I Have Questions
I’m just going to leave this here:
If you’ve ever wondered why the cavalry often turns up late?
Fucking cyclists, it’s always fucking cyclists. 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/ImtA56jObt— Myxy Jeff 🏴 (@MadThom4PM) August 12, 2026
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Cyclists final boss.
They should have fired a warning shot.
The subject of cyclists has cropped up once or twice before.
We don’t know where we’re going…
I’m still trying to fathom the thinking. I mean, you can’t not notice a mile-long armoured convoy rumbling along behind you, so was he assuming some priority over the tanks and support vehicles, or was he just hoping he hadn’t been detected?
I’m struggling to come up with anything that would explain the choices being made.
I saw this clip and I was confused by the driver and the person behind her (at least, to me it looks like a “her”) with the wild, windblown hair. Are they military? Could it be a movie crew?
They’re not military, they’re either enthusiasts or walts. <rolls eyes>
I’m having a hard time getting past the caption(?) which is patently untrue. The cyclist is not caught in the convoy, would that he were and crushed under treads for all I care*. No, he’s blocking, or holding up, or just being a cyclist but he is not caught in it.
*peace be upon Lucy Connolly
And in film news.
What NBC said, WWII vintage stuff, the lead tank is an M4 Sherman (the hatch the gal in black is sitting on gives it away) and it looks like an M24 Chaffee behind.
Not to excuse the clown, but having seen armored road marches, that doesn’t appear to be a mile of anything, but, yes, like all cyclists assuming priority over tanks, cars, pedestrians, and small animals.
It did call to mind any number of journeys through the Peak District, details of which can be had via the links upthread.
Apart from the tanks. Don’t recall running into any of those.
Meanwhile, seems awfully “transphobic” to give men having babies “maternity” leave.
In other news, The Economist goes full Guardian.
Mile-long convoy? I only see two tanks.
Walter Mitty?
Smallish bees, do not apologize for your prolixity; it enhances this blog.
Walter Mitty?
Yes
Bloody-minded entitlement with a heaping dose of spite covers it.
Hugh Laurie says something without really saying anything about something. High brow discussions ensue. If only there were a Nobel Prize in disingenuity…or perhaps reverse disingenuity…I forget. Leaves me feeling all double plus unnonplussed.
It is currently 35°C. This simply will not do.
That’s about 95 in your Heathen Units.
Well hopefully another eclipse will be coming along shortly. Just you wait.
Meanwhile, I am awaiting the framing of my first commissioned work of art. Ooh, this is exciting.
Well, don’t leave us hanging.
Heh. “Hanging”. Like hanging it on the wall. I get it! No, it’s not complete in context without the framing. Once properly finished and displayed I will share.
Ooh, I feel like a late 19th century railroad magnate. Or steel! I could see me running a steel monopoly. Ooh, or oil! That’s where I understand the real money is!
Not sure if I got this here but I don’t see it here and by Gum it belongs here! Especially as it comes from y’all’s favorite news source. On suicidal empathy.
“Heathen”
The only human scale is Fahrenheit.
Even the feeble breeze is hot.
Laurie, like his compatriot Fry, is a stupid person’s idea of a clever person.
It just feels like no one actually reads any more, and so the dramatic shortcuts taken by television and movies have become reality in many people’s minds. There’s a whole genre of YouTube videos called “Real <job> reacts to TV/movie depiction of <job>”
Are people confused that movies and TV are not real life? That directors and producers don’t give a flying fig about depicting anything realistically?
I feel the whole genre is rife for parody. “Real marine reacts to Avatar”
“Yeah, we don’t have giant dropships or battlesuits like that. And we’ve never been to space. So that part’s not very accurate. My mate banged this Afghan bird once but he didn’t go native. Her family just killed her.”
How did you lot ever conquer and rule India?
This is not the unquestioning sympathy I was hoping for.
India Pale Ale, Bombay Gin and the occasional bayonet.
Speaking of people pedaling, this is accurate.
