Category: Business

Getting Back To Business

Business, Eco-Crap

After fucking around with all the Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© nonsense, some sanity may be peeking its little head out of Britishland’s economic foreskin:

Britain’s biggest environmental quangos could be scrapped as part of a new Tory war on red tape designed to boost growth.

Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith will unveil plans to ‘abolish’ the Environment Agency and Natural England to help streamline regulations that are ‘acting as a drag anchor on our economy’.

Mr Griffith will argue that ‘the biggest deregulation project in a generation’ could help kick start the sluggish economy, drive investment and cut prices.

He will claim that cutting red tape and Net Zero rules driving up construction costs could slash the price of a new house by up to £50,000 and boost supply.

Yeah, I hate to pee into the Soup of Goodness™ here, but let me remind y’all that this is the Conservative Party we’re hearing from — and it’s because they always reneged on their promises in the past that they got tossed out during the previous election, ushering the Commies into power.

So let’s not get all excited just yet.

(I’d suggest that the Conservatives ask ArgyPres Milei for tips on how to do all the above, but they’re on the no-speaks with him because he wants to take over the Falkland Islands or something.)

Added Snoopery

Corporate Fuckery, Surveillance Society

Reader Mike L. points me at this latest example of Panopticalism:

Baystate Health is introducing new artificial intelligence-based weapons detection systems across its hospital facilities to enhance patient and visitor safety.

The technology combines traditional hardware with AI tools to screen people as they enter the building. By detecting specific metal masses and weapon-like shapes, the system allows daily items such as pacemakers, wheelchairs, phones and wallets to pass through without setting off alarms.

The system utilizes technology similar to what is used at schools and sporting events to detect prohibited items, including firearms, knives and electronic smoking devices. To accommodate the system at Baystate Medical Center, the hospital is closing its pediatric emergency department entrance to establish a single entry point where everyone passes through the detector.

Forget it, Jake.  It’s Massachusetts.  (Motto:  Where your pets have more rights than YOU do.)

That said, BOLO for similar fuckery in your state or city — and not just in hospitals either, because if the tech exists today, expect it to spread like the bubonic plague by tomorrow.  It’s like the loathsome Flock cameras, only with added bastardy.

Comeback

Celebrities, Marketing / Advertising, Men & Women

I have to say that I’m starting to get more and more impressed by young Sydney Sweeney as time goes on — and not just for the usual reasons.

First it was that wonderful jeans commercial, and her total unconcern about the critical response.  Next was the followup, which also met with disapproval, and her “don’t give a damn” response.

Then came that infamous interview with some feministical harpy, which gave birth to hundreds if not thousands of memes.

Now she’s posed stark naked (well, not actually) for some sports betting commercial or other, and when the usual harpies started wailing about how she was demeaning wimmens’ sports by appearing naked, she simply responded by posting pics of several sportswomen’s naked pics from their own ad campaigns.

Gotta love the gal.

Yeah, no Sydney pics, only links.  Blame the lawyers.

A Second Industrial Revolution?

Economics, Good News, Manufacturing

Perhaps, just possibly, we may be starting to turn a corner.  From this:

Where did all that creativity come from? Largely from physical suburbs, neighborhoods of the middle and working classes, and nuclear families – all seen as contemptible by globalist/Marxists – where the father had a good job. Who have almost all been reduced to desperation. Why? Because globalism effectively shipped tens of millions of jobs overseas, and the environmental movement, backed by globalists, cleared tens of millions rural dwellers into the mega-cities, where they languish in matchbox apartments beside super highways. A manufacturing job has a multiplier of five and a resource job a multiplier of 7. Where, I ask you, do people think money comes from? Production? The Fed? To globalists the Central Banks print money to pay their mounting liabilities, thank you very much.

To this:

Now both Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, who put all their eggs into globalism, are sneering, but this is what is happening in the real world, the physical world, where actual people make actual things.

