Pushback

Here’s an interesting situation over in Britishland:

The English Touring Opera has dropped 14 white musicians in a woke drive to ‘increase diversity’ in the company.  The musicians, aged 40 to 66, have been told they will not be offered contracts with the company in Spring 2022 citing diversity guidance from the Arts Council England, the Sunday Times reported.
The musicians, who officially work as freelancers, can be dropped from the opera season-on-season but many have played with the company for up to 20 years and consider it a permanent job.

Of course, this is a disgusting thing to do, but complaining doesn’t achieve anything, as any fule kno.

Here’s a thought.

I don’t have the numbers, but I’m willing to bet that this 40-66 age group would constitute a majority of the Touring Opera’s audience.  So I call on all patrons in that age range to boycott their performances.

I wonder if the company’s finances could sustain the subsequent loss of income…

Of Course It Did

Here’s a situation familiar to anyone who’s ever owned a classic British sports car:

She’s a lover of vintage cars, but Kate Moss suffered a set back when her beloved blue vintage MG broke down earlier this week.  The supermodel, 47, was forced to abandon her vehicle on the side of the A361 near Burford on Wednesday.
Kate’s classic car had to be collected by a recovery truck from the grassy verge of the road, with a team of mechanics checking the inside of the car and lifting up the bonnet.

As much as I love the things, even I will acknowledge that beauty sometimes requires sacrifice in other areas.  But seriously…
…and:

I know:  they’re expensive to run and maintain, temperamental, prone to frequent breakdowns, need constant oiling and maybe even a cylinder re-sleeve.  But hey, when looked after and in the right hands… pure fun.

Unnecessary Change

I am often teased about my resistance to change, but in fact I’m quite comfortable with it, when it is both necessary and/or beneficial.

Case in point:  last week I got sick of my phone performing random changes on me — e.g. switching to “Airplane” mode (a 3-button operation, so not a “fat-finger” or “butt-dial”  phenomenon) without my input — and a battery that had been charged t0 100% but had somehow shrunk to less than 50% by the time I got to the supermarket.  New Wife was having similar issues to mine — also un-prompted but different in type — and as we’d bought them at the same time some four years ago, we decided to get replacements together over the weekend.

Because I have ZERO tolerance for inanimate objects and even less with technology, we went off to the T-Mobile store at the mall so as to preclude situations like me hurling the new phone against the wall.  I had done a little research beforehand and decided on the model already (Motorola 4G something because I don’t trust 5G just yet) and as luck would have it, the store had them in stock — the last two, by the way — and so we sat down and got the friendly young customer service kid (thanks, Carlos) to perform the magic which would transfer the data on the old broken phones over to the new ones.  (It says something for the modern generation that he was able to perform said magic on both phones simultaneously without any hassle whatsoever.)

Of course, there was some work left to do — reinstalling the few apps I need to keep my life organized — but that was no problem because I’d done it before with the old phone, so easy job.

Then as I started to familiarize myself with the new phone’s operation, my irritation started its engine and the rev counter began to head towards the red line.  For starters, the familiar operation buttons at the bottom of the screen

…had been replaced by the inscrutable

…which requires one to swipe up to go back to the Home screen.  The “Back” and “Show Open Programs” buttons?  Gone without a trace, sunk quicker than the fucking Bismark.  You can show the open programs, but that requires two or three non-intuitive steps to get there, and I still haven’t found a replacement for the Back button.

WHY?  What possible user benefit does that change provide?

Next comes the incoming phone call answering screen, changed from:

…with, once again, a single button:

And because I get few phone calls anyway, I haven’t yet been able to figure out how to send the poxy call to Voicemail if I’m busy or don’t recognize the caller.

One again:  WHY?

The older screens were both functional, easy to understand and required absolutely no change, nor time spent in learning how to work the fucking things.

I remember back in the day that when buying a new car, learning how to work the thing required about 30 seconds — where’s the indicator lever, where are the light switches, how does the fan/AC work — and you could drive straight out the dealership and carry on with your life.

Now?  You need a 30-minute tutorial from the sales rep, and you’d better not lose your instruction manual (which itself requires a tutorial on how to use it, because car manufacturers insist on trying to make a single manual cover all the different models at once, rendering the thing as inscrutable as the Rosetta fucking Stone).

The new phone bullshit is even less justifiable.

I haven’t even mentioned the fact that the new phones use the smaller USB-C plugs, thus rendering all my old backup power cords redundant and requiring the purchase of a few new ones, to drive up the transaction cost.

Technological change is fine, but making it more difficult to operate on the most basic level does nothing but cause unnecessary aggravation.

New Wife locked the patio door before leaving for work so that my new phone wouldn’t turn into a submarine (the pool is but a few yards away from our apartment).  She is wise, and knows me well.

The only positive thing about all this is that the new (and larger) phone still fits in my car’s phone holder, so there’s that.

News Roundup

And it’s even worse than usual, I’m afraid…


Howard who?


and if that’s not enough to start a revolution


because it’s for your own protection, see?  AA’s fares will of course be going up to make up for the loss of revenue.

Dept. of Suckage:


why hasn’t this asshole been executed yet?

And on the same topic:


and we’d all be a lot less sorry if this asshole had been executed ten minutes after the guilty verdict.


must be all that Glueball Wormening we’ve been hearing about.

Which kinda makes this story even more suspect:


but no doubt, there’s a good explanation for all this.


yup, that will delay the plane for a little while, and Miss PhD. Candidate a lot longer.


is anyone still surprised by this kind of thing?


or, roughly half the value of the stuff that the US military just left behind in BaghramAlso note:  “avoid” (which is legal), as opposed to “evade” (which isn’t).


and owners of cars and trucks made before the Internet Of Things all look smug.


and looking at his picture, the parents are probably right.


you first, Toots.

 

Ugh.  I’ve seen sexier biker chicks.

Dept. of Righteous Shootings

Kinda skimpy on details, but:

An alleged robber is hospitalized in Houston, Texas, after being shot in the face Wednesday by an armed citizen.

If we’re going to get all legal and stuff, I think it should read “An alleged robber is hospitalized in Houston, Texas, after being shot in the face Wednesday with an alleged bullet.”

I’m just surprised that the choirboy survived, which is why we need to know stuff like what chambering was used, where in the face was he shot, etc.

We citizens need to know all this, so that we can make adjustments for the next time we are confronted by an alleged armed robber who pulls out an alleged gun and asks us nicely to hand over our possessions.

But in the meantime, for Our Hero:

Overload

With all the bollocks surrounding the miracle electric cars and how they’re going to Save The Planet, etc., anyone with half a brain knows that a.) electric cars need lots of juice to run and b.) the current electricity grid — in any country — would not be able to handle the surge in demand should a country (foolishly) decide to abolish gasoline-powered cars by x date (sooner rather than later).

So how would government handle the problem?  Step forward the BritGov, with a wonderful idea:

Charging points for electric cars will be preset to turn off for nine hours a day amid fears they could cause blackouts with the government pushing the switch from diesel and petrol.
From May, every new charger will automatically not function at ‘peak times’ to ease the pressure on the national grid.
There is also set to be a ‘randomised delay’ of up to 30 minutes if there is high demand from motorists.

Yeah, that’s going to get just everyone to dump their Jaguars for Priuses, won’t it?

Fucking morons.