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

Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (717)

April 19, 2024 229 Comments

Custom cars for rats. || Mouse trap. || Incoming. || Incoming 2. || Navigational error. || Nature and its wonders. || Also available in red. || “What’s your job on the leftist commune?” “Pouring hot cocoa for folx in the reading alcoves.” Also, “writing workshops,” “therapist.” || Related. || Also related. || Having it both ways. || Bath time peekaboo. || By “radical pursuit of pleasure,” she means her amputated breasts displayed in a jar. (h/t, Paul Dover) || The top speeds of beasts. || The progressive retail experience, parts 546, 547, and 548. || It’s amazing how quickly the day can turn to shit. || Tread carefully. || Let’s go ice fishing, they said. || It’s “fully functional” and will sort itself out in no time. || “The fake bus stops keep them from wandering off.” || The perils of fitness activity.

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Reading time: 1 min

Written by: David

Reheated

Reheated (90)

April 17, 2024 88 Comments

To keep you quiet, some items from the archives:

Too Pale-Skinned For Comfort.

Activist students conjure excuses, project wildly.

Readers will note that the students, these avowed opponents of racism, refer to themselves, and by extension all black students, as if they were some ancient and unfathomable offshoot of humanity, for whom rapport with outsiders is impossible. And who are supposedly oppressed by the unremarkable fact that, in a white-majority country, their professors will often be white and – as seems unavoidable – older than the students. Readers may also wonder how such exquisitely sensitive creatures will fare when faced with potential employers who may also be paler than themselves and, shockingly, not nineteen.

In short, the students are admitting, albeit unwittingly, that in fact they are the inflexible and bigoted ones, the ones preoccupied with racist and ageist stereotypes, and are incapable of feeling “comfortable” with people whose appearance differs from their own. Apparently, for them, learning is next to impossible unless they are being taught by people who look just like them, are of a similar age, and who share the assumptions of a subset of nineteen-year-olds who are very much accustomed to flattery and indulgence.

Fashionable Malice.

The University of Cincinnati peddles mental poison.

In the spirit of reciprocity, I’ll attempt an alternative, and perhaps more realistic, definition. “White fragility” is the unremarkable fact that people by and large don’t like being slandered as racists and then assigned with some pretentious collective guilt, the supposed atonement for which requires deference to actual racists and predatory hokum merchants.

But Why Aren’t People Rushing To Buy My Art?

It’s like art, but much less so.

For those who may be confounded by the profundity of the piece, a handy walk-through guide is available. Said guide points out that the performance will encourage among onlookers “a deeper level of critical thought.” Of the many ruminations that will doubtless be inspired is the following: “After seeing someone wrap their head in meat twice, does it still hold the same weight as it did the first time?”

The guide notes, rather earnestly, that the first attempt, by Mr Carvalho – to envelop his head in bread, string, and assorted meat products – prompted more amusement from the tiny audience than the subsequent repetition of it by Ms Cochrane. This is presented as an invitation to “a fundamental shift in paradigm” and some allegedly profound insight into gender politics. Or, how “different actions are read on different bodies.” Our artistic deep thinkers are seemingly unaware of the concepts of novelty and diminishing returns.

The Clown Quarter Now Has An Engineering Division.

Rigidity and stiffness, and other sins.

According to Dr Donna Riley, academic rigour and the expectation of competence are “exclusionary” and tools of “privilege,” and are unfair to women and minorities, for whom rigour and competence are presumably impossible. Dr Riley goes on to denounce engineering’s “cultures of whiteness and masculinity,” and informs us that, “scientific knowledge itself is gendered, raced, and colonising.”

Dr Riley is the author of the little-read tome Engineering and Social Justice, which she describes as “an attempt to explain the lack of emphasis on social justice in engineering.” The term “social justice” is, we’re told, “difficult to define” and “resists a concise and permanent definition,” a problem illustrated by the author’s own struggle to arrive at a convincing definition, despite deploying the term on every other page.

But apparently, engineers need to spend less time doing load-bearing calculations and more time pondering “radical protest” and “Marxist traditions.” Needless to say, Dr Riley opens the book by congratulating herself for having devised “alternative ways of thinking” that are “challenging,” and which, for those less enlightened, may be “difficult to understand.”

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

Reading time: 3 min

Written by: David

Anthropology Politics Travel

The Unspanked Speak Of Points

April 16, 2024 87 Comments

Regarding the obstruction by activists of the Golden Gate Bridge, a not unfair observation:

My toddler’s new thing when I tell him to stop doing something is to respond, “I’m just <literally the thing I’m telling him to stop doing>, so I’ll be like, “get down off that chair” and he’ll say, “I just wanted to be on the chair.” These people are literally toddlers. https://t.co/JrJMgoQ1ZI

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) April 15, 2024

And,

Reminder: these people arrive at thought-terminating cliches because their views are extraordinarily stupid and cannot be defended on their own terms. “I should get to shut down the economy any time I’m mad enough about something” sounds so retarded that they have no choice but…

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) April 15, 2024

Note the lofty defence offered by our pronoun-stipulating champion of the obstruction – that “protests are meant to be disruptive. It’s the whole point.”

