It is of great benefit to my understanding of the world that I live with someone who isn’t plugged in to the internet as I am. Or perhaps I should say, not to the same portions of it that I am.
I mean, Dan is a mathematician, and he works hard and working from home while we appreciate it (We don’t like to be apart) has not helped with the working hours, because now the would-be commute is also work time. And, oh, look, he an go and solve that little niggling problem before bed. And… how come it’s four AM.
I’m not saying I don’t do that too, it’s that, being a writer and working for myself, I also go through times of doing deep dives on this and that, and then coming back to politics, because I’m a politics-interested critter. (It’s not that I have an interest in politics, so much as my early life showed me they have an interest in me. I don’t turn my back on it. Can’t.)
His time is more limited, and his time off — he does the taxes for all the family businesses and I’m not the only one with three — usually ends up being spent researching HIS obsessions, like music or some obscure movie thing that fascinated him for no reason I can figure out, or something about early 20th century history.
But he definitely never hung out on political blogs. Which means when I’m trying to explain why something is immediately obvious — like, DIL in training doesn’t like to eat sandwiches, so I immediately said “But you’ll still make them for my son, right? Otherwise, it’s just unnatural” three of us laughed and my husband looked confused. Because “women as sandwich makers” was not part of his mental archive. And then I had to explain how it started in the blog fights of the early oughts — I end up, more often than not having to get galoshes and a spade and go digging, until he gets how we got here.
And then I suddenly feel a weird sympathy for the left and their absolute belief we use “dog whistles” and are in the middle of some form of conspiracy.
It’s not just that they can’t meme, or are humorless (though dear Lord, that’s part of it) but the inherent structure of politics in this country — and parts of the world, though they’re behind us by a few decades — makes the two sides very different in how they communicate.
The left STILL commands all the traditional communication channels. And because they are and assume they are the “accepted” mode of being in the culture — because they have the cultural megaphones from media to education, from government mechanisms (even when nominally not) to entertainment — they communicate in the open. They just slap their “I support thing” as virtue signaling over everything, plus some. They — and this is partly personality attracted to the side — seem to change their programming over night and all talk about “new thing” in unison.
This means their mode of communication is detached from reality (often) and rests on shaky ideological/economic foundations but it’s out in the open and blared from a megaphone.
They make jokes that aren’t jokes, merely pointing out they support the thing. And they say things they think will shock the right, but they have no clue what the right is or what would shock us.
They are in a way the young girl just released from a convent school trying to shock the kids in public school. They get weird looks. We understand them, but they don’t get us at all.
Meanwhile the right comes from years of silence. Years of being silenced, and not even being able to explain it to anyone. If I had a dime for every time I told someone in the nineties or oughts ‘yeah, most bestsellers are left because the right ones who are known to be so are stopped early” and got back “Nah, the left is more creative, because they’re anti-establishment and blah blah blah.” (HOW the left, in control of everything, is supposed to be anti-establishment is a good question. I mean, sure, they do a lot of things they think are shocking, but wouldn’t shock anyone who wasn’t born in my grandparent’s generation. Look, people, naked Shakespeare was OLD HAT when I was a kid in the late sixties. Now extrapolate from that.)
At least now most people know — it took twitter, I think — that the right was being hard-silenced.
Which means most people my age who are the oldsters of the “we talk back” generation came to our own conclusions and thought we were crazy to dissent from what “everyone knew” for the longest time. No, really. We were out there, thinking we were along, but we could see no other way to make sense of things, so we stood. Alone, we thought.
A lot of my generation discovered they weren’t UTTERLY alone due to Rush Limbaugh. (I was never a big listener. I just am not. I don’t listen to podcasts, except maybe once a week. Even the audio books I listen to are usually things I already read. I don’t hear very well, and need to be sure I can “catch” what’s said, even if I miss some words.)
And most of us hit the nascent right blogosphere with two feet in the early oughts. Which is where a lot of the early memes like the “girls make sandwiches” meme comes from.
But the blogs, and particularly the blog comments, being a wild west type of atmosphere, where people who developed their opinions in isolation came together and figured out how it all fit for the first time, is a completely different form of communication from the top down, revealed truth talk on the left.
On the right, the clash between right feminist and right not particularly enthralled with feminism gave rise to “Make me a sandwich and get me a beer” as response to screeds on how you’re disrespecting some feminist shibboleth. (Particularly when women on the right hadn’t fully realized how much of the feminist “current thing” was really Marxism in a cute scarf and high heels.) And from that it got meme-fied into short hand, so you could drop a picture of an early 20th century mesmerist levitating a girl and label it “And like that this sandwich maker becomes an ironing board” and it was immediately funny, both poking fun at feminist outrage and the troglodytes or pseudo troglodytes (I’ve been known to be one of those) on our side who think women are inherently house-keepers. (And a lot of this is self-conscious mocking of the person by him/herself.)
We had to develop a sense of humor about our internal battles, including our own opinions, and we had to be able to communicate we weren’t ossified in our opinions really quickly, to prevent minor disagreements becoming blog or alliance shattering wars.
A lot of memes come from that. Because they can communicate “Yeah, this is what I think, kind of, but I’m aware it’s also funny.” Or “This is how I see your opinion. Care to clarify” in — usually — a non-offensive, quick-hit manner. A manner that allows the other person to come back with “Yabut–” Or “Funny, but in fact–“
The left doesn’t do that, because no scrapping allowed in the ranks. They value unity and directives come from above.
Beyond giving them a tragic inability to meme (Seriously, we should start a fund to send them to meme school) it also leaves them with the conviction that the right is always speaking in “dog whistles” or “code” and that we’re plotting horrible and scarifying violence against them, in these bizarre coded words.
Part of it is that we kind of due speak in a code. As I find out every time I have to translate something for not-plugged-in husband. There’s layers upon layers.
What they don’t get is that it’s not a secret code on purpose. It’s more like …. family speak. Which makes sense. I have lost my linguistics shingle in the moves, and at any rate, haven’t exerted my profession in too long to now tell you the proper terms for all of this stuff, but–
There are different types of communication for different environments. In church a sermon communicates better than whispers between the pews, say, in effectiveness. On the radio, you listen to the opinions of the performers/broadcasters. On the blog, at home, around the water cooler, around the kitchen table communication is different. And communication of equals — which is mostly what the right comes from right now — often embeds the history of how this came to mean a thing or more often how this makes us laugh.
Look at your family and chances are there is at least a joke that started in something a now-dead great grandparent said or did, and which got elaborated on or turned into shorthand for something.
Like my grandfather, once notoriously mouth-fumbled (he was one of those incredibly smart men who trips on his own words) “Veal soup” which was apparently a thing in his childhood, and he was lamenting no one made anymore into “Hand soup of cow veal” (homemade soup of veal, but ….) which in my family of birth has become the phrase that signals “You’re being tautological and fumbled the speech.”
Or my mom, in her youth, saw a woman with a one year old daughter, who had lost her her shoe. (Babies seem to drop shoes like rain.) Instead of being a sane human being who realizes a not-yet-walking kid didn’t lose the shoe on her own and can’t answer, the mother was yelling at the kid “Where’s the shoe, Aurora? You’re going to bankrupt me. First you lost a necklace, now a shoe.” My mom imitated this in crazy cakes splendor, including the accent. So, I grew up with it. Usually when mom was trying to find something that had disappeared. (And usually the spiel was aimed at herself. If at me it was as a joke. Like, she knew whatever I’d lost I’d lost because she hadn’t told me she’d need it, or didn’t tell me where to put it.) And it has transmitted to my family, particularly as younger son was known for losing his shoe. Always only one shoe. (This is why in the alternate timeline in which Dan wasn’t called to work, and we didn’t cancel our reservations for vacation in the WTC on 9/11/2001 I know exactly where we would be when the plane hit: In the room, trying to find Marshall’s missing shoe, so we could have breakfast and go out.) This means not only would we say “Where’s the shoe Aurora” to him, but when Dan came back from the car to figure out why the almost-ready shoe and wife haven’t rushed out, so we can go to church, he was likely to be met with said kid crying and said wife snarling the one word “Aurora.”
I have this head image of my great grand kids frantically looking for something, while my grand kids shout “Aurora.” And when questioned they’ll say “I don’t know. I think it’s Portuguese for “I lost something I shouldn’t have.””
