Words And Thoughts

419 thoughts on “Words And Thoughts”

1. Thing is, part of the problem is argument that we should make law on the basis of behind the eyes. As evidence, it is a matter of trusting what people say about their perceptions, and hence is fairly weak. Make a decision to trust some type of evidence in excess of its inherent quality, and you will get lots of abuse. Like we’ve seen with “women don’t lie about rape”.

   Secondly, the initial bathroom law seems to have been championed by someone with a history of sexual abuse convictions. I.E., exactly a predator lying because the cultural mores of the time made the technique very feasible.

   1. We’ve had that kind of law for several decades now. Back in the ’80s several states enacted “hate crime” laws, some of which have sentencing multipliers based on what they assume you were thinking if you committed a crime…

      People who should have known better claimed to see nothing wrong with the concept; indeed, were enthusiastic in their support.

      1. The case that always got to me like sand in my shorts was the man who was dragged to death in Texas, and the Left waved his bloody shirt and asserted that Bush was evilbadhater because he wouldn’t back a Hat Crimes bill in that State.

         He signed the two swine who did it’s death warrents. What the f*ck more did they want him to do?

         I know, I know. They wanted Bush to join in their posturing. Foo.

         If the punishment for a crime of violence needs to be made harsher, then increase the punishment. Don’t get into ‘the government doesn’t allow you to think like that’. It CAN’T end well.

         1. Hat Crimes

            Now there is an interesting typo in the context of recent events.

         2. For those keeping track, that was James Byrd Jr, killed when he accepted a ride home from three guys who’d joined a race-gang in prison and apparently because he was Black, not Matthew Shepard, who was killed by his dealer/boyfriend and another man, possibly due to inability to pay.

            In trying to clear up my memory, I ran into some old news articles– calling for Bush to be charged with murder because he signed those, and other, execution orders.
            Quote:
            In Bush’s two terms as Texas governor, he signed death warrants for an incredible 152 out of 153 executions against convicted murderers, the majority of whom only killed one single person. The only death sentence Bush commuted was for one of the many murders that mass murderer Henry Lucas had been convicted of. Bush was informed that Lucas had falsely confessed to this particular murder and was innocent, his conviction being improper. So in 152 out of 152 cases, Bush refused to show mercy even once, finding that not one of the 152 convicted killers should receive life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. Bush’s perfect 100 percent execution rate is highly uncommon even for the most conservative law-and-order governors.

            Huff’n’puff, if anybody’s interested.

            1. Showed them the same mercy they’d shown their victims, huh? Terrible, that.

               1. Much much more

            2. Why would we go there? A More wretched hive of scum and villany I’ve never seen….

               … except DC of course.

         3. I once got into a ‘discussion’ with a gay fella and his mom over hate crime laws, and they were prancing out the guy out west (Wyoming?) “killed for being gay” and I pointed out killing him was just as bad if it was a random drug deal gone bad or a “We hates him because he’s a gay guy” killing, and my opinion is the perps in both cases should be dealt the same penalty, i.e. executed. They were adamant that no, killing someone because they were gay was worse and I didn’t understand because, shut up, etc. I asked why it was okay for the killers to get a lesser sentence because they randomly killed him than if they targeted a gay person?
            I again was told I just didn’t understand, but no, I did and do understand. THEY don’t comprehend I think any killing not for self defense is about the worst and just because it was a gay guy, you can’t kill the killers but once.
            Turned out the guy in their example was killed by a possible sometimes gay sex partner over a drug deal or whatnot, but I never dealt with the two of them again (thankfully, just the husband/step-dad), so I never asked them if they were now fine with the killers getting a lighter sentence for torturing and killing him over drugs as opposed to for being gay.

      2. I once reduced an online interlocutor to incoherence by flipping the description — since if A is more important than B, then B is less important than A — and so if hate crimes are very bad, then, of course, non-hate crimes are. Obviously, he never came up with a coherent objection to this.

   2. Secondly, the initial bathroom law seems to have been championed by someone with a history of sexual abuse convictions. I.E., exactly a predator lying because the cultural mores of the time made the technique very feasible.

      I remember that. And yes, the conservative media had discovered that the original pusher for the bathroom law did indeed have a string of sexual abuse convictions, some of them, if I am not mistaken, against young girls. They were also able to cite several instances of men who were in jail for molesting young girls become ‘transgender’ while incarcerated, and have the state pay for the transition. Another example was of a rapist who would gain access to the women’s dressing rooms by dressing up as a woman, then claimed to identify as one post-arrest. (Using seriously the ‘lesbian in a man’s body’ claim.)

      This isn’t to say ‘all transgender people are sexual offenders’ – indeed, even the original discoverers of those instances decried painting with the broad brush. Instead, they warned that there were predators who were all too happy to pretend to be part of a sexual minority in order to facilitate access to their preferred prey group or use the identity to lessen the punishment for their offences. The implication was, in reality, true transgender populations are not that big, and the predator population is bigger than the transgender population, and any pushes to accommodate the very tiny transgender population would result in the predators using that with impunity.

      On a tangential note, but closer to the post proper, have an article.

      1. The link is bad, Ma’am.

         1. Ah, drat. Thanks for letting me know. Try this one?

            https://pjmedia.com/trending/lesbian-feminist-transgender-activism-is-a-mens-rights-movement/

            1. First they came for the straight white men…

2. Pronouns, “triggers”- all an excuse to exercise a petty tyranny over one’s fellow man.

   1. Petty tyranny never stays that way.

      Although often people fed up with the petty tyrants are the ones bringing in the real tyranny to take car of the petty kind.

      I stand by my prediction that tyranny in the English speaking world would not be leftist, as much as the fools think it will be and that they will be in charge.

      1. Correction. Left tyranny already operates in much of the English-speaking world. But the worm it is aturning, and I think you’re right.

         1. Oh, the UK is just about on the edge of Left Tyranny and the Left can’t figure out what pushing over that edge keeps getting harder like approaching the speed of light.

            What is interesting is it might go right wing in France, who arguably are the ur leftist tyranny state in the First Republic. The desperation the media is using to hide the yellow vests is amazing and very, very telling.

            1. Precisely.

               1. “The peasants are revolting!” “You said it! They stink on ice!” (History of the World, Part One.)

                  1. I think that Mel got it from Wizard of Id which had a similar line and predated the movie.

                     1. Versions of the joke pre-date Wizard Of Id.

                        One of the first versions was in the Second Oz book.

                        https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/06/03/revolt/

               2. I’d like to know what the elite’s laundry bill looked like when the Yellow Vests started carrying around that model of a guillotine.

                  1. Oh did they? *grin* Delightful.

                     A reinactment of the Terrors will likely follow.

         2. Lefty’s love tyranny when used to push Progressive goals. They cream their jeans over Castro, Stalin, Chavez, Assad, Putin (until delegitimizing Trump made them spin on a dime) and others. They tremble in fear at Right-wing tyrants because those they understand.

            They get confused over those who are not tyrants and who do not want to be tyrants. That confusion unsettles them and makes them anxious.

            1. yeah being concerned about Russia was all “The 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back” right up until 11/9/2016

               1. Trump got the Democrat party to reverse it’s support for Russia, reverse its stance on a barrier at our Southern Border, reverse their aversion to overseas troop deployments sans mission, sans “exit strategy” and even got Noam Chomsky to defend military intervention.

                  Greatest. President. Ever.

   2. The wonderful thing about ‘triggers’
      Is triggers are wonderful things
      Their heads are made out of biscuit
      Their tales are made out of dung..

3. I view the lefts’ efforts as simply another part of their use of 1984 as a “how to” manual:

   “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
   ― George Orwell, 1984

   1. A silly goal, because you can’t have that and the Two Minute Hate too.

      1. I don’t know, they’ve not only gotten us the Two Minute hate, but can hold onto it for two weeks.

         Ask Brett Kavenaugh or the Covenington High school kids.

         However, Twitter is banning people who tweet #learntocode at laid off leftist activists who pretended to be journalists.

         1. Hate is easy. The idea that you can make thoughtcrime unthinkable is rather stupid. If you have the language and emotion to project hate at Emmanual Goldstein, you can also direct it towards Big Brother.

            1. Besides that, no matter how you try, you can’t make anything literally unthinkable. You can make it very hard to express, but people can think of it anyway.

               1. Yeah, but — if you lose the tools of thought (i.e. never learned the words, because of the previous generation’s compelled speech), it can be very hard to think those thoughts with any clarity.

                  1. People are pretty dang good at making up words (grok me, droogie?), and if they can’t make them up, they’ll just take them from other languages.

                  2. It gets easier with practice.

         2. #learntocode

            Sure. Yea. So they can be downsized in multiple industries as their jobs are exported to India, & other offshore farms. Why not, they farmed out their prior jobs.

            1. Well if they’re banning that, then it’s time for #learntocoal 🙂

               1. Somebody suggested several alternative occupations for ex-journolistas (including cleaning toilets, making beds and other deplorable tasks), and was banned from Twitter for that. He did not have the hashtag in his comment, either.

                  Apparently, it’s no longer OK to “speak truth to power”, but it’s fine for lefties to “speak power to truth.”

                  I’m so glad I don’t use twitter.

               2. Apparently now that #learntocode is being directed at journalists instead of coal miners, Twitter has decided it is hate speech and is suspending and banning people directing it at journalists:

                  https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/learn-to-code.php

                  1. But why? A leftie limpwrist advised it as one of the skills that should be learned in order to ‘replace obsolete mas skills’, especially those of brutish (faint!!!!) car repairmen.

                     Larry mocks it here

                     The comment in it’s entirety, goes like this (emphasis mine):

                     3 Repairing Your Car

                     In the popular imagination, the greasy car mechanic wiping his sweaty brow as he peers into your car hood is always a guy. Concordantly, the idea that a car is a guy thing and a guy should be able to fix his car as a result is something that’s pretty ingrained in our cultural beliefs. But as cars shift from analog behemoths to digital devices, some of the basic functionality in your car is now completely out of the fixing range of even the handiest of men. Not to mention that increasingly, electric cars, public transit, and cycling are becoming more attractive options for environmental reasons, and ride-sharing or car-sharing services mean the link between being in a car and being responsible for its functioning is as tenuous as it’s ever been. Instead, Learn How to Code. The 20th century mythos of the car as a vehicle that gave you freedom — to cross great distances, to discover new things, to leave your past behind — is perhaps now more accurately applied to the internet. There’s a pretty good chance you spend more time online these days than driving (ideally not at the same time, though), but the average person probably has little idea how any of the internet actually functions, let alone how to build a website or make an app. Considering the way the economy is increasingly shifting toward the digital, having at least a solid grounding in what makes the internet tick is a good idea generally. There are a lot of free or cheap how-to coursesdesigned to help you learn how to code these days. Give one a try and see if it doesn’t come more in handy than learning to replace the alternator.

                     1. Yeah, the engine is getting increasingly computerized and more emissions doohickeys to break. But just jacking, changing a tire, fluids and brakes ain’t gonna be going away until pads do

            2. To code you have to have SOME connection to Reality.
               Not sure they have that.

               1. Well, yes. Shh. Why state the obvious? If they are frustratingly trying to learn to code, maybe they’ll shut up?

                  No? Yea. Didn’t think so either.

               2. Not so much reality, but logic. Code doesn’t work because #muhfeelings.

         3. But they can’t manage to make EVERYBODY do it. Even when they insist that they are.

         4. In the case of Trump, a few years.

         5. But not the people who say to kill/punch/etc a bunch of high school kids

            1. Well, they are hating the right people.

               Although if we are honest they don’t consider those high school kids people, they consider them straight white males, which is a non-human category.

               Which also explains how they can call our hostess a Morman white male. White and male are not descriptors of physical traits, but markers of not being human and those not deserving the dignity human beings do.

               Covenington has really shaken me. It show just how successfully people on the white have been rendered non-human even to people nominally on the right.

4. : . . . but I’ve been called “sir” and “he” . . .”

   Well, after all, everyone knows you are a straight white Mormon male.

   “Here, inside my head, I can think what I very well please.”

5. As for me, I’ll refer to anyone I’m talking to/about as him or her as the gender is obvious. For those times when the gender isn’t obvious, if possible just ask, “Could you tell me your name?” If the name and voice tone are still ambiguous, I’d have no trouble asking, “I’m sorry to ask, but are you male or female? I don’t want to embarrass us both by making a mistake in talking to you.”