A protest, then, is not meant to persuade the general public, or to get them on-side, or to make others sympathetic with whatever this week’s cause may be. But simply to be disruptive. To gratuitously frustrate, and aggravate, large numbers of law-abiding people. To exert power. By doing random harm. That’s “the whole point.” A vision doubtless attractive to those with antisocial inclinations.

And those inclinations aren’t being indulged and given rein reluctantly or under duress. The screwing-over of others is sought out and chosen, over and over again. This is recreational sociopathy.

We’ve been here before, of course:

It’s interesting just how often “social justice” posturing entails something that looks an awful lot like spite or petty malice, or an attempt to harass and dominate, or some other obnoxious behaviour. Behaviour that, without a “social justice” pretext, might get you called a wanker or a bitch. A coincidence, I’m sure.

It is, I think, worth pondering why it is that these supposed displays of righteousness routinely take the form of obnoxious or bullying or sociopathic behaviour, whereby random people are screwed over and dominated, and often reduced to pleading. Pleading just to get home, or to children, or to work, or to get to the doctor’s surgery. Even ambulances and fire engines can be obstructed, indefinitely, with both impunity and moral indifference. Among our self-imagined betters, it seems to be the go-to approach for practically any purported cause. Which is terribly convenient. Almost as if the supposed activism were more of a pretext, an excuse, a license to indulge pre-existing urges.

And what kind of person would have urges like that?

As is the custom among the activist-wanker caste, much of the behaviour we’ve seen, and will doubtless see again, amounts to a moral non-sequitur. Rather like saying, “I’m troubled by the plight of the Javan rhinoceros, so I’m going to start spitting at the elderly and keying random cars, and then boast about it on Twitter, while waiting for likes.”

Hence the need to consider other, less edifying motives.

Update, via the comments, where other illustrations come to mind:

In the video, note the planning, the efforts to maximise the imposition and its somewhat menacing implications. Someone sat down and thought, “How can we really aggravate hundreds of random people, ordinary families, about whom we know nothing, and make them feel unsafe in their own homes?” And then, other, like-minded people agreed, presumably with enthusiasm.

The Mao-lings who obstruct and intimidate random motorists, or who harass random restaurant customers, scaring their children, or who scream amplified profanities at random people trying to sleep, while shining lights into their bedrooms – they don’t do these things because they care about civil rights, or policing, or whatever this week’s Issue Of Great Concern happens to be. They do it because menacing other people – and spoiling someone’s day, or night, arbitrarily – is gratifying. If, that is, you’re a certain kind of person.

They are, as it were, pleasuring themselves.

Update 2:

In the comments, pst314 adds,

They would feel differently about protests that disrupted their lives… Ignore pleas of “I have to get to work” or “to the doctor” or “catch a plane” and see how they react and how the press covers it.

Alas, being incorrigible narcissists, I suspect that reciprocation isn’t a restraining factor, or a common feature of their thinking. See, for instance, this rather glorious illustration:

“A judge has refused to delay the trial of Just Stop Oil protesters charged with storming a West End performance of Les Misérables after one of the defendants said she was flying to India.”

No, really. It turns out that Ms Lydia Gribbin, one of the five protestors, had assumed that only other people’s lifestyles should be curtailed, that only other people’s plans can be thwarted with impunity.

And from which, this bears repeating:

It helps to bear in mind that such ostentatious pieties are very often a kind of camouflage for quite vain and obnoxious people. People whose own hypocrisies and dishonesties, however glaring, do not appear to embarrass them, or alter their behaviour. Consequently, they’re difficult to shame.

They’re the kind of unspanked little tossers who gleefully vandalise petrol stations, rendering them unusable, while applauding themselves, and who conflate “not being heard” with not being obeyed. The kind of preening dolts who film themselves pouring oil onto busy roads, an act morally analogous to sabotaging the brakes of random cars and motorbikes.

One more time. This is who they are.

Reading time: 4 min

Written by: David

Books Free-For-All Media Politics

The Struggle To Find Fault

April 13, 2024 186 Comments

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading of course:

Calvin and Hobbes deemed dated, problematic.

In the piece linked above, Ben Sixsmith responds to an attempt, by Lukas Shayo, to problematise a much-loved comic strip, one that must now, it seems, be fretted over as both “violent” and “sexist.” Readers familiar with the strip in question may wonder whether complaining in print about Calvin’s mom being, well, a mom, and about the “sexism” of a cartoon six-year-old, should result in some reflection on one’s chosen career, and one’s life choices more generally.

As Ben replies,

What are you doing that an AI couldn’t do? Type “10 Ways Calvin and Hobbes Has Aged Poorly” into an AI text generator and it will spit out an article similar to yours in seconds…

When you write such a lazy and opportunistic piece, you’re also conditioning readers to expect that sort of prose. You’re conditioning them to expect the kind of regurgitated pablum that a text generator could produce on demand. You’re contributing to your own redundancy, Lukas, and to the redundancy of what we love to do… If you want an image of a future we should try to avoid, imagine a text generator producing mirthless moralistic listicles — forever.

