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Common Thread

Crime

Three separate places in the U.S. were rocked by mass shootings over the past few days:

In Kentucky, five people were shot, one fatally, when gunshots rang out in a park near a packed downtown bar district Saturday evening. At least 13 shots sent revelers running for cover.  The shooting took place at roughly 6.45pm at Charles Young Park. 

Next:

Meanwhile, a mass shooting was unfolding in Chicago, at around 7.15.pm. It left four injured, two critically, after a car pulled up beside a group walking along a sidewalk in the city’s Gresham neighborhood.  The victims were all injured after multiple occupants fired shots out of the windows before driving off.

And lastly:

A 19-year-old suspect was arrested Saturday evening, though, for a shooting that occurred at Virginia State University outside Richmond early Saturday and injured five, including a student.  Suspected gunman Camron Harris is not a student and is from Virginia, Chesterfield County Police said in a statement shortly after making the arrest. Neither were four of the people injured.

There’s one commonality that’s curiously been omitted from the press coverage of these admittedly-tragic events.  Let’s just examine one particular circumstance of each.

The performing act in that concert at Charles Young Park in Lexington was a group called Benny J & Friends, who according to their website are a “funk, R&B and soul” band.  Charles Young Park is located in a predominantly-Black neighborhood.

The drive-by shooting took place in Gresham, which is a working-class, predominantly-Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.

Virginia State University has a predominantly-Black student body, but as only one student was injured, that’s probably not important.  What is important is that the shooter and four of the victims weren’t students.

Now before anyone of the Woke Generation gets onto me about this, let me say very firmly that what I’m commenting on is not the probable race (Black) of the events, victims or shooters.

What I am curious about is that not a single press report picked up on that commonality between the three mass shootings.

It took me about fifteen minutes to do that research myself, and to write this post.

But of course, the overall takeaway from the press reportage is how all these terrible mass shootings are so frequent an occurrence, and as KYGov Beshear was quick to pounce on, mere minutes after the shooting at Charles Young Park:  “To stop mass shootings, we have got to elect Democrats that will actually do something about it.”

Pro tip:  They’re not going to “do something about it” other than try to pass more stupid gun control laws that will not — ever — prevent mass shootings like the above from occurring.  Nor will they — ever — try to improve the tragic set of circumstances that lead to Black kids killing each other, routinely and often.

What they will do is defund their police forces, refuse to prosecute violent criminals, make plea deals that result in less jail time, and release convicted violent criminals from jail prematurely:  all of which will only exacerbate the problem.

But Trump / MAGA / Republicans are the evil ones.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD, Technology

From Steven Miller:

“Data centers being built isn’t the problem, the data in those data centers is.”

It has always been my major concern about this whole business.  It started way back, when I found out that Google was suppressing search results for my old Nation Of Rifleman website.  Even keying in whole sentences or blocks of text from a specific post didn’t bring up the post, or even the website itself.

So now I’m supposed to trust artificial “intellgence”, when I have no idea what the search criteria are, or what sources were accessed to produce those “intelligent” results?

I don’t fucking think so, Simon.

Executive Advice

Corporate Wokism, Men & Women

I had to laugh at the news that the WNBA is going to need “weeks and months” to decide (in essence) the definition of a “woman”, which will decide once and for all (or probably not, see below) who qualifies to play in their stupid little league.

Here’s the problem.  Women are by nature accommodationist.  They seek to make decisions based on consensus, something that takes all viewpoints and attitudes into account, and finally arrive at such decisions with the implicit (and sometimes explicit) understanding that the decisions may be altered at some point — even when the decision may be critical and a matter of foundation principle, as is the case here.

In this case, that approach is not only wrong, but completely wrong.

At the risk of sounding all mansplainy, allow me to offer some advice to the WNBA chicks.

  1. Whenever an executive decision is made, somebody’s going to get upset about it.
  2. The key to making the best decision is to decide whether that aggrieved person (or group) represents a significant obstacle or even threat to the future of your organization.
  3. If you are convinced that your decision is the right one for both the short-term and long-term viability of your organization, and that the opposition’s position isn’t, make sure you set up guardrails to ensure the decision’s permanency.

That’s the 200,000-ft perspective.  Here’s the nitty gritty:

Decide that the definition of a woman is someone identified as such on their birth certificate.  Period, end of statement, end of discussion.

Yes, I know there is a percentage of the population who were born female but turned out to be male, either by physiology or inclination — and vice versa.  And yes, I know that it’s a tragic circumstance for them.

