Friday Ephemera (717)
Custom cars for rats. || Mouse trap. || Incoming. || Incoming 2. || Navigational error. || Nature and its wonders. || Also available in red. || “What’s your job on the leftist commune?” “Pouring hot cocoa for folx in the reading alcoves.” Also, “writing workshops,” “therapist.” || Related. || Also related. || Having it both ways. || Bath time peekaboo. || By “radical pursuit of pleasure,” she means her amputated breasts displayed in a jar. (h/t, Paul Dover) || The top speeds of beasts. || The progressive retail experience, parts 546, 547, and 548. || It’s amazing how quickly the day can turn to shit. || Tread carefully. || Let’s go ice fishing, they said. || It’s “fully functional” and will sort itself out in no time. || “The fake bus stops keep them from wandering off.” || The perils of fitness activity.
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A model SJW.
The lesson was not intended to promote a specific agenda or ideology […] (via Not the Bee)
Perhaps the condescension and despite wouldn’t be so galling if the lies weren’t so blatant.
Oh for criminey’s sake. Who, in the last 40 years or so, has entered any retail place without noting in-plain-sight surveillance cameras? Those black bubbles above the cashier aren’t there for decoration.
Don’t want to be watched by the eye in the ceiling of a store? Order online, pay, and have the stuff delivered.
Oops… I think I’ve stumbled on to the real motivation … that “paying” thing that stands between the woman and her wants.
Approximately ten percent of the population are habitual criminals and hooligans. Permanent separation would benefit the civilized ninety percent. Perhaps Israel can advise us regarding the construction of walls.
[ Removed. Inadvertently duplicated. ]
The deranged and evil consequences of “disparate impact” laws:
Do you discard job applications from people with criminal records? That’s racist!
“Sheetz Inc., which operates more than 700 stores in six states, discriminated against Black, Native American and multiracial job seekers by automatically weeding out applicants whom the company deemed to have failed a criminal background check”
David: you can make money as a benefactor of humanity:
A world map of locations in need of correction booths.
My shocked face.
It’s not the capturing that is the problem, it’s the retention. When/if (granted speculation here) they match a random retained face, or other biometric data, to a specific identity and that identity is innocent of any wrongdoing, if they retain that data, there’s a problem. I don’t know what/where the legal lines are drawn but there is considerable gray area that could be exploited. Especially given the lag time between what gets decided in some court case and what is actually implemented in the running code. Anyway, it’s Target. F ’em.
I think that’s exactly the point. Here’s someone else with an inexplicable fetish: https://twitter.com/WomenReadWomen/status/1781133048626679906
I saw a video a few months back of a psychologist reading a case study of a dude who had grown up in a home full of hoarders, where the garbage was piled high and he was devalued, such that he felt like a piece of garbage.
So when he grew up, being devalued like garbage became a turn-on (what is it with men?), so he decided to trans into a woman, because he wanted to be treated like trash. Which is what it means to be female, I guess.
What do you even do with that? Don’t we have the sense to look at disordered behavior and say, “dude, get help for that,” instead of congratulating ourselves for being tolerant of the intolerable?
Sorry, but fuck Illinois. I don’t care what happens to Target … I haven’t shopped there in years and never will. BUT I also know the value of surveillance video — be it dash cams, body cams OR retail cams.
Tape from multiple locations was crucial in putting that case together. I know, since it was prosecuted out of the DA office where I was Chief Clerk.
You have no expectation of privacy in public. HOW the information is handled and stored is definitely something to have strict guardrails around. But consider, convicted commercial burglars – even misdemeanor petty theft – have as a condition of probation “stay away” orders concerning the places they robbed. In the past, businesses kept mugshot books so security could identify someone that was barred from the store. Storage of video should be no different.
Bill Maher is still a smarmy creep, but he’s taken a few red pills lately.
The modern ethos, it seems, on pretty much every front.
If you habitually indulge the presumptuous and undeserving, the uninvited, and if you flinch at every gratuitous utterance of the word racist, the results will not be gratitude and harmony. Quite the opposite.
