Category: Social media

BMNB QotD: Silence

Michael Tracey:

I don’t think it’s accurate that “silence” automatically equals “complicity” or “violence.” Sometimes people are “silent” because they have complicated views about a complicated subject, and decline to mindlessly repeat whatever clichés you are trying to force down their throat.

Which I only got to read because Steve Stewart-Williams (plus another of my followees Claire Lehmann) liked it. (See also: this posting here (also made possible by SS-W liking and linking to something) which told me about this bit of video about dentistry.)

Am now following Michael Tracey. So far? Disappointed. Says he’s “friend to all dogs”, but have scrolled and scrolled, but have found no canine references at all. Just him not being silent about all the rioting and posturing. But it’s all good knockabout stuff, and he’s still right about silence.

How to keep busy during Lockdown

Farvardin Daliri passed the time by building a Giant Kookaburra:

“If a bird can laugh, why not me?” said Mr. Daliri, 65, who unveiled his work this week by towing the kookaburra, a beloved Australian icon, around his block in suburban Brisbane, where it cackled its distinctive laugh through a sound system installed inside.

He posted video of his project online without much thought. To his shock, it went viral, hailed by some as a perfect antidote for this moment. Others were simply confused.

Michael Jennings, who’s Facebook posting alerted me to the existence of this remarkable bird and the sayings and doings of its creator, said only this:

Straya.

I just think it’s a really flash bird.

Shark skin under microscope

Is this for steering, or just to damage you if you rub them up the wrong way?

With thanks to Matt Ridley’s Twitter feed.

According to a commenter, these are “dermodenticles”, but google asks: Did you mean dermal denticles?

According to this:

These denticles decrease drag and turbulence, allowing the shark to swim faster and more quietly. Olympian swimsuit designers have taken a page from the shark’s playbook and created a fabric that mimics the exact proportion of the shark’s denticles, hugely improving a swimmer’s speed.>

Blog and learn.

BMNB QotD from Scott Adams

Also at the Scott Adams Twitter feed, this, from the man himself:

Never follow a leader who would lose the only job he is qualified to do if he succeeds in solving your problems.

Not sure if this is completely right, but it’s definitely a point.

Twitter at its most addictive.

Candace Owens – alarm clock for black America

My thanks to Scott Adams for telling me about this video speech to camera by Candace Owens. (When I watched this video at the Scott Adams twitter feed, the top of her head was sliced off, sometimes even including her eyes. Not recommended.)

The heart of what Candace Owens says about the dramas now unfolding in America is that black Americans are the only ethnic group in American who make martyrs and heroes out of their worst people, i.e. petty and not-so-petty criminals who come to bad ends. George Floyd is now all over T-shirts, but he was actually, first, a petty criminal, and then a not-so-petty criminal, as Owens explains. By martyrising and glorifying wickedness and failure, you set yourself up for a life of wickedness and failure. And mostly: just failure.

What Candace Owens says seems to me, and to Scott Adams, very persuasive. I hope it will prove persuasive to those whom it is most particularly aimed at, which is black Americans. But what Owens says is partly aimed at old non-black guys like me and Scott Adams, because what she says is also universally appealing wisdom. Wise people don’t do this! Owens has certainly done nothing to stop me hearing this speech of hers.

A twitter commenter says that Owens will become America’s first female black President. But Owens is surely in the meantime attempting something smaller and more immediate than that, and in the longer run potentially bigger and better than that.

The “alarm clock” reference comes towards the end of the video.

Rioters and the ending of the Lockdown

Scott Adams:

Serious question: Did any Republican lose a business to rioters?

I began thinking of my answer, but the first tweet-in-response said it for me:

I bet some future Republicans did.

I’ve been suspecting for some time now that Antifa – or “Fa”, as I prefer to think of them – could be a project put together by Trumpsters to ensure his re-election. I mean, if they really were that, what would they be doing differently? (Take a gander at this bit of video, to see what I mean.)

On a more serious note, all these demos will speed up the process of discovering if ending Lockdown makes sense. I already think it does make sense. If, as I am now betting, no Coronoavirus spike now materialises among the demonstrating classes, others will likewise be convinced.

Meanwhile, a huge chunk of people are now behaving as if the only thing they’re scared of is dirty looks from other people. They aren’t scared of The Bug itself anymore. Lockdown is ending. You can feel it. You can see it, for real and on the news and social media. Two months ago, no matter who had done what, there’d have been no demos about it because almost everyone was truly scared of The Bug. Now, The Bug is right down there with car accidents and getting struck by lightning.

