Year: 2019

Knife to know

Posted by – August 31, 2019

As so many stories coming out of the UK now, I found this utterly baffling, until I figured out it’s not a chicken box of convenience, that you don’t need a knife to eat, for some reason distributed by the UK Home Office, but a chicken box of anti knife crime messaging. Though that is still pretty, pretty baffling.

(I did figure out it had something to do with violent crime, but I thought the idea was to encourage people to go without knives in their homes completely. And – I don’t know, maybe it is, I can’t make out the text. But probably not out of convenience of the chicken box.)

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Virgil Kane is the name

Posted by – August 28, 2019

Time for the manliest musical performance on Youtube:

MFW

Posted by – August 27, 2019

This is true, and kind of funny, except that I can believe a lot of them aren’t lying. I think there’s some sort of market for videos of black guys reacting to “white people” music in general, like there’s tons for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Megadeth, etc. They say “I’m normally a hip hop head, but I’ll give it a try”, then they go nuts for it, and fans of the band have a collective orgasm in the comments. Now… how do I get them to react to the Dead?

Terrapin redux

Posted by – August 25, 2019

This is very much in modern Grateful Dead spirit – a medley performance of Terrapin Station, 40 years after the namesake album was released.

Some are now saying, “It is what it is”

Posted by – August 25, 2019

Humanity has an inherent tendency to seek heroes and symbols, and that’s sufficient to explain Greta Thunberg. She has charisma, and politicians in particular are impressed by her, because her talents are those of a politician, and thus comprehensible to them. She obviously has excellent PR, speechwriting and coaching, just like any other successful media figure, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In her case the goal is altruistic rather than egoistic (I assume, although if someone is making money off her too, that would not change much). So situation normal, I say, nothing to remark on really, except to say that there are far worse things to spend media attention on. Sensible people don’t make up their minds based on what a celebrity says anyway, whether it’s Greta Thunberg or anyone else who is mainly qualified by celebrity.

Humppa or not humppa

Posted by – August 21, 2019

This is pretty real, then when it cuts to the audience at 1:27, it gets incredibly real.

Deep in my plums

Posted by – August 20, 2019

When I’m old, I want a voice like Henry Blofeld:

Facebook comments:

NH: See if you can find John Arlott. More attractive in my opinion, and certainly less likely to make you get beaten up in a pub car park.

Sam Hardwick: Nice, but according to Wikipedia “He was also a poet and wine connoisseur”, so he might actually have wanted to keep his wits about him in a pub car park.

Neil Hardwick: He liked his cake.

Sam Hardwick:

NH: Now being embraced by a blond policeman, this may be his last public appearance. Lovely.

Twitter before twitter

Posted by – August 20, 2019

I like it, but I wouldn’t listen to it all the time

Posted by – August 20, 2019

The best thing about this is that Youtube’s algorithm claimed copyright on it as a Slayer song

Don’t threaten me with a meh time

Posted by – August 13, 2019

The ideological Turing test is an idea by Bryan Caplan, where you’re tested on whether you can convincingly imitate someone on the other side, ideologically. Conservatives have long complained that liberals have absolutely no idea what conservatives actually think, and I’ve found that to be largely true. Anyone who reads is aware of liberal ideas, but only people who specifically seek out conservative ideas are aware of them.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has suggested that this is inherently so, because while conservatives care approximately equally about all of his six “moral foundations” – care, fairness/proportionality, loyalty/ingroup, authority/respect, sanctity/purity and liberty – leftists (in American usage “liberals”) mostly care about two – care and fairness – and libertarians, who we might call liberals, care most about the liberty foundation.

Anyway, even quite enlightened leftists/liberals frequently demonstrate that they don’t really understand what they’re talking about when it comes to ideological attitudes. Or maybe people who do become so enlightened that they become centrists/unaligned. I saw a striking example of this on Twitter the other day.

Maria Petterson, who is a quite influential left-liberal muckety-muck in journalism and politics, had retweeted a tweet, adding the comment “Accurate.” The original tweet contained a screenshot of a cartoon, with the comment “Hilarious to me that even in their worst visions of how society could be, everyone is still white.” In the screenshot (Twitter gets complicated), the comment reads “This is the future the Left wants.”, with the source not visible.

The suggestion was that a right-wing/conservative cartoonist had made this cartoon showing how horrible the future might be if the liberals take over – cloning vans, abortions on demand, drugged-out kids, men kissing each other, a man driving with his sheep partner, a statue of Bill Clinton etc. And was still so white-minded that they included only white people. But to me it was immediately obvious that it wasn’t a right-wing/conservative cartoon at all, but a parody of one. Those things just aren’t what right-wingers are worried about, even as a joke. And of course right-wingers/conservatives are actually enthusiastic about non-whites in their ranks, as it (hopefully) shows they’re not racists. A quick search confirmed it – the cartoon is actually a send-up of the elderly couple in the middle, who are saying in the original, “I knew this would happen if the liberals took over!”

(And about the white thing – people really care a bit too much about that. The fact is, there are plenty of places in the US where seeing 10 identifiably white people and no other ethnicities at once is not statistically unlikely. Hell, I’m pretty sure that happened lots of times when I was last in New York City. Everything from America gets imported to Finland, and I’ve even heard of people complaining that walking the streets of Helsinki they saw only white people. It’s like – yes, you are living in one of the whitest places in the world. From time to time you will see a lot of white people at once. What did you expect?)

So, yeah. Even people whose job it is to understand things of this nature, routinely don’t. And I’m saddened to say it, but I’d put most of my friends, an esteemed and educated group, in that category of people who don’t really know what they’re talking about when it comes to politics across ideological boundaries. Even Trump voters aren’t as stupid as you think.

Th-thanks

Posted by – August 12, 2019

Great how cricket brings cultures together

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Sure whatever dad

Posted by – August 12, 2019

I was explaining to my kid how Stunts is a wayy older game than Grand Theft Auto, but actually they came out in 1990 and 1997, so 7 years between the two and then another 22 years to now. Weird how everything in the past basically converges to a point.

Grapes of wrath

Posted by – August 12, 2019

The kids react to no bonus grapes in the morning due to bad behaviour

Checkmate

Posted by – August 11, 2019

“What are you not ashamed of, Boris?”
“Whatever there… is not to be ashamed of.”

Spasticus fantasticus

Posted by – August 11, 2019

This classic has so much to recommend itself, perhaps for that reason the bassline isn’t in those “great basslines” lists but really deserves to be:

It’s only hyper-commodified cocaine capitalism but I like it

Posted by – August 11, 2019

The time for the status quo has passed. We must choose our future.

supercompass