Because that’s family communication. Layered and fossilized, and often leavened with humor in the cracks. Which is at this point in the twenty first century the communication to the right of Lenin. Because our origin, out of silence, was in scrappy email lists, boards and blog comments, where we didn’t want to alienate permanent allies, but some things had to be countered.
Which means some of our fossilized jokes and short hand are utterly bewildering.
Sure, the left thinks “boog” or “boogaloo” and never mind “Luau” is some super secret white supremacist short hand. (And I’m still convinced it was the reason for the tiki torches in the cos playing Nazis’ hands. Because they thought tiki and luau meant something TO US. Which they do, but not that way. And it doesn’t symbolize someone is on our side, either. For one Nazis aren’t on our side, and no, we’re not just saying that. We really hate all socialism, and all its false glamour and all its empty promises, and we don’t care if it’s international or national. You see, we understand economics. Sorry.) But then again when the left came out with the mini panic about Hawaiian shirts and thought it was signaling for a conspiracy to overthrow the government, I had to recover from a near fatal laughing fit (well, I have asthma) and explain it to my husband, going way back to the beginning.
It went something like: It started with ACWII, and because it rhymes and is funny, and also to signal this really isn’t something we want, but it still has to be talked about, softened with “Electric boogaloo.”
From there, it of course became by the end of the month just bogaloo or boog. And again, because it’s organic and language of equals, and because it allows us to make funny jokes and memes, it followed the sort-of-rhymes route to Big Igloo and Big Luau.
From there to a picture of a bunch of guys in Hawaiian shirts grilling something and explanations of how they were revolutionaries, or they’d share their recipe or something.
Now for us this makes sense, and is funny.
However if you’re the left, whose directives come from above, it’s impossible to penetrate language at that level. All they see is that suddenly, inexplicably, the references to Luaus and Hawaiian shirts are EVERYWHERE. And then they realize there are a lot of guys wearing Hawaiian shirts (Judging form science fiction cons, it’s the favored attire of late middle aged guys who have gained some weight, nothing political.)
And next thing you know the Times is reporting breathlessly on the “Boogaloo boys” who wear Hawaiian shirts and plan to overthrow the republic (From the way that disappeared, I’m assuming the Facebook group they showcased was 39 FBI agents and one young man with Aspergers who was just glad to be accepted somewhere for the first time in his life.)
It makes perfect sense from their point of view because if they were slinging “code” no one else understands around that much, it absolutely would be to coordinate an operation in which they plan to kill us all.
It never occurs to them these are just viral-propagated jokes, and at most — at most — we plan to get on their nerves and laugh. To the extent we plan anything, which ain’t much.
It also never occurs to them that we not only don’t actually want to kill them all, but we’re still praying very hard that this cup passes us by without tipping on the barbecue in the big luau. Because we know what’s actually at stake, and don’t get our idea of revolution from movies where everything is done in a couple hours and everyone goes home after disposing of the popcorn container.
Or that if/when they push us out that far, the result won’t be coded words and a carefully coordinated attack, but hell on Earth that sets fire to the very water.
And you know what? I hope they never have to find out.
As for their occasional freakouts at our “coded speech” point and laugh. It’s all we can do. But be aware the poor saps have some reason for their confusion.
They’re the establishment. Their ideas are delivered top down. They never had to communicate in funny short hand.
Which is why the more they tighten their hand the more we slip between their fingers.
Be water, my friends. And stay frosty.
According To Hoyt 
Basically, we speak a cant. Like Thieves’ Cant (D&D old heads will remember that). Or the “slanguage” that, say, the Russian vory (professional criminals) use. Derived from the mother tongue, using words from the mother tongue, but nonsensical to those not initiated into it.
Yep.
No wonder they think we’re plotting. They understand nothing.
It really amazes me how devoid the Professionally Oppressed Left is of humor. It’s like trying to explain color to a blind man. Which is probably why they think Stephen Colbert is funny.
to them, comedy is belittling their perceived enemies, and just being stupid beyond even their norm, usually tied to trying to do the previous
Yeah. I think it helps explain why my delight in Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein is so horrifying to them. And our hilarious laughter burns their ears; they just do not get why it’s funny.
One quote from ‘Saddles and our family is gone for at least a half hour. If there’s a whoopee cushion anywhere nearby? Hours. Literally hours of great fun.
“It’s OK to laugh at this?”
Me: “Yes. It is funny. It is poking fun at government and racism at the same time.” SIGH.
I feel your pain.
Don’t forget ‘Life Stinks’.
“Nurse! Give this patient 300 milligrams of Thorazine!”
“Three hundred, Doctor?”
“He needs it!”
[3 repetitions later] “This patient has been over-narcotized! How does this happen?”
[Frederick Frankenstein and I-Gor are digging up a grave]
FF: “What a filthy job!”
I-Gor: “Could be worse.”
FF: “How?”
I-Gor: “Could be raining.”
[Thunder]
FF: [Gives I-Gor a dirty look]
FF: [looking at the doors] “What knockers!”
Inga: “Vhy, sank you, Doktorr.”
ROFL. “FRAU BLUCHER!” Neeeeeiiiiiggghhhhhhh!
Mel Brooks is a comedic genius.
It’s so fun at work to find someone who knows either Monty Python or Mel Brooks well enough to complete the quote for you. There’s nothing quite like shouting across the warehouse “COULD BE WORSE!” only to hear a moment later from the opposite site of the warehouse “COULD BE RAINING!” with a Yiddish accent if you could.
Pure joy.
And I confess the fireside scene in Blazing Saddles still makes me laugh. Hard.
Do you want me to take you back where you came from? UNEMPLOYED IN GREENLAND?!?!
Always good for a laugh with the right co-workers.
“Never get into a land war in Asia and never deal with a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha! Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha–” (Falls over).
He should have remembered he was in a battle of wits, because everything he was told was true. It was what he assumed that was a lie.
Anybody want a peanut?
one of the few things on twitter I missed was the InigoBot who commented on tweets with Bride lines with usually Inigo’s appropriate line
There was an account called A Center For Ants that would do a similar thing with Zoolander. It was great. Never failed to make me laugh.
Some good ones in Kentucky Fried Movie, too.
“Send him…to DETROIT!”
“NOOOOO!”
At a friend’s repair business in NOLA, I said something from Blazing Saddles (likely “What in the wide world of sports isa goin’ on here?”) and a huge black guy walking past does a spot on Slim Pickens “Some uppity #igger done hit me upside the head with a shovel. . . ” and we choked laughing at him. He finished most of Slim’s lines and said “Best movie ever made” (aside – – does “the n word” drop into moderation? I’m leftin’ it out just in case)
He hung around for a while chatting about the movie, and he did a passable “It’s Hedly” as well, but his Slim/Taggart could have been dubbed into the movie and not noticed. He worked for another business renting space in that building, and I think my buddy was working on the equipment he used, so he was gonna go home until Saddles was heard.
Remember that big black guy who played tenor sax in The Blues Brothers?
Army. 1980. Fort sill, OK. Put tenor sax guy in uniform. He knew the movie by heart, including the line you quoted- and it always brought the house down, including him. We would giggle uncontrollably. All you had to do a week later was catch his eye and boom giggle fest.
True leftists can only watch Blazing Saddles on TV as edited for sensitivity.
It runs on the order of 5 minutes.
…and the screen is blank for 3 of those minutes.
“He says the Sheriff is near!”
“Wheee-ooo, that wuz close. We almost lost a four-hunnert-dollar handcar!”
Spaceballs. “These aren’t them, these are their STUNT DOUBLES!”
Quote that, and I bet they’d be looking for Manchurian candidates for weeks….
The funny thing is, that’s partly rooted in the theory of humor as in-group signaling.
Just… our humor… is actually funny, and a different group.
Hadn’t really thought of it that way before. It does help explain why their “funny” isn’t. For us, in-group signaling is only one of humor’s many potential functions; for the left, it seems to be the entire point of the exercise.
:nods:
If I told someone ‘that does put a damper on our relationship,’ it has to be a situation where that’s at least amusing in order to be funny for being similar to The Princess Bridge.
Members of a particular groups always know the bets jokes about that group.
*best
Rowling can’t even make a witty comment about a “transwoman”‘s cisphobia without being accused of transphobia.
“Citation Needed” was so appropriately funny
And thoroughly wrong for this (or maybe perfect?), but I now think of Da Yoopers…
“He’s wandering across Wisconsin, looking for his Chevrolet.”
