Reheated (104)
For newcomers, some items from the archives:
Perhaps The Cardboard Has Magical Properties.
It’s a San Francisco vibe, so doing the obvious is out of the question.
By issuing little cards, they’re creating “new social norms.” To supposedly address the problem of having created other “new social norms” in which punishing criminals is deemed unjust, racist, and terribly old-fashioned.
But hey, if you’re travelling to work on a BART train and some deranged creep starts masturbating against your leg, or pissing on the floor, or you find yourself standing next to yet another knife fight, or overdose, or commuter mugging – and no-one else does anything, or dares to do anything, except watch impotently and demoralised – because even noticing such things is racist – at least you’ll have a little card to clutch. Apparently that’s something.
The thrills of modern gym membership.
You see, in the progressive pecking order, the fantasies of sexually dysmorphic men – and the preferences of male sex offenders – are of much greater importance than any “discomfort” felt by the women and girls on whom the former groups choose to impose themselves. Women and girls whose role, it seems, is merely to understand and tacitly affirm. To be reluctant accessories to some strange man’s psychodrama, while remaining free of judgement. Which is frowned upon.
Because the modern, not-at-all-insane response to repeated acts of indecency and sexual intimidation – by a predatory man in the women’s changing rooms – is to ask him not to keep waving his erection at women and children. On grounds that what he’s waving could somehow be a lady’s penis. Such is the sophistication of our times.
On fabulist “identities,” and malice with impunity.
The risk of being punched, vigorously, is important. It inhibits quite a lot of recreational malice.
It’s Trivial When The Victim Is Someone Who Isn’t Me.
Canadian socialist podcaster solves problem of all crime, everywhere.
Perhaps it would be ungentlemanly to wish on dear Nora some first-hand experience of the crimes she so merrily diminishes when inflicted on someone else, someone who isn’t her. Though it is, I think, tempting.
Behold ye this snapshot of progressive innovation.
For those craving more, The Year Reheated is a pretty good place to start.
The Parable of the Motorcycle Helmet:
From the comment thread:
Someone else once said (and I paraphrase):
Sorry I cannot remember the exact words and who said it.
I don’t know whether to feel sad for this kid or whether to slap her silly.
Her narcissism is off the charts, but then her mother (whom she’s already cut off) and her [maternal?] grandfather are likely the ones who made her this way.
Still, astounding on so many levels.
Also, anyone who talks to me from that set of assumptions, telling me that “If you loved me, you’d change your politics,” I’d have to cut them loose.
Curious how decidedly non-reciprocal that if-you-loved-me line is.
Grampa tried to say “how would you like it if our positions were reversed and I said things like that?” but it didn’t get through. She is cocksure that she’s absolute right and everyone else is messed up.
Curious how decidedly non-reciprocal that if-you-loved-me line is.
No doubt she is fully expecting to be remembered financially in her grandfather’s will.
And it scarcely needs pointing out that someone who repeatedly excommunicates supposedly loved family members – say, by berating and rejecting an unremarkably conservative grandpa – for reasons of party politics – is more likely to be a political extremist than someone who would see that as an odd thing to do.
[ Considers need for an Arguments With Mad Women category tag. ]
More common than excommunication: Telling a friend or family member that it would indeed be right and proper for them to be fired or denied promotion or never hired, to be deplatformed and debanked, and even to be arrested and fined or imprisoned.
Speaking of entitled gits, if you ever needed another reason to avoid Starbuck’s, they can’t “express themselves”.
I’m assuming the cause of their woe, or professed woe, is the expectation that they dress for work in a way that’s vaguely presentable. It’s remarkable how so much personal drama can be conjured from pouring cups of weak, burned coffee.
Note that they refer to themselves not as employees but as “partners”.
And, as good little socialists, they denounce management decisions as “unilateral”.
As if little Miss Parasite ever would or could grow anything but resentful.
Meet the face of welfare fraud … at least in California.
[ Schedules tomorrow’s Ephemera, weighs merits of something bacon-related for tea. ]
I’ve heard of beef tea, but never bacon tea.
As I said a while ago,
The weird thing is when you realise that on the handful of occasions you’ve visited the place, each visit has ended with the same question. Namely, “Why did we come here? The coffee’s disgusting and bears no relation to the beverage I’m familiar with.” To my shame, it took several visits before registering that the experience wouldn’t be getting any better.
