Friday Ephemera

Announcement of note. || A question for art enthusiasts. (h/t, Dicentra) || There’s treasure in the attic. || Rodent motorist. || Emergency bread. (h/t, Damian) || Bit late now, love. || Brain-eating amoebas. || Hallowe’en eye pies. || Progressive fashion choice. || Feminist intellectual. || That little face. || Pelican visits fish-and-chip shop. || Enhance your phone fondling with artificial skin. || “Please refrain from gendering us.” || Social gaffe. || The glow of greenhouses. || The thrill of musical theatre. (h/t, Damian) || Compressing metal. || At last, an autonomous robotic pooper scooper. || I suspect trickery. (h/t, Dicentra) || Night landing. || And finally, comfortingly, something to think about before you go to sleep.

Comments

[pst314]

Bit late now, love.

It's even later now, after nine years.

[TimT]

treasure in the attic

I’ve seen plenty such photos in my beekeeper group. Bees love the walls or ceilings, if there’s enough hollow space.

It’s often worth contacting beekeepers to collect the hive - they’ll remove as much of the wax and honeycomb as they can and will be able to offer advice as to how to block up entrances from future swarms.

Pest management guys will probably do a less thorough job; if a big hive remains in your house with no bees, that’ll attract other pests.

The job is known as a ‘cut out’, and is distinct from swarm collection/management.

[Hector Drummond]

Someone needs to teach that New York Democrat how to stand like a lady.

[Daniel Ream]

I suspect trickery.

Halfway through they reversed the video.

[Steve E]

Progressive fashion choice.

Someone on the thread suggests: "Somebody get that lad some gaffer tape."

I say that would be overkill. An Easter Seal would do the job.

[Jim Whyte]

In re Munch, a few years back there was a series of tissue boxes that looked a lot like Ensor's The Entry of Christ Into Brussels. Thought you'd like to know.

[TimT]

Uses for a giant pumpkin #6768. Water craft.

[TimT]

Straya. Where the animals will disembowel and eat the hearts and liver of their enemies.

(Or, you know, wait patiently in a queue at a Fish 'n' chips shop.)

[Joan]

And finally, comfortingly, something to think about before you go to sleep.

*burns every pair of headphones in house*

[TimT]

Unusual business concern:

https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/23/hitman-hires-hitman-hires-hitman-hires-hitman-hires-hitman-tells-police-10971438/?ito=article.mweb.share.top.link

[David]

Morning, all.

Unusual business concern

I’m adding “the hapless assassins” to our ongoing list of possible band names.

[John D]

Bit late now, love. || Brain-eating amoebas.

ISWYDT

[David]

Wokeness versus honest film criticism.

It’s worth watching the Dave Cullen video about the curious uniformity of the praise, as if the improbable, rather stilted gushing had been, dare I say it, coordinated.

It reminded me of this io9 review of the grating, godawful Batwoman series, explaining how its enormous list of shortcomings and general mediocrity, including the severely limited range of its lead actress, were actually good things and very progressive. Something for which any remaining viewers should be grateful.

And this is the standard now, throughout pretty much all of the Gizmodo titles, and certainly at io9, where you’ll find laughably contorted articles titled,

The Mediocrity of Batwoman Also Feels Like One of Its Biggest Strengths.

Because, like so many of her woke peers, Ms Cranz, the senior reviews editor, and a former contributor to Jezebel, has learned to excuse a film or show’s mediocrity, even outright awfulness, provided said film or show ticks enough woke boxes. Because crass, ham-fisted politics, not quality or competence, is apparently what matters. And they’re quite upfront about it.

[Jonathan]

Sir, this is a species-neutral bathroom.

[Jonathan]

Bit late now, love.

Remember, this is not a Hate Crime.

via Orwell & Goode

[Tom]

Remember, this is not a Hate Crime.

Ah, Rochdale, you think they'd've learned their lesson after the child sex ring scandal, but you'd be wrong.

[svh]

A question for art enthusiasts.

Now can't unsee.

