Tidings
Snow scene, Hokkaido. Photographed by Tak. Via Tim.
As is the custom here, posting will be intermittent over the holidays and readers are advised to follow me on Twitter, which will alert you to anything new as it materialises. Thanks for another 1.5 million or so visits this year and thousands of comments, many of which prompted discussions that are much more interesting than the actual posts. Which is pretty much the idea.
And particular thanks to all those who’ve subscribed or made donations to keep this rickety barge above water. It’s much appreciated. Should you be gripped by an urge to express your appreciation via currency, feel free to use the buttons in the sidebar, top right. Just think of my little face lighting up.
Curious newcomers and those with nothing better to do are welcome to rummage through the reheated series in search of entertainment. You may, and probably will, find things you’d missed. And this, needless to say, is an open thread.
To you and yours, a very good one.
What’s the mysterious object in the snow?
Merry Christmas to our barkeep and the regulars. Tip jar hit.
Well, quite. I’ve passed several phone boxes that have been repurposed as first-aid points, complete with defibrillators.
Bless you, sir. May you accidentally discover a friendly, efficient – and remarkably cheap – jewellery polisher.
Hell, even I cried. Well, just a little…
https://twitter.com/Cameron_Gray/status/1606996799633383424?s=20&t=MUdMYjv6qoyD0FRDt9YMrQ
You just had to be the first, didn’t you?
Not my fault it is already tomorrow there.
What’s the mysterious object in the snow?
That really is what phone boxes look like in Japan.
Need to find ways to drive these creatures back into hiding.
An excellent explanation of perspectives in regard to traveling to/living on Mars. It’s definitely not the kind of place to raise your kids. And the cold has nothing to do with it. OK, just a little.
When asked for comment Santa said, “A great deer like that, you don’t eat him all at once.”
Thanks! I’m here all week! Try the venison!
https://www.wideopenspaces.com/three-legged-buck-christmas-lights/
Try the venison!
No, thanks. I filled up on swan.
Those lyrics get me each time I hear them. Merry Christmas!
+1
Every. Single. Time.
Merry Christmas all, and a blessed 2023!
Whoopi has opened her pie hole again.
Bette Midler has also opened her pie hole.
It’s “interesting” how so many celebrities publicly denounce good as being evil.
A high trust society, but not for long: ” ‘refugees’ – young single men of military age from perfectly safe countries – have been pouring over the channel, hundreds a day. The government has been housing them in four star hotels, feeding them and giving them a spending allowance, and no one knows why.
We’ve just learned a whole bunch are going to be billeted a few miles from us. There go my chickens.”
Our increasingly transnational ruling class is not just stupid, it is malevolent.
“A great deer like that, you don’t eat him all at once.”
“Wrecked ‘im? Damn near killed him!
Thanks! I’m here all week!
“To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high”
I’ll be in Schnectady, then the Catskills, maybe Ted will be take in my show.
Live feed of note.
Live feed of note.
Accompanied by the tiresome slogan “create change”. (Whatever happened to “seek truth”?)
Would that their leftist change were as slow as that dripping pitch.
Live feed of note.
It’s like a burning fireplace video, but for science nerds.
I was never a full-on science nerd but I have greatly enjoyed studying science as long as I can remember. Literally (heh) before I could read I was fascinated by some kiddie oriented TV science show back in the 1960’s. At one point they did a show or maybe a series of shows on the solar system. My father somehow stumbled upon this real cool, huge poster with all the planets on it and I think that was where I first learned to read bigger science-y words. When going on long vacations, Scientific American was one of my favorite airplane reads. I eventually got a subscription but gave it up when they went obviously hard left back in the 1990’s. The science behind things like this I would normally have found quite interesting. But since this Covid crap has hit, science has become as tiresome to me as professional sports have. My mind has been trained at some almost subconscious level to now expect any “scientific” information to be shoving some sort of politics at me.
A New York feminist publishes her annual “imagine a world without men” post.
On Christmas Eve, because that’s what feminists do.
I wonder how quickly utilities would start to fail–water, gas, electricity. Gas stations. Traffic control systems. Telephone and internet, radio and television. And then there are the local problems that keep plumbers and electricians busy 24/7, fixing and replacing equipment in homes and apartment buildings and so on.
Anybody sufficiently familiar with these industries to give likely times to failure?
