Honesty Box
With the nights drawing in – and with bills for renewing hosting, domain registration, security, and so forth all upcoming – it’s time to remind patrons that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain ad-free, there are three buttons below the fold with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. If what happens here is of value, this is a chance to show it.
If one-click haste is called for, there’s a QR code in the sidebar, at which you point your phone, and my PayPal.Me page can be found here. As requested, I’ve added SubscribeStar and Ko-Fi accounts, via which love may also be monetised, whether as one-off donations or monthly subscriptions.
Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link, or via the button in the sidebar, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Feel free to buy things wildly and in bulk.
For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last seventeen years, in over 3,000 posts and 200,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.
Do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.
As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.
By all means consider this an open thread.
Oh yes. The buttons:
May you never spend $80 on urgently needed tools, only to find some stashed in an odd corner.
Yeah, but add about 5 years worth of blessings. I have no life and live vicariously through David’s True Stories.
Mostly true.
I know. The intrigue is unbearable.
Oh, look, that thing that doesn’t happen happened again.
The sheer number of these occurrences can only mean the denial machine is going to start up soon: “xe/xir he/she/they aren’t “real” trans.”
On that idea about “populations consisting of 100% high school graduates” and all the rest.
Go ya one better… How about a population of 100% high school graduates that is also screened for physical/mental fitness and criminal records? How would that be, a paradise?
That’s the description of the US Army I served in for most of my career; along with that, you had the fact that you had to pass a fairly rigorous sort of training and winnowing out process for about 8-32 weeks, there at the beginning. D’ya think that made a difference?
If anything, the experience of dealing with the “ten percent” of that population that caused problems led me to seriously question the job our education system was doing. Most of them were stone-ignorant and utterly lacked any ability to work out cause-effect relationships, worked out in real life.
I’d be hesitant to use any criteria besides real-life performance to select groups. High school diplomas aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, these days.
I wish there were a workable solution for the world, that would bring it back into conformity with reality, but… I think there’s going to have to be an interregnum of sheer horror, before it penetrates a lot of skulls that what you wish just isn’t so.
And, that’s the essential problem with much of our “progressitariat”: They live in their heads, and they’ve built up this set of false expectation and beliefs that whatever they think must be or become reality, regardless of the observed effect those ideas have in the real world. That’s why so many of them keep demanding more money, more resources, to go down the rat-hole of whatever fantasy belief they’ve formed and convinced others to participate in… See, for example, any of the “homeless programs”.
I’ve a friend who used to be a counselor in those programs. She described the epiphany she had, after about the sixth or seventh attempt to get one guy “off the streets” in the three years she was with that agency. She was sitting there at her desk, talking to the client, and suddenly realized that he didn’t really want to “get off the streets”, all he wanted to do was scam some free benefits so he could go on about his life of drugs and dereliction… It took a bit for it all to penetrate her indoctrination, but it finally did, and she realized that she wasn’t doing anything to help anyone by where she was working and what she did. So, she got up, ushered her client out the door, and then walked into her bosses office and quit.
She’s been much happier, since.
See any of various columns that Theodore Dalrymple has written about his years working in prison and slum hospitals. 🙁
Thank you, David. Your tip jar has been hit.
Bless you, sir. May your cables be tidily organised.
How luxury beliefs work.
From the article: “When he grabbed my son’s arm, my dog attacked him and then he stumbled back off the stairs,”
GOOD boy! Hope the puppers got a very tasty steak for his deed.
And in celebration of said GOOD Boy, my good girl Roxy urged me to toss something into the tip jar.
PING
Crime at the University of Chicago:
The university is on the South Side, where black crime is a daily thing.
Men who pretend to be women have invaded the Daughters of the American Revolution.
High school diplomas aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, these days.
Yes! And neither are a significant number of university degrees–both undergrad and postgrad.