She’s wearing a mask in a video chat. I’m seeing more and more people wearing masks walking alone, driving alone in cars. Their brainwashing should be taken very seriously. Themselves not so much.
TBF, a lot of us here increasingly think about firing up the helicopters. Myself included. It eventually becomes a chicken/egg thing. The further one gets from the original divergence of common ground, the less it matters, to the moralists anyway, who started it.
Heh. Ran across this somewhere, X or insty, I forget. I made a photo copy so likely it was X. Hopefully it is readable. I have lived this myself, though to a lesser extent.
Today is May Day, also known as That Wasn’t Real Socialism Day.
An exchange.
Ignoring the oratory that would make Cicero hide his head in shame, cast your glaza on what I am assuming is the staffer who wrote that – not sure whether that is unwarranted smugness, or a smirk.
It seemed to me that her grandfather was in the room with her & she was using her laptop to record his deviationism from her party line.
It can also be That Wasn’t a Real Woman Day.
Likely smirking smugly at having her very own Ron Burgundy.
If you click the thumbnail, then click open image in new tab, it is.
That might be something that Starbucks itself does. Companies sometimes get really weird about “what to call ourselves,” as an effort to prevent linguistic devaluation of the proles, I guess, so they go for “partners” or “associates” (WalMart) or “team members” or maybe a variant of the company name (Googlers).
The bearded lady does make one valid point: the dress code removes the more bohemian coffee-house vibe, but I assume some employees were getting way over their skis in that wise.
Again, we’re running into self expression as being a per-se good thing without considering that who you’re expressing might be a detestable worm.
Now rather tickled by the thought of Starbucks as bohemian.
The suburban wine mom’s idea of Bohemian.
Cutting off family: this is the type of person who turned in parents to the Stasi in E Germany. It is hilarious (in a black-humor sort of way) that these twits think they are “fighting fascism” when they are enabling it. Useful idiots indeed.
Starbucks: how you present yourself is a pretty good indicator of what type of employee you would be. This group of slobs looks like they can’t even make a cup of coffee, never mind representing the company. They do not get that the purpose of a starbucks is NOT to allow employees to express themselves, but to make money–by serving the customer. self-expression is very very optional as a business goal.
Via Dicentra: “Fetish mining”.
Forcing others to do what you want is socialism; others forcing you to do what they want is fascism. Huge difference.
Hi Ho
How about a bacon tree?
I’ll need matches and gasoline.
Who influences the influencers?
Ah. My bad then. Specific to her anyway. Somewhat. I generally don’t listen to audio when there is captioning. Plus I did give up on it early. Because…well…anyway, I still stand by my statement regarding masks and brainwashing. Even applies here to some degree.
See? For Kamala, they were just innocently looking for positive content. Positive. It was even kinda free market work. But re RFK Jr., well, it publicly unraveled. Publicly and stuff. Understand?
That. It’s always weak. I don’t know how they can make it so bad.
Presumably, they aim for inoffensive. Can’t say they succeed, even in that. I must have tried a handful of Starbucks brews, but they’ve all been weirdly flavourless and feeble. My own default morning stimulant is nothing fancy – some Sumatra Mandheling made in a plunger cup – but – and this detail is fairly important – it tastes and feels like coffee.
“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
That’s a lot of big air for a boat.
And now my brain has decided to remind me of Clarkson, May and Hammond crossing the English Channel in a customised and allegedly amphibious Nissan pickup truck.
[ Narrows eyes. ] Wouldn’t a True Englishman say petrol?
At first they were somewhat unique flavor wise with the burnt thing. I only started drinking coffee in the early 90’s which was about the time I first saw one or noticed Starbucks anyway. I recall finding it interesting. The only coffee that I had ever tasted before and actually liked was a cup of Blue Mountain coffee in Jamaica. After a couple weeks of force feeding myself coffee in the mornings because I learned that it actually helped, even cured, my insomnia, I decided I didn’t really care for that burnt flavoring. After they became ubiquitous at airports, that was about the only place that I would bother with them. And of course they were virtually a religion in some IT quarters. The more I was exposed to, kinda leaned on to liking them the more I started to really dislike them.
It’s so rare that I get a real good cup of coffee that the good ones really jump out at me. But that usually only happens at a good, generally Italian, restaurant. Sometimes I am successful at home when I stumble into whatever formula. One that I rarely seem to replicate. Not that I’m trying all that hard.