Friday Ephemera (725)
My first thought was coffee maker. || A manhole cover protrudes, a tiny beep is heard. || Big bunker bared. || A somewhat ungardenly garden. || Gruesome shoe death. || Oh, the glamour of Hollywood. || I hear tiny hooves. || Bag of soup transportation tip. || Ectoplasmic happenings. I did this one at school. || At last, how to cook a kitten. || There was smoke, some shouting. || Shoulders and hair, girls. Shoulders and hair. || Unwelcome guest. || Unwelcome guest 2. || A downloadable compendium of Weird Tales, 1923-1954. || Competence under trying circumstances. || A situation has arisen. || For the larger gentleman. || They’re always in the last place you look. || And frankly, who here hasn’t? || Fiddling with focal length. || Don’t tell your mother about the bath-time fort.
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An excellent analogy. The hilariousness is a bonus.
Subjecting the Atlantic’s editors to 24/7 barrages of noise is in order.
While seemingly unaware that an endless succession of such screeds might lead people to suspect that there is an inherent connection between “having brown or black skin” and being a Cluster B sociopathic savage.
Certain farming analogies come to mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUgQlVZJ9qc
Did the spam filter get one of my comments?
[ Pokes spam filter with stick. ]
Nothing in there.
Trying try-again…
Neither do most people. Even here which is more likely to be discussed, Dostoevsky or Deadpool? I’m even more Deadpool and I only know it from one Ryan Reynolds movie. Though admittedly, I’ve read far more Dostoyevsky. Apparently to my shame, see…
I posted that meme on FB and caught crap from my sister about it. Apparently Leonard is lucky to have her and we need to talk lol.
BBT: why is leonard lucky to have her? because he is a dweeb and she is hot. Hot girls do not have to act responsibly, know stuff, or do stuff. Hotness is sufficient. Our hormones tell us this. To overcome dweebness, Leonard would need to do something much more than the success he has–Enstein for example became a chick magnet once famous.
And Penny is much more socially well adjusted.
True, although that does not make him highly cultured.
Here is an archive of that Atlantic article, just in case it gets stealth-edited or “disappeared”.
The racist complaints about a white American culture of quiet are especially ironic, given that in other contexts I have seen numerous complaints about American and British tourists being annoyingly noisy, talking loudly when all around them the Spanish or French or Italian natives are engaged in soft-spoken conviviality.
Reminds me of the adage, “Behind every beautiful woman is a man tired of her shit.”
Hotness doesn’t last. Good cooking does. Fit, feminine and friendly does.
From the experience of my long second marriage, I’ve concluded that the best measure for choosing a mate (apart from being attracted to them) is finding someone whose bad points don’t bother you much.
Example: Me, I’m a chronic sniffler. At times a snorter. Can’t help it. But it doesn’t seem to bother her. She’s never said a thing about it.
Add to the list: conviviality and an inclination to negotiate disagreements and conflicts.
Most of the hot young women I knew in the 70’s and 80’s are now very fat and plain looking–at least the ones I have actually run into again in the last decade or so.
Not to you.
[ Quietly resumes proverbial stirring of shit. ]
That looks like a challenge.
No, artillery.
Dicentra,
On r/oldschoolcool, I recently posted a photo of Neil Armstrong with my father, at NASA Ames, from about 1965. Neil was learning vertical landing techniques. In the process I dug up a photo of the Ames air force at its peak, with something like twenty planes and helicopters. The last time I was at Ames, all I could think of was how glad I was he did not live to see it’s current disgrace.
A recurrent symptom of societal disease: you guys are white you don’t understand
Brad Torgersen and pagliacci the hated have thoughts:
and:
So who is this Xochitl Gonzalez?
There’s something suspiciously odd about her photo at the Atlantic.
There’s something very “red flag” about her face.
Hope for the future, or the littlest thought criminal?
Apparently Xochitl Gonzalez is not trans? And she’s actually got Latino heritage. And she’s as pale as I am, so obviously telling her to shush is a racial animosity thing.
