Sensible Enough

I note that some of the Euro airlines are going to mandate that passengers wear face masks for the entire journey, which seems somewhat excessive given that they’ve (finally) got round to installing HEPA air filters to clean the recirculated air.

The main danger of infection is not through the air, but in touching the surfaces inside the aircraft — given how shoddily these are typically cleaned, if at all.

Based on thousands of hours imprisoned in these winged cigar tubes, I would suggest that what people really need to do is carry many sterilized wipes with them, and clean as thoroughly as possible areas like seatbelt buckles, tray tables and armrests — the places that people touch with their filthy hands and (yes) feet.

Oh, and ALWAYS bring your own food, especially on long-haul flights (I wrote about my choices here).  That way, you’re assured of eating exactly what you want and not being compelled by hunger to eat airline food [pause to let the nausea go away]  and even have emergency food if you’re stuck on the plane or in the airport for longer than expected.

If you have to fly, that is.  I don’t see myself doing so until next year.  (Mr. Free Market has hinted at a high-bird shoot in Dorset in Fall 2021…)

No Business Sense

Here’s a situation which left me scratching my head:

The managing director of a plant wholesaler said his firm has lost more than £2.5million-worth of business in the last three months after garden centres were forced to close as part of the coronavirus lockdown.  Adrian Marskell, who runs The Bransford Webbs Plant Company in Worcester, in the West Midlands, has had to begin throwing away around 100,000 flowering plants which cannot be sold.  Shocking photos show mountains of de-potted plants waiting to be composted, with others sitting in colourful rows, all destined to be thrown away.

I would have done something a little different.

Why not load up the plants in the back of a truck, then drive around all the residential streets in Worcester, depositing two or three plants at a time in front of houses, with a note attached:

“Rather than toss all these lovely plants in the skip, we’d rather they found a good home in your garden instead.  Please accept them with our compliments, and we hope to see you all when the lockdown comes to an end.”
— Bransford Webbs Plant Company

And come tax filing time, I’d write off the cost of the plants as an advertising expense.

No doubt, this being Britishland, there’s some law against doing all that.

Racial Preferences

My first job as a teenager was as a computer operator at a large corporation, part of an expansion of the IT department’s mainframe system.  There was one other White male operator, and an Indian guy was the department supervisor.   As more operators were hired, all were Indians (coincidentally, all from the supervisor’s home city in India).

Within six months, I and the other White operator had been replaced by two Indians.

Several years ago, I knew a highly-respected senior executive at a huge multinational corporation who once attended a meeting with the IT department.  This having happened when globalism was all the rage, it will come as no surprise that almost all the people in the meeting were Indian men — and not one of them second-generation American, either:  all were recent immigrants.

Anyway, as the meeting went on, the language increasingly turned into Hindi — this in a company which insisted on English as its global language in all correspondence and conversation — and when my friend insisted that everyone speak English, the atmosphere turned hostile.  “But we understand each other better in our native language!” was the protest, whereupon my friend, not known for her tact, said, “Then you should have stayed in India, where everyone understands your home language.  Unfortunately for you, we’re in America, this is an American company, and our corporate language is English.”

Half an hour after the meeting’s conclusion, she was summoned to H.R., officially reprimanded for “cultural insensitivity”, and told to watch herself in future.

So she filed a formal complaint against H.R. for not enforcing corporate policy and (deliciously) adding that one of the men had referred to her as a “stupid bitch” during the meeting — unfortunately for him, one of the few Hindi expressions she understood — and she filed a complaint against him for sexual harassment.  He was “reassigned” to another division a week later, and the H.R. flunky was also officially reprimanded, by Legal this time.

It didn’t matter, though;  over time, the entire IT department became staffed by Indians, all H-1B visa holders.

It is a little-known fact of corporate life — not just here in the U.S., but in Britain as well, that unless checked, Indians will always hire other Indians, and if they can, they’ll displace non-Indians in order to do so.

And this is why I understand exactly what is going on in this little situation:

An Indian-run outsourcing company used Congress’s H-1B visa-worker program to systematically discriminate against American college graduates, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in New Jersey.
The company, named Wipro, “operates under a general policy of discrimination in favor of [imported] South Asians and against [American] individuals who are not South Asian and not Indian,” says the lawsuit, which was filed in New Jersey.

U.S. executives strongly favor outsourcing because it makes work easier for CEOs and H.R. managers, the Americans say to Breitbart News. The Indian workforces are easy to hire and fire, they don’t complain to managers, they do not make professional arguments against executives’ decisions, and they allow kickbacks via India or ancillary U.S. businesses, the Americans say.

Lovely, isn’t it?

