For newcomers, some items from the archives:
Hard To Tell If It’s Going Well.
The thrill of atomised dairy products.
Here, let me bring you artistic sustenance, with some “performance documentation” from Manhattan’s Grace Exhibition Space. The mighty talent featured in the following video is artist, educator and “community organiser” Alex Romania, whose work teeters on the edge of profundity, as will doubtless become clear, via juddering and convulsion, and the strategic deployment of twenty-five pounds of powdered cheese.
New Niche Indignation.
On transgender dinner parties, where competitive upset is the sweetest dish.
Readers are invited to ponder the prospect of a dinner party at which, in order to be polite and suitably affirming, you’re obliged to insinuate that the host is rapist material. And to do it convincingly. Rather than, say, compliment the cooking or the décor.
Sudden-Onset Womanhood.
On gender-bending Bond and other modern wonders.
We’re also told, “A gendered spin on the character can open up more potential for exploring Bond’s individuality.” And this exploration of the character’s individuality will apparently be achieved by erasing a rather fundamental aspect of the character – his maleness – and replacing him with an entirely different person of a different sex.
Readers are invited to ponder whether similar transitions might enrich the character of, say, Miss Marple, who, via similar logic, could be depicted as male, and as always having been male. Thereby exploring her individuality.
Answers on a postcard, please.
The recent, sex-swapped iteration of Doctor Who is invoked as a “positive example” on this front, as if Jodie Whittaker’s brief, unloved manifestation had been a rip-roaring success – despite the terrible writing and wildly unpopular retconning, both loudly derided by fans, and despite the subsequent, rapid death-spiral of viewing figures. Because boring and alienating much of your audience, and shrinking it dramatically, is a political triumph. A breath of “new life.”
Big City Dreams.
On London’s struggling artists. Terms I use loosely.
At which point, readers may suspect that the imperative is not so much being creative, but being creative
in London, a notoriously expensive city, but in which one can draw attention to the fact that one lives and works in London, a notoriously expensive city. Thereby glowing with a kind of location status.
Readers may also note the article’s, shall we say, coyness regarding the art on offer – all that cruelly underfunded creativity. None of which is displayed to sway readers of the Observer. The nearest we get is a photo of Ms Kwan standing next to a creation that we cannot actually see, and a photo of Grayson Perry in a hideous frock.
Our Betters Stroke Their Pets.
The hounds of love.
Other questions generated by means of Queer Theorising include, “Do I think I’m having sex with my dogs when they kiss my face?” Apparently, for Dr Kathy Rudy, a Professor of Women’s Studies, being licked by a dog is difficult to distinguish from kissing grandma on the cheek or being lost in a full-on erotic fever. And thus, we’re told, “The line between ‘animal lover’ and zoophile is not only thin, it is non-existent.”
For those craving more, The Year Reheated is a pretty good place to start.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Perhaps discriminating against “queers” is entirely rational.
Is that a wallet in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
If anyone scores a date via this thread, there will be a handling charge.
The word infestation came to mind.
Ezekiel 23:20.
The lanyard class […]
No, that is just when he woke up and noticed it, the real world has been using it that I can attest to since as at least the ’60s.
Bullshit jobs: in the recent E coast dockworker strike it came out that they do not want any decrease in jobs due to automation….and there are already 10%+ of them getting a paycheck for doing nothing. Professors who never publish. Univ admins that keep proliferating.
Back when Trump was a dem and NYC real estate developer, the city had tried for years to repair the famous ice rink they had. Trump said “let me try” and got it done in 6 months and didn’t even charge the city.
[ Once again does slightly farcical stretching exercises. ]
[ Once again does slightly farcical stretching exercises . ]
again
The only alternatives to meritocracy are various forms of corruption.
And some cultures and subcultures seem to be much more inclined towards such corruption. A tendency towards mental illness can only exacerbate that.
I didn’t know men could even get en pointe, let alone dance that way.
Sliding scale?
Wow.
I knew they were stupidly indiscriminate, but this?
Since I can’t hot-link to PowerLine’s The Week in Pictures, here’s something to contemplate while nursing sciatica:
meritocracy: actual studies of countries with big tendency to nepotism showed it to be a real drag on the economy. Particularly if someone started a business, as soon as it got going they were expected to give all their relatives jobs, whether competent or not. Dragged down all attempts to start a business.