Eh… Anything Rowling does these days gets her accused of transphobia. And her tweeted snarks in response to her trans critics are hilarious.
But what’s even more hilarious is the outrage over the Harry Potter video game that’s coming out next month, and the attempt by the “caring crowd” to “cancel” it. The response from the public has been to drive the game up to even higher pre-order numbers than it had already reached.
It’s not just Rowling’s position on trans people. Some lefties are claiming that the goblins are stand-ins for the Jews, and that the game takes place during a goblin uprising that you have to deal with. So they think the game is about oppressing Jews.
They were discussing this on the latest episode of Broken Crown (the podcast by Aydin Paladin and Spoon) and joked about doing a “Kanye-percent run.” Followed by a “Hadrian-percent run.” Not gonna lie – I LOLed.
For anyone who wants to see it themselves:
The game does take place during one of the historical goblin uprisings (there’s apparently a plot point involving said uprising). However, the goblin claim is not new. And it seems to appear whenever there’s a particularly financially inclined species. We saw the same cries about the Trade Federation after The Phantom Menace was released.
Given it’s the UK, you’d think someone might figure out that, if anything, they’d be Scottish-archetypes.
Especially with the whole having-fighting-ability and engineering skills.
Throw freakin’ tartan vests on them and call it a day, already.
But then the Kanye/Hadrian run joke doesn’t work. 😛
I assumed that the Nemoidians were mean to represent the Chi-Coms, given their accents.
The Ferengi, on the other hand…
I thought the goblins were Swiss.
Perhaps, but the thought of a Kanye-percent run is amusing enough that they will always be Jews to me now. I am committed in my racism. 😛
Sometimes I wonder if these cancelation attempts are clever marketing. Or even brilliant marketing – get some useful leftist to go for the bait you’re dangling and then use their outrage to drive purchases.
I don’t think this case is deliberate clever marketing– that is, deliberately inciting someone to attack.
They have been doing a great job of making it clear they’re not making a statement, they’re making a game, and not even doing the usual genuflections to the screamers.
Which make the screamers scream more.
No, it’s clearly not intentional on the part of the developers. But they have taken advantage of it. Apparently the tags that the developer assigns to the game on Steam briefly included things such as “Genocide Simulator” and “Villain Protagonist”. But only briefly. Of course, the tags assigned by players have also had such labels, though likely these were given by people attempting to cancel the game. And they’ve quickly been removed each time that they appeared.
I’ve seen at least one claim that this is Gamergate 2.0. And while I don’t think it’s quite to that degree, it is amusing to once again watch the gamers rise up in revolt against the self-appointed scolds. Last time the progs spun a story that claimed that they won. That was possible because there wasn’t really any way to physically measure the outcome of the fight. This time, it’s pretty clear that the gamers (likely including Harry Potter fans in general who otherwise might not care about gaming) are telling the scolds to buzz off.
Husband saw an interview with the developer.
Requested we pre-order.
^.^
You don’t even need to bait them deliberately; if they don’t like you or your product they’ll come for you anyway and you can take advantage of it with a clean conscience.
Larry Correia boasts about how he keeps making extra sales when he smacks down the idiots who hassle him on Twitter. He also mentioned recently that he’s probably made an extra half-million over the course of his career by exploiting hostile fake reviews of his books that people keep leaving (though I’m not sure exactly how he does that).
Pretty sure he cut and pastes them on social media, then fisks them, with a link to the book.
He’s already posted a number of quotes from reviews by anti-gunners on his latest book, with great gusto.
They posted 1-star ‘reviews’ of his book without reading it! Some of those reviews were posted months before it was physically possible for the trolls to have seen the book, which was just released two days ago. My copy is supposed to be delivered today.
He even got a quote from Camel-twerp 😊
They’re so used to demonstrations, dial it up till they get attention, dial it down till the next time they need a cause supported. They actually think it works the same for everyone.
They have no concept of what happens when the switch is thrown by people who aren’tplaying a game, not making idle threats, and won’tcompromise a bit once the tipping point is reached.
Unfortunately tar and feathers are no longer in fashion.
He merrily quotes them on his blog and facebook.
They think we are plotting because THEY are always plotting themselves. Once again, it is a case of projection by the left.
The Planescape setting for D&D used a lot of real-world Thieves Cant (from the 16th to 18th centuries) for the slang. Examples included things such as bonebox (head), Knight of the Post (thief or cheat), and kip (a place to stay). While it all sounds odd, most of the words used can be figured out quite easily (barmy, for instance, meaning crazy) – though it’s hard to say whether that’s because the words are still in our linguistic sub-consciousness, or because Planescape’s slang experienced a brief surge of popularity that pushed some of them into usage in the more general fantasy genre.
Russian prison slang is called mat’, which literally means mother. Why? Because it includes a lot of opprobrious epithets which include the word for mother.
The thought about mat’ entered my head because I happened to be re-reading The Gulag Archipelago (light reading!) and I had just gotten through the part where Solzhenitsyn wrote a chapter in the voice of a fictional anthropologist visiting the “Archipelago” and part of that was talking about the unique language of the “zeks.” It was much the same as mat’ but actually quite a different set of slang and coded terms…except for the frequent use of “mother” curses. Some things are universal.
One other thing…I absolutely love the “make me a sandwich” style of comeback/meme. Not because of any particular hatred toward women but because of what it signifies. It has a deeper meaning. And that deeper meaning is: “I have listened to your arguments, and find them devoid of merit and absolutely lacking in coherence and logic. I therefore refuse to engage with you any more. Shut up, go away, and do something useful.”
This works because the left will not disengage in that way. If a leftist finds your argument lacking, instead of just blowing you off, they’ll turn it up to 11 and begin haranguing, screeching, ree-ing, demanding cancellation, and in general losing their minds. Whereas we on the right hear a vapid leftist argument and just say, “Y’know, I’ve got better things to do than listen to your insanity, like take a poo and vacuum my cat.” And so we blow them off–“yeah, OK, go make me a sandwich, woman”–and we do it with a smile on our face. They cannot abide that.
Nothing sends a leftist agitator’s blood pressure higher than mockery. Nothing.
And they are so deliciously mockable.
Yep. I also love it, because of that. Which is why I’ve USED IT.
I think the, “Why don’t girls need wrist watches? ’cause all stoves have clocks built in.”, was 2 or 3 (4?) generations earlier than the sandwich. Parenthetical aside; (I don’t think any male ever told that joke without at least 4 females in earshot.)
Thinking about a today’s version; She, standing in an empty room says, “Alexa, why don’t us woke boys, girls and any and all combinations thereof need watches?” and a somehow sinister soprano voice booms out, “Because I’m always right here beside you, honey.”
OK, it needs a lot of work and OK some y’all don’t find the wrist watches funny, but it got a lot of snickers back in the day. 🙂
My aunt had a cat who loved to be vacuumed. Buddy Q. Stepsetter was an odd cat.
Our cat demands to be vacuumed anytime we’re vacuuming.
My cat hides under the couch when machinery runs.
Where she also stashes a very large quantity of little toys.
My husband had a thing:
He look at me, and ask, “Haven’t you lost weight?”
He’d look even more closely. “Stand up. Hmm. Turn around.” All of which I would do.
Then he’d deliver the zinger, “Now that you’re up, bring me a beer.”
Never failed to make me laugh.
Except that when my brother called me from all the way across the house to ask me to go get him a drink (he was within 2 feet of the kitchen), he was serious. He thought my anger at the behavior was hilarious, though.
…. I would have dumped it over his head.
Yes, I have done things like that. If my time and effort is worth so little, then so is theirs.
My family doesn’t bother with that subterfuge.
We address somebody who is sitting down with, “Hey, while you’re up…”
My SIL is an orphan. He remarked that living among my family requires learning a new language that includes knowledge of what number two son’s stuffed bear “said” when he was three as well as a working knowledge of Latin and an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure sporting references. Essentially, we communicate in catchphrases and argot as many families do. That most of the family does the crossword daily, in ink just adds to the hilarity,
he’s a bright boy so he’s figured it out and he’s a computer programmer which helped.
Left wing people are very serious — saving the world is not frivolous. They are also neurotic, damaged, fragile people who can’t handle change. I often feel bad for them. Then I realize what they want to do to me and mine and I stop feeling bad for them,
I frequently remember to tell people in advance that that, there, is the new room in my parents’ house.
We had one of those. The extension was The New Room for 40 years or more.
Yeah they really don’t get the difference between inside jokes and dog whistles.
