So we’ve also seen pictures of Oolong Husk’s Cybertruck(kk), but I think this is the first time I’ve realised the actual size of it:
Jay Leno is five foot eleven, apparently. That’s what a nearly six-foot man looks like inside one of these fucking things. Seeing that gave me a sudden understanding of the actual size of Cybertruck(kk)… and it now feels uglier to me than ever before; if it didn’t look bad enough in the pictures of it I’d seen, it seems a whole lot worse now…
So I’m not particularly a Taylor Swift fan (I recall I did quite like Folklore, mind you), and the news that Time magazine declared her their Person of the Year fills me with indifference much like Time‘s Person of the Year almost always does. It had a… different effect on some people.
There’s always got to be someone like this posting this sort of bullshit, hasn’t there. Especially after they’ve also posted this sort of bullshit:
For Eric, I guess, the sight of a woman on a magazine cover is one of those exceptions that prove the rule, and you should instead be quick to anger at that. Oy.
I’ve pontificated here in the past about matters of personal identity and how I’ve never not felt like a man but I’ve also never felt like much of one, and how I don’t seem to feel the same need other MEN evidently do to prove what MEN they are and how I find such MEN off-putting (and obviously I capitalise the word advisedly). Eric Conn is exactly the sort of MAN I mean, the sort that has to beat his big masculine chest about how virile he is by hosting podcasts called the Hard Men Podcast (“Reclaiming biblical masculinity in a world of softness“) and The King’s Hall (“exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world“), identifying as a “Western native” and “avid hunter”, and being threatened by the success of a… woman. An aging (34 next week) woman at that. And goddamn, though I may be a “failure” as a man, if THIS thing represents “success” at being one, I’ll settle for failure. I like me more.
This is one of the strangest rock music stories I’ve ever read, and I’m kind of perplexed that I haven’t discovered it before. I like the Clash but they’re not a band I actually know many historical details of, so I had no idea that Joe Strummer actually disappeared for a while in 1982.
This was not the only or even the first such musical disappearing act of that year, with Jaz Coleman from Killing Joke having hilariously relocated to Iceland in February either to escape a nuclear apocalypse or else become Iceland’s top hash dealer, depending on which of his stories you believe…
And I wonder if that peculiar incident inspired Strummer’s vanishing. The story goes that Bernie Rhodes, who’d been reinstated as the Clash’s manager, suggested Joe “disappear” for a while cos ticket sales for the upcoming tour were a bit sluggish; Rhodes seemed to think that him going into hiding in the US for a while might work as a publicity stunt. (I don’t know if he did get the idea from Jaz Coleman or not, but the timeline does fit.) Strummer decided to take this idea and carry it out properly… by actually disappearing. Not only did the public not know what had happened to him, neither did the band or Rhodes.
Anyway, he was eventually discovered in Paris after a few weeks and normal business resumed; unfortunately, normal business for the band by this time meant increasing dysfunction and tension, resulting in Topper Headon being ejected from the band owing to his increasing substance abuse a week after Combat Rock came out and the tour finally started… a little rich given the rest of the band’s drug consumption and the fact that Topper had just given them a great big hit in the form of “Rock the Casbah”. The whole story really is quite odd, and Strummer did later regret it; supposedly he wanted Rhodes back as the band’s manager to recapture some of the chaos of their earlier career, and I suppose he got that in this case… it was just that he didn’t realise the one thing the band didn’t need by that time was chaos. Still, at least he learned not to do that again as far as I can tell, unlike Jaz Coleman…
‘Charles’ or ‘skin rash’? Māori MPs’ oath of allegiance to king sparks translation debate
Māori party MPs have departed from the traditional oath of allegiance to King Charles III at the opening of New Zealand’s 54th parliament, sparking a debate about whether the Māori word they used to describe him meant “Charles” or “skin rash”.
As part of the formalities to open parliament, MPs must swear allegiance to New Zealand’s head of state, something Te Pāti Māori, a Māori political party, has long protested against. MPs can say the oath in either English or Te reo Māori.
During Tuesday’s opening of parliament, three MPs from Te Pāti Māori traded “Kīngi Tiāre,” the official reference to the king in the oath if spoken in Māori, for “Kīngi harehare.”
The website Māori Dictionary refers to “Tiāre” as “Charles” and “harehare” as a “skin rash” and “sore” among other skin conditions as well as something “offensive” or “objectionable”. […]
Jack Potaka, a Māori language expert with Te Tari Consultants, confirmed that “hare” can have different meanings in different regions including “skin rash” and “Charles or Charlie” but cautioned that the intended meaning can only be confirmed by the speaker.
“This linguistic diversity underscores the potential for varied interpretations influenced by regional nuances,” Potaka said in an email.
All Te Pāti Māori MPs broke with protocol and swore allegiance to their grandchildren before stepping forward to pledge allegiance to the king.
I actually really like that last idea much more than swearing allegiance to whoever the head of state now is. As for the language issue… well, the new NZ government has raised quite some concern about the status of te reo Māori in their brave new world:
It’s not yet clear what the new government’s position will be on the use of te reo Māori by government departments because it’s not yet been formed.
