Tag: Good News

Lifestyle Choices

Food & Drink, Lifestyle

From some Spanish chick SOTI about her country’s lifestyle:

‘Everything slows down in the afternoon heat. Between 2pm and 5pm, shops close, streets empty, and we like to rest up.

‘Embrace our slower afternoons and you’ll have more energy to enjoy dinner the Spanish way; late, leisurely, and alfresco at 10pm.’

I have to say that when I went to Chile — where they have the same outlook — I grew to love that way of doing things.  Granted, it’s not the best business practice, and you can mock it all you want, but it sure as hell is more restful.  I loved that when we Americanos  went out for dinner at 7pm, we found most restaurants still closed or at best staffed only with people cleaning the place.  Two hours later and there’d be a queue of hungry Chileans with their families waiting for a table.  Then after the meal — which would end at about 10.30pm — the streets were filled with people strolling about the streets, or going home.  Bedtime, I would guess, was no earlier than 11pm, maybe later.

Small wonder that their workday only begins after 9am.

One of the worst aspects of our Murkin work ethic is that nonsense about eating lunch at your desk.  Apart from being a filthy habit — sauces and crumbs scattered all over the place — it denies the necessity of taking a break from work. When I was working for Big Corporations, I never had a lunch break of less than an hour, unless there was a deadline looming in which case I just didn’t eat at all and worked through lunchtime.  But those situations were few and far between, because I planned my workload efficiently to account for a long lunch.  I might have worked late — sometimes past midnight — but only during crunch times.

Over Here?  Don’t ask.  Work, work work, even for a shitty wage, and annual vacations that are totally inadequate for allowing people to take a proper break from the grind.  Ten working days / two weeks?  What a load of crock.  Whenever I hear about some asshole saying proudly that he hasn’t taken a break from work for ten years, I want to kick his ass.

And we wonder why some people burn out.

I don’t want to hear that our relentless work ethic is what makes our economy the powerhouse that it is.  What causes that is not the number of hours we work, but how efficiently we work.  (Europeans and Latin Americans are the worst:  they work less time and only at about 60% of our efficiency, so it’s small wonder their economies lag behind ours.)  There must be a happy medium somewhere between Euro sloth and American drive, and we should try to find it.

To quote the best summary ever:  Nobody ever lay on his deathbed wishing he’d spent more time at the office.

Cutting The Fat

Good Stuff, Military

SecWar (how I love that new title) Pete Hegseth has apparently read the Riot Act to the fat cats at the upper end of the chain of command:

“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia.

He also announced at the meeting new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness as well as an end to “woke” culture in the military, according to the Associated Press.

Hegseth also said he is changing fitness and appearance standards for the military, while setting the “Golden Rule” test.

Hegseth began his speech by saying: “Welcome to the War Department.”  He also said: “The era of the Department of Defense is over.”

The secretary said the mission of the Pentagon is “warfighting: preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit.”

“Our warfighters are entitled to be led by the best and most capable leaders,” he said. “That is who we need you all to be.”

“We lost our way, and we became the ‘woke’ department, but not anymore,” Hegseth also said.

The secretary said that he is sending out 10 new DOD directives regarding physical fitness and grooming requirements, including a return to “the highest male standard” for combat positions.

“If you do not meet the male level physical standards for combat positions, cannot pass a PT test, or don’t want to shave and look professional, it’s time for a new position or a new profession,” he said.

Hegseth added that “it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the world. It’s a bad look.”

Everyone agreeing with Pete, raise your hands…

Watch what happens to recruitment numbers…

No Big Deal, Then

Illegal immigrants, Lies and Untruths, Plagues and Poxes

Speaking of those manky ICE detainment centers, it seems that some illegal aliens have been dying of Covid.  Of course, that’s just terrible, according to the Usual Suspects, but some smart guy at Blueberry Town has taken a look at the actual numbers, applied some appropriate statistical methods and inferences, and sucked the air right out of the narrative:

The upshot is that ICE has been testing the heck out of the detainees in its facilities. As of September 11, there are only 20,138 detainees in ICE facilities (down from an average of >50,000 in 2019), and ICE has administered more than 35,000 Covid-19 tests. Recognizing that people cycle through these facilities at varying rates, it is safe to assume that ICE has tested a solid majority of its detainees during the last six months, and possibly the vast majority.

The agency has found 5,810 cases of Covid-19, for a “positivity rate” from testing at an ugly 16.6%. That is the sort of rate that gets journalists screaming at governors, fun banned, and schools firmly virtual.

Sounds horrible, right?  Nazzo fast, Guido:

But only 6 detainees have died of the Covid. That is a case-fatality ratio of… 0.1%. Compare that number to the observed case fatality rates in various countries, which are massively higher. The Covid-19 case fatality rate in ICE detention centers is right in line with the seasonal flu. That made us curious.

There might be several explanations for this. ICE facilities might have excellent health care. Well, maybe, but that would be a narrative-buster of the first order. Indeed, a recent whistleblower has contended that at least one ICE facility has under-reported Covid-19 cases, which would suggest an even lower case-fatality rate than indicated by the dashboard.

Through the same link, there seems to be data that says that the median age of people deported from ICE facilities is 30. By comparison, the median age in the United States is about 38. The population in ICE facilities, therefore, is almost certainly significantly younger than the United States in general.

