Answering your own question

Why do hardly any straight men write about sex and dating?
Imogen West-Knights

Hmm. If a woman who writes about dating doesn’t know this well, then……..

Do I think a trailblazing men’s dating column is going to suddenly solve the so-called crisis in male emotional communication? No. And I confess to feeling a bit sorry for straight men in this regard. I love the way women talk freely about this stuff. But not even an imagined – and it seems pretty impossible – golden age of personal writing by men is going to force straight guys into hand-holding, tear-shedding summits with their friends when the truth seems to be that, whether for societal or biological or whatever reasons, they don’t want to.

Men don’t do this*, men don’t write about it because men don’t want to read about it either.

It’s a terribly, terribly, female column, isn’t it? Not in the sense that it’s wrong or anything, but in that it’s hundreds and hundreds of words of flabbling when the answer is already known.

*OK, a sufficiently large portion of men to make it a going economic concern.

The closed nature of the British Establishment

This is really very amusing indeed. Nesrine Malik:

The old boys’ club. We don’t hear about it as much as we used to, do we? The phrase seems a little dusty, a bit of a throwback. Harrovians, Etonians, Wykehamists and other privately educated politicians may constitute 80% of Britain’s prime ministers so far; but they increasingly sit cheek by jowl in parliament with others who did not go to fee-paying schools, are not male, not white – and not only did not go to Oxbridge, but are not university educated at all.

And yet here we are, riffling through the seedy dealings of a small connected group of people at the top.

John Harris:

From the disgraced former party chair to the Richard Sharp investigation, government failure stems from a network of private schools and elite universities

Now, the subject of this ire is Nadhim Zahawi.

When he was eleven years old, during Saddam Hussein’s early years in power, he and his family fled to the UK.[15] Zahawi was educated at Holland Park School,[1][16] before moving to Ibstock Place School and then at King’s College School, an independent school in Wimbledon, London, followed by University College London, where he earned a BSc degree in chemical engineering in 1988.[1][17]

Not the traditional definition of the early years of the British Establishment.

The critics of that establishment:

Harris was raised in Wilmslow in north Cheshire; his father was a university lecturer in nuclear engineering,[1] and his mother a teacher who was the daughter of a nuclear research chemist. He became fixated by pop music at an early age.

He attended the comprehensive Wilmslow County High School (at the same time as members of the band Doves[2]), then went to Loreto College, Manchester, a Roman Catholic sixth form college sited between the University of Manchester and Old Trafford.[3] He applied to study Modern History at Keble College, Oxford, but was rejected, and claimed his membership of left-wing organisations had not won him many favours with such a traditional and conservative college.[3] He spent three years studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at another Oxford college, Queen’s, between 1989 and 1992.

That’s more traditional, isn’t it?

Nesrine:

Malik was born in Khartoum, Sudan, and was raised in Kenya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.[2][3] She attended The American University in Cairo and the University of Khartoum as an undergraduate, and completed her post-graduate study at the University of London.[3][4]

Career
Alongside her career as a journalist, Malik spent ten years in emerging markets private equity.

That’s another outsider making it in.

And yes, being a regular columnist – not just the occasional column, but on contract for a long piece a week – at a major newspaper like The Guardian does make you part of the British Establishment. The description has no meaning at all if those in such positions are not part of it.

We’ve the Oxbridge son of scientists – most haute bourgeois that is – now posing as a yokel from Frome, the immigrant Arab via banking to media stardom both complaining bitterly about the Kurdish refugee who went to Holland Park Comprehensive and still succeeded.

That all three are indeed part of the Establishment seems to indicate that it’s a fairly porous thing. Given the people involved we’d hesitate to call it a meritocracy but it’s definitely porous.

And yet the actual complaint being made is that it’s restricted in membership, that Establishment. Which is to laugh, no?

Which is as it has been historically. A Wide Boy on the make has always been able to get ahead in England. We never actually did have that blocking off of the ascension of the heights that so afflicted many other European countries.

Jeez, does no one recall Widmerpool?

We might be able to spot the problem here

A mysterious Adderall shortage reveals how America fails ADHD patients

Mysterious?

The DEA controls their supply, under what it calls a “closed system of distribution”. After the agency decides its annual production quotas, manufacturers and distributors must set limits on how much of the meds each pharmacy can buy. Pharmacies must guard the substances under lock and key, and fill out forms if they lose even a single pill. Doctors, of course, must screen their patients. Every link in this supply chain must also refuse and report any “suspicious orders” of unusual size, frequency, or “deviating substantially from a normal pattern”.

Violating any of the DEA’s rules can mean big trouble: anything from civil penalties to criminal prosecution.

Government efficiency at estimating, planning for and supplying the market then.

Meanwhile, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which controls the supply of the drugs, announced last month that it would not increase manufacturing quotas for 2023, despite the shortage…..