Treasury: next we will hear that stopping fraudulent payments will hurt the ghetto dwellers and is thus unjust. I did wonder how so much covid $ vanished. The more you know.
It’s not their money.
Heh…well, since you went there…the word condom did come up once or twice…
And we know that they benefit in manifold ways from indiscriminate spending.
And if you need to hook up with other vendors, you are expected to contract with the friends of friends and relatives, and you can’t demand quality or efficiency of them, because they’re friends, and you can’t afford to lose social contacts.
Or if you get a government position, you are expected to use your access to get all kinds of stuff for relatives and cronies.
I don’t know how you persuade a whole society to switch to our method of No Conflicts of Interest, because compared to the crony method, it’s cold-hearted, impersonal, and cruel (you have to be willing to fire vendors or employees who don’t perform, even if they’re friends).
Which, I kinda wonder how we managed to do the No Conflicts of Interest system ourselves, because the crony method appears to be the human default.
If you want to hang on to the crony system, well, OK, but then you can’t complain that Americans or Westerners are preying on you, making you poor.
It was an amazing and unusual achievement…which many bad actors seek to undo.
Palate cleanser: classic music video
Relevant
.
I’m not sure how much more “enrichment” Europe can stand. More here.
Geographical determinism.
It originates in the Scandinavian countries, gets brought to England during the Viking Age, then finds its way into English culture and gets spread around the Western world.
When resources are scarce and the climate harsh, your tribe will be very small and very local. Everyone works; there can be no slackers or valuable food gets wasted. You need to trade with the homestead/tribe on the other side of the ridge to survive, but you’re not related to them and might only see them once or twice a year at the thing, so you have no particular connection to them. Cattle raiding is ultimately self-defeating because you don’t have the manpower to absorb losses in a border skirmish.
So you develop ways of trading and interacting based on trust and reputation rather than kinship ties.
You get something similar in Bronze Age Greece with the practice of xenia. Again, small, remote, precarious communities for whom trading is essential for survival.
Excellent recommendation.
They talk about the “frenzied” (Marc’s word) application of “fairness” such that companies’ hiring practices are illegal no matter what they do.
If they try to apply any standard to measure competence — no matter how objective it can be proven to be — if it has disparate impact among any set of groups that can be imagined, it’s not legitimate.
It’s become obvious to me that the activists would gladly see companies flounder, thrash about, and even collapse because of an incompetent workforce, as long as their spoils system is in place, as long as they have the palanca to force companies to bend the knee, they’re good with it.
They don’t care a bit about the most competent being hired, because they think anyone can be put into any slot and trained to do the job. People who think like that must themselves be mediocrities and midwits who are either unable to detect degrees of competence beyond their own, or they harbor pathological resentment against those who are more competent and therefore more successful.
That degree of resentment is characteristic of covert narcissism, which is tough to detect, because it’s not bombastic and obvious. Many covert narcissists are good at cloaking themselves in the trappings of virtue.
I’m not an Ayn Rand acolyte, but her thesis in many of her writings about midwits and mediocrities banding together to take down the competent is depressingly accurate.
Resentment will poison your mind, says J. Peterson (IQ 150), and apparently it will also poison and kill the entire Western world.
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
― Robert Heinlein
Me:
Glenn Reynolds has the same worry:
historians had figured out that during a 200 yr period, Greece had increased per capita productivity. The secret turned out to be a network of vetted, authorized trading agents that reduced the deadweight of trade that distrust causes. Not sure if it is xenia Ream mentioned.
I read an interesting account of the 18th and 19th Century industrial revolution in England. It was not really supported by the gov and there were in fact all sorts of protectionist laws and rules in place, but the revolution happened so fast that by the time the gov noticed that entire industries had been made obsolete, it was done and the new industry was a big success. It was progress by neglect.
Just an ordinary roller with gray paint.
Savin’ the world.
Though frankly if it were up to me, I wouldn’t use industrial gray but something warmer, given the color of the floor and bricks.
Pantone 469 oughta do it.