[jones]

“Please refrain from gendering us.”

"Texas jury: Father can’t stop chemical castration, gender change of seven-year-old son"

https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2019/10/22/texas-jury-father-cant-stop-chemical-castration-gender-change-seven-year-old-son/

"a jury in Texas has ruled against a father’s petition for sole custody of his twin seven-year-old boys as a means to protect one from undergoing hormonal gender-change therapy at the hands of his mother."

I have a sneaky suspicion the mother does not have the child's interests at heart. Surely she can't be acting out of sheer spite in any case?

[svh]

And finally, comfortingly, something to think about before you go to sleep.

Can't unsee that either.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Posted by: jones | October 25

The judge, probably due to the public outcry and the fact that the Governor and other Texas officials are launching an investigation into this farrago, has overruled the jury.

The judge presiding over the case of Jeffrey Younger, the father who is trying to protect his seven-year-old son, James, from chemical castration via a gender “transition,” ruled today that the parents will have joint conservatorship over James, which includes making joint medical decisions for the child.

Despite the gag order on the father not to speak to the press, this ruling at least buys time for the kid and for more rational people to sort this mess out.

Meanwhile, on the topic of emotionally disturbed persons, you can't call them that in NYC anymore, thanks to a diktat from the mayor.

Calls for law enforcement that have been referred to as "EDPs," or "emotionally disturbed persons," will now be referred to as a "mental health call,"...Other measures taken by the city would require mental health professionals instead of law enforcement to respond to certain types of calls.

Because in an emergency you always have perfect knowledge of the actual situation. It should be interesting when they send a shrink to see the nutcase brandishing weapons, and the rozzers to the depressed dude who has locked himself in his bedroom, because the mayor and his minions don't want to upset a crazy person by calling him "emotionally disturbed".

[David]

Can't unsee that either.

No refunds. Credit note only.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Twitter rules and censors, it is almost as if they are arbitrary and clueless.

[Burnsie]

The glow of greenhouses

And each one, being pumped full of evil CO2.

BWAAA HA HA HA HA...

[WTP]

Bit late now, love.

So of course she will be resigning and throwing what political capital she has left over to the AfD (or whomever?). Ahhh, but...

“For a few years, more people have been leaving our country than entering it,” she told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. “Wherever it is possible, we must lower the entry hurdles for those who bring the country forward.”

Of course not. We mustn't learn anything from our mistakes. Because that would be wrong. Unless of course "those who bring the country forward" means what it literally means and not the PC BS that such convoluted language has meant for decades now. But then again, leaving Germany has been a German tradition for centuries. On the one hand, it's the reason that I even exist. Still TBD if in a small way that's a good thing or not, but I digress...

Curious if anyone over yonder has noticed this...Growing up in, and frequently visiting, South Florida I saw a great number of German tourists. Also our next door neighbors were post-war German immigrants. Much more so than other non-English speaking tourists, the Germans always look confused. They seem to lighten up after a few beers or whatnot, but I can pick out the Germans on the beach (insert lame reverse D-Day joke here) even before hearing them speak because they seem terribly unsure of what to do with themselves.

[David]

Douglas Murray on the inadvertently comical Naomi Wolf.

[David]

Continue the research.

[Sam Duncan]

“Brain-eating amoebas.”

Oh, great. Just when I've managed to start sleeping at night again.

“Pelican visits fish-and-chip shop.”

Are you watching this, seagulls?

“And finally, comfortingly, something to think about before you go to sleep.”

Will you just knock it off?

“It’s worth watching the Dave Cullen video about the curious uniformity of the praise, as if the improbable, rather stilted gushing had been, dare I say it, coordinated.“

So... what I'm getting is that many asses are kicked in this movie.

Seriously though, Dave's video about, basically, the opposite phenomenon, the uniform critical disdain for non less-woke films, is worth a look too. Are we being played?

[David]

Will you just knock it off?

[ Carefully places ear buds in spider-proof case. ]

[pst314]

Meanwhile, on the topic of emotionally disturbed persons, you can't call them that in NYC anymore, thanks to a diktat from the mayor.

