Less Blow, More Cut
From the pages of the Guardian:
A salon in Sydney is spearheading workshops for hairdressers on how to steer small talk about the weather into conversations about global heating.
“More than 400 hairdressers have attended workshops” to “role-play how conversations might go.”
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Guardian or Babylon Bee?
Ah, but, you see, everything, but everything, must be made political. No space must be allowed to remain untouched.
It occurs to me that the reason my hairdresser is good at her job and can expect a generous Christmas tip – beyond her skills with clippers, scissors, and arcane potions – is her ability to make customers feel welcome and at ease. Which generally entails avoiding conversations about politics.
Seemed apt.
https://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-race-together-campaign-history-2015-6
At least hairdressers don’t have a global brand which will be ridiculed as a result of their own posturing.
In terms of inaptness, it’s on a par with getting a cut and suddenly, halfway through, the stylist leans in close and whispers, “Have you considered God’s plan for the universe…?”
Jeff Goldstein declares his independence.
Ah, but, you see, everything, but everything, must be made political. No space must be allowed to remain untouched.
Related and also from the Guardian, the next author on the chopping block.
Ignoring that not all locals are natives, as native is now an offensive term, Indians who became Native Americans are now to be called Local Americans, I guess.
My suggestion to the non-problem would be that “modern” audiences who find such trivialities offensive either get a life or take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.
I remember that fiasco. Up until then I rarely went to Starbucks because their coffee was overpriced. Thereafter it went on my boycott list.
“some people blasted the company for weighing in on race at all when only two of its 19 executives are black.”
Only? That’s 10.5%, while blacks are 12.5% of the population. And considering that a large number of blacks are unemployable or underemployable, 10.5% is a lot.
“He [CEO Howard Schultz]…wanted to hold a race forum with employees at the company headquarters.”
What could go wrong with injecting politics into the workplace? Especially racial politics? It’s almost as stupid as asking your Muslim employee to explain Osama bin Laden to the staff after 9/11. “Six of our employees were killed yesterday in a terrorist bombing in London. I will now ask Pat, our resident Catholic, to explain the IRA to everyone.”
Apparently, we must all pretend that the past was exactly like the present. No other values or perspectives being conceivable.
Liberals do have a compulsion to proselytize. It’s striking how often they will, seemingly out of the blue, declare their opinions on all sorts of matters.
The Blurting, as I refer to it, is a real phenomenon, and quite common.
Old cartoon: College literature professor: “Yes, Mister Jones, Stalin was ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know.’ But we were talking about Sonnets from the Portuguese.”
Change Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native to The Return of the Local? Rename Far From the Madding Crowd as Far From the Neurodivergenting Crowd? Euripides’ The Trojan Women as The Trojan Uterus-Havers?
Amusingly, liberals hate non-liberal proselytizers. The eliminationist comments I’ve heard about Christian door-knockers have all been from liberals. And of course conservatives make liberals feel “unsafe”. In short, liberals, who want to micro-manage everyone’s lives, hate and fear those who want to free people from the chains of tyranny.
Speaking of The Blurting, another recent example.
I belong to a WhatsApp group used by the neighbours for neighbourly things – requests to take in a parcel, or help with moving something heavy, etc. It’s all quite amiable – and for 13 years has been blissfully free of politics. A not unrelated detail, given the range of views that are probably held by participants.
However, one member has now seen fit to use said group as a platform for her own political preoccupations – complete with tearful references to herself and how deeply and heroically she feels about the issue. And this is done as if oblivious to the incongruity and presumption, the potential for friction, sourness and alienation. As if everyone else in the group would, obviously, share her views.
Because every grown adult wants to live perpetually in a sixth-form common room.
Change Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native to The Return of the Local?
Keeping with the Agatha Christie rewrites,
“local americans” ahahahaha they don’t think this shit through, do they? Like when “field work” was declared racist because slaves worked in the fields, leaving people who go out to do research into the “____” speechless. Or women became “vulva owners” or something. Reminds me of when everyone was on a freudian kick and skyscrapers were penis symbols…uh, no, that is just the highest density construction possible in the real world. Everything resembles other things.
I hope there’s a list of attendees at these workshops.
Published on the interwebs, of course.
Belated thought (as usual…).
Is there a market niche for businesses posting signs like ‘We don’t care about your politics’?
A mostly peaceful punch in the face.
And then there is engineering: Master control system and slave devices. How long until they starting going after email software with its blacklists and whitelists?
Or, group of people likely to have high concentration of Cluster B personality disorders behaves like group of people with high concentration of Cluster B personality disorders.
This attorney is a highly paid professional. Clown world.