It would not, I think, occur to me to choose to relocate to a country, halfway across the world, whose language was utterly alien to me, and which I could not speak, at all, in even the most basic way. It certainly wouldn’t occur to me to then expect every other bugger to spend lots of their time and money accommodating my perversity, as if this were a right.
As if indulging me – my selfishness and lack of forethought – must obviously be worth the effort, and worth the wilful inconvenience to countless others. And while mouthing, or having others mouth, accusations that any failure to do so must be racist and atoned for publicly.
I suppose it’s the familiar pattern of activists and “community organisers” making their pet demographic seem less endearing and simultaneously expecting deference. Say, by demanding that others learn Congolese and its various sub-tongues, and demanding cuts to policing budgets in order to further accommodate the uninvited.
Again, I miss the concept of shame.
You could almost think of it as elaborate, socially-affirmed self-harm. Which it pretty much is.
I’m just going to leave this here, for no reason whatsoever.
Wouldn’t it be funny if the next time there’s a demonstration the police refuse to attend until those who might have been affected have submitted enough evidence of criminality for the DA to build a case? Imagine it taking a week – the cars all stacked up abandoned on the bridge, the protestors cemented into barrels slowly starving, the rest of San Franshitto moving on, and the police and the DA refusing to act first.
“No you need to bring me evidence of a crime before I can charge anyone”
“No you need to charge them with a crime before we can attend”
Yes. Agree. But the fine details, how those details are interpreted as defined in the law, or worse in the law made up by individual court cases as determined in various jurisdictions across the country is a minefield for whatever surveillance measures taken and thus nearly impossible for anyone designing and implementing such a system to keep up even if they want to*. This is how we got to lawfare. Were this some non-woke retailer I would be on the other side of the issue. And as you say as well, F Illinois. But Target has make serious, conscious effort to join the left in politics. Seeing them potentially get eaten by their own, considering that they are guilty of contributing to the degradation of the rule of law, they are getting what they deserve.
*Having worked in the biometrics business that developed systems for CJIS and FBI, looking back it was rather stunning how cavalier the attitudes toward privacy were just a dozen years ago or so relative to today. Myself included. Granted, big difference between what government can get away with relative to the private sector.
You’re face is not private. In what possible world could you demand that people forget what you look like?
Of course not. But it’s your face combined with your identity and the storage and retention of that information that creates the problem. Especially by a private business when they then turn that information over to the government. Of course we’re assuming that the law means anything to begin with here. We have blown through those guardrails long ago,
A typical New York liberal, it seems. At the very least, his popularity condemns liberals as similarly vile.
Speculation: People become comfortable with what they are used to, even if what they are used to is abuse and suffering, and as a result they cannot feel comfortable with healthy relationships and situations and keep returning to the abuse.
Speculation: These are profoundly ignorant people and it never occurred to them that they were heading for a land where nobody spoke their language and where the lingua franca was one they did not speak.
And what’s more, a land where literacy is vital and illiterates are essentially doomed.
I wonder what activists have been telling them. We know that numerous NGO’s are heavily involved in facilitating this “migration”. Might they be not just offering guidance and assistance but also promising a land of milk and honey eager to give them endless free stuff?
They do appear to have been encouraged to behave like an ungrateful, unwelcome houseguest.
Among the terms deployed are “respect” and “cultural competency challenges,” though both are seemingly directed only at the natives – and by extension, the taxpayer – not the new arrivals, many of whom are illiterate and in the country illegally. Illiterates whose very first act is to violate one of the country’s most fundamental laws.
Such quality material.
This:
Combine with this:
Exactly. These people from all over the world are not just suddenly thinking to themselves, “Gee, I think I might try to go to…MEXICO…first and then get to the USA”. They are not surviving first in Mexico and learning to get by in Spanish.
As this guy was clearly a threat to the huge pro Hamas demonstration I can see why Sergeant Plod threatened him with being arrested because he was being “quite openly Jewish”.
Right, the mere sight of a single kippah will turn this peace loving mob into a mostly peaceful mob and an offence under the Public Order Act.
“Quite openly Jewish”. Somewhere I suspect Oswald Mosley is laughing.
