I expect to be busy for a few days. However, being a gracious host, I’ll leave you with some items from the archives:
Marking Their Territory.
Two radical identity groups struggle for toilet dominion.
Naturally, the first task was to give the toilets a makeover via the uplifting medium of graffiti, thereby communicating the life-enhancing qualities of prostitution: “Less abolitionism, more whoring,” and “less TERFs, more sex.” Needless to say, the conflict has escalated… With the facilities now being used by rival tribes, all gorged on intersectional compassion – and with so much graffiti to be written and responded to indignantly – students are reporting queues and “lengthy wait times.”
You’re Reading The Comments, Right?
When wokeness is ascendant and apparently quite stupefying.
Pst314 and Mr Muldoon point us to an “analysis” piece in
Scientific American, in which we’re urged to fret about “the violence Black men experience in [American] football,” and in which we’re told that the physicality of the sport “disproportionately affects black men.” This is framed in the article so as to imply some systemic racial wrongdoing – “anti-Black practices” that are “inescapable” – rather than, say, being an unremarkable reflection of the sport’s demographics, in which, at professional levels, black players are a majority.
Or to put it another, no less scientific, way – the risk of injury while playing a contact sport disproportionately affects those who actually play it.
No evidence is offered, at all, to establish that injuries are more frequent among black players compared to their white peers – which is pretty much the article’s premise – or to support the conceit that any such disparity, should it exist, must be driven by racism. And yet we’re told, with an air of satisfaction, “These playing fields… are never theoretically far from plantation fields.” Albeit a plantation with fan mail, lucrative endorsements, and an average salary of around $2.7 million.
The D-Words.
On supposedly racist traffic cameras.
Those presented as victims of injustice, of “racial inequity,” include Mr Rodney Perry, whose photograph accompanies the piece, and who, in a single year, has received eight tickets for speeding and three for running red lights. The article appears not to have had room to include the views of those injured or bereaved by Chicago’s law-breaking motorists, despite an eye-widening spike in accidents, fatalities, and hit-and-run crashes. Nor, it seems, was there room to consider the possible effect of endless, widespread excuse-making for antisocial behaviour, and its role in making such behaviour more likely, not less.
No Relation.
“Diverse identities” and euphemistic convolutions.
I can understand the reluctance to appear indelicate or to cause needless offence; and in some situations, there may be scope for polite fudging. But pretending-as-default, or worse, pretending-as-law, can lead to unhappy farce and a kind of collective derangement. And the media presenting the reader with an obvious distortion of reality, and seemingly an expectation that we should all pretend too, is also rather offensive.
Hard To Tell If It’s Going Well.
I bring you art. And atomised dairy products.
The mighty talent featured in the following video is artist, educator and “community organiser” Alex Romania, whose work teeters on the edge of profundity, as will doubtless become clear, via juddering and convulsion, and the strategic deployment of 25 pounds of powdered cheese. Come, sup ye at the teats of creativity.
Consider this an open thread.
Goodness. Buttons. I wonder what they do.
See also,
And if you disagree with her or provide statistical evidence to the contrary, then you’re a “white supremacist.”
Wokeness, ladies and gentlemen. See how it shines.
Hmmm, no Ephemera. David must be busy hiding squirrel eggs.
Didn’t have time this week to cobble together a batch I was happy with. And contrary to rumour, and all appearances, I do make an attempt at quality control.
There were nine of them this morning. I must remember to use my new powers for good. Once I figure out a crime-fighting application.
You could say that this weeks’ offering is maximally ephemeral.
A possibly useful translation guide.
It’s the Weimeranas I feel sorry for 😪
[ Hides from Stephanie. ]
In the spirit of WWII motivational posters, we’ll all just have to Do Our Part.
I should have posted this as “Urban transit experience #549”.
That’s the spirit. I mean, how hard can it be?
Ooh, I’m being taken out for lunch in the Peak District. Score.
[ Grabs coat, checks hair, buggers off. ]
For who’s lunch?
