After the 2016 election, I did what every sane American did: I eliminated the annoying people from my social media feeds on both the left and the right who had become singularly obsessed with politics. And then I took another healthy step: I eliminated feeds from the “fake perfectionists.”
Who are the “fake perfectionists?” You probably know them. They are the people who post beautiful photos of their work on social media and never seem to experience a single glitch. And, in the cases of schools with “fake perfectionist” feeds, they crow about the beauty, detail and perfection of the work being taught there.
To which I say: Hogwash.
Woodworking is about failure. In fact, I consider successful projects to be ones that simply endured less failure than usual. Stuff goes awry. Wood chips out. Table legs go into the burn pile. If you aren’t making errors – of the hand or of the mind – you are a robot and need to have your firmware downgraded.
Christopher Schwarz, “Failing Daily Since 1993”, The Christopher Schwarz Blog, 2017-03-16.
April 8, 2017
April 7, 2017
The art of Shakespeare … well, actually the art of Munchkin Shakespeare
John Kovalic reflects on the now-complete artwork for Munchkin Shakespeare:
Munchkin Shakespeare is DONE!
At least my part.
Final tally: about 250 cards, bookmarks, covers, etc.
It was, without question, the largest single Munchkin project I’ve ever tackled at one sitting.
Well, several sittings, really. Over about a two-month period.
The final sitting was the best, though. In London at the time, I wandered around Southwark – Shake-dawg’s stomping grounds – and chose the bar at Shakespeare’s Globe to finish the last few drawings.
[…]
Munchkin Shakespeare was a hugely fun project – but it was also hugely huge, thanks to you monsters and all the stretch-goals you hit.
Would more time have been helpful? Yes. But then, that’s always the case. Point being, Munchkin Shakespeare is going to look fantastic. Most of that is due to the Steve Jackson Games Art Department, which always manages to make my silly little scribblings look great. Those folks are amazing.
Also? The cards are hilarious. I mean, truly madcap, green-eyed, bloodstained tremendous. Thanks to Steve Jackson, Andrew Hackard, and many contributors who threw in crazy ideas during a crowdsourcing braintrust info-dump that launched this too, too silly project.
Here are some first-looks at a few of the cards (Insert usual “Art Not Final” etc. things I’m supposed to say here)!
April 5, 2017
What your wine choice says about you
Posted on the Facebook Four Sisters Wine page, H/T to Jessica Brisbane for the link.
April 3, 2017
Decoding TLAs among the PUAs
Kim du Toit on a specific example of the use of jargon heavily sprinkled with three-letter acronyms (TLAs) and extended three-letter acronyms (ETLAs, or four-letter acronyms) to create or enhance the impression of their specialized insider knowledge, in this case among the pick-up artists (PUAs):
In every cult, there are people who try to set their group aside from the rest of the population with language — in other words, creating a shorthand that only the initiates or insiders know, which (I guess) makes them feel superior to outsiders. Many times, this language is made up of abbreviations or (my particular bête noir) acronyms that create a level of inscrutability to the casual reader or onlooker and render the simplest of statements completely opaque to the uninitiated. (I’ll talk another time about academic language, which shuns abbreviation and acronym in favor of dense, elliptical words and phrases used as a shorthand among fellow academics and gives the users a veneer of erudition, usually false.)
[…]
All this pales into insignificance by comparison to people who toss off expressions like “This beta orbiter tried to neg the AMOG in front of the SHB to increase his SMV.” Allow me to translate: “This weakling who hangs around pretty women trying to curry favor with them tried to cut down a charismatic man in front of a beautiful woman, in order to make himself more attractive to her.” (AMOG = Alpha Male Of [the] Group or Alpha Male Other Guy, SHB = Smokin’ Hot Babe [sometimes V(very)H(ot)B(abe), and SMV = Sexual Market Value.)