Apropos, three incidents just the other day of deranged people viciously assaulting random people in New York:

Man punches out elderly women on bus in New York City:
https://nypost.com/2019/10/23/three-elderly-women-attacked-on-upper-east-side-bus/

Man assaults random strangers on subway platform, shoving woman headfirst into train:
https://nypost.com/2019/10/24/police-arrest-subway-saboteur-after-woman-shoved-head-first-into-train/

Man slashes random young teen girl:
https://nypost.com/2019/10/24/man-at-theme-park-slashed-teen-girl-bit-man-who-tried-to-intervene/

[Sam]

inadvertently comical Naomi Wolf

Wolf is - without exaggeration - every bit a conspiracy theorist as Alex Jones, yet one is too racy for most social media platforms, much less major publishing houses and mainstream organs like the Guardian.

We reside in the timeline where Alex Jones is right.

[Jonathan]

We reside in the timeline where Alex Jones is right.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

If you laugh, you are probably a very bad person.

[Matt]

Smart pelican. I was wondering how he planned to pay for his meal... then realized he was probably just going to ask the cashier to put it on his bill.

[David]

he was probably just going to ask the cashier to put it on his bill.

I’ll get your coat.

[Uma Thurmond's Feet]

Night landing

I prefer this one, which has floaty text and a cool soundtrack.

https://youtu.be/OpA3ORYlgGs

[Daniel Ream]

Re: Batwoman and Terminator

A lot of this reminds me of Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal, in which the writer points out that movie studios don't really know what sells or what doesn't; they just produce so much stuff that the big hits pay for all the damp squibs. At the time of writing, DVD sales were completely savaging studio profits and the book was mostly stories about the studios flailing around and having no idea how to function in a market where they had to make ROI on nearly everything.

The New Wokeness is just studio execs being their usual clueless about what audiences want. We didn't want six Transformers movies and the later ones didn't do very well. There's not much wokeness in the entire DC cinematic universe and half of them were absolute box office bombs.

Unfortunately this means that the poor financial performance of Batwoman and Terminator won't likely make much difference. If the greenlight guys were capable of spotting a bankable property, we wouldn't have gotten these to begin with.

Keep an watchful eye on Jason Reitman's Ghostbusters sequel next year. If it does well, that may be the bellwether studios need, as it's a clear A/B test.

Texas jury: Father can’t stop chemical castration, gender change of seven-year-old son

There's something really off about this case. The father requested a jury trial in lieu of a bench trial; I'm assuming he felt 12 normal people were going to be a lot more sensible about the issue at hand. And yet, 11 of the 12 jurors voted to give sole custody and conservatorship to psycho mom.

The judge who overruled the original decision merely gave 50/50 conservatorship (i.e. medical decision-making) to the father. Psycho mom still has sole custody and the father is under a gag order such that he can't talk about the case.

There's something about this case we're not being told.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

There's something about this case we're not being told.

There are many things that stink on ice, beginning with...

During her testimony Georgulas stated she is not the biological mother of James or his twin brother Jude. She purchased eggs from a biological stranger.

...also this from someone who was supposed to testify on behalf of the father...

Unfortunately I was called into the courtroom and dismissed 30 seconds later, because the judge said the lawyers needed to rest their case.

...which, if true, indicates the "lifelong Democrat" judge may be standing on shaky ground when this mess gets investigated.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Trans individual sets new cycling record.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Adjunct professor of law | He/Him |

[TomJ]

Pool shot of note.

[Darleen]

Another entry in the category of the best woman honored is a man. Now with everyone trying to ignore that fact.

[pst314]

Pool shot of note.

Broken link of note. :-(

Was it by any chance this one? :-)
(Found via Charles Murray's twitter feed.)

[TimT]

Pool shot of note.

Broken link of note. :-(

I thought it was a cunning and deceptive (cleats throat, accent changes) underline of note.

[TimT]

Aw, the code doesn’t work. :(

[Darleen]

cleats throat

OUCH. You didn't have to go that far.

