Friday Ephemera
Three words: post-coital fondue. || Tongue action. || Twitter: The Movie. || He nipped outside for a smoke. || The thrill of carpet fitting. || Cyberpunk excitement. || How to empty one of these with optimal speed. || They have much to teach us. || A cosy murder mystery. || “The erotic mind-control community has a problem with racism.” || Brittany, 27, is not at all religious. || Booby drumroll. || There ain’t no cringe quite like woke theatre cringe. || Divergence. || “What does it matter?” || It’s amazing how quickly the day can turn to shit. || Apparently, he’s not broadcasting it. || Batman: The Silent Motion Picture. || Notice of note. || The thrill of anvils. || Millions of years of fun for the whole family. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || And finally, don’t pull that face – you’d watch and you know it.
And yes, should you wish to, you can follow me on Twitter.
This is what I imagine hell looks like:
More like every leftists wet dream of “high density urban planning” or at worst purgatory or the first level of hell, this is what the lower circles hell look like.
Hell: why do leftists want high density urban? Because nature is sacred and we are corrupt. We must not set foot on nature.
Movies: are they really getting worse? Yes. Why? Because to have a good plot you need heroes or at least someone struggling against a real problem such as war. But the modern Left hates heroes unless they are struggling against capitalism, which no one believes. Thus no one cares about the stories.
Um, er, no…Tequila is my elixir of choice. But maybe I forgot to hit Post after Preview…
LadyTheo in action
This is what I imagine hell looks like:
And yet so many “urban planners” see it as heaven.
Hell: why do leftists want high density urban? Because nature is sacred and we are corrupt. We must not set foot on nature.
That is only the left’s latest excuse (along with “high density cities consume fewer resources per capita”).
The real reason, however, is that high-density housing is one of the ways to warehouse and control people.
Everyone I know who claims to be a member is clearly in on the joke. Although they don’t seem to appreciate when I ask them whether all the time and resources they expend on what amounts to “hurr hurr, churches sometimes don’t live up to their ideals” performance art is worth it.
Well, the people I used to know who made excuses for it were not members but rather pagans–at least I don’t remember anyone at the moment who professed to be a member. But their claims and arguments did not strike me as sincere but rather as more-or-less clever rhetoric crafted to shield their dubious lives from criticism. I haven’t had contact with them in decades, so it would be impossible to re-check those impressions.
Musical interlude.
clever rhetoric crafted to shield their dubious lives from criticism
That sounds so familiar for some reason.
Musical interlude.
Infectious beat!
Over on the twit sidebar where they amplify crap I saw this headline from HuffPo:
“15 Latine [something or others] you Need to Hear About!”
So is Latine the new Latinx? It caught my eye because I thought the headline was about Latrines
And isn’t the whole Latin, Hispanic (e.g. Spain] thing Colonialistic??? I mean we’re decolonizing everything under the sun these days. So wouldn’t the whole Hablo Espanol, no habla Ingles thing just be admitting you’re massively colonized and have forgotten your “native” language and culture? Why does Spain get a pass when they are just as European (and wyte) as the rest of them?
Daniel,
Religion, first amendment…
This is why I argue that a proper execution of the first amendment “establishment” clause would require that the words “religion” and “church” and their equivalents, must not appear in any law or regulation. Otherwise, government gets to define what is and isn’t a legitimate religion. And you get silliness like courts ruling on ganja smoking by prisoners as religious expression.
You’d still have, for instance, the for-profit / not-for-profit distinction, if necessary.
Years ago I fell into a big argument online (yeah, I know…) about this. My interlocutor absolutely denied that current doctrine required federal definition of religion, AND that even if it did, that would not be a problem. Because ” government defines all kinds of things in regulations and law. ”
And that’s why bees are fish in California now. (I even agree with the court’s logic in that case. The legislature effed up. Better the court follow the text, silly though it was, than legislate from the bench. Embarrass the leg into doing their job. ) (Haha. I should do stand-up, right?)