Speculation: These are profoundly ignorant people and it never occurred to them that they were heading for a land where nobody spoke their language…
Speaking of which, America’s BBC just makes up language…
Nothing says “inclusion” like
“affinity group”“segregation”.Not to slag on the Spam-No-Mor (Ausf. G)™ more than necessary, but as a heads up, it hangs on archive.(wherever) links.
[ Liberates comment, heads out for haircut. ]
Peaceful Brits must not become demonstrative in the face of Muslim aggression and violence, and must hide lest they offend Muslim immigrants invaders.
Will I get put on a government list if I speak of treason?
Monty Python comes to mind:
My money is they know submission by authorities to their demands is to be expected. Certainly they know they’ll receive government subvention before they start their journey.
You must not have much contact with high school graduates.
Middle school girls show more courage than many adults about this issue.
Quite. It’s perhaps unfair that the girls should have to do it, but there we are.
I’ve just discovered that the shot used by men is almost twice the weight of that used by women. Presumably, we’re supposed to believe that this is entirely arbitrary and not a reflection of any physical realities.
And in activist-wanker-caste news. Not entirely surprising to regulars, I suspect.
You stupid whites expect all Africans to speak the same language. Africa, the continent I voted with my feet to get out of, is a place of such rich cultural diversity that I need to cross-compile Burundian patois into Swahili just to speak to my uncle, and that isn’t even going to work for my aunt. You understand? No, of course you don’t understand. We don’t expect you to understand, we just expect you to pay me and my cousins a salary as translators and community advocates.
And you’re evil if you ever ask “What benefit do we get from importing this Tower of Babel?”, or “What benefit do we get from hiring the literate English speakers (we’re hardly talking about rocket scientists here) to funnel their illiterate countrymen through our system?”
[ Tries to muffle WrongThought klaxon with damp tea towel. ]
At the palestine protests there are open calls for genocide (“No Other Option” signs for example) and leftie whites go right along with it.
The difference between chants of Death to America and Death to Israel, is that there is not even the remotest chance of the first being carried out, but the second has been a close call in several wars in Israel. If the Arabs put their minds to it they could obliterate Israel in a few weeks.
A commentator on Fox pointed out that the BLM and current riots have common signage unrelated to the supposed issue, like calls to end capitalism and communist flags. The issue is not the issue, it is the excuse.
Littering: in suburban neighborhoods litter mostly has escaped during garbage pick up and people pick up anything on their own lawn. The city where I Iive has never sent a litter crew to pick up litter. We get a street sweeper once per year after leaf pick up. But of course the difference in litter is surely a sign of racism…by all my Indian and Chinese neighbors.
From the original thread:
And yet, somehow, this isn’t mentioned.
[T]he first suffragette arsonist and bomber.
Not just a Babel of languages. Also a Babel of cultures, which is a greater problem.
And you’re evil if you ever ask “What benefit do we get from importing this Tower of Babel?”,
The great irony of the Tower of Babel story is that God used DEI as a punishment.
Hilary Cass, the highly-regarded paediatrician who conducted the most thorough review ever undertaken on the medical evidence for transitioning gender-confused children has been advised not to travel on public transport for her own safety.
…because leftists and “trans” people are just as sane as normal people, right?
From fascism to kebabism in 100 years.
The platonic ideal of a trans activist post.
The complainers are Activists, not regular joes. For all we know, the migrants themselves understand perfectly well that the onus is on them to learn English.
Mental illness impedes your ability to impose order on your surroundings. Hoarders usually have some kind of trauma in their past, such as the death of a child, and it completely ruins the instinct to prevent junk from piling up. They can’t see it anymore — because they can’t cope with it — and so it just gets worse and worse.
Sometimes I have trouble confronting the little corners of chaos in my house. It’s not that there’s something I’d rather do, it’s that I can’t muster the mental energy to sort through stuff, make decisions, and toss what I truly don’t need. After awhile I “don’t see it” anymore.
I have maid service to keep the main areas of the house in reasonably good order, but there are plenty of places that need addressing that I can’t deal with. I’ll probably need to hire someone to help me organize — which means letting go of things that I can’t bring myself to toss out but that really don’t “spark joy” either.
From fascism to kebabism in 100 years.