   What I won’t allow is for someone to insist that I use made-up words to address them. My response would be, “How dare you try to dictate how I must speak! You have no right at all to offend me like that, by presuming your made-up words take precedence over my traditional English pronouns!”

   1. After all these years I had forgotten just how reactionary, hateful and phobic Saturday Night Live used to be.

      
      Of course, it also used to be funny, but that was long, long ago when Nixon was president

      1. I’m so old I remember when they could do this in movies …

         I was working then as a theatre usher and you could always tell when that scene and the “You call that a knife?” scene played: the audiences howled with laughter.

      2. I was wondering if anyone else was reminded of Pat.

      3. We saw a community theater presentation of M*A*S*H yesterday. Lots of talent, but not as many actors as the play would like. So, Dr. Walt Waldowski was played by an actress. Amusingly enough, they left the dialog intact.

         FWIW, it’s a hilarious play.

   2. “I’ll call you what you seem to be. ” — and if you dress, for your body type, so it’s hard for me to tell what sex you are? If I make a mistake after a good-faith effort, sorry kid – it’s on you, not me. That much self-knowledge shouldn’t be hard for anybody over the age of six!

   3. When I’m speaking TO someone, I prefer to use “you”.

      1. …I will insist on using ‘teme’ for those I hold in contempt. *evil grin* And it still translates to ‘you.’

      2. Right?

      3. Watch them start to gender you as youa and youo and then virtue signal with youx. I mean the hilarious part about all this is that compared to other languages English is REMARKABLY ungendered. But virtue signalers got to virtue signal.

         1. What? You-ah, you-hoo and yucks?

            Maybe we ought make hats mandatory, Mickey Mouse hats with old-style alarm clocks for the ears to symbolize how “woke” they are. The bigger the ears, the more woke.

            Then they can leave the remainder of us at rest.

      4. As in, “You arsehole.”

   4. Even asking though… “are you male or female” is sort of like asking a woman “are you fat or pregnant?”

      It’s not a safe thing to do.

      1. As I recall, Babe Ruth — who was, let’s face it, recognizable to far more people than were recognizable by him — had a simple solution to that: he referred to everybody, male, female, young or old, as “Kid.”

         As in “Hey, kid!” or “Thanks kid!”

         I kid you not.

6. More basically language is about communication and requires agreement among the communicating. You can see this in “family in-jokes” where a word or phrase that means nothing to the rest of the world is highly significant to the family. Of course, they don’t *expect* the rest of the world to become suddenly psychic.

   The reason language is binary is 99.9999% of the humans speaking on this planet are binary. They have no need for specialized, nonbinary pronouns so languages don’t have them. Invent as many as you like, they won’t be used by 99.9999% of the people who have no need for them.

   Just like mass-produced clothing. It is undeniably true that non-standard body types (conjoined twins, genetic bone disorders, etc.) will never be able to buy off the rack. Not because of prejudice, but economics. A few hundred years ago there WAS no rack to buy from. Everything was bespoke—and few people had more than two sets of clothes, too.

   1. Reminds me of the old saying- “hard cases make for bad law”.
      There’s always special cases or exemptions, but they don’t make for a good precedent.

7. > Honestly, I couldn’t care less if they’re trans or not, gay or not.
   —
   But you *MUST* care! Otherwise you’re showing your hatred by refusing to acknowledge their diversity and specialness!

   Nothing less than 100% agreement is allowed. 99% agreement is the same as being a Klansman with a MAGA hat.

   1. I don’t care if you think I’m a Klansman any more.

      I do care if you’re triggered by my MAGA hat. Didn’t own one until I saw how much it could trigger lefties last week.

      1. I need one.

         1. Be careful, Sarah. If you say your hat size here, you’ll probably be inundated by donated hats. 🙂

            1. But will they be her enemies spending time as comfortable hats which enjoy fitting snugly on her head?

               1. What Sarah needs is a red hat with “Made you look” embroidered on it in very large bold, all caps. Then in a very light red underneath add “make America great again” So when people start screaming, you point & laugh at them for screaming about the “made you look” logo, conveniently ignoring the other phrase. It’d take someone extremely detailed to catch the rest.

                  1. Jayne: Pretty cunning, don’t you think?
                     Kaylee: I think it’s the sweetest hat ever.
                     Wash: A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he’s not afraid of anything.

                  2. On the other hand, one of my friends has a black MAGA hat.

      2. Me, a Klansman? Hell, I’ve never voted Democrat in my life!!!

         1. 1+

         2. Winning the Internet there.

         3. Snicker. 🙂 🙂 🙂

   2. There’s some virtue signaling “wear red to support whatever” on 1 Feb. Definitely a reason to wear my MAGA hat. It’s the only red I own. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

      1. My daughter showed me a meme. Red cap with “Ha ha! Made you look.”

         1. I’ve got a red baseball cap I frequently wear, with a wishbone C for the Cincinnati Reds — now I fear* wearing it will mark me as a supporter of those Covington High School kids!

            Back in the Fifties the Reds called themselves the
            ‘Redlegs” due to the Communist scare, now their hat will once again incite hate-filled enraged mobs of people with bad grammar!

            I wonder if I can get a merged MAGA Pussy hat?

            *Fear? Hah!

      2. I’m tempted to wear a Pantone 2955C color hat, lettered “Make Gallefry Great Again” at BayCon in a Doctor Who costume, maybe crossplaying as the Thirteenth Doctor. Minimum $20 buy-in on if I get perma-banned, lynched, or otherwise harassed. 😀

         1. With or without a security team? Might want ear protection to protect against the Pod People screams.

            1. Another way to make the leftists hyperventilate would be wearing a superman/supergirl costume with a red heat “Make Krypton Great Again”

            2. I’m thinking of wearing concealed bodycams. 🙂

8. Several years ago, I saw a man in a bookstore that could have passed for a woman and the only way that I could be sure that he was a man was that he had a mustache. 😉

   1. or was a woman who had forgotten to use the wax to remove hair? She asks self-consciously. (And I do, so no the confusion doesn’t make any sense.)

      1. In his case, it was more than the “slight amount of hair” that some women might have and IIRC he did have a male name on his name-tag.

         Plus, I commented (politely) on it and he “admitted” that he was male.

         Of course, he was slender and didn’t have a “great rack”. 👿

   2. That ended up being the final ‘tell’ for a very nice lady who works in a bread surplus warehouse around here. I’m pretty sure she cleans up fine, but dressed in a man’s shirt, a masculine pair of pants, food service boots and with her hair “styled” in a masculine way, the immediate response is “guy,” and her voice is deep enough to pass.

      I even understand why, especially here– she works with the guys bringing in truck loads of the bread that didn’t sell, and at least some of them are going to have the Mexican attitude. So it beats having to beat them over the head with the clipboard when they try to pull something “clever” with the paperwork.

   3. A lesbian I worked with had a partner who could almost pass as male until she spoke. Such a sweet lovely voice. The co-worker herself back then, might have passed when looked at from the back, as she works(ed) for UPS and tossed boxes all morning loading trucks. She had a set of Swimmer’s shoulders. From the front she was fairly well padded though. She changed to being a driver for them (occasionally delivering to my house) and if not retired by now, probably didn’t change much.

   4. Reminds of some lyrics in a Bog Seger song (cover version courtesy of Metallica)

      1. just heard the original in the car lol

9. “In ape-days it called from completely different reactions and guessing wrong could cost you your life.completely different reactions and guessing wrong could cost you your life.”

   Actually, long after that and up until fairly recently. Call a knight a woman, and you were dueling to the death. Call the Queen, or the baron’s wife a man, the King or the baron would exterminate you either directly, or via a convenient accident. Call a biker in a bar a woman, you’re getting your teeth knocked out. Call a woman a man, and you’d see one heck of a cat fight. Invite some guy over for the night when he thinks you’re a woman and you’re not, you may be lucky to wake up alive the next morning, maybe. Call me a woman, and depending on who you are, I might offer to prove you wrong; assuming my wife didn’t tear you a new one before then, and me a new one for offering. /laugh

10. “I don’t hate intersex people. I don’t hate trans people. I don’t even dislike them as groups. Honestly, I couldn’t care less if they’re trans or not, gay or not. I don’t like or dislike groups as a whole.”

    Exactly – hating people wholesale is idiotic. That said, almost anyone can be annoying enough to hate retail…

    1. Oh yeah. ‘You hate me because I’m a [whatever]!”

       “No, I hate you because you are an obnoxious so-and-so who is standing on my lawn after keying my car, scaring my dog, and ruining my flowerbeds.”

       1. When I was a bicycle mechanic, I once was told “You don’t like me because you’re prejudiced because I’m black.”
          I replied “Yes, I am prejudiced! I hate Assholes. If it was because of being black, I’d hate Wayne and Valjewon, or Rahsan, and you know damned well I don’t.”
          He did apologize later, and eventually stopped being such an a-hole. I even built a set of wheels for him after he got hit by a drunk (long story there)

          1. “I even built a set of wheels for him after he got hit by a drunk”

             The Drunk probably wouldn’t have hit him if he’d been White.

             1. It was a group of 6 guys riding together.
                The driver used “Black guys are hard to see in the dark” as a defense.
                Sadly for him, it was 7am on a Sunday Morning in June or July, and all but the fella in questions dad were wearing outlandish bright colors of bicycle racers of the ’80s.
                The 6 were riding the white line, (lower rolling resistance) in a draft. From the back was son, Wayne, dad, then three others (forget their order). they got hit from the RIGHT Rear. Drunk (driving a 70’s Lincoln Conti iirc) ran off the road and shoulder and was coming back on, Got son big time (dude wore only sweat pants for a long time due to swelling in his thigh) ripped the seat off the seat rails and the seat post out of the frame, and the post was tight enough it left a 1/8 inch grove the length of the post. It was amazing he had no broken bones. Nothing on his bike was repairable. Repair tag said “Install Tube, Install bicycle around Tube”. Then as son was screaming, Wayne got hit, and was launched forward and slid past the front three on his face. Then Dad got hit and while it bent the rear seat stays, the bike remained aligned, and only needed a new rear rim and spokes. He actually didn’t go down, but slid to a stop. Drunk continued across the two traffic lanes, the curb separating from the two oncoming lanes (damaging the oil pan), off the opposite shoulder and down towards the canal, back over the highway yet again and crashed into a Mitsubishi dealership, damaging several pickups. The motor blew from the pan damage and he wasn’t able to back out of the trucks to get way, though dad holding a revolver pointed at his head did get him to shut the thing off. Dude’s dad was a lawyer but a fellow cycleist lawyer represented them in court and pointed out the bright sunny morning still had the clothing (blood stained and son’s cut from the ambulance removing it for treatment) and the fact the guy had another case forthcoming, with the Mitsu dealer suing for damages with the same judge and they got a decent settlement.

                1. In the ’90s we had a couple of fatal runovers. In one, the girl was reaching behind her for a tape and ran over 4 cyclists. The other was a DUI, and if memory serves, one cyclist. Both got very light sentences from the judges, though both were quite egregious. The first was on a straight, wide 2 lane road with an unusual-for-San-Jose wide shoulder. Didn’t help.

                   A few other cyclists I knew were considering open carry in response, but because California, it wasn’t going to happen. One of the more ticked off guys transferred out of state.

                   1. The dad and son lived just off one of the worse projects in the NOLA area, and the dad was always armed. Some of his cases were those that’d tic the big baddies off, let alone the amount of crime in that area, so he really had to worry more than most.
                      My youngest sister once rolled her car after taking out a brick encased mailbox, due to digging for a cassette tape.

    2. “No, I don’t hate you. I don’t know you well enough to hate you. I don’t care about you at all, frankly.”

       1. “I don’t hate you. I’m angry with you for acting like an asshole. You’re probably not worth the effort to hate you.”

    3. I’m too lazy to hate. The most you can get me to do is avoid you.

       1. You are a better person than I, m’lady

       2. Ditto. Too lazy to hate. Ignore OTOH. To the point you (generic you fyi) are stupid enough to assault, at which point I stumble & sit on you, accidentally have to bounce on you while I try to get up & fail repeatably, probably putting my hands (not fists) on your face & other ouchy to push on places, all the while digging in with my fingers because after all I’m trying to push myself off, but you arn’t helping any. All that is because you attacked me & I’m just trying my hardest to get away from you, & failing at it very hard … that’s my fantasy & I’m sticking with it. This is all presuming I can’t avoid you.