It’s almost as if no government action was required, either to make Lockdown start when that made sense, or now, to make it stop.

See also what Johnathan Pearce, has to say about these US rioters. JP links to all these videos, which I am now about to sample.

Time-lapse of braces doing their thing

I think Steve Stewart-Williams is now my favourite Twitterer. Never really understood these contrivances until now.

Jokes about a broken blog

Not mine, thank goodness. 6k’s. A few hours ago, 6k told the tale of his broken blog, in the form of a blog posting which he had to put instead, at first, on Facebook.

I LOLled at this bit:

I’m optimistic that the engineers at Afrihost will get their act together in the very near future and put the server plug back into the wall after the cleaning lady socially distanced it from its socket, …

Ah yes, the eternal and never-ending war between cleaning ladies and us computer users. That surely speaks, in the language of Lockdown, to all of us.

I did not LOL at this next bit. I merely smiled. Even though I now think it funnier. This is how 6k summarised his tale, having successfully copied it to his actual blog:

So now you’ve read a blog post about a blog post about not being able to post a blog post on the blog I wasn’t able to post on.

Blogging is, or can be, sometimes, a lot like stand-up comedy. Bloggers are mostly seated throughout, but the same principles do often apply, of a stressful life told of amusingly, and often at quite some length while you wait for the joke but are in the meantime at least diverted, and then there are jokes like those above, finding new ways to say eternally true things. At which you often LOL, but often are happy enough just to smile at.

A national tree contrast

Two photographers-whom-I-follow do trees.

Martin Cook, in England:

That photo reminds me of this urban equivalent, although to be an exact rhyme, it would need a big bird in the middle.

Charlie Waite, in France:

Waite says, of his trees:

Any tree avenue is reminiscent of a cathedral nave …

Especially a tree avenue where the distances between trees and tree sizes have been so precisely contrived, and where failure to achieve identical size is just that: failure. If Wait hadn’t said that, the rest of us would still have thought it.

Anyway, my point is: I seem to recall quite often seeing effects similar to Waite’s, while being driven around France by GodDaughter2’s parents, over the years. I’m pretty sure I have photos in my archives to prove and illustrate that observation, although nothing as dramatic as Waite’s wonderful photo, a classic Real Photographer achievement, and surely the product of lots of preparation, exact timing, weather watching (daily and seasonal), and general photo-expertise. (Or maybe just high class opportunism. Whatever. I think it’s very good.)

In England, on the other hand, avenues seldom have this architectural precision about them, or not as often. Yes the trees are sometimes evenly spaced, and approximately the same size, but there isn’t the utter determination to keep them the exact same shape. Having planted them, the tree carers follow a set of rules about how to care for them, for instance by pollarding them, but the outcome is whatever it is. Variations on a theme, rather than bang: theme!

It is tempting to see this as an expression of the French delight in obedience to official rules, while the more anarchic English way is more expressive of English anarchy, and English resistance to official rules. A temptation I think I choose to give way to and indulge in. It seems improbable that there are any “practical” reasons for the difference, like the French trying to contrive a particular sort of timber, in the one best way.

I think each country is getting what it wants.

Picadil Circus

I did not know this, from a massive thread about the London Underground, done by a lady called Antonia:

In 1612 a man named Robert Baker built a mansion house just to the north of Piccadilly Circus.

He became wealthy from selling Picadils, stiff collars worn by the fashionable gents in court.

He called his mansion Picadil Hall, and the name Piccadilly stuck.

She should surely have said “north of what is now” Piccadilly Circus. But pedantry aside, good to know. And no wonder we’re all confused about how the hell to spell Pic(c)adil(l)y. The name got started at a time when they never knew things like that in the first place.

This is from one of those Twitter “threads” that ought to be a blog posting, but isn’t, because it doesn’t make sense to stop using Twitter just because you feel an essay coming on. (I think very short blog postings work fine, whereas great piles of tweets are often a dismembered mess. This one’s okay, though, because each tweet is a distinct bit of information.)

When she said “mansion house” I thought it was going to be Mansion House she was explaining, even though that’s not, I now realise, where Mansion House (Tube) is.

So this blog has now done Piccadilly Circus, and before that, Horseferry Road. I’m not now going to start looking for these explanations of funny London names. But when I bump into another, I’ll try to remember to notice it here.

I bumped into this one because a bloke whose photos I like retweeted the thread in his feed.