should take it back.
[ Mongols interrupt the thread. ] “Hey, what about our contributions to Russian national character/dysfunction?
10.012 on first attempt. Quitting while ahead!
Tight dress, big breasts
I looked at that one first, anticipating I suppose something like Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman.
Now I am a bit gun-shy of the rest.
In this instance, the darker garment isn’t sufficiently “slimming”
Gummy bear lovers, look away now
I bring you a tale of drama, loss and love. https://twitter.com/LmfaoWith/status/1532476477404504081?s=20&t=BKb8gWRidqcTdbkcj3lmBw
But a society in which Effete Hat Guy is the norm, or very common, is unlikely to fare well when a rival population, perhaps one less alienated from itself, wants to take his stuff.
That.
That.
Maybe Effete Hat Guy thinks that such stuff-taking scenarios shouldn’t be a thing. Maybe he thinks that countries and borders somehow shouldn’t exist, and that people shouldn’t identify with where they live. But these thoughts will not inhibit those whose worldview is rather different from his own. And who want his stuff.
It reminded me of Ms Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a London-based writer, broadcaster, and activist, who announced during the Jubilee,
Given Ms Abdel-Magied’s apparent horror at festive symbols of the country in which she has recently chosen to live, you have to wonder why she came, and why she stays. Sudan, her place of birth, would presumably welcome her enormous, throbbing talents, and doubtless she would flourish there every bit as much.
It’s a familiar pattern. The ostentatious disdaining, to signal status, of values and structures on which one’s own comfort, and ability to sneer, very much depends. See also Laurie Penny.
It reminded me of Ms Yassmin Abdel-Magied …
Having previously been unaware of this particular enlightened intellectual, I went to her Wikipedia entry which, if accurate, and presumably it is, makes for fascinating reading in light of her “waking nightmare” comment:
Yassmin Midhat Abdel-Magied was born in Khartoum, Sudan.
As skilled migrants, her parents moved to Brisbane, Australia with her when aged 18 months in late 1992 [ … ]
Abdel-Magied’s father, Midhat Abdel-Magied, completed a PhD in electrical engineering at Imperial College, London [ … ]
Yassmin’s mother, Faiza El-Higzi, was a qualified architect in Sudan, and now holds postgraduate degrees across various disciplines [ … ].
Abdel-Magied attended primary school at the Islamic College of Brisbane and the independent Christian high school John Paul College, at which there was no policy against wearing a hijab
David Baddiel, a British comedian and writer, once commented on the Scottish tennis player, Andy Murray, that it was funny how everyone assumed that because he was from Scotland he must be working class (not the case at all).
At the time, it was an off-the-cuff comment on a BBC radio programme poking gentle fun at London’s intelligentsia.
It was mildly funny then, but Channel 4 (UK), the BBC, and The Guardian has for quite some time championed and promoted a number of ethnic minority intellectuals, writers and the like on the unstated assumption that such people are authentic voices of the oppressed.
Afua Hirsch is one good example (educated at the exclusive all-girls Wimbledon High School before going on to Oxford, naturally, her parents and even grandparents’ were educated at Oxford and Cambridge and held elite posts in the old colonial establishment).
Priyamvada Gopal is another – a child of diplomats, she was educated at an exclusive international school in Vienna, Austria, and is now professor at the University of Cambridge, where she complains of being discriminated against by the porters.
There are no doubt more.
The words “controlled opposition” and “managed dissent” come to mind for some reason.
“controlled opposition” and “managed dissent”
“The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”
– Robert Conquest
in light of her “waking nightmare” comment
Ms Abdel-Magied’s “activism” seems largely to consist of calling people racist, apparently at random, while somehow ignoring her own rather obvious racial animus. Say, regarding the people who were good enough to provide her with a new and comfortable home.
If I were to emigrate to South Korea, for instance, and immediately began insulting the home and character of my new neighbours, calling them names, and recoiling in loud horror from any sense of national identity or cultural common ground, I might expect my churlishness and ingratitude to have consequences. Say, the locals expediting my departure.
Maybe Effete Hat Guy thinks that such stuff-taking scenarios shouldn’t be a thing. Maybe he thinks that countries and borders somehow shouldn’t exist, and that people shouldn’t identify with where they live.
See George Orwell’s essay “No, Not One”, his scathing review of pacifist-anarchist Alex Comfort’s political-tract-as-novel “No Such Liberty” in which Comfort presents passivity as the moral way to oppose Hitler: One should not take up arms to fight Hitler’s armies, but rather should retreat behind the armies of those nations that will oppose him–first Holland, then England, and finally America. (The protagonist declares that he will not fight the Nazis, thinking it better to “overcome Hitler with love”.) That book review launched a vitriolic back-and-forth in Partisan Review in which Comfort accused Orwell of “engaging in intellectual hunting again” (note the “again”). I am not aware that Comfort every reassessed much less repudiated his cowardice-masquerading-as-morality.
The review and the exchange of letters can be found in The Collected Essays Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 2: “My Country Right or Left, 1940-1943”. The entire 4-volume collection is well worth owning.
… “activism” seems largely to consist of calling people racist…
Speaking of which, time again to update your dictionaries.
“Obesity” is now “people in larger bodies”, and “morbid obesity” is right out in favor of “severely”.
One of the reasons for this change is of course:
Only a racist would take that to imply that wypipo don’t become obese.
I know, it is the doctor’s fault completely, and. like every other group that wants the world to adapt to them, these guys have suggestions:
Scroll to bottom to see the comprehensive lois of how doctors need to redo their offices just for this lot.
I know the original link is to a Daily Mail story, but but enjoy the journal article that sparked it.
I am thinking it is gravity more than words.
group that wants the world to adapt to them
What percentage of the world’s problems are caused by this?
like every other group that wants the world to adapt to them, these guys have suggestions
They’re so dense, light bends around them.
I have friends who either escaped persecution or worked very hard to get here and they are the most patriotic americans you can imagine. But they don’t aspire to be “elite” (engineers, dentists) so they don’t virtue signal.
It is so tiresome to show how enlightened you are by running down patriotism and your country. Please show me another country that fought a war to end slavery or fought WWII and did not take territory and gave money to the losers (Japan, Germany) to rebuild. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Yes, a necessity, I can’t imagine how we all got on without it all these millennia.
“individuals affected by obesity” notice how every oppressed group is helpless, lacking agency, but wypeepo must change, which implies that only they have agency and will power. Unless obese of course.
“obesity” is racist? hahaha no
Join us again for another thrilling episode of “Today In Racism™, Chapter 39,876 “Gay Wypipo”.
George, “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever…”, Wallace approves this message.
Please show me another country that fought a war to end slavery or fought WWII and did not take territory and gave money to the losers (Japan, Germany) to rebuild. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
I have read and heard of personal accounts of people who came to America after WWII because the American soldiers they encountered: The Germans were cruel and genocidal. The Russians pretended to be liberators but behaved as sadistic rapacious conquerors. The Americans in contrast behaved like genuine liberators, kind and generous. Europeans who had experienced the Germans and Russians thought “Who are these Americans? That is the sort of country I want to live in.”
Alexander says, those who don’t fit this specific and narrow image of queerness are left out.
This will recur:
Yes, a necessity, I can’t imagine how we all got on without it all these millennia.
How have societies traditionally dealt with groomers?
“individuals affected by obesity” notice how every oppressed group is helpless, lacking agency
The morbidly obese cannot escape fattening food because each is at the bottom of a gravity well.