davidthompson: Friday Ephemera

Alone With His Patriarchy

Elsewhere (288)

At last, shoe drawers. || He draws cities. || How do you draw an X? Anything but #8 is just wrong. || Real-time travel. || “You don’t imagine Romans in socks.” || The Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading, Rio de Janeiro. || At all times, dignity. || An animated collage of Google Earth images. (Photosensitive types beware.) || Golden boulder of note. || Sacred substance. || He does this better than you do. || A snug fit. || A work of evil genius. || Knitted village. || These are some of those. || Thrust. || She can’t hear men. || “The Crippens’ marriage was not a happy one.” || Petals and stems. || He chose poorly. (h/t, Holborn) || Pregnant with no vagina. || And finally, instructively, “How to make thin hamster.”

Posted at 00:02 in Ephemera | Permalink | Comments (127)

Comments

Indigenous relations consultant Jed Johns went on to say that their ethnicity was not the point.
“I don’t think it matters if they’re Indigenous or not,” said Johns.

Not the first time we've seen this, but hell's bells. Talk about "cultural appropriation". This dude has arrogated to himself the right to pass judgement on what is and is not a legitimate expression of some other culture's culture.
Absolutely classic totalitarian attitude.

Posted by: Fred the Fourth | January 27, 2019 at 07:25

See, unlike products in meat space, the idea of what software should do, the degree/quality to which it should do it, reside entirely in people’s heads.

I'm not sure what you do for a living but I'm fairly certain it doesn't involve software.

Then again, the Dunning-Kruger effect is rampant in the IT field.

Posted by: Daniel Ream | January 27, 2019 at 07:44

Eyebrows raised.

Via Damian.

Posted by: David | January 27, 2019 at 10:37

Ancient Britons, built Stonehenge ? Shocking and completely mind blowing.

Lies! We all know who really built Stonehenge:

Posted by: Jonathan | January 27, 2019 at 11:18

National Trust should stop 'privileging heterosexual lives'

Given that in the UK approximately 98% of the population are heterosexual, who should they 'privilege'?

Posted by: Jonathan | January 27, 2019 at 11:23

I'm not sure what you do for a living but I'm fairly certain it doesn't involve software.

Then again, the Dunning-Kruger effect is rampant in the IT field.

For thirty years I have, from the inside as a developer, watched this industry slowly come to grips with this problem. This is what Agile is really all about. If the design of the software could be understood from the beginning of a project through to the end as well as most real engineering projects, like say building a bridge are understood, the waterfall method would work. Software is far more susceptible to rapid technological advancement, things going on in people’s heads outside of the immediate project, than other forms of engineering. Granted some of this rapid technological change is creeping into construction and such as well, so perhaps Agile is creeping in there as well. I wouldn’t know. But I would guess that if/when that happens it will meet with much more resistance than in the software industry. Which itself was a hard sell.

Agree on Dunning-Kruger. I’ll leave it at that.

Posted by: WTP | January 27, 2019 at 11:51

As an example, Java was originally intended to be used for programming smart appliances, something we are just now beginning to see nearly 30 years later. It became something of an industry revolutionary technology that I’m sure they never dreamed of back in those early days of 1991.

Posted by: WTP | January 27, 2019 at 12:10

Given that in the UK approximately 98% of the population are heterosexual, who should they ‘privilege’?

Or, “What is usually the case is still being regarded as what is usually the case.” It’s an odd thing to be outraged by.

Posted by: David | January 27, 2019 at 12:19

Given that in the UK approximately 98% of the population are heterosexual, who should they ‘privilege’?

A few weeks ago, a chatty taxi driver assumed I had a wife. He was going with the odds. (‘Handsome chap, pleasing of limb, and well-spoken too. Someone must have snapped him up, probably a woman.’) To flare up indignantly and accuse him of “heteronormative emphasis,” and of “privileging” what is most likely to be the case, would say more about me than the taxi driver.

Posted by: David | January 27, 2019 at 12:35

.... would say more about me than the taxi driver.

