Friday Ephemera (735)
You first. || For the latest eye-colour fashion. || Fortresses, palaces and perched churches, a thread. || Could you survive a nanosecond on the Sun? || Well, really. || Make way. || Well, you would. || Namibian waterhole livestream. || How to climb volcanoes. || Will Newquay ban beatniks? || Is language dumbing down? || Our betters wring their hands. || Obligatory crotch grab. || Grooming scenes. || “I can’t even imagine what parent would buy this for their daughter, a child under five years old.” I can. || Incoming. || An excess of dramatic tension. || Help/hazard ratio. || Is your blue my blue? || How snakes move. || Atomic trampoline. Making one isn’t easy. || Today’s word is professionalism. || Sunfish of size. || And finally, from questions asked back in 1975: Are aliens abducting England’s dogs?
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It has been remarked that one has to repeatedly commit rather serious crimes in order to spend any time in a British prison.
And worse, the powers that be are now, in their “wisdom”, releasing those criminals early in order to make room for those protesting immigration policy in the wake of the Southport stabbings. [ For future readers outside the UK: July 29, Southport England, 3 little girls killed, 8 more wounded, plus 2 adults, by a son of third world immigrants. ]
I’m just going to leave this here. The statistics alone may widen eyes.
Indeed. Indeed. My parents seriously considered sending me to a private school with many classes for high achieving kids, but ultimately sent me to the neighborhood public school. (Two chief reasons: The private school was expensive and would have eaten into my college fund. And as a lower middle class kid I would not have fitted in with these kids from wealthy suburbs who vacationed in Europe etc.) If I had gone to that school I wouldn’t have had all that contact with working class kids, poor kids, and pathological welfare-dependent ghetto kids. And thus I would not have learned the lessons I did which served to somewhat inoculate me against the nonsense imparted by college professors and the public intellectuals who filled so many periodicals.
It’s also worth noting that those same liberals and leftists obstruct and bar entry by conservatives: If you’re a conservative, then you are morally unqualified for any profession that has anything to do with helping people. Or so they think and claim.
Very very fancy
Ooh, fancy pants rich McGee over here . . .
Theodore Dalrymple, who worked for many years in a prison hospital, said that the prisoners he spoke with freely admitted to committing roughly an order of magnitude more crimes than the authorities knew about.
You don’t hate leftists enough. You may think you do, but you don’t.
And let’s not forget the Guardian‘s Zoe Williams, who scolds those who would rather not live next door to feral neighbours – specifically, the kinds of creatures who blast out loud music at 3am, and who hurl pets from upstairs windows:
Ms Williams’ own children, since you ask, are named Thurston and Harper. Which probably tells us much of what we need to know.
As I can tell you’re curious, here’s Mr Murgatroyd, mentioned above, with three of his twelve children. Everyone in the photo is subject to Antisocial Behaviour Orders for repeatedly terrorising their neighbours.
Here’s Mr Murgatroyd exchanging views with the mother of his children:
It’s tempting to imagine a reality TV show in which the Murgatroyds move in next door to Zoe Williams, our Guardian columnist, so that they could chat over the garden fence, while their respective children have jolly times together.
I would SO watch that.
It would, I think, be a ratings smash. Pure car-crash television.
But this is the fantasy world Ms Williams and her peers inhabit.
The solution portrayed in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age comes to mind:
Regarding Mr. Murgatroyd…
I had to look up what the hell Ribena was and found this recipe, I never want to hear another word from the UK about Jell-O salads.
Which reminds me – in the bottom of the fridge, laid flat and partly hidden, there’s a large and rather unattractive bottle of Fanta. It’s been there for some time, untouched. I think it came free with a pizza.
Maybe I should throw it at some passing orphans.
I never want to hear another word from the UK about Jell-O salads
I think you just happened on to one of those recipe sites that specialise in seeing how far they can go to gross people out. Ribena is actually a very pleasant blackcurrant cordial (properly diluted). Drink, yes but cooking with it, no way.
It’s as if people watched the film A Clockwork Orange and sympathized/cheered on the main character Alex.
I think you just happened on to one of those recipe sites that specialise in seeing how far they can go to gross people out.
Nope, it is a legit recipe site, though they don’t know the difference between shepherd’s pie and cottage pie. OTOH, making either with ground turkey is gross.
That is one way to generate clicks.
Although there are people with, shall we say, odd ideas about what’s tasty.
But perhaps nothing can top the people who embrace nasty food because of its ethnicity. Hence people who eat haggis (and tolerate no expression of dislike) because they became Robert Burns enthusiasts. Or people of Scottish ancestry with a fanatical loyalty to Stewart brand products and abhorrence of Campbell brand products–or vice-versa. Or people of Swedish ancestry with fanatical loyalty to Swedish brands. And then there’s ludefisk and fermented shark…
Sooner or later everyone comes around to Limburger, onion, and a spicy brown mustard on pumpernickel bread. And a beer. A strong one.