       3. Or, “you don’t qualify for free room and board inside my head.”

    4. Wholesale hating isn’t idiotic, it’s misanthropy, an honorable vocation to which I often aspire.

       It’s hating people at the distributor level, where you only deal in hating whites or men or blacks or gingers, that the problems start.

       If you aren’t going to be a misanthrope, do your hating at the retail level, of individual people.

       Me, I like cats.

       1. Eh…depends on how they’re prepared…

          2. Bow Wow Beef. It’s what I tell Nemo I’m protecting him from by not allowing him to go to Chinese restaurants.

             1. If the Democrats get there why, these won’t be jokes anymore. Just look at Venezuela.

11. “they couldn’t get inside my head and PHYSICALLY make me obey.”

    Working on that. When it’s perfected you won’t even realize it has happened is happening.

    1. Yes, but how can I get a thrill from being controlled if I don’t know you’re doing it?

12. Three years ago, when being gay was still the teen identity fad, one of the morning talk shows had a lesbian couple on talking about how their toddler son was really trans and had told them that he was a girl inside. The camera panned to the child. He had Downs Syndrome. Not two weeks later, another homosexual couple were in the news announcing that their child identified as the opposite sex. Lesbians again, mentally retarded boy again. Right there I started worrying about what might be coming.

    We’re going to have a number of really physiologically as well as emotionally messed up young people pretty soon when the fad passes and they discover that the hormone blockers, surgeries, and other things inflicted on them are not reversible. Those who truly suffer from gender dysphoria are one very small group, and I wish them the best. Those who began “treatments” because their parents pushed it, or because social-media pushed it and the activists encouraged it? Those poor souls are going to need all the help they can get, and then some.

    1. Up until quite recently, that was the kind of child abuse that people could go to prison for.

       In a few years, it will be child abuse if they don’t mortgage everything they have to have it done… assuming “free healthcare for all!” doesn’t take care of it, even over parental objections.

       Schools have the authority to drug children into obedience over parental objections, how soon until they can decide whether your child has “gender dysphoria” and mandate “correction”?

       1. No. In a few years it will be child abuse again. When it turns it’s very fast. Look at the “satanic child abuse.” thing.

       2. I gather that the suicide rate among the trannies is high, but I’m also wondering just how many will take revenge on the people responsible for the transition.

       3. “it will be child abuse if they don’t mortgage everything they have to have it done… assuming `free healthcare for all!` doesn’t take care of it”

          Not once they figure out that paying for such treatment means less money available to provide cardiac stents, anti-dementia treatments* and Botox for politicians.

          *Hah – I keed! Dementia victims will be harvested for parts until the remains get put down as no longer of use.

          1. Unless the dementia afflicted ate politicians or of ruling class

             1. With the amount of work done by their staffs? How would we ever know if a politician was demented?

                1. They still speak from time to time.

                   1. Have you heard Mad Maxine or Hank Johnson attempt to be coherent?

                      1. Yep. I was tipping over guam on way to M-Peach fody fih

       4. Wanna be a dragon as an adult? Go for it. Just don’t expect everyone to not treat you as a freak. As a kid, that’s where I draw the line. If you gave your kid a beer a week you coud get em taken by state. But drug and mutilate them and its all good.

          1. “Wanna be a dragon as an adult?”

             Don’t be surprised if some guy in metal clothes on top of a horse tries to ram a 12 foot long stick up your butt then.

       5. Already happening at the college level. And Planned Parenthood is also offering it, under the same rules as they offer abortions to 12 year olds.

    2. It’s an acceptable form of Munchhausen by Proxy.

       1. I wish instead we had more Baron Munchahusen by Proxy. That could be amusing instead of destructive.

       2. This. So true.

    3. That’s horrifying.

13. Invoking the law to make people not be “mean” is invoking the gun. You can’t make people be kind at gunpoint, you only make them fearful and obedient. (Up to the point where they work to remove the danger to themselves and possibly what motivates it.)

    All these arguments about being insensitive or hateful kinda fall flat when the brute mechanisms of the state are meant to be brought to bear to bring about this gentler, more inclusive world.

    Using “they/them” to refer to an individual smacks a bit close to the royal “we”, in my opinion. Who died and made you the monarch? Why must the rest of society be your serfs?

    1. My gut reaction to being told I’mmhateful and insensitive is, “Yes, I am. Cope.”

       My gutmreaction to being told I hate a group because I won’t let an individual bully me is, “No, you don’t understand. It’s YOU I dislike.”

    2. And using the coercive power of the state is already being done in areas controlled by Democrats. NYC enacted local legislation that can impose large fines (if i recall correctly upwards of $50,000) for businesses that “discriminate by not calling someone by their preferred pronoun”. The other usual lefty city suspects are going this route or have done so. Under Newsom, California will surely do so on a statewide basis if it has not done so.
       Yes, these laws are patently unconstitutional and yet will be upheld by the usual suspects on the Federal Courts in the 9th Circuit and elsewhere.

       1. CA already did it , first , iirc.

14. Now that I call everyone “hon,” I don’t have to worry about sex of addressee, unless someone finds it excessively familiar.

    The third person singular pronoun form is “this nice person.”

    1. In the future, everyone will think that hon is a form of one of pers-hon.

       1. 🙂

15. They’re Odds, and rejected by their age peers, though they’d be fine if they were in a place with people of all ages. Most of us, I daresay, were like that.

    The age peers versus all ages is huge. I contend the reason D&D and RPGs in general became a lifelong hobby is it was the first place adults accepted me as a peer when I was a teen.

    I had not thought about it until now, but I suspect there was that aspect of “this is my place that I don’t have among my age peers” in it. I didn’t have it as bad as soon after sixth grade, mainly because I was willing to punch and take the in school suspendion and punch again after I was out and not stop punching if I was bleeding, or if you were for that matter.

    Might explain my tendancy to just want to burn it all down. 🙂

    With all the good will in the world, in the real world of people, how do you know what someone wishes to be called?

    Nearly to a person everyone pushing this pronoun BS has a track record of extending no good will. In fact, their reason for pushing it is to display a lack of good will.

    HOW do you know what to call people, particularly when it’s a made up pronoun? Are you going to require people wear little name tags with their pronouns?

    Well, there are cons that will let you put your pronouns on your badge. I suspect all the “good” cons will require it by 2021.

    I bet DragonCon will by 2023, but I’m also having a day where I realized that nothing has changed since the early 80s. I just put on a different kind of angry music while I wait for the collapse of the Western world. It is metal instead of punk/post-punk and cultural sucide instead of nuclear war, but the feeling is the same.

    As for them, screw them. Them is plural. Yes, I’ve seen all the instances of “but it was used as singular before.” Outside of making meter and rhythm all the circumstances are AT BEST ambiguous.

    Oh, I know a regular usage…the pronoun game among your straight/gay friends when you have a samesex/othersex partner. And, yes, nominally gay people having a heterosexual relationship use it among gay people a lot, especially nominal lesbians. Some lesbian communities will excommunicate women who date a man. I watch it happen to a friend whose “boyfriend” was a bigger genderf**k that any six lesbians in her university’s LGBTQ group combined (me still angry 19 years later? no, why do you ask).

    1. Case in point; here’s a signature block of one of the people here:

       , BSN, MS, RN,
       Pronouns: she/her/herself
       Director of
       Hospital

       , NH
       P: 603-867-5309

       And yes, it’s considered an aggression to roll your eyes here. I’ve had 3 reports on me to HR in the past 15 years, so maybe I’m overdue for the next one. Maybe I’ll take retirement if and when it happens.

16. Doesn’t really address the problem, but something interesting I’ve learned in our attempt to learn the language out here is that the 3rd person pronoun in Samoan isn’t gendered. AFAICT, that pronoun is “ia.” With the way English muggs other languages for loan words, it might at least be an acceptable alternative to the singular “they”

    1. The truly bizarre thing is the way the left imports from more gendered languages, then virtue signals by eliminating the gender in a stupid way.
       Like, Mexican or Latin? Not gendered.
       So the left uses Mexicano/a or Latino/a then virtue signals not by going back tot he normal word, but by adding x. So we get Mexicanx and Latinx.
       It’s all virtue signaling. There is actually NO need for an ungendered third. There is “one” which is what I was taught (in the seventies btw) and they say that’s “too stuffy.” What they’d really like is for it to be onx so they can virtue signal.
       They’re tiresome. Tiresome two year olds. They need a time out.

       1. Agreed.
          I was mystified when I started seeing “Latinx,” honestly, because I’d thought the “o” was just the general, and you only used “a” when it was important that the subject was female. Oh, wait. That’s why they go ballistic over “men.”
          At some point, though, I’m going to steal the “fa’fafine” for a story. (Cross-dressing guys, raised as girls, maybe just because their parents needed a girl in the house. I’m sure I’m missing nuance, but I don’t tend to think of Polynesian cultures as matriarchal.)

          1. But wait, by forcing these changes in Spanish (and indeed most Latin based languages) aren’t they imposing cultural changes on people from “historically oppressed cultures”. Or is that okay if it is in favor of a proclaimed even more oppressed group. It turns into a victim status Olympics, in which each group strives to be recognized as the “most victimized.”
             And then they wonder why the rest of us think they are utterly insane.

             1. It’s not bad when they do it.

             2. Olympus and its dwellers (and those who wish themselves dwellers there) are best avoided.

                1. And they don’t even hide the fact that they think of themselves as the gods of Olympus-just recall Obama’s 2008 acceptance speech for the Democratic Party nominiation in a stadium made to look like…Mt. Olympus.

                   1. The Olympian gods screwed damned near everything in sight, shirked their responsibilities and exacted cruel punishments (Echo? Actaeon?) against any who won their ire.

                      Yep, sounds like our Progressives.

                      1. That’s one reason why I cheered when Cohen the Barbarian gathered his Silver Horde and they went off to return the gift of fire to the gods… the bastards needed killing.

                         Well, it was the Disc and not ancient Greece, but close enough…

             3. “It turns into a victim status Olympics, in which each group strives to be recognized as the “most victimized.””

                Welcome to the United States of America, 2019.

       2. I didn’t even know this was a thing. Just when I thought their abuse of language couldn’t get any worse. And it isn’t even clever Leftist abuse of language.

       3. Mexicanx? Those the people who work on cars and such south of the boarder?

17. Some random thoughts:

    ‘Recovered memories’ do happen. They don’t happen under hynosis, or through drugs, or if they do the instances have been swallowed by the noise of fake recoveries. But My Lady didn’t remember much of anything before about 14, and had a lot of oral issues. With various kinds of non-leading therapy, she eventually remembered abuse by a family member everybody already knew was an amoral scumbag. Nothing has surfaced since to put those memories in doubt. The problem with the recovered memory fad was that it WAS a fad. Like the Trans issue, there are such, but nowhere near as many as was claimed.

    The Trans thing is eventually going to set those who really ARE Trans back decades. I hope that, in the process, those members of the medical profession(s) who pushed surgery get struck off. They are dangerous quacks, as bad or worse than the idiot who grafted monkey testicular tissue onto patients back in the early 20th century.

    As for the whole pronoun mess, I will address you as you dress. Period. As foe ME, I identify as a curmudgeon. Cope.

    1. The Trans thing is eventually going to set those who really ARE Trans back decades

       Too late, if only because they are crowding limit services for people with the issues. Some of the psych services already had huge issues due to the internet to arguably make them meaningless (Google and you can find out how to pass your interviews for the various stages and have been for years).

       1. And for those truly truly affected by it it is one. Instead of having difficulty reconciling reality with what you wish it to be or think it to be you have difficulty reconciling your mind and body. Same as anorexia. But we don’t give anorexics gastric bypasses and I struggle with accepting my lack of control instead of forcing others to accommodate me. We indulge in the dysphoria in this case, even in cases where simple therapy would function.

          Too many don’t realize that this won’t change the reason they are unhappy in many cases, and can make it worse. You will be dealing with medications all of your life. You will likely fall in that space between genders where people don’t know how to view you. It’s not magic.

          And so many are led down the primrose path by those they trust.

       2. There were advisor/therapy/encounter groups who specialized in the same thing before the internet became common. Though things were a lot simpler then.