I speak here, of course, of the PUA (pick-up artist) community, in which the High Priests have created this entire glossary of acronyms to show that, yes, they are the gate-keepers of knowledge which, if you buy their training manuals or pay to attend their seminars, you too, Mr. Sad Beta Male, can unlock the secrets of access to SHB pudenda (Latin alert) and become a “notch collector” similar to these skilled exponents of the art.
It’s bad enough when used in a sentence, but when used graphically or in a chart to illustrate a concept or theory, it becomes completely opaque. Here’s a beauty which attempts to show the correlation between a woman’s looks and the likelihood of her being bitchy:
VHB10 -> BQ 0
HB9 -> BQ 0-1
HB8 -> BQ 1-2
PJ7 -> BQ 3-4
PJ6 -> BQ 5-7
PJ5 -> BQ 6-10
PJ4 -> BQ 4-10
UG3 -> BQ 1-8
UG2 -> BQ 1-4
UG1 -> BQ 0-3
VUG0 -> BQ 0-1VHB = Very Hot Babe, HB = Hot Babe, PJ = Plain Jane, UG = Ugly Girl, VUG = Very Ugly Girl, and the numeric qualifiers 1-10 are the common delimiters on the Female Hotness Scale (FHS). BQ, by the way, is Bitchiness Quotient, and the numeric qualifiers there are the levels thereof.
Note that this is presented as a scientific analysis or model, when in fact it’s no such thing: it’s a creation solely of the writer’s observation or theory and not by actual, you know, data — but creating acronyms gives it quasi-scientific gravitas — damn it, another Latin word, but you know what I mean, right? It’s kind of a pity, because the author at Chateau Artiste has an excellent way with the English language, when he’s not talking utter bullshit like the above. (Credit where it’s due, though: he also called Trump for the overwhelming electoral victory long before anyone else did, so he’s a more-insightful observer of trends than most mainstream media pundits.)
April 2, 2017
Yes, Prime Minister – The need to know
Published on 23 Sep 2014
Scene from season 2, episode 8.
April 1, 2017
QotD: Philosophy
One quarter of philosophy is about Being; one quarter about Knowing; one quarter about the Being of Knowingness and one quarter about the Knowing of Beingness.
Ace, “Terrific Bill Whittle “Afterburner” Video Essay on The Great Unlearning”, Ace of Spades H.Q., 2015-08-18.
March 29, 2017
QotD: The humble vodka soda
My favourite drink? Vodka soda on the rocks, no lemon. Unpretentious, dependable, easy to slap together, gets the job done. It’s basically the Ford F-150 of cocktails. And clear as rain, so it won’t stain my wife’s dress if some good-time Charlie slaps me on the back at a party. For years, it has been my odourless, tasteless, ten-ounce refuge of gastro-utilitarian sanity in a world full of foodies gone mad.
But those days are over: the vodka soda has gone the way of wine, Scotch, and gourmet hot sauce. Order one at any velvet-rope bar or restaurant, and the waiter follows up by asking your preferred brand of hooch — under the demonstrably false conceit that the human tongue can distinguish between what are effectively different varieties of windshield-wiper fluid.
Last month, when a waiter launched into an especially long list of unpronounceable Russian and Scandinavian words apparently corresponding to fashionable vodka brands, I felt as if I were in a scene from “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” I really can’t tell the difference. Just give me the cheapest one on the list were the words on my lips.
Of course, I said nothing of the sort, because I didn’t want to come off as a rube. So instead, I declared emphatically, “Oh, Grey Goose, please” — recalling at random the last brand I’d seen advertised in an upscale travel magazine.
Moments later, the waiter returned with my drink, and it tasted fine. Which is to say, it tasted exactly like every other vodka soda I had ever tasted — or, indeed, that had ever been tasted by any other human in the history of fermented spud juice.
This, more than anything else, is what I have come to resent about foodie culture: Not just that it is pretentious and expensive. Not just that it makes me feel guilty about the Cheez Whiz sandwiches I put in my kids’ lunch boxes. But that it turns us all into liars.