Furthermore, eyeballing that chart above, the ICE facilities seem to have very few people over the age of 70, which represents the preponderance of Covid-19 fatalities in the general US population.

There’s all sorts of other geeky goodness in the article, and I would earnestly recommend that you read all of it.  But the executive summary?

There’s not a whole lot to panic about — not on this topic anyway.

Sorry, Commies.  Find another issue to care about.

Miracle Pill?

Health

Most vitamins are useless — at least, they’re at best harmless (unless overdosed, of course) — because most of it is just passed through urine.  It must be true because I read that in an encyclopedia (my Junior Readers can ask their grandparents to explain how the Internet was once all contained on paper, in leather-bound books — also ask for an explanation of “books”).

Where was I?  Oh yeah, vitamins.

Turns out that some are actually quite useful, at least until next week, when another group of “scientists” will tell us that Vitamin D gives us congenial herpes or something.

As you can probably guess from the above, I don’t set much store by vitamins;  the only one I do take religiously is the aforesaid Vitamin D, because I don’t go out into the sunshine a lot (I can get sunburned walking to the mailbox, hello Texas), and my doctor said I should or else Bad Things would most certainly happen to me.  In fact, when I go for my annual checkup, it’s the one thing he’s most careful to ask me about.  “Still taking that Vitamin D 1000u each day?  Good.  Keep doing that.”

Turns out that’s a Good Thing, for all the reasons explained in this little piece (via Insty once more;  thankee, Squire).

Of course, there’s a catch.  No, not the herpes thing, I just made that up.  Turns out that for my age, a daily 800-1000u is just the ticket;  but too much can make the telemores too long, which is a Bad Thing.

No, I don’t have the foggiest either;  you’ll just have to read it all for yourself.

Back To Basics

Elections

I always like it when a sports team has completely screwed up and lost the plot — Dallas Cowboys and Manchester United, take a bow — and then when the new coach/manager joins the organization, the statement is pretty much always the same:  “We’re going to go back to the basics”, as in the wisdom in the words of the old manager in baseball’s Bull Durham:  “You hit the ball, you catch the ball, you throw the ball.”

So given that our current method of voting in the United States is a hopelessly corrupted process, completely open to fake voters, system hacking and the outright fraud made so easy in “mail-in voting”, anyone with a brain should welcome this pronouncement from POTUS:

“Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS!  Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!!  Also, No Mail-In Voting, Except For Those That Are Very Ill, And The Far Away Military.  USE PAPER BALLOTS ONLY!!!”

So who could possibly object to so simple, basic and open system?  Don’t be silly.

Critics of Trump’s election plans (take a wild guess who they are – K.) argue that such decisions should be left up to the states.

Yes of course.  By all means let’s leave federal elections in the hands of such honest and decent states like Illinois, Michigan and all the Usual Suspects.

I find it interesting that when the United States sets up a system in foreign countries to ensure that the process is free, open and not easy to corrupt, it involves such artifacts as paper ballots and dyed fingers (to prevent repeat voting) in one-day elections conducted only in official, supervised polling places for registered and verified voters only, with ballots tabulated by hand and all results published by the following morning.

Yet when it comes to the United States itself… oh no, let’s use vulnerable and corruptible machines to collate and tabulate votes electronically, let’s allow the process to take place over weeks and months, and let’s likewise drag out the actual reporting of results over weeks and months, with no controls as to who was qualified to vote, and no guarantee of the integrity of the ballot papers trickling in from unprotected collection boxes.

Let’s just ask ourselves:  who could possibly object to simplifying and protecting the integrity of the voting process for the most consequential elections in the whole world?  Silly rabbit:

To ask the question is to answer it:  it would be those groups and parties whose policies are unpopular, clearly destructive (to the country, its economy and its institutions) and cannot pass even the most simple and casual scrutiny for efficacy and common sense.

By the way, the only thing I don’t like about DJT’s announcement (apart from all those stupid exclamation marks) is that he made no mention of dyed fingers.

We need them too.  And I don’t care how “primitive” it looks.

As with sports teams, the basics are critical — and none so critical as our elections.

U-Turn

Corporate Fuckery, Marketing / Advertising

…as Cracker Barrel turns away from the Bud Light precipice:

Cracker Barrel will bring back its old logo after days of ruthless criticism and a plummeting stock price following its botched rebranding.

The company’s board, led by CEO Julie Felss Masino, ignored warning signs and criticism for months ahead of the announcement last week that the restaurant chain would ditch its old logo and give its stores a modern look. The company appears to have walked back part of that decision on Tuesday.

Which part, I wonder?  One commenter shared my doubts:

If they don’t change their support for all the weird sexual politics and attendant shenanigans, none of that matters. In fact, focusing on the logo, etc., just drives publicity and brand awareness up for them. Lose the CB-sponsored drag queens and maybe I’ll care about the decor.

As with the Bud Light “fegeleh” and New Coke episodes, companies seem to forget that if your ethos is traditionalist, you mess with your brand positioning at your peril, and chasing new customers is a fool’s game if you alienate your existing base.

I haven’t eaten by myself at Cracker Barrel for years because their prices have become just outrageous — but when I get an overseas visitor to entertain, it’s a must-see experience (along with Buc-ees and rodeo).

Even The Donald weighed in, telling Cracker Barrel not to be idiots and go back to what has, after all, been their basic positioning since forever.

Kudos to them for acknowledging their mistake.

Unlike Jaguar.  [#Morons]