Tokens Of Gratitude And Esteem
With various blog-related expenses looming, annual renewals of this and that, I’m going to do something reckless and appeal to your better nature.
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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 nigh on twenty years, in over 3,600 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.
The Island of Misfit Toys?
Yes, indeed.
I called bullshit because I was not persuaded that any serious honest research had been done*, and that everything these Smart People were telling me was merely the latest Mensa crowd fashionable nonsense spouted by people with an extreme tolerance-and-diversity fetish. I’d heard so much over the years, in fact, that I reflexively doubted anything they’d say without independent verification from non-assholes.
* Other examples: “woke” pseudo-science documented in Fashionable Nonsense by Alan Sokal and Higher Superstition by Levitt and Gross. Also the claims that a radically new and different mRNA vaccine for COVID, developed in only a few months, was perfectly safe and fully effective with no short- or long-term risks.
The importance of education.
Oh, they’re belief-based alright, just not belief in anything found in the Bible.
“It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.”
–G.K. Chesterton in one of his Father Brown stories.
Interpreted by biographer Émile Cammaert as “The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything”.
Well, they are women right? Right? Well most of them anyway…
Is this the ultimate girly way to say your car was stolen?
If that’s what her videos are like, can you imagine how much worse she is in person?
I’m struggling to get past the whole women-narrating-their-lives-while-filming-themselves-putting-on-make-up thing.
Faux Pali, faux pas.
“Gann, a Philadelphia teacher…”
Employee sues for discrimination because she (of course) was denied time off to attend a rock concert.
Pic of said lady exactly what you’d expect.
Dear lord.
I don’t understand her eyebrows.
On the Western Massachusetts lesbian bar front:
It seems to me – and do correct me if I’m wrong – that the process is to shave off your actual eyebrows, leaving you looking like a burn victim or someone undergoing chemotherapy, and then to draw on unconvincing fascimiles of the eyebrows you used to have.
And this is regarded as an upgrade, right?
I’m in favor of anything that makes it easier to spot fools and loonies at a glance.
Heh. As a freshman in high school I was eligible for an AP history slot. The teacher was the assistant swimming coach so I had a bit of an in there, but I still had to interview with her. In this interview we were sitting down face-to-face two desks, facing each other. For the first time I couldn’t get past my noticing that her eyebrows were gone and they appeared to be drawn back in again with a makeup pencil. Being a naïve 14 year-old I thought she had had some horrible accident, or maybe a disease where her eyebrows needed to be drawn back in every day. Women are weird. They never tell you that in sex education.
[ Uses brown felt-tip to draw thin eyebrows onto flesh-coloured sticking plasters. ]
[ Places sticking plasters over actual eyebrows. ]
[ Adjusts sticking plasters. ]
[ Checks for any increase in allure. ]
She had a “genuine belief …”
I get into this argument all the time (well, on a rare occasion) regarding the US first amendment and religion. I assert that the proper core of executing freedom of religion is to prohibit the use of words like “religion”, “church”, “clergy”, “faith” etc. etc. in any Federal law or document. I assert that anything else inevitably devolves into 1) an argument about what is/is not a “bona fide” religion, and 2) into granting a sole power to the government to answer that question.
Nobody ever agrees with me. They all want to make lists of things like essential and non-essential attributes, or argue from history, or something.
“allure” is not quite le mot juste. Quel dommage.
More interesting details:
These people really are insane.
The rest of the workplace would flourish more if she weren’t around.
Absolutely guaranteed that this isn’t the only crap she’s given her employer.
Gambling? Selling gambling? I…hadn’t noticed.
JKR remains unbeaten: https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/2102740292461834339
She’s increasing the value of her stake.
This is not normal. It can’t be.
Because it’s not a church; it’s a political activism org.
Patrick said in the 60 Minutes interview that he is convinced that she went insane because of the meds and that he forgives her (to guard his own sanity).
