Friday Ephemera
And yet the first thing I noticed was the lack of shoes. (h/t Obo) // Remember, feminists are the ones we’re supposed to take seriously. // Her favourite thing. // The final resting places of seven famous dogs. // Forgotten guest-stars of Murder, She Wrote. // His model tornado is better than yours. // A bit gusty. // A good hard poke should do it. // The underbellies of horses. // 1980s New York. // Non-stop Chuck Norris. // Assorted Sixties nuclear tests. // Jordan Peterson on “privilege” and its precedents. // This seems to work and it’s cheaper than divorce. // This is exactly how I would have done it. // This should be a thing. (h/t, Damian) // And this should not. // Lakeside property. // Rock music. // Flashback. // And finally, live radio transmissions from the airports of the world.
I’m not allowed to view the “Her favorite thing” tweet.
I’ll make up for that, though: Kafkatrapping in action.
Klein bottle-trapping, Ted? Hall of mirrors trapping?
Quick, SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING.
The final resting places of seven famous dogs.
Giant lump in throat.
“Forgotten guest-stars of Murder, She Wrote.”
Also worth noting that J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, was a co-producer and writer on the show.
“A bit gusty.”
I like the woman on the other side of the street, casually leaning against a lamp-post as if it was just a gentle breeze. I expect she’s probably braced hard against it, but she looks so nonplussed.
“Jordan Peterson on “privilege” and its precedents.”
Great stuff. And of course, that class-related or group-related guilt he talks about is the definition of “social justice”: it’s “justice” according to social association rather than individual action. There are too many people around right now who’ve been seduced into thinking it just means being nice to poor people or black people or whatever. If you want to argue for social justice, then know what it means, and know that doing so puts you in the same boat as the founders of the gulag.
(I remember, incidentally, Paul Marks of Samizdata ranting about this about 15 years ago after some Tory shadow minister or other used the term and not really following what he was on about. But I get it now. “Social justice”, being based entirely on guilt-by-association, is utterly incompatible with real, actual, justice. Nobody who isn’t a raving Commie should go near it with a ten-foot pole.)
“This should be a thing.”
Heh. I quite enjoy the agility competitions; you know, the part that’s like showjumping for dogs, with little fences and tunnels and whatnot. The mutts look like they’re having the time of their lives. Always cheers me up.
Airports of the world: Try this: https://www.liveatc.net/ None of that annoying elevator music.
I think if you open one browser tab with the Peterson lecture snippet and another tab with Ted’s Kafkatrapping link something cosmically bad happens, like a black hole opens or something. Or maybe some kind of matter / anti-matter explosion. I don’t know – I’m too scared to try it, and besides, this laptop is out of warranty.
Oh, and Peterson’s 6:50 lecture bit, “…being ideologically possessed” is also quite interesting.
Don’t miss THIS.
A bit gusty.
I thought last year was full election season . . .
Kafkatrapping in action.
And which actually features the now-protected tweet by Ms Claire Lockard. In which she declares, rather piously, that her “new favourite thing” is “interrupting white dudes” in class.
that class-related or group-related guilt he talks about is the definition of “social justice”: it’s “justice” according to social association rather than individual action. There are too many people around right now who’ve been seduced into thinking it just means being nice to poor people or black people or whatever.
Absolutely. It’s also interesting that, despite the term being used frequently and ostentatiously, clear definitions are rarely volunteered. As you say, what it seems to entail is treating people not as individuals but as categories. And judging a person and their actions based primarily on which Designated Victim Group they supposedly belong to and then assigning various exemptions and indulgences depending on that notional group identity and whatever presumptuous baggage can be attached to it. And conversely, assigning imaginary sins and “privilege” to someone else based on whatever Designated Oppressor Group they can be said to belong to, however fatuously and regardless of the particulars of the actual person.
Which is to say, “social justice” is largely about judging people tribally, cartoonishly, and by different and contradictory standards, based on some supposed group identity, which must override all else. It’s glib, question-begging and ultimately pernicious. Morality for the mediocre. Viewed rationally, it’s something close to the opposite of justice. And yet it’s the latest must-have.
