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Anthropology Problematic Civility Psychodrama

Tall Tales

September 28, 2024 113 Comments

Lifted from the comments, a spot of anthropology. In which, a progressive woman seeks irritation, some cause for concern – and, with effort, finds it:

What’s amusing about these displays of woke piety is, I think, the eerie uniformity, the contrivance, the same weird psychology.

Ms Jeffery, the editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, is not only ostentatiously vexed by an unremarkable expression of politeness and goodwill – such that she feels a need to alert her 134,000 likeminded followers to the imminent Christian Nationalist uprising – but we’re also expected to believe that her account of events is entirely true. That her peculiar disapproval was shared, audibly, by many other passengers, which, frankly, seems unlikely.

Oh, and she’s also revealed in the subsequent thread to be something of a hypocrite, and a repeated user of the same, supposedly offensive term. The latest instance being a mere three days earlier. I’m sure you’re all shocked. Do take a moment to steady yourselves.

As Clam adds in the comments,

They’re so used to bullshitting they don’t even notice how bad they are at it.

It does suggest being accustomed to getting away with it. An expectation of mutual dishonesty, in which no-one pulls at the obvious threads, lest the favour be repaid and their own pronouncements receive an unwelcome scrutiny.

I suppose we could see the dubious story above – in which an innocuous expression of politeness is proof of “creeping Christian nationalism” – as a new spin on the woke eight-year-old phenomenon from 2016, in which countless progressives, including MSNBC “analysts” and editors of leftist magazines – and including Ms Jeffery herself – started tweeting, competitively, about their small children, all aged eight, supposedly saying Oddly Precocious And Terribly Progressive Things:

As I said at the time,

As an eight-year-old, I had strong opinions on bedtime, the evils of Brussels sprouts, and whether Spider-Man’s webbing could actually hold five tonnes; but I don’t recall being overly engaged by, or aware of, the politics of the day.

The phenomenon was seemingly contagious and quite bizarre, a collective fit of transparent fabrication, and soon became a mocking meme. But I think we’re seeing much the same psychology. The same telling of tall tales in order to assert status and to fuel some progressive psychodrama.

For grown adults, our supposed moral betters, this is… odd behaviour.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi quips,

It’s only odd for grown adults who aren’t woke progressives. For woke progressives it’s totally normal behaviour.

The urge to inflate grievances, and indeed to fabricate them, to balance umbrage and chest-puffing on the merest mote, is a progressive credential. Theirs is a hamster-wheel world of competitive indignation. But when you’re very publicly complaining about a flight attendant using the word blessed, as if this one word signalled some impending theocracy – and when you’re using your eight-year-old child as a political ventriloquist’s doll – then we’re in the land of make-believe. And possibly, anti-psychotic medication.

Ms Jeffery seems oblivious to how petty, presumptuous and mean-spirited she sounds. As if complaining about a commonplace word of kindness, a courtesy, and construing it as offensive and vaguely sinister, were what righteous, well-adjusted people do. As if it were something one should boast about, publicly, while waiting for applause.

Ms Jeffery goes on to complain about disrespect – as if she had been violated by someone wishing her well – and she depicts herself as being oppressed by some “dominant culture.” In which flight attendants say nice things to passengers.

Readers are invited to imagine what it must be like to publicly mouth some bizarrely implausible claim, for no discernibly pressing reason, knowing that the bullshit-like properties of your claim, and your own hypocrisy, can easily be discovered, in a matter of seconds, and to mouth it anyway. And then, when challenged, to double down on the implausible and bizarre. Again, it strikes me as an odd compulsion.

Ms Jeffery is now calling those mocking her “so, so, so dumb.”

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Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (738)

September 27, 2024 107 Comments

At last, the ever-changing pronoun pin you’ve always wanted. || Loud chomping, heard from below. || The thrill of personal airbags. || Suboptimal situation. || Still a bear, madam. || Man cave, not bear cave. || He was not entirely cooperative, and then there was the business with the machete. || How to remove those whale skeletons from your ceiling. || Milky loveliness. || From 1963, a laboratory of smells and some educated noses. || She “felt God’s presence,” you know. || Unwell woman, one of many. || When you’re a little too into yourself. || A cunning use of cardboard. || At least the ducks were unharmed. || Odd dog. || Further to last week, more thrills of frog venom. || Big horse fart. The fart, I mean, not the horse. || Moths and butterflies. || And finally, in case you didn’t know, they unfold.