I’m not familiar with the kind of thing I’m seeing. Does it end with a pillow fight?
Possibly at Castle Anthrax.
Meanwhile at barbershops on this side of the pond…though it’s generally understood…takes too long to explain but ykwim.
Yet another thing from ages ago. And even to this very day. One can see how the leftists steer conversations in that direction all the time. Conservatives avoid doing so because for much more sensible reasons that go to the very nature of being conservatives they want less politics in their lives. A classmate of mine posted something to the effect that she was very frustrated at being accused of being “political”. And to her point that was not something I saw in her when we were younger. Her objection being that she only cared about politics because over the last few decades of her life (she just passed away fighting a recently discovered cancer) politics was increasingly intruding on her life. As the old saying goes, you may not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you.
Now I’m not saying that we should be playing the same game in the same way but there really needs to be an awareness that this is how they work. Quite often when I point out to other conservatives the political nature of things that on the surface seem rather benign (Critical Mass cycling groups being one example), they simply don’t want to hear it. The overton window on a lot of this stuff needs to move. They didn’t start chopping the penises off of boys just yesterday. IYKWIM.
Does it end with a pillow fight?
Only after a few rounds of Cosmos with that Dylan chap.
Meanwhile at the NHS, next thing the nazis will do is ban dancing TikToc nurses, the racist bastards.
You do notice the political slant in that itself, correct? This is how it works. Whether we want to see it or not.
This. I see it over and over again on Facebook groups. First the camel gets its nose under the tent by some oblique reference perhaps to how they were “wronged” by a local business or, my favorite recently in a group regarding “happenings” around a small seaside town where discussion is always about fishing, drinking, eating, diving, drinking…and did I mention drinking? The first sign of a problem was “Can someone recommend a gynecologist, but NOT (insert name of only gynecologist in the small town of 2500 residents)”. This being a small town only in the sense that it sits immediately in a metropolitan area of 6 million people. Questioning why someone would ask a group of people who are mostly interested in drinking, dining, fishing, and…did I mention drinking? was met with an onslaught of “OMG! Why must you must be so uptight about women’s bodies?”
Well, it creates another situation like the ones mentioned in the Blurting post:
And so, again, those who disagree with the substance of the political item, or who simply feel that the message group in question isn’t a suitable forum for divisive political causes, are obliged to be quietly polite, most likely hoping that their silence will be noticed and understood.
No time to get into this further right now but just checking a FB page about Pompano Beach, a page where people discuss similar to what I just posted, someone posted a picture off the lighthouse. Just that. No boats no people no anything else except perhaps a tiny cresting wave with the comment “We are diverse! We are America’s paradise!” Not political in the least. And yet…if you can see past the end of your nose…
You are thinking that the cartoonist is a leftist? That would be incorrect. His name is Alexis Gilliland, and he is a libertarian. It can be easy to over-interpret from a small dataset.
“Politics were a part of human life. People who thought they didn’t play politics, simply played politics badly.”
Correction: The caption was “Well yes, Stalin was ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’. But we were studying Lord Byron.” That is funnier, as the earliest use of “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” was by Lady Caroline Lamb upon meeting Lord Byron.
David Drake? I haven’t read anything by him in many years. Like Joe Haldeman, he served in the army in Vietnam.
I’d love my barber to turn the talk onto global heating.
I bet he’d get fed up of the subject before I did.
” A mostly peaceful punch in the face. ”
Did anyone else see when the retards were marching down the road in triumph they suddenly walked into a large group of even larger Maori men who combined glaring at the pond life with performing a Haka.
I believe that for some reason the rabble were not so keen to attack them as they were elderly ladies and 5 ft 1 in tall speakers at the event. Indeed, I think that they looked down, shuffled their feet and rapidly evaporated.
The Blurting, as I refer to it, is a real phenomenon, and quite common.
High school mean girls. OM-G, Becky, can you believe what she is professing?
Ah, but, you see, everything, but everything, must be made political.
Remind me again what group it was that coined the phrase “the personal is political”?
Is there a market niche for businesses posting signs like ‘We don’t care about your politics’?
Unwoke.hr tried that. It was a recruiting/job posting site explicitly for apolitical companies. It was DDoSed within a week with false posts and network shenanigans.
How long until they starting going after email software with its blacklists and whitelists?
Uhhh…that’s been going on for well over a year now. Every major email API provider has changed its terminology.
I am still in the process of migrating our hundreds of git repositories over to use “main” instead of “master”.
Yes. Yes, if there is one thing people speak of frequently it’s that most annoying thing about how conservatives and such constantly turning casual conversations into discussions about Stalin. Stalinactio ad Hitlerum I think it’s called. Libertarian, you say? Hmmm….