          And before that, they could just collect sufficient money and take a plane to Switzerland without having to play Bureaucracy.

    2. The trans thing is the typical left fetishizing a mental illness.

18. As for using the wrong restroom, many times, at a baseball game (and I assume the same holds for football games, but they cost a lot more), I’ve seen several women at a time in the men’s restroom. No one cared. We all knew why: it was simple to see on the way in that the line to the women’s was five times as long as the one to the men’s.

    It’s also not too uncommon to see it happen (both sexes) in bars, yet I’ve never heard of any problems when it does.

    1. This actually became law in California when I was living there. If more than x number (I think 3, but not sure) of women were standing in line for the ladies room, they were allowed to use the men’s. SO. shortly after said law went into effect, I was at an event and needed to use the restroom. I had just walked up to the urinal when three women walked in and one of them immediately started nagging me, saying I had to leave. I replied that no, I didn’t. The law said they could use the men’s room, not that they could kick the men out of it. She capitulated when her friends told her she was being a jerk. As they went into stalls and shut the doors, I said “I’ll promise not to peek if you promise!” I was done already anyway. As I was leaving, one of the women yelled laughing “No deal! I’ll peek if I want to!” We were adults, and acted like adults, so everything was fine and no harm was done.

       1. I can remember using the urinal in a Korean bar- said urinal being a wall with a trough on the floor and a pipe dribbling water on the wall- and some of the business ladies in attendance came in to use the doorless stalls. Interesting experience.

          One time on the NJ Turnpike as I was whizzing I heard the unmistakable sound of high heels on the tile. Turned my head and there was very confused looking lady who said “I think I entered the wrong door.”

          But my most frequent experience with opposite sex using the restrooms has likely been experienced by many. Guarding the male restroom door against entry while desperate pregnant wife is within using the facilities. A pregnant woman gets a pass to use whatever’s available.

          1. My most frequent experience with opposite sex using restrooms was a female Marine friend of mine who, whenever she was drunk, would try to “freak us out” by using the urinal in the men’s room because somehow she was able to pee standing up just like a man (Legitimately, I mean. As in not just dribbling down her leg). After the first time, it was no big deal. Although it was funny to see the reaction of someone who didn’t know her seeing this for the first time.

             1. I probably could do it (never tried.) It’s urethra placement and tilt. Meh.

                1. I vaguely recall Heinlein having something of the sort in one of his novels, a toss-off anecdote about two kids (male, female, one each) having gotten into a contest over who could pee farthest, with the boy complaining he’d been set up because she’d “been saving up!”

                2. I wouldn’t know for sure… she would have beat the crap out of me if I had tried to actually WATCH. LOL!

                   Female Marines are terribly perilous creatures.

                   1. The local Coliseum (ACC basketball, pro-hockey, Disney On Ice, Circus, and concert venue seating up to 20K) offered urinals in the Ladies which gals could straddle (lifting skirt or, presumably less appealing, drop trou) and, while pulling panty crotch aside, empty bladder.

                      I don’t think they were very popular, so they may have been replaced in the twenty, thirty years since I last was there.

       2. “We were adults, and acted like adults, so everything was fine and no harm was done.”

          But that’s exclusionary toward Progressives!!!

       3. What was that Japanese saying? “Nudity is to be seen, not looked at.”

    2. It happened to me at Sam’s Club. Washing my hands, I thought it a bit odd that a mother was leading her son into the men’s room, but whatever. She also gave me an odd look. Then I realized I was in the women’s room. A hasty exit ensued. Nobody said anything.

       1. Saw a variant in the ’90s. A guy was engrossed in his cell phone call and went to a stall in the Ladies’ at Costco. My wife said the women there were quite annoyed, but Clueless Jerk just kept talking.

    3. Tolerance doesn’t count when it’s voluntary. Only forced tolerance is real tolerance.

       1. Rather like forced charity, that. Thieves of virtue.

    4. Honestly, I never saw much of a problem with bathrooms, after all the ones in our homes are in the main unisex.
       Where I saw a great potential for abuse by the wrong sort was demanding trans accommodations in group changing and locker rooms. Seemed like way too much of an opportunity for voyeurs and pedophiles to bend tolerance to their advantage.

    5. > women at a time in the men’s restroom.

       Until they check out some guy at the urinal, claim they’ve been traumatized, manage to get him arrested, and, in all likelihood, convicted and listed as a “sex offender.”

       1. Well, I haven’t been to a ball game since before that became something that might be a concern…

19. c4c

20. My best friend way back when I lived in California had a neighbor lady who would mow her grass topless. She was so flat chested that the only people who noticed were the few neighbors that knew her. She wasn’t a trans, she wasn’t an exhibitionist (or maybe she was… I was never sure, but Nicky said she wasn’t) It was just damn HOT in the summer in So. California and nobody really wanted to wear any more than they had to when mowing.

21. I don’t think that “trans” originates from “transitioning,” and I think the people who say so are engaging in folk etymology. I first encountered the term “transsexual” (the original word) in the 1970s or early 1980s, in Robert Stoller’s Sex and Gender, which I think was the first full length study of people whose chromosomal makeup and/or genital anatomy did not match their subjective self-definition; Stoller pioneered using the term “sex” for the first and “gender” for the second, which at the time was actually a useful distinction, though now the terms have gotten blurred and people use “gender” for lifeforms that HAVE no subjective self-definition, and also for all discussion of which categories humans belong to. The thing is, despite having a lot to say about what was then called “sex change surgery,” Stoller did not talk about “transitioniing,” and the word was not in use back then. But there’s an obvious derivation of “trans” from “transsexual” or “transgendered.” There is also the fact that people now talk about “cisgendered,” and that makes perfect sense if you look at the opposed Latin prefixes (as in Cisalphine and Transalpine Gaul), but there is no word “cisitioning.”

    1. Perhaps. But even so. How you can be trans, if the inside the head is the same for everyone?

       1. The hallmark of the Left is the poisonous ability to hold ad Holy Writ several mutually exclusive positions….and to explode only at people who insist on pointing this out.

          *spit*

          1. Another example of their use of 1984 as a “how to” guide, is there use and insistence on such Doublethink.

       2. I’m not concerned here with the logic. If I want arcane conceptual systems, there are more interesting ones to play with. I’m just thinking about the etymology.

       3. Those transitioning as adults by their own choice and means are of no issue, as stated. But transfatheads are unhealthy for people in so many ways.

          1. Ot quite no issue. There is an industry that has grown up to convince people who are unhappy with their bodies and gender that taking unsafe amounts of hormones and being mutilated will help. This is despicable.

             If there were actually a method for trading a body of one gender for a working bidy of the other, that would be different. There isn’t

             All the surgeons involved,should have their licenses pulled, permenantly. All the tharapists, psychologists, etc. involved should be chased into the sea with pitchforks.

             1. Hey, at least the nutters haven’t managed to get female genital mutilation part of mandatory healthcare coverage yet…

             2. “a method for trading a body” … they’re working on it. More properly described as a brain transplant, I think.
                The well-known ethical problem is finding a working target body without killing the working brain currently in it – the temptation to corruption created by such a market is at least as despicable as anything currently being done to morph a body’s sex.

                1. “The well-known ethical problem is finding a working target body without killing the working brain currently in it”

                   Unfortunately, the largest most obvious pool of donors of functioning brain-dead bodies is also the class most able to demand they be the beneficiaries: politicians.

                2. These people should be made to watch this until it sinks in:

             3. Instead, if a doctor or anyone else advises against it, they are the ones whose licenses will be pulled, prosecuted, etc.

                Most of the laws against so-called “gay conversion” have a clause for this as well.

       4. Last time I looked inside my head, it certainly wasn’t the same as anyone else’s; thank goodness for them!

    2. I had always wondered if the cis/trans usage got stolen from Chemistry. Trans and Cis naming are used for isomers, two compounds that have the same molecular formula but a different physical structure (see here https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/definitions/cis-trans-isomers-6 for more detail than you want). Oddly the trans compound has the sub group on the SAME side while Cis has it on the opposite side seemingly reverse of its usage in transsexual. I suspect the trans usage started and then someone wanted a way to discuss the opposite (base) state without using some pejorative like normal ( 🙂 ). I imagine most psychiatrists (or at least the MD ones) had to suffer through organic chemistry (pardon me while I duck as my wife’s specialty is physical organic chemistry…).

       1. More recently, chemists have started referring to some compounds as “gauche.” That might actually be the right prefix for Odds. . . .

       2. I am still awaiting (not in hopes, no) the meta-, ortho-, and para- claiming folks.

          1. I feel the urge to announce that I identify as a pretersexual. See how that goes for me. As a woman, that means that I can demand that the men I want have to accommodate my unique sexuality, right? That is how it works now, yes?

       3. pardon me while I duck […] physical organic chemistry…

          A bit too physical?

       4. If that is the case, then it explains so much about why the sorts who insist on the usage of cis/trans tend to be so damn explosive and prone to meltdowns.

          1. Paging Derek Lowe…

       5. I got lost when they started referring to chemical “species”, a term which was not covered in my Chem I, Chem II, or outside reading…

          1. Chemical.. species? Now, I’ve heard of elements (and their isotopes) and the different forms, isotropes and compounds, and mixtures… but species? That’s most curious indeed.

             1. It’s a standard term in the chemistry articles that I copy edit. Merriam Webster defines it as “a particular kind of atomic nucleus, atom, molecule, or ion.”

                1. I’m sure it is *now*.

                   The most annoying thing about chemistry is that the terminology won’t STAY PUT.

                   If you want some fun, try working with chemical processes documented fifty years ago, where names can be slightly different. Sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn’t. Go back a hundred years, and you might as well be reading something by Ye Olde Alchemiste.

                   1. Aye, the one problem I have with newer texts (and not NEW by any means!) is that the old text I first learned from was.. already old. Ferrous and Ferric, not this Iron (II) and Iron (III) stuff. Of course there were also the bits like what a wonder 2,4,5-T was and a section on lead paint as then-currently used – not as a history.

                   2. Well, for values of “now” that go back forty years to when I started copy editing chemistry journals.

                2. The alchemists used it. It’s very old.

22. On pronouns; As I have long said, I get around the issue of people who demand “custom” pronouns by ignoring them. Not the pronouns… the people (which I suppose makes the pronoun question a moot point.)

    Frankly, the whole pronoun thing, in and of itself, doesn’t really annoy me other than I have enough problem remembering people’s names let alone a bunch of add-on BS*. It’s that “I’m so very special-er than you” attitude that goes with it that annoys me to no end.

    * On the ability to remember people’s names. I have a friend who is convinced that this is an introvert thing. I don’t know though. I also have a horrible memory. Although, I had a pretty good memory when I was (a lot) younger, and I remember having trouble remembering people’s names back then too. Any ideas?

    1. Every summer, I go camping with 200 of my closest friends. I used to try to remember everyone’s name – and didn’t do too badly. But seeing someone for a few days a year is not enough to burn it into my memory. After re-introducing myself every year, I finally just got tired of it. It’s been going on long enough now, that there are people I’ve known for 15 years, or 1.5 months, depending how you count, and I still don’t know their names.

       1. Yes. In spades.

          Last company I worked at I had everyone’s names & their spouses written down & available to pull out from under my keyboard … company size 9, counting me & the boss. Granted, after awhile I’d remember the employee names whether we talked everyday or not (I was there for 12 years), but it took way longer than most people. Did that with every job. Still that way with hubby’s golf buddies. Never did learn everyone’s name at the job we shared right after we were married. Heck my second job, hubby knew yard crews better than I did, even though they worked for the same company I did, & not his, & he was rarely assigned to that location.

          Not only that, usually after I’m no longer exposed to someone after awhile when I run into them again, I won’t remember their name. Not ever, or very rarely. Even on weekly Pack Walks I take my pup on, I’m more likely to know the dogs names than I am the handlers.

          At over 60, doubt it is going to get better anytime soon, or ever.

          1. “If I don’t call you by name or have to ask your name, do not be offended. I generally only remember those I see almost every day and those who really stand out. And most of those who really stand out are often the [jerks]. So it’s not insult, but a compliment.”

          2. My brain does a thing where it takes the name card from the internal file, then flings it across the room and laughs at me.
             Inside my head, of course.