The British ruling class gets my vote. They created the problem and then proceeded to blame those victimised by their idiocy.
Agreed. That was, in fact, a rhetorical question.
Sing: “The cat came back, the very next day…”
That doesn’t terrible. Black currant isn’t repellent.
British cooking may have its flaws but things like this – with ‘chunks of tuna, pimientos, and cucumbers molded into lime Jell-O’ – can’t be excoriated enough.
There’s an image but it doesn’t want to upload for some reason (the error notification – a reverse image floating box that disappears before it can be read – is nearly useless).
[ Logs onto World Of Tat, orders more breakables, same-day delivery. ]
Jell-O crimes were a significant part of James Lileks’ book on food horrors.
Some extremist weirdo is on Twitter talking about freedom of speech.
That doesn’t terrible.
Neither does devils on horseback, yet here we are…
Black currant isn’t repellent.
Nobody said black currant was repellent, it is the combination of ingredients that is. e.g., Things That Don’t Go Together (see above).
[ Wonders what black currant wine would be like. ]
[ Wonders if it’s too early to pour a gin and tonic. ]
The statistics alone may widen eyes.
Well yes. El Salvador had its eyes opened and cracked down on gangs and dropped the murder rate from 106-per-100,000 to 2.4-per-100,000. So, in real life, if you incarcerate career criminals crime virtually disappears.
But, of course, according to Potemkin groups like Amnesty International, the cost is too high because “gang violence is being replaced by state violence.”
You can tell that they’re leftists. They believe the state doesn’t have the right to protect itself. That’s because they want to see the end of the state as we know it today in the West. But the kind of state they advocate would certainly defend itself.
Meanwhile, these tools are silent on real state over-reach. Has anyone seen them stand up for those who are being harassed and jailed for on-line posts? There aren’t enough cases of Ribena.
[ Wonders what black currant wine would be like. ]
Not sure about wine, but creme de cassis is widely available. Add a little to your flute glass and top with champagne and you’ll have a Kir Royale. That will give you a pretty good idea what black currant wine might taste like.
Sounds delicious.
People joke about elderberry wine, but any tasty fruit can make a tasty wine.
[ Sips gin and tonic. ]
And I’ll thank you not to judge me.
Many years ago I had a home-wine-making enthusiast friend. One Christmas he collected all the pine needles off his Christmas tree and made wine out of them. I’m not suggesting that you could get rich selling it, but it really wasn’t bad.
pst314:
An oft-repeated shibboleth.
We are talking about averages. The bell curves largely overlap. There are lots of potential engineers, nurses, plumbers, teachers, businesspeople in that overlap.
You might see underrepresentation among nuclear physicists and brain surgeons. And yes, overrepresentation among criminals.
But IQ does not explain why this never happened before.
When poor blacks have school choice – vouchers, church schools, etc. – the achievement gap is quickly closed for kids with semi-intact families and parents motivated/competent enough to get them out of the gubmint schools.
In places like New York (and I assume London) – the exact same government school system that once helped waves of illiterate immigrants enter the middle class within a generation, now have been subverted by the Left to create a dumb, dependent, resentful proletariat.
She deserves no less.
Well yes, of course.
But the extremes of the bell curves are key.
I’m not sure what you mean by “lots” but it doesn’t seem applicable.
The roughly 15-point difference in average IQ (one standard deviation) means that the pool of blacks who are capable of becoming engineers is extremely limited, while at the other end of the bell curve a much larger fraction of blacks than whites will be virtually unemployable. For instance, an IQ in the 120’s – 130’s is needed to succeed in engineering.
Do they really close the gap, though? Or merely narrow it? It is still the case that very few blacks go into the STEM fields. And furthermore, there is a lot of self-selection going on in that process, so we don’t know that those taking advantage of school choice are representative of the general population.
It would be great if the cause of the gap can be shown to be cultural, but the fact that the gap has persisted so long and the fact that IQ is largely heritable (maybe up to 70 percent) makes me gloomy.
That’s even crazier than the enthusiast who made it from Hawaiian Punch.
I would refer you to Thomas Sowell’s writing on Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. There was a time when government schools weren’t the failure we’ve come to expect.
She deserves much more.
Good and hard.
The over-subscription to charter school waiting lists indicates those taking advantage are more representative than not. Hence the panic of the teacher’s unions.
aelfheld: Time will tell.
The reason Haiti is an utter shit hole is because it is full of Haitians.
Only a liberal could be so stupid as to think savages are virtuous just because they are suffering–and therefore invite those savages here to do their evil unimpeded.
Oh god, retsina.
Retsina supposedly originated from the need to use pine resin to seal otherwise permeable wine vessels. The need is gone, so the pine resin should also be gone, dammit.