…suddenly realized that he didn’t really want to “get off the streets”, all he wanted to do was scam some free benefits so he could go on about his life of drugs and dereliction…
The bad machine doesn’t know it’s a bad machine and the progressitariat still believes the factory can fix the bad machine.
Crime at the University of Pennsylvania.
Leftwing mind virus comes for DAR.
Oh, there is such a thing.
See Nina Jankowicz “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation”.
Arielle Fodor is even worse.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/21/health/boundaries-kindergarten-holiday-wellness/index.html
Whoops, PST314, I posted on same subject (DAR) as you. My apologies for stepping on your post.
*inserts coin*
I don’t doubt it. Though again, Ms Heffernan, mentioned upthread, doesn’t provide any evidence to that effect regarding her neighbours, the ones who were neighbourly while she was away. There’s no mention of any actual transgression, or any obvious basis for disaffection, and no expectation that any actual wrongdoing need be mentioned – beyond the fact that they failed to vote for Mr Biden. For which they must atone. For which they must earn absolution. From their self-imagined betters.
And so, being progressive and therefore pious, Ms Heffernan badmouths them, luridly and breathlessly, in print, in an attempt to publicly humiliate them.
How dare they think differently while being thoughtful and obliging.
Bless you, madam, and bless you, sir. When heading out of town to visit a beloved sister-in-law, may you remember to take some decent coffee with you.
The thing about “aggressive niceness” is that it isn’t really all that nice…
It is also extremely stressful to deal with, in general terms. The people who’ve basically weaponized this “niceness” wield it as a tool in order to shut down criticism of their own incompetence and sloth.
All over the local healthcare facilities you’ll find these little signs telling you that they won’t tolerate any negativity or criticism. If you voice your displeasure with their rampant idiocy, then you’re “aggressive” and they’re going to take action.
I once heard the word “stress” defined as that which you undergo when restraining yourself from providing some dumbass with the beating they manifestly deserve. I think that’s true, and that all of this “niceness” is basically the way these people go about controlling the narrative, and thus, everyone else. You’re not “nice”? We’ll call the security people, or the cops, and have you charged. For criticizing us…
The other thing with this is that they demand acquiescence with every idiocy they come up with. I had to deal with this during my time driving my mother to her cancer treatments… The wheelchairs she needed were being kept at a different entrance than the one we had to use, and whenever I had to go get one, the jobsworthy in charge of that entrance would harass me for taking one of “his” wheelchairs. The whole thing was surreal, because as far as I could tell and anyone could tell me, there was no real distinction between entrances in terms of which type of wheelchair went where… He just refused to put the ones without the provision for oxygen tanks at the entrance we had to use, and that got in the way. Any attempt to question either his authority or the sense of the whole thing, and… Yeah. I got the feeling he wanted to call the cops on me, for my transgressions, but he really couldn’t.
People like that character infest most of our institutions. Look at what the FAA is trying to do to SpaceX… Same mentality.
I’ll wager you good money that there was some similar freak there when Columbus sailed, demanding signatures for supplies and what-not. Precisely the same sort of mentality on display at Isandlwana, with the ammo crates. Hordes of Zulus with spears coming at them, and the supply types are demanding signatures before issuing the ammo…
We used to know these things. Now it seems we have to pretend we don’t.
If he weren’t real – and a real danger – it might almost be funny. A bizarre comedy sketch.
[ Slurps coffee, compiles Friday’s Ephemera. ]
Some things are worth saying twice. 🙂
[ Hides breakables. ]
I have, in fact, encountered that phenomenon in my personal life: Leftists will deny that leftists are attempting to silence dissent, and when presented with examples will deflect by claiming that the individual was punished not for their views but for “incivility”.
He’s a big girl.
This is of more concern:
as there is a non-zero risk of a dancing monkey.
