Friday Ephemera (755)
Boobs in a jam, an obliging nudge. || Rice grain Gojira. || I’m no expert, but I don’t think that’s a guitar. || Feel the deep wisdom of her third eye. || Driving with intuition. || How to shrink your lungs. || Laughing while pregnant. || Little helpers. || The progressive retail experience, parts 609, 610, 611, 612, and 613. || Beef pottage and other thrills of the Medieval tavern. || You know, I question the physics. || Big and clicky, the way you like ’em. || On the problems of a billion-story building. || Tibetan sky burial. || Bottled for freshness. || Espionage essentials. || Question asked. || Taking out the trash. || More adventures in trash management. || His “first ever lesson” is to make small children memorise his own fabulist pronouns. || And finally, one to be filed under poolside etiquette.
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I know several YouTubers (Critical Drinker, Nerdrotic, etc.) who absolutely adore this shitshow because they’ve been making bank off of videos critiquing it.
Nerdrotic, especially, because he’s a Tolkien buff (among other interests) and his dissection of how they’ve destroyed the canon is a beautiful sight.
One of the greatest tank names of all time.
Demanding the exclusion of those who differ with you then calling them insular would be considered hypocritical by any rational being. Lucky for her she doesn’t suffer from that burden.
Cretaceous lot lizards
Yoko Ono turned 92 yesterday.
David’s getting good at the squirrel-whispering business.
Robert Palmer’s back-up singers haven’t aged well.
Wise sound engineer kills Yoko’s mic while performing with Chuck Berry. His expression when she starts caterwauling is hilarious.
Seven weeks is long enough for Cluster B behavior to become manifest, and given her behavior afterwards, she must have manifested some pretty crazy stuff, because he got a restraining order at the same time as the annulment.
He might also be a real piece of work, so who knows.
The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” — Luke 18:11-12
I will admit to being boring. I also score extremely high on Trait Openness.
Assumption denied.
Shades of Gillray.
I had to look it up. Quoth Ai: “An ASVAB waiver is a request to serve in the military despite not meeting the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) score requirements.”
Sun dogs.
Not to be confused with rain dogs.
Those little details.
I can’t think of a better motto for Philadelphia.
I like the guy nodding along with the Yass Queen face behind her. Do these idiots hear what she is saying? (assuming she did say it – sound is off on my browser by default).
Oh and Ping! good sir. Happy belated blog birthday.
Bless you. Should you be adding a good cheese to your garlic and rosemary crackers, and should you discover that one of said crackers has an alarming crack, may you avoid complete cracker failure thanks to a generous application of butter.
Heh.
Who are those two people? I read through a few of the comments but literally could not get a clue. I find that I have pretty much stopped absorbing any more pop culture stuff.
That’s transgender doctor “Beth” Upton, who made a complaint about a female who refused to share a changing room with him.
If anyone ever needed a remote control mute switch it was her.
I was thinking about Yoko today after watching a bit of the “Get Back” documentary. Paul and Ringo were pretty chill about her being there, and even if they didn’t like it, they felt it was none of their business. If John wants here there, she stays. Besides, Paul had Linda there, too.
Seeing her there, it occurred to me that she was acting as a mother support to John, who lost his mum while a child. But then, my wife and I like being together often.
92 years old, which means her widowhood’s eligible for social security. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Wait a minnit, it’s only 45 years ago, not 65. Me can adddd so good no mo. Still, the point holds.
I think you’re on to something. Paul and Ringo were happy to have her there because John was stoned out of his mind for most of the session. I had always thought that Paul was over the top controlling with the band, but after seeing that doc, it was clear someone had to take charge.
The anger that George was carrying was palpable and Paul was extremely condescending towards him. It’s no wonder George came out of the breakup so strong with so much material.
This thread.
One winner.
WowWowWowWow.
I’d seen excerpts of J.D. Vance’s speech in Munich, but now I’ve heard it all, and daaaaayum.
Here’s his line of argumentation:
This security meeting is about “defending democracy.”
That’s great, but y’all are forgetting what “democracy” is.
Back during the cold war, it was democracy vs. tyranny. Which side engaged in censorship and viewpoint suppression? It wasn’t the democracy side.
Here are some examples of y’all acting like Soviets.
Are you defending democracy or are you defending entrenched interests? If you’re “running scared” from your own populace, it’s gotta be the latter.
Whatever your goals are, you won’t achieve them without the people’s support. Because you’re mistreating people, you lose that support.
Get back to democratic principles like free speech. Then maybe you can get stuff done.
***
His phrasing is far more diplomatic than mine. It’s remarkable. I have to wonder how that kind of speech lands with those rulers.
If they’re sociopaths and malignant narcissists, they will not be pleased at being called out.
If they’re thick-headed midwits, it will go over their heads.
If they’re functional adults with a conscience, it should shame them into better behavior.
But I have a feeling this speech wasn’t really meant for those present. It was meant for the European population to realize they’re not being well-served by these tyrants and to insist on better treatment.