[Fred the Fourth]

Something to think about...

In the podcast series "Welcome to Nightvale" there's an announcement from the narrator (the local radio station guy):
"New research has shown that there is at least one spider on your body at all times. Yes, you. Further work is needed to clarify its intent, but it is pretty certain that it is one of the ugly ones."

[David]

Attention, well-off Cupertino lefties - Come bask in our two-hour poverty simulation.

Sent by ‘A’, via email.

[Rafi]

Come bask in our two-hour poverty simulation.

Two whole hours?

[David]

Two whole hours?

It’s the odd realisation that there must be people, potential attendees, for whom the above isn’t cringeworthy or comically oblivious. Instead, it may well be a marker of status.

[Daniel Ream]

There's a strain of this in (of all goddamned things) tabletop roleplaying games. It's been sardonically dubbed by its critics "misery tourism".

[Joan]

Come bask in our two-hour poverty simulation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0

[David]

[ Slides 2%-off drinks voucher to Joan. ]

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Gentlemen, please inform yourself about your incoherent social construct.

Anatomical penises may exist, but as pre-operative transgendered women also have anatomical penises, the penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct. We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity. Through detailed poststructuralist discursive criticism and the example of climate change, this paper will challenge the prevailing and damaging social trope that penises are best understood as the male sexual organ and reassign it a more fitting role as a type of masculine performance.

Please be sure to read the "Public Interest Statement".

Penises are problematic...and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change.

RTWT, especially section 2.2 where you learn how your johnson controls the weather, wield it wisely.

[Captain Nemo]

Yeah, I think I'm going to remain standing:

https://twitter.com/MarDixon/status/1187676652450582529

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

The other day I mentioned that even medicine is being infiltrated with SJW loons, behold today's riveting installment of "Sexism"...

"STDs are sexist, and women are the losers. Here's why"

Simply put, because "STDs are biologically and psycho-socially sexist at all levels," said Dr. Hunter Handsfield, a professor emeritus of medicine...at any one exposure, a susceptible woman is more likely to catch it than a susceptible man," Handsfield said. That's because the lining of the vagina is thinner and more delicate than the skin on a penis...Another example is human papillomavirus, or HPV. It causes cervical cancer, which can be deadly unless caught early.

"Yes, men can get penile cancer from HPV," Hansfield said, "but at about one hundredth the rate that women get cervical cancer from HPV."

Damn those incoherent social constructs to have evolved differently into psycho-socially sexist climate changers.

[David]

Gentlemen, please inform yourself about your incoherent social construct.

As Patrick Brown has just pointed out, the paper is a hoax, albeit an all-too-plausible one.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...albeit an all-too-plausible one.

Based on the nonsense that has been presented here, they got me, but in these days of having female penises thrust upon us, too easy to believe.

We intended to test the hypothesis that flattery of the academic Left’s moral architecture in general, and of the moral orthodoxy in gender studies in particular, is the overwhelming determiner of publication in an academic journal in the field. That is, we sought to demonstrate that a desire for a certain moral view of the world to be validated could overcome the critical assessment required for legitimate scholarship. Particularly, we suspected that gender studies is crippled academically by an overriding almost-religious belief that maleness is the root of all evil. On the evidence, our suspicion was justified.

Yep. The article at David's links is well worth reading.

[David]

they got me,

You’re not alone there. And the quoted assessment by the hoaxers seems spot-on. The primary criterion is the affirmation of deranged woke politics. Which is to say, ideological conformity. How one gets to the preferred - and predestined - conclusion, or whether one has gotten anywhere at all, is at best secondary. And often simply irrelevant.

[pst314]

Come bask in our two-hour poverty simulation.

Remember how Marie Antoinette played at being a shepherdess?

[Frack]

Come bask in our two-hour poverty simulation.

Doris Lessing's semi-autobiographical novel Landlocked has a funny passage about what made her progressive friends different from her non-progressive friends...