Here’s what I also know:  decisions have to be made — especially in a corporate environment — that benefit both the organization and a significant majority of their employees.

Let me mansplain that further.

Allowing biological men to play in the WNBA will do two things, both fatal to the organization and to the game.

Whether you like it or not, a huge percentage of your already-tiny audience is going to react negatively to the spectacle of “cocks in frocks” taking over the game and rendering the contest meaningless.  With the disappearance of spectators — live or on TV — this is going to mean reduced interest from your advertisers, and a concomitant loss of revenue for your already-cash-poor organization.  That’s the corporate outcome.

As far as the sport is concerned, that dominance is going to subtract the entire essence of sport — of equals competing against each other.  Thus, adding the aforesaid cocks in frocks is just going to end up with teams recruiting more and more of them, which is going to harm your (actual) female performers both physically and in terms of their competitiveness.

Yes, that means that the gender-confused will be forever denied a chance to play in your competition.  It’s sad, but in real life, tiny minorities often get the short end of the stick.  It’s just the way of the world, and has been so forever.  All the good intentions aren’t going to change that, and most probably, such intentions are going to be very counterproductive to your corporate wellbeing.

So, if I may be permitted to use a very masculine term, the WNBA has to bite the bullet, and make the above — and correct — decision.

They won’t.  And the WNBA will begin its slide into oblivion.

You read it here first.

Classic Beauty: Googie Withers

Classic Beauty

Uncommon name, uncommon beauty, uncommon talent.  I first saw Googie (pronounced with hard “g”s, like Google) in  It Always Rains On Sunday , and while she was really good, I gave her no more mind.  Then I saw her in Once Upon A Dream, then in One Of Our Planes Is Missing, and was spellbound both times.  I’ve never seen her in anything else — which is surprising, considering that she was in  the movies for over seventy years.

Like so many actresses of the 1940s, she was done wrong by the hairstyles of the times…

Oh… did I mention that she started off as a dancer?

Of course, nobody’s perfect;  she ended up marrying some Australian actor and moving to Strylia, the poor thing.

What Price Collecting?

Finance, Morons & Idiots

Lots of educational video to watch today, because… it’s the weekend!

One of the reasons why wealthy people are looking at hypercars as fungible assets and investment vehicles [sic] is because they are wealthy enough to ride the ups and downs of consumer demand — why, for example, a rusted-out 1950s-era Porsche 911 or 1960s E-type Jag can ask for, and get, a premium price for that piece of junk.  Scarcity, of course, helps — which is why a rusted old 1956 Porsche 356 cabriolet will always be worth more than a worn-out 1975 Honda Civic:  the first is worth restoring, the second is only worth recycling.

If you’re interested in learning about this business — even or especially if you can’t afford to play in it — then I would suggest you watch Cars & Money, Rob Moore’s excellent podcast channel with his partner, Carl Hartley of Tom Hartley Motors.  Here’s one example.  (All the podcast episodes are long, about twenty minutes too long in my opinion, but they’re peculiarly fascinating.  This particular episode, you can quit at 1:28.00)

And speaking of watching, there’s the premium watch business, where Teddy Baldassarre, for example, plies his business.  (Here’s one.)

But in this latter category, if you want to see all the costs of creating a watch collection — as an investment strategy — then please take a look at this one, (yeah, it’s A.I., but it’s factually correct) to find out how the big watch brands are bending collectors over the table:


(…and these guys are the worst, which is why I’ll never own a Rolex, because I’m not going to play their stupid game.)

Oh, and by the way:  the actual purchase price of these items is only the first lightning-strike on the wallet.  Then comes the (mandatory) servicing, the parts replacement, etc. etc. etc…. see how the insurance companies play ducks and drakes with your premiums.

Oh, and by the way, car manufacturers like Ferrari are equally guilty of the same kind of practices (which you’ll also learn from Cars & Money;  watch out for the word “allocation”).

 


…and Porsche is just as bad.

If a fool and his money are soon parted, then the duration of “soon” is shrinking faster than a cheap Chinese cotton T-shirt in the clothes dryer.

And when baubles like watches and performance sports cars start becoming investment assets, the Finance Fucks in companies like Rolex are going to start making marketing decisions (pro tip:  they already are).

It’s the utter cynicism of the whole business which gets up my nose.  My only consolation is that the fools who’re being thus led around by the nose are the super-wealthy who can afford to pay those bullshit prices.  And I have absolutely no sympathy for them.