Also pagliacci continues:
Two nations separated by a common language.
[Puts on Kevlar helmet. Shifts over two stools farther from dicentra.]
(my dad, circa 1953) … Happy Father’s Day! I, for one, honor and cherish each and every one of you good guys. I lost my dad in 2018 and I still miss him. If your dad is still on the sunny side of the grass, be thankful and tell him so.
The noise level being a pretty good measure of other issues. People who don’t care about stopping their neighbours from sleeping are unlikely to care about other things too.
Still, perhaps we can look forward to Ms Gonzalez’ thoughts on the wonders of graffiti, litter, vandalism, and disagreeable bodily smells.
By the way, I finally got around to watching the much-praised Godzilla Minus One last night. I have to say, I didn’t see what the fuss was about. As Godzilla movies go, it was… fine. A bit glum and whiny and melodramatic for my taste, and quite predictable, and not particularly gripping, but, well, sort-of okay. Nothing more.
In hindsight, the gushing coverage is a bit of a mystery.
Unless, of course, the rest of last year’s films were particularly bad, and reviewers felt they had to gush about something. My own cinema-going has dropped to practically zero. I went to see Dune Part Two, which was, again, sort-of okay, but that was it.
Trans or not, she has a “red flag” face.
Plausible.
Maybe a lot of them don’t have jobs to go to in the morning.
From that piece in the Atlantic:
She doesn’t tell us what “surprisingly early” actually was, but I’ll guess 10pm whereas a vibrant person of color like herself stays up until 2am.
Meanwhile serious students have morning classes to go to.
My professors made a point of scheduling some of the “gatekeeping” classes for 7:15am, as this would discourage students who were not serious about a career in physics or chemistry. Students who cared more about late night parties looked for less demanding majors.
Hear, hear!
Progs so often remind me of the difference between movie special effects people and real engineers. The former do whatever’s necessary to “get the shot” (who cares if the thing falls apart a minute after “Cut!”). Everything they do is just for appearances and does not have to work in the real world.
David: So how’s that heat wave going?
As a proud penguin, I resent this.
As we are in the middle of “Pride” month, lets see how things are around the world…
In Wiemar Bavaria we find,
♫♪ein hübsches Mädchen,
ist wie eine Melodie♫♪
Nearby, as Patton once said,”Do your damnedest in an ostentatious manner all the time.” In war torn Kiev, they have taken that to heart, sort of.
14°C and intermittent drizzle. So June in Britain, basically.
Dicentra, enormous thanks for that toaster link. Not just because of that post itself – which is both hilarious and deep – but I went on further through that author (Devon Eriksen) tweet history, and some amazing posts, intelligent and insightful.
Highly recommend.
This is another one for starters – and something that resonates with anyone who has followed David’s content here:
https://x.com/Devon_Eriksen_/status/1785673620729073911
(Which reminds me, need to figure out the smart and elegant way of embedding tweets. Sorry.).
Ps – looks ok though, somehow.
I disabled the option to embed tweets in the comments as this would slow down page-loading time. There are addons to enable commenters to embed social media, video, audio files, etc., but they come with a yearly fee and, again, they all bog down page-loading quite noticeably.
As so often, it’s about juggling trade-offs.
Labor declined to comment.
So that’s what, 58 in Freedom Degrees? I haven’t followed the British weather stories but even with an unexpected drizzle I’m finding it hard to understand how there could be a predicted “heat wave” and yet temps be below 60. Of course “weather in Britain” is a bit silly (kind of like “the Earth’s temperature”). But you’re somewhat in the center of the England part, right? Maybe the “weather in Britain” just means ‘London’?
More or less.
Good Lord, as I type, the Sun has come out and the temperature has soared – soared, I say – to 16°.
That’s 60 in colonial heatification.
[ Gathers sandbags, canned goods. ]
Also, we’d never hear the end of Muldoon’s grumbling.