But of course these were 'intelligent' people; some of them even 'educated'; even - though this was a word they used with an increasingly humorous grimness, 'progressive' people. Yet what had changed in the talk, since Martha had chafed at the talk at the women's tea-parties in the avenues?

These women did not complain about their servants; they deplored, instead, that they had servants, wished that they could do without them, and often indeed, took decisions to give them up. And they did not complain about their husbands, but about 'society', which made marriage unsatisfactory.

They did not talk scandal in the sense of have you heard that so and so has left her husband? They discussed people's characters, with all the dispassionate depth offered to them by their familiarity with 'psychology'. Why anybody ever did anything was immediately obvious to these psychologically educated females, and people's motives were an open book to them, their own included.

[Steve E]

they got me,

A paper about "the problematic penis" by Peter Boyle. [ sniggers ]

Reminds me of the paper I once read about buggery by Benjamin Dover.

[Squires]

The primary criterion is the affirmation of deranged woke politics minds.

[Fred the Fourth]

Farnsworth,
My favorite bit is from "About the Authors", namely the phrase "their particular fascination with penises".

[Fred the Fourth]

A hoax?
There is no joy in me now.
Publican, a double shot of hemlock, if you please.

[Captain Nemo]

Pumpkin lanterns of note:

https://twitter.com/DannyDutch/status/1187595440830717957

[Hal]

Come bask in our two-hour poverty simulation.

Remember how Marie Antoinette played at being a shepherdess?

Nice, but not an issue.

Yes, there are hipsters who are queens, but absolutely no hipster is an actual, does actual getting things done, administrator, basically by definition.

---Pre-revolutionary France got trapped in that Title By Inheritance And Nothing Else thing, and didn't figure out how to shake it before the guillotines arrived.

---The same of pre-revolutionary Russia and the handy Tokarev, for that matter . . . .

[Diogenes]

Just after the spider on the buds, there was a moose eating a pumpkin... Truly surreal

[pst314]

"Just a moment... Just a moment... I've just picked up a fault in the AE-35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure within 72 hours."

[HAL 9000]

Just a moment... Just a moment...

I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

[Darleen]

Is there any higher medal in gymnastics than Olympic Gold?

Two 17-year-old boys accused of harassing four African-American middle schoolgirls — using racial slurs and urinating on one of the victims — are facing charges including bias intimidation and lewdness. [snip]

Police say the boys are of Indian descent.

While it’s tempting to see the reported ethnicity of the boys suspected in the assault as complicating the story and raising questions about whether the assault should be thought of as racist, I look at it through a different lens. Instead of asking what the boys’ reported racial identity tells us about the nature of the attack, we should see the boys as enacting American whiteness through anti-black assault in a very traditional way. In doing so, the assailants are demonstrating how race is a social construct that people make through their actions. They show race in the making, and show how race is something we perform, not just something we are in our blood or in the color of our skin.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Is there any higher medal in gymnastics than Olympic Gold?

For a clue on how American racial identity is evolving, it may be less useful to look to clues like complexion, and more to the performance of identity. The performance here — flinging around the N-word, with the befoulment of urination — holds an answer. One potent way of being American, no matter where you or your parents are from, is enacting anti-blackness. And traditionally, acting out anti-blackness has meant acting white.

I see, so I guess that means all the black rappers and all the black on black crime is merely blacks acting out whiteness, then.

This lady's mental contortions are why the incoherent socially constructed johnsons is so believable.

[Darleen]

so I guess that means all the black rappers and all the black on black crime is merely blacks acting out whiteness, then.

The boys’ actions resemble those of people who feel empowered to act out their resentment against nonwhite people who are deemed out of place, confronting them with hostility or slurs or calling the police. The people patrolling what they see as their spaces are often — but not always — white. The Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson calls areas that are policed in this way, “the white space,”

Black gangbangers, acting white, protect their "white space" when confronting people they deem out of place "Where you from?" and beating or killing the person who gives the wrong answer.

Makes sense.

[Steve E]

...all the black on black crime is merely blacks acting out whiteness.