*ducks*
[ Hasty internet search. ]
Looks beautiful. And not an urban experience for many miles.
The urban transit experience, statistics division.
It’s the mucus.
124 of the people arrested in the NYC subway system last year “have been arrested over 7,500 times in their lifetimes.”
Sure, but were any of those for “parading, demonstrating, or picketing”?
Quite.
124 of the people arrested in the NYC subway system last year “have been arrested over 7,500 times in their lifetimes.”
I think I see the problem right there–and this doesn’t even count the times they were arrested while not on transit.
There is an observation I have heard but cannot verify that black moms raise their girls but love their boys–ie every son is a good boy, can do no wrong, and is never disciplined. Cute when they are 4 but not so cute when they are 22 and swinging fists around on the train.
It has turned into a romcom, or a romdram or whatever the term is when a Roman mystery series is beset by whinging women and lots of emotional introspection
That definitely comes and goes in the books. I’ve not listened to the BBC radio production, but I have a copy somewhere.
All cultures are equal.™
♪♫A pretty girl, is like a melody…♪♫
Witnesses were arrested for misgendering.
[ Returns from Peak District, gorged on steak pie and beef dripping chips. ]
[ Adds to database. Draws more red driving range circles on wall map ]
Slowly but steadily we close in on the Lair of Evil.
Band name.
He’s got a point.
The vile Cathy Newman has been proposed for membership.
Wonder how they’re going to deal with men pretending to be women.
Note the boneheaded error in the headline: Jordan Peterson is Canadian, not British.
That falls under this purpose of the original club rules:
What could be more tiresome and boring than a tranny?
Well, maybe a Marxist vegan.
New realms of wankery.
The pretending about trans etc has real-world consequences. These days in many US jurisdictions the only way to find out the race of a suspected rapist or murderer is if they do NOT say white, but you still don’t know which non-white this dangerous person is. For trans criminals, you are left confused as to who this dangerous person is even more. Thus you cannot take precautions. Showing vids of porch thieves might violate their privacy. Some places can’t show mugshots any more. It is clear who has more rights.
Not that new.
Don’t they know they’re supposed to throw more than their voices into the volcano?
Demanding that people lie, and even punishing them if they don’t, doesn’t strike me as an unalloyed virtue. It is, however, an assault on probity and psychological realism. And as noted here many times, not without its dangers.
This came to mind.
As EmC quipped in reply, “8 uses of ‘she’ and not a woman in sight.”
It is The Atlantic.
Child abuse if nothing else.
Yes, but you were supposed to make a dig at ignorant ‘Muricans.
Granted, it’s not fair to judge all Americans by what journalists get up to.
Excepting the child it’s unlikely there’s anyone virgin-adjacent in that lot.
Looks more like a tribble to me.
Larcenous cow.
“Whoosh bottle”
Possibly related.
I’m not entirely sure what is happening here, but it seems like we have a new nadir with what may be transincest.
A palate cleansing baby race. Via Not The Bee. Not pallet. Nor palette. Stupid french.
This being Easter weekend, I feel I must share my renewed faith in Christ. We met my sister in law and her hubs for lunch today in a nearby little mountain town. After lunch, walking about the square, my sister in law spied a store called Beyond Pink and insisted we go in there. Well at that moment, the local Catholic (Hispanic) church was having a Holy Week procession complete with Roman soldiers, Christ carrying His rugged cross whilst being whipped, the other two guys, etc. As they were passing twixt us and the store the idea of going to that store was abandoned. The procession of a couple hundred followers were headed up to where our cars were parked. It was clear we might be there a while. My wife spied a rooftop cigar lounge just at the tail end of where the crowd was passing. We went. We saw. I smoked. The Lord works in mysterious ways. It’s not like we didn’t already have plans and a church picked out for Sunday, so…Feeling doubly blessed.
They’re does seem something distinctly end-of-timesey about it.
Just in time, Joy Reid chimes in to display her madness. (Via Scott Adams.)
