Well, ok, it’s probably not literally the worst Twitter conversation ever — you’ve seen Twitter, right? — but you have to admit it’s pretty awful all around.
In one corner, we have @apurposefulwife, “alt right” racist and defender of “Traditional Family Life and White Culture.”
In the other, manosphere clown @aaron_clarey, a dude who proudly identifies himself as an “asshole.”
Let’s get ready to rumble:
I hereby declare both combatants in this ideological battle huge losers.
The screenshot isn’t mine; I ran across it on Twitter, but unfortunately lost track of who originally posted it. Nonetheless, the tweets are real, and you can find the full discussion between @apurposefulwife and Mr. Clarey archived here.
Here are a few other recent Tweets from both of them. Such charmers!
https://twitter.com/apurposefulwife/status/688567891273199616
https://twitter.com/apurposefulwife/status/687298001920917505
https://twitter.com/apurposefulwife/status/686678320109387776
https://twitter.com/aaron_clarey/status/684856576419627008
https://twitter.com/aaron_clarey/status/686295836897210368
https://twitter.com/aaron_clarey/status/672849385722478593
https://twitter.com/aaron_clarey/status/686572810114850816
That last one is a warning to anyone tempted to buy one of his ebooks, not that anyone here will be.
oh, he actually puts ice in his whiskey, doesn’t he? yeah, you man of the world, you.
I most prefer Lagavulin, but generally drink Laphroiag because people who hate it keep buying it.
One of the regular Courts Martial centres is at a place called Kinloss. That’s in the heart of distillery country. You can have a nice walk through amazing countryside and see quite a few.
What amazed me was how small they are. Some of the most famous names operate out of premises about the size of a regular house.
The hotel we use pretty much has every decent Scotch available. The irony is I can’t stand the stuff. It’s like winning Willie Wonka’s golden ticket but then saying “Actually, I don’t care much for chocolate”
@Orion
I like Lagavulin, too. I mostly drink Oban, because its relatively cheap here and still quite good. But I’m really looking to get a bottle of that Smokehead for special occasions. Have you ever tried it? If not, I highly recommend it.
@Alan
That’s a pity. I remember watching a documentary about Islay (I think) where they introduced a guy who had reopened a small distillery that had stood empty for decades, only to discover a 40 year old barrel of Scotch in the cellar, which, of course, he proceeded to bottle and sell for thousands of bucks. They asked him if he had ever tried it himself. He made a face as if he had seen God and said: “Yes. I took a sip once.”
@ Bernardo
Islay is the one that no one can pronounce right, yeah?
Scotch sounds interesting. To hear enthusiasts talk it seems like liquid geology. But I just don’t like the taste. Weirdly, I don’t mind American whiskies.
Really? I thought it’s like island.
I get that not everybody likes that earthen taste of Scotch. I myself don’t like Bourbon very much, although I suspect that’s simply because I never had a really good one.
@guest:
The “scotch” and the “smoking” is how we know that he’s just so alpha!
My guess is that he’s drinking apple juice.
I like to sometimes listen to the manuresphere asshats while misandering extra hard by playing video games. Their nonsensical opinions do amuse me but I really don’t need to see their faces.
@ Bernardo
You’re quite correct. Some research on Gaelic YouTube has it as ‘Eye-lah’
The Lost German Slave Girl: The Extraordinary True Story of Sally Miller and Her Fight for Freedom in Old New Orleans
http://www.amazon.com/Lost-German-Slave-Girl-Extraordinary/dp/080214229X
This book looks like an interesting read about who is white. I haven’t read it but I’ve read about the woman at the center of this amazing story.
Vucodlak:
That was a very enjoyable rant, but this:
has just become the name of my new punk metal band!
Hmm, never trust a TV continuity announcer.
(Actually quite enjoyable in a different way)
Having recently finished reading “The Count of Monte-Cristo” I’d like to point out that the author of said work, and also “The Three Musketeers”, is widely believed to have been at least one-eighth, more probably one quarter, Afro-Caribbean. His paternal grandmother is known to have been a descendant of slaves, though born a free woman. Unfortunately, as she lived prior to the Revolution, a lot of information about her has been lost. 🙁
i somehow am not thankful for the protocols of the elders of Zion. Or the pogroms, or the whole of World War Two. Those are the things that came to my head when I saw that smug “thank a white person” hash tag. She might have been sleepy during history class.