That man went through one of the hottest hells a man can go through. He was on the phone with 911 when he found the kids, and his howls of grief are rumored to be unworldly in their pitch and tenor. He’s requested that they not be made public. Before they played the recording in court, he had to excuse himself, where he went into a back room and had a nervous breakdown, bad enough that they took him to the hospital in an ambulance.
People need to leave that poor man alone. Cripes. Nobody gets to condemn him for how he rebuilds his life.
In terms of measurable differences between male and female brains, and alleged similarities to trans brains, you are right — no reliable research has been done, and I don’t think it can be done for a good three decades, until the current crop has retired.
Preach, brother. And again, the meaning of words…
Ooh, and did I mention that I got my first death threat this week? Well it’s kinda a death threat. Basically someone told me they were looking forward to seeing me Kirked. I feel so alive now. I mean, if you’ve never been threatened with death, even just a little, are you really living?
Sure they didn’t mean ‘Kirched‘, as in ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche‘?
No…no, there was a picture included to explain exactly what he(?) meant.
Breaking news.
He “surpasses the boringness of vaginas.”
I’m trying to imagine sitting through this shit.
I’m no expert in theology, but didn’t Mary receive news of her motherly condition – and of the forthcoming child’s sex – via angelic visitation? In which case, the one presumptuously “assigning gender” would be… God Himself?
Community notes for the win.
It’s the self-satisfied tone twinned with ignorance of the stories to which she refers, and on which her supposed expertise depends. And the idée fixe, the tedious self-absorption, whereby all things must be made subordinate to the transgender delusion. God Himself must be made to affirm her mental health issues. Her demons, as it were.
You have to wonder exactly how obviously pathological the shit-show has to become before the congregants start walking out, or throwing chairs.
Meanwhile, some of Gen Z are up in arms because a recruiter advised in a Tik Tok NOT to bring an iced coffee to a job interview.
It reminds me of when I first started at Arthur Andersen. I was told by a manager that when summoned to his office, we were expected to have two things in our hands: a pad of paper for note taking and a pen.
Doesn’t seem ideal in terms of first impressions.
It reminded me of a conversation I had years ago with someone who railed against the idea that potential employers might judge him based on his chosen, supposedly alternative appearance, which he very much felt they shouldn’t. I remember spending quite a lot of time trying to convey to him that it didn’t matter whether he felt they should do this. What matters is that they most likely would.
You could practically see the struggle to process the fact that his preferences in the matter were immaterial.
And which in turn has reminded me of this post, in which a body-modification enthusiast, quoted approvingly in the Observer, feels entitled to be hired regardless of how he presents himself to an employer (and to that employer’s customers):
As if contrarian choices should never have real-world consequences of an unflattering kind. As if actively choosing to make one’s chances of employment slimmer and more perilous were a thing to be both applauded and rewarded.
I’m now chuckling over my attempts to rephrase the same question, “Why would they care what you think about this?”
It does not matter to these people what the Bible says. They have consumed it holistically. You can quote chapter and verse and they write you off as just cherry-picking. They either cannot or will not cite any specific passages. The text is irrelevant compared to their feelings.
Oddly, ironically, it was partly a dogged insistence on literal accuracy and the resulting refusal to reconcile science and theology that got us here. People capable of rational and logical thought fell away from the church. All that was left were feelings people. You can see it even in the waning number of socially/politically conservative churches as well.
In other lesbian (real or imagined) news, the bar keeps on giving, everyone is welcome except the aforementioned “Zionists” and now “pigs” (because of course), and probably a third
basemanbaseperson to be named later.Related, a “journalist” known for – actually I don’t know what for other than apparent nosophobia – learns us rubens about how one drinks through a mask. Apparently straws have a force field that keeps viri away when not stuffed in one’s gob.
[ Checks alignment of Elastoplast eyebrows. ]
She really does need shaking by the elbows. Before being entombed in concrete.
They should be denied all the protections of the law.
I can’t begin to imagine how traumatic it must have been to discover the stuff didn’t just spontaneously appear in garment factories.
How the hell does she wipe her ass?
Hey, these Elastoplast eyebrows are looking pretty good right now.