As for my on-the-run comment regarding the FB post about a lighthouse, shortly after posting my comment I doubled back to ensure I had the wording right (Gotta be exactly exacto or someone will whine) and I found that they had reposted the same post (why they didn’t just delete the first one might be because they’re government connected and can’t for some reason?), this time mostly repeating their comment but with the offending word removed. That offending word being “America’s”.
Unfortunately their (the obliged ones’) silence is understood. It’s understood as intimidation. In their minds they’ve shut you up. When they say “Silence is compliance” they are clearly stating what they mean. They will suck up the oxygen in the room by prattling on. You are expected to be quiet because of course you are the polite one. Much, much easier to ignore your silence than to make the otherwise intelligent interpretation. Which will be lost on the more ignorant of their cohorts and the (God help me I hate this word but…) normies.
Look, as I said I don’t like this situation. But it is what it is. It was becoming a big problem 30 years ago with the diversity training crap. Had I not been singled out in a Jane Elliott style class myself I might have been able to pretend like everyone else that it was just something to be endured. Though maybe not. Especially not if it had happened to a friend instead of me. It certainly would have been easier to kick the can down the road a few years though. But the politicization of nearly every damn thing was started of course by leftists long ago but, as noted here and elsewhere, accelerated in the last few decades by the feminists. And especially during the Clinton years with the rise of Hillary. I first read the term “making the personal political” in The New Republic back during the Clinton years. It was promoted as having been political genius by people who pretended that they hadn’t heard of it before. Another part of their game.
Going forward, as they take up more and more of the conversational space, your failure to speak up emboldens them even more. I have come to believe that this is a big part of their efforts to redefine words. Find a dictionary published in the last century and compare some very common words with their further-down definitions from online dictionaries today. About 15 years ago I had a rather long argument with a blogger whom I generally respected. I forget what the word was but the definition of some word turned out to be the crux of our argument. I had pulled down my hard-back copy of Meriam-Webster and typed the definition into my comment. He posted the definition from an on-line source. The word had effectively switched meanings and IIRC it was a politically shaded interpretation of the word.
Damn…keep re-editing…but to finish that last thought…the redefinition of words, like “woman”, is meant to draw you further into compliance. You cannot object to words that you previously agreed to so if they conveniently (for them) redefine those words in the public’s limited verbal, colloquial understandings, they win yet again. I have even seen this happen in the legal domain.
Forget it Jake. You’ve been reassigned to Chinatown.
I had a hard time with this retirement concept. I’ve partially attempted it several times in the past. But things in this post-Covid world have me quite aware that I never want to deal with such idiocy again. It was hard enough when it was a distraction from my job. But crap like this…I actually had a bit of a cringe whenever I would see the use of that word because I remember when I started in the biz the term master/slave was used for terminology that we now call client/server. At that time the changeover was a little more “whatever” as it was conceptual/architectural and not built-in to huge codebases. The fewer people that I have anything to do with, the better.
The Golgafrincham Ark B would be a good repository.
I first heard “The personal is political!” from radical feminists in the 1970’s. Many (but not all) were commies.
And apropos of absolutely nothing. Had this article popped up in my face from somewhere. This lady supposedly holds the record for most units of blood (203) donated. If you read the entire article, nothing is mentioned about what the record number of units for any other kind of human being are. Trans nor otherwise.
Note I do have some skepticism here in general as I know a fine Yorkshire lady in her 90’s who I’m pretty sure has donated more than that.
In case you were wondering how the “elites” in public health screwed up covid so badly.
Transgender they say? Shot up a school they say? A Christian school no less. Shocked to learn this. Those Christians must have done something to piss himherhimherhim off. Fuck I’m sick of these damned idiots. Not the trannies so much. The bloody stupid idiots, the fucking morons, the so many “normal” people that I know, who encourage their mental illnesses. But maybe if we ban the guns….
Three of the dead were 9 years old. 9 years old.
As they say at the Other McCain blog, “crazy people are dangerous”.
You will note that they don’t dare say the tranny thing in the headline. No, no, no, no, no, no. Gotta read down what, three or four paragraphs where it is ever so cautiously asked. Idiots. Crazy people indeed.
OT: The topic of ad-blockers for Firefox came up some time ago.
I see that there are a variety of popular ones.
Anyone have opinions on these? Pros and cons?
Anyone have opinions on these? Pros and cons?
Adblock, I use it on a Mozilla variant, generally trouble free, no ads on the youtubes. Occasionally need to pause or turn it off on normal commerce sites.