The three prospective parties – National, ACT and NZ First – have different views on the issue. National’s Chris Luxon has said he wants an “English first” approach for government departments with dual-language names, whereas NZ First’s Winston Peters has promised to erase all Māori names from government departments.
Winston Peters is half-Maori himself, for what it’s worth, which has not stopped him being a right wing prick. As for ACT, I can’t find their specific policy on the language, but I do see that some of the things they want include abolishing parliamentary seats guaranteed for Maori and an evidently substantial rewrite of the Waitangi Treaty, so I don’t suppose they’re too sympathetic to language considerations either. As amusing as this stunt was, I have a feeling this is only going to harden Luxon and Peters against using te reo in parliament at any rate…
YIKES. Honestly, if that Hbomberguy video hadn’t already driven James Somerton off the Internet, this one would’ve ended him on YT; as it stands, this serves neatly as the final nail in the coffin. It comes from a channel called Todd in the Shadows, and Todd Nathanson doesn’t usually do this sort of thing, his channel’s more about music, but he was sufficiently offended by something Somerton posted that he felt the need to make this… and he acknowledges knowing Harris was doing his video about Somerton and that it was something of an inspiration, but the two videos take separate approaches so they’re both worth watching.
Todd’s video is more about the facts than the knocking off of other people’s work, and the sheer amount of things that he’s caught James being verifiably wrong about is just… oy. Why, though, would James lie about something like this that can be, you know, independently verified? (I use the word “lie” because Todd assumes malice rather than incompetence in almost every case here.) Well, he has a Fandom wiki entry that currently reads in part:
He generally has left leaning political views, although has made multiple statements condemning a group he calls “straight white women.” This is likely a masking of misogynism: focusing on their race and sexuality in an attempt to deemphasize the gender aspect, and thus, making it appear acceptable him to make statements that would be hateful and bigoted if these qualities were not brought up. James has also misgendered transgender creators in some of his videos, as well as erasing mentions of the word transgender when covering transgender specific topics. He has also described the queer community at large as “LGB,” a transphobic dogwhistle.
So there’s a certain propensity, as noted by both Harris and Todd and various of their commenters, towards James promoting himself as a champion of the LGBT but arguably only really caring about the G and trying to paint the L, the B, and the T as historically having had an easier time of things than gay men have had. Haven’t seen enough to really confirm that for myself, but that seems to be the broad consensus about how he works as a queer creator.
It still begs the question of why he’s telling these bullshit stories. I can kind of understand him calling The Rocky Horror Picture Show the film that saved 20th Century Fox if he’s trying to push queer art and history (despite it not actually being history, cos RHPS was bugger all of the sort). I don’t even remotely understand his retelling the origins of messrs Gaiman & Pratchett’s Good Omens, which has been told by Gaiman at least (not sure how much Pratchett wrote about the subject), and Somerton’s telling is… kind of entirely different from Gaiman’s, and Gaiman strikes me as the sort of creator who’s actually honest about these things; what’s the point, therefore, of James spinning his bullshit narrative?
I don’t understand a lot of this stuff, and consequently I’ve had great difficulty articulating that lack of understanding, I’ve cut and/or rewritten huge parts of this post while writing it since last night. What is the point? Cos these details are all things James Somerton could’ve verified before stating them as fact, we know cos Todd managed to verify them; James not doing so makes him look kind of grossly incompetent at best. That should be enough to end whatever credibility he had on YT. And what if it was deliberate…? Was he just hoping no one would fact check him? Why did he do it at all?
Having given more thought to the situation, I find myself increasingly perplexed by it, but also oddly sympathetic somehow towards James Somerton. I sense some sort of sad personal flaw that makes him feel like he’s less than he wishes he were—a feeling I know myself better than I’d like, to be honest; I’m sure it’s a thing that drives a lot of people really—but it also made him try to be something in a way that he really shouldn’t have done. So whatever sympathy I might feel really is wasted, cos this shit is something he’s ultimately brought on himself. And there’s still something kind of sad about it.
Oh, and one final irony: The Algorithm suggested one of Somerton’s videos while I was watching Todd’s as something I might like to watch next. I decided against it.
GODFUCKINGDAMN, I’ve long wished that Harris would make videos more often than he does cos they tend to be really interesting, but when he springs a nearly FOUR HOUR extravaganza on us, I can’t accuse him of slacking off. (And the fucking thing’s already had two and a half million views…) Most of this is about one creator in particular, a guy called James Somerton, who was sprung by one of his own fans when she caught him plagiarising her work. I’m not sure that I’ve ever actually watched anything by the latter (I might’ve seen one or two but can’t remember offhand), but I have had him recommended to me by The Algorithm quite a lot and I think I’ve got quite a few of his videos in my YT watchlist. Think I might be removing those now, much like he seems to be removing himself:
Woof. I know Harris tells him “delete your channel” at one point in the video, but I didn’t expect Somerton to actually go to ground quite so hard so soon. And that’s not the only video about him that’s just appeared on YT in the last couple of days; I’m just going to watch the other one now…
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