And what follows is a long list of developments that should make one feel a little more hopeful, in that they are reversing the effects of “off-shoring” our manufacturing capacity and the shuttering of energy development.  Then:

None of these depend on green energy. Why? Because green energy is a boutique operation for rich globalist virtue signalers meant to steal subsidy from the taxpayer.

The investments from the private sector into the physical economy are equally huge, as the big houses diversify away from globalism and carbon capture and alternative energy as profit. Trillions are moving into the marketplace.

Oh, and Trump just CRUSHED the trade deficit, slashing it from $136B to $29.4B, the lowest in 20 years. America has been subsidizing the rest of the world long enough. Time all those broken countries stood on their own two feet.

Time to grow.

I think we can do it.  The rest of the world?  I’m not so sure.

This New Thing

Marketing / Advertising, Morons & Idiots

Probably the modern word I hate the most is this “influencer” tag.  Fuck me, every totty with some kind of EeewwwChoob / TikTwat channel is now suddenly an “influencer” because her views of makeup / clothing / (whatever fad the younger audience of today are obsessed with) seem to cause advertisers to swoon with delight, according to the number of “followers” they are supposed to have according to some impenetrable measurement method.

There’s nothing wrong with the latter, of course:  the Nielsen ratings were once the yardstick whereby advertisers could approportion their spending among the various TV stations and shows according to the shows’ audience size.

Or maybe it’s just sour grapes on my part, because these (mostly-brainless) girls are raking in the cash with their “content” — the latter being nothing but opinion (largely shaped, I assume, by the brands’ sponsorship of such).  And apparently, being beautiful with large breasts increases their allure (no idea why).

I find it interesting that male “influencers” tend to have more actual content on their shows;  the wonderfully-low-class Mat Armstrong, for example, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars (okay, pounds sterling) out of repairing crashed supercars — he’s just bought a house in England and another in Miami, so we can safely assume that his business is profitable —  while stalwarts like Garand Thumb (two guys with actual expertise, being former SpecFor and Ranger operators) skimp along, apparently, with sponsorships from various gunny-type companies (but have a lot of fun along the way).

I suppose that even I could call myself an influencer, judging by the number of (tongue-in-cheek) complaints from people over the years, wailing about how they were perfectly happy with their firearms until they came to this website and were compelled — forced, even — to buy yet another gun they didn’t know they needed until I spoke glowingly about its allure and excellent qualities.

Did I get any kind of remuneration from this “influencing”?  Don’t be ridiculous.

So yes, maybe I am jealous that today’s influencers make money hand over fist each week while I have made, at a rough guess, a few thousand dollars — over twenty years — from my type of influencing.

Of course, my own cussedness hasn’t helped, in that I refuse to take on advertising (I did, once, very briefly for a few months during the NoR days, until an advertiser complained that I’d said Bad Things about his industry and I told him to fuck off and pulled the plug on the whole thing).  Ditto sponsorships, mostly because gun companies don’t need me when they have “gun writers” to pimp their products via the various gun magazines, but also because I absolutely refuse to be tied to any kind of influence over my opinions on, well, anything.

It also doesn’t help that my “likes” are confined to a really small list of products and such, either.

So I guess I am and have been my own worst enemy in this regard.

Oh well.

Here’s an unsolicited (and unpaid-for) recommendation (link in pic):

It’s a pre-WWII Sempert & Krieghoff tube-fed semi-auto chambered in 8x60mm, and it’s so beautiful it makes me swoon like a schoolgirl groupie.   Okay, at $17,500 it’s not the cheapest gun you could buy, and good luck finding the obscure 8x60mm S ammo anywhere, which means it’s strictly for reloaders.

And its performance is pretty much on a par with its smaller 8x57mm Mauser cousin, which is plentiful and can be fired far more cheaply from rifles like this mil-surp K98k:

…which are sold everywhere and can be had for under $1,000.

But you have to admit, that one-of-a-kind Sempert sure is pretty.  If you do decide to buy it, mention my name to the folks at Collectors, which will result in nothing more than a “who?” from them and not a single penny of kickback to me.

Par for the course, really.