@Monzach
Alexandre Dumas:
His father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas
Probably around 1/4 maybe?
I have not, but I will certainly give it a look-see!
I can also reccomend “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” by Lynne Truss. It’s a really fun book to read about punctuation and it taught me my favorite punctuation joke of all time (right before “Let’s eat grandpa!” vs “Let’s eat, grandpa!”).
The confusion that can be caused by a misplaced comma is considered such a risk in legal documents, that at bar school we’re specifically taught never to use them.
There’s a comma in the wrong place in the US confusion that allows for slavery in certain circumstances. I’ll leave where it is as an excercise for the reader.
@Alan Robertshaw
I’m prone to taking things literally. Because of this habit, I must point out that British lawyers certainly must use commas.
Perhaps they use them sparingly, but they use them.
The blameless series comma (Oxford comma)? Pick up tofu, organic peanut butter, and tequila from the store.
The innocent commas that set off a date? January 2, 2008, was an important day.
The virtuous commas that set off an apositive? My guiding light, Katie, inspires me to speak my mind.
@Kat
They don’t need to use them for dates when they can do 2 January 2008. 😛
@ kat
Oh we certainly use them in everyday writing, and they do slip into legal docs, although it’s considered sloppy.
But the list thing is one example. Do you have that mutatis mutandis thing? We have weird rules about interpreting lists. Often we’ll essentially use a schedule for stuff like that. Were also fond of brackets. You do see huge, multi clause sentences, but they’re very much frowned upon.
Even the famous panda example would be written as something like “pandas eat two main types of food. Pandas eat shoots. Pandas also eat leaves. Pandas do not necessarily eat both at the same time, although they can do.”
But lengthy, but avoids confusion.
The Katie example may use brackets (that’s a common way of identifying subjects) or split the sentence. “Katie is my guiding light. She inspires me to speak my mind” sometimes you’d even put “She (Katie) inspires…” In that second sentence.
We aim for clarity rather than elegance. The example they always use at bar school is a letter from sir Humphrey in yes prime minister. (Although ironically they go on to say how elegantly written it is!)
@ pandapool
Yeah, that’s how we do dates, so we don’t need commas. The US system causes all sorts of confusion here. We now obviously know what you mean by 9/11 but generally to us that’s ninth of November
Our own home grown terrorists were kind enough to go for seventh of July to make things simple.
@Alan Robertshaw
I spot a comma… ;-D
Dates are so confusing. 9/11 would normally mean the 9th of November here too. If I read a date in an English language text, I need to figure out if it’s a British or American source, or if it’s from some other country I need to google how they do dates. Can’t everybody just agree on one standard and stick to it, like we did with the metric system? 😉
@Alan Robertshaw
Thanks! That’s interesting information. I’ve known some lawyers well enough to talk to them about their work, but none of them mentioned that rule. Perhaps US lawyers don’t follow that rule, which actually does seem to be a sensible one.
@dhag85
I have problems with use-by dates on foreign foods. I’m never sure if the originating country’s system is used or the US system. But if a number is greater than 12, then I know that it refers to the day, not the month. Therefore the other number that’s not “2017” or some such must be the month.
@dhag85:
We have.
It has been internationally agreed that the date format YYYYMMDD is the correct and universally accepted way of writing a date; therefore today is 20160119. This can be separated out using hyphens or spaces or other punctuation to taste, but that order of numbers is specified by international standard 8601. If you add a time to it then put it on the right of the date in 24 hour format, starting with hours, then minutes, then seconds. For example the time that I’m writing this sentence could be written 2017-01-19 09:08.
The more troubling aspect is that no state out there appears to be willing to enforce the international standard that they actually signed up to. (ISO 8601 dates from freakin’ 1988.) This is just slack. No wonder we can’t meet Kyoto if we’re trailing on a thing as simple as date format.
I’m in favour of reeducation gulags, but that’s probably just me. /s
@ anisky
Ha yeah. Can we pretend I actually used the proper semi colon? 🙂