Friday Ephemera (802)
The machine uprising, day 11. || How to catch a human. || Fully automated to save time and effort. || “I love me,” says she. || When you have a CT scanner and a whole bunch of animals. || I think there may be something under the house. || Incoming. || Suboptimal scenario. || Big thing bring green. || Moral support, I’m guessing. || It takes a lot of spray. || I believe some physics occurred. || Rise of the Vegetarians, 1972. || New Orleans jollity, 1962. || The Chinese earthquake-detecting seismoscope. || On the making of Jaws. Oddly, the trained shark idea didn’t pan out. || Determined to make things worse, a possible series. || The progressive retail experience, parts 695, 696, 697, and 698. || Question asked. || But could be thinner. || And finally, for those who missed it in the comments.
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My eldest is an RN … she deliberately chose to work night shift (ICU for 7 years) to avoid the drama queens and snotty doctors. She’s happier as a CCT RN working on an ambulance.
Those “archetypes” were once associated with heroes. Not just in 20th century John Wayne cowboy sense, but going back throughout literature. The association was changed by generations of brainwashing. Not just in the media but in academia and “medical” sciences, etc. And all the smart people, the leaders of our modern society, went along with it.
I don’t blame her but the rest of us don’t have that option. WTF is the medical world going to acknowledge that they have seriously screwed the pooch here? It’s been going on long before covid, yet covid was six years ago now. Not to mention the previously referenced transy thing. They will slow walk that lawsuit and any follow ons in the media. Play the HIPPA card on anyone who steps out of line. Ultimately the insurance companies will pass the costs of those settlements on to the rest of us anyway. It’s where “insurance industry” solvency meets financial solvency which plays into, essentially, effectively, ultimately socialism. But don’t say that. You good Republican insurance agent friends will get very upset with you.
HIPPA was the direct result of the AIDS crisis, when nobody wanted anyone to know they had HIV, because you could be outed and canceled.
Prior to that, there was no imaginable reason why you’d care if people knew you had a particular diagnosis.
Always watched it as a young child. Enjoyed it a lot.
IMHO … it comes down to the cultural change in how female rage is viewed and encouraged/rewarded. Every child at some point throws a tantrum, and I’m not talking about normal hissy fit or whining because he or she didn’t get their way. Parental boundaries are something all kids test and it is also a test of a parent’s own skills in raising the little barbarian.
But some tantrums are out-of-control rage fests. Knockdown screaming, pitching stuff, trying to hurt others or themself. Those are the ones in which a sharp swat on the tuchas followed by isolation until they calm down is usually effective.
Somewhere in the GrrrlPower era, that kind of irrational meltdown was now looked at as ‘justifiable’ — she is a victim of injustice, don’t you know, so Hear Woman Roar! and understand it’s your fault she’s upset.
Do that long enough there’s a good percentage of females who not only never learned self-control, but who realize how this rage is a good tool in manipulating others.
Jim engaged the wounded mother leopard while Marlon stayed in the Jeep. lol
Lovely cat. Can we send it to Minneapolis? Or Congress perhaps?
Some bangers on This Week in Pictures.
[delete]
I love this one
Unless it was, say, gonorrhea, syphilis, or some other venereal disease.
For those who don’t recognize the background music, it’s the old theme from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, a hugely popular nature show from the 70s. We all got our nature documentary nourishment from just this one show.
I immediately started flapping my arms in slow motion like a v-formation of Canada geese.
We got six inches of snow in Knoxville last night and Bronx is quite happy. I’m not, I hate the stuff, but so long as my dog is happy . . .
This. My first professional job, my boss’s wife worked in HR. Everyone hated her, mostly for being a gossipy biotch but other reasons as well. Rumor came out of our local HQ that she was blabbing about someone’s health insurance claim along the lines of an STD. This was mid-80’s so…But to dicentra’s point, people do now make great drama about anything about their healthcare slipping out. Which is kinda opposed to the general female behavior of the past. Kinda, yet the same.
Safest place to live.
They would occasionally show those videos in science class in school. Forgive my transliteration but in the
Da-dat-da-daa-duh, Duh-dat-da-da-da-dada-duh, BOOM BOOM.
At the BOOM-BOOM part, every boy in the class would pound their desk. It was a toxic masculinity thing. Eventually we were…socialized…to give it up. Except for one guy. Surfer dude. Some things just can’t be helped.
The excuse making on this thread is amazing. Especially from one datadrivenemo. SMDH.
I started whistling a tune and then stopped. Was that the theme? Or was it the Wide Wide World of Sports?
Turned out it was the theme. I hadn’t thought about that show in so many years, but it was a staple of my childhood TV viewing.
The excuse making on this thread is amazing. Especially from one datadrivenemo. SMDH.
I read that article this morning and was floored. $1200/month to get prepared food delivered on a $50k annual salary IN CALIFORNIA?