“is one of the ways to warehouse and control people.”
This verges into conspiracy thinking that I find difficult to believe. That there are groups sitting around debating ways to control people like Dr. Evil?
I think about this a lot, and wonder if it is the unintentional side effect of self-interested actions.
Take for instance the Soviet and American response to housing needs after WWII. They came from two difference sources. The war destroyed a lot of the Soviet housing stock, and the government was responsible for replacing it. Result: Hastily built multi-story towers with tiny rooms. Efficient for the government that doesn’t need to take the end user into account.
In the U.S., which needed housing for returning vets wanting to move to the suburbs, this solution wouldn’t fly. The private market supplied the solution with “ticky tacky boxes” in “faceless suburbs” (I’m being sarcastic here) that families could choose to move into.
As for government actions like vaccine mandates and intrusive data gathering, this can be chalked up more to an agency’s unchecked quest for power common to all groups (or in the former, financial incentives from Big Pharm). Same with the president’s use of signing statements in lieu of, you know, passing a law in Congress. We’re reaching a point where a president could rule solely through S.S.’s with the Congresscritters failing to object. Then we end up following Rome’s path to an emperor.
The only area where I can see a conspiracy is to use the FBI/CIA to attack political opponents. Nixon tried to do that and failed. Biden’s doing that and succeeding.
In the U.S., which needed housing for returning vets wanting to move to the suburbs, this solution wouldn’t fly. The private market supplied the solution with “ticky tacky boxes” in “faceless suburbs” (I’m being sarcastic here) that families could choose to move into.
The private market built the solution but they would have been content to build concrete high rise ghettos too. Housing development grew at a faster rate than the political bureaucracy which would eventually control it. Today the politicrats, bureaucrats, and technocrats are firmly entrenched. They think they know better. So “In and Up” is how it’s going to be. They’re making it too expensive for low and medium income families to afford even ticky tacky boxes and they’re doing it by controlling the cost of entry into the development market through red tape and taxes.
While I agree with you that there is no evil lair of villains, the controlling class is made up of like-minded individuals who are going to mold the world to their perceived utopian image. Even conservatives, yes “conservatives” (hat tip to WTP) are onboard with the current thinking about development.
This verges into conspiracy thinking that I find difficult to believe…
I’ve listened to these people all my life.* Commies hate suburbanites for being suburban rather than urban. For owning individual houses with lawns and gardens rather than renting apartments in dense neighborhoods.** For driving cars rather than taking the bus. For being outside the control of city political machines. For being so devoid of taste and sophistication as to like their choices. And so on.
Their hatred and contempt goes back before the “green” excuses for condemning “inefficient” suburbs, and before the “white flight” excuses for condemning them. Therefore I became convinced that it is important to look for deeper motives. One of the first things I noticed, even when very young, was the pervasive snobbery (especially among the academic left), and thinking about that led me to eventually listen more carefully and notice other things.
Note that these same leftists also condemn condominiums, and indeed the contempt and loathing for condo owners is palpable. From the tone of voice that I have heard, you’d think that condo owners should be the first to be shipped off to the Gulags. This hatred of condos makes no logical sense if one purports to hate houses because they are less resource- and energy-efficient. And never mind also how much less land we all occupy in than if we lived in houses, how much less it costs the Post Office to deliver to us, and so on. It also makes no sense on socialist/communal grounds because condos depend on volunteer labor by homeowners to manage the building,*** and leftists claim to love cooperative endeavors. Not to mention that every owner has a vote in board elections and in critical matters prescribed by the legal declaration.
So what makes urban apartment buildings better than condos? Apartment buildings are run by a single entity as that entity sees fit: Today it is a private individual or company but some day it could be owned by a Communist State, or could remain in ostensibly private hands but run according to all-encompassing universal rules laid down by a fascistic State.