It seems that his 4 years being persecuted (and shot) has given Trump a clarity of vision that he lacked before. He is hitting every target. Removing security detail from Fauci. Removing security clearance from Milley and the 51 NatSec officers that signed the Hunter laptop letter. Opening the spigots for S CA. Canceling DEI. Pardoning J6. Telling FBI they may not target catholics or parents. Ending restrictions on appliances. Ending EV incentives/mandates. One after another. I never thought I would see this. My wife hated trump the first time around but now she loves him. That is what the crazy dem policies did.
Oh, and the dems are now admitting they need illegals to pick their crops. hahahaa they never change.
He is.
And I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, i.e., what the Dems do in retaliation. I don’t know how much of what he does is going to stick.
OTOH, maybe enough people like getting out from under the woke scolds that they won’t stand for it coming back.
“This really does deserve to be cast in solid platinum and hung in the Smithsonian.”
IMHO I’m still hopeful for success specifically because Trump 2.0 is treating everyone in the Fed civil service with abject suspicion. It was absolutely delicious to see Musk go into the OPM and lock everyone out of the computer system.
YES.
Those duplicitous bastages deserve to have the hammer of competence dropped on them from a great height.
Our chorus of prophets and wise, wise men ain’t what it was.
Assuming it ever was.
[ Sound of slightly farcical stretching exercises. ]
When someone I know only casually raises these subjects – say, by signalling their affirmation of workplace “diversity” policies – and I’m obliged, reluctantly, to reply, I have on occasion used the words unhinged or compelled neuroticism. Such descriptors are invariably objected to, quite emphatically, as if the very idea of a widespread unspooling were outlandish and impossible. As if supposedly good intentions could never, ever have ludicrous and alienating consequences.
I may then list two or three quite vivid real-world examples, regarding which such terms are warranted. Typically, this information is not absorbed. I may offer to share more examples, across several spheres, and suggest further links and video evidence. This too is declined. Which makes any meaningful conversation on the subject rather difficult. The posture has been assumed, the role of the pious, and challenges to that posture, that status, are neither welcome nor expected.
See also, recent rumblings on the subject of Net Zero policies and their obvious consequences.
In the instances mentioned above, the dynamic was basically,
I paraphrase, of course. But not by much.
That is what the crazy dem policies did.
Crazy dem policies? How dare you impugn these titans of diversity, inclusion, and equity.
Totally unrelated, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last to wear women’s clothing”
Of all the things to claim to have invented, an odd choice, but get your tickets now.
As I am injured and being all handsomely heroic about it, I’m being taken out for a fortifying pub lunch.
For the rest of you, those of you not being taken out for lunch, I’ve left cold tongue sandwiches on the bar.
“You must elect…” Do they even hear themselves?
Did Jefferson Davis culturally appropriate it or the other way around?
[ Childhood trauma triggered. ]
Thots & Trots: A Socialist Singles Mixer.
Regardless of one’s opinion of RFK Jr., it appears Caroline may have some insight.
This guy again – assuming any of his BS is real, sooner or later I would imagine he will FO from his FA.
European Languages according to the Dutch
“The people who understand things have no power but to scream at the people who don’t understand them, and they never listen, because stupid people don’t know they’re stupid. They will try communism again.“
There’s more supposition than evidence at work there.
There is a difference between protecting the rights of the minority and privileging the minority.
The enlightened, the anointed, the painfully woke, so sensitive to every quecto-aggression, is incapable of noticing those necessary, fundamental distinctions that surround us.
Wm. Shakespeare, late, of Stratford-upon-Avon, would disagree.
Cold tongue of what?
Ice axes optional.
Wm. Shakespeare, late, of Stratford-upon-Avon, would disagree.
Thespis and Euripides were also unavailable for comment.
I was, understandably, reminded of this:
“Our politics reflect who we are!!!!!” said Mindy Isser, co-creator of the socialists-only dating platform. Which is rather the problem, I think.
[ Notes plate of untouched sandwiches. ]
[ Puts plate of untouched sandwiches under bar for tomorrow’s clientele. ]
Restrooms: once I had my perhaps 8 yr old daughter with me at a McD on S side chicago and she needed the restroom but the women’s was closed for cleaning or something. I checked restroom and was empty so I sent her in. A black male came up while I was guarding and I explained and he was like “no problem man” and he patiently waited. Even in bad parts of town men used to know these things.
I now have an adjustable standing-sitting desk. I am standing as I type.
Though I don’t see why I should be the only bugger on his feet.
