This photo of my future wife Karen is from her ancient Yale ID card. It was taken in 1971, her freshman year. The same photo was mounted and framed, along with similar photos of all the other members of the Class of 1975 in Berkeley College, and hung in the Common Room on the wall opposite the Dining Hall.

As you might expect, male Yale undergraduates not infrequently passed the time perusing the four Class Photo Displays, rating each of the young ladies on attractiveness and desirability. (Karen typically came in first in 1975.)

So I was not in the least surprised to read that male submarine sailors were in the habit of rating the respective appeal of their feminine shipmates, now that the US Navy has succumbed to political correctness and foolishly sexually integrated subs. What would anyone expect?

The lying propagandists of the journalistic left sensationalistically refer to the sailors’ ranking of feminine charms as a “rape list,” despite no reference therein of any kind to rape. I suppose they have to. How else would they be able to puff up perfectly natural, and to some at least, complimentary, male behavior into an aggression of some kind, a threat to the womens’ “safety,” and a scandal meriting a 74-page investigation, the discharge of two male sailors, and firing a captain.

“The sexually explicit list describes various USS Florida females by appearances, characteristics and various sexual acts the creators of the list wish to perform with them,” the investigation states. “The list describes aggressive sexual activity, but does not reference non-consensual acts.”

The sub’s commander got fired for failing to respond to complaints from goofy feminists with immediate inquisitorial proceedings. Doubtless, the unfortunate captain thought there were more important priorities on a warship than catering to the amour propre of the hyper-sensitive and easily offended. Clearly, today’s Naval High Command did not agree. Admirals in the Pentagon these days worry less about anti-submarine missiles and depth charges and more about the incredible destructive power of identity politics and crusading journalists.

The whole appalling story is at Military.com.

Donald Trump ought to re-instate those two sailors and the wronged captain, shit-can everybody involved in the investigation including especially the initial complaintants, and issue an Executive Order ending the presence of females in combat units, including warships.

The late Hendrik Coetzee.

The political/cultural divide extends conspicuously into the Outdoors.

The Outdoors Right fishes and hunts. The Extreme Outdoors Right shoots big game and/or hunts par force du chien. The Outdoors Right wears safari jackets, canvas hunting coats, camo for duck and turkey hunting, and Scarlet Hunt Uniforms for fox hunting.

The Outdoors Left hikes, bicycles, kayaks, rafts, rock climbs, and skis. The Outdoors Left wears the latest artificial fabric in Life -Saver-flavor colors.

The Outdoors Right remembers shopping at the old (the real) Abercrombie & Fitch and Wm. Mills, and buying from the Herter’s catalogue. We still shop at L.L. Bean, Filson, Woolrich, and Cabela’s. We used to buy from Orvis, but now they do.

The Outdoors Left buys from Patagonia, Northern Mountain, and REI.

We lust after custom shotguns. They yearn for custom bicycles and hiking boots.

There is surprisingly little overlap between the two worlds, though –regrettably– A River Runs Through It (1992) resulted in a lot of unwelcome cross-over into fly fishing. Men used to say: “I never met a fly fisherman I didn’t like.” Not anymore. When I see some fashionista on the stream loaded down with expensive, brand-new Orvis equipment, I feel like pushing him in.

I sometimes read Outside magazine, and I commonly marvel (and bristle with indignation) over the cultural differences.

We Outdoors Right types would never dream of spending time in the territory of large predators unarmed. The readership of Outside Magazine is capable of debating the ethics of spraying Old Ephraim in the snout with pepper spray. They bicycle through Mountain Lion country. They camp, unarmed, among the grizzlies. And as you will read in the linked article from the Outside Magazine archives on the late Hendrk Coetzee, the Outdoors Left will go kayaking in cannibal-infested regions of the Congo and down rivers full of crocodiles.

Whitewater kayaker Hendrik Coetzee had decided to call it a career after a decade of first descents on the wildest rivers in Africa. The river’s most feared predator had a different ending in store.

The Drive:

Waters continue to rise across the midwest this week as heavy rains and saturated soil bring multiple rivers to flood stage. Homes have been destroyed, entire communities are inundated—and in Oklahoma, the historic World War II submarine USS Batfish has re-floated once again nearly fifty years after it was dry docked on display in a park along the Arkansas River.

Aerial video from KOTV News on 6 shows the USS Batfish floating comfortably in at least 15 feet of water on Wednesday as the Arkansas spills over its banks and swamps the city of Muskogee. Normally, the 77-year-old Balao-class submarine serves as the centerpiece for Muskogee’s War Memorial Park, standing bare on a bowl-shaped lawn as both an interactive museum and a point of pride for the region. But these floodwaters have it sailing again like it’s 1943.