This verges into conspiracy thinking that I find difficult to believe. That there are groups sitting around debating ways to control people like Dr. Evil?
There doesn’t have to be an organized conspiracy, merely a consensus of opinion that This Think is Bad and must be replaced by the Good Socialist Thing.
Consider: Socialism (be it communism or fascism or whatever) now has a century of failure to show for all those dreams. If the left cares so deeply about people, why doesn’t the left abandon socialism? Because the left’s motives are not benevolent. And the left loves to plan other peoples’ lives, resenting when people make their own choices.
In the U.S., which needed housing for returning vets wanting to move to the suburbs, this solution wouldn’t fly. The private market supplied the solution with “ticky tacky boxes” in “faceless suburbs” (I’m being sarcastic here) that families could choose to move into.
I well remember that sixties song about “ticky tacky boxes”, sung by an American communist. That was indeed one of the American left’s earlier condemnations of the suburbs: vast numbers of virtually identical tract houses, laid out on developer-planned streets. Tasteless junk produced by…capitalists! and embraced by clueless tools of capitalism (remember the epithet “capitalist tool”?)
And yet at the same time the American left praised the gigantic industrial-looking apartment blocks of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. (And also the somewhat similar if not as gargantuan Council housing developments of the UK which started going up before WWII, not after the Blitz, and which involved tearing down lots of old housing stock.)
For that matter, there is little or no individuality in the big apartment buildings that American leftists favor: Each apartment identical the ones above and below–and often to the ones up and down the hall. No freedom to make alterations without permission. Living cheeck-by-jowl with neighbors whose good character and compatible personality are matters of chance.
American home buyers could choose from various options to customize and individualize each of the offered home designs with additional rooms or even stories, different facades, and larger garages, and make further individualizing changes later–which they happily did. And here we are, generations later, and those “ticky tacky boxes” are still good homes which have had successions of owners.
The American left sometimes condemned the suburbs for being full of virtually identical tract houses, although they were more individual than the socialist housing of the USSR and Eastern Europe.
* At least until I could no longer stand to socialize with them and one-by-one ceased all contact. For many years they thought I was more-or-less one of them because I knew about some of the “right” science fiction writers and because I always either quietly listened or asked questions in the mildest way.
** But it’s okay to buy a Victorian-era house in a slum neighborhood with crack dealers down the street and periodic muggings and shootings.
*** And managing this cooperative operation is a lesson in the foolishness of socialism: It is virtually impossible to ever get more than ten percent of owners to volunteer their time, although a noticably larger number will complain about things. There is also great variation in how conscientious owners are in taking care of the parts of the property that are their responsibility and in noticing and reporting problems in those things that are the responsibility of the association.
When will this $#!!@X&%!! stop?
David, I believe you have mentioned the child-rape-friendly magazine Destroyer on a few occasions.
A book has been published.
Ben Six Smith comments: “It must be such a shock to their colleagues to discover the appalling ideas they had so deviously hidden away in their blogs, books, magazines, articles, YouTube videos, speeches, zines, activism et cetera.”
pst314, you nailed it. Precisely that. I’ve made similar observations over the years but that pretty much sums up the entirety. Especially the contempt for the condo association while at the same time the disdainful attitude for conformity, even when it is a moderated conformity regarding simple standards of maintenance and general efficiency as determined by the members of the association. Yet socialist warehousing of humans is gooooood. Pitifully stupid. But again, those who endorse such stupidity are generally highly educated smaaaaaart people.
When will this $#!!@X&%!! stop?
Every member of the cast should be told “Sit down, clown! Sit down, clown! For God’s sake, sit down!“
When will this $#!!@X&%!! stop?