Jonathan Kay, “Lies My Waiter Told Me: Foodie culture has invaded my vodka soda. It’s time to fight back”, The Walrus, 2015-08-17.
March 26, 2017
“It’s that old self-love double-standard again”
Julie Burchill on the recent boom in public applause for female masturbation:
There’s a bit in the Cate Blanchett TV commercial for a scent called Si that never fails to make me snigger smuttily. (Admittedly not difficult.) After we see the Radiant One being life-affirming in the rain (‘Si to life!’) and with a Significant Other (‘Si to us!’) she wanders off alone and, looking particularly glowy, stares into the camera: ‘Si to myself!’ It’s tragic, but what was clearly intended as an oath to empowerment always strikes me as a reference to onanism. I spit out my Malibu every time.
Mind you, I could be forgiven for my immature interpretation. In recent years, female masturbation has gone from being the love that dare not speak its name to the one that can’t stop moaning, gasping and screaming it — and then making pop videos about it.
[…]
We’re encouraged to admire these finger-happy females, but what would our reaction be if male crooners started singing about self-abuse and, even better, filming themselves pretending to do it in order to flog their music? I suspect the reaction might not be a million miles from one long collective ‘Ewww!’ But why is a masturbating man the subject of amusement and/or contempt while a masturbating woman is some sort of heroine? Logically, it doesn’t make sense. A woman can always get sex, whereas men often have to chase it, pay for it or go without it, so they’ve got a lot more reason to be interfering with themselves.
But now it’s the ladies, Lord love ’em, who are paying for the pleasure right through the nose, with the unstoppable rise of sex aids. And yes, that was a snooty judgmental tone you thought you heard there. I refuse to use the approved term ‘sex toys’ because it brings a creepy air of infantilism to this most adult of pastimes (an unnerving number of sex aids are made in the style of children’s playthings). I don’t know what I find more pitiable, two people, presumably equipped with the usual supply of hands, mouths and sex organs, setting about each other with bits of garishly coloured cut-price plastic to reach the realms of ecstasy, or a woman with more money than sex paying £12,000 for a vibrator that the Sunday Times described thus: ‘An 18ct-gold-plated gilded pebble… five vibration patterns with customisable levels of intensity… comes in an artisanal wooden box with gold trimmings.’ Be still my beating heart!
March 24, 2017
QotD: Academia resembles a drug gang
… both academia and drug gangs are marked by an endless supply of foot soldiers willing to work in terrible conditions for a small chance at living the good life. In drug gangs, the average street-corner dealer makes $3-something an hour; given that he’s got a high chance of being arrested or shot, why doesn’t he switch to McDonalds instead where the pay’s twice as good and the environment’s a lot safer? The article suggests one reason is because drug gangs offer the chance of eventually becoming a drug kingpin who is drowning in money.
(I’d worry they’re exaggerating the importance of this factor compared to wanting to maintain street cred and McDonalds jobs being much more regimented both in the application process and performance, but they’re the ones who have talked to anthropologists embedded in drug gangs, not me.)
Academia has the same structure. TAs and grad students work in unpleasant conditions for much less than they could make in industry, because there’s always the chance they could become a tenured professor who gets to live the life of the mind and travel to conferences in far-off countries and get summer vacations off.
The article describes this structure as “dualization” – a field that separates neatly into a binary classification of winners and losers.
Scott Alexander, “Non-Dual Awareness”, Slate Star Codex, 2015-07-28.
March 21, 2017
Icelandic standup about Nordic neighbours in general and Finnish language in particular
Published on Dec 1, 2016
H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.
