Nineteen Years
And yet, bewilderingly, this place is still here.
Which is a half-decent excuse to remind patrons that this luminous establishment is made possible by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to ensure this place exists a while longer and remains ad-free, there are three buttons below the fold with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. If what happens here is of value, this is a chance to show it.
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Sordid business, I grant you, but it’s what keeps this place here.
For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for nineteen chuffing years, in over 3,500 posts and hundreds of thousands of comments, the Reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year-summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.
Do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.
As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Update, via the comments:
Liz directs us to a Guardian article, adding, not unreasonably,
Indeed, the article in question, by Ms Sangeeta Pillai, “a writer, podcaster and feminist activist” who “grew up in a Mumbai slum,” is, one might say, an example of concentrated Guardian. By which I mean, contrived to the point of being perverse. As readers may deduce from the headline:
In what follows, Ms Pillai informs us of how she is “exhausted by the pointless stream of politeness” – say, when buying coffee. “I now find myself saying thank you at least 10 times a day and sometimes many more,” says she.
And so, we arrive at the framing of routine courtesy – thanking a shop assistant for being helpful, or a waiter for bringing your meal, drinks, etc – as “incessant ‘thank you’ culture.” Something to be dispensed with – banned, even. Because that normal social lubricant – acknowledging others in a tiny but agreeable way – is just too much effort, apparently. Exhausting, to be precise.
Says Ms Pillai, mockingly,
Well, a few months ago, I was wafting around a department store, searching for some new shirts, but with only a vague idea of what it is I wanted. A young woman took maybe fifteen minutes of her time to help me find exactly what I was looking for, with several pleasing surprises. The idea of not thanking her for her help, her eye, and her ability to decode my half-arsed attempts to describe what I had in mind, strikes me as rude, gratingly so. That the young woman was being paid by an employer was, in context, immaterial.
Yet this is what’s being proposed. Adding specks of grit to normal social interactions. Because everyone wants a working day that’s just that little bit shittier.
Commenter Ccscientist adds,
While Fred the Fourth quotes Robert Heinlein:
And that’s before we get to the wearyingly common phenomenon – not least in the Guardian – of tone-deaf columnists who boast of their immigrant status as if it were a credential, a basis for deference, while lecturing the indigenous on the supposedly profound inadequacies of the country to which they have migrated, and in which they choose to remain. Those allegedly fatiguing customs of civility.
As if that in itself weren’t obnoxious.
And at a time when the coarsening of social interaction, a swell in casual rudeness, due in large part to the behaviour of new arrivals, is very much on the minds of a great many people.
Ooh, lookee. Buttons.
It’s easy to wreck things but harder to build them.
Absolutely. As noted here:
And were Ms Pillai’s example to catch on – more than it has, I mean – it’s not at all clear how that ground might ever be recovered.
I mean, trying to de-rude people is a bit like trying to un-burn stuff. Especially if they’ve been told that their rudeness is a valid expression of their identity, their specialness. In our vibrant, multicultural utopia.
’28 Days Later’ was not a how-to guide.
No. I already had that card in my Apple Wallet and it is a physical card that I possess. I think the virtual might be specific in some way to the (new) card because when I went to the app for that card (Capitol One app) it showed David Thompson blog, or whatever, as a virtual card connection. Which is sorta, kinda why I figured the first attempt went through. Either way it seems like there are about twice as many steps to using the virtual card this way. I still had to manually enter much of the data. Especially the email. I use different emails for different purposes to better manage spam and also as a means of preserving some degree of anonymity back when I was still working/seeking employment opportunities. When asked for an email the context wasn’t clear as to whether it was the email I use for blogging or the one I use for that credit card. It’s just more tech stupidity.
I seriously feel we are reaching a technological singularity because the terms used to design our underlying technology will shift/are shifting such that the precarious add-ons to our technological tower of Babel will come crashing down on us. Especially as poorly/not reviewed AI generated code seeps into the system.
Thanks to all who’ve chipped in so far, or subscribed, or done shopping via the Amazon link – including all those much too shy to say hello. I sometimes forget how many of you are lurking in the bushes, being very, very quiet.
It’s much appreciated and is what keeps this place here.
