Or, He’s Put Tinsel On The Tip Jar.

Konkon’s Yawn, photographed by Tak.

As is the custom here, posting will be intermittent over the holidays and readers are advised to follow me on X, or subscribe to the blog feed at the very bottom of the page, either of which will alert you to anything new as and when it materialises.

Thanks for another 1.5 million or so visits this year and thousands of comments, many of which prompted discussions that are much more interesting than the actual posts. Which is pretty much the idea.

And particular thanks to all those who’ve made PayPal, Ko-Fi, or SubscribeStar donations to keep this rickety barge above water. It’s much appreciated. Should you be gripped by a seasonal urge to express encouragement via currency, by all means use the buttons below this post.

Just think of my little face lighting up.

Curious newcomers and those with nothing better to do are welcome to rummage through the Reheated series in search of entertainment. You may find things you’d missed. And this, needless to say, is an open thread.

To you and yours, a very good one.

Lifted from the comments, an excerpt from the Joe Rogan Experience, a discussion with investor and tech developer Marc Andreessen:

Forward this video to friends & family to understand just how evil the government has been
pic.twitter.com/XgRnikMK6J

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 29, 2024

The complete three-hour discussion, which I recommend making time for, can be found here. Topics touched on include progressive status bubbles, biased AI, debanking and other deep-state shenanigans, and a march towards dystopia only recently interrupted.

Update, via the comments:

As Dicentra says in reply,

It’s quite a revealing discussion, on many fronts, and worth finding three hours to hear the whole thing.

Much of it is dystopian in its implications, and there’s a recurring sense of getting a chance to avoid a path to nowhere good. The idea of a branch in the timeline, mentioned jokingly early on, did not strike me as inapt. And the description of living in a self-flattering progressive bubble, with continual anxieties about status and expressing The Correct Politics, may be familiar to regulars here.

I was in the car, listening distractedly and pretty much by accident, but soon found myself paying attention. The mechanics of unaccountable state power are not uninteresting, if somewhat disturbing; the sheer foolishness and perversity of Our Betters is a never-ending source of black comedy – say, with the US military using Chinese drones; and the insider description of elite liberals and their world – its vanities and its mismatch with reality – had a certain resonance.

As you might imagine.

Mr Rogan is known, and parodied, for his whoas and wows and what the fucks, but it’s an episode in which what the fuck is not an unreasonable response. And if you’ve wondered how an elite liberal, a Silicon Valley billionaire, starts to, as it were, leave the faith, it’s quite interesting. The process of registering the vanities and incongruities, the social dynamics, the outright lies about topics in which you have some expertise, and so forth.

Now please insert your political views into the scanner.

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

Lifted from the comments, it turns out that Transport For London is advertising assisted suicide. They seem to be giving it quite a push:

Westminster Death Tunnel sponsored by @dignityindying pic.twitter.com/fW0mbtqVRc

— Fleur Elizabeth (@fleurmeston) November 25, 2024

Very on-brand, I’d say. Almost too on-the-nose. I mean, if London’s buses and tube network were suddenly to be plastered with huge posters saying END IT ALL NOW, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO, it wouldn’t be entirely inexplicable, or entirely dissonant with the customer experience.

It’s perhaps worth noting that Transport For London has a staff training centre, complete with fake station and platform, and “suicide pits,” where employees learn how to manage what are euphemistically referred to as “passengers taken unwell” or “disruptions to the tube service.” Events that occur on average once or twice a week.

In 2019, staff “intervened” in the self-destructive thoughts of 426 customers deemed “visibly in distress,” “up from 252 in the previous year.”

As EmC quips darkly in reply,

Update, via the comments:

The adverts for assisted suicide are now being partially covered, by persons unknown, with posters for a Samaritans helpline.

Consider this an open thread.

