Men never change

I suppose a woman could have carved this stone found along Hadrian’s wall, and from the 2nd century CE, but somehow I doubt it.

The stone is fairly small, measuring 40 cm wide by 15 cm tall (15 inches by 6 inches). Experts in Roman epigraphy recognized the lettering as a mangled version of Secundinus cacator, which translates into (ahem) “Secundinus, the shitter.” The penis image merely added insult to injury—a clever subversion of the traditional interpretation of a phallus as a positive symbol of fertility. The Vindolanda site now has 13 phallic carvings, more than have been discovered at any other dig site along Hadrian’s Wall.

The last laugh is on whoever carved it, because we remember Secundinus’s name and not his.

He is so angry!

Boy, Jordan Peterson sure is upset that other people don’t share his Objective™ and True™ evaluation of beauty.

How dare Sports Illustrated insist that a non-athletic body could be beautiful? I’m going to take that personally.

Then he’s offended that SI was exploiting Yumi Nu…as if no other woman asked to pose in a skimpy bathing suit was exploited. He pretends that he’s defending her by insulting her.

It’s weird how he exposes his rage over such subjective issues, as if he is the final arbiter, and he and he alone gets to decide who is beautiful and who is not for everyone else. His authoritarianism is exposed.

I don’t know what’s going on in Ukraine

This is symbolic of the conflict: Citizens of the Russian Federation from the Free Russia Legion fighting for Ukraine captured Ukrainian citizens from the LDNR formations fighting for Russia.

In other words, the guys with the guns are Russians fighting on the Ukrainian side, and the two prisoners looking hangdog are Ukrainians fighting on the Russian side. It’s all very confusing.

I read the newspapers, and the impression I get is that Ukraine is getting desperate with serious ammunition shortages, while Russians are getting desperate over increasingly heavy casualties, as are the Ukrainians. Ukraine wants to join the EU, but France and Germany are dragging it out, saying it might take decades to negotiate. I don’t think they have decades. No one is going to win this war, are they?

The detritus of GamerGate is still washing up on our Western shores

What kind of attitude goes with a Silicon Valley tech-bro crypto-dude? You probably won’t be surprised by this:

Jesse Powell, a founder and the chief executive of Kraken, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, recently asked his employees, “If you can identify as a sex, can you identify as a race or ethnicity?”

He also questioned their use of preferred pronouns and led a discussion about “who can refer to another person as the N word.”

And he told workers that questions about women’s intelligence and risk appetite compared with men’s were “not as settled as one might have initially thought.”

Of course, being a pretentious libertarian, Mr Powell has written a philosophical manifesto for his company.

This month, Mr. Powell unveiled a 31-page culture document outlining Kraken’s “libertarian philosophical values” and commitment to “diversity of thought,” and told employees in a meeting that he did not believe they should choose their own pronouns. The document and a recording of the meeting were obtained by The Times.

He talks about valuing “diversity of thought,” but at the same time he has an “ideological purity test” for his employees. He does not seem to be aware of the contradiction, or that his company is no better than Answers in Genesis in this regard.

He also insisted that some workers subscribe to Bitcoin’s philosophical underpinnings. “We have this ideological purity test,” Mr. Powell said about the company’s hiring process on a 2018 crypto podcast. “A test of whether you’re kind of aligned with the vision of Bitcoin and crypto.”

Here’s where I get really annoyed: to defend his argument that women have inferior brains than men (because they prefer real cash over crypto junk!), he pulls out a Shapiroesque claim that he’s just talking about science and biology.

“Being offended is not being harmed,” Mr. Powell responded. “A discussion about science, biology, attempting to determine facts of the world cannot be harmful.”

I call bullshit. I hope his whole company gets sucked into a vortex of destruction as the crypto market implodes.

Would you want this guy to influence your children?

I’m curious to know which of the two individuals below you might think would be a more traumatic sight for children visiting a library story hour.

The drag queen?

The Proud Boy?