It's odd we don't actually see whites acting out whiteness in these same ways. Blacks seem to experience whiteness in a, dare I say, almost exclusively non-white way.

[David]

Makes sense.

As a worldview to cultivate, it’s not just wrong or even laughably wrong. It’s pernicious and deranging. Again, the conclusion – Bad Whitey, Corrupter Of All Things – is obligatory, predetermined; and the route to it, however twisty and contrived, is unimportant. Any contortion, any paper-thin pretext, will do.

And this fatuous twattery is apparently more than good enough for Princeton, where the author is employed.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Thinx, For People With Periods, please enjoy their ad, MENstruation.

...we craft our undies carefully and consciously. From sustainable manufacturing processes to ethical working conditions...[at] Our award-winning facility based in Sri Lanka...

Sri Lanka ? Not Pittsburg or Edmonton ? I wonder why that might be, an impenetrable mystery, but they got an award for best uniforms or something.

As an aside, what is with this "taboo about menstruation" nonsense ? 70 years ago, maybe, but it is not as if ads for products are banned, and the items kept behind the counter in plain brown wrappers, or the SJWs never stop barking about it as if they are the first people with periods women ever to have periods.

And this fatuous twattery is apparently more than good enough for Princeton...

Indeed, fortunately emeritus, but far from alone, which is why the "elite" schools and their output are in reality as "elite" as a Yugo.

[Joan]

For People With Periods,

"It doesn't look human"

https://twitter.com/scottmorris39/status/1188409518704807936

[David]

And in travel news.

[Jonathan]

Holy c**p!

Sorry for the profanity, but I just had to link to This interview with Philosopher Angelo Codevilla where a member of the American Elite media gets his clock cleaned:

So, when I express my sincere concern about transgender rights, you would presumably accuse me of manufacturing a new category of clients—and at the same time, a new class of bigots for me to self-righteously oppose.

You are not manufacturing a class, or rather you are exploiting that class’ weakness to turn that class into clients.

Most of all, what you are giving them—which really in a sense they crave more than anything else—is a sense of grievance against the rest of America. Grievance is the handle by which you push these pawns into your cultural wars.

via Second City Bureaucrat

[pst314]

Most of all, what you are giving them—which really in a sense they crave more than anything else—is a sense of grievance against the rest of America.

I wonder how many of these damaged people feel a grievance against the world, against life, but will settle for blaming America because (1) that is fashionable and (2) blaming the entire world would be too nakedly pathological to get away with.

[Jonathan]

...blaming the entire world would be too nakedly pathological to get away with.

They blame America - or Britain, France, Sweden - because it's permitted even encouraged, by the Elite Class.

[pst314]

because it's permitted even encouraged, by the Elite Class.

Exactly.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...where a member of the American Elite media gets his clock cleaned:

"American Elite" is an odd way to spell "smug, condescending, generally ignorant, bubble dwelling nitwit", but it is shorter.

I was always struck by the marginal status of those other people you mention, Republicans. Clearly, they were not as bright as me and my friends were...As a graduate of two elite American universities...

As I said before, "elite" = Yugo.

(S) You call those contemptible people the “country party.”

(C) Precisely. Here, I’m borrowing an 18th-century British term.

(S) I thought it was a good term because it brings to mind country music.

(C) That too. Have you ever been to Branson, Missouri? Do you even know what it is?

(S) I gather it’s neither Aspen nor Hollywood.

Touche, Mr. Wilde, touche, (not that you haven't just shown your provincialism).

(S) As a sometime student of intelligence work...There are now well more than a million Americans with some form of top secret or higher security clearance. Now I can accept that something is properly a secret if only five people know it, or if 40 people know it, or even 400 people. But there is no such thing as a secret that is shared by 1 million people...[later]...

(C)...Pollard was sentenced on the basis of a memorandum, which is yet secret.