We had a new Fish & Chip restaurant open near us last week. Can’t tell you how happy I was to see it. Most frequent new openings in no particular order are for ramen (noodles), shawarma (kebab sort of), and burritos. Oh, and we got our first Chick-fil-A and Jersey Mikes.
Littering: in suburban neighborhoods litter mostly has escaped during garbage pick up and people pick up anything on their own lawn.
I think that is mostly true. Yet, I’ve lived in some very nice (read expensive) neighbourhoods where there has always been at least one house where people let garbage accumulate. In our last neighbourhood, we called these residents “the piggy people. It would seem that the cheaper the neighbourhood, the higher the number of “piggy people” on the street. So I’m not sure what causes that. In the more expensive neighbourhoods, these people have been whyte and lived in the country their whole lives.
When I visited the “social” housing estate, the litter was the first thing I registered. The amount of it, its prevalence, was quite striking. And this was a housing estate, set back from the road, not some high-traffic commercial area with fast-food outlets everywhere. The nearest fast-food joint was a fifteen-minute walk away.
I was reminded of a late 80s documentary I saw some years ago about the tenants of a run-down and disreputable council estate. One I’ve actually driven past once or twice, and about whose occupants I heard legends as a teenager. The film was, inevitably, made by middle-class leftists (art degrees, boarding school) and was clearly intended as some kind of indictment of 1980s Thatcherism. As if Mrs Thatcher and her policies were somehow the cause of behaviour that predated them.
Before Mrs Thatcher was elected, and certainly before her policies could take effect, the estate in question was already a topic of legends and jokes. I remember one joke, heard at school and passed down over the years, involving a taxi radio operator repeatedly calling for drivers to pick up someone on the estate, her calls going unheeded long into the night.
What struck me at the time – and went entirely unacknowledged by the documentary makers – was the infantilism of many of the tenants – their lack of agency. They seemed entirely absorbed by the state, as if it were some all-powerful but utterly negligent parent, and were consequently reduced to a kind of childish passivity.
This mindset was apparent throughout the documentary, yet somehow never remarked upon or challenged, even gently. The residents were clearly being steered towards externalising the cause of their woes, but the mindset on display seemed beyond the scope of any political policy.
One detail that lingers in the memory was that, among the residents, there was no expectation that even a simple, routine task – replacing the washer in a leaking tap, for instance – might be undertaken by the tenants themselves, or by a friend or family member. Instead, they waited for the council to “send someone.”
For months.
Hilary Cass
It woud be lovely if there was a movement to wear a t-shirt with Hilary Cass’ image on it and purposely ride public transit while wearing it. Hundreds of Hilarys on the Tube. Yes.
One detail that lingers in the memory was that, among the residents, there was no expectation that even a simple, routine task – replacing the washer in a leaking tap, for instance – might be undertaken by the tenants themselves, or by a friend or family member. Instead, they waited for the council to “send someone.”
This is akin to the Catholic “relief” agencies and how they foster dependency. I am a Roman Catholic and follow much of the Church’s etachings. But one thing that has bothered me in the past is what is almost a fetish towards The Poor. The Poor can be excused for almost everything because Jesus wants us to help The Poor. The Poor cannot be asked to help the community at large – like picking up after themselves – because they are The Poor. My former parish in Southern California had a weekly soup kitchen in which food and other items were distributed to The Poor – and I watched as a young man led his pregnant girlfriend, their arms laden with handouts, back to his late model pickup with custom wheels.and grill. But, you see, he was part of The Hispanic Poor and no one could challenge him on that.
Steak pie and beef dripping chips incoming.
It was disturbing how many of the commune people wants to work/teach the kids.
Power dynamic. Cluster Bs are drawn to fields where they are in a dominant position that’s externally enforced: child care, teaching, elder care.
You have no expectation of privacy in public.
Private places of business aren’t public. Some states define a fuzzy intermediate “place of public accommodation” status but that’s not germane. As WTP has pointed out, this is an example of Illinois making a well-intentioned law without thinking for five minutes about how it was going to actually work.
Middle school girls show more courage than many adults about this issue
Leaving aside the utter farce of middle school girls’ shot put for a moment, no, they aren’t. This doesn’t affect them at all at this stage of their lives – no scholarships are at risk, no financial rewards are being foregone, no college scouts are going home empty-handed. This is purely performative.
