Friday Ephemera

“I’m a vegetarian. It was self-defence.” // Fun with projection mapping. // Pause. (h/t, Damian) // AI attempts portraiture, does pretty well. // Peacock in a liquor store. // “A scientific meta-analysis of whisky flavours and quality.” // Rejection. // Undulations. // Most hated online advertising. // A burglar’s mishap. (h/t, Obo.) // Meanwhile, in Mozambique. // Always respect the media. // Museum of Teletext. // Multi-pass. // Inner peace. // Irony. // These ladies go hardcore. (h/t, dicentra) // I hope they don’t screw this up with identity politics. // Initiative. // Bookshop of note. // How British teachers voted. // Today’s word is touché. // And finally, “Sadomasochist swingers club with a dungeon and torture chamber has been shut down over health and safety concerns.”

Comments

[R. Sherman]

Noted in the article about the S/M club with emphasis supplied:

"Owner Katherine High pleaded guilty to five counts of breaching the rules."

What a marvelously generic crime, suitable for any occasion!

[Sam Duncan]

“Fun with projection mapping.”

Holy freakin' crap, that's bloody awesome.

“AI attempts portraiture, does pretty well.”

Hmm. At first glance. It all goes a bit uncanny valley when you look more closely though.

“Most hated online advertising.”

Vaguely related.

“Museum of Teletext.”

Oh, man. I remember when I was a kid and our flash neighbour bought a teletext TV. Must have been quite early, maybe about 1976-'77; we'd only recently got colour. I was only 5 or 6, but so green with envy I probably glowed in the dark. Reading stuff on a screen... this was The Future! (And sure enough, it was.)

[TimT]

Robots make pretty dud humans. I wonder what sort of robots humans make?

[Darleen]

“Which one of you ---holes is the gay?”

[Mike]

Fun with projection mapping.

Holodeck 1.0

[Jen]

A burglar’s mishap.

Social justice! :-)

[Hal]

Multi-pass.

A friend's one word variety of review; Ah yes, Boron.

[Hal]

Bookshop of note.

Hmmm. The architecture does seem slightly reminiscent . . .

[David]

“Which one of you ---holes is the gay?”

As if he were dealing with wayward livestock. Creatures that he owned.

[Hal]

Today’s word is touché.

Here, have some more book covers . .

[Connor]

Most hated online advertising.

Just reading it made me angry. :-)

[Hal]

On TV, Putin Plays the Role He Likes Best: Russia’s Mr. Fix-It

Oh, dear. Not really the best sort of historic record, doing that . . .

[Patrick Brown]

From the most hated advertising thing:

Retargeting “You shop for an item online. Later, you see advertisements for that same item or company on other websites.”

I've bought guitars online, and I keep getting ads for guitar shops, which is reasonable, because the ideal number of guitars to own is just one more. But my dad bought a chainsaw online once, and is still getting ads for more chainsaws. Do chainsaw owners get Gear Acquisition Syndrome too?

[David]

Just reading it made me angry. :-)

The people responsible for auto-play videos should be hunted down for sport, especially the ones that, when manually paused, simply shrink a little and move elsewhere on the page to continue being irrelevant but thoroughly distracting. (For several months, Den Of Geek seemed determined to aggravate its own readership to the point of mutiny, such that almost every comment thread, whatever the ostensible subject, ended up derailed by heated complaints.) And those goddamn things that are timed to slide in and obstruct the item you’re trying to read just as you’re getting immersed, thereby spoiling the experience and making you lose your place, all to remind you of something in which you had absolutely no interest and now, thanks to the intrusion, actively despise.

[David]

because the ideal number of guitars to own is just one more.

Heh. Also shoes, I’m told.

I don’t much mind the retargeted stuff, provided it’s not intrusive. What I dislike, to an irrational degree, is crap that actively thwarts the experience of reading a site. Like a bored younger brother amusing himself by standing in front of the end-of-season cliff-hanger you’re trying to watch, and being as annoying as possible while making fart noises.