According to Weather Underground, Berkshire is a little warm out there today.
It is 89°F (32°C) at 10:45am (CDT).
The projected high temperature is 101°F (38.3°C).
Exactly. Though not even an especially stupid person.
Oh, I would suggest that reading is a big part of the problem. Fiction, especially the more Narrative oriented fiction, gets cannonized first through literature. The poverty-causes-theft-and-crime belief, instead of the other way around, has been hugely driven by that damned Les Miserables book. Much male bashing stems from having Lord of the Flies pushed on us at a very impressionable age, whilst it having been a story stolen from a real event and then having its moral message flipped.
Yes. TV and movies certainly push the Narrative further along. One of the more frustrating aspects of discussing social and political issues with people, even conservative people, is the layers of false consciousness that one has to dig through. A false consciousness about even otherwise innocuous things. Police stories of witnesses claiming they saw something through a window is one of my favorites. But so much police interaction “understanding” is driven by fictional cop TV shows and movies.
Heh. But those 2 mph gusts bringing it down to an absolute balmy 101 Freedom Degrees. They don’t talk about that on the local weather reports! I guaran-damn-tee you that!
Previous post updated.
Needless to say, a pattern emerges.
from the article: She says she isn’t worried about being stung – “it wouldn’t be a whole lot worse than mosquito bites”
Uh, no. She’s not fooling anyone who has had the misfortune of experiencing a wasp-sting. MUCH worse than a bee sting let alone mosquito.
One day, she’ll find out (fingers crossed) and it won’t be just one sting.
Currently (10:05 a) Southwest Washington state — 62°F (partly cloudy) with predicted high of 80°F at 4:00p.
Beats decades of August in SoCal.
Is the literature cannon like the T-shirt cannon at sporting events?
once upon a time, I could take responsibility for my language foibles but thanks to autocorrect and AI, I spent a good bit of time today correcting far more obviously wrong “help”, I have no problem with taking the coward’s way out.
“I never thought leopards would eat my face!” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party
That’s why I say it’s not “suicidal empathy”. It isn’t empathy, and to these people it’s not suicidal. They don’t think anything bad will ever happen to them as a result of displaying their fashionable beliefs.
There’s a woman in my (very suburban) neighbourhood who repeatedly posts pics and video of a fox mother and her kits that have moved into her tiny backyard, year after year. I’ve pointed out repeatedly that you can’t domesticate a fox, they carry rabies, distemper and other diseases, and will bite and kill pets and small children, especially if it’s a mother defending her den. Doesn’t matter. She’s never had a problem, therefore no problem exists.
The icing on the cake is that they’re all drinking. We have those in some tourist towns here, they exploit a loophole in that since none of the passengers are directing the vehicle and it isn’t a car, and they’re not on foot, neither the drunk driving nor drunk in public laws apply.
Examples abound.
[ Schedules tomorrow’s Ephemera, weighs merits of a gin and tonic. ]
For temperature regulation.
We’re waiting for you to appear on the next edition of Flashman in the Great Game.
People pay to do that?
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of this gin and tonic.
Meanwhile, blacks can’t hear anyone over the sound of their own narcissism.
(Quip stolen from linked comment thread.)
Nashville is full of those dumb things. Brides book them for their bridesmaid parties and the women pedal throughout the city getting tipsy and yelling “w0000!”
No.
But if you don’t have personal experience with something, and you repeatedly see the fictional convention, you’ll assume the fictional convention is real.
Such as a gun with a silencer going pew-pew.
Or a defibrillator reviving someone who flatlined.
Or people getting from point A to point B within a reasonable time in NYC or LA.
Also, narration is predicated on cause-and-effect chains, so if you see causes and effects continually portrayed in a certain way — and you don’t have strong personal experience to the contrary — you’ll accept the narrative.
Storytelling has always been the way that societies conveyed their values from generation to generation.
That’s something more conservatives need to understand: Solid evidence and rational argument are valuable, but stories are more persuasive for most people.