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Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (741)

October 18, 2024 231 Comments

How the pyramids were constructed. || Overstepping. || Incoming. Or down-going. || Because it can be done. || Big woman, six-five. || Oh delicate Rose. || I’m guessing the dog is the brains of the outfit. || “A week after the boys’ detention, their families vanished.” || Sea view of note. || About this high. || Smoke, some shouting. || Sharp look, 1983. || Roadside baby parking, 1973. || It’s a miracle substance. || All-male semi-final in women’s pool tournament. || Problem solved. || Parenting scenes. || Parenting scenes 2. || Hiring based on competence? Can’t have that. || The progressive retail experience, parts 586, 587, and 588. || Pedro is trusted with children. || Docteur Qui. || Marital woes. || Fire helmet, safe word not included. || And finally, the return of the Ogmios School of Zen Motoring.

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Written by: David
Reheated

Reheated (98)

October 15, 2024 159 Comments

For newcomers, some items from the archives:

Don’t Oppress My People With Your Expectations Of Politeness And Basic Consideration.

A tear-inducing tale of racial victimhood.

Ms Gonzalez, who repeatedly mentions how “minority” and “of colour” she is, also tells us how she, “just wanted to be around people in places where nobody told us to shush.” Say, when being a late-night annoyance to roommates and neighbours, a thing that by her own account happens repeatedly, or when playing music in a library. Where other people are trying to study:

“One day, when I accidentally sat down to study in the library’s Absolutely Quiet Room, fellow students Shhh-ed me into shame for putting on my Discman… I soon realised that silence was more than the absence of noise; it was an aesthetic to be revered. Yet it was an aesthetic at odds with who I was. Who a lot of us were.”

A bold admission. One, I suspect, that reveals more than intended. Also, the claim that one can sit down in a library accidentally.

Inevitably, Ms Gonzalez blames her own moral shortcomings on other people’s race and class, as if, by expecting politeness, they were imposing on her in cruel and unusual ways. Because – magic words – “of colour.” But the common variable, the one that’s hard to miss, is the author’s own rudeness and self-absorption. And so, she blunders into the library’s “Absolutely Quiet Room,” and fires up her music.

Not Entirely Arbitrary.

On the non-random nature of who you are.

A person doesn’t just happen to be born into a context that their parents also just happened to be born into. I could not have been born to Mr and Mrs Jeong in South Korea, any more than I could have been born to a Yemeni peasant couple, or a Californian billionaire. Much as I – the person talking to you now – could not have been born in 1652.

The newborn me was a result of a particular lineage, of choices made by specific individuals and the genes of those individuals – who can of course say the same thing about themselves. To imply that anyone’s birth is a random thing, as if it could have happened anywhere, at any time, as if the particulars were immaterial, is, it seems to me, a little odd. Indeed, arse-backwards. And I doubt that many parents see the birth of their child as some random occurrence, unmoored from any context or preceding events. I’d imagine it wouldn’t seem random at all.

Unless you imagine a queue of souls waiting to spawn in some small but arbitrary body on a continent chosen by the spin of a wheel. Or cosmic bingo balls.

Impermissible Thoughts.

Ontario teachers’ union forbids “right-wing” opinions, endorses deception.

As we’ve seen, many times, some teachers and educational bureaucrats do seem rather titillated by the prospect of actively deceiving parents. As, for instance, when middle-school teachers in Missouri were urged to fabricate and publish a false curriculum, purely to hide from parents the details of their activism and what they were actually up to in class. A move pre-emptively described by its proponent, Natalie Fallert, as “not being deceitful.”

It occurs to me that when your solution to such complaints [from parents regarding classroom indoctrination] includes the words “so parents cannot see it,” it may be time to revisit your assumptions.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Problematic Walking The Great Outdoors

Black Women Climb Hill

October 13, 2024 106 Comments

Attention, people of the world:

She didn’t see other black hikers. She decided to change that.

In the New York Times, Megan Specia reports on a staggering feat of racial fortitude:

Rhiane Fatinikun called out encouragement as the group trudged upward. She was the reason these women had come together to take on this demanding trek.

Or, Black Women Climb Hill.

Specifically, a hill in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Yes, I know, it’s emotionally overwhelming, the defining triumph of our time.

There are photos and everything.