[David]

Incidentally, I’m sometimes approached by small agencies that want to clutter this place up with apparently random, low-rent advertising. So far, none of the products – insofar as I’d have any say in what they are – seem likely to entice the kind of people that I imagine visit this blog. It’s just ugly visual noise that would bog down the site. That such approaches aren’t overly lucrative has made it easier to decline them.

You’re all welcome to bear this in mind - my heroic high-mindedness - next time I do a fundraiser.

[Ray]

Speaking of ads, next to the picture of a burnt out tower block on Breitbart, I get "Now is the ideal time to invest in London property."

[Surreptitious Evil]

There are many things wrong with the Forbes website, but the bloody annoying auto-play videos are pretty much the most bloody annoying. If not actually the most awful.

Also, I'm currently getting banner and side ads on many sites for dodgy* Islamist charities. Working on my Mac because the HP notebook work give me is crap has opportunity costs.

* As in high-risk of funding armed insurgents.

[Fruitbat44]

Fun collection of ephemera.

Some random observations:

1. You ladies may be hardcore, but you'll never be killing-a-rabid-racoon-with-your-bare-hands-hardcore!
1a. Rocket!!!!!!!

2. No wonder lefties rail against "The 1%" if a hardcore Marxist's earnings puts him in the top 2%.

3. 'Black Panther?' Let's just hope it's awesome.

4. How teachers voted: why am I not surprised. -sigh-

5. To end on a positive: yep, that's abookshop!

[Daniel Ream]

Sadomasochist swingers club with a dungeon and torture chamber has been shut down over health and safety concerns.

Tim Newman will probably be able to relate to this story.

A lady friend once invited me to a BDSM sex club; I took her up on it for a lark. At one point in the evening she caught me staring rather intently at the sex swing and asked mockingly if I was "freaked out".

"Damn right I am. They've attached that thing by drilling up into the underside of that beam, and you can see the stress fractures already starting. Given the weight of the people in here, that whole mess is going to come down soon, and God help me I think that's load-bearing, too."

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Sadomasochist swingers club with a dungeon and torture chamber has been shut down over health and safety concerns.

The Vivente private members club in Sunderland has been closed down for not complying with fire regulations.

Silly me, I was thinking it might have been because of rampant STDs and physical injuries from the "equipment".

Meanwhile, in the department of things I would never confuse with a lady's naughty bits:

"The pineapple is the feminist fruit of our times," writes the feminist. "Yes, you can playfully joke that a pineapple is a vag, but it isn't a friendly vag! There are spikes to get around, cutting into them takes a bit of practice, and if you don't know how to eat them right, the rind will f*** up the corner of your mouth (sorry, was that too much?)...it's now the primary motif of, dare I say it … the post-Trump era."

In other quarters, fighting words and a looming civil war ? transgender activist makes bold claim.

Transgender advocate, Attitude columnist and author Juno Dawson is convinced that there are a lot of gay people who are actually transgender but too chicken to come out and admit it, accepting a gay lifestyle as a "consolation prize."

For fairly obvious reasons this went over like a cement cloud, but his whole premise is based on his N=1 of himself being a gay man who wants to be a woman. However, if he wants to be a woman, but have sex with men, I would have thought that would have made him actually straight, or a trans-cis man, as I think the term is.

Being a toothless, sister shagging, trailer dwelling, knuckle dragger in South Flyoverlandia I am, of course, bigoted and _____________phobic (please fill in the blank), but this makes my two neurons connected by a spirochete hurt, and I would like to go back to that old timey way of a couple of years ago when there were only two sexes who were either just gay or straight.

[David]

‘Black Panther?’ Let’s just hope it’s awesome.

I’ve seen several ‘progressive’ writers pre-emptively declare that if the film doesn’t do as well as expected, this can only be because every single white person is seething with racial animus. The irony being that the thing most likely to put me off seeing it is the prospect of it being ruined in much the same way that the comic book was, thanks to the ham-fisted dogmatism of ‘progressive’ writers.

[David]

things I would never confuse with a lady’s naughty bits

Don’t tell me you never listened to the B-52s.