In much the same way that “equity,” another word favoured by campus activists, is usually defined only in the woolliest and most evasive of terms, and which sounds unobjectionable, given the connotations of fairness. But which, when used by activists, seems to mean something like “equality of outcome regardless of inputs.” And, on reflection, that isn’t fair at all.
It’s also interesting that, despite the term being used frequently and ostentatiously, clear definitions are rarely volunteered.
I often end up helping the university-aged children of my friends and acquaintances with their arts studies (the curse of having minored in an Art).
One such wide-eyed naif asked me for help with an essay on social justice, as she was completely lost. After going through all the readings with her, I was struck by the fact that the only assigned author to actually define “social justice” was Friedrich Hayek, and the point of the assigned essay was to answer his criticism of the entire concept.
I ended up having to admit defeat, as I simply couldn’t find anything that resembled a coherent argument in the rest of the readings. I advised her to just write 1500 words saying that Hayek was full of shit because he was white and didn’t understand oppression.
She got a B+. Lost marks for using too many contractions.
I was struck by the fact that the only assigned author to actually define “social justice” was Friedrich Hayek
Heh. I generally think it’s a good idea to treat any unironic use of the term as warranting suspicion. If a person feels compelled to repeatedly signal their imagined virtue – which, it seems, is the term’s primary use – this is a little odd. The word camouflage comes to mind.
And yet the first thing I noticed was the lack of shoes.
Ever the gentleman.
Ever the gentleman.
In fairness to McDonald’s, I feel I should point out that in none of my occasional visits have I ever seen a fat lady’s bare arse.
It’s also interesting that, despite the term being used frequently and ostentatiously, clear definitions are rarely volunteered. As you say, what it seems to entail is treating people not as individuals but as categories.
See, e.g. North Korea’s Songbun system, where one’s class is used to reward or punish one for generations. It is the inevitable end-game for the SJWs.
This is exactly how I would have done it.
Me too. 🙂
1980s New York.
Ahh a stroll down memory lane. Good examples here of what happened after The New York Times came out in favor of graffiti “artists” who were tagging subway cars at the time. Dimwits. Nothing changes in liberal fantasyland.
Remember, feminists are the ones we’re supposed to take seriously.
NYC again. Why are liberal cities such horrible places for women that they must resort to gas warfare?
The final resting places of seven famous dogs.
Just got a bit dusty in the manor, for some reason. Had to go check on the hound as well, just to ensure she was squared away.
Surprised they didn’t include Hachiko
A good hard poke should do it.
Like Jenga.
See, e.g. North Korea’s Songbun system, where one’s class is used to reward or punish one for generations. It is the inevitable end-game for the SJWs.
Another realm in which NorKo is ahead of our own SJWs in obtaining the Perfected State and total justice is that Juche recognizes the importance of an “artist” class to unify and define the vision of the proles. A notional improvement on communism by stating formally that bien pensance defines who is to be most equal. Rising above the Hammer and the Sickle, the Brush.
Congratulations, lobbyists for the Seriousness Of Art, right thinking pushed through mandatory “art” flummery, and for amending STEM to STEAM. You’re only 50-odd years behind… North Korea. That utopia thing will be along any day now.
“25 million metric tonnes of spiders exist on Earth.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/science-unravels-spiders-monstrous-food-184133798.html
25 million metric tonnes of spiders exist on Earth.
Someone should tell Julia. She’ll be thrilled.
This is always a good sign:
Supremacist religions are supremacist.
Heh. I generally think it’s a good idea to treat any unironic use of the term as warranting suspicion.
A friend of mine once observed that any adjective in a marketing campaign means “not”. (Specifically, in relation to the last generation of CRT TVs, which were advertised as “virtual flat”)
I think the same principle is at play here.
Meet Mr Intersectionality. You’ll know him when you see him.