It’s the high school and college girls who aren’t doing a damn thing about this that are the cowards, because even though they’re not walking off the pitch, they’re still not getting the scholarships and championships because they’re getting beaten by the men in skirts.
This nonsense could be stopped overnight if the girls with something to lose simply refused to compete anywhere and everywhere men invade their sports. They won’t because they need a queen bee to follow. Riley Gaines might be it, but her influence is too diffuse and she’s largely being nullified by regime propaganda.
If the Arabs put their minds to it they could obliterate Israel in a few weeks.
Samson has entered the chat.
Oooh, this. I see it rather thicker in the Irish Catholic myself. But it’s not just a Catholic thing. Here in red, red Appalachia I have encountered this attitude among many of the Protestant churches as well. I see it even among many similar “conservative” types who want to blame the government for every little problem or personal failure.
And this. I am still in contact with most of the girls from my high school’s state championship swimming team and, as a one-off, an Olympics women’s team member or two. Out of all of those women only two of them have spoken up on the matter. One of whom I actively encouraged myself*, the other “speaks up” in the sense that she’s been very supportive of my posts.
*My specific encouragement being the tipping point for her is unlikely…but it could have been. She certainly got more vocal after I encouraged her. I only found out recently that she had been a rape victim in college in a case that was never solved.
A bit of advice: Depending on the nature of the clutter, better tools for organizing and storage can help a lot: Elfa shelving, plus a few sizes of storage bins, greatly increased how much stuff could be kept without clutter. Everything is now easy to find and nothing gets in the way.
Fair point, but I have seen a number of news reports of “migrants” staging protests, rejecting free meals, and so on.
Our own dicentra has come under the sway of the Marie Kondo Kult, and needs an intervention! Does anyone know some deprogrammers?
.
[ Returns from pub lunch, full of pie. ]
[ Considers crafty afternoon nap. ]
LGBKV1IL2++ history has so much to teach us, who knew that Queen Charlotte (of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a POC) , and that the decolletage in fashion at the time was to ward off storms?
But wait! That’s not all! You can “…join drag king and historian Christian Adore for ‘a very gay tour’ of the Queen’s House” at the Royal Museums Greenwich.
Meanwhile, as foretold by The Amazing Chriswell, the protests will continue till the left 1% are discomfited in any way.
Eco loons vs. the Green Party.
Minimalism…yes…
From the comments…
That money that they’re collecting is just going into their pockets to be spent on weed. Hopefully.
“Let them fight”
The inertia, the lack of agency – of any expectation of agency – was pretty striking. And so, if an annoying, leaking tap didn’t get fixed promptly by someone “from the council,” it would just be left to continue leaking, and being annoying, for months, and presumably indefinitely. I should point out, the residents in question weren’t disabled or infirm. They were just weirdly passive and inert. And yet, this went unremarked by the makers of the documentary.
In turn, that reminded me of something the late Peter Risdon once wrote, regarding the pernicious influence of the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee:
There’s more at the link, some of it quite… earthy.
[ Watches Rio Bravo. ]
Was it here or Insty I saw linked an article about the poor oppressed Somali migrants in the US version of council housing in Minnesota, and how they’re getting such poor sleep and it’s all due to systemic racism and probably islamphobia on top of it. The link also mentioned that their smoke alarms are chirping the “low battery” alert day and night, for months on end, because they’re waiting for “someone” to come fix it, until they no longer are conscious of it. Think it was the Lutheran do-gooders that were partly responsible for the Somali takeover of Minnesota. But the same lack of agency is all over anywhere there is a large amount of government-supplied housing. They discover agency in their gangs and drug cartels though.
IIRC, it wasn’t specific to Somalians. It was a black thing in general. Something people became aware of as a result of the schools being closed for the Scamdemic for remote “learning” via Zoom meetings. Students, and I believe some teachers as well, just lived with it until the batteries ran out.
agency: I read an account by a guy in San Fran. He had a landscaping business and could always use day labor. When he would encounter a homeless person he would give his card and tell them to come and he had work. He said he gave out over 100 cards and not a single person ever showed up.