             1. I warn in advance that I am very bad at names, don’t be offended if I forget yours.

                But as much as I try my brain does what yours does. =_=

                1. People tend to get upset when I can’t think of their name, or don’t recognize them if I haven’t seen them in some time. I think it’s because I seem to have a very recognizable face – people who haven’t seen me in twenty years and a hundred pounds recognize me immediately, while I’m going, “You kind of look familiar…”

                   1. YES. And I have really lousy memory for names/faces. So if you meet me in public and I don’t know you, guys, tell me your blog name. Or tell me when we last met.
                      I think in my case it’s because my socializing happens in like 30 days distributed throughout the year and really intense and with tons of people. The rest of the time I’m alone. When you meet 100 people in one weekend, no matter how nice your talk with one of them is, you’re NOT going to remember him/her.

                   2. Heh, same. I had someone walk up to me once, call me by name and chat to me, as if we’d been classmates. I just couldn’t remember who she was and where we’d gone to school together. ^^;;

          3. A year after HS graduation, I was working in Chicago and commuting by train. Ran into a girl I knew from school and we’d chat mornings while waiting for our train. I could not remember her name for the life of me, and never could figure it out. (The yearbook didn’t help. Graduating class was 1100 people, and my talent for picking faces from photographs sucks big time.)

       2. I remember names just fine. It’s the “faces” part I have trouble with.

       3. I can’t even imagine having 200 friends at one time. Not sure I could claim that many even if I added up all the friends I’ve ever had, a vast majority of whom I no longer have any contact with.

          #introverproblems

          1. Foe me, it depends on how you define friends. I probably am friendly with over 200 people, but for “close” friends, I could probably count them on both hands.

    2. I can’t remember names until I know folks well enough to have something to “attach” it to– and none of the extroverts I know will ever introduce themselves AFTER I have anything to connect them to.

       This is actually where phones are awesome, when everyone is standing around you can just ask folks to text with their names, “because it makes it so much faster for everyone”, especially if it’s an existing group with a mass text.

       1. I used to have a couple close friends who knew my inability to remember people’s names, and knew it bothered me. So whenever we were out together, and we met someone I should know, I got a name and sometimes a quick one or two lines about who that person was, whispered from behind me.

          It was AWESOME!

          We did get caught once or twice doing that. Mostly when that happened people were nice about it. Once or twice, the person got all bent out of shape. Then there was one woman who got pissed and wouldn’t quit annoying me about it “How could you forget ME?!?!?” Sigh… As if, being me, her being beautiful wouldn’t just make it MORE likely that I would forget her name (yes, my brain hates me).

          1. Ooh, “I can remember a smile, it’s the other I keep forgetting. Who are you again?”

             1. * end

23. There are other divisions for restroom use besides sex- though many never see them. We were about halfway through a spec-op when one of the roving watches stuffed a set of black shoes, socks, and khaki trousers and carefully placed them in the officers single head so anyone looking under the door could see the crapper was in use. 3½ hours went by before someone became desperate enough to shout “Who the hell is in there?” and getting no response opened the door. None of them got desperate enough to use the enlisted head though- and once revealed there was a line to conduct business….

    1. Naval-types can be downright mean.

24. Once upon a time in a far away country the Leader cared for his people. All he touched sprang into bloom, from the poorest family (and there were many in that time), all the way to the largest Factory. When he spoke to the people the adoring crowds cheered his name and his entire family.

    Then one day the Leader went out to address his adoring citizens, who in his generosity had been given all the necessary implements with which to praise him. Sadly the crowd did not cheer, save for the party officials. In fact the crowd began to jeer and to mock the Leader. How could they do this to their benefactor who gave them so much?

    A few days later Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife lay in a pool of their own blood with some canvas thrown over them.

    He who exerts control over your mood is demonstrating that he has complete power over you. When that control is lost it is a seemingly insignificant thing from the outside, but so is a firing pin.

    I can’t imagine why the left is so wound up over a couple of smirking kids. I probably just don’t realize how evil the MAGA Hat is.

    1. May Bill de Blasio, Kamala Harris, Alexandra Occasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, and other American socialists receive similar treatment, and soon.

25. “it’s all being done in the name of `if you don’t do this, you’re the evil one who hates people and makes them subhuman.`”

    I’ve heard that song before … although the Brits sang it better:

    From now on, we’re gonna do things my way.
    My way, or not at all.
    We’re gonna do what I wanna to when I say
    Not when you say, but when I say.

    And I say that my way is the sure way.
    My way will work out fine;

    [SNIP]

    We’re gonna do things my way
    Or not at all!
    If we leave it up to you we’re gonna rue things

    [SNIP]

    And I say that your game is a sly game.
    Your game could lead to wars;

    1. I don’t know that play… but for some reason the Voices insisted on reading the lines to the tune of Loverboy’s “Turn Me Loose.”

26. “I don’t like or dislike groups as a whole.”

    Oh, I sure do. Humanity: that’s the group I hate most. More crime is done in the name of that group, more abuses perpetrated, more sins committed than any other group.

    I like plenty of individuals and would happily do what I can to help them. Individuals are fine, but when you group them into Humanity my hackles rise. Individuals are responsible, are accountable, but Humanity (or its guise, Society) is not, it evades accountability, ducks responsibility and shifts blame to any who challenge the group’s supremacy.

    Especially when I find myself caught behind them in traffic.

    1. Why, Mr. Mencken! I thought you had passed on!

    2. “I am not (insert accusation here) I hate you all equally!”

       1. Just tell them they are all equally worthless:

          (note-below clip probably not safe for work-Full Metal Jacket opening)

       2. Warning: A rather complete list of terms.

27. “HOW do you know what to call people, particularly when it’s a made up pronoun? Are you going to require people wear little name tags with their pronouns?”

    Armbands. Color-coded armbands that everybody is legally required to wear under penalty of imprisonment. Possibly with symbols embroidered on them, such as stars and triangles and the like.

    It’s a solution so simple, so obvious, it is a wonder nobody has thought of it before!

    1. You could call it the final solution, even.

       1. And it’s things like these bits of tongue in cheek that remind me oh so cheerfully why I love y’all ^_______^

       2. Yep. Why stop with armbands? We’ll just tattoo the symbols on their foreheads in addition to making them sew the symbols onto their outerwear. And we can recycle their clothing when they don’t need it anymore.

28. “As for them, screw them.”

    And the horses they rode in on!

    1. Nooooo. They might breed, and we don’t want that.

29. “Don’t use fireman, use firefighter.”

    Don’t use firearms, that’s discriminatory! Use firelimbs.

    1. $SISTAUR once saw some TV show about a runner or some sports player with noted speed, Atomic Legs. She quipped, “And nuclear arms!”

30. For the record, though I heard a lot of things, I NEVER once heard of clothes hangers used. It always makes me wonder if that was even ever true.

    I’ve heard of one case, but it was rather recent, abortion was totally legal, she had the money and the abortuary wasn’t out of range. She was just totally mental.

    1. *stares at this comment with an expression of utter horror*

       1. Horror? I will give you horror …

          Lowering Care Standards for Abortion and Suicide MDs
          By Wesley J. Smith
          The usual medical standards of care and competency don’t apply for doctors who assist suicides. That same approach can be seen in new abortion legislation and statutes.

          Take New York’s recently passed abortion law. It protects abortionists from facing consequences for mistakes or incompetencies that formerly applied.

          [SNIP]

          The notorious abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for killing a woman during a botched abortion. But with New York repealing its law that made death-caused-by-abortion a specific crime, a Gosnell-type practitioners will have less about which to worry if his negligence causes an abortion seeker’s death.

          Gosnell was also convicted of murdering infants that survived his late-term abortions by snipping their spinal cords. That would still be illegal, but knowing that the care requirement for living infants was repealed, a doctor without a conscience might passively watch until a living abortion baby died — attaining the same end, but just more slowly. In 2006, this happened in Florida, where a baby was born alive at 23-weeks gestation, and rather than try and save her life, the abortion-clinic owner stuffed her in a medical-waste bag.

          And for the life of me, I can’t understand why the state would repeal its consent requirement for an abortion to be legal!

          [END EXCERPT]

          1. Wait. you no longer need to consent for an abortion to happen?

          2. On the flip side: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ohio-kentucky-florida-race-to-be-first-to-ban-abortion-at-sign-of-fetal-heartbeat/?singlepage=true

       2. It makes sense, if you look at it sideways– it’s a form of self-harm, like cutting.

          …I’m honestly not feeling ANYTHING about it, and I’ve known it for years now, so probably still in the “the only thing I can do would be negatively impacted by a reaction” non-reaction zone.

          The scary thing is, based on how self-harm tends to channel into suggested goals, she probably only did that BECAUSE of the myth.

    2. I’m assuming the abortionist bent the hanger into a U-shape and used the bend to scrape the inside of the uterus. I can’t imaging anyone using the end of a coathanger for that purpose as you’d get punctures of the internal organs all the time. Ditto with knitting needles, assuming you weren’t using the handle end.

       1. Which never made sense to me, either way. Both descriptions seem like the kind of urban legend that preys on people’s not knowing anything about the uterus, or how pregnancy looks from the inside.

          1. THIS.

       2. I doesn’t work that way. Good Lord.

       3. Women did and still do some wacky things to induce abortions. There was a woman who killed herself by using a bicycle pump to pump air into herself when she had an appointment for an abortion the next day.

          A small — very small — percentage. Just like there are women who go for delicate self-cutting.

          1. Also relevant: https://hotair.com/archives/2019/01/30/moderate-dem-virginia-governor-new-late-term-abortion-bill-allow-babies-killed-theyre-born/

             The Guttmacher study that’s referenced is fascinating, if nausea inducing reading.

31. Or in certain circumstances “They’re seeing other people who aren’t here.”

    I get this a lot, between either talking to a baby (that the people can’t see), or forgetting I’m actually shopping ALONE and saying “excuse us!” to get by someone in the aisle.
    Had a few people give me a look, obviously looking at the basket and behind me. (Yes, I did laugh, and say ‘sorry. Shopping without the kids isn’t normal for me.’ and got a big grin in response.)

    1. Actually … I’ve haven’t had the kid shopping with me for a long time. But fell back into the habit recently. I take my SD with me shopping. So, when needing to get people to move will also say “excuse us” then when they look at the empty basket or the obviously empty spot where other people would be, I grin & point down. She’s not very big …

       https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/48416305_10218329133128107_813559319457955840_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_ht=scontent-sea1-1.xx&oh=2453fcad82475a72cefbe07167b54f01&oe=5CBDFCCC

       1. ❤

    2. If you do that sort of thing a lot, perhaps you need a prop bluetooth earpiece? (I wonder how many actual nutters use that to pass.)

    3. I’d probably be looking around with an expression of concern, thinking, “Oh, crap. They wandered off and she doesn’t know yet.”

32. I remember hearing a “funny” about using “firefighter” in place of “fireman”.

    Somebody was talking about the Ballad of Casey Jones and mentioned Casey telling his “firefighter” to jump out of the locomotive.

    Well, the old steam locomotives had “firemen” who were definitely not “firefighters”. They were the men who “fed the fire” not “put out the fire”. 😈

    1. Fire feeder though, sounds too much like arsonist…

       1. “Stoker” will do for me.

          1. They were a lot more than just stokers. They tended the fire and the boiler. Screw up and the safety valve popped if you were lucky,

             1. The photographs of the unlucky screwups are impressive and scary.

                1. Those who don;t know figure that running out of fuel is a problem. Well, it is, but it”s nothing compared to running the water too low.

                   1. A few years ago I ran a stationary steam engine at the Collier State Park exhibition*. Did that a few years until life got in the way. There were two ways to get water in the tank while running. The force pump got a little bit in, but if you needed a lot of water, the injector was the way to go. However, that injector had a check valve that didn’t like getting hot. Needing water and dealing with a balky check valve was a bit disconcerting. We always got it going, but there was a pucker factor, even for a 25 HP engine.

                      (*) Father’s Day, and Collier is about 30 miles N of Klamath Falls on US 97. AFAIK, there are 3 working steam engines (one a tractor that pulls a wagon with riders, another a tractor normally used as a stationary engine) and various internal combustion systems. It’s one of the larger shows around. I *think* it’s free admission. If not, it’s cheap.

                      Come on WordPress. “Klamath” is a real word!

          2. Even stokes need a little stoke.

    2. Or maybe “firemen” are the people who burn books.

       1. …male dragons?