March 19, 2017
March 18, 2017
QotD: MILFs
I’m not sure if my predilection for MILFs came naturally or if it was learned over time. I came of age in the ’70s and ’80s and back then, only pedophiles liked young girls. All our pinups were old. When Raquel Welch appeared on The Muppet Show, I started having feelings I’d never felt before. We all did and we talked about her on the swings at school. She was 38. Pretty much every man of my generation has Olivia Newton-John at the end of Grease burned into his boner. She was 30 in that movie. Bailey was over 30 when WKRP was on. Loni Anderson was in her late 30s. Mary Ann wasn’t quite 30 on Gilligan’s Island, but Ginger was 33. Mr. Kotter’s wife was 31 when the show ended. Chrissy Amphlett was 10 years older than me when the Divinyls released “I Touch Myself,” but I almost had a heart attack looking at her thigh-high socks. Nobody paid attention to young girls when I was a young man. It was considered creepy. If one of them wore a Catholic school uniform on Halloween, we’d barf. There may be some disgusting perverts in the world, but in America, “MILF” tops the list of porn searches. Sure, there’s some extra meat around the waist and a little more junk in the trunk. What tepid eunuch can’t handle that? Real men are into women, not girls. No wonder blacks and Hispanics are trampling our masculinity like we’re a bunch of bitch-ass maricóns. We can barely handle a fat ass. You can keep your perky tits. I want breasts with a bit of hang to them. I’m not talking about National Geographic saggy, but if you can hold five pencils under your left one, I’ll write you a love letter. It’s like my friend Trevor once said: “I dated a chick with droopers when I was 19 and I really wasn’t into it — but I sure wouldn’t mind messing with them right now!” He looms in for the second part with a leering grin on his face. This is something young men will never understand. As Steve Coogan points out in The Trip, the spectrum of what you find attractive widens greatly as you get older.
Gavin McInnes, “In Praise of the Benjamin Button Babes”, Taki’s Magazine, 2015-07-24.
March 17, 2017
Jeremy Clarkson’s view of off road cars – Clarksons Car Years – BBC
Uploaded on 21 Sep 2008
Jeremy has his say about 4x4s and his novel take on the school run.
QotD: No True Irishman
I speak for every true potato-loving mick on the planet when I say that St. Patrick’s Day is a genuine Irish holiday that’s been corrupted into Amateur Drunk Day by us filthy Americans. Nobody in Ireland really cared much about it until dumb American tourists started going over there every March, demanding green beer and tunelessly bellowing “Danny Boy” out of their vomit-encrusted cakeholes. St. Paddy’s Day is fake. It’s Kwanzaa for white people.
Jim Treacher, “No True Irishman Loves St. Patrick’s Day”, The Daily Caller, 2016-03-17.
March 16, 2017
QotD: Sex and the twentysomethings
To be clear: The ideal female mate is young. You’re going to want three kids, and to do that you really need to get going by 25. My wife had our first in her early 30s and at the hospital she was wheeled through a door that said “Geriatric Mothers.” I thank my lucky stars we were able to defy biology and churn out three so late in life. I know you twentysomethings are convinced you don’t want kids, and I was the same way at your age, but you’re wrong. Talk to social workers who deal with the elderly. The deathbed moans from those with no kids are all about their total lack of legacy. Defying the biological imperative isn’t empowering. It’s a curse. So if you settle down with a woman over 35, you are making a huge mistake.
That being said, I’m not into women under 35. I remember having sex with young women when I was a young man and it sucked. Teenagers were the worst. It was like we were both trying to go through a doorway at the same time as we grunted, “Not there,” and apologized. My single friends often text me pictures of the twentysomethings they’re paired up with and I almost feel sorry for them. Sex lasts, what, 10 minutes? Now you have 23 hours and 50 minutes to talk to someone who says “like” every third word. The sex is terrible, too. They pump away like they’re working at a pump factory and there’s no intellect or imagination involved. It’s like playing tennis with a toddler. I want a woman who has been around the block and knows what she’s doing. I’ll spare you the details, but there are techniques you learn with time that only a wife can know.
Gavin McInnes, “In Praise of the Benjamin Button Babes”, Taki’s Magazine, 2015-07-24.
