News Roundup

Today’s sponsor:

And in other health news:



...we know, dude — ’cause most of them seem to have ended up in Texas.


...like tossing a pebble into mud:  one small plop, no ripples, silence.


...there seems to be a lot of this going on, and it’s about time.


...it’s almost enough to make me want to go back to shopping at Target… nah, not yet.


...I like this, if only because now they won’t be able to slip in a verse from the Koran, either.


...living down to all my expectations of him.


...welcome to MY world.  Fuck Joe Biden.

And from INSIGNIFICA:


...no doubt she’s all embarrassed about her wrinkles and dried-up old mimsy flaps.

  ...hook up with these guys, sweetie: …that’ll show him.


...I actually tried this, as a service to my Readers.  And it tastes as bad as you think it would.

Finally, in Paige Three News:


...I’d share the link and pics, but I refuse to be responsible for all those exploding erections.

Oh, what the hell…

And that’s it, for the news.

Unaffected, Yet Still Amused

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.

Pick Of The Litter

You have a chance to get three (and only three) cars from this collection as tax-paid gifts from the dead guy’s estate:

Read the descriptions and so on at the linked article, then make your choice and post in Comments.

Assume that you won’t immediately sell them and pocket the money.  Play the game.

My three choices (in order):

Read more

Time For An Update

This is one of my favorite Reader games, and I can’t believe I haven’t run this in so long.

Here’s the setup.  It’s called HANG THE SOCIALIST, and starts with the well-known Hanging Tree:

Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to put a name to each number.  Your list ought to be in order of preference.  (I know, only 15?  Deal.)

Have at it in Comments.

The Tightening Spiral

Bear with me while a gather all sorts of straws, political, social and policy.  Some will have links you can follow, most won’t because you’d have to have been in a coma not to have seen them.

So Government — our own and furriners’ both — have all sorts of rules they wish to impose on us (and from here on I’m going to use “they” to describe them, just for reasons of brevity and laziness — but we all know who “they” are).  Let’s start with one, pretty much picked at random.

They want to end sales of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines, and make us all switch to electric-powered ones.  Leaving aside the fact that as far as the trucking industry is concerned, this can never happen no matter how massive the regulation, we all know that this is not going to happen (explanation, as if any were needed, is here).  But to add to the idiocy, they have imposed all sorts of unrealistic, nonsensical and impossible deadlines to all of this, because:

There isn’t enough electricity — and won’t be enough electricity, ever — to power their future of universal electric car usage.  Why is that?  Well, for one thing, they hate nuclear power (based on outdated 1970s-era fears), are closing existing ones and will not allow new ones to be built by dint of strangling environmental regulation (passed because of said 1970s-era fears).  Then, to add to that, they have forced the existing electricity supply to become unstable by insisting on unreliable and variable generation sources such as solar and wind power.  Of course, existing fuel sources such as oil. coal and natural gas are also being phased out because they are “dirty” (they aren’t, in the case of natgas, and as far as oil and coal are concerned, much much less so than in decades past) — but as with nuclear power, the rules are being drawn up as though old technologies are still being used (they aren’t, except in the Third World / China — which is another whole essay in itself).  And if people want to generate their own electricity?  Silly rabbits: US Agency Advances New Rule Targeting Portable Gas-Powered Generators. (It’s a poxy paywall, but the headline says it all, really.)

So how is this pixie dust “new” electricity to be stored?  Why, in batteries, of course — to be specific, in lithium batteries which are so far the most efficient storage medium.  The only problem, of course, is that lithium needs to be mined (a really dirty industry) and even assuming there are vast reserves of lithium, the number of batteries needed to power a universe of cars is exponentially larger than the small number of batteries available — but that means MOAR MINING which means MOAR DIRTY.  And given how dirty mining is, that would be a problem, yes?

No.  Because — wait for it — they will limit lithium mining, also by regulation, by enforcing recycling (where have we heard this before?) and by reducing battery size.

Now take all the above into consideration, and see where this is going.  Reduced power supply, reduced power consumption, reduced fuel supply:  a tightening spiral, which leads to my final question:

JUST HOW DO THEY THINK THIS IS ALL GOING TO END?

If there’s one thing we know, it’s that increased pressure without escape mechanisms will eventually cause explosion.  It’s true in physics, it’s true in nature and it’s true, lest we forget, in humanity.

Volcanoes erupt when the pressure of expanding gas and magma becomes too much for the Earth’s crust to prevent.  The English once executed their king because his rule became too tyrannical to bear.  (Side note:  when the Cromwellian republic also became too tyrannical, they brought back the kingdom, but the next king was a much gentler and more controllable one than his father was.)

Here’s the historical truism when it comes to tyranny, and it’s true for all totalitarian regimes:

Totalitarian states suppress their peoples and impose misery on them.  When the people rebel against that suppression and misery, the State uses that as an excuse to suppress them yet further, and increase the misery thereby.

But at some point the dictator will be executed, the soviet will be cast out (by force if necessary), and the walls will be brought down.

Sic semper tyrannis.

I just hope I’m still alive to see that day, to help reload the machine guns, and to hold the coats of the gunners while refilling their tray of martinis.