    3. I’ve seen similar in at least two news articles regarding railroads. Journalists must have been absent the day God was handing out brains.

33. I’d probably turn things around, and demand that whatever snowflake wanting to play the pronoun game use my preferred forms of address: My Lord, Sire, and Master.

    1. I haven’t run into any of the xhe/zir/whatever types in the wild yet, but that has been my plan. And I shall be mortally offended if I don’t get my preferred titles…

       1. Some years ago, I was informed through the grapevine that sibling in law wanted, iirc, “ze.” We, not caring much about her opinion, declared that ze was not a word, and her option other than she was it. Not that it really comes up, because DH prefers not to have any more contact with this sibling than he can avoid.

          But I like that idea better. 😸

    2. And as benefits our respective stations, I shall refer to you as scum, lackey, serf, peasant, or other fitting titles.

    3. Oooh, I like that. *evil grin*

       I want my preferred pronouns to be My Lady, Mistress and Arbiter of Existence.

       1. My pronoun of preference is “O!” — as in, “O! Wallaby, dear Wallaby.”

          Don’t nobody but family* know me well enough to address me with no steenkin’ pronoun.

          *Y’all be family

          1. Dear Wallaby,

             I’d be quite pleased to use ‘dear’ ahead of your usual nickname, as you are quite dear and a source of delight.

             Signed,
             Shadowdancer

             *mischievous grin*

    4. Just don’t use “Your Tankness.” That’s been taken already.

       1. Tom Knighton, right? Or am I misremembering? =)

          1. Tom Knighton. He self identifies as a tank.

             1. Yay! My memory did not suck like a outer-edge of galaxy black hole for a change!

                (Sleep dep. But she is the adorables and worth it.)

          2. Yeah, but he also graciously has declared that other people can identify as tanks, too. 🙂

             1. Oh? Well, then, I guess: tanks, a lot.

       2. What if you’re speaking to a Bolo?

          1. You want to call a lion “Kitty” go right ahead.

             1. Chuckle Chuckle

                In one series, there was a first meeting between the female main character and a Lion Shifter where she said “Here Kitty Kitty”. 👿

                To be fair, he was playing the Domination Game by inviting her to meet him in a very very dangerous area of future Atlanta Georgia.

                She wasn’t “easy” to dominate and he had been warned about that. 😀

                1. I found, and read the first book in that series when I was underway in Blue Ridge a couple of weeks ago. The next book in the series present in the ship’s library was book 5. I was perturbed.

    5. My personal pronoun is Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla.

       1. I break out into that song every time the girls start whining about “what is a pronoun?” to try to get me to do their lessons for them. Er, “help.”

       2. A very proper noun.

34. Re: The teen girls feeling they were trans after the church meeting –
    There is a period when young girls find themselves interested in boys where many of them find men downright scary with a large yuck factor. This is why we have these androgynous teen singers who look almost like their girlfriends and aren’t threatening. Pushing an alternative to maturing and getting past that stage is cruel.

35. Somewhat OT but still somewhat amusing: On the issue of Global Warming:

    https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/01/24/winter-carnival-cancels-parade-as-bitter-cold-settles-in

    1. It’s been amusing to see “This is WEATHER, NOT CLIMATE so you can’t say it’s a disproof of global warming/climate change” (by the same folks who do NOT such things in heatwaves.

       And…

       “This weather extreme shows that the climate IS changing!”

       To which I say, “Yes, it’s cycling back to how it was a couple decades ago.”

    2. Right on the supposed hottest day in Australia (a couple of days ago) Housemate’s father took a photo of himself and sent it to his son. He was drenched – not in sweat, but in the sudden heavy downpour.

       I was later told that some other friends had taken photos of themselves holding what appeared to be a giant snowball. In some areas, the sudden rainfall was more like sleet.

       Then the heatwave set in and the humidity was horrible and yes, it became hot as the back door of Hell, because bloody effing Australia.

       1. Yeah, hottest day of the year (so far, at least) in Oz just a month after what the larger world calls the Winter Solstice. How northern hemisphere-centric is that?

          1. This is something I’ve had to point out to people repeatedly. A number of the salt restrictions they advise these days are for people in temperate, cool countries; not hot weather climates. Drinking just water will NOT replace the salt you’ve lost sweating, and when you’re sweating a lot in a hot, humid climate, you’re likely to need more salt than the recommended 5 mg a day.

             I don’t think a lot of medicine is calibrated for localization. It’s one of my pet peeves.

             1. Also athletes. Drinking lots of water and losing lots of fluids without electrolyte intake, particularly salt, WILL KILL YOU. Apparently that’s okay for nanny-staters.

                1. One particularly brain-dead explanation I’ve heard was that salt and sugar are poison because they’re chemicals, and water is ‘natural’ thus good for you. I’m sure that the same kind of person who believes that thinks botulism is a nice exotic edible mushroom.

                   1. In these days of celebrating all foods ‘organic’, I suppose I can understand deprecating the only common ‘inorganic’ food, salt…

                   2. I don’t know if you’ve run into it, but there’s an idiot out there who also started a movement on, “Don’t eat anything with ingredients you can’t pronounce.” This one makes my blood boil even more than the hijacking of the term, “Organic” to describe 18th century farming with modern tools.

                      There’s now even food providers jumping on this bandwagon, talking about not having ingredients you can’t pronounce. And I’m thinking, “How effing stupid is it to declare that food preparation should be determined by the literacy of the consumer?”

                      1. So I have to give up eating in Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Italian, French, Mexican, German, Middle Eastern and pretty much any other ethnic restaurants?

                         I thought they hated McDonalds, but that’s one of the few places where everybody in America can properly pronounce the food!

                         1. I hadn’t thought of it in that light, but yeah, that’s funny, right there.

                         2. yes. No Biryani for you!

                      2. Eh, as fad diets go, that one is at least relatively harmless.

                         1. Oh, I don’t care if someone wants to DO that, but it’s another one of those things that is pushed with the overbearing attitude of how you’re hurting yourself if you don’t follow this insane rule.

                            Also, it’s part and parcel with the “Organic” and “Non-GMO” crowd, who seem to be doing everything they can to hurt poor people with their pointless purity tests on everything that’s less expensive.

                            1. Ah, THAT.

                               Yeah, me too.

                               I’ve been musing a lot lately about how the keep piling stupid “requirements” like that on to food, until it’s too expensive in money, time and technique for anyone but a complete obsessive to manage– then complain about that and insist it needs to be “fixed”!

                               Say, the obsession with using only fresh, unprocessed organic foods, prepared with minimum carbs, minimum oil, no salt and only fresh herbs.

                               *insert cursing here*

                            2. and then there’s ‘locavore’, which is an ancient Indian word meaning ‘starves during winter and early spring’

                            3. Yeah, I just had some fresh-squeezed lemonade, from lemons grown in Chile. Mmmmmm . . . You can take your ‘locavore’ and shove it up your fourth point of contact. As for me, I’ll take global trade.

                      3. I heard that one too. And even as a kid I thought that was very dumb, given vitamin chemical names tended to be long unpronounceable words.

                      4. The ILOH’s Facebook page today had a post from a food scientist taking down one of those populist “food movements” that was all about “Eat ugly produce, don’t let it go to waste!” It was pretty epic.

                         1. Heh; one of our groceries here has a sub-line of produce called The Odd Bunch, fruits and veg that don’t look perfect but ‘taste just as good.’ They’re sold cheaper than the perfect looking stuff and are fantastic for things that get all chopped up anyway.

                            I don’t suppose you’ve got a link to the post?

                            1. It’s a facebook post of a twitter thread. I tried to find the twitter thread, but it’s apparently an older set of tweets, and aside from this wonderful takedown, I just can’t stomach her twitter feed, because she’s a raging lefty, and when I got to the doubling down on the crap about the Covington Catholic kids, I had to stop.

                            2. Fair enough.

                            3. If you go to Larry’s Facebook page, it’s right there. I don’t *think* it’s on MHN, though, so if you don’t do Facebook, you might not be able to find it.

                            4. Yeah, I don’t do FB, so it’s one of those things I don’t know how to navigate. Thanks though ^_^

                         2. Oh, that was awesome. I hadn’t seen it until reading your comment. Thanks.

                2. Not so much “they’re okay with people dying” as “they don’t understand how the human body works.”
                   Which isn’t surprising, all things considered.

                   1. The nanny stater I was thinking of when I posted that comment, ex NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, I suspect knows full well how the human body works.

             2. > salt restrictions

                The cure for almost everything, at least according to American Medical Association best practices.

                The cardiologist couldn’t explain why it was critical I should give up sale. My regular MD claimed it would lower my blood pressure. Which was well within the normal range, by the way.

                Because I had a sphygmomanometer at home, I took my blood pressure twice a day after giving up salt entirely and avoiding foods on the List of Evil the cardiologist gave me. For three months. Then I went back to turning my food white with salty goodness, and continued checking for another six months.

                Not a damned bit of difference…

                1. For the first time in my life, mind, my cholesterol is ‘slightly up.’

                   As in, on the high side of normal. e_e

                   1. My cholesterol is always “slightly up, high side of normal”. When dad had his stroke, it was because his carotid arteries were blocked. Well one was only 95%, so he was able to have the surgery successfully on that side.

                      But the consequences of this was his medical team suggested/requested as many extended family members have their cholesterol levels checked. 99.5% of us have normal high cholesterol. Regardless of whether we are skinny & fit, or not. Guess you could call it a “small sample” between us kids, his siblings, their kids, his mother, her siblings & their kids & grandchildren, & some great-grandchildren. Almost 100 family members had their levels checked. Over the last 30 years, what has proven out, is those who are smokers are the ones who have trouble early. Otherwise the problems hold off until between say 85 & 100 …

                      1. True story. Friend of the family had all his male relatives die by age 55. All from heart-attacks or strokes. He’s a pathologist, so he got curious and had an early full-suite test run. Lo and behold very high cholesterol especially after he ate breads and starches. Turns out, he came from a family of bakers and rabbis. They ate what didn’t sell. They also have an unusual gene that converts starches like breads into cholesterol. He’s now in his late 70s and still going strong, the first male in his paternal line’s recorded history to do so.

                         1. I find that calorie count does it. Carbs are as bad as fats, though protein is better.

                         2. It’s at this point that I start wanting to put together a GoFundMe to have “Biochemistry is Individual.” branded on every person working in health care I can catch.

                            1. The problem is, with Obamacare? You can get sued for deviating from “standards of care”. I.e. what all the other morons do.

                2. Some time in the 1980’s when the folks had a C-band satellite dish and we could watch some the backhauls and such, there was speaker, some doctor (wish I could recall the fellow’s name) who was presenting stuff counter to the Received Wisdom of the time (“Margarine is actually problematic. Don’t feel guilty about real butter. It’s better.”) and one thing I recall him say was that, for those he studied, salt had almost no effect on blood pressure. He summed it up, “If salt is affecting your blood pressure, get your thyroid checked.”

                3. Yeah, for several years, salt was one of the boogeymen of high blood pressure. Turns out it CAN be an issue, but only for a relatively small fraction of people.

             3. Worse, desk jockies in cool climates!

                1. YES. And doctors in air conditioned hospitals and labs!

36. Still not nearly as warm as it was in the 1400s…

    Funny, I haven’t been able to persuade any of the AGW idiots who have preached at me to read Tuchman. It’s chock-full of environmental badthink masquerading as French history…

37. Speaking of thought policing:

    Apparently Google might face RICO, defamation lawsuits thanks to it’s partnership with the SPLC.

    If this actually happens, ah, the comeuppance is going to be pleasant, at least.

    1. I know that Denis Prager, among others, is going after Google and the SLPC very hard for their censorship of him

    2. The SPLC are dirtbags. Very rich dirtbags, it seems…

       I wonder if the RICO suit could be extended to the FBI, who also uses the SPLC “hate group” list?

       1. You take back your unprovoked and unmitigated insult of dirtbags!

38. I… I must share this. I must.

    “Traditional” masculinity is DEAD. The secret to male sexual stamina is veggies. 😉 pic.twitter.com/51DUsqzyO3

    — PETA (@peta) January 16, 2019

    1. Well, that settles it. PETA jumped on the bandwagon, this is going to be forgotten in a week.

    2. Male sexual stamina?

       1. Yep. Somehow. As if the majority of the examples they gave would be attractive regardless.

          They are so not.