Indeed. It seems to be an artifact of identity politics that feelings of anger or outrage at a simple attempt to engage in conversation with a stranger is acceptable, or even admirable.

Posted by: Jonathan | January 27, 2019 at 13:17

Slate brings us a new way to resist Trump.

From the actual article...

“I wrote this book in part as a response to the wave of Islamophobia in this country,” Gold explained in an author’s note, “never dreaming at the time that it would crest as it has now.”
The Time He Desires is the story of Aziz, a cheetah in a faltering heterosexual marriage who explores the boundaries of his sexuality with the help of a gay fox....I also didn’t understand much about Islam other than that it’s a religion that hundreds of millions of people in the world follow.”

And so he resolved to learn more. He turned first to Wikipedia, then forums and Tumblr pages.

Tumblr pages to learn about Mohammedanism. Right. The Shithooks may not be big enough, these may be needed...

Meanwhile, I am not at all sure how this got past the editors at the Guardian.

So what follows is a basic rundown of the more definite differences between the brains of men and women.

Heresy !

Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 27, 2019 at 13:30

Interesting Thread

via Geoffrey Miller

Posted by: Jonathan | January 27, 2019 at 13:55

How to keep your Pandas clean

Posted by: Jonathan | January 27, 2019 at 14:06

Jonathan,
Thanks for that. That was probably one of the most insightful things on the subject that I have ever read. The vulnerability at times made me cringe, but that is part of the point. Damn.

Posted by: WTP | January 27, 2019 at 14:14

WTP

You're welcome. It was rather insightful wasn't it?

We forget the wisdom of the past at our peril.

Posted by: Jonathan | January 27, 2019 at 14:24

I am wiping away a tear for our lost democracy.

Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 27, 2019 at 14:26

We forget the wisdom of the past at our peril.

True. Or even the past at all. I have a pretty good memory for things that have actually happened (as opposed to things someone said in a book that I lack much experience with). I find that whil such a thing was once considered useful, I lately annoy people simply by remembering things. There seems to be some sort of “in the moment”cult that has caught on that I must admit has blindsided me.

Posted by: WTP | January 27, 2019 at 15:16

There seems to be some sort of “in the moment”cult that has caught on that I must admit has blindsided me.

The rot has spread far and wide. I stopped watching University Challenge a few years ago when one of the contestants, faced with a question about some seminal event in history, sneered with incredulity as if to say "But I wasn't even born then!"

Posted by: Trevor | January 27, 2019 at 15:34

"But I wasn't even born then!"

Yes. I notice amongst the milennials the phrase is, “It’s the 21st century, dude”. Those who fail to learn from Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings will get their comeuppance. I just don’t want them taking the rest of us with them.

Posted by: WTP | January 27, 2019 at 15:58

Interesting Thread ... We forget the wisdom of the past at our peril. ... 'we are supposed to "be vulnerable", but only in ways that women have prescribed'

Indeed, and hopefully not to derail too much, the opening paragraph speaks to the recent open thread about novels having too much padding and not enough point.

I was reading in an old book yesterday, and the author remarked, only in passing, that young men in particular tend to feel very lonely. It's striking and shocking that he could say a very obvious thing like this without "evidence", which is an appeal to authority.
If you make a statement about the nature of men or women, there is a kind of luminary who will come out of the woodwork to ask, incredulously, "evidence?!" as if she would read a scientific paper and change her mind, as if social science research were anything but fiat.

But back to loneliness, and obviousness. Things that once were obvious are now quite hidden; we have rejected the wisdom of the past in favor of modern ideas. Who could doubt that we, from our vantage point atop a mountain of smart phones, know better than all of our ancestors?

These "only in passing" remarks are a "padding" that can be a feature not a bug of novels. Movie scripts don't have time, literally or figuratively, for throwaway remarks that are inessential to the plot. Old novels, especially old unfashionable novels from second-hand stores, preserve insights that are too politically incorrect to be published in Current Year media or endorsed by social science, although my grandmother could have told me if I wasn't too much of a teenage know-it-all to pay attention.

Posted by: Cheese | January 27, 2019 at 16:37