I’m truly impressed.
Latest Twitter drama: An alleged tradwife account turns out to be run by an obese single woman who has a rap sheet.
If only she’d identified as a tradwife everything would be fine.
From last July, a handy rule of thumb:
RTWT
Chinese sex doll maker sees jump in 2025 sales as AI boosts adult toys’ user experienceWMDoll founder Liu Jiangxia says the integration of generative AI models ‘makes the dolls more responsive and interactive’
AI has its uses?
Personally I feel the same way. But there can be practical considerations, such as
A decaying body is repulsive, and that can’t be avoided, regardless of the particular process.
He also called the trans surgeons “butchers”. I feel the same way, but him saying that can’t’ve helped.
Jesus healed people on Shabbat, sending the Pharisees into apoplexy, and I wondered why He didn’t avoid healing on Shabbat so as to not provoke them.
Then I realized it’s because their rules against healing on Shabbat (or taking up one’s bed, or whatever else they’d come up with) were fake rules — not commandments of God but scholastic impositions that were being used by the ruling class to browbeat the populace.
You can’t serve God without offending the devil. You just need to figure out who’s who before you act.
Rainbow parade in NZ is interrupted by an enthusiastic haka.
Nate: re sky burials, pretty sure that (it being Tibet) those are wound into the unvoiced reasons behind the practice — but if memory serves the Parsee of the subcontinent have the same approach and the usual explanation is that dead bodies contaminate earth, fire and water equally. Which doesn’t leave a lot of options out there.
Or maybe it’s the Jains … been rather a while since I was looking into stuff like that,
The Greeks might be said to resort to the same practice occasionally, though for purely emotional and political reasons. Antigone’s obsessive cause was burying her brothers’ bodies which had been left on the battlefield to the scavenging dogs and carrion birds by their uncle Creon — vengeance was a constant in Greek drama.
Looks like they’re doing the haka all over the place.
I didn’t see that coming. I’m guessing those Most Social Harm calculations must be well underway.
Man with naff nail polish talks about stealthy travelling, cat litter.
So Meghan Markle is the American Yoko Ono?
Sky burials.
Or shallow grave burials. Or car trunk burials. Or hastily thrown tarp covering burials.
But all for the common good.
If this post is continuing for the weekend, I need another bookmark for the comments.
Tremble, all ye Nazis.
Tim Worstall, here.
Meanwhile
on Sproketsat the Left Party Congress……in case you were wondering.
Exactly the kind of chap to be entrusted with power and matters of importance.
Mediocre yte man has an opinion.
“My name is legion”.
I’ve been seeing that claim from numerous liberal acquaintances. They seem to think that blacks who score lower on standardized tests are superior in both intellect and achievement to whites and Asians who score in the top 5 to 10 percent.
There is no reasoning with such people.
“the chattering buzz of ideologically possessed demons”
–Jordan Peterson
Similarly, last night I learned that Magic Johnson’s son is a drag queen. Not that I was surprised to hear such a thing. I have maintained that Magic himself was gay ever since he and Isiah Thomas kissed each other at center court before the NBA finals way back before. I’m just surprised I hadn’t heard about it. Well, not totally surprised but…
A nation which does not defend its borders will not survive for long. And the Cato Institute is fine with that.
Buy to virtue signal, also, sell to virtue signal.
As an aside, I hope that fence is not around her crib, that wouldn’t be welcoming, or something.
He provides no solid source but a screenshot for that. How do we know they didn’t pass the Darian gap? Panama would be a justified place to send such people. There must be a reason Panama accepted them. Might have something to do with the “miscommunication” with Panama by our state department as well. Interesting if true.
Or, aging celebrity craves relevance, attention.
Or, I don’t want to do what is moral and/or necessary. I want to be seen as nice.
Infuriated by reality.
Doesn’t Cheryl Crow have a history of easily mocked virtue signaling?
Were mediocre whites hired? Of course they were. But in general this would shake out. Either the mediocre would be displaced by the competent or the organization would fail (excepting government of course). This ignores the fact that even the mediocre whites have tended to be more law-abiding, on time, organized, and functional than, ahem, alternative cultures.
Weren’t the Maori headhunters?
‘Gender assigned at birth.’ As if he was a potato & had the naughty bits (which it is certain he is overly familiar with) stuck on.
The mandatory COVID test is a nice touch.
A red flag that shouts “I am annoying”.
Yes:
also:
No, ‘deportation’ does no such thing. ‘Repatriation’ does, but not ‘deportation’.
In any event, I long ago learned to ignore utopia-mongering idiots.
“The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies.”
PhD (Hon), the John Lennon School of Philosophy.
I vaguely recall schoolteachers fatuously saying “It takes two to have a fight”.
Funded by corporations that profit from unrestricted immigration?
Also known as the You Should Just Let Yourself Be Bullied, Forever approach.
“It doesn’t matter who started it.” The hell it doesn’t.
