Big THANKS to everyone who helped make the latest fund drive a success!!

I’ll get you some money when I can my duck, you deserve it! And do take care of your back and head. You only get one of each!

Other matters: for all the lovely commenters, just so everyone can see: there’s something up with comments. Your Name and email don’t auto-fill from the cache, and when you post something it can take a couple minutes to percolate. Makes me wonder if there’s some database update thrashing or something going on in the back end. Either way, for me at least it does seem that comments do go through, it just takes a few minutes to trickle through. Patience in these trying times!

Thank you for saying that about the autofill, Scildfreja. I was wondering if it was just me.

@David, clearing your server-side cache shouldn’t cause any long term issues – i mean, talk to your provider obviously, ’cause I don’t know WordPress, but in general the cache is just going to provide static views of pages. Delayed updates and the like could be involving slow cache updates. Also worth seeing what your database memory useage is and whether it’s close to capacity. May need to pay for more hosting capacity if you’re getting close to limits!

I dunno though I don’t run a site!

David, thank you for running such an excellent site for so long. You’ve not only allowed a great community to thrive here, but also – perhaps more importantly – you’ve continued fearlessly documenting the very worst people on the web, years before the rest of the world knew who they were.

May you continue for as long as you want to.

Sorry for the OT, but: the anti-abortion side has conceded defeat in the Ireland referendum! This is a huge change for Ireland!

Looks like a 60% voter turnout, which isn’t too bad, and about 70% in favor of repeal, which is pretty good.

Nice to know that things aren’t universally getting worse.

1. Thank you, David for slogging through the sewage tank so we don’t have to. Got to explain to my sis and BIL what an incel was. She was horrified. He was enraged. “Who the hell do those little creeps think they are?” My sister said, “They just have a terminal case of sour grapes. And that will make sure a woman never gets anywhere near them again.”

2. Congratulations, Ireland. I’m happy for you. Just don’t be complacent. The US should be a warning to you all. For us, one more hard right SC judge and we could lose what you just won.

@ Surplus to Requirements

Regrettably, we in the UK have beaten the USA to it over wrongfully deporting our own citizens.

And our current Prime Minister’s time as Home Secretary seems to have been key to the wrongful removal of at least 63 British Citizens of Caribbean origin, a situation that came to light as the Windrush scandal.

@EJ

I’m so tired. Britain is a scary place nowadays; it suddenly feels as if the multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance was only ever a veneer over something much deeper and more primally hateful.

If I had to contemplate where that resentment comes from, I think it’s a function of a couple things. For a lot of people, their idea of “multiculturalism” is essentially the “tokenism” of certain communities that surround you. For example, you might live in an urban centre in an upper-middle class neighbourhood surrounded by people that look like you, but once a year there’s a celebration of Greek heritage in Greektown or Chinese New Year in Chinatown and you can go and eat Greek or Chinese food, have fun and go back to your white Anglo life without having to have any of “those people” around. And everything’s fine.

But then you see too many of “those people” around your neck of the woods. They don’t dress and act like you. Suddenly all those traditions you only cared about for the half-day you were at Taste Of The Danforth are in your neighbourhood too! And those traditions get celebrated! So the fall-back is “they don’t respect [insert nation here] traditions”.

But what is that tradition? You don’t go to church. Your community interaction is likely superficial at best. All you are is what you consume: the food you eat, the car you drive, the video game console you play. So what traditions are you really lamenting here? Ask a Canadian what “Canadian traditions” are and I’ll bet you’ll get eight answers about hockey and one about apologies. But I’m willing to bet the Greek residents of the Danforth play hockey and say “Sorry” a lot too. The question then remains: what traditions are not being respected?

Case in point: Doors Open Toronto took me to the Revue Cinema, the oldest continuously-operating movie theater in Toronto, opened in 1912. It is located in Roncesvalles Village, which was known as an immigrant enclave and now boasts a significant Polish population. The Revue was playing short subjects about Toronto and I sat through a couple of business development films obviously trying to attract people from late 1920s or early 30s. The way they were pitching it was as Canada’s Queen City (read: second banana to Montreal, which was larger at the time) and boasting how it was the jewel of the British Empire. The CNE! Sunnyside! Mary Pickford! U of T is bigger than Oxford or Cambridge! Union Jacks everywhere.