Was expecting to see this waiting for me in this weeks Ephemera…or maybe I’m weeks late. Anyway:
Crazy fool tries to race against a London Underground train.
https://twitter.com/Holbornlolz/status/841554012298190848
What’s next, fluoride in the water?:
http://www.dailywire.com/news/14492/college-student-explains-why-milk-racist-elliott-hamilton
I suppose the very air we breath is racist.
I suppose the very air we breath is racist.
“Trolls… drank milk… as a means of imposing white supremacy on the actor.”
The 21st century isn’t turning out quite as I’d imagined.
The 21st century isn’t turning out quite as I’d imagined.
I’ll say.
Elsewhere, totalitarians wonder why people might object to redistribution of infants.
Perhaps.
They raise fake objections and respond to them with fake rebuttals, eliding entirely what I would take as the central point of the children do not belong to you, they are not yours to redistribute, STOP THINKING OF THE ENTIRETY OF THE BLOODY WORLD AS CLAY TO BE REARRANGED IN YOUR HANDS OR I AM LIKELY TO START THINKING A LOT MORE ABOUT REARRANGING YOUR ANATOMY.
the children do not belong to you, they are not yours to redistribute,
There is, as so often, a monstrous arrogance.
If you follow Dicentra’s link you will also find this
https://au.be.yahoo.com/lifestyle/health-and-fitness/a/34656641/meet-the-naked-yoga-teacher-yahoo7-be/#page1
I forgot to warn that it is obvious cultural appropriation.
The redistribution plan is all sorts of problematic and wickedness. But I can at least hope it fades from sight quickly and quietly. One of its references evidently has not, so let me stab at that a few times:
John Rawls’s concept of justice is approximately this: Suppose that a hypothetical quasi-parliament of maximally risk-averse amnesiac-alien-ghosts bereft of personal feelings or opinions behind the veil of ignorance were about to mass-incarnate into human bodies at random, but first they were coming to an agreement on how worldly goods should be redistributed for the benefit of their future incarnations. Due to their risk aversion, they would wish for the distribution of goods on Earth to be rearranged towards equality such that the world is graded strictly on how well off the single worst off person is. This is how we humans should redistribute goods.
It’s nonsense on stilts, and the fact that Rawls hasn’t gone the way of phlogiston is an embarrassment to philosophy.
Arguably, phlogiston might even be the more sensible of the two. Phlogiston is basically oxygen with a sign error, after all.
If you follow Dicentra’s link you will also find this
I’d imagine there are, um, specialist websites for that kind of thing.
It’s nonsense on stilts,
As so often with these things, there’s an air of moral and psychological obtuseness. As if they don’t quite understand, and don’t much care, how human beings work. In another context, it might suggest sociopathy.
Regarding, the redistribution of babies, I note the third “advantage” would be ending racism, given that families could consist of members with random melanin levels presumably. However, I thought that the idea of a “colorblind” view of human interaction was itself racist in origin, inasmuch as there’s that whole “white privilege” thing. Which is it? This is similar to the idea that mixed race marriage and procreation should be encouraged because once everyone has a lovely olive toned skin, our problems will be solved. That idea was determined by the Left to be the functional equivalent of advocating genocide.
redistribution of infants.
There’s nothing new under the sun. Plato thought of it first (or at least quite a bit earlier).
Reminds me of the old joke: Why can’t girls drink beer at the beach? They get sand in their Schlitz.
Meet Mr Intersectionality.
In a keffiyeh (or whatever the rock-chucker rag is called). Colour me stunned.
Rawls always omits the fact that any structure reworked to create an equal instantaneous outcome (itself an idiotic preposition) is one that very possibly enables someone malign upsetting the applecart one second after. Therefore, the first alien ghost not to be the veriest angel can ascend to power with (amusingly enough) minimal risk. Further, a society which cannot preserve gains made unequally stagnates to the misery of all – how tolerant are these ghosts of that result?
Regardless, all it likely takes is one enterprising actor in the example to “refute it thus”, possibly with a quick, sharp blow to another alien-host’s head.
