Friday Ephemera (726)
So how was your day at work, dear? || Some difficulty with heels. || Some difficulty with language. || “Decolonisation” dilemma: “A University of Oxford museum will not display an African mask because the culture which created it forbids women from seeing it.” || How the Dutch will take over the world. || My, how you’ve grown. || Sound on for title sequence. || Customer service. || Hazard sign. || Incoming. || This is London, 1981. || Scenes of enrichment. || Tricky manoeuvre. || Compressed towels. || Solving the three-stroller problem. || Today’s word is parenting. || The progressive retail experience, parts 557, 558, 559, and 560. || Always roller your squirrel. || The wheezing motor noise is particularly erotic. || And finally, in a friendly way, your French teacher says hi.
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Just how short is the average Scotsman?
The queer history of tanks.
And then there’s the British Navy: Rum, sodomy, the lash…and hermaphrodite brigs.
And don’t you put no pancake on my head neither, human!
So how was your day at work, dear?
Well this is the hooman version, well, sort of. NSFW
Some difficulty with heels.
I begged my dad to stay off the socials.
Tricky manoeuvre.
Reminds of my first joke book as a child which asked, “How do porcupines hug and kiss. Answer: “Very carefully.” This is just the adult version.
And finally, in a friendly way, your French teacher says hi.
A friendly reminder written on many a bathroom stall in my High School years:
“Beware, gay limbo dancers.”
Well this is the hooman version,
Never start a land war in Asia, never tattoo nethers if they might be loaded. He knew the job was dangerous when he took it.
Solving the three-stroller problem.
I Know this one professor, don’t take three squalling brats shopping to begin with.
The subtitles to the 1981 London are hilarious. The Bank of England, the old lady of Fred needle street… is merely one amongst thousands. Worth watching just for the words.
Also known as a prick
That article really needs to include a photo of the mask, so I, a male, can decide for myself. Women, avert your eyes.
With that hairstyle, you know there’s no innocent explanation.
*applauds*
Didn’t see that coming. 😀
“So how was your day at work, dear?“
Hey, at least it’s not figuratively!
Morning, all.
I laughed and I’m not sorry.
Heh. Well, the school’s changing explanations don’t exactly help on that front.
Though I’m still processing the idea that someone wearing a Covid mask in 2024 – a mask with “They/Them” pronouns printed on it, obviously – is happy to slither about on the floor of a school toilet stall. Where no bacteria or disagreeable material is ever, ever found.
Don’t lick your hands, madam.
[ Slurps coffee. ]
A choice was made.
Is it a Pokemon?
In case you missed them, a couple of items from the previous thread:
Inclusivity, baby.
And,
A thread on academia’s Clown Quarter and its claims.
See also this.
Long-form analysis, with stats, here.
Or you could just, you know, lose some weight.
Seems less trouble, frankly.
I think he may be manifesting his womanliness.
But. Why. Is. It. A. Dog?
Oh, I think we should leave that one for the ladies to answer.
[ Wipes bar, whistles nonchalantly. ]
I’m just going to leave this here, for no reason whatsoever.
She doesn’t think that she cares.
Someone should steal her car so she’ll understand. #teachablemoment
But we’ve been assured – by, among others, Nora the Socialist – that habitual car theft is a “victimless” crime.
Solving the three-stroller problem
Notable is the women gushing about how amazing this is, while the men are thinking “So rack and pinion steering. And?”
and 560
Those women are desi, which was not what I expected.
I do try to find a racial mix.
If they truly want to decolonize or whatever, why don’t they just return the mask to wherever they got it? Why is this so hard (for them)? Given their stated objective I don’t understand why they made it so complicated. Which makes me suspect a woman or women are involved in mucking this up, perhaps? Also, the obvious follow on question, so long as they keep the (probably hideous) thing, do they allow women who identify as men to see it? Prohibit men who identify as women from seeing it? What about the non-binaries?
When he was eight years old he was already over six feet tall.
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1803592693844709847/
Well, quite, esp the gender-fluid ones. I’m sure the eternal spirits of whatever-the-hell won’t take offense because it’s Tuesday, and you’re not wearing heels.
Also, can’t imagine it’ll be helpful for DEI recruitment scores to have a section of their storage labelled ‘testicle-bearers only’, or whatever they choose to project.