[ Wipes bar, whistles nonchalantly. ]
Cluster B leftist imagines a Better World:
As I may have mentioned before, I once knew a “progressive” of awkwardly moderate intelligence who was chronically traumatized by the plethora of supermarket choices. Numerous varieties of chicken noodle soup from various brands was just too much for her to handle. And suggesting ways for her to cope didn’t help. Clearly the only reasonable solution is to eliminate choice. (The online crank’s claim that the choice is “fake” ignores the fact that these soups are all different in various ways and will appeal to people with different palates and needs.)
[ Overcome by shame over failure to save more than a couple contributions. ]
That’s not how shopping works. Or indeed self-contemplation. And I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than, say, eleven seconds choosing which type of peanut butter I’d like. I somehow doubt that any great reimagining of my life, or of the world in general, would otherwise have occurred to me during those eleven seconds.
And a person who is emotionally exhausted by a choice of peanut butter seems unlikely to steer us towards some radical enlightenment and profound personal growth. But apparently, we’re to take lessons in self-improvement from someone who is prevented from flourishing and ushering in utopia by the fact that more than one type of peanut butter exists.
Such titans walk among us.
I bet she thinks she’s the first person to come up with that too.
Cyclist charm school. A debate ensues.
“transgression fetish”
Except early in one’s life when one first begins shopping for oneself.
Or, in my case, again when I went on a low-carb/almost-zero-sugar diet.
And occasionally when a favorite brand disappears.
These are deeply “troubled” people. And yet they presume to tell us how to live.
“dealing with racial trauma. Please send money to fund my healing journey.”
Look at this terrible kerning. Just look at it!
Well, yes, a fleeting period of know-nothing novelty. But people generally buy whatever they bought last time, whatever is familiar and acceptable. Which is why online grocery shopping has a ‘favourites’ option to save the customer needless farting about. This accounts for the overwhelming majority of grocery shopping.
Only occasionally is there a departure from this – a new and sufficiently intriguing brand, a whopping discount, or something. Again, people don’t generally ponder all of the conceivable options for every kind of item on their shopping list. That would be hilarious. Or, if you were stuck behind them, legitimate grounds for murder.
That’s why you can think about other things while you’re food shopping.
Heh. Well, yes. You could even use your “mindspace” to ponder “What person shall I become?” If that’s your thing.
I, of course, glide around the local supermarket with both poise and machine-tooled efficiency. Even the deli counter and wine aisle, where some browsing might be expected, barely slow me down.
It should be a sport.
Rather like solving every new problem in math and physics by starting from first principles rather than from what has already been established.
Did you see the item on Twitter about the thief who was tied to a sign post with plastic shrinkwrap?
I often find myself stuck in the checkout line behind women who spend an astonishing amount of time rummaging in their purses, finding the wallet and coin purse, counting the cash, counting the change received, putting away the wallet and purse and receipt, and miscellaneous fiddling/tidying.
My local supermarket introduced a personalised online voucher system, a kind of loyalty rewards thing, but it’s not been well thought-out, or particularly well-received. The result of which is that I often find myself at the checkout behind someone faffing about with their phone, trying, often vainly or at great length, to find their selected products. It slows everything down and generates a fair amount of embarrassment, as the atmosphere of testing others’ patience becomes more difficult to ignore.
Why they couldn’t just have a card that gets scanned, resulting in a discount, I will never know.
You’re misinformed on the meaning of the word ‘cranks’. The grandparents of children today danced to that tune. Some people read/understood the lyrics and raised concerns. Those people were called cranks.
Heh. Timed my wife at 45 seconds deciding which can of tuna to buy. Mock if you will but the struggle is real. For some people.
Yeah…yeah…some on the right will do that as well. “Incivility” is a rather universal trump card (npi) for avoiding the underlying issue or as an escape route when cornered logically. Usually after frustrating the hell out of the “uncivil” one with irrelevant, well refuted arguments.
Added: why is it “incivility” but not “incivil”? “Uncivil”? Stupid language. Fight me.
That would drive me to distraction. There would be shouting and gestures.
Don’t tell her I said that. I’m sure she had her reasons.