Somebody posts this every year during Holy Week:
Good on that. Awkward kidding aside, the procession was a rather interesting thing to see. Especially in the terrible, racist, horrible, did I say racist?, small town American south. There’s a significant Hispanic community in this small town. 84% white, 12% Hispanic county of 30,000 or so people. Most instances that I recall hearing about or seeing these sort of processions were in Hispanic or Italian communities. It was kinda cool. Like a trip back in time. Sorta.
Larcenous cow.
Or should that be Larson-ous cow?
“Whoosh bottle”
The “whoosh” was the sound of the page disappearing from existence
That.
There’s also the not insignificant detail that it adds to a sense of alienation. The feeling that one is living in a society that is coming unhinged.
It was the combustion of an alcohol-air mixture in a 5-gallon carboy. An internet search returned a number of hits.
Smart rat.
I might suggest that you misspelled “spandex and lycra encased bicycle enthusiast who sails down the back roads with at least 20 vehicles behind, while whizzing by at … 14 MPH”
Jordan Peterson is a revanchist? The heritability of intelligence is scientific racism?
I’m curious: Just when did the New Yorker become an outlet for crackpot and far-left lies? Their army of fact-checkers were supposed to make them a paragon of reliability. Full article here. (The earliest crap article I recall seeing was Paul Brodeur’s 1989 Currents of Death, which blamed cancer on AC power lines, a book which relied on anecdote rather than science.)
LOL. As a matter of fact, I toyed with “Marxist vegan crossfit cyclist” but went instead for maximum brevity.
Former CEO and founder of Planet Fitness has changed his Twitter bio.
Sounds… horrible. The very idea of people being so closeted w/in their group that they are inable to comprehend the views of “others”, and their effects on the world at large…
*hey, look – another Triumph Car Owner’s club get together!!!! I wonder if she’ll start today?*
I know nothing about Triumph cars and their owners, but here in the States we have Chevy fans vs. Ford fans and Bears fans vs. Packers and Vikings fans. 🙂
wait, what? When did we in Texas secede?
*contemplates a screed on Hotchkiss rear ends. Or overdrives. Or SU carbs…*
The heritability of IQ is hardly a “contention,” let alone one that can honestly be “dismissed” by anyone even remotely familiar with the field. Or indeed, anyone with eyes. Regarding adults, there’s some debate about the exact percentage of nature over nurture – considerably more than half or much more than half – but not a lot else. It’s curious how progressives are so often dismissive of the areas of cognitive research that are by far the most exhaustively established, confirmed countless times, and demonstrated all but daily.
I’ve sometimes found it darkly funny that many deniers of the glaringly obvious are those who are most likely to see the thing that they deny every working day – say, teachers.
That. Dear God, that.
It occurs to me that if I became aware that I was needlessly delaying dozens of people in a really aggravating way and for long stretches of time, I would, I like to think, be embarrassed and apologetic.
That joke went right past me.
Not really. It’s either dismiss it or acknowledge they aren’t nearly as smart as they pretend to be.
More important: They don’t want to abandon their ideology.
The degree that it is accurately measured with the tools available and especially how those tools are implemented is open for debate but the idea that intelligence, or the capacity for greater intelligence, has a strong genetic aspect should be rather clear. Should be. I had two (idiot) college roommates/friends who would argue nature vs. nurture. One was “100% it’s nature!” and the other guy “100% nurture”. It was endlessly stupid.
But arguing this in the human domain is doomed to failure. Too much complexity attached to humans. Put the concept in the domain of dogs and the “100% nurture” people become apoplectic when forced to face it. And it’s not just intelligence but also other life preferences like swimming or hunting or herding.
This stubborn refusal to grasp these things…while I understood it in my idiot college roommate/friends, I was rather stunned as I got out in the world and realized how many otherwise intelligent seeming “liberal” people believed it. And how quickly some of those “liberal” friends and “superiors”, so called, would dismiss the thought (and it’s not too much of an inference to say myself as well) as fascist was rather shocking at times. There seems to be a wall such that the concept of breeding cannot involving anything other than physical characteristics and any thinking beyond that is heresy. And now they are starting to eat away at the physical characteristics. The “identify as” thing is the early stages of that.