Ah, schooldays.

[WTP]

What I dislike, to an irrational degree, is crap that actively thwarts the experience of reading a site.

There's a new tactic, or new to me, that i've noticed just in the last week or so on certain news/web magazine sites. Seems I get five or six paragraphs into an article, sometimes after disposing of the initial popups and such, and a subscription request or something similar from the site itself descends almost like some slapstick comic prop into the screen, totally disrupting whatever train of thought I was well into and causing me to lose place of where I was reading.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Don’t tell me you never listened to the B-52s.

Actually no, but I am guessing their lyricist and/or singer missed a class or two on human anatomy and. They understood these things better in the olden days...

"Nobody in town can bake a sweet jelly roll like mine, like mine
No other one in town can bake a sweet jelly roll so fine, so fine
It's worth lots of dough, the boys tell me so
It's fresh every day, you'll hear 'em all say"

[SumDumGuy]

Meanwhile, in Mozambique.

Bald privilege. I'll go ahead and mark it off of my list of places to visit one day.

Or would if it had ever been there to begin with.

[Sam Duncan]

“There are many things wrong with the Forbes website, but the bloody annoying auto-play videos are pretty much the most bloody annoying. If not actually the most awful.”

Ugh. Forbes. That's the one whose HTML is so mangled (as far as I recall, the body text is in the header) that you're basically left with two options:

a) Turn your quad-core 64-bit desktop gaming rig into a space heater so you can read a page of text, or

b) don't bother.

Seriously, if you have the time (it's almost an hour), watch the video I linked. Bloke's numbers might be dodgy, but he's right, dammit. The Web took a disastrously wrong turn somewhere back there.

[David]

Ugh. Forbes.

I think I previously mentioned following a link to something at the International Business Times, which wouldn’t allow me to read anything unless I disabled my adblocker. Which, for once, I did. Even with a fast internet connection, the site took 22 seconds to load all of the auto-play horseshit, the Facebook extensions, and all the distracting and irrelevant crap that no-one wants to look at. In internet time, 22 seconds is an eternity.

As you say, I now just don’t bother with such sites.

[Darleen]

Transgender advocate, Attitude columnist and author Juno Dawson is convinced that there are a lot of gay people who are actually transgender but too chicken to come out and admit it, accepting a gay lifestyle as a "consolation prize"

In Canada, a 30-year-running clinic to deal with children's gender issues was closed because the psychologist, Dr. Ken Zucker, was still counseling caution and a thoughtful approach to kids gender confusion - that many times wanting to be 'trans' was really a coping mechanism for realizing they were gay. If the child was truly trans (very tiny minority) there was time post-puberty for the radical and risky steps of physical transition.

As he is now a heretic to the accepted Settled Science, he had to be destroyed.

[Sam Duncan]

Oh, Forbes (if it is Forbes) is worse than that, David. I've mentioned before that my go-to tactic for dealing with stupid websites is to turn off javascript entirely, or use a text browser. Doesn't help there. Because the text is rendered by encapsulated javascript in the header, those methods won't show anything at all. “Like it or lump it” really are the only options.

No doubt Forbes reason that their target demographic can afford to throw money at the problem. (“Hey, you there! Underling! My computer is slow. Procure a new one! And light my cigar. I can't reach the other end.”) But some of us remember when displaying 2 kilobytes of text didn't require half a gigabyte of RAM and a gajillion CPU cycles.

[[+]]

The irony being that the thing most likely to put me off seeing it is the prospect of it being ruined in much the same way that the comic book was, thanks to the ham-fisted dogmatism of ‘progressive’ writers.

Check out Larry Elder... :-)

http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/30091-For-Fathers-Day-Week-The-Moment-LARRY-ELDER-changed-DAVE-RUBINS-Mind-Forever.html

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...but the bloody annoying auto-play videos are pretty much the most bloody annoying. If not actually the most awful.

I would submit the the prize for most awful goes to the sites with the auto-play that, even if you stop the damn video, as you scroll down the page move the video to a smaller version (which is also autoplay and has to be stopped) on the right side of the page and follows you as you scroll further.

