Chesterton’s bicycle. || It’s a chair, it’s an earthquake helmet. || A shovel is used. || Tiling issues. || Three sizes, five colours. || Incoming. || I’m not entirely clear on the rules. || Another fun way to pass the time. || It’s an alternative approach. || Giving it to the man. || Big mirror. || “Best new artist.” || I want all of the loveliness in one big injection. || More joys of public transport. || Pulse detected. || Provider and role model. || Critter of the sea. || Car relocation. || Close enough for showbiz work. || Conservatism in an idealised nutshell. || Noise reduction. (h/t, pst314) || Street scenes, godly edition. || Attention, all heterosexual menfolk. If you think she’s hot, you’re gay, apparently. || It’s her way of life. || And finally, because you look like you need this, a “freeing and detoxifying” project for the weekend.
Oh, and while I have your attention, today is this blog’s seventeenth birthday. Yes, seventeen chuffing years. Which is a pretty good excuse to remind patrons that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain ad-free, there are three buttons below the fold with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted.
If one-click haste is called for, there’s a QR code in the sidebar, at which you point your phone, and my PayPal.Me page can be found here. As requested, I’ve added SubscribeStar and Ko-Fi accounts, via which love may also be monetised, whether as one-off donations or monthly subscriptions.
Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link, or for Amazon US via this link, or via the buttons in the sidebar, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Feel free to buy things wildly and in bulk.
For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last seventeen years, in over 3,000 posts and 200,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.
Do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.
As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.
Oh yes. The buttons:
Note that a related meaning of “hermetic” is “having to do with the occult”.
Heh. Also, “the gender bollocks people.”
Finally, the end. Of comments, that is. Took me a spell to read them as I just got back from an extended weekend visitng the glorious fruits of revolution in Cuba. And every Cuban seems to have the same attitude: Sixty-five years later and this is what we got from it?
The pandemic took its toll as well – one fellow told me that pre-COVID, okay, at least you did not see homeless people, but now they are there, picking through the trash on the street, of which unfortunately they have much choice. As a Westerner you are a constant target for hustlers, be it a taxi, private tour, money exchange, or simply children just asking, “Please, a dollar, a gift for the Cuban people, please.” Rare to see an image of Fidel amidst souvenirs but let’s face it, idiots are more apt to buy a t-shirt with that other fellow’s face on it because Hollywood made Che cool.
Happy to hear Cubans call both bastards and speak against their govenment; I had been an exchange student in the Soviet Union and found none of the paranoia I saw back then, instead everyone using WhatsApp to keep in touch with foreign friends and friends who managed to leave Cuba.
IMHO, the govenrment needs to increase privitaization and allow foreign money in doing so. That is their only hope.
And I haven’t pung in a while so let me offer some pesos, señor.
[ Lays out tray of restorative snacks, dims lights. ]
Bless you, madam. May you live on the kind of street where, should mail be misdelivered, it gets forwarded to you with promptness and a big smile.
Also, pung. Heh.
“I recently saw a clip in which a hairdresser asks her client’s permission to touch her hair.” The feminist author seems to think this absurd fetishization of consent is a new thing, but I witnessed it in the 70’s and 80’s when feminists proclaimed that men must get explicit consent* before touching a woman in any way–not getting consent before touching a shoulder would be sexual assault. Really, what we are seeing today is not new but is merely a logical culmination of 70’s feminist lunacy.
* Consent had to be written or verbal: No recognition of the reality of nonverbal communication.
Umm, ‘now’?
I did not realize until today that “bollix” in “all bollixed up” is a variation on “bollocks”. When I was a child I somehow assumed it was a nonsense word.
Personal growth.
Journal wokeness: the linked article is appalling. One of the good things about many journals has been blind reviews where the reviewers do not even know the identity of the author(s). It has been found that this increase a focus on the ms quality vs the fame or lack of the author. This new DIE focus reverses this. Another sick trend is journals making you include a statement about how you hired local or minority persons as coauthors or technicians. Most academics use their own grad students as labor and collaborate with friends so this is almost impossible to satisfy. It is also none of their business.