For one thing if you’re the only one who hears a dog whistle, you’re the dog.
I suspect some families have more “Aurora” moments than others. My future husband told me after being at my house a few times, “I feel like I am surrounded by alien beings at your house. Everyone is using English words but I have no idea what anyone is talking about.”
We all read. A lot. So lots of literary and poetry quotes to make points. TV and movie quotes are also liberally applied. I’ve never heard his family talk remotely like that.
I guess you could say it was a real “Shaka when the walls fell.” experience for him, if you know what I mean. And I’m certain sure this group does.
Ha! Same wavelength re: dog whistles. I should’ve refreshed the comments first.
My family always did the book/movie quotes and metaphors thing, the wife’s didn’t. But she kept her head above water and only floundered once or twice, very briefly; and quickly added some of her own to the mix. We raised our kids in the same sort of household, full of repurposed quotes from books and movies that made a lot of people wonder what the heck we were even talking about. (“Give your mother a kiss or I’ll kick your teeth in!” is a favorite quote; we had to explain to a few people that it wasn’t actually a threat.)
It’s an interesting concept, but for some reason I found that episode highly annoying the first (only) time I saw it back in the day. (I watched TNG almost religiously for a while, but eventually the entire show started to annoy me.)
At my kid’s homes, “Tina, you fat lard, come get some dinner.” or “Sid, your Pop Tarts are ready.” Are two ways to signal that Dinner is Served.
UNLESS, there are normies in attendance. Then something more regular like Soup’s On will be used.
Since they have a normie father they have learned how to not make it weird around company. Something I have distinct trouble with and, therefore, I default to extremely shy. Since hubby has enough personality and social skill for several people he was able to steer me on the right direction and raise kids who can pass for normal if the occasion calls for it.
My family’s dinner call was dad “To the attack, my monkeys.” (Disney comics.) Usually followed by “The old king Lu, that’s me, shall lead.” 😀
Got to the point mom said the first part, leading him to the second.
We have “kill your own” meals, and that one came from my mom.
Hrmm.. no strange dinner/supper call. But some oddities. Due to the Green Acres episode where he was trying to teach her how to drive, the ‘gear selector’ on automatics was the “pernerndle” or “pernandle.”
And there was the the time, running an injection molder and the parts weren’t quite filled (short shot) “Turn up the voltage” Reaches for and adjusts the pressure control “Er, pressure. Oh, right, voltage is pressure.” And the odd times when a transistor circuit was being drawn/discussed but tube terms used. “grid” and “base” are close…
EEEWWWW
” 11B-Mailclerk, carp.”
I always stumbled on the logical hole of, “if they talk in metaphors, how does anyone learn the story the metaphors came from?”
Nod, that was the problem with that NG episode.
Racial memory.
Some kind of education by electronics.
Using a complex language of acting and visual effects to convey it. The metaphor one is the cut down version for inartistic situations.
The stories are told in non-metaphorical language that’s deemed to be some strange combination of “for children” and “obscene” and thus taboo for adults to use when speaking to each other.
Never saw the episode, so maybe my easy solution is contradicted by the episode, but my fix would be: only adults talk in metaphors. Children get spoken to directly, so that they can learn to read and read the stories. But for an adult to be spoken to directly, rather than in metaphors, would be a huge insult as you’d be treating him like a child, so he’d just ignore you. Hence still requiring the Enterprise crew to learn the appropriate metaphors to get their point across to the adults they’re talking to.
Your solution was never mentioned.
Sadly, I doubt that the scriptwriters understood the problem.
Oh, that would be freaking HILARIOUS, though– they spend the whole episode horribly embarrassed for the humans because they are baby talking, WTF is this about?!
Could scifi it up by the language teaching being done by machine– so you don’t have adults teaching the kids to talk, they’re watching videos.
Only the Blues Clues level stuff actually has folks talking directly.
Sort of like symbol-based writing vs letter-based writing.
Then what did this society do before they invented machines? [Puzzled]
I based it off of the development of teaching that I’ve seen while homeschooling, and extrapolating forward.
They taught normally before, it just means you don’t have the same pool of experience; kind of like how kids in public school don’t have a lot of interaction with kids of different ages.
I see what you saying.
My problem with that episode is that those aliens were “so stuck” in “communications with metaphors” that they were unable to think of communicating in any other way.
I can’t believe that they had a way of teaching their children without the metaphors and failing to realize that they could “open up communications” with other species using a modification of that method.
In the episode, they were shown as really wanting to open up communications with other species.
Which is why I had to head-canon it as utterly baby talk, and.. can you see Picard dealing OK with anyone baby-talking to him, even without any cultural taboos?
<= is dying at the mental image.
I can see Q baby-talking to Picard and finding Picard’s reaction hilarious.
Woops! Posted above before seeing your reply
The annoying thing is that the same UK people who quote movies and tv, think that Sayers was snobby for quoting poetry and crazy old novels.
It is the same thing. Literally. The. Same.
Minus points if you are an academic who has cute reference titles for articles, that then diss Sayers for making references.
“The left and their absolute belief we use “dog whistles”… which somehow we keep missing, but they hear loud and clear.
If you keep hearing dog whistles, you’re probably a dog.
Hum, hum. I wonder if anybody actually hears dog whistles.
Perhaps dogs are telepathic (& keeping such skills to themselves, of course.) and, not wishing to embarrass their human pets standing there blowing away with no sound coming out, trot over to them so they won’t feel too silly. Just a passing thought.
Hmmm… it’s possible. If they were telepathic, dogs absolutely would be cool like that.
One big hole in that theory, though: I’ve never met a dog that’d be able to keep something like that to himself. Although…thinking out loud here…maybe it’s just that humans, big galumphing idiots that we are, mistake their joyful exercise of the power for something we did.
This might require more than just a passing thought. 🙂
There are no thoughts that could pass me by. I am too quick.
Be interesting to try it out with a cat. They hear about an octave up from humans (45kHz vs 20kHz). I think the dog whistles run about 25kHz. Cat would just get annoyed, not actually do anything useful of course…
I’m not sure whether this belongs here or over on your MGC post, but I want to vent for a moment.
We have recently started attending a different church. In the choir with us is a young college girl, who knows everything. You know the type. Which wouldn’t be so bad if she occasionally would /shut up/.
Since we’ve started there, there have been two shootings that have made the national news. And both times she has gone off on a rant about how “they” were out to get people of various minority groups, etc. (The first one, she kept going on about how Colorado was supposed to be “safe”. Which made me tilt my head and say, “Huh?”)
And both times, the perpetrator was later determined to be a member of that minority group.
Next time something happens (as, alas, it shall), I shall ask her to wait 48 hours before going on a rampage, so that she can be sure to aim it at the right party.
I have a feeling that I’m part of the “they” she is going off about. I’m also reasonably sure that there isn’t really a “they” like she thinks there is.
I expect that in 20 years, maybe even 10, she’s going to have the joy of having a college student correct her about things she lived through.
don’t you know that Asian folk shooting other Asian folk is White Supremacy writ large?!
Oh, and guns. because no one kills people without guns. Just look at the UK (points to a machete attack) . . . oops Well, Australia! (points to a knifing) . . . um
Japan! Oh… er…
THE GREAT CNN HAS SPOKEN! PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT COLLEGE STUDENT WITH THE HOMEMADE BLACK-POWDER BOOMSTICK!
be vewwy vewwy caweful
That was a big kaboom. Bro had less protection there than I would have, I’ll tell you that.
made his tinnitus go up a notch, and probably caused the need for new underwear.
The top of his head even clears the barrel. Granted, the angle between the weapon and the top of the far side of the barrel is probably enough to protect him (and would explain why he would stay so close). But still, he seems to be cutting it way too close for my tastes.
I’m with you; I’d have a barrier that covered me completely and get further back.
This is one of the “strikes” I don’t mind — Youtube was explicit on what caused it, how it could be rectified, and how they could go forward in the future.
It’s the shadowbanning, the vague “you’re violating community guidelines” without explaining what those guidelines are, and the banning for mere “wrongthink” (that often turns out to be “rightthink” a few months later) that deeply disturbs me. Particularly when, as Elon’s Twitter demonstrated, government is likely involved in a lot of this stuff!
> “It’s the shadowbanning”
[nods]
The arbitrary and unexplained censorship is one of the two reasons I still refuse to join Twitter. I’ve never had much patience for people who treat me like I did something wrong but refuse to explain what the problem is.