As a demo, it just blocked 253 (!) ads and/or trackers on the Daily Mail’s US home page…
Anyone have opinions on these? Pros and cons?
I use AdBlocker Plus with all the list options – social media buttons/tracking, nag windows, etc. It does pretty well, far as I can tell. Simple, easy to use.
workshops for hairdressers on how to steer small talk about the weather into conversations about global heating.
Hard pass. All I want in a hairdresser is for them to professionally cut the split ends off my hair and do a little shaping in the cut, with a minimum of fuss, and if there must be small talk, keep it to small, innocuous subjects.
I’ve been quite happy with uBlock Origin. AFAIK it’s one of the few that also works on the mobile version, which is a factor for me.
That miserable POS Link-O-Matic 9000 did it again.
Daily Mail US home page.
And again – that bit of buffoonery correctly displays the link prior to posting, then inserts the %20 nonsense after.
Just go to the Daily Mail US page www. dailymail. co. uk / ushome / index . html without the spaces or %20 between every word.
and if there must be small talk, keep it to small, innocuous subjects.
I’ve had the same gal for 6-7 years now … to a point where we swap stories of kids and grandkids, recipes, holiday decor and hobbies. I have absolutely no idea what her politics are, and I do not care. It’s a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.
Currently in use here.
It does strike me as an odd thing to do – for an adult, I mean. Specifically, making an incongruous demand, via an inapt WhatsApp group, that your neighbours start making videos about how they oppose any practical attempt to reduce the number of illegal immigrants to the UK. Because the government has to be told that “people don’t support” efforts to that end.
Indeed. From “The Voyage”.
Unlike Joe Haldeman, he was a college student when he was drafted as well as leaving VietNam with both of his legs. Mr. Drake has been diagnosed having had many mini-strokes (https://david-drake.com/2021/newsletter-122/) and does not believe that he can continue to write.
He’s a never Trumper; maybe that’s partially because he went to serve in the 11th ACR while Trump did not serve at all. Even so, if you haven’t read “Redliners” from him, it’s worth a read.
Lady blood donor.
I share WTP’s scepticism about the “world record”.
A US website states that whole blood donations can be made every 56 days or 6 times annually.
On that basis someone starting at aged 18 and continuing until their early 70s could rack up well over 300 units.
In the lady’s home country of Canada it’s once every 84 days. Do the calculations and up to 250 is perfectly possible.
Still a nice story for a change and respect to the lady for sticking with it (I’m personally closing in on 100 units which would have been a whole lot more has it not been for a 20+ year hiatus when work took preference over pretty much everything) but it’s probably inaccurate.
Ah, but you miss the greater point that I was alluding to. While they make much of this lady’s 203 donations…as a women’s record…the world record for any kind of human is held by a man who has donated five times as much. And just think about that in the context of a society that for some reason tries to tell us that scaredy-cat can’t handle pain (because they don’t…or didn’t…do child birth…or something) men are more afraid of needles than the stunning and brave women.
Doh…my bad on part of that…and even I should have known the numbers were not right…that 1000+ figure is for a guy who donated plasma, not units of blood. Plasma can be donated once a week. Not sure why I cannot find just the blood donation record. Search results are mixing the terms up for some reason.
My understanding is that Joe Haldeman did not lose a leg, although the wounds were so severe that I suppose it gives him trouble to this day. I never made an effort to find out more than that. I was surprised that Joe was drafted after graduating from college with a physics degree. I would have assumed that the draft boards would have thought “good, Joe, now go make missiles or something”. Also surprising: I do not recall hearing of any fellow students getting drafted when I was in college.
Thanks for all the comments about ad blockers. Very helpful.
Mr. Drake was rather annoyed about being drafted; he mentioned that it was a relatively new policy that grabbed him in one of his forwards.
While I enjoyed Drake’s writing when I first encountered it, upon re-reading I’m struck by how thin the veil over the Vietnam ACR experience is in the Hammer’s Slammers stories. I feel like they’d have been just as good if he’d written them straight as there’s little SF in them beyond the cosmetic level.
Exactly! Sadly I frequent the cheaper sorts of places, and when I find someone there who does a good job on my hair, inevitably she will have moved on within the year.
Well, that allowed him to use ancient wars as a template for the action, which would be otherwise difficult. His short story “Contact” was set in VietNam/Cambodia and used a lot of the jargon that I started directly hearing in 1976 when I was a cadet.
He does frankly admit in one of his forwards that the 11th ACR was the template for the Slammers with hovercraft used to replace the issues one might have with tracked vehicles. OTOH, I was never able to say “Booster” and have the vehicle’s AI do things for me back in the day. 🙂
[EDIT: Being able to edit a post is TIGHT!]