I hope that this open secret gets whacked, and fast — and if it does, at least one good thing will have emerged from the Chinkvirus pandemic, as the massive job losses we’ve sustained have brought practices such as these to everyone’s attention.

And don’t let anyone get sidetracked into thinking that this comes from racial animus against Indians — because it’s the exact opposite:  Indians are discriminating against Whites, and as much as they might claim that this is all in the service of the great god “Cost-Cutting”, they’re lying.  It’s a way to get Indians hired, and a way to get tech expertise back to India.  (If you think I’m exaggerating, please prove me wrong by showing me the statistics proving that a large majority of Indian H-1Bs do not return to India, and go on to become U.S. citizens.  Good luck with that.)  It’s absolutely no different from the ChiComs infiltrating U.S. universities and taking expertise out of the country and back to China.

I hope that Wipro gets sued out of existence.

News Roundup

…with even shorter commentary than usual!


but what would really upset them would be the number of volunteers to man the firing squads.  And considering they’re all on the ChiCom payroll.


of course we do.  So we can get lots more of this kind of thing: 

and a special message to the has-beens known as the Bush Dynasty:  shut the fuck up.


and you’ve gotta see the pic.


because Communism is SO civilized… you murderous cocksuckers.  And:


at a rough guess, pretty much everything they said, including “and” and “the”.


and for the first time ever, I’m envious of the Danes.


I always knew he didn’t kill himself.  From the funniest website since the Babylon Bee.


LOLCue Big Education’s screams of outrage as their lies are exposed, in 3… 2… 1


and when he recited his wedding vows,  still no one could understand what he was saying.


hey, no fair, wait a minute:  did Republicans have a plan B when John McCain became their frontrunner?


okay, stop laughing now, this is serious.

Mystified

I understand why people use drive-through lanes to get their morning coffee en route to the office, even though I think it’s a mark of either stupidity or pure laziness when the “convenience” is nullified by long waits in the queue, e.g. in Britishland:

Motorists queued for hours to get a drink at Costa drive-throughs this morning, sparking fears people are ignoring lockdown measures as more high street chains reopen.
Tailbacks stretched around the block at takeaway chains in Edinburgh, Wakefield and Glasgow today as drivers waited to get their coffee fix.
At the weekend, eager customers queued for more than a mile to get a coffee at a branch in Snowhill Retail Park in Yorkshire as it reopened after more than a month on Saturday.

Costa makes decent coffee, but it’s not that  great.  (And don’t get me started on Starfucks’s burnt water concoctions.)

For those people who are not completely up to date on recent modern inventions, there are now things called “travel mugs” which allow one to make one’s coffee at home and take it to the office, where it can still be enjoyed hot.  Here’s an example:

… or, if one prefers to support one’s favorite coffee brand: 

Pro tip:   Plastic travel mugs are useless.  Nothing beats a decently-insulated metal one — unless you’re rich and can afford the Thermos (glass-interior) type.

Even better, brewing one’s own coffee at home allows one to use a decent brand of coffee — whether it’s the humble Dunkin’ Donuts Regular (still my favorite coffee, after thirty years):

  … or one of the “gourmet” (over-priced) offerings: 

In the old days, the only way to brew coffee was in a giant thing which made a large pot of the stuff — which, of course, is not the optimal choice when one needs only a single cup.  However, since the mid-1990s there has been another option, the single-cup home brewer:

…or, if one wants to feel all Italian: 

…which were once tied to the awful pods, but now allow one to use ground coffee in a small filtered device which — and I cannot express this strongly enough — enables one to brew coffee to the desired strength, and not as decided by some bored coffee-jockey.

I know that all this sounds terribly complicated, and really can’t compare with the joy of waiting for hours in one’s car, eventually to get a cardboard cup filled with overpriced coffee, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out at least a modest option thereto.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the Keurig.

Don’t Bother

I am really, all evidence to the contrary, a fairly even-tempered man [quit yer sniggering, it’s true].  Whenever people who only know me from this website meet me in person, they’re all astonished to discover that I’m quietly-spoken, placid and quick to laugh or chuckle at life’s many little hassles.  Even behind the wheel, I am not — and never have been — prone to road rage;  automotive dick-headedness will almost always just get a shake of the head and a quiet “What an asshole” from me.

The one thing, however, which is guaranteed to turn me into an instantly-violent psychopath is pranking, whether in public or in private.  I don’t play pranks on people — I actually think it’s a form of cruelty — and I have absolutely no tolerance for pranksters.  (And for any who want to test that, having read this, please don’t.  It will not end well for you.)

So when I watched this video at the Knuckledragger’s place, my response was immediate — I roared with laughter, frightening New Wife out of her chair in the next room.

All pranksters should meet a similar fate, or worse.