As clear a case as any of theory not surviving the encounter with practice.
If only there were some deep thinkers in some nearby institution who could be counted on to draw suitable conclusions from this failure.
From Tim Worstall in CapX yesterday.
Who said existential despair can’t be amusing now and again?
Wow.
Just wow.
Yes, but what happens to Mars?
[ Starts constructing interdimensional portal generator. ]
I’m more worried about the land bridge with France.
A choice was made.
Good enough for ships, good enough for a staircase.
Long-form analysis, with stats, here.
Exactly, I am guessing the “students” didn’t bother looking at the drivers (as that could be raciss), and have no clue whether the Mercedes, Lexus, Bimmer, or whatever is borrowed, used, or the owners in hock up to their eyeballs. The guy in the McLaren is just as likely to be a “rapper” as a hedge fund manager. The guy in the F-150, if it didn’t have a company name on the side, could be anydamnbody.
How the Dutch will take over the world.
They have been at it quite a while.
Speaking of cars and class, I am conflicted.
I thought Juneteenth was supposed to be the happiest time of the year.
I am guessing the “students” didn’t bother to do the actual legwork and just made up those statistics. Who verifies this stuff? Has this “experiment” been reproduced? Where? What were those results?
What about female curators, researchers?
Heh.
By the way, chappie also says that billionaires “don’t have a right to exist.”
@ Daniel Ream
If you adopt a very broad definition of ‘Desi’ that includes Roma, sure. Otherwise not.
Heh. So…my ignorance but ‘Desi’ being a new term to me, I looked it up (yes, on Wiki) and:
Now my initial reading of that, gypsy/Roma was the first thing that came to mind. But that’s as far as I read. After George questioned it, I went back and wasa bit surprised that neither of those words appeared in the (current version of) Wiki article. So in the etymology section I read:
Again, the gypsy/Roma sign is flashing in my head but still…?
Revenge served warm.
How long before there are suttee pyres in the forecourt?
Equity at the BBC: Hiring preferences for dead people.
Well, yes, that was a typo and it should have been deaf people. But still. . .
And “neurodivergent” people? People who cannot get along with others?
Hardcore disability, that.
Still waiting to hear from the ladies about this whole erotic dog sex toy business.
Was that a form of decolonization?
[ Fetches bag of gravel, catapult. ]
There should be one less French teacher on the planet.
Still waiting to hear from the ladies about this whole erotic dog sex toy business.
That would be a definite no from this one.
[ Starts list of yeas and nays. ]
Frog: if you put something on a cat’s head, they freeze, so evidently cats<frogs. Just sayin.
One goal of civilization is to make life safe for mothers with small children. Single men can tolerate much more disorder/danger. We are failing that test.
Decolonization museum: in North America, Native peoples are refusing to allow digging in native sites, or the display of artifacts, or the analysis of current or bone DNA. Often it is unclear who actually can speak for native peoples, so activists make the demands. It is self-erasure.
DEI: in the US, Congress passed the CHIPS act to bring chip manufacturing back to US. Ok, whatever. However, to get the billions of dollars you must be in a rural location, only hire local people heavily weighted to POC, you cannot import skilled labor even from the rest of the US, and you must hire felons. No company has succeeded in jumping through all the hoops and probably cannot. The fact that you need highly specialized talent to run such a plant escapes them. You cannot replace a materials scientist or elec engineer with a high school drop out.
Drinking establishments, take note.
Not unfair.
Jessa, by the way, the one drawing magical power from her keffiyeh, is an “organiser, socialist, podcaster.” She feels a need to mention her pronouns.
Her argument might go over a bit better absent the food stains on the top (shirt? blouse?).
Gender pay gap: 1) young single women in urban US cities make more than male counterparts. 2) for general pop, if you count time taken out for children, choice of career, hours worked, and dangerousness of job there is virtually no pay gap. Women do not want to be roofers or truck drivers (ok, 1% do).
Feminists simply cannot declare victory and go home.
She doesn’t think.
Calais won’t be any closer.