The United States has Soviet Union style shortages of Adderall because the United States runs the supply chain of Adderall as if it were the Soviet Union.

All hail the efficiency of government planning!

The Twitter problem

Surely no organisation could survive the termination of the entire “human rights” department, the abrupt demand that everyone return to the office, or the insistence that staff be “hardcore” or else get out of the way? If it didn’t crash, every company in the world would have to re-examine its staffing.

That is it, indeed. A company run the way the woke and progressive left would have all of society run does in fact become a problem if it is more successful when it is not run as the woke and progressive left believe all of society should be run.

So, who do we believe here then?

Investment in oil and gas production will be needed for the next three decades if the world is to avoid more shortages and price swings, BP has warned.

The oil giant said in its annual energy outlook published on Monday that fossil fuels are still likely to account for about 20pc of primary energy in 2050 even under a significant tightening of climate policies.

Well, there’s an expert view.

Greta Thunberg told world leaders at Davos earlier this month that new extraction should be stopped immediately, while UN chief António Guterres said last June: “New funding for fossil fuels is delusional.”

And there are two non-expert views.

Toughie, who do we believe then?

Seems sensible

The first victim of Isla Bryson, and the mother of one of his children, say it is “impossible” not to say the transgender rapist is a man and should not have been allowed in a women’s prison.

Father, penis, we’ve got several of the attributes of a man there…..

Dumbkopfs!

Nadhim Zahawi sacked by Rishi Sunak without a fair hearing, say allies
Claims Tory chairman lost his job because Prime Minister rushed to remove him for political expediency

This is politics. Of course it was done for political expediency. Everything is done for political expediency. Nothing is done for reasons other than political expediency.

This is why it’s such a shit way of doing things.

I do love this idea

Plumbers have an image problem that may derail the Government’s net zero ambitions, experts have warned.

Replacing gas boilers and switching to heat pumps is a central tenet of the Government’s ambitions for the UK to be carbon neutral by 2050, and the installation will largely be done by upskilling current gas and oil boiler installers.

But almost all plumbers are middle-aged white men close to retirement, a government report has found, raising concerns that there will not be enough competent installers to reach the Government’s goal of 600,000 heat pumps being installed every year by 2028.

So, we’re going to plan everything. We’re going to have that Green New Deal. Just turn on that massive programme to lag, insulate, change the heating system of, every house in the country. And NOW! because climate change. Set money printer go brrrr!

But once we try to do this we find planning isn’t that simple. Every bodger in the country will be killing folk with bad work – as happened in Oz. So we’ve got to train more plumbers. And to do that we’ve got to design plumber training programmes. And then to do that we’ve got to plan more tech colleges. Which will need, of course, diversity advisors to do the Wilt Work on our Toilets Two classes. Which will need training programmes for diversity advisors and…….you see how this goes?

Fat Controllerism never does work simply because the world is a complicated place. Beyond the minds of even the cleverest retired accountants.

Well, Mr. X. Kendi

Let’s continue with this logic:

There was some controversy around the film because Dahomey was a major human trading nation and that wasn’t necessarily rendered in the film. But even as a historian I understand the difference between a documentary and a drama and in other continents there have been so many films that have taken a major figure or fighting unit and made them these glorious heroes and heroines, so why can’t we do the same thing for West Africa?

Try financing a film which makes Hawkins and Drake (??) the heroes as they haul slaves across. Same – -ish – time period, same activity, but it won’t gain coos and ahhhs for the glory of the drama and execution now, will it?

Also worth clicking through to the page just for the photo. That stern proletarian gaze into the future so well known from socialist realism – along with the quizzical “Who Farted?” look.

And the bias shows up

Long Observer piece about Twitter:

In an impossible-to-follow tweet thread that unfolded over several hours, Taibbi published the names and emails of rank and file ex-employees involved in communications with government officials, insinuating that Twitter had suppressed the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

It wasn’t impossible to follow and it didn’t insinuate. It stated, flat out, that Twitter had suppressed the story. As, indeed, it had.

Employees rushed to warn a Twitter operations analyst whom Taibbi had doxed to privatise her social media accounts, knowing she was about to face a deluge of abuse.

Amazeballs. Worrying about someone getting slagged off on social media is more important than swinging elections by suppressing truths. There might be good reason why 75% of these people are now gone, no?

Twitter continues to haemorrhage money,

That’s not obviously true. A 75% headcount fall and a – by some estimations – 40% revenue fall could mean absolutely anything. Even a return to profitability.

But Musk appears unaware of what he’s actually broken: the company culture

But that’s not a mistake. That’s the aim, the intention. That’s the whole goal from the start.

They’re really not getting it, are they?

