Month: April 2018

Adding The Years

Two-Minute Hate

I hardly ever read the insufferable, whiny Liz Jones (former editor of some girls’ magazine, now columnist for the Daily Mail and a lifelong Train Smash Woman), but this article’s headline caught my eye, and I found myself nodding in agreement.

Shouty headlines on Friday morning proclaimed: ‘Couple of glasses a night shortens life by two years! Much more than four bottles a week can lop off five years!’
By that count, I should have died four years ago.

I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve really needed a drink (as opposed to just wanting one), but I’m with Liz this time.

I have always wondered about the veracity of these scare stories, thinking, well, what if your wine glasses are really small?

As Loyal Readers know well, I don’t believe any of these shitty studies and / or scare stories anymore, because all you have to do is wait a couple months, and another study will come out and completely contradict the earlier one. Most of the time, they’ve all been written by scolds and busybodies who want to tell us how to live our lives — and by the way, when did every fucking thing become a matter of public health?

And Miz Jones surely has a point with this thought:

And I cannot help wondering why everyone wants to prolong a life that will inevitably be joyless, as if this were our only ambition.
There’s nothing to look forward to at the end of the day. No point sitting on a terrace with a beautiful view as, with no stem in your hand, all that’s left to do is fiddle with your phone. No reason to crave the interval during a play; I tend to slope off home at half-time, the prospect of Act Two too tedious without bubbles.
There’s no point winning an award or getting married or getting out of bed on Christmas morning. I’m generally asleep by nine, as there’s nothing to do. Nothing to dull the loss of a parent or child. Nothing to hold.

Here’s the thing: speaking for myself, I don’t need any of those reasons to have a drink, not a single one. But I can quite understand why someone else would want or need a drink on those occasions — whether out of joy, sorrow, or just wanting to relax.

As I said, it’s a rare occasion indeed when I agree with Liz Jones; but on this occasion, despite her irritating demeanor, I find myself in full agreement with her sentiment towards these tools: just leave me the hell alone and quit trying to scare me into living my life the way you want me to.

Scary stories are supposed to frighten children into better behavior. And by trying that tactic on adults, it reveals exactly what these “public health” Nazis think we are.

Fuck them all. Time for a healthy breakfast:

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Babes And Sucklings? Fuck ‘Em

Business, Two-Minute Hate

One of the most irritating and destructive Biblical statements is that innocence breeds strength — “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings…” etc. No. What you get out of the mouths of babes and sucklings is meaningless, uninformed babble at best, and sociopathic speech at worst.

As Loyal Readers know, I don’t have a FaecesBook account, so I don’t really have a personal dog in the current fight about how Zuckerberg’s little toy has been turned into an open-top mine of personal data for others to play with. (Click on that link at yer own risk: I nearly had a coronary when I read it.)

All I have to say is: this is the kind of thing you get when teenagers create multi-billion dollar companies without adult supervision:

They don’t have a fucking clue what they’re getting into, or the eventual consequences of their actions. (Or they do, and they’re amoral little fuckers like Mark Zuckerberg.)

And speaking of kids with guns: the day I support the idea that callow adolescents (like these children) get to dictate public policy and Constitutional amendments, is the day y’all need to ship me off to Senility Central. You have my full permission, given in advance.

Happy Together

Music

Watch this video (embedded in the pic), and if these charming young girls do not put a smile on your face, I don’t want to talk to you ever again.

There’s more cuteness in there than a basket full of kittens…

Loose Lips

Business, Ethics

…and I’m not talking about the Kardashians, Lindsay Lohan or the cast of Jersey / Geordie Shores, either. I’m talking about “leakers” — those Snowden types who are entrusted with confidential information, but can’t resist telling other people about it.

I’m going to make a clear distinction between leakers of State secrets — who deserve imprisonment regardless of their motivations, and whom we can discuss some other time — and commercial leakers, such as those addressed in a (leaked!) memo from Apple. I think the Apple folks are precisely correct:

Apple explains that leaked information about a new product can negatively impact sales of the current model, give rival companies more time to build a competing product and hurt sales of a new product when it hits the shelves.

I am unmoved by the apologists who point out that in Apple’s case:

Consumers continue to be in a frenzy each time a new Apple product is rumored, while the tech giant’s stock price has catapulted higher in the past year.

That’s not the point. The point is that when you work for a company, you are privy to information which, as the word “privy” specifically denotes, is privileged information. When you abuse that privilege, the company has “cause” to terminate the leaker (which is spelled out in just about every employment contract, and is implicit in all employment hiring). In extreme cases, as Apple adds in the memo, revealing confidential information can be and has been further grounds for arrest and indictment — which is precisely as it should be. Passing information directly on to a competitor is definitely criminal, and for leaking to the Press, a “scourging” rider should be attached to the criminal penalties.

At best, leaking confidential information is indiscretion; at worst it’s actual espionage. And leaking information just so you can feel important should translate to that feeling of importance as Jamal’s favorite plaything in Cell Block D — and Apple has given its assurance to its employees just how far they will go to making the latter part come true if employees are caught and identified.

I’m no great fan of Apple, but in this case: good for them.

Let us all be perfectly clear about this. We are talking here about ethics — when you are asked on your word of honor to keep a secret, whether on paper or by handshake, you keep your fucking mouth shut.

Lawyers have “client confidentiality” tattooed on their foreheads (metaphorically speaking), and quite frankly, I see no difference between those ethics or any other agreement concerning keeping your mouth shut.

And I don’t care if indiscretion doesn’t lead to any actual harm — e.g. lives being lost as a consequence — because breaching trust of any kind is just plain wrong, regardless of the penalties thereof.

Is that too high a standard? It better not be.

They nailed it perfectly in a bygone era:

…and Apple has simply extended the concept:

I am fully aware of the irony involved in discussing a topic which has arisen from a breach of confidentiality — i.e. a leaked memo from Apple in this particular case — but I could have written this post without any prompting at all. The leaked memo simply provided the spark which resulted in the above. Had I been CEO Tim Cook, I would have posted the memo on the front page of Apple’s website, to inform not only Apple employees but the whole world of its contents. It’s long overdue.