[ Fetches binoculars, glares across English Channel. ]
Hey, that’s my local station! The thing about the Glasgow Subway is that the rock under the city is notoriously hard, making tunneling difficult. So they dug the tunnels just as wide as they needed to be and no more, making it technically a narrow-gauge railway. That’s also why it’s never been expanded from the original 15 stations.
That said, there are proper-sized railway tunnels under the city, and if our network had developed in the same way as London’s, with all the various companies running urban passenger trains being consolidated into one before the “grouping” of 1923, we might easily have had a multiple-line metro.
Not at the Beeb, surely?
The real reason being that by doing those things the natives might find out they aren’t. Can’t have that, you know.
Jessa, by the way…
Indeed, because if there is one thing a podcaster in war torn Ontario regurgitating Teh Current Thing™ needs is courage.
[ Rummages in Lost Property box, picks out single, slightly sticky Polo mint, rolls it along bar to Mr Muldoon. ]
Yet strangely, my eyes were drawn to the blonde wig on the road.
She doesn’t think that she cares.
Right the criminal groups that are stealing cars by the container load and shipping them overseas to sell are “down” and “need it more than she does.” What a warped morality.
She needs a basic education.
Yet strangely, my eyes were drawn to the blonde wig on the road.
The inspiration for Suicide Blonde?
Teh Current Thing™
Like, down with the man, man! Do you think they realize that they are the man?
And she uses the word delusional.
And she uses the word delusional.
Perhaps, “poverty” is the name of a neighbourhood in Brooklyn.
The number of purportedly educated people who haven’t a clue as to the meaning of the words they toss around with abandon is frightening.
It’s the height that puzzles me more than the width: Wouldn’t they have seen it as important to make the subway cars tall enough for passengers to not have to duck their heads? Or did they really feel that this was an acceptable cost-saving measure?
On the other hand, it’s more fun to ignore facts and insinuate that 19th century Glaswegians were all hobbits. “It comes in pints? Brilliant!”
From the previous thread:
Double entendres perpetrated by British grocery chains, albeit not so niche.
Museum again: as to respecting cultures, that is why some western countries refuse to prosecute female genital mutilation and even honor killings.
Had strawberries and cream this very evening. And they were indeed plump. The plumpest I’ve seen. Practically the size of nectarines.
Hey, I’m just sharing my day.
The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All
Very old joke:
Socialist: “Come the Revolution, everyone will eat strawberries and cream!”
Bystander: “But I don’t like strawberries and cream.”
Socialist: [ visible anger ] “Come the Revolution, you will like strawberries and cream!”
[ New appetite is triggered. ]
I always found the references to the song more funny than the lyrics that were invented later to fit the jokes.
Agreed. We Can Rule You Wholesale is much better all around.
How does a medieval historian become a “net zero energy czar”?
What special expertise does he bring? (Never mind, I think we all know.)
I can see this competition becoming an Olympic Sport.
It’s been done.
I Laughed And I’m Not Sorry, “Innocent” Prison Scum division.
Quoth this bright light.
Say I:
Meanwhile, in Oakland CA, at the Juneteenth party:
https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=58592
Give a listen to the video. CA has some of the toughest gun laws in the world, but I distinctly heard at least one full-auto weapon firing in burst-mode, two separate times.
Apparently something like 50 shots were fired. No known fatalities.
And in other cities across America. Is that now the true spirit of Juneteenth?
We really do have a media class that’s morally disgusting. Note the familiar flattening of values, of violator and victim, such that the only thing that seemingly matters is to ensure no harm comes to the criminal. As Wanye says in reply, this kind of prattle is quite sickening in its perversity.
It implies a world in which the law-abiding just stand there, impotently, while criminals violate their boundaries and take their property. And then do it again to someone else. Only more emboldened.
A world utterly demoralised.
If only it were mere prattle instead of the guiding principle for too many attorneys general and district attorneys in the west.
Quite.
I’m now trying to imagine this worldview as the moral basis for a 1950s Western, in the which the hero does nothing, pointedly and piously, and indeed prevents others from acting in self-defence; thereby allowing the villains to continue preying on the townsfolk, with ever greater boldness.
And then the film ends.
It would not, I think, make for an uplifting movie.
Oh, and that thing that never happens has happened again.
Someone’s keeping score, right?
In happier news, dumplings and dogs.
Sounds like a pretty good reason to, you know, lose some weight.