Perhaps The Cardboard Has Magical Properties
Lifted from the comments, where WTP alerts us to more fun times for commuters in the San Francisco Bay Area:
❓ Did you know ❓
You can ask any station agent for BART’s free bystander intervention cards, which you can use if you’re experiencing or witnessing harassment in stations and trains.
Here’s how they work 👇 pic.twitter.com/09WmyquxVS
— BART (@SFBART) March 29, 2024
The cards, we’re assured, are “a concrete way to deal with an unsafe situation.” Though given the consequences of recent attempts at intervention – or what Bay Area Rapid Transit refers to as “allyship” – readers may wonder whether prompt and meaningful assistance may be less frequent than one might wish.
In case you had doubts, WTP adds, “This is not parody.”
Perhaps we can look forward to the issuing of “I am being stabbed” cards. And some “The man next to me is masturbating” cards. It does have the makings of an unhappy board game. It also calls to mind this uplifting scene from no-less-progressive Portland:
What the card for that would say, I leave to the reader.
Update, via the comments:
Diogenese asks, if direct and effective intervention has been discouraged and entails a serious risk of punishment,
Well, I’m assuming the point is largely to misdirect, to conjure an illusion. To give credulous progressive women, like the ladies in the video, the impression that the situation isn’t as bizarrely horrible as it actually is. And to make credulous progressive women imagine that progressives are The Ones Who Care, while so much of what they touch gets much worse, quite rapidly.
By issuing little cards, they’re creating “new social norms.” To supposedly address the problem of having created other “new social norms” in which punishing criminals is deemed unjust, racist, and terribly old-fashioned.
But hey, if you’re travelling to work on a BART train and some deranged creep starts masturbating against your leg, or pissing on the floor, or you find yourself standing next to yet another knife fight, or overdose, or commuter mugging – and no-one else does anything, or dares to do anything, except watch impotently and demoralised – because even noticing such things is racist – at least you’ll have a little card to clutch. Apparently that’s something.
And – and – every woman in the explanatory video, every single one of them, has brown skin. So there’s that.
Progress!
Chili, onions, and cheese.
I first encountered it on a business trip in Tokyo. There was a Shakey’s Pizza franchise there that was popular with the round-eyes crowd.
Sam Panopoulos, a Greek immigrant to Canada is widely recognized as the creator of Hawaiian pizza in 1962. I apologize on behalf of Canada.
For me, as a child, the excitement was of having pineapple; but that was probably just the 1970s for you.
During the 70s any pineapple we had came from a can.
I would be offended on behalf of ketchup lovers
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with ketchup, there are just things on which it should never go, I have no doubts there are people out there who would put it on Peking duck as well as hot dogs.
Sam Panopoulos, a Greek immigrant to Canada…
Another argument for strict vetting and quotas for immigration.
I have no doubts there are people out there who would put it on Peking duck as well as hot dogs.
I’ve seen recipes that recommend ketchup in the marinading liquid for Peking duck when other ingredients aren’t available.
People who despise people who like ketchup on hot dogs are little children.
[ Hmmm, with just a little more provocation I can keep this thread going for another 12 hours. ]
Next up: Barbaric Brits put beans on pizza.
Next up: Barbaric Brits put beans on pizza.
I’ve seen recipes that recommend ketchup in the marinading liquid for Peking duck
As there is zero tomato in the preparation of Peking duck, I suspect this is another abominable recipe from a Greek immigrant to Canada.
People who despise people who like ketchup on hot dogs are little children.
I don’t despise them, pity and advise them to seek psychiatric help, yes.
I pity people who pity people who like ketchup…
Speaking of which…
[ Sends activation orders to galleon fleet ]
As there is zero tomato in the preparation of Peking duck, I suspect this is another abominable recipe from a Greek immigrant to Canada.
Quite possibly. Canada is the land of ketchup potato chips.
There are hundreds of recipes for Peking duck and no two are alike. A lot of them call for hoisin sauce which can be made with ketchup as an ingredient for its sweetness. There are a lot of asian recipes that substitute ketchup for other asian ingredients, including pad thai and char siu. I’m not saying they’re particularly good or authentic but they’re definitely out there.