If you need a little more information to come to conclusion, what the fuck is wrong with you? Here’s the context, though.

A group of men displaying Proud Boy colors stormed a Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Lorenzo Library on Saturday afternoon shouting homophobic and transphobic threats after anti-LGBTQ online activist Chaya Raichik – who runs the anti-LGBTQ LibsofTikTok account – posted information about the event online.

The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office said that police responded to a report of a disturbance at the library at around 1:30 p.m. and discovered five men “described as members of the Proud Boys organization,” “extremely aggressive with a threatening violent demeanor causing people to fear for their safety.”

Right. So in order to “protect” the children, they charged into a children’s story hour to disrupt what should have been a quiet, friendly event with threats and abuse.

Libs of TikTok, which encourages this kind of hate, still has a Twitter account…and is also on Facebook, Parler, Truth Social, Rumble, Gab, GETTR, Instagram, and YouTube. All the social media sites participate in encouraging this kind of frenzy of conflict.

Another fun morning

It’s a physical therapy day for me…and it seems futile. My back problems are getting worse, so it’s just a little torture session that won’t do a thing for me. It’s all I’ve got for now.

Tomorrow I get an MRI. I have no idea how long it will be after that that they come up with a treatment plan that works, or even if such a plan might exist. So once again, later today, I’ll take my little pill and zone out into the brain fog.

The curse of the middle-aged white man

Pity me! I’m part of the most oppressed demographic in the world! I know because my fellow middle-aged white men tell me they’re suffering.

Look! Here’s James Patterson!

James Patterson, a best-selling author with an estimated net worth of $800 million, opened up about how difficult it is for white men to find work in publishing and Hollywood.

The thriller novelist said white male writers experience “another form of racism” in an interview with The Times published Sunday, lamenting the plight of older white males. “What’s that all about?” Patterson mused. “Can you get a job? Yes. Is it harder? Yes. It’s even harder for older writers. You don’t meet many 52-year-old white males.”

It’s so hard to be a mystery writer who churns out formulaic pot-boilers that grace the shelves of every airport bookstore in the country.

And what about Christopher Eccleston?

Christopher Eccleston, star of Doctor Who, Thor: The Dark World, and The Leftovers, said in a new interview that straight white males are “the new pariahs of the industry,” though he also acknowledged that more diversity in film and television is a good thing.

In a conversation with Times Radio (via Deadline), Eccleston noted, “Quite rightly I’m a dinosaur now. I’m white, I’m middle-aged, I’m male, and I’m straight. We are all seen through the lens of Harvey Weinstein et al. And I can feel that the opportunities are shrinking, as they should do.”

I love how these articles always set the stage by first telling us how many hundreds of millions of dollars they have or what movies and TV shows they starred in, before quoting their sad little whimpers. You know, this isn’t a case where these people have lost opportunities or are making less money — they’re just finding that now they might have to rub elbows with people who are not middle-aged straight white men. Patterson is correct, it is another form of racism…it’s just that the racist here is himself. Maybe it’s just the same old racism?

If we’re seen through the lens of Harvey Weinstein, though, you have to recognize that one reason is that a lot of straight white men enabled him and profited from him and tolerated his behavior.

Elon Musk: Super-genius!

No, really. This is brilliant, a real out-of-the-box, Kobayashi Maru-type of solution to a real world engineering problem.

Initially the probe started last year in response to Tesla vehicles mysteriously plowing into the scene of an existing accident where first responders were already present.

On Thursday, NHTSA said it had discovered in 16 separate instances when this occurred that Autopilot “aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact,” suggesting the driver was not prepared to assume full control over the vehicle.

CEO Elon Musk has often claimed that accidents cannot be the fault of the company, as data it extracted invariably showed Autopilot was not active in the moment of the collision.

There was a time not that long ago when I thought the Tesla was a great idea, and would have loved to get one — I was held in check, though, because there was no way I could afford one. Now I’m relieved that I dodged that bullet.

You can’t even toast a marshmallow on that fire, thanks to all the toxic chemicals.