RTWT

This chap claims that people walked differently before 1500.

Joachim Friess, Diana and Stag automata drinking cup, 1620, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

href=”https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/193623″>Elizabeth Cleland, 2017:

This object was prized, though not unique; other versions survive, all targeted at the wealthiest clientele. A wind-up mechanism once moved the group forward on hidden wheels, making it vibrate as if with life. Uniting modern technology, precious casework, and visual appeal, automatons were celebrated as a novelty entertainment for guests of the most moneyed classes. Removing the stag’s head reveals a drinking vessel; the diner in front of whom the piece stopped had to drain the cup.

HT: Karen L. Myers.

Minister of Justice Morgan Johansson wants to ban Runes and other symbols of the Pagan Norse Religion.

Samhällsnytt:

(translated:)

The government is currently investigating the possibility of banning the use of Norse runes. It is reported that the Minister of Justice, Morgan Johansson (Socialist) is behind the initiative. Among members of the Asa-samfundet, the organization of contemporary followers of the Norse Pagan Religion, and people with an interest in the Norse cultural heritage, the outrage is great about what would amount to a restriction on, among other things, religious freedom. A petition has been started and on Friday a demonstration is planned outside the Parliament House in protest against the proposal.

The background of the proposal is said to be the consideration that neo-Nazis in Sweden use the so-called Tyr-rune as a symbol. The fact that this is is the case is something that neither Norse Pagan-believers nor those interested in cultural heritage are particularly happy about.

It is thought, however, that it is not reasonable to deal with this by banning an entire written language and to also violate the freedom of constitutional and convention-protected religion. When the government applies other meanings to the runic script than the real ones, it make the same mistakes as the Nazis, one points out.

“Our attitude is that prejudices and errors are best cured with knowledge and facts! It is not appropriate to try to ban the our symbols on the basis of their own prejudices. To forbid them would be to ban portions of our own history, culture and beliefs – and our right to express them because of political interpretations that have nothing to do with the Ancient Norse Religion!

Contemporary political activists have no right to destroy the expressions of a religion and culture as old as the first evidence of the first human residents of the Norse Region, posted the Asa-samfundet on its website.

According to the government proposal, ancient Norse symbols and jewelry would also be banned as inciting animosity against ethnic groups. This would apply to the Thor’s hammer Mjölner, Odin’s Valknut and the Vegvisir.

The Asa-samfundet has started a campaign against the government’s plans, called “The Rune Battle” with the slogan “Do not touch our runes”. A petition has been started which at the time of writing had gathered nearly 6,000 signatures.

On Friday, May 24, between 14:00 and 16:00, a demonstration is also scheduled at Slottsbacken in connection with which the petition will be submitted to the government.

Interest in the Old Norse has grown strongly in recent times, also internationally, including TV series such as Vikings, The Last Kingdom and Game of Thrones.

Anyone who wants to sign the petition for the protection of the Norse cultural heritage and the right to practice the Old Norse religion can do it HERE.

Anyone who wants to participate in Friday’s manifestation in Stockholm will find more information about the event HERE.

The Washington Post updates the condition of the city by the bay which has more billionaires than any other location on earth and also more bums and winos crapping in the street.

San Francisco seems to be what you get when the piratical tradition of Gold Rush Capitalism somehow managed to interbreed with Hippy Dippy Gay Leftism.

Michael Feno stands outside Lucca Ravioli, his beloved pasta emporium on Valencia, a vestige of old San Francisco, puffing on a cigar while posing for pictures, his customers in tears.

Living in this city’s radically shifting landscape, veterinarian Gina Henriksen found comfort by telling herself, “Thank God, Lucca is still here. If Lucca goes, I’m going to have to leave San Francisco. What do we have left?”

Lucca is no longer here.

After 94 years, doors shuttered on the last day of April. The parking lot sold for $3.5 million. A three-building parcel, including the store, listed for $8.3 million and was purchased by — need you inquire? — a developer.

A few blocks away, in this neighborhood of shops hawking $2,600 electric bikes and $8 lemonade, Borderlands Cafe — a throwback with plants cascading from the ceiling — closed the same day after a decade in business.

Owner Alan Beatts couldn’t retain staff, even with a $15 minimum hourly wage. Who can live on $15 an hour in this city transformed by innovation?

How can Alba Guerra, co-owner of nearby Sun Rise restaurant, continue to charge $10.95 for the housemade vegan chorizo platter after her rent spiked 62 percent last year to $7,800 a month?