I’ve said before, regarding the pop-culture site io9, the more insufferably woke the site has become, the more generic and unwritten its content feels. By which I mean, it was once possible to stumble across lengthy articles on niche pop-culture subjects, often written with an affectionate expertise. Now, however, it’s difficult to differentiate one contributor from another. The content doesn’t read as if anyone in particular wrote it. It’s flavourless, uniform in its politics and ideological assumptions, both pointedly announced, and uniform in its tone. It might as well be generated by an algorithm.

Regarding Ben’s piece, Aelfheld adds,

Absolutely lovely take-down: “[…] nauseating combination of complacent presentism and totalistic moralism.”

It’s practically a genre – and a tool for the forging of progressive credentials. Basically, take something that’s very good and that a lot of people like, or have liked as children, and then problematise it, sour it, generally in a narrow, glib, and self-satisfied way. While getting details hopelessly wrong and missing all kinds of subtlety.

Or as Ben puts it, “joyless Buzzfeed-esque finger-wagging.”

The author of the joyless prattle, Lukas Shayo – CUNY and Brooklyn, naturally – does rather struggle to find his “10 ways” in which Calvin and Hobbes should elicit regret or disapproval. We’re told, for instance, that,

Dinosaurs actually had feathers, which contradicts Calvin’s imagination.

And we’re informed that the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices – the strip concluded in 1995 – may be “baffling for young readers.”

Mr Shayo also bemoans Calvin spending “too much time by himself,” thereby allowing his imagination to entertain the reader.

We’re told, with improbable earnestness:

At his age, Calvin should be building his social skills with other children, rather than his imaginary tiger. He should also be spending much more time with his parents. The poor parenting in Calvin and Hobbes has not aged well, given that developing child-rearing theories encourage socialisation and parental involvement.

Also troubling to Mr Shayo is the thought of our comic-strip protagonist being “unsupervised in an enormous forest.” Or, unregistered by the author, what Calvin perceives as an enormous forest. This, remember, is a six-year-old boy who regularly ventures into outer space and who perceives his stuffed toy as an eloquent, talking tiger. This one reminded me of being six or so myself and, with my cousin in tow, fearlessly exploring a small strip of woodland behind my grandmother’s house, and which six-year-old me chose to see as enormous and therefore a basis for adventure.

Given that the charm of Calvin and Hobbes so often hinges on the mismatch between what Calvin imagines and rather more mundane reality, you’d think that Mr Shayo might entertain such possibilities. But no. Wokeness must be announced, a posture assumed, and things found problematic. Because contrived disappointment, a souring of all the things, is the latest must-have. For a certain kind of person. And everything, especially things that many people have enjoyed, must be judged – and found wanting – by the narrow standards of one’s own self-admiring in-group at this precise point in time.

Update, via the comments:

Aitch adds,

I honestly can’t tell if it *is* an AI parody.

While Dean reveals,

At this point I started sharing my cat’s tranquilisers to try to make sense of it all.

I suppose that’s what makes it grimly funny, in a disappointing modernity kind of way. If you poke through Mr Shayo’s other, numerous contributions, the tone, such as it is, is much the same. There’s no obvious personality – no sense of any particular person having written it – no sense of mischief, and no discernible wit. Mr Shayo is, however, capable of making entirely contradictory claims, on the very same subject, mere days apart.

For instance, in the “10 Ways” article quoted above, Mr Shayo worries that the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices may be “baffling for young readers,” and he bemoans how the strip “doesn’t have any modern technology.” And yet we’re told – days later – that, “the lack of technological influence makes the strip read as a timeless work.” “It always feels that it’s something that could still happen today… the absence of technology is hardly notable.”

Likewise, Mr Shayo insists that “ending Calvin and Hobbes is exactly what saved it,” and praises the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, for refusing to license spin-offs, adaptations, and potentially lucrative merchandise, thereby “living up to the ideals that the strip… championed.” “Ending the strip,” we’re told, “was a good decision” and “there is no reason to tarnish that legacy by adding more to an already concluded work.”

While, one week earlier, “Calvin and Hobbes needs to be an animated show.” Because “an adaptation or continuation is essential.”

These, shall we say, inconsistencies, among many others, aren’t a result of some cunning AI spoof, some infinitely deep intelligence. This is just the standard of writing, and thinking, now deemed good enough.

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

Reading time: 5 min

Written by: David

Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (716)

April 12, 2024 134 Comments

Vortex rings, Mount Etna. || Invisible drum kit. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || A brief history of defenestration. || No good deed. || How to deal with insufferable, self-inflated wankers. || Heist movie. || Hygienic button-pushing. || Booty booty booty. || She has jam jars and takeaway boxes containing human brains. || A game of falling balls. A guide of sorts. || “The most unique gift for any man.” || Dragon chicken. || Ladies in a certain line of work. || “The sand is the weight of the artist.” || To send a message to the others, obviously. || Mongolian heavy metal. || Please don’t defecate in my grocery store. I paraphrase, but that’s the gist. || At least the poncho helped a little. || Petrol station scenes. || 1950s Super Panavision 70 Star Wars. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || First impressions, they say.