Following this are the sites that say they won't open unless I have the latest version of Chrome, IE, Firefox, or Safari and which refuse to recognize the open source versions of either Chrome or Firefox.

[Lisboeta]

I think I've found out why, despite online advertising being so offputting to viewers, companies persist in throwing money at it: "Advertising and promotional costs are deductible because they are part of the cost of doing business".

[Connor]

You’re all welcome to bear this in mind - my heroic high-mindedness - next time I do a fundraiser.

Will do. ;-)

[Darleen]

Larry Elder has been driving Leftists nuts for years.

[David]

Check out Larry Elder... :-)

Game, set and match.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Larry Elder has been driving Leftists nuts for years.

That is not a drive so much as an extremely short putt.

[Jonathan]

A little too dedicated to finding the truth?

[Daniel Ream]

[...] the prospect of it being ruined in much the same way that the comic book was, thanks to the ham-fisted dogmatism of ‘progressive’ writers.

I'm cautiously optimistic. There's signs that MarDisVelNey has a close eye on what the market's rewarding, and WB avoided social justice in the Wonder Woman movie despite the character being a magnet for feminist loons.

The comics and the movies are two completely different sets of management, and I guarantee it was Disney that laid down the malleus dei over at Marvel Comics Group and told them to lay off the propagandizing.

[Pogonip]

Every time we order from Amazon it tries to sell us more of whatever we just bought.

Let's hope the story of the raccoon drowner helps discourage the idiots who try to "tame" wildlife. She didn't, but there are plenty of those who do.

[Fred the Fourth]

Daniel Ream:
You must be my long lost twin

[David]

I’m cautiously optimistic.

Same here. I just wonder if the professionally aggrieved ever entertain the possibility that the smell of their own preferences being indulged is what would repel a sizeable chunk of the film’s potential audience.

Let’s hope the story of the raccoon drowner helps discourage the idiots who try to “tame” wildlife.

A couple of foxes that live in some adjacent woodland have taken up sitting on the lawn waiting for us to feed them. They’re entertaining to watch, but I wouldn’t want to get too close, or comb their fur, or make them little dresses.

[Fred the Fourth]

Racoon?
Try a stare-down with a wild badger sometime.
"Look, dad, it's smiling at us!"
" No, honey. Keep moving. "

[Fred the Fourth]

In light of the announcement that Amazon intends to buy Whole Foods, I think you should know that my Amazon Kindle auto corrected "stare-down" as "state-run" .

[Spiny Norman]

My grandmother used to feed the raccoons (and thought the little babies were so darn cute) - until they ate her neighbors' kittens.

[R. Sherman]

Let’s hope the story of the raccoon drowner helps discourage the idiots who try to “tame” wildlife.

The number of otherwise reasonably intelligent people who have an anthropomorphic view of Nature is astounding. Nature is not an "effing" petting zoo, but I cannot count the number of idiots I've observed trying to get up close and personal with bison or elk or bears. How there are not more deaths is unclear to me other than the fact that God must protect idiots. Walt Disney and the Bambi story writers have a lot to answer for.

[WTP]

Damn 'coon took our dear duck Duck. OK, not so dear. Ornery bastard really. But we will miss him just the same.

http://luckyslakeswim.net/luckyslakeswimblog/2017/06/12/a-fond-final-farewell-to-our-friend-duck-r-i-p/

[Spiny Norman]

Life in the natural world is nasty, brutal and short. I believe it was Tennyson who wrote something along the lines of "Nature red in tooth and claw".

[Wh00ps]

The reason the ads (mobile interstitials) now pop up just when you've gotten engrossed is because Google recently changed their algorithm to apply a search penalty to sites that have the interstitial straight away.
I know this, ironically, because Google's algorithm imagines I want SEO news in my Google Now page because I searched it once.

[Darleen]

Nature is not an "effing" petting zoo

And the wilderness is not a city park.