That’s the root of it.
It often seems the ideology is adopted to demonstrate a purported intellectual superiority and independence . . . just like everyone else they know.
Heh. And to further my rambling from yesterday regarding my renewed faith in Christ, I just learned that the owner of the cigar bar we chanced into is a native of that little town and…a pastor at his church. Very interesting…
For Easter…from yesterday. I really thought this was pretty cool.
Multiple reasons:
It would be like abandoning a religion.
Their sense of self and worth is intimately tied to their ideology.
The ideology gives them status and power.
The ideology is a profitable grift.
Here it is: The ultimate topic for Friday Ephemera.
Don’t forget to scroll down.
“That joke went right past me.”
My mistake. I took it as my not living in the states.
FWIW, I am a bit of a heretic as I have a very limited interest in sportsball, having never attended a high school football game in Texas…
*gasp*
“Ideology”?
You misspelled “theology”
“Overdrives…SU carbs”
Flashbacks. My first car was an MGB. But i did enjoy the looks on my friends faces when I’d casually mention that I had to top off the oil in my carbs.
Because their ideology is what keeps them employed, I’m guessing.
I hear that’s much more heretical than me never attending a high school ball game in the Midwest.
Hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, NGO drones, and DEI commisssars.
*doffs cap in salute *
Sadly, started out with a beetle. Rectified that by switching to an X/19…
Speaking of which, the put-upon and marginalized finally get a word in.
No Easter statement or proclamation but hey gotta pump up those pro-Hamas voters who celebrate Ramadan.
And in case you aren’t yet paying attention — “Dr” Jill wants absolutely no religious symbols or themes on those
Eastereggs rolling on the White House lawn.So would that be classified as a micro or macro aggression? Steve Urkel call your office.
The unequal distribution of cognitive wherewithal, and why that might be so, is one of those areas where progressives will resort to feats of rhetorical limbo dancing.
And it’s worth noting how such contortions are almost entirely confined to the agonising class. Average Joes and the lumpen proletariat don’t seem to have anything like the same hang-up on this point, or the same need to pretend:
And this bizarre supposition, entirely unmoored from observable reality, was to be the basis of the Labour Party’s educational platform.
“Dr” Jill wants absolutely no religious symbols or themes on those
Eastereggs rolling on the White House lawn.Speaking of Eggs and the Bidens, Joe searches for eggs in the most unusual places.
The whole ‘faithful Catholic’ schtick from this lot has worn thin.
Wait, aren’t these the same guys who pretty much demand the killing of Down Syndrome babies?
It’s like the “everyone should go to college” delusion, as if in the glorious future of Next Tuesday everyone will be a professor or a public intellectual or an artiste.
To quote myself shamelessly:
The tolerance of contradiction – and the willingness to disregard the readily observable – is quite a thing.
Imagine what they could accomplish if they applied their Massive Brains to something real and valuable.
Ooh. British Summertime starts tomorrow.
[ Writes note to self to remind self to change chuffing oven clock. ]
Speaking of “interchangable”, Boeing’s recent failures may have a lot to do with the mythology of the MBA and the delusion that smart people are interchangable: The company was built by engineers and flyers who understood airplanes and the critical, primary importance of meticulous design and manufacturing. The current top management are people without any such background, but with a strong interest in cutting costs.
What, one degree warmer? [ Ducks out the door ]
[ Pokes head back in door ]
Steam powered? 😉
Some Deep Thinkers are now saying Canada should legalize euthanasia (MAID) of the poor.
Heh. Not entirely unfair. I’ll allow that. Just this once.
Most of the time-keeping devices will change automatically, but the clocks on the oven and microwave don’t, and changing them requires more faffing than you’d think strictly necessary. (In my infinite wisdom, I long ago threw away the user guides, obviously. So each year, it’s an adventure in haphazard button-pushing.)
That is, the clock goes chuff, chuff, chuff?