Regarding the recent Māori theatrics in the New Zealand parliament:

Interesting. Are we indigenous Danes also more spiritually and culturally connected to our land than the recent immigrants? https://t.co/4WzK6HOr2g

— Jonatan Pallesen (@jonatanpallesen) November 16, 2024

Oddly, no reply was forthcoming.

Update, via the comments:

On those connections to the land: 

Today’s word, since you ask, is juxtaposition.

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

Mr Destiny, who is, I gather, some kind of deep thinker, a moral colossus of the left, is apparently unable to make a mug of hot chocolate:

My Uber driver brought me my hot chocolate today on bike. It took 45 minutes to get here, and this is what happens as soon as I pick up the bag to bring it inside.

This is Trump’s America. pic.twitter.com/g4iBNXsQjt

— Destiny (@TheOmniLiberal) November 12, 2024

Needless to say, mockery ensues. 

Update, via the comments: 

Mr Destiny – aka Steven Kenneth Bonnell II – evidently felt that the moment above had some symbolic meaning, some charged political relevance. Which, I suppose, it does, in a way. Though not, I think, of the kind he imagines. In that, it merely tells us something about him.

Mags adds,

Quite. And it’s a world in which your cup of hot chocolate has its own driver.

I did briefly wonder if Mr Bonnell might be trying to make some ironic point about modernity and decadence, but that doesn’t appear to be his style at all. And even if the objective were to say, “Look at how decadent we are,” that doesn’t really work, since the more obvious message is “Look at how decadent I am…” The we being rather presumptuous.

And I suspect that many of us here manage to make it through the day, most days, without being overly decadent. Say, by not having single cups of hot chocolate needlessly delivered to our doors, seemingly on a daily basis. Or by not finding loudly announced amusement in the death of a random stranger who was trying to shield his family from gunfire during an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.

As Mr Bonnell did.

By all means, consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Because I like to bring comfort to those in distress, How To Avoid Tears And Pretentious Agonising: 

Well, you’d think that repel invaders and uphold the most basic of laws wouldn’t be too much to ask of a government. And yet.

And at this terribly difficult time, for some, do spare a thought for this tightly-wound progressive gentleman, presumably now trembling at the prospect of some Trumpian Sturmabteilung. Oh, and this madam here, the editor-in-chief of Mother Jones. The one rendered distraught by a flight attendant’s courtesy and its ominous implications for the future of the world.

Update, via the comments:

Writing in the Guardian, the left-leaning novelist Francine Prose is not, I fear, taking recent developments well: 

Following the above, those unhinged leanings really kick into gear, with the inevitable mentions of Hitler, Stalin, dictatorship, people thrown from helicopters, and “the imprisonment and execution of those who disagree.” A feverish, dystopian drama in which, one assumes, Ms Prose anticipates a starring role.

Needless to say, Ms Prose is far from alone in her weird theatre of distress. And as illustrated many times in the comments below, the overlap of progressive politics and mental illness would seem to be quite significant.

And so, we have the round-the-clock delusional ravings of MSNBC, including the repeated claim that Florida is “an extreme right-wing fascist state,” and Laura Helmuth, the editor-in-chief of Scientific American, a once-reputable publication, screeching profanities and insisting, quite emphatically, that anyone who chose to vote differently from herself must be racist, sexist, and “fucking fascists.”

No other possibilities fitting inside her gentle, thoughtful head.  

For seekers of the erotic and forbidden:

Consider this an open thread.

I’ll start the ball rolling with an excruciatingly obtuse discussion about wangs and women’s changing rooms. I say obtuse, but it’s more a matter of practised dishonesty.

Share ye links and bicker.

A tightly-wound progressive gentleman offers lifestyle advice:

It all sounds terribly exciting.