Three murdered Olympic athletes. A reminder that culture matters, and that the West should be very careful about who it allows to immigrate. And getting citizenship should be a very slow process to so that bad character is more likely to be revealed. It’s a pity that most liberals are too stupid to understand this.
Speaking of cultures, how about should we trust anything coming out of China?
Very plausible: Why George R R Martin cannot finish A Song of Ice and Fire
At some point we’re going to have to do something about these Cluster B nightmares.
Looking for something that’s a lot like Instapundit but it isn’t Instapundit. Suggestions?
Try a purple wine gum to see. (Purple sweeties are always the best tasting)
A Greek influence? Poor man’s retsina
When the newcomers start eating your protected species.
If you raise this matter – say, at a public meeting – then you’re obviously a racist, a scandalously bad person, because “the real issue is racism, pure and simple.”
Not, say, manners.
Somewhat related to the above:
Why, yes, dear reader. She did.
I’m assuming something has happened…
The NeverTrumper-while-pretending-not-to-be-NeverTrumper thing. Had enough of it. Especially that Driscoll guy. Posts the same crap over and over. The comments on his posts have become overwhelmingly about how nobody likes him. Rarely have I seen such contempt by consumers for the product being offered. It’s really quite tiresome. The serious news posts are increasingly diluted by the pretend-NeverTrumper-loser-wannabe stuff, stuff about going to da moooooon and Maaaars and spaaaaaace, the weakly substantiated hottest health news. It’s becoming a joke. It’s a shame because on substantial issues, it’s a decent source. Mostly because picking through the (sometimes unhinged) comments, especially given the volume of them, I can rather quickly get multiple perspectives on a given story.
Low testosterone predicts leftist opinion.
Only a liberal could be so stupid as to think savages are virtuous just because they are suffering–and therefore invite those savages here to do their evil unimpeded.
One of my biggest complaints with the Catholic Church, of which I am a practcing member, is the attitude of some that somehow poverty = nobility and much leeway is given to people of that socioeconomic status, even when demostrating they are, in fact, mean and callous. And rabid grifters of charity.
For instance, an IQ in the 120’s – 130’s is needed to succeed in engineering.
There is some difficulty with that graph, it shows teachers between 110 and 125. As the current crop is incapable of “Gathers, infers own information” they should probably be 85-100 along with nurse’s aides and clerks.
That’s even crazier than the enthusiast who made it from Hawaiian Punch.
Don’t be knocking Pruno, h8r.
Ooh, this. I see some of that in the Appalachian protestant “conservative” churches as well. An aside, we went to a different Catholic Church the last three weeks(wife is Catholic). Last week the lectern guy or wth he’s called brought up
glowball warmingclimate change and how it is devastating the poor of the world. We’ll be doing Baptist this morning. The two known entity Methodist options being of the “conservative” protestant kind I describe above or the rainbow Methodist ilk.I’ve given my reality-TV-show pitch a post of its own.
Comments that-a-way.
I believe that is exactly the calculation. There is no virtue in the liberal/woke world except to be oppressed. This is the only way they themselves can be virtuous is to exclaim on behalf of the “oppressed”.
As to IQ, Jordan Peterson has some great videos on it. If one takes an individual responsibility view, each person can try to do the best with what they have. I could lament that I have no sports ability or I can play to my nerdy strengths (which is what I have done). The not so bright can do ok if they just stay out of jail. My local hispanic painters and yard guys make a decent wage. If, however, you have a view that only cosmic justice is allowed, that all must end up equally rewarded by life, then infinite resentment and redistribution (ie theft) are the order of the day.
Low testosterone=progs
This matches with the data that lifting weights turns you conservative. The reason for low T in my view is that no one gets any exercise these days. Exercise increases your T.
Academic cheating in China: my one data point is my visit to a uni in China 25 yrs ago, my hosting prof proudly showed me his book that was a straight-up translation into Chinese of an american text which he then put his name on. It was also common practice to make copies of US software and distribute them–just pay for 1 copy for 100 people. In a university.
China is “a one copy country” as my employer said over 30 years ago.
To be fair, there is some disagreement over the reliability of that data. But I do find it plausible from my non-biologist point of view.
Some of the leftists I’ve known worked out regularly, but not many as I recall.
And of course we’re talking here about tendencies. Those overlapping bell curves again.
AND if they are not constantly prey to criminals who are never locked up.
One way to help the poor is to increase their security by putting away the criminals and the anti-social punks.
See also the deep thoughts of, again, Zoe Williams.
It’s a pity I can’t IM her each morning with my daily exercise.
I exercise more today than I did ten years ago, but I don’t think I’ve gotten more conservative. On the other hand, in relative terms I have because the liberals I used to know have moved farther to the left, often loony left.
This black racist scrunt should be denied all the protections afforded by the police, the courts, and the laws of the United States. All.