The other reason is the need to give them personal data (a phone number) just to make an account.
And speaking of which, it sounds like someone’s up to their old tricks:
snicker
I’d love to see the look on her face if you were to suggest that she get a carry permit and be prepared to take “them” out when “they” came to get her.
And yes, the 48 hour rule is a good one to follow. When I worked in Emergency Management one of your mantras was “the first reports are always wrong”.
“He hit a zebra? Really?”
It was a Z-28. I preferred the original version, but . . . shrugs tail
I didn’t know tails could shrug.
<is now impressed. Tries it with dragon tail.
“… and to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street!”
That book is not a style guide, people.
HMMMM at least for all the cats I’ve known the act of flicking a vertical tail forward (usually done in frustration or defiance) seemed to be the feline equivalent to them “flipping you the bird”. Indifference/shrug seems to be taking the sort of question mark raised tail and flipping the tip left to right and back a couple times sort of lackadaisically. That one doesn’t seem as universal as the tail flick. Cat tails really do provide a lot of information about the owner, reading the feelings of a rumpy Manx is REALLY hard (having had one) due to the lack of warning flag…
On the other hand, when LawDog had to deal with an ostrich — he really had to deal with an ostrich. It had already killed two people, and while the police weren’t out to kill it, the ostrich spooked someone enough that they ended up shooting it anyway.
So I wouldn’t consider “hitting a zebra” to be completely out of the question, even if unexpected!
Regarding “know it all college aged” …. Been there. Learned the lesson. Wasn’t long, or all the way through college (when your college classmates are returning Vietnam Vets, and you are a lowly HS graduate, age 17 … I learned to keep mouth firmly shut). Now dealing with youngsters from just out of HS through their early 20’s. Well really, being retired not having to deal with them. I can walk away.
Ah yes, the ‘non traditional’ college student. I, along with a buddy, were in that group and while neither of us made it to the SE Asian games he did time with the big green machine in Europe and I worked with a bunch of vets and military types starting out as a cop. So… we’re having coffee in the student lounge trying to figure out how to buy the least amount of books and still cover tuition when cute bubbly cheerleader in full uniform bops up and says we have to go to “Homecoming Jail” as we are not wearing school colors. Yeah, we tell her to go away – she gets actually mad and says her Quarterback Football boy friend will make us!
We look at each other and laugh our loud and tell her that’s just fine if he wants a trip to the hospital before the big game. She stomps off and we see her talking to big bruiser boy friend and he keeps shaking his head ‘no’ and walks off. That poor girl was having a real disconnect.
Same buddy (artillery background) when frustrated with problem would yell out “RIGHT FOUR ZERO! ADD 200” Your reply was to shout back “FIRE FOR EFFECT!” This is/was usually followed by drinking your beverage. One time at an Army O Club, visiting an Officer friend for after work drinks (Windsor Coke was 25 cents), the routine was on the shout of ATTITUDE! all present would shout ADJUST! and drinks would be chugged. Now over 45 years later my buddy will call me up and if he says any of the above I give back the right reply – we then laugh a lot while anyone else is totally confused.
We conservatives and/or ‘odds’ all have such stories and it’s part of our “culture” if you will. We have humor and unique connections to one another and all the left loony types have is the current thing and what they should feel to be one of the in group – which is always being changed to keep it “pure” while us folks just keep on with what we have and build more.
All they had to do to ditch me was go to any place that sold alcohol to study. I was not 21, and looked it (I couldn’t get out of the car without getting carded. I was 32, had some gray hair and very pregnant before they stopped carding me.) I learned to NOT be a pest really fast. OTOH I also learned the non-traditional student role from them, which paid in spades later. Or I was young, not only is it curable with time, I was teachable (not everyone is).
“But Miss Red, that’s not what I read on a blog that quoted someone on YouTube that the book said that Reagan was an eeeeevul guy who ruined the US budget.”
Me: “I lived through it. Allow me to clarify what really happened.” While grumbling about how much time the student would have saved by just reading the book.
I remember the day when I had to explain to some young whippersnappers that people frequently referred to the USSR as “Russia” back in the day.
What the heck did they think the “rooskies” thing MEANT!?!?
They thought some SF works referring to Russia meant the USSR had fallen. I had to explain that it wasn’t evidence.
Will they next discover that mention of “Brits” as applied to a military force doesn’t mean that the UK has fallen?
It’ll have to be explained to them. In very short sentences.
I fondly(?) remember the day when I had to explain to some young architecture students that the reason there was no architectural scholarship (in western architectural journals) on Russian buildings prior to about 1994 was because the Soviets wouldn’t have let any westerners in to do any, and westerners would have been foolish to try due the the likelihood of being accused of and imprisoned for espionage.
One of them vaguely remembered being told about a “red scare” in high-school history class, and that was their entire impression of the Soviet Union.
I forget who, alas, but someone of that era had this great explanation of what a ‘deal’ was and wasn’t: “A (dozen?) elephant(s) for a nickel is only a Great Deal IF you need elephants and have nickels.”
I also recall Reagan being annoyed with congressional Republicans who didn’t back him up on cutting the budget as needed – roughly, “I needed tigers, and all I get is pussycats!”
I remember when I started a job and the boss introduced us to his fiancee. And after he left, several of the new hires started saying “I thought he was gay.” After I said he hadn’t struck me that way, one of them started lecturing me about how not all gay people presented the same, and she’d done a paper on it in high school.
I bit my tongue and definitely did not mention the gay trio I was friends with. Oh honey, you have no idea who you’re talking to…
Hey, /they/ were the ones who took a straight man as gay.
Not all straight men present the same way, either….
That’s true. Stan Laurel, Bud Abbott and Penn Jillette are very different. 😛
@ Jasini > “but I want to vent for a moment… I shall ask her to wait 48 hours before going on a rampage, so that she can be sure to aim it at the right party.”
Only you can pre-vent forest fires.
“It also never occurs to them that we not only don’t actually want to kill them all”
Who’s this “we”, paleface?
But we know that the butcher has a bill. And not all on their side, and not all physical
What you want to do is make the other guys pay the butcher’s bill.
I’m sure there is a trick to that.
I’m too old to learn new tricks. So in my case, the only way to win is not to play.
@ SusanM > “What you want to do is make the other guys pay the butcher’s bill.”
Or as General Patton so memorably phrased it…..
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/04/24/war/
I’ve got enough of a “bill” from 2020 to last me a lifetime, tbh. So many people who should have known better, acting like -idiots- and demanding I do it too, [insert many bad words here].
Just imagine a real, live insurrection. That’s a FUBAR where even the people on your side are not on your side. The Scamdemic was bad enough, thanks.
Exactly
Nice post.
“… every time I told someone in the nineties or oughts ‘yeah, most bestsellers are left because the right ones who are known to be so are stopped early”” Ahh! My favorite subject. And it’s still the case. Good books from the Right are smothered in the cradle, I believe. They’re shunned by Big NYC Publishing so they must be ‘self-published’ and they get no ink or klieg lights from the literati so they just slowly fade away, never having gotten any traction. I know… some people are rushing for the keyboard to type, “well… just write a better book.”
Sure. And the same thing will happen.
“… Boogaloo…” Wow, yeah I recently heard that was supposed to be some kind of code for civil war or something. Also, I’m Vietnam era, so it doesn’t mean that to me. Maybe it came out of the whole Iraq/Afghanistan mess. Who knew? Back in the day when I was a young man that word came from the ‘hood’ in a Motown song, “Boogaloo down Broadway, funky Broadway…”
This… “we’re still praying very hard that this cup passes us by without tipping on the barbecue in the big luau….” I like this as it is a meme of my book, Crossing Over, that I was telling you about. Crossing Over, as some reviews have pointed out, creates a compelling and scary look at what a civil or revolutionary war (boogaloo) here in America might, could, be like. I know a lot of young studs fantasize about defending their cabin atop a hill with their fifty cal and unlimited ammo ala Rambo, eating flies and waiting for all the stupid unprepared grannies, useless eaters and liberal single mothers to die off… But for most people ‘it’ would not be like that.
no, it comes from a 80s movie, Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo, which is such horror that it cannot be unseen.
Okay. Never knew that. Thanks for the movie non-recommendation.
Honestly, I don’t know where you’re hanging out, but on OUR side no one thinks of “useless eaters” or unprepared grannies or liberal single mothers as the enemy.