Summer is here and a lot of people who have no outdoor skills will be heading to camp grounds with the belief they or their kids can just wander off for a quick 'walk in the woods' and never worry about getting lost.

[Hal]

Walt Disney and the Bambi story writers have a lot to answer for.

So change writers. Nice music there . . .

[R. Sherman]

Summer is here and a lot of people who have no outdoor skills will be heading to camp grounds with the belief they or their kids can just wander off for a quick 'walk in the woods' and never worry about getting lost.

Do not get me started. I've often thought of writing a book chronicling the goofy crap I've seen people do in the wilderness. I usually keep my mouth shut because I don't want to be "that guy," but Jeeze Louise in a chicken basket, people are morons.

[Darleen]

Do not get me started

Heh.

One of the attorneys I used to work with has been part of the volunteer Search & Rescue and has told me of all the times getting called out into the local mountains of SoCal for people who have gone off-trail cuz like what could happen?

[Alex deWinter]

Do not get me started

It's not just the people who suffer, either. I hike a lot geocaching and even when my dog isn't with me I've taken to carrying her water bottle/bowl. Can't count the number of people I've run into on the trail with dogs in various stages of collapse because their humans didn't think to bring water for either of them.

[R. Sherman]

One of the attorneys I used to work with has been part of the volunteer Search & Rescue...

My thing is proper footwear. When my kids were growing up, it got to the point where they would make post-hike comments about idiotic shoe choices of people they'd seen. My absolute favorite was the weeping foreign lady whom I could not make understand that the reason she wasn't doing well on the ledge overlooking Zion Canyon was the 4 inch heeled pumps she decided were appropriate for the day's activities.

Then there was the couple in April at Chiricahua N.M. in SE Arizona who thought an eight-mile point to point wearing flip-flops and carrying a single 20 oz. Diet Pepsi for hydration was a solid plan.

See? You got me started. I hate it when you make me do that . . .

[Pogonip]

Here in the States, we have idiots who hand-feed deer. Every year a few of those idiots are beaten up by grumpy bucks when rutting season arrives. A deer is a large animal! Wouldn't you think even the most stupid would keep a respectful distance?

[Fred the Fourth]

Hiking out of Grand Canyon late one afternoon (Bright Angel trail above Indian Gardens), I called up to my wife to ask if she wanted a cookie. Guy in front of me whips around and says "I'll give you $20 for that."
By the time I reached the rim (after sunset), I'd given away ALL my food, water, and extra flashlights. People were still straggling (struggling?) out two hours later, in pitch dark.
Oh, that Death's Head sign 10 yards into the trail starting down? The one that says "You can DIE if you don't have X, Y, Z basic supplies"? That sign?
Purely decorative, apparently.
Same thing with the sign on the trail to Nevada and Vernal Falls in Yosemite. The one that says "X people slipped and died here in the last 5 years when they went off-trail". (and X is some non-trivial number like 12.)

[Chester Draws]

because the ideal number of guitars to own is just one more.

Heh. Also shoes, I’m told.

I must be a rebel then, because I always buy just two more shoes at a time.

[PiperPaul]

"The Vivente private members (Hehe - they wrote, 'members'!) club in Sunderland has been closed down for not complying with fire regulations."

I'm surprised that all the friction going on at these types of places doesn't cause more fires than currently.

[Fred the Fourth]

Could this have been forseen?

[Fred the Fourth]

ideal number of guitars ...
I had a friend who followed a different rule: Buy two. Of everything.
Except, apparently: guitars, pointy-toe boots, and crowbars.
I went to him to borrow a crowbar one day, and he grandly waved at the collection in his shed, which ranged from teaspoon-size up to a 2-meter breaking bar (which was just what I wanted that day).
His guitars had their own room in the house. Their own, except for the rows of boots.
Great guy, all in all.

[R. Sherman]

@Fred IV

Last summer, the lovely wife and I did three weeks in Yellowstone and the Tetons, which we visit every four or five years. We were there a week after some idiot decided to get a close up look at a thermal feature, fell in and dissolved in the boiling, highly acidic water. Signs and stories were everywhere in the park, including the front page of the park newspaper everybody gets when they come in. STILL people insisted upon wandering off piste for giggles.