I eat avocado toast. You know when I eat avocado toast? When avocados are on sale. If not, I eat something else. How many of these people are also spending $5-$8/day on “coffee” (or whatever slop Starbucks serves)?
Maybe with the popularity of kids going to trade schools some high schools can bring back Home Ec. Cook a meal. Make a budget. Sew a button back on. Use a drain snake. Check your oil.
The excuse making on this thread is amazing.
Instant gratification?
How incompetent is she that with jarred sauce she can’t make spaghetti in maybe 15 minutes max (can shave a couple off that with the added lazy step of heating the sauce in a bowl in a microwave then dumping the noodles in that)?
Unless she lives above the restaurant she is ordering from and they are dumping Chef Boy-ar-dee into a container, no way it is getting there more instant.
Does this moron have someone reminding her to breathe?
“Negativity” excuses $200 per week on food delivery??? WTAF?
The only time we ever spent ANY money on food delivery was during the 2020 Wuhan Lung Rot lockdown. Sometimes we needed a break from making our own meals and figured an occasional delivery was our substitute for going out to eat on our “date night”.
What happened to making stuff to freeze and having *that* for fast/convenient food when one is too busy or too tired to cook?
Just yesterday I made a double batch of meatballs for Albondigas soup and froze half. Future soup craving and, voila, meatballs at the ready!
Then again, my grandparents were young parents during the Depression, my parents having grown up during it. Learning how to stretch a dollar or a pound of ground beef seems second nature to me.
Affordability crisis: an economist charted the square footage of new homes over time. Spoiler: they keep getting bigger (and nicer). There is no money in building a tiny house and people don’t want one. They want apartments to have an exercise room and a pool plus indoor parking. Same with cars: there is no car on the market anymore as minimal as an old VW bug–safety regs plus who would buy a car with no AC? Things like this drive “affordability” because what the gov reports is the cost of housing that people actually buy, not a constant unit of size/quality over time.
Absurd. I bought a few stainless steel vacuum thermoses, and brought hot coffee from home.
Sometimes it really is canned sauce…and mediocre sauce at that.
There is such a wide variety of inexpensive prepared and semi-prepared foods available that the “necessity” of Doordash is laughable.
Yep, probably the same stuff on her shelf, but it is still not getting there quicker even if they have it pre-portioned and packed.
Exactly, add in unprepared E-Z meals one can whip up in minutes – presliced chicken, frozen veggies, pan, sesame oil, and you have a stir fry in 10 minutes. How utterly incompetent do you have to be not to do something like that? Of course I guess cleaning up after is beneath them.
The word “libertarianism” is being used to mean two totally different and incompatible political agendas…
This and similar. Confession to make…I decided early in my career, like from my very first professional job, that social security was not something I would be able to count on being there for me 40+ years into the future. I always, always lived well within my means, took advantage of 401k opportunities (while some of my coworker “friends” who were from much more secure families laughed), etc. There were a couple times where I looked at my F-you money and quit the job(s) that I absolutely loathed but always came out ahead later. Now that I am retired, thanks/no-thanks to the Wuhan Flu, I am finally getting payments on that tremendous amount of money Uncle Sam owes me that I never planned for. It’s about $2-$3K/month in gravy. I still have to remind myself that I can afford many of the little niceties that these whiners can’t seem to live without. I sometimes even have to force myself to spend extra money. By force I tend now to overtip, but only for good service, which is something I used to consider bad in general. Still do…kinda. This constant whining, especially the “if you can’t afford a 25% tip you shouldn’t go out to eat” BS, really gets under my skin. They’re too bloody stupid to understand 25% of zero is…zero.
Tiny or modest? The issue is less “no money in them” and more “why there is no money in them”. The starter house would definitely sell, but developers who are trying to build new homes are going to pony up somewhere of 24% or more of the selling price in federal/state/local fees & regulatory costs. e.g. all new homes in CA after 2020 have to have solar panels — about $10k extra to construction cost. Oh, the owner is supposed to recoup that cost but …
So developers will build houses with all the bells and whistles because they can then charge enough to make a profit — just like that soft drink you buy as part of a combo meal is the REAL money maker for the fast food joint, in a house, it’s “soft close drawers”, granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances and a coffee bar in the kitchen.
Basic post-WWII homes built for returning GIs were basic, but tidy and spacious enough to start a family. Say 1,100 square feet 3 or 4 bedroom, 2 bath on 1/6 acre lot. You put in your own fences and landscaping and bought your own appliances.
I bet people would buy the kind of house I grew up in, but builders can’t afford to build them.
There must be a story behind this, but I don’t want to know.
Your “working class” Green Party candidate
“Migrants” show their appreciation for free NHS healthcare.
I’m trying to imagine upping sticks to, say, South Korea and expecting the locals to make their historical dramas flatter people who look like me.