On the glorious NHS.
A nation which does not defend its borders will not survive for long. And the Cato Institute is fine with that.
If not having any connection to your destination country was a reason for migration to be wrong, then migration wouldn’t start or wouldn’t continue.
If “connection” means a connection to the people of the destination country, a lack of connection doesn’t stop a lot of migrants from coming – somebody needs to do the job of calling us racist. It goes without saying that the people of the desired destination countries of immigrants are considered to be outside the bounds of political and moral respectability if they complain that aliens are being parachuted in who have no connection.
The connections that migrants need and value are more with their own ethnic communities in the destination country, so early migrants tend to be more adventurous and assimilable than their cousins who arrive once those communities take root.
It’s not the source of their funding that is exceptional, but the vacuity of their notions.
Besides, using the bright-eyed & empty-headed as camouflage for base motives has a long, storied history.
In passing.
Both are noteworthy.
Another example: Silly and naive “defund the police, empty the prisons” liberals, who are funded by malevolent leftists like George Soros.
How dare you want an appointment with your GP.
How dare you want a doctor who understands English.
YOU BIGOT!
Following my recent piriformis injury, I phoned the local doctor’s surgery, which is about 200 metres away, to arrange a brief, ten-minute chat to check that I’m doing everything I ought to be doing and to discuss pain management, the hazards of prolonged use of anti-inflammatory painkillers, that kind of thing.
I was told that the earliest I could hope to be seen, whether in person or by phone, was in three weeks. For a ten-minute chat.
And don’t get me started on the attempt to return someone else’s crutches.
Looks like they’re doing the haka all over the place.
Wasn’t there here recently a video of a NZ parliament speech (by a Maori MP?) that was a haka, and which was celebrated in the media as Magic Brown Person Imparts Indigenous Ways of Knowing? But when it’s Magic Brown People vs The Rainbow Mafia, it looks like Rainbow wins. So much for those sacred Indigenous Ways of Knowing.
You know – I think there’s something to that Most Social Harm theory.
Does not make sense – the text says it is a time lapse covering 4 hours – but Jupiter is gigantic. Maybe 4 of our days.
This is brilliant. Tie them up in their own ideological knots.
Juno is not traveling slowly.
See @Dicentra’s comment.
The Hurt Feelings Squad has become the biggest department in the British Police Force.
This Cato Fellow fails to mention that there are internationally recognized rules for asylum seekers. The first rule is they are supposed to stop in the first “safe” country they land in. The vast majority of “asylum seekers” today are really economic migrants attempting to jump the immigration process and most of them have been in or through more than one country on the way to their preferred destination.
The Green Hornet needs to have a talk with Cato.
Also true: Jupiter does a complete rotation in under 10 hours.
“Free speech caused the Holocaust.”
I can’t even.
It’s never the well-paid people at the Cato Institute who are harmed by open borders.
I recall Mark Steyn pointing out Germany, after the Great War, had ‘hate speech’ laws in place.
The irremediable ignorance of our supposed betters is only matched by their malice.
Cheryl Crow: “The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies.” Ask the Belgians how that worked out for them in 1940. You don’t have to make enemies to be a victim. It is like saying the woman raped was asking for it.
Teachers and fights: it is simply easier to punish both rather than figure out who started it. My daughter in jr high got away with retaliation when bullied by her locker because the boys involved would not admit they got bested by a girl, and she had a good radar for teachers being around.
One of the most vacuous things I ever saw was during opening show for the london olympics the brits put on an paean to the NHS, complete with people dancing with beds. Really? The signs of rot were already there even then.
NHS: one of the big US innovations in health care is the walk-in clinic. No appointment, covered by insurance. You don’t get to see your regular md, but you get to see someone.
That’s right.
There was a time when such performances celebrated culture rather than politics.
Very strongly agree. Extremely beneficial.
Now that culture – or, more accurately, ‘culture’ – has been politicised . . .
“The personal is political and the political is personal.”
Also JBP: My right hand aches with the charge of a thousand undelivered yet morally obligatory slaps.
So what I hear you saying is the Earth is lazy?
OMG, that. But what was even more vacuous IMNSHO was the way people pretended otherwise. The elephant in the room was how so few people mentioned it, given how bloody absurd, Python-esque it was. Even over here across the pond.
Apropos of nothing…we need to make spanking great again. Especially for two year olds.
Our friend Adam Kotsko, ranting in 2023 against free market innovations:
Also Adam Kotsko
I recently watched the late 1960s movie A Touch of Love, in which Sandy Dennis plays a British woman who gets pregnant out of wedlock but decides to raise the child as a single mother. The baby is born with a congenital heart condition and has to spend some time in hospital. The NHS nurses, who of course know best, won’t let Dennis see her own kid, so she finally responds by screaming until the head doctor orders the nurses to let her see her own child.
Of course, if David tried that today, he’d get arrested.
A proper response, I, as I am sure the rest of you lot, can think of many others.