More, you know, Antifa and the other shooters and attackers.
I’m laughing, okay, ’cause I’m on YOUR side, and that was snarky humor. Guess I shoulda put a ‘LOL’ in there.
I sincerely hope you don’t know that “a lot of young studs fantasize about … Rambo,” etc. Because if you know, then you’ve interacted with such types – and surely you can find people who are more congenial to be around? (I also hope that such types are rare – and I can say that I’ve never been so unfortunate to actually encounter one.)
Wow, why do you put ‘know’ in italics? What’s that all about? And I’m a grown man, and so Yes, I know that there are people on OUR side who are not nice (sorry, I can’t give you the numbers or the percentages) and yes, some of them probably fantasize about shooting the ‘bad’ people on the other side. Okay? Maybe I got that from having served in the infantry and witnessed people ‘on our side’ who were not very nice and some even got off on shooting people. Okay? I don’t know what your italicized ‘know’ implies and I don’t give a damn. As a writer, I am able to put myself in other people’s heads, yeah, in story, and at 74, I’ve live a nice long life and I’ve had experiences and I know that our side is not angelic and the other completely demonic. That’s what children believe.
Ringo Starr 1972 ‘Back off Bugaloo’
Breaking 2 Electric Bugaloo’ 1984
It was Ringo’s fault…..lol
And yes I had to look it up.
This is what boogaloo (not bug) means to me… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEGhvseexYM
The Bugaloos!
Early 70s kidvid, musical live action.
CW2, eclectic Bugaloo!
Our side rocks.
And I think of the Sid & Marty Krofft show, The Bugaloos… whether I want to or not.
The thing I’m trying to wrap my head around is, I’m not sure most people really care about what is true or not, so long as they have their group.
I suspect it is really a profoundly odd trait to be more concerned with trying to know what is true and what isn’t, rather than simply keeping up in one’s social group.
I remember doing some asking around after the election, and found a lot of people who weren’t really interested in politics just didn’t care whether or not fraud happened. The outgoing one was loud and unpredictable and stressful, and the new one didn’t sound like that, so it just did not matter to them whether it was legit or not.
I suspect a lot of the folks who put their
current thing” tags up are similar. Putting the tags up makes their group accept them, and it doesn’t matter whether or not their nice thing conflicts with the tag or not. As long as the group doesn’t say they need to get rid of it, it’s not important.
And I sort of think that is the normal response?
That’s why we’re Odds. We value things like Truth more than we value Acceptance By The Group.
Nope, I still don’t get why anyone would put “nice/acceptable” ahead of “truth no matter who or how much it hurts”, but… I see the attitude every day. NeverTrump had (still has) a lot of that in their heads, I think, but also just average folks who worship ‘nice and polite’ at least as much as they worship God. (Do they not realize that quite a bit of what Jesus preached about was considered, “how rude!”/”how dare He!” by the scholars of that time?)
I really don’t think it’s that they don’t CARE about what is true or not, they’ve just been conditioned to think that Their Set and the people who rule it are right.
That’s what makes red- pilling so difficult.
The idea that they have been fooled and lied to by the people they automatically trusted just does not compute.
Why if their leaders are not good honest people that means that they might be on the wrong side of history. Which means they are the Baddies.
Sad.
Much harder to persuade someone they have been fooled, than to fool them.
@ SusanM > “I really don’t think it’s that they don’t CARE about what is true or not, they’ve just been conditioned to think that Their Set and the people who rule it are right.”
Conditioning is correct, and it is effective primarily because they simply never are allowed to see anything that contradicts The Narrative.
Never.
Literally: they do not know what even moderately plugged-in conservative readers are aware of.
(A recent example; they can be multiplied endlessly.)
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/01/kevin-mccarthy-explains.php
<
blockquote> Yesterday Speaker McCarthy “officially booted Reps. ADAM SCHIFF and ERIC SWALWELL from the House Intelligence Committee.” McCarthy set forth his decision in a letter to Hakeem Jeffries posted on Twitter. The lady and gentlemen of Politico Playbook find the letter “short on details about the two California Democrats’ sins[.]” You can grok that the press wants to pick up its cudgels on behalf of Schiff and Swalwell, whose malefactions have not been featured in its coverage of the Democrats.
…
McCarthy took the opportunity to explain in terms that any moron should understand. It’s not clear to me that the lady and gentlemen of Politico Playbook have grokked his explanation. They do not go so far as to quote or paraphrase his comments on Schiff and Swalwell, but they do link to the C-SPAN video. This is magnificent.
<
blockquote>
Well, that was McCarthy’s mistake. Left-wing media flaks are far stupider than morons. If he could make his explanation obvious to a particularly slow second-grader, then it might be effective.
If they don’t stick their fingers in their ears.
———————————
Not everybody should go to college. Some folks, you send ’em to college and you just wind up with an educated idiot.
It’s a bit worse than just not being aware. I’ve had conversations in which the lefty that I was talking with agreed with a point I’d made… and then just a few minutes later was saying things that suggested he quite literally did not remember the point that we had just discussed.
And no, senility was not involved…
What kind of mental skills does one develop as one grows up, and assembles one’s mind? What kind of mental model adn worldview does one grow to adulthood in?
Left beliefs change element by element all of the time, with each element changing independently of each other. The only way to live this is to do it by rote.
In theory, ‘conservative’ beliefs are tested by time, and prior analysis. In theory, there is a unified whole, with each element consistent with each other element, and update cycles that adjust every related element when understanding of a single element changes. In practice, this second theory is never fully true, and maybe never partly true. But, a lot of the inherited theory does fit together pretty well, and a fair number of conservatives have a personal understanding where related elements can be pretty consistent, and do update with changes in understanding.
Different habits of mind. Where folks practice ‘life of the mind’, the approaches can be very different.
Anyhow, makes for a situation where conservative mental update processes and patterns are poorly predicted by the left, and left mental update processes and patterns can be poorly predicted by the right.
No doubt that I have over simplified, and made an explanation that is too quick and too neat. But, this is partly a limit of my own current understanding.
I really have to write up the 30-10-60 essay. In short, the 60% is the people who go along to get along, and that seems to be a fairly consistent percentage.
What do the other two values represent? 10% who always insist on the truth and 30% who can be persuaded to care about it?
How horrible to live that way. Truth is so important.
I agree.
If it helps any… It’s a little like Sturgeon’s Law. What percent is “don’t care about if it’s true” will change by the subject.
I don’t know if your family had to teach this, but– the “it’s not worth arguing over”?
They’re like that, even when it’s something that is stupid easy to find out and/or check, and does not involve any judgement values.
They care about the SUBJECT, not about accuracy.
My ggg-grandmother, Antonia, was sent to help raise six kids after her sister, Maria, died of a stomach ailment. (Probably appendicitis.) After a short while, she ended up marrying the widower Ignatious and adding six more kids into the family swirl. Ignatious, you’re a rock star.
Antonia had a saying, as she married off all twelve, one by one: “There’s never a pot so crooked you can’t find a lid to fit it.” I bet she was hilarious. We use it in our family still, today.
….my grandmother said the exact same thing, in Portuguese.
Looks at Bonnie speculatively.
“Rachel? But she’s almost blind!”
“With the way he looks, it’s a perfect match!”
I read an Arabic fairy tale in which a girl thrown out of her family met a man who wanted to marry and had no bride price. She said, “The cooking pot has found its lid.”
My Antonia’s favorite saying has its origins in an ancient Arabic fairy tale. I think that makes it even better.
Don’t know how ancient it was. . . .
English saying too. I don’t know which way the loan went.
https://palomasnest.com/blogs/storiestotell/7146164-one-minute-history-lesson-a-lid-for-every-pot
Well, there is another element.
Official statements, and mental models.
There are probably sane people in America, somewhere, but they are probably pretty quiet, and many of them are also stressed. The noticeable people are both stressed, and nuts.
The specific methods of those insanities are very often occurring in similar combinations. There are groups of like minded individuals, and many of them have a few similar flavors of nuts, that can get along. However you set your criteria for a nutty idea, if you apply it objectively, you will often find some instances on the left, and some instances on the right.
Now, the laugh line is that my ideas are all sane.
But, even if we take that for granted, I have specific versions of those ideas that are extreme to the point of being crazy. Like ‘there will be no university tomorrow’. Universities may have a limited future, but it will not happen overnight.
If map the ideas to a space, look at frequency of occurance in same persons, and graph along a single axis, there is probably a bimodal distribution.
