Friday Ephemera (803)
Tastes like chicken, I’m told. || “The ladders have since been replaced with stairs.” || He’s smouldering, I think. || Today’s word is daylight. || Setting the bar quite low, I fear. || Go with what works, I guess. || Let’s go to Pilates. || The progressive retail experience, parts 699 and 700. || “On YouTube, there are video demonstrations of how to make a portable bidet using a plastic soda bottle.” || Question asked. || A choir made up of people who’ve had their voice boxes removed. || Adventures in bicycling. || Scenes from Bolton. || Little foot soldiers. || Fowl smothered in oysters and other hearty fare, 1796. || “Of course I want there to be a replacement.” || “They’re not my ancestors, I don’t care.” || Headline of note. || And in military news. || Mostly rubber. || And finally, on leaving residue.
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Can’t imagine why some Olympic athletes never get on the cornflakes box… must be racism.
One flake too many?
If we put you into an MRI scanner while you were counting the 15 heaps of shit in the front yard and listening at all hours of the day to banging, revving, outdoor-voice conversations, arrivals, departures, would we really see the brain of somebody who thinks their neighbors are nice? Or does it matter that they’re nice if they still don’t understand the social norms and create such a nuisance?
Of course this isn’t really descriptive, it’s presenting your credentials as a good person, not like a MAGA. Would a MAGA say that foreigners are nice, no, “very nice” or exchange greetings from yard to yard? And if they did would they mean it? This is why mandated proximity is so important. You don’t need it because you find foreigners nice already, but MAGAs should have your neighbor because experts tell us that real experiences overcome prejudices.
The empathy here, which is undoubtedly applied in a principled race-blind way, for blue collar businessmen who struggle with regulations and taxes and lease conditions so we all understand if they impose externalities on their neighbors.
I have it on good authority that in 2003, scientists found a curious metal coil on a spool in the melting permafrost, and once they unspooled it they saw it was a recording device. It took several months to determine what was on the coil and also where it came from.
They realized that it originated on Venus, and the vessel carrying the spool exploded and vaporized in Tunguska. The spool said that “after “two cycles” they can start irradiating the earth, then the Principal Operation can commence.”
It’s been more than 100 years since Tunguska, and scientists realize that they don’t know how the Venusians measure time. So they send a multi-ethnic expedition to Venus to sue for peace. The Kosmokrator space ship had been built to explore Mars, but the message made going to Venus more urgent.
Onboard the Kosmokrator is the computer “Marax.” Instead of being binary, it stores information in “curves,” with which it performs five million operations per second. Also, it has vacuum tubes.
The Kosmocrator takes 34 days to reach Venus. After discovering curious thing such as a forest of colorful glassed trees, a large white geodesic dome that created an anti-gravity field, semi-sentient ooze, and an enormous crater, they find enough records to recreate what had happened in 180 years of Venusian history.
The Venusians had decided that they were going to irradiate the Earth by sending a radioactive cloud, killing all humans but preserving the structures, and then use the anti-grav sphere to launch the invasion fleet.
The Venusians had it all planned out to the last detail. But then they began fighting amongst themselves. There were huge power struggles over which faction was in control of the energy system. It appeared that finally one faction got control of the energy system but didn’t know how to use it, and they detonated it in 1915, destroying all the inhabitants and most of the structures.
No really. I read about it.
“…the clash was the result of customers hearing through studio gossip that the company’s corporate team had instructed management to take down an anti-ICE sign that previously hung in the building’s front window.
“’By the way, every single business in Minneapolis has something on their door right now — it’s not like we were asking for something out of the loop,’ she added”
This sounds RATHER familiar. Paraphrasing from Grok:
In “The Power of the Powerless” by Václav Havel, he describes a greengrocer who places a sign in his shop window reading “Workers of the world, unite!” — the classic communist slogan.
The greengrocer doesn’t do this out of genuine ideological enthusiasm or belief in the revolution. He does it simply because it’s expected, because everyone does it, and because refusing could bring trouble (harassment, loss of business, or worse under the totalitarian regime). The sign functions as a ritual of compliance — a visible signal to authorities and potential informers that says, in effect:
“I know the rules, I’m obedient, and therefore I should be left in peace.”
It’s not about fending off a literal angry mob storming the streets, but rather protecting himself from the regime’s mechanisms of control — the ever-present threat of punishment for disloyalty in a system built on forced public conformity and “living within the lie.”
They’re doing the thing. THEY’RE ACTUALLY DOING THE THING!
On my grandmother’s grave, I’ve never had it do that to me.
Shows what you know: the athletes go on the Wheaties box.
I think you’re supposed to direct such malevolent bitches to the nearest door with instructions never to return, lest their jaws become dislocated.
And get the scuffle on video so Steve Inman can narrate it.
Or put another way, when people show you that they’ll rush to behave in ways that are obnoxious and sinister when given any leverage – in this case, by exploiting incongruity and other people’s reluctance to cause a scene – then it seems unwise to embolden them and thereby give them more leverage.
Entry of the Gladiators will do, I suppose.
I was picturing something with more lava and billowing. Something along these lines. Actually.
[ Sees leftovers in fridge. ]
Perhaps the cornflakes box is more apt?
Jar Jar Binks.
Going the distance.
The condescending narcissism might be bearable if they weren’t so f—ing stupid.
Earnest idiocy is still idiocy.
It’s Venus!
Where the pressure’s ninety times the Earth, my friend,
And carbon dioxide skies that never end.
The clouds are sulfuric acid, drifting high above,
Yet underneath, a hidden world of blazing love.
In Venus!
The heat may never cool below eight hundred degrees,
By order of the runaway greenhouse, if you please.
The winds race supersonic, tearing ‘cross the plain,
Yet in the twilight zones, the colors never wane.
Venus!
I know it sounds a trifle wild and strange,
But in Venus, Venus,
That’s how conditions range!
“Oh spare me the paragraphs, please!”
Come on, now, who among us doesn’t have a handgun that can be turned into an MG 42?
Question asked.
Questions no one asks…why didn’t she try to ban 1200 round magazines first?
In case you wanted more.
Silly question, no magazine, it is clearly a crew served belt fed handgun.
412 of note.
I believe that some of my “friends” who approve of the hijab were the same ones who, in the 70’s and 80’s, condemned nuns’ habits.
That’s the world’s entire supply of ACTING used in one scene.
[ Awaits wisdom of crowd. ]
You could be there for some time.
Reduced alcohol version for when you run out of the good stuff.
I started thinking “Turkish movie” within the first two seconds.
This is my outraged face.
[ Points to face. ]
[ Ups price of drinks. ]
Remember Star Trek’s “synthahol”?
[ Points anathematizing finger of scorn at Hollywood. ]
One way to free up a bed.
Morning already?
I’ll trade you a kilo of palladium for a small lager shandy.
£1,247.68 seems a tad steep for a small.
We’re definitely approaching “traded for a mess of pottage” territory.
Describes so many “conversations” I’ve had with members of the Left. Rational conversation that dares to bring up for discussion, let alone debate, any subject that the Left has fenced off as a “Settled Subject” quickly moves to the “how dare you, are you a Nazi?” stage of shutuppery fairly quickly. Starmer as center-right?
Dear lord.
The mask is off.
There is an old joke that leftists define a fascist as anyone to the right of Lenin. But it’s not really a joke.
Gotta wonder what fraction of Chinese immigrants are this racist.
Never forget. Never forgive:
The fish slapping dance is fine for minor misdemeanors.
But this seems more suitable for more egregious offenses.
I think this is a metaphor for something.
The internet really was better 20 years ago.