Friday Ephemera

Don’t worry, he’s not naked. // You want one and you know it. // When your nearest neighbour is Area 51. // His swordsmanship is better than yours. // The Hindenburg’s interiors. // Cats unimpressed by feline-human hybrid. // A visual history of Macy’s Thanksgiving parades, 1929-1964. // The untidy moons of Pluto. // At last, clip-on man buns. // Man with broom, brooming. // A Mongolian record shop. // On a classic of Australian television drama. // Advent calendars filled with liquor. // Crooked timber. // Magnetism. // This rent map of London is not for the squeamish. // The Three Laws of Robotics do not work. Would an autonomous robot surgeon perform an abortion? // And finally, it turns out there are around 1.2 million people with my surname. What about yours?

Comments

[Hal]

Don’t worry, he’s not naked.

Bring back the exploding shrimp and dumplings.

[Russtovich]

Re: Liquor Advent calendars. They started rolling out Advent Beer cases last year in BC, Canada.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/q2cnhav

Cheers!

[dicentra]

"BUCK NAKED," not "butt naked."

But I guess folk etymologies often win the day.

[Dom]

Only 300 people have my last name. I bet they're all related, too.

[R. Sherman]

Don’t worry, he’s not naked.

Hey, Honey! Let me show you what I learned from the internet!

[TimP]

There's apparently about 70,000 Pollards in the world, but we're pretty common in Australia with about 9% of all of us living in Australia.

[TimP]

More on surnames:

There's a around 1200 Hitlers in the world; a fairly large chunk of them in Tanzania and India. (Interestingly enough a big chunk of Mengeles are also in Tanzania.)

Stalins are a bit more common at 8500, with fairly large chunks in Bangladesh and India.

[Joan]

At last, clip-on man buns.

This must stop.

[Joan]

On a classic of Australian television drama.

Vinegar tits! Brings back memories of being a student. *Checks Amazon for DVD*

[David]

Vinegar tits!

During the early Nineties it was on at some ungodly hour, about 4am or something. I recall stumbling in from a club in a state of disarray and being captivated by it. 692 episodes of compelling tat.

[David]

Brace yourself, Joan. Re-live the dream.

[Joan]

Re-live the dream.

Thanks. :-)

[Sam]

Cultural appropriation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnb7EqfykF4

[David]

Cultural appropriation.

Heh. There just isn’t enough mechanical organ in modern pop.

[Darleen]

hmmm... I remember posting about only 12,012 Clicks in the world

I guess "click" triggered the spam filter. ;-)

[R. Sherman]

Jason Whitlock, a sports journalist and pundit writes about the current kerfuffle at Mizzou.

[David]

This week, I have mostly been playing The Room 2.

[David]

Meanwhile on Twitter, Laurie is Fretting.

One.

Two.

Three.

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

Only 11 people with my surname, nine of them here in the US. In addition to me, Dad, my brother, my now deceased mother, and my sister-in-law, I'm wondering who the other six are.

That doesn't include the original German form of the name, which had an umlaut, or other respellings once immigrants got to America, which would include a 1930s Hollywood director and a female singer from the past decade.

[Col. Milquetoast]

From the Mongolian record shop link : "rare state-sponsored Mongolian rock bands."

[David]

Only 11 people with my surname,

See, now I’m feeling positively common.

[Dom]

Just when you thought American culture has hit rock bottom, we sink a little more.

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/11/common-examples-cissexism/

[David]

Just when you thought American culture has hit rock bottom, we sink a little more.

I wouldn’t describe this kind of pretentious and competitive neuroticism as “American culture.” It’s a dysfunctional subset of leftist culture, itself a dysfunctional subset. And one that almost every American I’ve known would regard as ludicrous and alien.

[Megaera]

My surname is (as we understood) an Alsatian variant of a German spelling; it is most common, as we knew, in Louisiana. Well, there, and it seems that there are also some 61000 of us in Bangladesh. Not in India, mind -- only one there. Perhaps he reaches out occasionally to some of the Bangladeshis... that would ease my mind, I think.

[Rich Rostrom]

But I don't want a wet raccoon and I know it.

[Joan]

Meanwhile on Twitter, Laurie is Fretting.

"Is there a word to describe 'someone whose thinking is sloppier than it could be' that isn't ableist?"

Er, how about 'Laurie Penny'?

[David]

Er, how about ‘Laurie Penny’?

It’s all a bit, “Look at how clever I am in fretting about how my drawing attention to other people’s stupidity, and therefore my own cleverness, might theoretically upset people much less clever than me. Not that I like drawing attention to my own cleverness, of course, being as I am so terribly righteous and egalitarian.”

This, from the woman whose prose is defined by hyperbole, question-begging and a disregard for facts. The woman for whom logic is just a synonym for “pile of unsupported and contradictory assertions.” The woman who thinks that businesses should pay low-skilled staff much higher wages because businesses don’t need to be competitive.

And note the implication that only bigoted, sexist people could possibly think her stupid. Or more accurately, foolish.

[CB]

Crymobs, crybullying, and the left's whiny war on free speech

The left is a victimhood cult. It feeds off pain and fetishizes suffering as a moral commodity to be sold and resold in exchange for political power.

The victimocracy’s foot soldier is the crybully. The crybully is the abuser who pretends to be a victim. His arguments are his feelings. He comes armored in identity politics entitlement and is always yelling about social justice or crying social justice tears.

If you don’t fight back, the crybully bullies you. If you fight back, the crybully cries and demands a safe space because you made him feel unsafe.