And then there are the ubiquitous selfie-sticks . . . I watched a bus load of foreign tourists walk around the Norris Basin without once lowering those damn things. Their movie of the vacation of a lifetime is nothing but their face superimposed on the landscape.

[dicentra]

the reason she wasn't doing well on the ledge overlooking Zion Canyon was the 4 inch heeled pumps she decided were appropriate for the day's activities.

I've done that trail barefoot, on account of most of it's bare sandstone. I also do the last half-mile of Angel's Landing barefoot to get a better grip on the slickrock. Anyone who's seen the handrails and chains and the 1500-ft drop-off from that stegosaurus backbone of a hike knows what I'm talking about.

I worked in Zion NP for two summers. We called them "tourons."

[Darleen]

I hate it when you make me do that . . .

Sorry, not sorry. I take a perverse amusement from such stories.

some idiot decided to get a close up look at a thermal feature, fell in and dissolved in the boiling, highly acidic water.

Yep, been there and never once was tempted to get off the clearly marked pathways and defy the clearly readable signs.

I grew up in suburbia, but I also had a hardcore Girl Scout leader who would have made a fair Army DI -- she took us 8/9 year olds and started drilling us on healthy respect for wilderness and the rules of how to behave (and survive) while camping. As we got older, it was backpacking. I enjoy the wilderness but I have no more trust in it then I would walking naked in a Chicago neighborhood after dark.

(#2 daughter brought home news that a nurse she used to work with a few years back died of exposure in a National Park last month after getting lost by taking a walk - no water, jacket, etc - outside her campsite NOT on a marked trail)

And yes, I have seen things lots of things in National Parks that convinces me that any EMP event will wipe out 70-80% of people in the first 2 weeks who have no clue how to survive without modernity.

[David]

Incidentally, Dave Rubin, the squishy centrist liberal who frets about “structural racism” in the Larry Elder clip upthread, is now being described by Mother Jones as “far right.” Note that Mr Josh Harkinson, the chap who struggles with research and who wonders why someone might object to such wild, possibly libellous, mischaracterisation, is a “senior reporter” at said publication.

Remember, always respect the media.

[Joan]

Dave Rubin, the squishy centrist liberal who frets about “structural racism”...

IS LITERALLY HITLER!

[John D]

As our host would say, "the tolerant left"...

http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/16/this-list-of-attacks-against-conservatives-is-mind-blowing/

[David]

Tim Newman on Grenfell Tower saga:

I was just a kid in the 1980s when we had that seemingly endless series of disasters: Piper Alpha, the Herald of Free Enterprise, the King’s Cross fire, the Marchioness, the Clapham Junction rail crash. These were catastrophes of enormous consequence with all the emotional and human aspects of the Grenfell Tower fire, yet we did not see third-world style mobs whipping up anger and making ludicrous demands, nor perpetual adolescents demanding the government be replaced by one headed by a bunch who’d just lost an election. Sensible heads prevailed, inquests were held, genuine lessons were learned, and the rules changed so they didn’t happen again. In those days the adults were in charge.

Oh, there’s more.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Fines, jail, and/or mandatory regrooving in Canada if one fails to use the proper pronoun.

How one is supposed to know what the proper pronoun to use when meeting someone is not explained, perhaps bits of colored cloth sewn onto ones clothing to indicate which.

Of course Little Potato seals it with a hashtag.

Great news: Bill C-16 has passed the Senate – making it illegal to discriminate based on gender identity or expression. #LoveisLove

#MiniluvisMiniluv

[Darleen]

R Sherman

More goofy stuff

Last week, in the Blue Hills Reservation outside Boston, two teens and a 21-year-old set out to look for unidentified flying objects and got hopelessly lost.

They were, it’s safe to say, rather unprepared. One wore slippers—not the right footwear for the rocks and branches and undergrowth of the woods. Their phones weren’t fully charged. And they had no flashlights. After reaching the top of a hill and realizing they did not know where they were, and were surrounded by darkness, they decided to call for help.