When conservatives…”conservatives” grow a pair and openly mock the bloody obvious stupidity of it all. Not whisper amongst themselves, pointing and muffled laughing. Openly and clearly, daring to be “that guy” and saying, “Yonder emperor is naked as a #$&*$#% jaybird, and ugly as sin to boot!” But will it happen? November 8 is just weeks away.
disdainful attitude for conformity, even when it is a moderated conformity regarding simple standards of maintenance and general efficiency
It’s not that people behave perfectly when they own instead of rent, but they do behave significantly better. We were forced, years ago, to amend the by-laws to require that all units be owner-occupied, which cut down on various problems. Of course there are still problems caused by close proximity and communal facilities which are lessened or eliminated when people live in separate single-family homes on grass- and garden-covered tracts, and I wonder about the situation of people who live in buildings with less sound-absorbing walls and fewer barriers to bugs and mice.
When pondering motives, always ask “why do socialists still cling to socialist, top-down ‘solutions’ when socialism has failed so disastrously for so long?”
Twitter hall of fame. Life lesson: Resist social media’s tendency to encourage bad behavior.
Uma, those “ticky tacky houses, all alike in a row” built c. WW2, are in Daly City, CA. They still stand, are generally in great shape, and sell for about $400,000 – $800,000, depending on location and upgrades.
It’s as simple as that. These people want to be In Charge, and they can’t be In Charge if people are allowed to make individual decisions about their lives. Since people can’t be relied upon to Do What They’re Told merely by the power of persuasion, they need force of arms, which means government. That’s why rental apartments heavily regulated (or better yet, operated) by government are preferable to privately owned condominiums.
Daniel, I was listening to an NPR interview / tongue bath with a couple of A-list anti-racists. They were debating when it would be / not be appropriate to call the cops, as opposed to government social workers, or neighborhood activists. There was plenty condemnation Of The violence inherent in the police system. But there was no sign that they understood that compliance to any government rule, whether against murder or excess driving speed, is ultimately backed up by governmental violence and the threat of death.
In my younger and ruder days, when faced with an argument for a new law, I would ask, “Would you shoot your grandmother to enforce that rule?”
People rarely responded well to that line.
People rarely responded well to that line.
I can’t find the reference now, but some US congresscritter once suggested all laws be prefaced with the text “Men will point guns at people who…” just so everyone understood what the stakes were.
I’ve had similar arguments with people who argue that it’s silly reductionism and that we don’t shoot people for breaking laws, we shoot them for resisting arrest. As if that’s a distinction with a difference.
As for the “defund the police”/BLM bollocks, conservatives need to understand that this is Alinsky’s Rule #4. The goal is not to defund the police; the goal is to push the other side into defending the police no matter what. This makes effective police reform impossible (and there’s rather a lot of police reform needed in the West, as we see here regularly; it just doesn’t have much to do with racism). Between the good cops quitting and the bad ones being protected by conservatives, you’re deep into the Bezmenov process.
David, I see you have a PayPal button at the top of the page.
I hope you always immediately transfer such donations into your bank account.
Police reform has been a a periodic topic at conservative blogs and magazines for a long time, but it’s not the right kind of reform because it’s not pro-criminal.
I hope you always immediately transfer such donations into your bank account.
I’ve been thinking about adding alternatives to PayPal for those who have issues with their service. Suggestions welcome.
More thoughts on the song “Little Boxes” at the ChicagoBoyz blog and the Assistant Village Idiot blog.
Little folkies on the hillside, little folkies made of ticky tacky
Little folkies, little folkies, little folkies, all the same
There’s a white one, and a white one, and a white one, and a white one
And they’re all made out ticky-tacky and they all think just the same.
All the people who are folkies all know how to say “diversity”
But they all think in boxes, little boxes, all the same.
And there’s artists, and there’s journalists and there’s teachers of social sciences
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all think just the same.
They believe the TV newscast and the newspaper editorials
But they never believe conservatives so they can’t be “taken in.”
Now they don’t all wear gray ponytails and they don’t all wear Birkenstocks
But they do wear them on the inside in the boxes in their brains
And the houses look like summer camp and they all buy organically
And they don’t have any children, except okay, maybe one.