For decades, this coruscating city of hills, bordered by water on three sides, was a beloved haven for reinvention, a refuge for immigrants, bohemians, artists and outcasts. It was the great American romantic city, the Paris of the West.

No longer. In a time of scarce consensus, everyone agrees that something has rotted in San Francisco.

Conservatives have long loathed it as the axis of liberal politics and political correctness, but now progressives are carping, too. They mourn it for what has been lost, a city that long welcomed everyone and has been altered by an earthquake of wealth. It is a place that people disparage constantly, especially residents.

RTWT

CNN reports that the Navy is responding with new rules and “diversity and inclusion” counseling after two minority pilots who had been dropped from fighter training for inferior performance complained of Pilot Sign Protocol Bias.

The head of naval aviation has directed the creation of a new process for approving and reviewing pilots’ call signs after two African-American aviators at an F/A-18 Hornet training squadron in Virginia filed complaints alleging racial bias in the unit, from which they said they were unfairly dismissed.

In a formal endorsement letter signed May 13, Vice Adm. DeWolfe Miller, commander of Naval Air Forces, said he found the two aviators, a Navy lieutenant and a Marine Corps captain, were correctly removed from Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 106 out of Naval Air Station Oceana due to “substandard performance,” despite errors and inconsistencies discovered in the grading and ranking process.

However, Miller said he did find inappropriate conduct by instructor pilots who did not treat the pilots-in-training “with appropriate dignity and respect,” using discriminatory call signs and having inappropriate and unprofessional discussions about them on social media.

He directed the Chief of Naval Air Training to have all training command and fleet replacement squadrons in the Navy formalize a call sign assignment and review process within 90 days, including appropriate peer board representation for minority and female aviators. And he recommended that multiple officers, including a Navy captain, receive rebukes, counseling or administrative punishment for their role in events substantiated by the investigation.

Miller also ordered that VFA-106 receive training on appropriate use of social media and that the unit bring in a “diversity and inclusion expert” to train the squadron on unconscious bias and stereotype threat. Similar training, he wrote, will also be added to the curriculum for prospective commanding and executive officer courses and commander training symposia.

RTWT

“Buggins did it. It was Buggins who, once he got some power, thought he understood things which his dim little mind was never meant to even consider. The bloody little labor M.P.s, Bill this and Sam that, with their mouthings about the exploitation of the native peoples. What do they know about the work we’ve done? About the five years it might take to win over an African chief to the idea of giving up some barbarous and revolting custom, or about the other things in India. But roads, railways, hospitals, schools, hygiene. But Buggins has no use for that. It was done by gentlemen so it is no good. Baggins hates the gentleman because the gentlemen know the value of good things. Baggins is trying to destroy the good things we’ve done.” Through his clenched teeth he said, “God how I loathe and detest Buggins when he’s out of his place.”

— Gerald Hanley, “The Consul at Sunset,” 1951.

Brett Stevens:

We have given in to mundane, socially acceptable evil that we now accept as good, and that starts with individualism/equality, which is the backdoor into the human psyche. All of the stuff that the far-Right detests — diversity, decay in behavior, shattering of the family, international finance, Idiocracy, mass/pop culture, ethnic crime — has its origins in equality or being used to justify equality as a workable program. We target the root, where everyone else is swatting at flies and missing the big point. …

The core of politics for me is realizing that most people mean well, but do not understand how their actions translate to reality. They see a thing, want that thing, and desire that some all-powerful force will make it so, but that is religious thinking, not leadership. Democracy means that whoever sells the most pleasurable lie wins, and as a result society has drifted Leftward. At the close of the twentieth century, however, it had become clear that the liberal West was dying just as the Communist East had done.”

and

CLS:

Successful civilizations lead to weak populations. Weak populations know they are inferior. They know this instinctively. They have no purpose for existing. They don’t articulate this directly. They act it out indirectly by throwing themselves into acts of symbolic importance because they are not capable of acts of importance.

The Regents Park Police recently proudly posted a photograph of the arms cache collected from a local charity shop, and destined for destruction so that they will not fall into the wrong hands.

I see a large number of undoubtedly dull used paring knives, a few old and cheap chef’s knives, a lowest quality used carving knife, several bread knives, two sharpening steels, two carving forks, a letter opener, a cheap tourist-trade replica barong, a cheap and inaccurate tourist version of a tanto, one fencing foil (these are all blunt), a cake frosting spreader, and a spoon (!).

Now, thank goodness, with that deadly spoon safely off the street, citizens of Regents Park can sleep safe in their beds.