Indeed. And if you did make those demands of the locals, you’d be labeled an evil colonialist, if it were Botswana, a gaijin and know your place if Japan, and I’m sure the South Koreans would have something unflattering to call you as well. Only the Western countries (by modern standards) aren’t allowed a history and a culture worth preserving.
Is there anybody at the Atlantic who is not a fascist or communist?
Y’all east of the Rockies need to stop hogging all the winter wet, especially those of you who aren’t supposed to be getting snow at all.
Save some for the rest of us. Our water year has been bone dry.
You place the order, you do other stuff, then the food comes.
Y’all say that the effort to make one’s own tomato sauce is trivial, but it still involves chopping things and cleaning up afterward.
That’s the nice thing about DoorDash: your kitchen isn’t involved, and there aren’t saucepans and such to deal with.
Moar on the woman joining the Leopards Eating People’s Faces party: She was a skier at a resort in Fuyun County, which is in NW China near the Mongolian border.
The videos on the news sites don’t show that initial photo with the leopard behind her, which could mean that it’s not from the actual incident, which happened on 23 Jan 2026. She was wearing a ski helmet at the time, which helped her survive the encounter.
She got out of her car and moved closer and closer to the kitty, trying to get a photo, but I doubt we have that photo. If she got mauled and was hospitalized, would she post it? I sure wouldn’t.
The janitorial staff.
Probably.
Clearly they weren’t getting enough tips.
The Adam and Eve fellow: looking him up on Wikipedia, he’s an “open Orthodox” rabbi. Well, “open Orthodox” is to Orthodox (i.e., genuine) Judaism as “open marriage” is to marriage.
The janitorial staff?
Oh, let me introduce you to the SEIU…
Bezmenov used to say that once two successive generations had become demoralized there was no way back from that, because there would be no one left to teach any future generations the correct path.
Alternate theory: it’s just a shit test, of the kind all women have been running on all men since the beginning of time.
Tempus edax rerum.
I hope this is just one company… frozen concentrate is extremely useful in cooking, and features in several of our favorite recipes.
Nope. There has been expectation drift.
The original Levittown had tiny rooms with tiny windows and kitchen cabinets of unfinished plywood. Then they started putting Formica on the plywood, but leaving the edges unfinished… My parent’s bedroom had enough clearance for 2 small side tables, and a closet on the wall opposite the headboard. And a half bath with a sink smaller than a tea tray…. that’s before we talk about windows and air conditioning.
“The house we grew up in” would now be considered the starting point for a teardown/makeover.
I believe this blog endorses and celebrates capitalism… so yes, there has been progress, and a shift in expectations. Capitalism and technology make luxuries commodities… like those gorgeous double-pane windows now available at factory-made prices…. so these improvements are not driving up the cost of housing. Take a look at the granny flats that are build affordably to a high standard of finish.
I blame zoning – and I completely agree with you about regulation being another major culprit in inflated housing costs.
An increasingly urban/suburban population needs more attached, semi-attached, zero-lot-line, and low-rise stacked housing… zoning that requires huge setbacks and totally wasteful side lots reduces housing density.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing
Medium-density housing is characterized by a range of multi-family or clustered house types that are still compatible with single-family or transitional neighborhoods.
Many forms of what is now described as “missing middle” housing were built before the 1940s… Post-WWII, housing in the United States trended significantly toward single-family with zoning making it difficult to build walkable medium-density housing in many areas.
The drawing on that Wikipedia page says it all…. builders and homeowners often struggle against outdated zoning that prevents sensitively-designed higher density housing.
And if you did make those demands of the locals, you’d be labeled an evil colonialist,
Is it okay to appreciate colonialism for the fact that hearts are not being ripped from live people in sacrifices and widows are not getting thrown onto funeral pyres?
I am being taken out for lunch. Because I deserve no less.
Are you being taken out for lunch?
Oh dear.
She lives in one of the most expensive states in the union but blows around a fifth of her income on being too lazy to boil noodles.
Back in college I had a friend whose work schedule (as she was paying her own way) and class schedule often caused her to miss the cafeteria hours whereupon she would make Kraft™ mac and cheese or soup in an electric kettle, this being long before microwaves were a thing and electric kettles being the only allowed item of “cookware”. Amazingly, perhaps by some supernatural power, she was able to study or do other stuff while whatever heated and while eating.
I am sure, though, that the chucklehead in the article had many pressing TikToks and Instagrams to catch up on that precluded her from wasting 15 precious minutes boiling some noodles, poor thing. Clearly we need Full Luxury Communism™ to save her from her cruel oppression.
Corroboration here.
Meanwhile all the other Muslims are saying “why didn’t we think of that?”
No, because those were indigenous practices which the people deeply believed in. At least that’s what New York liberals have told me.