Now, whether Musk is going to win in the end I don’t know. But if he does then I, for one, will laugh like a drain. Because there’s so much invested in this by the journalistic classes – Musk broken Twitter, going to lose it all, it’ll go bust etc. And if and when it comes roaring back with a decent profit then we’ll have our evidence, won’t we? Fire all the woke, the lazy, the progressive, and make an organisation work. Hmm, good plan for the rest of society, no?

Just all so mindbogglingly efficient, isn’t it?

Wind farms backed by government subsidies could be paid more to switch off than to generate power, The Telegraph has learnt.

A lack of grid storage and transmission infrastructure means that the UK is regularly producing more electricity from wind than it can use.

It also tells us that wind isn’t as cheap as we’re told – because it requires that more grid which isn’t included in the calcs now, is it?

Snigger

Norwegian undersea metals find:

There are three types of mineral deposits on the seabed; manganese nodules, manganese crusts and sulphides. All three types contain multiple metals, and they are located at significant sea depths, mainly between 1500 and 6000 metres. On the Norwegian shelf, manganese crusts and sulphides have been found at depths around 3000 metres.

Yes, OK, all known, but they’ve gained more detail:

“The volume of recoverable resources depends on technology and economy. It remains to be seen whether the areas will be opened, and whether production can be profitable from a financial standpoint”.

Also true, these are resources, not reserves. Actually, they’re not even resources in the technical jargon, they’re just stuff that is there. We’ve no even general indication that these will be mineable economically.

15,000 tonnes of hafnium

Umm, not really. There might be 750k tonnes – or so – of Zr, which then contains Hf, but Hf separately, no.

56,000 tonnes of scandium

Well, maybe. But only because they’re talking about all the rock in some vast area of the Norwegian arctic.

This is the sort of thing to put down as vaguely interesting. There are only 92 elements (before we get to manmade ones) so everything is made of them. An, everything is made of them in varying proportion. So if you add up some vast amount of rock – “deepwater areas in the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea” and so the seabed of 2.5 million km, or much more than 10x the land area of England – then you’re going to find lots of metals. Because metals is what stuff is made of, see?

In terms of mineral availability this is about as exciting as finding out that Cornwall is made of rock.

Cool!

The case of Isla Bryson, the transgender double rapist who was initially sent to a female prison, must not result in a blanket ban on trans women serving their sentences in women’s facilities, the campaign group Scottish Trans has said.

The other view of this same insistence is that there must not be a blanket rule that transwomen will serve their sentence in a women’s prison. Which is great. Ms. Cossey – should she ever be convicted of anything – might be suitable for the female estate. Ms. Bryson not.

Great.

Now here’s a modest and balanced view of media history

The assault on truth by a right-wing “media ecosystem” began with Rupert Murdoch’s invention of Fox News, augmented in recent years by even more fantasy-based cable networks like Newsmax and One America News.

The shamelessness of these sham journalists was best summarized by lawyers defending the most successful one, Tucker Carlson, in a suit accusing him of slander. The preppy anchor’s statements “cannot reasonably be interpreted as facts”, they said, because he so obviously engages in “non-literal commentary”.

Another foundation of the disinformation crisis was the deregulation of broadcast by the Reagan administration, which eliminated the fairness doctrine in 1987. That simple change insured the pollution of the radio airwaves by Rush Limbaugh and his imitators, creating the first echo chamber.

Of course, the internet allowed these waves of lies to reach warp speed, more destructive than anything humanity has experienced. In the understated description of this volume, “the conservative media ecosystem was augmented by … Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, where the tendency to find like-minded partisans and the freedom from fact-checkers took disinformation to new depths.”

Folk being allowed to say what folk wanted to say is the terror of our times.

These venues have given “far-right lies unprecedented access to significant numbers of Americans” and allowed “ordinary Americans to spread lies to one another”, instantly. “As a result, misinformation and disinformation have infused our debates about almost every pertinent political problem.”

Just to emphasise, this is not some nutter running with the Tankies:

A former reporter for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek, he is currently a nonfiction book critic for The Guardian.

This is actually close to the establishment view in the very serious and proper journalistic classes.

You just know this is going to lead to some sort of tossery

Hillary Clinton never stopped being pilloried for her “basket of deplorables” speech in 2016. However, the fact is that Trump and plenty of his supporters have said and done things which are deplorable. The really scandalous part was her casual remark that some Americans were “irredeemable”. But democracy is based on the notion that no one is irredeemable, that we should never give up on fellow citizens, hard as it may be. Those who have engaged in anti-democratic actions must have the chance to convince others that they have changed their ways.

Democracy is the system by which we can throw the bastards out. And that’s all it is. Forgiveness, redemption, they’re moral, or religious, concepts, not democracy.

If we can throw the bastards out without a bloody revolution then we’re in some form of democratic entity. If we can’t we’re not……