There’s a Green one and a Pink one, an old Red one and a Rainbow one,
But they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all think just the same.
Malvina Reynolds, by the way, was a Red Diaper baby, which reminds us of the inadvisability of giving sanctuary to existential enemies.
Oh–and she was also a Unitarian-Universalist, which is the “church” for atheists and vaguely “spiritual” people whose politics range from left to far-far left.
“little houses”–the Left are not just authoritarian, they are elitist. They hate trailer parks and poor people. The say with a straight face that people should just buy electric cars…which cost twice as much as ICE cars. I doubt if poor people who park their car on the street have any way to even charge them. They require that new construction have all sorts of amenities like solar panels and X sq feet per person, ignoring how that adds cost.
I doubt if poor people who park their car on the street have any way to even charge them. They require that new construction have all sorts of amenities like solar panels and X sq feet per person, ignoring how that adds cost.
Some communities require that all new homes have interconnected smoke detectors, with a strobe alarm on the outside to lead the fire department more quickly to the fire. When I remodeled my home, I was required to replace the electrical panel with one that had more separate circuits and safety features. Very nice, and I could afford it, but it cost a chunk of money. Every new requirement is “nice” but adds to the costs, and that puts many homes beyond the reach of the poor and working class. The same can be said about automobile features, I suppose.
When I remodeled my home, I was required to replace the electrical panel with one that had more separate circuits and safety features
On our HOA board we (well mostly me) wanted to upgrade our existing security system at our pool/cabana to add a camera and upgrade to a software system that we could access from our homes and even possibly enable residents to see how busy the pool was or to keep an eye on what their teenagers were up to, etc. But no, we could not do just that. We would have to upgrade our electric panels etc. for a $25K additional cost. Well that was the end of that idea. Especially as we are being sued in a baseless lawsuit by one of our own homeowners who claims, with ZERO evidence that he lost a toe because of a chemical he stepped in at our pool…two years ago…which has cost our community $30K in excess insurance fees before this case has even gone to mediation, let alone court. So…see how much safer we are thanks to the lawyers, insurance companies, and government regulators? Oh, and we need to upgrade our signs (costing a couple hundred bucks) to tell people not to drink the pool water.
We would have to upgrade our electric panels etc. for a $25K additional cost.
This seems to be ubiquitous: When building codes change, older buildings are grandfathered in. But the moment you make more than some threshold amount of improvements, those new codes are imposed.
But the moment you make more than some threshold amount of improvements, those new codes are imposed.
And nobody voted for this crap. The lawyers, the insurance companies, and the electric/sign/plumbing “industries” all got together and decided for the rest of us that it was a good idea. And the doctors and pharmaceutical companies are just getting warmed up to it.
And nobody voted for this crap.
Wait until you find out about how the CSA does business.
TL;DR: the CSA has driven a private electrical contractor out of business and the country by claiming, contradictory to settled law, that they own the copyright on certain parts of Canadian legislation and he’s not allowed to print copies with annotations and advice on how to comply.
He’s applied for and received political asylum in the United States because they want to jail him for contempt of court for doing exactly what he was ordered to by a previous court.
It’s our Kelo v. New London and it’s going to stand for the same reason.
It’s our Kelo v. New London
I was sad because I had no shoes…
The say with a straight face that people should just buy electric cars…which cost twice as much as ICE cars.
It’s worse than that. They know that even if we could just give everyone electric cars for free, there isn’t nearly enough electricity to do that without a rapid, massive buildup of nuclear power plants, and that won’t happen. They’ll offer a lot more public transportation instead.
It’s worse than that. They know that even if we could just give everyone electric cars for free, there isn’t nearly enough electricity to do that without a rapid, massive buildup of nuclear power plants
Also a massive buildup of the electrical grid.
It’s
turtlesfraud all the way down.