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Basking

Honesty Box

September 23, 2024 267 Comments

With the nights drawing in – and with bills for renewing hosting, domain registration, security, and so forth all upcoming – it’s time to remind patrons that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain 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.

If one-click haste is called for, there’s a QR code in the sidebar, at which you point your phone, and my PayPal.Me page can be found here. As requested, I’ve added SubscribeStar and Ko-Fi accounts, via which love may also be monetised, whether as one-off donations or monthly subscriptions.

Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link, or via the button in the sidebar, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Feel free to buy things wildly and in bulk.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last seventeen years, in over 3,000 posts and 200,000 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.

By all means consider this an open thread.

Oh yes. The buttons:

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Written by: David
Free-For-All Policing Those Poor Darling Burglars

Criminal Trajectories

September 22, 2024 81 Comments

Further to our lively rumblings on crime and recidivism, including recent comments, Inquisitive Bird has some relevant data:

Perhaps the single most important fact of criminology is that a large share of crime is committed by a small group of persistent repeat offenders…

One illustrative example: people who are imprisoned in the United States have typically been arrested many times. An analysis showed that less than 5% of people admitted to prison had only been arrested the one time that led to the prison sentence… It was more common to have been arrested 30+ times than having only the single arrest that led to imprisonment. The median number of arrests was 9, and more than 3 out of 4 prisoners had been arrested 5+ times.

Another example is that nearly a third of shoplifting arrests in 2022 involved just 327 people, who collectively were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times.

But the reality is even worse than this, for criminals (when asked) admit that have often committed dozens of crimes for every crime they were arrested for…

A corollary of the criminal power law is that a large fraction of crime can be prevented by addressing a surprisingly small number of persistent offenders…

In 2020, three prolific burglars were on the loose in Leinster, Ireland. Together they had accumulated over 200 convictions. But one day, they all died in a traffic accident. As a result, the robbery rate plummeted.

That would be this incident here. The gentlemen in question met their maker after colliding head-on with a lorry, while driving down the N7, at more than twice the speed limit, in the wrong direction. Their car, a stolen BMW 3 series, promptly burst into flames, making the identification of their remains a time-consuming endeavour.

Happily, the driver of the lorry survived.

Readers with an interest in the subject are advised to read the whole thing, in which eye-widening statistics abound, along with some rather sensible – and therefore terribly unfashionable – policy suggestions.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the burglars’ demise, what catches the eye are the gushing tributes from friends and relatives, claiming, rather improbably, that the gleefully malevolent creatures were “too good for this stupid shitty world.”

As if the trio – whose activities included habitual burglary on a prodigious scale, and assaulting and mugging elderly couples and bedridden cancer patients – were somehow deserving of public sympathy. Not the numerous victims of their predations, mind, but the predators themselves. It does rather tell us something about the quality of those friends and relatives, their moral orientation.

Again, I miss the concept of shame.

Oh, and consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (737)

September 20, 2024 107 Comments

At last, a walking coffee table. And how to build your own. || Incoming. || Close enough, buddy. || Close enough 2. || 70s cop show. || Tongue action. || Nommy nommy nom. || Attention, peasants, I bring thee art. || Rob Henderson on wokeness, the media, and luxury beliefs. || Hey, it’s a job. || Hey, it’s a job 2. || A pressing question from 1981: Who are the New Romantics? || The progressive retail experience, parts 578, 579, 580, 581, and 582. || Paid $136,000. || Another professor struggles with logic and reality. || A project for the weekend. || Hot water. || Hey, you wanted it immersive. || It’s raining men. || This is one of these. || Fifth wheel for tight parking. || ‘Fess up, it was the first thing you noticed. || And finally, a tale of harvesting psychedelic frog secretions, parts 1 and 2 and 3.

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