Around 1900 (earlier?) when immigrants poured into New York, they would immediately start making clothes and selling to garment shops. One family I read about within 3 months had 3 sewing machines and 2 employees, all working from their tiny apartment.
To be fair, one of the problems today is that all the rules make it hard to start a business. For example, Chicago has gradually put all the little news stands (a little box on the corner) and souvenir stands out of business. They harass food trucks. To do nails you must attend cosmetology school. Barriers to entrepreneurship.
Everything we eat is racist.
Original post here.
Ergo propter hockey.
While redefining “big” and “little”.
The more immoral we become in big ways, the more puritanical we become in little ways. ― Florence King
We have a strong desire to view ourselves as moral, as good. Even mafiosi defined themselves by a “code”. If you get rid of religion and following the law and family and patriotism, you latch onto trivial good things and really milk them.
There is an interesting contrast, Jesus told his followers to pray in private (vs those who prayed loudly on the street corner). My uncle funded his church ball teams (baseball?) and I only found out after he passed. In contrast, you can’t get the wokies to shut up about how morally superior they are in spite of their provably lower contributions to charity. urgh
Having given birth to three children, she’s given up entirely on keeping things clean.
[ Straightens coasters. ]
Ed Smart was remodeling his home, so he’d go downtown and pick up vagrants to work in his home, and he’d give them a hot meal and a few bucks, plus a bit of pride in work, he hoped.
And then his daughter Elizabeth was stolen out of his home one night, because one of the vagrants wanted another wife, so he and his current wife took her up into the mountains, violated her, and kept her captive for nine months.
She was walking down a busy street with the other two when some people recognized her and rescued her.
Meaning that you’ve gotta be careful who you’re nice to. Some of the homeless are truly dangerous people.
Ah. I thought the bar-biscuits were getting a bit soft.
Caption competition:
And before you ask, no, I’m not entirely sure.
Perhaps this will help.
Looks like the work of some kind of instigator or provocateur.
And before you ask, no, I’m not entirely sure.
Nothing says “I’m pregnant” quite like a sagging scrotum.
Your tax dollars at work. One way or another.
As it is
“Earth Day”Lenin’s birthday, a protest of note.I do like a happy ending.
I laughed and I’m not sorry.
Calls to mind the old sports cheer, “Let’s have another one, just like the other one!”
And before you ask, no, I’m not entirely sure.
“Black baby factory”?? Is this guy for real? Or is this just more of the power of trans that they can fetishize even the sacred black people and expect to get away with it. The look on the mannequin’s face in the second photo is perfect – like he’s saying “WTF is WRONG with you???”
I was thinking tactical nuke.
Again, it seems to be the conceit, common among such creatures, that they can act with impunity. That the people on whom they impose themselves, gratuitously, will always show restraint and never risk doing them harm.
It’s a fashionable conceit, very now, and one that I’d quite like to see stamped into oblivion. The understanding that if you fuck about you may very well find out is, it seems to me, generally a good thing, a reason the rest of us can for the most part endure each other’s proximity.
Curiously, those environmentalists calling for a dramatically smaller population never seem to lead by example, and always manage to give the impression that no matter how small the ark is they’re a shoo-in for a first-class stateroom. — Mark Steyn
Curiously, those environmentalists calling for a dramatically smaller population never seem to lead by example…
TBF, the co-founder of
“Earth Day”Lenin’s Birthday did.Of course it was his girlfriend and not himself, but again leading by example, he “composted” her.
See also the second update here. The lack of any interest in reciprocation – indeed, the open disdain for it – is pretty much a signature of the activist mindset. Make of that what you will.
“And in the blue baby-grow – this year’s winner of the ‘Gonna Tear You a New Asshole‘ competition!”
Whereas in reality they are the ones least deserving.
A Boston-based influencer has sparked outrage over inflation after claiming she paid $7 for a single apple at a Whole Foods.
It’s not called ‘Whole Paycheck’ for nothing.
$7 apple at whole foods
If you are going to whole foods, you have no room to cry about inflation. Also, from my few times in one it has the most neurotic clientele ever. If whole food makes you healthy it isn’t working.