Lions form a pride, crows gather into a murder and crybullies cringe into a crymob. The crymob demands a safe space because free speech and dissent makes its crybullies feel very unsafe.

Crymobs will “safebait” by yelling and pushing and then whining that the people they’re shoving make them feel unsafe. One crybully safebaiting tactic is to yell loudly, forcing anyone talking back to them to raise their voice. That’s when other crybullies begin shouting, “Don’t yell at her.”

Crybullies will push into you and cry that you’re making them feel unsafe. They will hit you and when you raise your hands in self-defense, they will scream that you’re putting your hands on them. (All these safebaiting tactics and more can be seen in the Missouri video.)

[Spiny Norman]

I finally got the Forebears link to work. Despite what I thought was a fairly common name, only about 224,000 have it. The shortened version of it is claimed by nearly 3 million, though.

[Lancastrian Oik]

Corbyn really is as dumb as a box of rocks, as I believe they say in Montana.

"It appears Mohammed Emwazi has been held to account for his callous and brutal crimes. However, it would have been far better for us all if he had been held to account in a court of law....These events only underline the necessity of accelerating international efforts, under the auspices of the UN, to bring an end to the Syrian conflict as part of a comprehensive regional settlement."

It seems to me that he thinks the UN is a bit like International Rescue (of "Thunderbirds" fame*) instead of a corrupt, bloated and monumentally useless bureaucracy.

*For the benefit of those who may be baffled by this reference

[Lancastrian Oik]

I think intellectual (?) ableism is something I don't instantly grasp because 'being clever' was so much my core identity growing up.

I wouldn't have thought it possible for someone that small to be possessed of that amount of smugness.

Meantime, in the wake of the Paris atrocities; I don't know what it's like for others here, but on my preferred social media feed, the tu quoque/whataboutery levels are rising fast thanks to the Lefties desperately trying (and failing) to appear concerned whilst maintaining their usual stance that it is, naturally, all the fault of the West/because Palestine/Iraq/Afghanistan/whatever despite the explicit message regarding the reasoning (I use that term very loosely) behind the Bataclan massacre.

[WTP]

to bring an end to the Syrian conflict as part of a comprehensive regional settlement."

Now there's the nut of it, inninit? In all my study of current events over the past too many decades, in conflict after conflict, dispute after dispute, nothing is ever comprehensive enough. What the world needs more than anything is a comprehensive solution, dammit. And we want it NOW.

[David]

I wouldn’t have thought it possible for someone that small to be possessed of that amount of smugness.

Self-flattery is the fuel of modern leftism.

[R. Sherman]

Just discovered the "pre-Anglicized" version of my surname is possessed by 461 people, scattered throughout Alsace and Lorraine. Very cool.

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

Mr Oik, I think it would have been better to reference Thunderbirds with this clip. ;-)

[jabrwok]

J-pop vs. 70's Rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivJZljEostE

[dan]

Tonikaku - a more complete version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CXtWLk_PAA

Don't worry, he is also wearing in that one, but more 'hey's are provided.

[Nikw211]

OT

This here has to be the most egregious abuse of the collective ‘we’ and ‘our’ I have seen in a long time.

Pour example

As Europeans we have always viewed ourselves as fully human, but seen those in the Middle East and much of the rest of the world as slightly less than human, and not quite as deserving of our sympathy. It is such feelings that allowed Europe to colonise, abuse and exploit brown people.

In short, anyone who expresses dismay and even grief at what happened in Paris is not only doing it wrong but part of the problem. I cannot find words for the utter contempt I have for this buffoon’s posturing.

[David]

the most egregious abuse of the collective ‘we’ and ‘our’ I have seen in a long time.

But his pieties, see how they catch the light!

[David]

In other news… this.

[Nikw211]

But his pieties, see how they catch the light!

They are - almost - nonpareil.

I don’t know if you clicked through, but if you go to the About page, you discover that not only has Cook been "based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001” but during that time he has published books entitled Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008), and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008).

I know it’s a common paradox, but I am fascinated with the conundrum that had he been living in, say, Saudi since 2001, the idea that he would be able to not only remain and also publish works critical of that country's regime is completely laughable.

This is not to say that the Israeli government should be beyond criticism, but that surely there is an irony in Cook’s declaration that “We”, not sure who he has in mind by that, but never mind, “We are still trying to civilise brown people. We still think we have the right to change them, bend them to our will, improve them by force. We still want to lecture them, condemn them, threaten them, overturn their elections, arm their oppressive leaders, plunder their resources.”

Hmm. I can’t help but feel that he is telling his readers more about himself than he realises given the country he has made home for the last 14 years and the kind of things he says about it, judging by the titles of his books.

[Nikw211]

In other news… this.

*Insert 48pt exclamation mark here*

[David]

*Insert 48pt exclamation mark here*

I’m struggling to imagine the obliviousness required.

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

As Europeans we have always viewed ourselves as fully human, but seen those in the Middle East and much of the rest of the world as slightly less than human, and not quite as deserving of our sympathy. It is such feelings that allowed Europe to colonise, abuse and exploit brown people.

Note also the meta-context that when there's Islamic terrorism against the west, of course we're supposed to look at the root causes behind it and make other equivocations. But if you were to make suggestions regarding the Anders Breiviks of the world, the allegedly tolerant class of people in media/academia/Brussels would have a screaming fit.

[01]

In other news… this.

That can't be real. Parody, surely?

[David]

That can’t be real. Parody, surely?

Oh, it’s quite real.

[Hal]

Artistic commentary . . . .

[Hal]

More commentary 'cause just too perfect . . .