       2. They should have said, “Stamen-a”.

    3. … I don’t think they realize that it’s the fellow’s face that’s offputting, not the size of his meat and two veg…

       Also: “If your gentleman’s area shows a resemblance to these foodstuffs, seek medical attention immediately. It could be a sign of a serious illness”

       1. EVERYTHING about that guy was offputting; face, expression, body language. Ditto the one guy they had who had girls in the same scene. I found it somewhat interesting that they weren’t really staying close to him physically even though you know they’re just acting.

          1. First guy:
             Holy F shoot him NOW.

             About the only guy who didn’t trigger my “get the kids in the van and get your hand on your gun NOW!” reaction was the old dude in the second scene.

             1. EXACTLY. I think my brain was able to handwave it as ‘two old gay guys, happy that they can boink now.’

                The rest of it… (Insert the chorus of that choir piece from the Deadpool 2 soundtrack)

                1. Haven’t seen any of the Deadpool movies,won’t– not my thing,though he’s hilarious in many comic page level things etc– but I can imagine.

                   1. Well, it seems to have been an exercise to see if instead of Latin, you can use… different lyrics.

                      Worth it, even if you don’t watch the movies.

                      1. Oh, gads, when I started dating my husband he had two or three entire CDs of modern music as Gregorian chant.

                         For those who like gregorian, there’s this:
                         https://tunein.com/radio/Calm-Radio—Gregorian-Chant-s142218/

                         1. We sing it as an indication of THINGS GOING BAAAAAAAD NOOOO

39. Another reason I’m not going to use any of the new pronouns is because I’m not going to pick up a whole bunch of new pronouns on the chance I run across one of these .003% of the population folks.

    I tried learning Spanish pronouns somewhat recently and my brain just fizzled when it came to indirect object pronouns. No new tricks for this old dog.

    1. About 1975 we had an entire English class day about “Ms.” and why it was imperative that we use it forthwith. Even though it’s usually indistinguishable when spoken, and I figured women already had two titles, they didn’t need three…

       1. Given how I’ve seen it in use here…

          My son is “Master” (Surname). Daughters are “Miss”. At some stage, that turns to Mister. and Ms. When that changeover happens, I have no idea.

          1. IIRC, the change from Master to Mister changes when you attain your majority or become a head of household. I suspect the same is true of Miss to Ms.

             1. Unless of course your a Time Lord who regenerates and goes from being The Master to being Missy (short for Mistress) 🙂

             2. I remember being very confused as to why was called Master XXX in all the eagle scout letters until that was explained to me.

                1. Same here for mail addressed to “Master…”

             3. However, an old retainer may not make the switch. In Jane Eyre, she talks with a servant who refers to “Master Edward” and she pauses to explain he had worked for the family when Mr. Rochester was still a younger son. Likewise Alfred refers to “Master Bruce” not “Mister Wayne.”

          2. I just recently – as in a few weeks ago – learned about the Master->Mister thing after more than half a century as a native English speaker.

             I suspect it’s a Britlish thing; if it’s used in America, it’s rare enough that I’ve never come across it anywhere I’ve lived or in anything I’ve read.

             1. Master transitioned to Mister in American English as an all-purpose honorific just about around the same time as the US gained its indeoendence, or a little before. Possibly around the same time “Mistress” became “missus”, as people began transitioning to a more egalitarian form of address. I WISH I remembered the title of the book where I learned about the linguistic changes. I think it was a biography of John Hancock, geared towards young adults rather an academic treatment, as I recall.

                The number of times I have had to tell people they are spelling “ma’am” wrong (usually with the apostrophe in the wrong place), is ridiculous.

                1. It’s more complex than that. In Elizabethan England you were Master unless you had something (say a university degree) that made you Mister. So yeah, egalitarian in the US, but Master and Mister were NEVER the same thing.

          3. When visiting in Portugal I remained “Menina” (little girl) well into my forties. That’s the equivalent of Miss. I was never offended.

          4. It’s important to know the difference when the same word is used in different connotations. Leftists seem to have lost that.
             BTW Mrs. was always used as an honorific title for UNMARRIED women of position and power. They also failed to get that.
             I’m not Ms. Ms. is neither fish nor fowl nor yet good red meat. I was Miss and now I’m Mrs. Or if you prefer village honorifics, I’m Aunt, shading to Grandma in a few years whether I have any nephews or grandchildren.
             F*ck the left with a rusty spork.

             1. I always liked village honorifics. There’s two different levels of ‘auntie/uncle’ – Tita/Tito, and Manang/Manong (for older). The interesting bit is that the latter is also used by family to refer to siblings that are much older than oneself; for example my Jaenelle would traditionally have to refer to say, Vincent as Manong, given that he’s over ten years older than she is, as opposed to the usual ‘big brother’ = Kuya. (For those who watch anime, he’d be Oniichan.)

                And yes, rusty spork.

             2. Might be regional for “southern” and got spread through the military, but there’s the familiar-honorific of “Miss (firstname),” usually used for kids’ friends’ parents or less-formal teachers.

                I think it must be rather regional, or the “cool” teachers wouldn’t have insisted on the “just call me Sue, not Mrs. Smith” standard. (Well, they might have, but it wouldnt’ have stuck.)

                1. You can see it used in rural 1930s Alabama if you read (assuming all compies haven’t been burned because #MeToo) To Kill A Mockingbird. It was an honorific used by children to address or refer to any adult female not married.

       2. Oh, but the insect in the medication was that “Mz” thing that I admit I didn’t understand and don’t truly understand now. I make up for it by not giving a damn about it.

          1. I recall Paglia (I think) talking about that. She said that Ms. actually solved a problem and I think she’s probably right about that, even though it was annoying. I mean, on the one hand having your status as ‘available’ attached by public manners to you as a title might be useful, maybe, but it still means you have to ask.

             Same problem as using all the weird made-up pronouns. You are going to have to ask in order to get it right.

             Ms. is neutral and no need to ask “is that Miss or Mrs?” So it actually simplifies interactions.

             1. In grade school, rural-ish Texas, all female teachers were called “Miz” because we couldn’t be expected to know which ones were Mrs. and which were Miss. The hoity-toity now-proper spelling Ms is pronounced the same. I do not put a period because Ms. is not short for anything, in the way that Mrs. is short for Mistress (feminine of Master).
                Curious that the unmarried female consort is also called Mistress; I never did figure that out, as a youngster, so I looked it up.
                Britannica says: Why Is There an R in Mrs.?

                If we pronounce the title Mrs. as “missus,” why is there an r in it? Despite its pronunciation, the abbreviation Mrs. is derived from the title mistress, which accounts for that confusing extra letter. Mistress is the counterpart of master, which—you guessed it—is abbreviated to Mr. (Of course, English speakers now pronounce the title Mr. as “mister.”)

                While mistress may have distasteful connotations today, in the mid-18th century the title referred to a woman of economic or social capital. Mrs. was an honorific: a woman referred to as Mrs. generally had servants or was part of an upper social echelon. Most notably, the title Mrs. did not signify that a woman was married, just like Mr. today. In fact, Samuel Johnson’s dictionary of 1755 offers six definitions for the word mistress, which range from the respectful (“a woman who governs” or “a woman skilled in anything”) to the ironic (“a term of contemptuous address” or “a whore or concubine”), but no definition mentions marital status.

                The use of Mrs. to refer to a married woman is linked to the history of another title: Miss. Miss became a popular title in the late 18th century and specifically referred to an unmarried woman (often a schoolteacher) of a high social status. (Originally, Miss was actually a title for young girls, while Master was the title for boys.) This, according to scholar Amy Erickson, caused a shift in the use of Mrs. to signify a married woman in the late 18th century and still informs our use of the title Mrs. today.

                How the pronunciation of mistress turned to “missus” is somewhat unclear. Erickson cites John Walker’s A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, and Expositor of the English Language from 1828: “The same haste and necessity of dispatch, which has corrupted Master into Mister, has, when a title of civility only, contracted Mistress into Missis.” The change in pronunciation was essentially a colloquial and utilitarian shortening, and by the tail end of the 18th century, this pronunciation was the preferred one.

       3. Yeah. I hate that shit.

       4. “Ms.” is one of the few things my mother appreciated that came out of the “women’s movement”. She liked it because it removed the need for determining the marriage status, and she stopped receiving mail addressed to, “Miss Blackburn” after she was married.

40. Noted, but hardly news to anyone who understands the fundamental question is always: Qui bono?

    Who’s Benefiting from Medicaid Expansion?
    There’s a new study of how the Affordable Care Act, especially the Medicaid expansion, played out in California:

    We show that a substantial share of the federally-funded Medicaid expansion substituted for existing locally-funded safety net programs. Despite this offset, the expansion produced a substantial increase in hospital revenue and profitability, with larger gains for government hospitals. On the benefits side, we do not detect significant improvements in patient health, although the expansion led to substantially greater hospital and emergency room use, and a reallocation of care from public to private and better-quality hospitals.

    In other words, the expansion brought in federal money that benefited hospitals and government budgets, and it made care more accessible to patients, but gains to actual health are harder to find. This could partly be just a limitation of the study — for example, it finds a 7 percent reduction in in-hospital mortality, but it’s not statistically significant — but other studies have struggled to find health improvements from Medicaid as well.

    And beyond measuring the efficacy of this major aspect of Obamacare, the paper really drives home the expansion’s game-theory dimension. States get to decide whether to expand Medicaid, but if they opt in, the federal government picks up almost all of the tab, spreading the cost throughout the whole country. …

    To add insult to injury, in states that expand, much of that big check comes right back to state and local governments; at least some of the time, they get enough to reimburse them for their share of the initial cost and then some. In California, “about half” — half! — “of the Medicaid expansion replaced county safety net programs that previously would pay for hospital care for eligible uninsured low-income patients,” the new study finds.

    California hospitals were big winners too, because Medicaid reimburses them at about twice — twice! — the rate those county programs do. Government hospitals “received nearly a 20% increase in total revenue per bed,” the paper says, despite the fact that they experienced lower patient volume because more people could go to private hospitals, which themselves saw revenue jump 8 percent per bed. Hospitals’ operating margins improved by about four percentage points as well, indicating they “do not seem to be deploying this income toward greater capital spending or expanding bed capacity, at least in the short run.”

    [END EXCERPT]

    1. There was iirc a Harvard study decades ago that did longitudinal study of uninsured individuals and Medicaid insured individuals. No health difference. Its why they shifted to the financial arguments in part.

       1. The British NHS is unrefutable proof that the leftists claims as to the financial benefits of government run/controlled healthcare are utter nonsense.

          The real reason they are pushing it is power. Government “Medicare for all” or any other such government run single payer system means the effective nationalization of medical care, and absolute government control over medical care people do and do not receive. Even though doctors and hospitals may remain nominally private, they will have no choice but to do what government tells them to do, no matter what. With a multitude of private insurers, they can at least negotiate with insurers and drop insurers who are unreasonable. Likewise some donate services to poorer patients (doing so will almost certainly be barred as it could result in “socially unjust and inequitable treatment”. Race-based “social justice” will be the deciding factor in treatment, with people treated collectivelym, and medical care will not be based on the individual needs of the patient.

          The Democratic Party has gone full Communazi, and if they get the Presidency and Senate in 2020 while keeping the House, they will complete the Lenin Trifecta of government total control of healthcare, education and finance, thereby enabling implementation of their identity group based communism, which will use fascist methods, such as nominally privately owned companies, to implement government diktats.

          1. The benefits of government run/controlled healthcare are plentiful and obvious — for the ones selling and operating such a system. For the customers, well …

             … it’s kind of like a monorail: a single track that takes you where and when it’s going, not where or when you want to go.

          2. Not saying it’s correct or honest. Just that that is part of why the financial sob stories are the driver now.

          3. Hang on.. so the Great Socialist Medical Thingy… is to keep things allegedly private, but dictate to them? Where have I heard that before? Ah yes, National Socialism… so who are the modern-era Nazi’s?

    2. ehh, its also covering major gaps anyway. Do you agree that someone receiving non-service connected disability from the VA should be receiving medical care from somewhere? Well, because of changes made during the Clinton administration, the VA doesn’t have to cover them if they were in the service for less than two years, and if the state they are in doesn’t have expanded Medicaid, then they are expected to come up with $349/mo for an Obamacare plan, which will be refunded to them as a credit on their tax return that they don’t file because they don’t have any taxable income. Ask me how I know.