But, that theoretical model would possibly predict a more strongly bimodal distribution than actually exists. Cultural factors, and thinkign not explicitly examined and changed, etc.
The official statemetns of American politicians suggest claims that imply mental models in tenuous connection with reality. Some of the factions dissenting from politicians are also ‘nuts’.
One of the basic skills necessary in this environment is being able to objectively look yourself in the face, and figure out if the stuff you are into right now is nuts, how nuts it is, and in what way it is nuts. Or at least, it is a useful skill. Tribalism alone can carry you some distance, but can also lead you into big problems.
Re humorless….
Yesterday on Twitter Johnathan Turley quipped that Biden’s residences seem to attract classified documents the way some people believe trailer parks attract tornadoes. And down in the replies was a guy very seriously saying, “There is no link between tornadoes and trailer parks.”
I almost told him the one about tornadoes and Tennessee divorces (either way, somebody’s gonna lose a trailer), but decided that would sail over his head anyway.
That goes way back. Sniglets: Mobilehomeazone – where all tornadoes in the US concentrate.
Tornadozone – where all the trailer parks in the US concentrate.
Then there’s the Q thing which every lefty I know thinks someone called Q is sending super secret mind rays to the Extreme Right.
I have no idea where it came from as I am very right wing, but I’ve never actually seen one of these Q conspiracy documents they are so sure are setting righty agendas everywhere.
I probably just didn’t get the memo.
4 chan. Seriously. The idiots take 4chan at face value
They take 4chan literally but not seriously.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/02/03/pelosi-brands-gop-leader-mccarthy-q-ca-even-as-he-condemns-greene-comments-n1422983?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=582
“…as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) met with Greene and condemned her comments, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) branded him a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory.”
I know someone who regularly posts Q stuff on Facebook, and believes it. I would glance at each new thing that came up, note the comments agreeing with the latest thing she’d posted, and then move along. Occasionally I’d post something in response (usually along the lines of a factual correction), but that was quite rare. Other than that, I didn’t generally didn’t interact with her on Facebook.
Not too long ago she posted something about 9/11, and it bugged me enough that I unsubscribed from her Facebook feed. No idea what she’s posted lately.
Different MOs can lead to different wrong forecasts of opposition processes.
Left does appear to have behind the scenes coordination of messaging, etc.
Q is not a name. Q and L are department of energy security clearances.
Some dude was posting anonymously to an image board, and made a set of claims.
Among the prominent elements of the claims:
1. The dude was allegedly a holder of Q clearance, and because of that had secrets about the government that they were sharing with the public.
2. The government is run by a secret conspiracy of pedophiles.
3. The government is run by a secret conspiracy of satanists.
4. Trust The Plan. There is a secret Trump master plan that would see an inevitable conservative victory.
A lot of the conclusions to take away are pretty obvious.
But, if you find any leftists who provide the Q-anon argument, point out that blind trust in someone else’s plan could be pretty incompatible with conservatism. A lot of conservatism is a belief that when examined properly someone else’s plan is unsound, will not work, and will not deliver the expected results.
Of course, tornadoes and trailers might not correlate, but tornado damage will, due to the lesser strength involved.
:pushes glasses up nose:
From memory, at one point in at least one state, there was a strong enough correlation between “land where you are allowed to have a trailer park” and “relatively high risk of tornadoes” that they started condemning some of the parks that were hit frequently enough.
It was a classic example of going and looking at the data.
….so the guy wasn’t even right….
“… when the left came out with the mini panic about Hawaiian shirts and thought it was signaling for a conspiracy to overthrow the government, I …” sent my wife to Kohls to buy five more.
Not because an old, fat, unarmed cripple like me is gonna start something; but because I enjoy teasing people. And they go well with the Zoom default video of a tropical beach when I work from home.
Anyone who sees me as a threat is probably just behind me at the neighborhood grocery, in a big hurry, and doesn’t like lame jokes told badly.
FWIW, around here in Flyover County, wearing a Hawaiian shirt (in warmer weather) just might have something to do with the concealed pistol under the shirt. The church I used to go to (congregation long since dissolved) had a nominal “no guns” policy from the first minister, but the people wearing Hawaiians tended to consider that advice. Stupid advice…
Open carry is legal, but extremely rare in Flyover Falls. Different in the country.
YMMV
My grandfather, who was born in 1903, was introduced to his first grade teacher by his older sister. (She was ten to his seven.) She told the principal that her brother “hain’t right bright-in fact he pert near a damn fool“.
And that introduction has echoed down through 4 generations. As a semi-serious commentary on politicians, teen activists, cousins and the occasional cat. Depending on the broadness of the accent it might be affectionately intended or as a prelude to shoving the ‘damn fool’ into a stock tank. So I quite understand ‘Aurora’ and appealing to her to cough up the errant shoe. Humor within families can be impenetrable.
Grabs secret right-wing decoder ring….
“Drink more Ovaltine.”
Hmmmm.
Tastes of beets.
I think one of the reasons the left has no sense of humor is simply they are forced, yes forced, to take so many things seriously that are at odds with each other as well as logic and reason it bewilders them. If it is illogical to them, it must be a plot against them, because their leaders make everything they are forced to feel about so clear.
Case in point one of my favorite meme’s is so ridiculous it never fails to alarm and enrage liberals and panty bunchers, they start a hyperventilating almost as soon as they see it. That is those that can maintain their composure long enough not to out right pass out.
The meme is Winnie the Pooh dressed as a Victorian redcoat circa York’s Rift holding a rifle. The caption is, ‘ “Oh bother” said Pooh as he chambered another round’.
I love that one.
Great. Now I have “Men of Harlach” stuck in my ear.
And it’s Pooh singing Tenor.
Dang blast this fever…..
Does that make Lieutenant Char Christopher Robin????
Had an interesting journey in the webz looking for that Pooh meme.
https://img.ifunny.co/images/517400de083591779213712fa2b0381a5eb7d747b56ac537986c2525ba552614_1.webp
From a commentary on a military forum, which actually seems to be true, according to the New York Public Library.
WINNIE THE POOH HISTORY
Who would imagine that the origin of Winnie the Pooh goes back to Winnipeg, Canada and World War I? Some troops from Winnipeg, Canada [The Fort Garry Horse] were being transported to eastern Canada, en route to join the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade stationed in Europe. At a train stop in White River, Ontario, a lieutenant named Harry Colebourn purchased a female bear cub for $20 from a hunter who had killed its mother. The lieutenant named the cub “Winnipeg”, after his hometown city of Winnipeg, and nicknamed it “Winnie” for short.
The troops took Winnie with them to Britain where Winnie became the mascot of the Brigade. When the Brigade was redirected to battlefields in France, the lieutenant, who had been promoted to captain, decided to loan Winnie to the London Zoo. From 1916, until Winnie died in 1934, Winnie lived as a popular attraction at the London Zoo.
Along comes a boy named Christopher Robin who was a frequent visitor of the zoo. His favorite animal at the zoo was of course Winnie! Christopher Robin liked Winnie so much that he named his own stuffed bear “Winnie the Pooh”. It just so happened that Christopher Robin was the son of author A.A. Milne.
You can see where this is going…
totally off topic, and probably should be sent elsewhere, but I have a need for advice.
https://diosworkshop.wordpress.com/2023/01/25/teaser-more-to-come/?preview=true
At the bottom in double parenthesis, is the question/advice bleg.
HELP, PLEASE!!!
Since my main character of DST is Athena, I don’t know what to tell you.
They just really don’t get subcultures, or maybe organic growth….
My kids understand “Sid, tantor, bowmongani!”
It’s from a very old Tarzan.
EVERYTHING was that.
So… it became my uncles’ catch-phrase for basically mouth-noises where the words didn’t matter, the saying it did. (Such as “good morning.”)
And the Right tends to hang on to that kind of– oh! I think I know why–
Same way I got my family joke– we actually talk to older members. You aren’t going to group us very well by age, at least not by and large.
So you end up with the equivalent of my grandfather (a rather stately central-casting English fellow with a mild midwest accent) picking up a shoe and gesturing, menacingly, while intoning “I weel send you to JEE-SUHS!!!!”
Although not germane to any of this discussion (apologies) the terms “boogaloo” or just “boog” were once upon a time used as racial epithets. 50’s and 60’s.
Once upon a time, I could decipher all of this crap. Mostly because if I wanted to be a part of any community, I had to understand the insanity of it.