So there I was, in the Polish community of Toronto, watching a propaganda film about how British Toronto was a century ago. As much as the University of Toronto quad has remained pretty much the same, the rest of the city has changed dramatically. Change upsets a certain segment of people. I don’t know how to placate them, and I don’t think anybody really does.

I gotta say, it was fascinating what made for selling points back in the 20s.

I gotta say, it was fascinating what made for selling points back in the 20s.

Especially since IIRC in the ‘oughts and teens they’d specifically been trying to recruit immigrants from Eastern Europe, though that was to go farm the Prairies, so maybe they still did want people from the UK for Toronto.

I think at least part of the Prairie recruitment strategy was “let’s get Ukrainian farmers who are used to (a) growing wheat and (b) cold winters.” They also ended up with my British great-grandparents, due to my great-grandfather’s search for a dry climate to help his lungs; apparently he had to occasionally convince skeptics at first that he wasn’t a “remittance man,” i.e. some upper-class twit whose scandalous behavior had caused his family to exile him to the colonies.

@Chris O

I know it might be slightly off-topic, but let’s not forget to spare a thought for our fallen troops on this Memorial Day(or Rememberance Day, depending on where you live).

Well, Canadian Remembrance Day coincides with the American Veterans Day on November 11th. Closest holiday we got to Memorial Day is Victoria Day which was last weekend.

Still, any time I’m at Mount Pleasant, I always take a moment to visit William George Barker inside the Mausoleum:

Just read his Victoria Cross citation:

“On the morning of the 27th October, 1918, this officer observed an enemy two-seater over the Fôret de Mormal. He attacked this machine, and after a short burst it broke up in the air. At the same time a Fokker biplane attacked him, and he was wounded in the right thigh, but managed, despite this, to shoot down the enemy aeroplane in flames.

He then found himself in the middle of a large formation of Fokkers, who attacked him from all directions; and was again severely wounded in the left thigh; but succeeded in driving down two of the enemy in a spin.

He lost consciousness after this, and his machine fell out of control. On recovery he found himself being again attacked heavily by a large formation, and singling out one machine, he deliberately charged and drove it down in flames.

During this fight his left elbow was shattered, and he again fainted, and on regaining consciousness he found himself still being attacked, but, notwithstanding that he was now severely wounded in both legs and his left arm shattered, he dived on the nearest machine and shot it down in flames.

Being greatly exhausted, he dived out of the fight to regain our lines, but was met by another formation, which attacked and endeavoured to cut him off, but after a hard fight he succeeded in breaking up this formation and reached our lines, where he crashed on landing.

This combat, in which Major Barker destroyed four enemy machines (three of them in flames), brought his total successes up to fifty enemy machines destroyed, and is a notable example of the exceptional bravery and disregard which this very gallant officer has always displayed throughout his distinguished career.

Major Barker was awarded the Military Cross on 10th January, 1917; first Bar on 18th July, 1917; the Distinguished Service Order on 18th February, 1918; second Bar to Military Cross on 16th September, 1918; and Bar to Distinguished Service Order on 2nd November, 1918.”

I realize that I can often be the one to throw a wet blanket on military chest-beating, but anybody who takes to the skies in contraption made of wood and canvas, engages overwhelming numbers (Wiki indicates 15+ planes!) of enemies and manages to take out four of them in a tailspin while wounded in at least three places and lives to tell of it gets a salute from me.

@Katamount, @Rabid Rabbit – I recognized the name “Fokker” from a William Gibson story where there’s a circuit of virtual-plane fighters (“Dogfight”, I think?) but I didn’t know it was a real aircraft until now! So much for using my fiction reading to make up for a lack of history knowledge.

(Most of my early knowledge about WW1 came from L. M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside, which painted a vivid portrait of the “home front” but was also gratingly patriotic in places.)