41. “People to me are individuals.”

    Yes, me too. But it must be admitted, Sarah, you and I are a bit weird. ~:D

    1. when sanity is weird, only the weird will be sane.

       1. Weirdly sane, or sanely weird. Hmmm… ~:D

          But speaking of, have you seen this?
          https://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2019/01/punch-terf-made-lesbians-angry.html
          Its from PJ Media, a trio of radical lesbian feministas gave a talk. At the Heritage Foundation. Bwaha! And the Nazi reactionary crowd gave them a standing ovation at the end.

          Radical lesbians being forced to give their talk at the very heart of the Heart-O’-Darkness, the same organization they’ve been raging against since the Regan administration, and being well received? That’s some heavy-duty ironic weird, right there.

          1. The amazing thing about it is that the far-right extremist hate-mongers* gave them a reception more courteous that the Enlightened of Berkeley accorded Milo, Ben Shapiro or Heather McDonald.

             *Or is that hate-mongering far-right extremists? I confess I have trouble keeping the Titles of Opprobrium straight.

             1. Just remember the order of adjectives and you’ll be fine.
                Opinion,
                Size,
                Age,
                Shape,
                Colour,
                Origin,
                Material,
                Purpose,

42. I was in a building with two bathrooms labeled appropriately and as I waited for the female bathroom to open I realized that a mother was changing three children in that bathroom into swimsuits. Since the men’s bathroom wasn’t being used and it had one toilet and a lock, I finally went in there. I was at the point of emergency. I wondered at the time why they changed the children there, when there was a perfectly good changing room near the swimming pool.
    (A child would pop out the door and then the mother would close it after I would stand up to walk in– this happened three times.) *sigh

    1. In fact when a male realized that I had been waiting around 20 minutes for the female bathroom to open, he urged me to use the other bathroom before him. I have found through my life that men are more gallant than women in many ways.

       1. “I have found through my life that men are more gallant than women in many ways.”

          Oh, sure. Thanks to Male Privilege they can afford to be!

          https://media3.giphy.com/media/1wqK6DFqm5FW8ZCdJ9/giphy.gif?cid=3640f6095c5087d54b4c673359c594ec

          1. Well, that’s irksome. Let’s try a different version of that gif:

             

       2. Women aren’t taught to be gentlemen. Which is a necessary thing for EVERYONE if you don’t want to turn business and public life into a cesspool.

          1. *nod*
             I made a similar point over at Instapundit today, where a guy had a theory that the problem with females these days is that with fewer kids, dads didn’t get a son, so they did the guy stuff with their daughters, who were warped.

             It’s not actually a bad theory, it just doesn’t stand up to women I know who were stand-in sons of decent guys.

             And an awful lot of the screwball females didn’t have any father figures in their lives at all.

             I think they’re modeling on the “loud, abusive a-hole is what a successful Man looks like,” ie, caddish males.

             1. “…with fewer kids, dads didn’t get a son, so they did the guy stuff with their daughters, who were warped.”

                Oh, did he mean teaching the daughter to fight dirty, shoot straight, make a camp fire, cut a straight line with a handsaw and change her own engine oil? So she doesn’t have to be reliant on a man the rest of her life? The horror!

                Or did he mean guy stuff like taking daughter to the strip club on Tuesdays for Double-D Taco night? I can see where that might be a problem.

                1. Insufficient data; if you’d like, the comment is here:
                   https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/320104/
                   canminuteman • 6 hours ago
                   I think part of the female crazyness is men’s fault. Most fathers want sons, but with families being as small as they are these days there are a lot of dads who end up with daughters. Because they wanted sons they end up doing all the stereotypically male things with their fathers and basically grow up as if they were boys. I’ve seen this in my own life with my friends. I come from a big family. Dad taught his sons how to be men and mom taught her daughters how to be women. I don’t think we get that anymore, and I think it is partly to blame for the current crazyness. There are many other factors of course, but I think this doesn’t help.

                2. “did he mean teaching the daughter to fight dirty”

                   Girls don’t have to be taught to fight dirty, they have to be taught when and when not to.

                   1. And how to do it effectively.

                      (punching a guy in the boob won’t do much, nor will pulling his hair; pulling ears, OTOH…..)

                      1. Honey, I figured out where to kick (bigger) boys by 11. It ain’t hard.

                         1. Meh, the goolies only works if they’re not expecting it, or they’re stupid– most of the jerks I’ve had to deal with were expecting it. (to the point that they were very surprised I aimed for that soft spot the knee exposes when it’s bent)

                            1. For 11 year old boys it worked a treat. Like boobs, those hurt more in pre-pub. 😀
                               I also learned knees and was good at noses and ribs. The weaponized umbrella helped.

                            2. BTW a point once found in a book: depending on how you kick, a kick to the groin gets women too. Maybe not as bad… but it does. In the book the woman was dressed as a man and found that kicks to the groin still hurt (pubic bone, duh.)
                               I already knew that, because I fought a lot, by choice and not, when young.

                            3. Heck, any gal who’s ridden a boy’s bike and slipped should be aware of that.

                            4. Meh. A good hard kick sideways to the kneecap is easier, less anticipated, painful as all heck and makes it unlikely they can run after you.

                         2. I found out a few hours after it was over that the girl who came after me when the ball I threw hit her in the head* had tried to kick me in the groin at one point. By that time, though, adrenaline had kicked in, because she was really going after me, and it wasn’t until I was in the bathroom later that evening that I saw the hand-sized bruise on my upper thigh. Whew!

                            * No, not on purpose – we were playing dodgeball, I threw the ball at some guy, not noticing that she was running across the gym at the same time, then SHE DUCKED – it was about stomach-high when it hit her, but she moved her head in the way

                   2. This. Men are naturally more law abiding than women.
                      And Foxfier: the thing is dad taught BOTH of us to be gentlemen, my brother and I. Not instead of being a lady, but in different circumstances. In business, being a gentleman …. doesn’t always work better, when the bosses are female, but it’s more DECENT and stops tearing down the world.

                      And women traded in their heritage for a pot of message. NO woman is being taught to yield her power properly or what he power is, so they try to use MALE power and force, which they don’t have.
                      Except for a few outliers, I might be in the last generation in which significant numbers of women learned to be women.

                      We’re apes. We’re not born knowing. Daycares are an awful idea, as are public schools. They’re destroying us.

                      1. Utterly agree.

                         Hm….maybe part of the whole “the only way to be a successful woman is to be a man” defect is a subconscious recognition of that being a way it works?

                         Sort of like a queen dressing in armor and having a sword when she is acting as battle leader is inspiring, even if she can’t fight, but threatening to pound a dude’s head in is stupid and will get her tail kicked?

                   3. Some things come naturally. Other things, like “don’t hit him with your fist, use the chair on him” have to be taught. Use of unfair advantages and the environment in a fight is a Dad thing.

                      We want Daughter to WIN her battles, not fight bravely.

                      1. They don’t have to be taught when you scare easy and then berserk.

                         1. True. But when you have the battle madness, you have to learn to keep your shit together and burn cold instead of hot. Ask me how I know. ~:D

                            This is why the Zen pursuits of archery and target shooting are -amazing- for your young Aspie/berserker. Breath control, patience, focus, excluding outside perturbations. All key to making your daughter into the invincible engine of destruction you can be proud of, and boyfriends will be respectful of. Yoga, Aikido, Tai Chi also amazing for the kids.

                            Plus, the sight of 8 year old Daughter shooting an FN P90 off-hand better than the middle-aged cop next to her, that’s golden.

             2. Consider that the woman gains custody of the children most of the time. And the mother becomes the primary role model, no wonder kids are screwed up sexually and gender-wise.

                1. Most of the time, the parents are together. Even now.

                   Of those where both parents aren’t there, it’s usually because they never bothered to marry.

                   Then, of the much smaller and shrinking percent who were married, and then divorced (unknown percent ATM, just know that divorce is dropping for younger ages), the woman having “custody” is often paper only– my sister had primary custody for years, which meant she got to make health decisions for their son and her ex-husband ignored them and stuck her with the bills for treatment, while refusing to take the kid in for treatment the husband had agreed to.
                   50/50 time split.

                   But yeah, she “had custody.”

                   Don’t think that means the mother is solely responsible for screwed up kids, especially when a lot of the totally insane are 1) in their 60s or older, thus missing the whole parents-divorced thing, and 2) had completely intact families.

                   1. Granted, an absent father figure is equally at fault for not being there. Kind of a bad example coupled with a missing example. Not a good situation either way.

                      1. My point is it doesn’t cover most of the population.
                         (though especially given we’re talking girls, the trauma can melt around a lot)

                         ******************

                         There’s 50,569k kids in “both parent” households, 11,645k in divorced, widowed or separated households, and 12,080k in never married single-parent households. (The Census didn’t break it down by who had custody, just “reference parent.”)

                         Digging around to try to figure out how many married couples with kids are other folks’ kids, it appears to be 39% of those women with a “marriage event” in 2008 were living with children of their own, while 30% of men ditto, so about 9% of those married each year are mixed families. (8% of men and 8.8% of women were married that year and had a kid under 1, for those wondering about the marry-your-baby-daddy effect)

                2. One can grow up a boy mostly raised by one’s mother without being screwed up sexually.

                   1. It helps if she’s a widow.

                      It also helps if she’s doing it in a neighborhood full of married couples raising their children.

             3. I think there is not a single problem with any large group of people. Even if you select the group for all having the same major problem, and not having any others. Then you get people who manage that problem badly in different ways.

                When you decide to solve problems on the scale of a large group, you have to tell yourself a story about the group. This process is one that loses data.

          2. It’s even worse than that. Women not only aren’t taught gallantry and courtesy, they ARE taught to disdain it when it is offered to them.

          3. yep– Good manners are essential.

43. “I have found through my life that men are more gallant than women in many ways.”
    I noticed in the seventies that womyn (aka radfemlibs) were actively training men to eschew gallantry — and now they complain about it being gone.

    1. That’s a recurring problem with Progressives.

       They tend to assume a hard won status is actually a default condition. They constantly find themselves at the headwaters of Shit Creek and toss away their paddles under the impression that’s where they’ll stay.

       1. Yep– I expect my brothers and nephews to show good manners. It’s hard today though.

44. “Firefighters… The only “progress” I’ve seen is letting women into the force with lower strength classifications. I don’t know about you, but if I’m trapped and unable to leave a burning building I’d rather be fireman-carried than dragged down the stairs by my ankles by a fire-fighter. Which would probably kill me.”

    I know I’ve heard this before in other locations but was the “by the ankles” really quantified as such? Doing a drag as opposed to a carry isn’t a bad technique depending on smoke plane height. But you do it around the upper body. If I cannot wrap my arms around you with a foot or so of rope or webbing to extend reach, I would be surprised if single rescuer would work reliably.

    Just wondering if it was real or hyperbole because if real it is disturbing just because unnecessary.

    1. At 240lbs, I’m very hopeful I will be rescued by male first-responders. Because it will take more than two average women to lift/drag my unconscious ass out of whatever I’m stuck in, whereas the male will just carry me out.

       1. One of the jerk-moves-Marines-do that actually has a very good reason behind it is that, 90% of the time, the smallest guy in any group is going to be made to haul the biggest guy when they’re practicing dead-man carries.

          The very justified reason for this is that it teaches everyone that it’s possible.

          Kind of like the Navy Confidence Chamber.

    2. Yes. In Denver it was quantified as such.

       1. Damn. I…That’s scary for all sorts of reasons even without the victim’s safety.

    3. Being a rather large person myself (6’3″ 285lbs) it is nice to know that our local fire squad has a nearly 7′ tall giant who is built like a tank who would be able to haul my portly ass out of a fire like I was a toy.

       But I have to say, when you are as big as I am, it is surreal to come face to… chest… with someone that much bigger. I’m sure it can be intimidating for shorter people, but shorter people are used to it. It’s down-right freaky for someone my size.

       1. A few years ago I was standing in OldNFO’s kitchen with him, Peter Grant, LawDog, and Matt G. And all I could think of was “D-mn, I’m short!”

45. Superb piece by Victor Davis Hanson re current Democratic/Socialist/Communist Party and the milquetoast Republicans who would rather “lose nice” than win.:

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/progressive-politics-abolish-ice-tax-increases-free-college/

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