[WTP]

People have always underestimated the wilderness, the sea, etc. Granted it's fiction, but Jack London wrote of such people in Call of the Wild. Some such people survive and are hailed as great adventurers. Is anyone ever truly prepared to climb Everest? Then along comes a Timothy Treadwell to give us a few laughs at his and his girlfriend 's expense. Cest la vie.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

The P.T. Barnhum Award goes to Montreal's own James Turner for founding Montreal's first adult day care.

Its main focus is corporate clients — such as accounting firms or people in the financial sector, who need a way to blow off stress...“Typically the more boring your job is, the more you will benefit from this,” Turner said.

I'm so old I can remember people blowing off stress by playing sportsball and other physical activities, or even taking up some kind of hobby.

[Spiny Norman]

Dave Rubin, the squishy centrist liberal who frets about “structural racism” in the Larry Elder clip upthread, is now being described by Mother Jones as “far right.”

Because he invites all sorts of people to his show, many of whom espouse right-of-center or libertarian views, and doesn't verbally assault them, he's "to the right of Breitbart".

And he doesn't like confiscatory taxes.

SEIZE HIM! BURN THE HERETIC!!!

[David]

he invites all sorts of people to his show… and doesn’t verbally assault them

He’s part of “the new extremist media,” apparently.

[Jonathan]

Who said 8 years old was too young to be a superstar!!!!!

Montreal's Drag Superstar Lactatia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7T6qU16fT4

Does anyone think this isn't wrong?

[Darleen]

Montreal's Drag Superstar Lactatia

I've read about him before. Child abuse.

[R. Sherman]

@Darleen

They were, it’s safe to say, rather unprepared.

What bugs me is that it's those people who are responsible for the ever-increasing restrictions placed on the rest of us who are responsible adults, good stewards of our natural resources and simply want to enjoy the outdoors in peace and quiet. My inner libertarian believes that anybody should be able to venture off into the public wilds without interference, but sometimes, I think one should have to pass a test about rudimentary preparation and wilderness-craft before being allowed more than 50 meters off the highway.

[Microbillionaire]

How one is supposed to know what the proper pronoun to use when meeting someone is not explained, perhaps bits of colored cloth sewn onto ones clothing to indicate which.

Surely when meeting someone one says "You"? The special forms of address are supposed to come out when the bizarro-noble is no longer around.

[Fred the Fourth]

How to start a conversation with a stranger at a party (From RAH's "Glory Road"):
"Self," she announced.
"Speak"
"Sverlani. Student food designer. Mathematico-sybaritic."
"Oscar Gordon. Soldier."
"Questions?"
"Ask."
"Is sword?"
"Is."
She looked at it and her pupils dilated. "Is-was sword destroy construct guard egg?"
"Was-is," I agreed.
She gave a little gasp and her nipples stood up.

[R. Sherman]

The fun at the Evergreen State College just won't end.

[TomJ]

Rule 12 of the Velominati: The correct number of bikes to own is n+1.
While the minimum number of bikes one should own is three, the correct number is n+1, where n is the number of bikes currently owned. This equation may also be re-written as s-1, where s is the number of bikes owned that would result in separation from your partner.

On Mother Jones: this is the publication edited by someone who thought the UK general election was run under a totally new system.

[David]

On Mother Jones: this is the publication edited by someone who thought the UK general election was run under a totally new system.

Heh. As someone quips in the subsequent thread, journalism is a field in which blunders, incompetence, and even outright repeated lying, has remarkably little effect on whether or not you remain employed.

[Jonathan]

“Sadomasochist swingers club with a dungeon and torture chamber has been shut down over health and safety concerns.”

Somewhat Related.

(via Iowahawk)

[Horace Dunn]

As someone quips in the subsequent thread, journalism is a field in which blunders, incompetence, and even outright repeated lying, has remarkably little effect on whether or not you remain employed.

Entirely unrelated: what's Robert Fisk doing these days?

[Jonathan]

Headline of Note.