As to baby redistribution, it’s quite common knowledge that the racial imbalance of adopter and adoptee populations is pronounced, and minority infants are routinely robbed of any opportunity to grow up in a good home of any kind because administrators think they might not sufficiently receive transmitted grievances and might receive Whitey Cooties instead. A counterargument I’ve heard is that a racial mismatch to the parent accentuates adoption anxieties, and that it enables what one might call mascot adoption. The tendency of a deranged virtue-signaler to want a Special Snowflake” child ready-born.
So, the result, then, is to have foreign infants *also* a mismatch to their parents brought in, productive couples without issue of any kind, and children growing just enough to be tossed back into loosely affiliated gambles of foster arrangements. Bra-VO.
Their doublethink on the issue is substantial.
Colour me stunned.
Presumably, Mr Intersectionality wanted to signal to the nation, or at least his classmates, just how woke he is. Because men aren’t allowed to discuss sexism (and should shut up), and white people aren’t allowed to discuss racism (and should shut up). It’s all terribly inclusive.
That idea was determined by the Left to be the functional equivalent of advocating genocide.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a black SJW type recently who was aware of this… to a point. Proudly proclaiming that interbreeding would destroy the white race through the quasi-magical superiority of black genes, or something like that.
One step forward, two steps back for reason, then.
…minority infants are routinely robbed of any opportunity to grow up…
I’ve seen it in a professional context, but fortunately it’s been minimal. The good news is, such concerns do not have the force of law and rely on SJWs getting on the bench and appointed for prospective adopted children to really do damage. The only place where actual racial preference statutes obtain are with Native”>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Child_Welfare_Act”>Native Americans.
Link for above.
…and even the ICWA is very arguably a mistake. I remember some malign ruling a while back that, IIRC, ended up removing a child from the only family they’d known and placing with a putative relative that they’d had no connection to in their life based on an ICWA mechanism – even though the receiving relative was not of NA blood at all. It also handicaps any effort to place a child who really needs to be removed from a bad situation – as are all too common on some reservations.
You will PAY for my emotional labor, kaffir.
@Spork,
Yeah, the case is mentioned in the Wiki entry. The problem is when/if a tribe has asserted jurisdiction or whether it will at all. And, it depends on who is registered in the tribal rolls. There are a lot of people are are registered with only one grandparent on the rolls. It can get sticky, especially with adoptive parents who wish to sweep possible tribal affiliations under the rug, which can be tragic if that affiliation ever comes to light.
Jordan Peterson on “privilege” and its precedents
And as if right on cue … the usual parade of insufferable clowns comes to town, unironically complaining of a lack of tolerance while simultaneously behaving in a way that in practically any other context would earn them a well-earned punch in the snout.
As Peterson suggests, it’s quite eerie how much the assumptions of these clowns echoes the words of someone like Stalin in his 1937 address, ‘Defects in Party Work and Measures for Liquidating Trotskyite and Other Double Dealers’:
[Party Comrades] have forgotten that Soviet power was victorious in only one-sixth of the world, that five-sixths of the world are in the possession of the capitalist states. They have forgotten that the Soviet Union finds itself encircled by capitalist states. We have an accepted habit of chattering about capitalist encirclement, but people don’t want to ponder about what this thing is-capitalist encirclement. Capitalist encirclement – it is not an empty phrase, it is a very real and unpleasant phenomenon. Capitalist encirclement – it means that there is one country, the Soviet Union, which has established at home a Socialist order, and that there are, besides, many countries, bourgeois countries, which continue to carry on the capitalist form of life and which encircle the Soviet Union, waiting for the opportunity to attack it, to crush it, or, in any case-to undermine its might and to weaken it.
the usual parade of insufferable clowns comes to town, unironically complaining of a lack of tolerance
And so an educator who is by any measure thoughtful is harassed by a mob of narcissistic morons. And the narcissism won’t stop of its own accord. It will only be stopped when those who indulge in it, and those who encourage it, find that it costs them. Which, at the moment, it evidently doesn’t.