Tag: Stupid people

Right Idea, Wrong Application

Crime

From Insty I see this latest bit of nonsense:

Alief, a working-class suburb of Houston that is 71% Hispanic and black, is planting 1,200 new trees, but the objective is not just to beautify the neighborhood. Rather, the idea is that trees will fight crime.
…
Houston’s KTRK reported Friday that the tree-planting initiative is based on a study “published in the Journal of Public Economics,” which purported to establish that “when temperatures go up, crime does, too.” This is bad for Alief, which “averages 10 degrees hotter in the summer months than well-shaded areas of Houston.” This is because “Alief has only an 11% tree canopy, compared to the Houston average of 33%.” So if Alief cools off, the criminals will cool off. Or at least that’s the idea.

The only way that this makes sense is if over time the trees see the dead bodies of criminals dangling from their branches.  And before people start accusing me of wanting to create a health hazard in places like Alief (corpses wouldn’t take long to start rotting in Houston’s steamy climate), let me stipulate that no body should be left hanging for longer than a day before being replaced with a fresh one.  (As a bonus, that’s even an employment opportunity, both for hangmen and disposal staff.)

No doubt, someone will have a problem with my suggestion;  but as a rationale, it’s backed by more commonsense than the fanciful bullshit that “Ensuring equitable tree cover across every neighborhood can help address social inequities so that all people can thrive.”

It’s not “More trees, less crime” (which is a specious suggestion).  It’s “More trees, fewer criminals” (which is based on the cast-iron tautology of “Fewer criminals, less crime.”

Two Events, One Day

Eco-Crap

From our insufferable apartment management comes this little bit of eco-silliness:

I refrained from pointing out that the energy required to manufacture the snacks and bottle and deliver the “free” water would vastly exceed the puny energy “savings” from our little complex.  Talk about “virtue-signaling”…

Now, what other momentous event occurred on April 20th?

Oh yeah, a birthday:

Wherever the bastard is, I hope the temperature is set to BROIL.

Again?

Old Fartism, Travels

And the hits just keep on coming:

Southwest Airlines planes were grounded nationwide Tuesday for what the carrier called an intermittent technology issue.

But think of all the money they saved by not upgrading their systems for well over a decade…

I can’t really cast nasturtiums, though.  My laptop is five years old, I still use Windoze 10 and I haven’t downloaded upgrades to my 8-year-old printer, ever.  My car has nearly 130,000 miles on it, my 1911 has fired off close to 30,000 rounds and I still watch DVDs (never got into that blu-ray nonsense).  I even read Dead Tree books, not their electronic versions on Kindle, and I still love butter-fried eggs even though they’ll probably kill me.  The catalog of things in my life that have never been upgraded is voluminous.

But I’m just one guy, and not a billion-dollar corporation responsible for the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every year.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

From the Knuckledragger:

“You know, a wise person would take a look at the [Bud Light] ad and the losses that Anheuser-Busch has taken, put two and two together and then realize that the huge majority of Americans are sick and tired of this tranny bullshit.”

Silly rabbit:  that assumes the existence of wisdom in Corporate America.

Unaffected, Yet Still Amused

Corporate Wokism, Marketing / Advertising

As someone who has never drunk more than a mouthful of “light” beer (true story:  I tasted a Lite when I first arrived here, didn’t finish the drink, and never touched another of the type ever again), the brouhaha surrounding Bud Light’s marketing decision to elevate some girlyboy to be the brand spokesman has left me totally unmoved — well, apart from bursting out in derisive laughter, that is.

I don’t have a sexy MBA from some elite academic institution, so I’m hardly one to judge this latest example of woke stupidity [redundancy alert].  Nevertheless, here are some core principles I’ve discovered along the way, in a career that spanned over three decades of marketing and advertising.

Marketing Rule #1:  You never neglect (never mind alienate) your existing customer base.  They are the ones who pay your salaries and keep your production lines moving.

Marketing Rule #2:  Once your brand is established, you never chase after “new” customers, but concentrate on getting your existing customers to use your product more.  This is both intuitive and cost-effective, except perhaps to an inexperienced person with a sexy MBA from some elite academic institution.

Marketing Rule #3:  You never make radical changes to your marketing or advertising strategy, especially when it comes into direct conflict with the philosophy of the first two rules.

Marketing Rule #4:  You never let the latest “thing” drive changes to your marketing strategy, especially if that latest “thing” conflicts directly with your brand’s core principle (Unique Selling Proposition, ethos, whatever) and customer base.

And for senior management:  if anyone in your marketing structure — executives, ad agency, promotion company, whatever — suggests anything that flies in the face of the above four principles, fire them immediately before they get to make those changes.

Understand that they’re not being fired for making a mistake.  They’re being fired for deliberately ignoring the canon of the marketplace.