Nostalgia will have me putting Heinz ketchup (note the spelling – never “catsup”) on hot dogs at a backyard BBQ – along with pickle relish. Then there’s the childhood comfort dish of beanie wienies enhanced with a couple tablespoons of ketchup.
You may commence to throwing water balloons my way. 🙂
There’s quite a nice place in SoCal for some inventive AND yummy hot dogs.
I find ketchup today a convenient ingredient for dressings and sauces. A killer seafood cocktail sauce can be had from ketchup+horseradish+lemon juice+fish sauce.
Canada is the land of ketchup potato chips.
I have had those (and all dressed) but not really any difference than ketchup on fries. Still not sold on poutine, though, brown gravy and cheese curds is an odd combo.
I’m not saying they’re particularly good or authentic…
An understatement, particularly as tomatoes were unknown in China until they were colonized there by yte supremacist Europeans who culturally appropriated them from Central America.
And potatoes were unknown in India, but once introduced were put to good use.
Would spam sushi be the ultimate “inauthentic” food? Seemingly popular, though.
Still not sold on poutine, though, brown gravy and cheese curds is an odd combo.
In high school during the 70s in Ontario poutine was completely unknown but it was fairly common to have chips (fries) with brown gravy and ketchup at the caf (cafeteria). Then there was another group of people who would drown their chips in malt vinegar and lots of salt. Not sure if was to kill the taste of school cafeteria french fries.
Would spam sushi be the ultimate “inauthentic” food?
Spam musubi, more properly as musubi isn’t the same as sushi, and a cultural mashup like char siu manapua rather than “inauthentic”.
Yikes!!
I’ve only recently (ok like a dozen years ago or so…for me that’s becoming “recently”) noticed that people freak out over this
To quote the late Kathy Shaidle, “Bacon, like zombies, is something the Internet decided was cool and now refuses to shut the fuck up about.” Trends trend. It’s what they do.
Much too convoluted, too many players
I don’t normally think much of the Critical Drinker, but of late he’s been making the same point – that movies today in general just have too much of everything going on in them, and it’s driving the budgets to levels that guarantee an ROI catastrophe.
I’m not sure who, as Lord Vetinari
And yet, when I say that Pratchett’s novels describe his ideal authoritarian IngSoc people get upset.
It’s not a bad film, but it’s nowhere near as finely tuned as its predecessor. In the closing act, a key-moment-cum-big-visual-gag, one with an extended set-up, just lands flatly – it was very noticeable in the cinema – and while there are fun set pieces, the film overall feels cluttered and unfocussed. Too much rattling about and not enough narrative momentum. By the end of the film, you’ve pretty much forgotten the opening scene, and so the unresolved threat seems rather distant.
And then there’s the issue of the film being the (very long) first half of a two-part story. The film doesn’t end with any resolution or a cliff-hanger, just our heroes (mostly) surviving the latest set piece. As the credits roll, there’s some attempt to remind the audience of what’s at stake, but it isn’t enormously effective.
There’s also the problem that the premise of the film – a rogue AI – may be very now, but it doesn’t really lend itself to visual storytelling. Or at least, it isn’t depicted in ways that make much of an impression. There are a couple of short scenes showing some of what the “entity” can do, hacking coms and real-time altering of security footage, but they don’t really conjure any great or lingering dread.
As the first part of the story seems likely to have lost the studio between $50M and $100M, I’m not sure what they’re planning to do with Dead Reckoning, Part 2.
[ Edited. ]
Toss the cards, those girls should just be wearing t-shirts that say simply “I AM PREY.”
My favorite thing to put on hot dogs: sauerkraut. Also on polish and bratwurst.
Try using kimchi in lieu of sauerkraut.
[ Stomach rumbles. ]
And before you ask, Stephanie, I’m compiling it now.
[ Sounds of frantic Ephemera compiling. ]
It appears a new Union Jack has dropped, and it is fabulous.
Because the boring old flag is often confused for the French, Dutch, Russian, and US&A flags all of which are nigh identical, what with the three crossed crosses and all.
TBF, almost completely off the flag is pretty far.
I am a little concerned about the lion with the mane, though, seems a bit heteronormative.
The words that come to mind are just fucking stop.