[ Starts compiling Friday’s Ephemera. ]
AWFL advice for wypipo.
“…a “model and pageant star”…”
I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that seeing as how the “gunperson” is dead, they know something they don’t want to tell us.
As I’ve often argued, trying to understand this phenomenon in terms of politics, in terms of policy preferences, is inadequate and likely to leave you bewildered. You have to consider the psychology. The hopelessly messed-up mindset.
Again, if sociology were a credible field and not itself ideologically captured, this is the kind of phenomenon that you’d think might be of interest. Maybe a study or two, a little interrogation.
As they say.
I mean, from the prepared, competitive meltdowns and the woke eight-year-old thing to the hair loss and sudden-onset eye-twitching, there’s something odd there.
Something not quite right.
Close enough for government work, as they say.
From the replies.
There is also the casual racism. I doubt this individual, who has no apparent connection to South Carolina, knows a single “black church lady” (trotting out stereotypes) from there (or anywhere). I am sure, though, she is right proud that she thinks she had an original notion and hopes her friends will applaud her Deep Thought™.
Similar to “It takes 10 times as much effort/time to refute bullshit as it does to create it.”
There’s a test for that?
It’s curiously instructive, how such deranged monsters become heroes and role models.
That thing that doesn’t happen . . .
What a time to be alive.
But let us not forget those “lesbian-dog relationalities.”
And I’m just going to leave this one here.
Because I can, that’s why.
Nearly forgot about this one.
No, don’t thank me. All part of the service.
Could they be hunting?
[ Checks bushes for rustling. ]
Related.
Civility: it is an indicator of social cohesion and order. As to getting it back once lost, I call to your attention Somalia and Haiti, two countries that have devolved into anarchy and have no way out. In the old days, countries like this would be quickly conquered by a strong neighbor, thereby restoring order, though perhaps despotic order.
Bloke who did mass shooting: lying to your readers not a good play. Another group that lied to public and lost trust is scientists. It started with general pollution and conservation issues, where dangers were exaggerated and sloppy research got published. Then we had climate change where the actual IPCC reports do NOT say the world will end, it just says we would be poorer in the future than if no climate change, but still much richer than today. The public reports including interviews with climate scientists were over the top doom and downplayed or ignored global greening from CO2. Then the medical establishment lied about the origin of Covid and in the middle of lockdown said outdoor protests were just fine and dandy. They also lied about how it was spread (said droplets but is really aerosols), about risks from the shots, about how much risk (in fact almost zero) to small children….
Murderer was trans. Named Jesse “Jess” Strang.
Recalling a “poly” person who said that you don’t really love your dog unless you sleep with it. Seemed like a very odd thing to assert as absolute truth.
Ah yes, the old “Things would have been better in the future if you peasants would just do what you’re told and not object to our self-serving bullshit”…
Online safety.
Ah Cuba, famously know for freedom and being a champion of “progressive” values towards Alphabet People.
We live in an age of skin suits.
Star Whores
Question asked.
Dear lord, that’s sad.
Only a rabid transphobe would object to “trans”women competing with women.
“Trust me,” he said.
“Journalists” learn the meaning of “You’re fired”. Sad, clearly they are the best and brightest among us.
But it will be a nice dictatorship!
There are people in the world sufficiently stupid, and sufficiently vain, to follow the lead of that guy.
I’m gonna need a minute.
Their techs seem on par with their journalists.
From the replies, this and this.
Ooh. Cherry pie and custard. Score.
There are many people on the left who seem to sincerely believe that they are entitled a job and that it is a violation of their human rights to fire them for poor performance, or to lay them off due to economic troubles. In effect, they see every business as a welfare agency.
Washington Post Tech Guild. [ Rolls eyes. ]
I once had dealings with unionized IT workers in the UK back the 70’s. Nothing could be done quickly. Everything took forever, no matter how simple.
Speaking of stupid.
I believe that is par for the course at ComicCons.
A thought leader in the making.
What a time to be alive.
And here I thought “He really screwed the pooch” was just a colorful colloquialism for “He made a really bad mistake”. I did not think anyone would take it literally and in doing so become the literal embodiment of the expression.
Well – we did elect Mark Carney, so we have form, right?