In 2019, motivated by the racial disparity she saw among British hikers, Ms. Fatinikun founded Black Girls Hike. 

Note the use of the word disparity and its intended connotations of unfairness, of unequal treatment. The implication of some dastardly external force at work. As if the demographics of those taking walks in the British countryside weren’t chiefly a result of personal inclination, of leisure-time choices, or a simple matter of geography and where a person has chosen to live.

Her goal was to help open up the outdoors to people who have often seemed invisible in Britain’s countryside, and to shatter the perception that outdoor pursuits in the country’s natural spaces are for the white middle and upper class.

Or, Black Women Complain About Lack Of Black Women In Place Black Women Seldom Visit.

It occurs to me that a perception of the Yorkshire Dales, or the Peak District, or any of Britain’s National Parks, as some exclusive fiefdom of upper-class white people is the kind of misapprehension one might expect from someone who rarely, if ever, visits such places. One of the features of the nearby Peak District, for instance, is the number of East Asian students enjoying the scenery and walking about entirely unmolested.

And we’ve previously touched on ways in which parochial assumptions of racial “representation” will likely be distorted by proximity to the nation’s capital, which in my lifetime has gone from a native white-majority city, over 90%, to a native white-minority one, around 35%, an arrangement wildly out of step with the rest of the nation. Such that, things denounced as “horribly white,” or whatever the current term of disapproval is, may be puzzling to people who live in, say, Chesterfield or Plymouth.

But back to our tale of self-inflicted sorrow:

“Sometimes it’s actually quite sad, because you realise how people are going through life and just not being seen, not being able to be themselves,” Ms Fatinikun, 37, said of the experience of some Black women who felt excluded from these natural spaces. “But I am glad that they feel like they can be whoever they want to be here.”

Well, a walk in the countryside has much to recommend it. Britain’s National Parks are very easy on the eye, and time spent in them can be both enjoyable and restorative. As to why some demographics deny themselves this pleasure, we find the usual, somewhat vague rumblings of injustice and oppression, albeit of a kind not entirely convincing:

Britain’s countryside has long been viewed by some as synonymous with whiteness, said Corinne Fowler, a professor of colonialism and heritage at the University of Leicester, and can feel exclusionary to people from other backgrounds.

At which point, readers might reasonably expect the author of the piece – and Dr Fowler, our professor of colonialism – to reveal exactly how “people from other backgrounds” are being forcibly excluded from hiking, yomping, and casual walks. These cruelly thwarted attempts to enjoy the scenic parts of the country to which they or their parents had moved.

Alas, we are merely told that, “People are very quick to dismiss the suggestion that there is racism in the countryside.” On this point, no details are forthcoming. No damning particulars are presented to sway the reader. None at all. Though clearly, we’re expected to assume the worst.

We are, however, reminded of other struggles:

Ms Fatinikun admits she had a lot to figure out at the start, but she educated herself along the way – including learning how to understand topographical maps and finding the right gear for dealing with unpredictable weather.

Yes, dressing is hard.

We have, it seems, entered a world in which basic map reading and remembering to take a coat are deemed noteworthy achievements.

Of course, it’s not just a matter of waterproofs and picking out suitable footwear. There are other complexities to be navigated:

“Taking a selfie for social media… is an important way… to feel represented,” Ms. Fatinikun said.

Needless to say, our activist’s heroism has not gone unrecognised:

This year, she was given a royal honour — Member of the Order of the British Empire, or M.B.E. 

Regarding Ms Fatinikun’s accomplishment of walking with other women who look a bit like her, we’re told,

The response to the group from Britain’s broader hiking community has been largely positive, but she has faced racist abuse, much of it on social media, particularly after appearing on Countryfile, a BBC program focused on rural life.

Again, details of this racist abuse are oddly absent, and a news item on Ms Fatinikun’s appearance on the programme refers only to “complaints” from viewers. One of whom objected to the notion of black visitors needing a “safe space” – a term Ms Fatinikun deploys frequently – when among The White Devils, and the implication that the locals – shopkeepers, hoteliers, and sellers of ice-cream – are somehow dangerous.

An omission of particulars that leaves the reader unsure of whether the British countryside is in fact teeming with menacing bigots, people who refuse to sell lunches and fortifying beverages to those deemed alarmingly brown, or whether televised race-hustling is simply disagreeable and unpopular, along with the notion of whiteness as both an accusation and a pejorative.