I’ve known a few people who loudly despised pineapple on pizza. (Why? Nobody’s forcing you to eat it.) In the late 70’s/early 80’s I started to meet Chicagoans who were absolute chauvinists about Chicago-style hot dogs. Likewise Chicago asswipes who are chauvinists for Chicago style pizza and New york asswipes who are chauvinists for New York style pizza. A few Jews who expressed extreme disgust if you mentioned the wrong bagel restaurant. Some Americans of Scottish ancestry who hated England and hated everyone belonging to the wrong clan. I’m a Stewart so I only buy Stewart’s brand coffee and never buy Campbell’s soup.)
Social contagion? There have always been people who are easily persuaded to get on any bandwagon no matter how silly. And I haven’t even mentioned sports team fanatics.
IKR? My sister used to make a fuss whenever I ordered oysters. The mere mention of sushi drew “Ewwws”. Yesterday I see on a FB post by her husband that they were eating sushi. Heh. After years of “Eww!”, I couldn’t let that pass without engaging the Smartass Drive.
The same people will put Journey or REO Speedwagon in the jukebox and think nothing of it. Or in my sister’s case, Phil Collins.
Meanwhile, I am desperately searching for new things to tease David about, since beans on toast and the proper pronunciation of a-loom-i-num are getting old.
[ Makes enormous cauldron of chicken stew, thereby putting to use the long-neglected swede that was sitting in the vegetable crisper. ]
Liberalism makes you stupid. And in the case of these two, incandescently stupid.
In fact, this is such off-the-charts lunacy that I’m almost at a loss for words.
[ pictures Bjorn Borg sitting alone in a rocking chair at an old folks’ home somewhere outside of Stockholm ]
“Tomatoes arrived in China sometime in the late 16th or early 17th centuries, where they initially met a reaction that was equal parts confused and curious.”
A bit before Western colonial adventures in Asia.
There’s also the problem that the premise of the film – a rogue AI – may be very now, but it doesn’t really lend itself to visual storytelling
I recall a plot from a terrible They Fight Crime! show somewhen in the 1980s that had a similar plot; the AI had been tied into all municipal systems in a small town and had been killing off people opposed to itself by manipulating traffic lights to cause accidents. There’s a scene where the protagonists are communicating with it by speaking to a security camera and watching as the AI controls the traffic lights – red for no, green for yes. It’s paced very well, and the scene end where they piss it off and it turns all the lights in town red simultaneously really lands.
As most modern TV/film is unwatchable I’ve been delving into some classic media and the writing really was better, even on the throwaway shows. It’s entirely possible to do a rogue AI via visual storytelling, but it requires writers who are up to it.
Isn’t kimchi basically spicy sauerkraut?
Wondered what that soft plop was.
Why won’t David let me cook anymore?
Bork, bork. bork.
Again, Dead Reckoning has a couple of short scenes showing some of what the “entity” can do, hacking communications and real-time altering of security footage, but neither scene has the kind of dramatic oomph that’s needed.
It’s not unlike Avengers: Age of Ultron, which didn’t really show what would make the screen version of Ultron a unique and global danger. His ‘everywhereness’, as it were. It’s hinted at, in passing, with a line or two of dialogue, but the potential is never really explored or depicted.
[…] being on the Lloyd George.
[…] we needed to find a way of refreshing Team GB’s colour palette in a way that is both flexible and ownable […]
Context.
Isn’t kimchi basically spicy sauerkraut?
To a point, yes. But it really fires up a hot dog. And it is crunchier than regular sauerkraut.
Friday’s Ephemera – be still my beating heart.
Just arrived home a short time ago from the mountains, having photographed my 121st marriage proposal. She said yes! This time it involved a bit of a hike to a lovely waterfall. And to think I gave up Family Law in the courtrooms of Southern California to be paid good money to hike in the Smokies . . .
[ Prays all links remain active until Friday. ]
You might want to sacrifice a goat or two.
Oh no, too late: Instalanch!
Double-lock the wine cella door! Hide the good glasses! Hide your daughters!
Instalanch!
In the comments, someone with the handle Iwaldron is riffing on the possible things WTP might stand for. “Water Treatment Plant”, “Winnie-the-Pooh”, and “White Trash Party” stood out to me.
WTP, I’m just the messenger.