Now? A certain amount of simplicity would be nice. A job where my boss isn’t pretending that I am reading his mind to understand what he wants me to get done would be great. More people reviewing my book so that it shows up on more Amazon searches. Somebody putting most of the know-nothing “administrative” people against a wall to be shot so that they can get out of the way of people actually working on things like maybe some way to easily fix Mom’s spine or cure death and old age.
A lot of these people, especially in entertainment, live in worlds that they’ve created in their own mind. It’s a toxic brew up there, fed by people that were so desperate to rebel against any conformity that they chose French Nazi-friendly/Communist “fellow travelers” pedophiles over something reasonable like worshipping the Great Old Ones or such. The bad ideas have bounced around so badly in their heads it’s scary to see what pours out when they let their masks down.
0bamacare drove thousands of doctors and nurses out of medicine, and brought in hordes of bureaucrats to take their place. None of them could foresee that health care might get more restricted and more expensive as a result. They still pretend it was a Great Success.
Strangely, though, none of the Congresscritters that voted for 0bamacare wanted to depend on it.
Podcast of the Lotus Eaters posted a segment on YouTube yesterday with a discussion about some of the stuff that worried the WEF (according to the organization’s official documents). Apparently one of those things – and remember that this is something that they took the time to include in a document that is available to the public – is that we won’t be governed sufficiently.
Two freaking worlds.
c4c
Kind of on topic, there’s a guy checking if he’s in a bubble doing a survey on twitter about if American cities are good places to live:
Asked folks to retweet.
Which kind of American cities are we talking about? If they’re run by Dems, I wouldn’t dare.
I believe he means on average.
Even Des Moines has gotten worse– although it’s still quite decent, especially compared to non-US cities, there’s been an influx of stupid schemes where you can see the results and they tend to follow the city legal limits and vanish in cities that don’t do the dumb.
> “Even Des Moines has gotten worse”
Hmm… I won’t ask if that’s where you live, but if you are in such a place you might want to consider moving BEFORE things deteriorate too much further. You don’t want to get stuck trying to flee at the last minute like Sarah did.
:laughs: Oh, we knew in the first place that anyplace we could afford to have six kids, in the city, would not be a place that we’d WANT to live.
Which means that when I go into “Des Moines,” I’m not desensitized– I can see that there is an actually difference between Des Moines proper, and West Des Moines, or even Clive (run down but decent) and Waukee (shiny, new, thriving…and kind of wants to be like a real city, so does dumb stuff).
What I’m not sure of is how much of the degeneration is direct social stress– Des Moines and Waukee both did mask requirements, when that was legal– and how much of it is because the places that desperately want to be big cities do Portland or Seattle style stupid.
Even then, though, they’re not going, as the movie said, full retard. The schools in Des Moines are letting known gang members have a pass for a lot of bad behavior, but they’re not forcing people to allow tent cities to stay, nor having them on public land. The two crazies who tried to snatch a boy in the overpass had been noticed, and were being watched (even if his mom hadn’t kept them from getting away, they wouldn’t have made it out of the building) and were promptly arrested. When I go shopping in the Really Bad Area of town, I’ve never felt unsafe, even leaving the kids in the car, although I wouldn’t want to be walking around after dark.
> “Which means that when I go into “Des Moines,” I’m not desensitized”
[nods]
I had a sense that you lived somewhere more rural, but I wasn’t sure.
State culture matters, too– during the kung flu reaction, a lot of kids clearly WEnt To Stay With Grandma.
Now that things are back to normal… a lot of them haven’t gone back to the city, and the ones that did… well, Iowa just passed a huge school choice bill. Previously, you could use open enrollment to move between public schools. Now, private ones are an option, as well.
Hey Fox, if that guy is still thinking about moving to a city – especially a blue one – you might want to share this with him: https://ace.mu.nu/#402863
Boogaloo, does sort of come from where you explained, but you left out a big step. It is Gen X slang deriving from a very stupid movie from the mid eighties titled Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, sequel to a movie about break dancing named Breakin’. For most of my late teens/early twenties any bad or funny sequel or redo of a thing was [Name of Thing} 2; Electric Boogaloo. Hence Civil War 2 become the Boogaloo.
And “Boog,” “Big Igloo,” etc. came about after Facebook and the other social media platforms started flagging and blocking posts containing the word “Boogaloo” because they contained “extremist content” or “promoted violence.”
Heck I have used that joke. I just assumed everyone knew
“They — and this is partly personality attracted to the side — seem to change their programming over night and all talk about “new thing” in unison.”
Once upon a time, there was a particularly disgraceful psych experiment done by Harry Harlow, which I was forced to learn about repeatedly throughout my school years. Long story short, if you deprive a baby monkey of it’s mother, it will grow to be nervous, twitchy and clingy. Harlow, the pr1ck, called them “together-together monkeys” for their habit of all huddling together in a corner of the cage.
The behavior of Leftists, happily switching their views 180 degrees and instantly becoming loyal to the death to the New Thing, seems similar. They all watch each other very closely, and contest with each other to be the first and loudest to embrace the new New Thing when it first presents itself.
At this point I don’t think they really notice us anymore. There’s no social benefit to a Leftie to know what the non-Lefties are doing. Their attention is fixed inside their bubble. They have to be careful to not put a foot wrong or they’ll be under the bus quick as a wink.
That’s why the Left can’t meme. They’re terrified of being cancelled if they make a mistake.
Case in point, according to certain Chinese bot farmers the Grand Poobah of WorldCon found it necessary to issue a groveling apology for naming something “The Fannish Inquisition.” This was apparently beyond the pale, and self-flagellation was required or they’d be cancelled harder than John W. Campbell.
We, the deplorables, are already cancelled. We are therefore free to do creative and hilarious things, and don’t have to care who gets offended. We can even offend our own side.
Case in point, the FCK TRUDEAU flags everybody in Hamilton is flying this week. Yes, Les Petite Dauphine was here in The Hammer having a “cabinet retreat” downtown. I guess he thought it would be okay because Hamilton is Steeltown and full of NDPee voters. Oops, all them steelworkers and good union men showed up flying the new Canadian flag, all black with Fck Trudeau in red, and the * is a maple leaf. It’s a thing of beauty. Usually flown on a hockey stick, which is not a sign of welcome among our people.
Perfect! ~:D
:facepalms:
Good grief, and the folks that would have reason to be offended (more info here, short version, “Catholics” and “historians”) would of course never get the time of day if they tried to complain.
Not just bigots, but humorless ones.
(Even I think the Spanish Inquisition on MP is funny, and it’s part of Fannish social history.)
…. wait, I just accidentally demonstrated that thing Sarah mentioned at the start, didn’t I? /facepalms again
/laughs
Nobody expects the Fannish Inquisition!! 😀
Given how fandoms can be at times, I think EVERY creator learns to expect the Fannish Inquisition! 😛
> “We can even offend our own side.”
Because we’re not scalp hunters. We don’t see denouncing or destroying people as a way to gain cred, so we’re not motivated to do so just over disagreements.
Besides, the offense is, likely as not, apt to become yet another in-joke.
Love the flags! I have a “Truck off, Trudeau” hat in pride of place on my hat stack.
In HAMILTON? Hooo boy. (that city was VERY depressed and seemed to be rather lacking in gumption when last I was there… though that was 20 years ago.)
Lacking in gumption is totally fair. The place is a wreck, the whole downtown is an open-air mental hospital. Pretty much all the industries that Hamilton is famous for have fled or gone under. The town functions as a distant suburb of Toronto these days.
With all that, protesters came out of the woodwork and filled the street for several days. Heartwarming! ~:D
@ Matthew > “Besides, the offense is, likely as not, apt to become yet another in-joke.”
One of our family favorite in-jokes comes from “The Jewish Mother-in-law Joke Book.”
Yes, there are that many; it’s a well-trodden trope-path.
Sample, which may have crept into our conversations from time to time:
Mother-in-law gives son-in-law 2 shirts for his birthday.
He promptly goes upstairs and puts one on.
When he comes back to the family, she asks, “What? You didn’t like the other one?”
((blinks))
I see you have met my family…
Like flinging carp and c4c to me. I’m late to the party, but love my spot in the corner.
Wanders past, offers last few treats on the mostly empty tray Here, finish these, if you don’t mind, please. I’ll get a fresh tray in the kitchen.
Thank you, I was feeling a little peckish.