I’m also having to adjust to a new full-size keyboard. The number of typos is maddening.
Even in bad parts of town there are plenty of good people.
Homina, homina, homina…Trudeau channels his inner Kamala.
Clear as mud.
A “Heh” via the Critical Drinker.
The scene with an amplified Gerald – still incomprehensible and now much louder – still makes me laugh. And the attempt to cook chillies.
The original Star Wars was made by a visionary. The reboots by a committee of woke midwits with no idea about story-telling. Same with anything Disney touches now. They probably believe the woke lie that anyone can do any job, that excellence is just a ruse for white supremacy.
Over 7 years since his arrest, and this serial killer’s trial has still not begun.
But can they launch their car?
Maybe not.
We’ll be assessing mad dogs for mental competency soon.
I sometimes wish for separate trials: First, did he do it, followed by was he mentally competent.
Of course, we also need to address the question of the mental competency of the teachers and politicians and journalists and “activists” who incessantly scream about “white supremacy”.
Convicted 23 times. On parole for 3 more burglaries. Arrested yet again. Sent home on parole without even an ankle monitor.
The Queen of Hearts approach seems indicated in these cases.
Many problems can be attributed to liberal tolerance of the intolerable.
I’d suggest a fire extinguisher but, as we’ve seen, there aren’t any in the vicinity.
LOL (via CoderDyne)
when you say “don’t judge”, eliminate shame, and declare everyone a victim, it is easy to justify letting criminals go.
“The number of typos is maddening,”
Those of us who are Ancient of Days and grew up with not only real keyboards but actual (gasp) typewriters, and lack the questionable evolutionary benefit of minithumbs, are somewhat lacking in sympathy,
Still have my portable Smith-Corona.
The greatest crime fighter the world has ever known
Nothing better than genuine English cheesecake.
The horror, the horror!
Listen to how he talks about the girl’s mother: “parent,” “they.” Not a single female noun our pronoun for her.
And yet he’d flip tables if he were misgendered.
I guffawed.
Head.
Spinning.
¡Viva la libertad carajo!
The original Star Wars was made by a large team of people, mostly by overriding Lucas’ “vision”. Lucas unfettered got us the prequel trilogy.
The biggest myth George Lucas ever created was his own.
Sampling your morning bathroom routine.
Quoth Colin
It’s more likely the GOP will eff up so badly that everyone will want to change the ruling party again.
As noted the morning after the election:
You’d think that repel invaders and uphold the most basic of laws wouldn’t be too much to ask of a government. And yet.
And so.
[ Once more, the sound of slightly farcical stretching exercises. ]
Not entirely unrelated, from the new Vice Chair of the DNC.
May I introduce you to the Klangphonics?
Also, it occurs to me that protesting the deportation of illegal migrant criminals by burning the US flag, while waving the Mexican flag, is not the most persuasive of optics.
Speaking of…
Read downthread a piece.
It’s related, and probably originated with xenia. Xenia was the custom of guest-friendship, the idea that mutual hospitality was owed between random guests and kings of sea-towns. It’s fairly easy to see this evolving as a necessity to make trading possible at all.
What’s interesting about xenia is that it doesn’t just bind you and the king; it binds your entire houses and descendants. There are scenes in the Iliad where a Trojan and Achaean warrior meet on the plains of battle, and as part of the ritual engage in a bit of swaggering, naming their ancestors and great deeds only to discover that three generations back one of their grandfathers hosted the other. Since it would be unthinkable for them to fight, breaking the xenia between their houses, they exchange armour as a sign of renewed friendship and go off to find other enemies to slaughter. The xenia was so important it overrode the war.
One of my classics profs used to joke that the real reason the later Bronze Age Greeks were traders and merchants instead of warriors was that by the time of the Argonautica everyone had visited everyone else and there was no one left to fight.
If you’re going to introduce an obnoxious sound as your foundation, at least choose a cat.
Or an unbalanced washing machine during spin cycle.
Or a newer washing machine’s little ditty.
Apparently, if you’re going to hike around b’ar country, don’t bring bear spray, bring a cat.
Supporting evidence: youtube query for “cat chasing bear“
I bring news from academia.
Never has so much been made of such a small claim on the public’s attention.
Still, it’s nice to know that particularly malignant strain won’t be contaminating the gene pool.
@dicentra,
Hold my beer.