Women are divine beings. Merely touching them draws away their power. Hence the premium on virginity. You have essentially been taught this, or a more watered down version of this, even from childhood. The most sexist of men acknowledge their divinity, sometimes taking it further than the feminists (see again virginity). Old school at least permitted some degree of pushback on this keeping things from getting out of control. Things are now out of control. The feminists from back then have been given virtually everything they have asked for so now, of course, they must have more. And don’t you dare question them nor especially their appointed queens.
Today’s word is symbolism:
Symbolism of what, exactly? The acceptance of incompetence as long as the incompetent belongs to some protected group?
The symbolism here is akin to that embodied by the illustrious former president of Harvard University.
Eventually all this enforced acceptance of incompetence is going to have very real, very painful consequences, beyond the annoying and inconvenient ones they have now. But nothing will change until the elites feel it too.
Every day in every way, we are getting better and better.
Satirized in a painting I once saw, of men looking worshipfully at a woman they were carrying on their shoulders while she defecated a flower.
The sky has already fallen. Oops.
I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, the spam filter likes me!
So sorry.
So sorry.
It’s always worse than we thought.
Popular Mechanics got the flying cars prediction wrong (I’m still waiting) but I’m sure they’re right about sponges being great thermometers.
The Lakewood Church shooter was transgender: Legal name Genesse Ivonne Moreno, but went by the name Jeffrey Escalante. A radical leftist. Judging by one video I saw in which “his” head was covered, I’m guessing “he” was also trans-Muslim. And had “free Palestine” on “his” rifle.
More trans genocide.
Made-up national anthems is today’s lesson.
If you can kneel to protest The Star Spangled Banner, you can kneel to protest Lift Every Voice and Sing.
If it’s a “black national anthem”, then is it a song for black nationalists?
My knees have advised me to sit instead.
I suspect this drink won’t go down well around here:
Barbarism.
Heh. So wasn’t that what Liberia was for?
This accurately sums up BLM.
If they’re black nationalists, shouldn’t they wear black robes and hoods?
Where are Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton when we need them?
It’s as if the church is run by atheists.
Also an immigrant with an extensive criminal history, and yet not deported. For some reason. /sarcasm
I love Postum, but ever since Post stopped making it in 2007 and licensed the recipe, it’s been hella expensive.
I got a “first discovery”: a Clego. Combination of a Lego and something else. It only took me a day. I’ve retired and am resting on my laurels.
From Yes, Prime Minister, episode “Bishop’s Gambit”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751836/quotes/?item=qt1567269&ref_=ext_shr_lnk
Accepting incompetence among favoured groups, actively encouraging it in the name of “diversity,” is, as we’ve seen, socially corrosive.
And when you’re making it illegal to test whether would-be maths teachers actually have any mathematical knowledge to pass on, and when you’re selecting firefighters who can’t read the instructions on their own equipment – as seen in the links above – then the word farce scarcely covers it.
Yet here we are.
My grandparents drank it (never coffee), although I’m not sure if this was a habit acquired during the Great Depression when they were very poor, or a preference derived from the health claims behind its invention.
Also 70’s feminism: If the woman later regrets consensual sex, then she was raped and the man must be punished.
Charles Murray on teenage David Brooks.
Alas, I’ll be busy for a few days, so you’ll have to entertain yourselves.
[ Leaves cleaning products, mop. ]
Just something to trip over on the way to the potables.
I also do not understand this trilogy.
Hmmm.
Note to self: Limit consumption of caffeine and alcohol.
I’m at a loss for words.
Well played, sir.
I have words, but they’d get me suspended on Facebook.
Out: the French Disease.
In: Alaskapox.
Does this mean it’s no longer a crime to talk about the Wuhan Flu?
[ Glares across the Channel ]
To what’s on hand?
I do wish they’d make up what passes for their minds.