Stolen from TikTok.
Would there be an unacceptable cost if we started posting more screen shots of linked tweets and other items?
Truth.
I shouldn’t think so.
The hands are blurred.
Both.
Stop being selfish and give the glue time to set.
Also, we’d never hear the end of Muldoon’s grumbling.
Hey, it’s not my fault that if the coders of Typepad designed aircraft this would have been the equivalent result.
[ Sweeps up grumbling, pours gin and tonic. ]
Why isn’t there a combat video game called Waffle House?
Wouldn’t you have to be drunk to play it?
Not necessarily: Being diverse and Cluster B are also sufficient.
Currently 34 degrees centigrade.
A politician you can unplug.
Drunk it is.
Even the Mail agrees with the Guardian that English football fans singing “Ten German Bombers” is loutish, negative, monomaniac, going on for decades, not reading the room, not funny any more. But by what moral principle is that bad but this is good? Is “ten German bombers” not just a vernacular expression of the elite consensus that 1933-45 history must be rubbed in the faces of every generation of Germans for ever (or at least until nobody in Germany has ancestors who were in Germany at the time). Is it not a good thing that the chant sucks the joy out of any occasion? Is it not a worthwhile thing to demoralize Germans and render them less capable of collective action in their own interest? And surely the descendants of 1930’s/40’s Englishmen are more entitled than the descendants of 1930s/40’s Turks to whack the Germans over the head with this moral bludgeon?
Hilariously, I was first greeted by Mark Hamill’s face (shilling for Joe Biden).
Isn’t loutish what those fans are? Their authentic selves, as intellectuals like to say?
Kid Rock is being unreasonable about his royalty demands. Don’t ask me how I know.
Heh. Two hour drive to look at a pool table today. The temps on the truck instrument panel went from 92 down to 69. About 75 right now after the rain.
Budget alternative: a Spirit Airlines fight game.
Yes. Cultural appropriation for 100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. Surely.
OK, this is getting too complicated and/or my aged memory is showing and/or something else…oh, yeah…stop calling me Shirley.
English football fans singing “Ten German Bombers” is loutish…
Say again all after hello? Racially offensive to whom? Last time I looked the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were shared by both countries (we won’t even get into the royal family nutrolls) and given the British Empire at the time I am pretty sure the RAF was more racially diverse than the Luftwaffe.
Live to serve.
New term dropped.
the ads seem to be aimed at the “youth” demographic.
“Show producers” =/= “network ad time salesmen”
And even in the later seasons Leonard doesn’t show any cultural awareness beyond pulp sci-fi and comics
Yes, that’s my point. All the math/science references and backyard science experiments (remember the cornstarch and water on the subwoofer? Or Leonard bouncing a laser off the Moon?) were removed in favour of pop culture references to D&D and board games – because the new audience demo doesn’t get the math & science jokes.
caught crap from my sister about it. Apparently Leonard is lucky to have her and we need to talk
Further proving my point. Penny was rehabilitated, while the male characters were made even more pathetic.
I think we’ll give that one a post of its own.
Comments that-a-way.
By cultural awareness I was referring to art and literature.
New term dropped.
For the record, 0.02% and that is probably an overestimate.
Band names: Ambiguous Genitals and Unambiguous Bollocks.
Remember when 10% of the population was gay?
Remember when 10% of the population was gay?
And now there’s an additional 10% that’s trans.
And they’re aiming for 100%.
Remember the battle cry “everyone is queer”?
Somewhere, C.P. Snow is crying quietly.
Speaking of literature, this
https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2024/06/16/california-democrats-at-odds-with-cops-businesses-over-bid-to-curb-massive-retail-theft-n4929924
which discusses getting “petty” criminals out of prisons,
reminded me of the passage from “A Clockwork Orange” where it is explained that the Ludovico treatment goal is to empty prisons of baddies like Alex, to ” make room for political prisoners”.
Like “1984” , these books are being treated as instruction manuals instead of warnings.