As if it were the cause of all human woe.

If the above sounds familiar, you may be thinking of this assembly of much the same conceits, published in the Guardian, or any of the near-identical articles that appear on a regular basis. In which we’re invited to be outraged by the scarcity of brown-skinned rock climbing instructors, as if a person can’t possibly learn to climb without an instructor of a matching skin tone, and reminded of the need for “culturally appropriate provisions,” none of which are specified, but which must nonetheless be provided at taxpayer expense.

And in which we’re told that a place being “white,” or “distinctly white,” or “very white,” a “last bastion of whiteness,” is obviously lamentable and indecent, a thing that must be fixed.

Given the above, it may be worth repeating the following, from my comments on that particular Guardian article: 

If I were to move to, say, South Korea and complained in a national Korean newspaper about how I was being deterred from visiting Seoraksan National Park or Namiseom Island, on account of such places not already having sufficient numbers of white Europeans striding about in a suitably affirming manner, you might think me a tad presumptuous.

Or perhaps something worse.

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Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (740)

October 11, 2024 163 Comments

It’s a big, deep funk machine. || “But you can’t be drooling,” said the cross-dressing pervert. || Apocalypse digs. || Callers in the night. || It has 140,000 neurons. || Neptune. || Incoming. || Outgoing. || Daring escape. || Garden seat of note. || Theremin sink. || Yours for £575,000. || Flyless. || Hefty cuts. || Hinges of note. || Those runaway Honda blues. || “I’m riding a bike, I have more rights than you.” Cause and context. || Hers is bigger than yours. || Questionable covers of 80s synth pop, including a steel-band version of Gary Numan’s Cars, and a soul version of Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams. || Pick a percentage. || Well, yes, people died, but what about her stuff? || Amsterdam’s transport revolution, 1974. || Today’s word is modernity. || And finally, in comparison, how was your day?

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Academia Pronouns Or Else Sports

This Is My Shocked Face

October 10, 2024 57 Comments

Readers will, I think, recall Mr Sasha Yates, the cross-dressing high-school sports coach with an interest in teenage girls’ panties.

The chap so loudly championed by ladies of a progressive bent, despite numerous complaints regarding Mr Yates’ inappropriate behaviour.

Progressive ladies who denounced the “hate” and “transphobia” of those expressing concerns, while ensuring that Mr Yates retained his position, and his access to the girls’ changing rooms, where he paraded around in his own bra and panties, much to the girls’ discomfort, and while asking those teenage girls about their underwear and menstrual cycles.

Progressive ladies who merrily elevated themselves with the airing of modish views, their ostentatious displays of compassion and inclusivity, while in effect screwing over the schoolgirls being harassed by a cross-dressing creep.

Girls whose discomfort and polite complaints – their failure to be progressive – rendered them low-status. Beings of no consequence.

In case you’re unsure, Mr Yates is the strapping madam in the denim.

Well, readers, I have news.

Following the renewal of his employment contract, reported previously, Mr Yates has since resigned, citing “ongoing health reasons.” Which, as the ladies at Reduxx reveal, is something of a euphemism, another coy dishonesty:

Yates’ resignation appears to have come after starring in home-made pornography, including in a video showing him smoking methamphetamine from a glass pipe.

I’ll spare you the more graphic details, but in one of the feats of erotica seemingly shared with the world, Mr Yates asks the question every parent hopes to hear from someone educating their children:

“Am I a good meth whore?”

At risk of sounding stuffy and uptight, it occurs to me that if you’re employed as a sports coach at a school, despite perving on adolescent girls, and your home-made porno videos, in which you smoke meth, can easily be found by parents, and presumably by students, this is not an ideal situation.

And because, clearly, we need more irony, there’s this detail regarding the school district’s original investigation:

In response to the public outcry [in 2023], the district quietly hired an attorney to do an investigation into the allegations that Yates had exposed himself to the female students. The attorney, Christopher Harris, determined that the allegations were unsubstantiated despite never interviewing the girls who had reported seeing Yates’ genitals. 

Wait for it.

Harris was recently arrested on child pornography charges.

You may now resume your humdrum, non-cross-dressing lives.

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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.