THOMPSON, blog. Marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.

Free-For-All The Thrill of Friction

Be Still, My Beating Loins

November 4, 2024 25 Comments

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.

Reading time: 1 min

Written by: David

Ephemera

Suboptimal scenario. || Evolved for smartphones. || How to make a simple thing needlessly complicated, parts 1, 2, and 3. || Bedtime snacks. || Large objects. || Incoming. || Incoming 2. || For recreational purposes. || Pyramid building redux. Previously. || Mortal remains. || Hallucinate in mud, 1969. || There was smoke, some shouting. || Meanwhile, in Japan. || Autoerotic scenes. || Fly repellent? || At last, toe shoes. || Paranormal furniture and uncanny bangings, 1983. || Parking is hard. || For the children, you say? || How to stretch your daughter. || I’d say bullet dodged. || Gloopiness. Previously. || Malayan leaf frog. || Questions from 1964: “Is Wales rife with witchcraft?” || Furniture for “even the most delicate female.” || Flesh-eating bees make meat honey. || It’s good to polish those language skills.

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Reading time: 1 min

Written by: David

Reheated

Reheated (99)

October 30, 2024 105 Comments

For newcomers, some items from the archives:

A Failure To Affirm.

Romantic complications of a very modern kind.

A woman who wants to pretend she’s a gay man is thwarted by her male partner now wanting to pretend he’s a woman, resulting in something not unlike straightness, albeit with extra steps.

To which, Mags adds, “He she didn’t use ~~her~~ his pronouns.” Indeed. A notable omission. One that results in finger-wagging from fellow Reddit forum regulars: “You do have to respect that SHE is the expert on her own gender, not you.”

It’s a bold claim. Despite which, the person being scolded – a woman who expects to be taken seriously as a man – can’t bring herself to take seriously as a woman her own male partner. There’s no she or her, just a grudging them. Which does rather cast some doubt on the broader enterprise.

It’s Trivial When The Victim Is Someone Who Isn’t Me.

Habitual car theft is a “victimless” crime, says Nora the socialist.

Nora doesn’t think that a third conviction for car theft should result in incarceration. Because, and I quote, the victims “get new cars though.” “I write books and I know things,” says Nora, who lives in Quebec, where, in the last year, the rate of car theft has practically doubled.

The Thrill Of Word-Policing.

Assistant professor wants to censor the “violent” language of astronomy.

Apparently, the word collision is, for Dr Madrid, much too brutal and masculine when referring to the unstoppable convergence of two galaxies, and the ultimate merging of the supermassive black holes at their centres – an event that will entail the sling-shotting of countless stars and their orbiting planets, and which may release energy equivalent to around 100 million supernova explosions, and subsequently be detectable halfway across the universe.

It’s all terribly oppressive – for the implausibly faint of heart, I mean. And should a colleague carelessly refer to a planet being stripped of its ozone layer by a catastrophic gamma-ray burst, this is obviously “misogynistic language” and a basis for the sternest of hands-on-hips chiding.

At which point, readers may wish to ponder whether the best people to be doing astronomy, or teaching astronomy, or to be making workplace rules for astronomers, are the kinds of people who mouth dogmatic assertions without any trace of supporting logic, and who are distracted, even distressed, by hearing the word collision being used to describe a collision.

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

Reading time: 2 min

Written by: David

Anthropology Free-For-All Psychodrama

Great Darkness Foretold

October 28, 2024 165 Comments

A tightly-wound progressive gentleman offers lifestyle advice:

These are the basic ground rules for surviving a fascist government.

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,

Did he just forget Trump was in office for four years and none of this happened?

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

Their need to see themselves as Oppressed Martyrs of Petrograd™ is both laughable and pathetic.

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

Is he saying that Thanksgiving will be different this year?

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.

I mean, despite the alleged peril, the risk of being chased into the sea or imprisoned in a camp, Agitated Chappie couldn’t resist videoing his latest commands and then posting them on social media, where his oppressors might discover them. And should Mr Trump win the election, do we think Agitated Chappie will follow his own advice – his emphatic advice – and delete all of his social media accounts?

How would he signal his superiority then? How would we know how much better than us he is?

Via Protein Wisdom.

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

Reading time: 1 min

Written by: David

Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (742)

October 25, 2024 204 Comments

Because you chose the Hades Funeral Service. || All-terrain bed. || Hey, it’s a job. || Somewhat bigger than expected. || Slimline solution. || Nommy-nommy-nom. || Down on the farm. (h/t, Mark) || Minimal effort detected. || Close enough. || Ladies, look away now. || Ladies, look away now 2. || Answers on a postcard, please. || The unspanked pass the time. || The progressive retail experience, parts 589 and 590. (h/t, Julia) || The progressive dining experience, part 38. || But his “intention has always been to promote understanding,” obviously. || The path to manhood. || Scrambled maps. || Gameplay. || “What’s wrong with it?” || The thrill of women’s basketball. || Rufus and Harriet. || An excess of flexibility. || She found where he was storing his trauma. || And finally, first-timers find out.