First, our self proclaimed better and "sometimes student of intelligence" reveals he knows nothing about how clearances work or how classified information is shared. A guy with a TS isn't privy to the same info as a guy with a TS/SCI, and among the TS/SCI the whole point of the "C" is that information is "compartmented" and not everyone with a TS/SCI has access to the same "compartments". Second, seeing as how Pollard was sentenced in 1987 and a memo still secret, one would make the assumption that absent leakers and spies, the system generally works. But, hey, he is an elite.

One could spend a week dissecting everything in that article, I would give him props for publishing himself being beaten like a toy mouse in a room full of kittens, but you could bet the back 40 he thinks quite the opposite.

[Darleen]

Jonathan

I'm reading that interview with my jaw on my desk. Is the interviewer Daniel Samuels playing devil's advocate or does he actually believe what he's saying?

Samuels: As a young person moving through American elite institutions, I was always struck by the marginal status of those other people you mention, Republicans. Clearly, they were not as bright as me and my friends were, which is why they were marginal, even if they had an easier path to some kind of dubious status as pseudo-intellectuals in their second- or third-rate party organs. That hardly mattered, though. The New York Times was the important newspaper, and it was a liberal newspaper. The New Yorker was an important magazine, and so it was a liberal magazine. Right-wing types might look instead to the Conservative Review of Books, published out of Mobile, Alabama, or the Jesuit review of something or another. But nobody was quaking in their boots about how such places might review your work. All the cultural capital was on the Democratic side of the ledger.

Codevilla: What a marvelous recitation of ruling class prejudice.

Of course, you would not have judged them to be nearly as intelligent as you folks were. And you probably didn’t imagine that others would think you less intelligent.

Samuels: Let them rant and rave about their conspiracy theories and whatnot. They didn’t matter.

Codevilla: Well, they didn’t matter. Because of the power that you wielded, because of the institutions that you controlled.

Holy Jesus. And this stuff goes on and on!

[Darleen]

Oops... David Samuels, not "Daniel".

[Jonathan]

Farnsworth

... I would give him props for publishing himself being beaten like a toy mouse in a room full of kittens...

LoL.

It is quite extraordinary.

Darleen

Is the interviewer David Samuels playing devil's advocate or does he actually believe what he's saying?

TBH, reading the other interviews he's done with Codevilla, I think he may actually be playing Devil's Advocate.

I'm still not entirely sure though.....

[Darleen]

Jonathan

Samuels was lauding Bezos and Washington Post ....and today we have THIS obit headline on the killing of Islamic terrorist leader al-Baghdadi

Abu Akbar al-Baghdadi, Austere Religious Scholar at Helm of Islamic State, dies at 48

Our betters in journalism....

[Jonathan]

Darleen

Our betters in journalism....

We're just bad people; 'deplorable' if you will....

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

... THIS obit headline...

Marone; and that as what they changed it to. I guess they are just tying to create the darkness their masthead says democracy dies in.

[David]

I guess they are just trying to create the darkness their masthead says democracy dies in.

[ Slides 2%-off drinks voucher to Mr Muldoon. ]

[Daniel Ream]

Is the interviewer Daniel Samuels playing devil's advocate or does he actually believe what he's saying?

I found myself wondering the same thing. We're deep in Poe's Law territory here.

Based on same later incidences of Trump Tourette's, I think he's sincere.

[Jonathan]

[ Slides 2%-off drinks voucher to Mr Muldoon. ]

To be honest Farnsworth, it's a bit of a lucky dip:

[David]

Terms and conditions apply.

[Alice]

And in travel news.

The mile-high club isn't as glamorous as I'd heard.

[Darleen]

Well ... that face you make ...

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Terms and conditions apply.

I was wondering about that. Just so I know what to order, is that 2% off the price, the quantity, or the proof ?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Life imitates art, a play in three acts.

[David]

is that 2% off the price, the quantity, or the proof ?

Heh. Yes. You get a slightly smaller drink. For the same price.

[David]

that face you make...

We feel his pain.

[pst314]

You get a slightly smaller drink. For the same price.

And that's cutting your own throat.

[PiperPaul]

"And in travel news."

Guess where I was last week.