Leftist shares his plan if Trump wins this election. This is a whole new level of delusion… pic.twitter.com/BYYqVAL8T9

— Amala Ekpunobi (@amalaekpunobi) October 26, 2024

Update, via the comments:

Martin D adds, not unfairly, 

Ah, yes, but there’s a sweet role to play, a self-flattering psychodrama to enact. Or as Mr Muldoon puts it, 

And regarding the prospect of Our Betters being forced into some terrified silence, Eagle quips,

That was, I think, the bit that really strained credulity. The idea that Agitated Chappie and his radical comrades could ever inhibit their compulsion to announce their own superiority at every opportunity. It was a stretch, even compared to the implication that the streets would soon be patrolled by some Trumpian Sturmabteilung.

Readers will, I think, recall this eye-widening altercation, shared in the Ephemera of October 11, between a laid-back driver and a rather wound-up cyclist. The latter being a candidate, as Mags put it, for the title of World’s Most Annoying Human Being:

Average cyclist interaction in Utah. pic.twitter.com/od5i6a9dSX

— Dr Manhattva (@Manhattva) October 9, 2024

If you haven’t seen the exchange above, I do recommend watching it, if only as an instructional tale. Or a test of your own self-restraint. In the video, the cyclist, the aptly named Mr Peacock, goes out of his way to generate conflict, repeatedly, then descends into some paranoid fantasy, in which he is somehow both the hero and the victim. His fabulist construals of what is happening are quite remarkable. 

As I said at the time,

The drama resulted in Mr Peacock, our high-maintenance cyclist, receiving a $160 fine for disorderly conduct, and the driver, Mr Kempton, initially being given a citation for passing too closely, which would have resulted in a $130 fine, based solely on the cyclist’s claims. This was subsequently dropped after reviewing the driver’s dashcam footage, which tells a different story.

Readers will, I suspect, note the almost comical difference in attitude. Mr Chill meets Mr Head-Full-Of-Crazy-Beans. In the video linked above, Mr Kempton, our low-key driver, says that he feels sorry for the cyclist being cited for disorderly conduct, despite his dishonesty and irrational behaviour, and even though at the time Mr Kempton felt in some danger. As one might when confronted by someone belligerent and neurotic, a raving fantasist.

Well, happily, Dicentra has brought us a second video, showing Mr Peacock’s exchange with the police officer. Again, it may offer both instruction and some amusement:

Y’all remember that Park City Karen cyclist that picked on that kid?

Enjoy this cinematic masterpiece. Nature is healing.pic.twitter.com/mj6SxeL4wA

— 𝕏ANDER GEOGRAPHIC | ᴛᴏᴜᴄʜᴇʀ ᴏꜰ ɢʀᴀꜱꜱ🏕️ (@actionxander) October 21, 2024

“Oh, come on, man,” says Mr Peacock. “I was the victim here.”

And as before, almost every breath is a lie.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Not a lady, but a they-dy, obviously:

This is what happens when you hire woke. When they tell you who they are, believe them. pic.twitter.com/gk4EGnahps

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) September 5, 2023

As an employer, the person paying for this privilege, you’d never tire of that.

Previously and entirely unrelated:

Following which, I added:

Oh, and we mustn’t forget the male teacher who required three months of paid medical leave, supposedly due to emotional exhaustion and “severe burnout” on account of the small children in his class being reluctant to lie about the sex of the person teaching them. The honesty of small children – who used the words mister and he – had rendered him unfit for work.

And every employer would walk over hot coals for an employee who demands validation of his psychodrama from other people’s children. And who, when this bold stratagem fails, retires to his fainting couch for months on end.

Update, via the comments:

Behold, another model employee:

Male teacher who thinks he’s a woman says he had a conversation with a student about growing fake bre*sts and is upset that other students haven’t noticed his “additions” yet.

These are the people teaching your kids pic.twitter.com/i5ouCKHQ5S

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 8, 2024

Just so we’re clear. He’s a teacher who wants the children he teaches to notice – and comment on – his breasts. Or his approximation of breasts.

And surely that’s what every parent hopes for in a teacher.

Consider this an open thread.