Times to failure: well, my friend’s husband died and she (age 60) said she doesn’t know how anything works or how to fix anything, so the answer would be immediately. In surveys, men are largely happy with their lives and with their wives, but women have been getting steadily more miserable for the past 50 yrs. Feminism to blame I think. It tells them that the things that DO make them happy are bad, and they should want only a career.
In the late 80’s I worked very briefly at a company that had a seemingly disproportionate number of women on the development staff relative to any other software venture that I would work on in later years. I remember lunch in the cafeteria that first day with the team and it seemed like the women were in some sort of competition to brag about how they could not cook. Each of them was worse than any of the others. I remember sitting there trying to imagine a similar grouping of men bragging about how they didn’t know how to change a tire. Weird. The project eventually failed AIUI. Not saying those two things are related in any way. That would be silly.
I figure that gas-fueled power stations might continue to run until the gas pipeline ceased to supply natural gas. Coal power stations, I suspect, require near-constant human attention to maintain the supply of fuel.
And then there is the question of how long various sorts of infrastructure are likely to run before a fault condition occurs. Generators, pumps, substations, etc, etc. I really have no solid knowledge but suspect that such individual failures would cause network-wide failures to begin within 24 hours.
“Hollywood lost a half trillion dollars in market value in 2022”
https://hotair.com/headlines/2022/12/26/hollywood-lost-a-half-trillion-dollars-in-market-value-in-2022-n519995
women have been getting steadily more miserable for the past 50 yrs. Feminism to blame I think. It tells them that the things that DO make them happy are bad, and they should want only a career.
Yep, who are the real handmaids here? It’s been pointed out the more egalitarian a Western society is, the more women actually choose so-called traditional roles. Most of us really do like marriage, kids and making a home.
“I’m just joking, dad.”
This should materialise in about seven hours.
I’m just going to leave this here, I think.
So somewhat pursuant to this from Ace this morning regarding TVA power outages and rolling blackouts:
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/402478.php
This was posted on a FB group we follow to keep tabs on what is going on in our north Georgia home area:
At what point do people wake up to the bad, stupid, clown world into which we are descending? Where is the bottom from which people finally get a clue?
Hunter Biden finally pissed off the Russians?
https://www.city-journal.org/war-on-merit-takes-bizarre-turn
Top high school in U.S. withholds award information from parents. (Kosatka is Director of Student Services):
“In a call with Yashar, Kosatka admitted that the decision to withhold the information from parents and inform the students in a low-key way was intentional. “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements,” he told her, claiming that he and the principal didn’t want to ‘hurt’ the feelings of students who didn’t get the award. “
This story is outrageous in many ways, but I want to focus (heh) on “individuals vs achievements” .
The Director’s view would seem to obviate the need for the school to exist at all. After all, the school has 0 influence over who a student is. Unless, as is sadly likely, the school’s officers have decided that remolding a student’s “is” is their job. Never mind all that “knowledge” stuff. And I’m sure the parents will all be onboard (well, except for the ones filing suit).
In my universe, I have many times said, “I don’t care who you are. I care what you can do.” Because stuff needs to get done. The advent of the magical thinking that stuff just happens automatically, and there’s plenty of margin for nonproductive faffing about, will collapse civilization.
“We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements,”
Which is absolute nonsense because it is exactly by “achievements” and other behaviors we get to know individuals. What this school is doing is wiping out what makes students ‘individuals’ in the realm of academics (last I checked, ‘academic success’ was the default mission statement of schools) to ‘individuals’ by criteria under the Woke rubric of intersectionality/diversity. So now a student’s “individuality” has little to do with what they do but with what group(s) they belong to. And which groups are “in” and which are “out”.
Upending the whole concept of individuality itself.
The administration & teaching staff at that school should not only be summarily fired but driven out of town by a baying mob of parents wielding torches and pitchforks.
But I suspect the Kabuki theater will continue as long as the school’s prior reputation holds some cache for college admissions people.
[ Slides pint of advocaat along bar to Darleen. ]
…should not only be summarily fired but driven out of town by a baying mob of parents wielding torches and pitchforks.
Don’t forget tar and feathers.
some cache for college admissions people
Nit-pick: I think you meant cachet.
Yet they won’t. Probably won’t even lose their jobs. If they do, they will readily be hired elsewhere. Does anyone here see normal people being disturbed by this? Enough to say anything without being prompted?
Christmas Eve in New York
Does anyone here see normal people being disturbed by this?
Very rarely. My liberal “friends” either deny this is happening, or say it’s good.
They started with participation trophies. And that is fine for 5 yr olds playing T ball. But in the adult world, not everyone can win at every sport nor can everyone get an A without destroying the entire system. Even a lemonade stand can fail if the person running it is incompetent. Back in college we rented a place and hired an incompetent plumber to hook up the hot water heater. He ran the exhaust into a chimney that was bricked up. The thing exploded a few days later. Sure, it doesn’t matter about competence…BOOM!
I’m guessing it was actually the gas station sushi.
A period is when the uterous sloughs off the lining. A trans xY cannot have a period.
Does anyone here see normal people being disturbed by this?
Well, I’ll say one good thing to come out of the lockdowns was that a lot of parents were shocked at what was really going on in class. Remember, teachers have actually been instructed to LIE to parents – and let’s face it, some of the stuff is so outrageous as to be unbelievable. And what happened when parents tried to protest to principals or school boards? They had the Biden administration label them “terrorists”.
But I suspect the Kabuki theater will continue as long as the school’s prior reputation holds some cache for college admissions people.
Do I understand correctly that this is a Charter School? I’m not completely familiar with the concept as we don’t have them where I live, but aren’t charter schools generally in demand due to academic excellence? And, wouldn’t highly qualified desireable students quickly turn away from a school that behaved this way?
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/12/in-early-to-mid-2010s-when-high.html
More education malfeasance. I am SO SICK of the perennial debate about how to teach reading english. My parents taught their five kids to read before first grade using a little book on phonics, maybe 40 pages. As did i, with my own kids. So easy. Sadly, no money or glory in doing it that way.
Shocked! Like Claude Raines in Casablanca. Most parents today are younger than I. When I was in school much of this anti-American and other BS was getting started.
I would venture to say that many of those had an inkling as to what was going on but with the lockdowns they finally had the solid to push back. I would wager that the vast majority of others who are somewhat aware are still too timid to push back because they do not see those protesting parents as being the strong horse relative to what they see/hear in the media and even in their churches. Assuming they go to church. And I say this as a CEO (Christmas, Easter, Other occasions).
Shocked! Like Claude Raines in Casablanca.
I think a very large fraction of parents had no idea what was really going on. When you’re working hard all day at your job, it’s very easy to just leave everything to the schools while the schools are very happy to keep you in the dark.
Yes. I get that. And that itself is a big part of the problem. We all have let our employers and our coworkers gung-ho on technology attitudes literally suck the life out of us. A career is only a part of a well balanced life. I remember a team lead I had, a guy whose knowledge I greatly respected, overhearing him talking to his son on the phone, “Evan! Evan! Evan!..Listen to me! …” Based on other conversations, how much time he spent wrapped up in technology news and side projects and such, Evan was not getting the attention he needed. Parents need to be much more involved with their children, especially in the schools. I don’t begrudge women their having careers and such but the children must come first. When women were primarily caregivers they spent more time involved with the schools, assisting teachers, chaperoning field trips, supporting the schools with volunteer work. In all the volunteer work that I did, I never encountered a parent. At least not of the children that I was helping. Now one or two of the fellow volunteers were parents but I gathered that their own children were in high school or older.
But that aside, these specific things being discovered via Zoom classes, etc. I might believe. But the general problems with our schools, the incompetence, the improper focus, was apparent to me as a volunteer 30 years ago. And even more so 10 years ago when I returned to the effort. Yet even now, as I point these problems out, even mildly, to many former coworkers who volunteer, friends, and relatives who are teachers, I’m a pariah. As fun as it is to just lately see the scales falling from just a few of their eyes…well, it’s really not all that fun.
Parents need to be much more involved with their children, especially in the schools. I don’t begrudge women their having careers and such but the children must come first. When women were primarily caregivers they spent more time involved with the schools, assisting teachers, chaperoning field trips, supporting the schools with volunteer work.
I strongly agree. Also grandparents: My maternal grandparents lived within walking distance and would look after us once a week. They tutored us using the old fashioned methods that were despised by the teachers at our grade school, so although we got whole language and the new math at school, we got phonics and the times tables at home.