Tag: Stupid people

Speed Bump #768

Grammar Nazism

If The Federalist  didn’t exist, where else would I get my daily dose of grammatical irritation?

Here’s today’s offering:

Democrats’ abolishment of the filibuster is one reason the GOP-controlled Senate under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been able to confirm so many federal judges.

The word is “abolition”, and spoils what was otherwise an excellent take on the current political situation.  Even the barely-literate Microsoft spell-checking routine flagged that one, which makes me wonder what software the Federalist  writers actually use publish their articles (absent, it seems, any kind of editorial review).

Probably NotePad, come to think of it.  Then they don’t have to bother with all those messy issues of typesetting, spelling and grammar.

Jackals Of The Press #1,254

Media Assholes, Numbers & Statistics

I know, I know:  if you want fair and balanced reporting, don’t read Britain’s Daily Mail.  Yet I persist, despite nonsense like this, because I am weak.

This particular article starts off well, showing people getting their last kicks in before the latest totalitarian bollocks from H.M. Government, in the usual Daily Mail  fashion:

 

All well and good, and nothing puts me in a good mood like Train Smash Women (like I said, I am so weak).

However, the DM then eschews standard journalistic principle — I know, I know — and turns a general-interest piece into a study of the Chinkvirus re-emergence in Britishland.  For reasons best known to themselves, they publish some scawwwwy-looking graphs with the usual crap predictions from Doom & Gloom Inc.:

…although they do have the grace to give some actual numbers:

…which of course shows that even though hospitalizations are increasing, the death rate (which is the important number) isn’t doing anything alarming.

But non-alarms don’t boost readership, so the JOTP publish two graphs which show how scawwwy things could get, only they use Spain and France — no doubt because those two countries’ experience bolsters the alarmism:

Of course, what gives this bullshit away is the way the graphs are scaled.  Note that the right-hand graph (of daily fatalities) has a very fine scale, which despite the steep climb, simply means that the Spanish fatality rate has gone from much less than 1 to just over 2 deaths per million population  (0.2 per hundred thousand = 2 per million), while the Frogs have gone from pretty much zero to 5 per ten million.

I don’t have access to those countries’ accident stats, but I imagine that 2 per million and 5 per 10 million respectively are rather less than the death rates from, oh, falling down stairs or drowning in a bucket of wine.

So the DM took a perfectly okay article about people getting their last unfettered drinks in, and added all that pseudo-scientific bullshit.  Of course, those are really subjects for two different articles (one of the prime journo principles being:  don’t try to tell two stories in a single article).

Were it not for daily pics of the skinny Amanda Holden and the not-so-skinny Kelly Brook, I’d give them up altogether.

 

But did I already mention how weak I am?

Speedbump #328

Grammar Nazism

Here we go again.  In this article, the following sentence emerges to stick itself like a needle into one’s eye:

A huge fire has erupted in the rubble of Beirut’s port just 37 days after an explosion decimated the city.

FFS.

The original meaning of the word “decimate” was to reduce by 10% — for example, the punishment for a Roman legion which fled the battle field was to line them all up, pull every tenth legionary out of the ranks and execute them — hence decimation, from the Latin word for “ten”.

I know that in modern parlance the word “decimate” has been clumsily used to indicate catastrophe, and it’s become so widespread that I now only register mild irritation — say, 20 rounds’ worth — when I hear it thus used.

But good grief, can we at least stipulate that decimation can only be applied to a numerical value?  The Chinkvirus, say, might decimate a group of people in a retirement home;  but you can’t “decimate” a city, or a field of wheat, or a river — it just makes fuck-all sense, not that modern journalists ever apply that yardstick to their silly scribblings.

Is it too early for a mid-morning martini?  I think not.

Traffic Anacondas

Drive Time, Gummint

Here’s one guaranteed to make all my Murkin Readers chortle:

Pop-up cycle lanes set up as part a £225million plan to get Britain moving again are lying empty while traffic is squeezing onto narrowed streets, bringing the capital to a halt, it can be revealed.
MailOnline visited some of the key cycle lanes across the country at the height of the rush hour to gauge how busy they are, only to find them chronically under-used with cyclists criticising them as well as motorists.
Our research in London, where Transport for London is leading its own £33million scheme, shows that on the Euston Road, just 7 cyclists used the designated lane over a 15-minute period.  Meanwhile 420 cars fought their way through traffic.  In Park Lane, Mayfair, just 21 cyclists used the lane as 400 cars battled past.

Nonsense like this basically stems from the dreaded Car Hatred Disease, which engenders the opposite feeling from motorists.  The Englishman, as I recall, thinks that shooting cyclists from one’s car should not only not be prosecuted, but rewarded.  Mr. Free Market’s opinion should not be made public, but suffice it to say that there is plenty of gore involved.

We have nice wide roads Over Here in north Texas, so the “two-wheeled Taliban”, as the Brits call them, are not much more than a mild nuisance — other than committing the visual offense of wearing those faggy Lycra outfits and pisspot helmets.  It is, however, one more reason to enjoy winter here, because our usually icy roads make cycling deadly.  (“Make it compulsory, then,” grumbles Mr. FM.)

Of course, because BritPM Scruffy Johnson is a rider, all these crappy devices (“pop-up” cycle lanes?) are given a lot more government attention and support than they deserve.

I know that secretly — or perhaps not so secretly — the Greens would banish all cars if they could, and force us all to ride around on two wheels.  This is one of the reasons why, when the Beer & Treason Crowd gathers at its secret meetings, mass execution of Greens is generally ranked after the same treatment for anarchists and Communists, but just ahead of record company executives.  Or maybe it was vegans, I don’t remember.

I do know that in Britain, cyclists are generally hated more than badgers, and they squirt poisonous gas into the ground to deal with them.  Come to think of it, that sounds remarkably similar to one of Mr. FM’s suggestions…

Segregation

Third World

I see that some Black people want to start an all-Black community somewhere:

“We are dealing with systemic racism,” Scott wrote in an op-ed for Blavity last month. “We are dealing with deep-rooted issues that will require more than protesting in the streets. It’s now time for us to get our friends and family together and build for ourselves,” Walters, who serves as the president of the organization, said in an interview with Yahoo News. “That’s the only way we’ll be safe. And that’s the only way that this will work. We have to start bringing each other together. We really just want you to come and hang out and feel safe,” Walters said. “You don’t have to worry about the Karens of the world and anything like that. You just come in and have fun. We’ll have a sportsman area, like a Black sportsman area with fishing, hunting, shooting range, ATV trails. We really just want to build a tight-knit community for our people to just come and breathe.”
…
Scott said in the report that black Americans need to own land and create their own social, political, and economic institutions.
“Amass land, develop affordable housing for yourself, build your own food systems, build manufacturing and supply chains, build your own home school communities, build your own banks and credit unions, build your own cities, build your own police departments, tax yourselves and vote in a mayor and a city council you can trust,” Scott wrote. “Build it from scratch. Then go get all the money the United States of America has available for government entities and get them bonds. This is how we build our new Black Wall Streets. We can do this. We can have Wakanda! We just have to build it for ourselves!”

Let’s hope this is the start of a trend.

I know, this may sound strange coming from a lifelong and bitter opponent of apartheid.  The fundamental difference between apartheid and this idea, however, is that apartheid was forced upon people by government policy.  This, however, is a bunch of people who want to band together — a natural right of free individuals, as enumerated in the First Amendment.

And I want it to work — I really do.

However, not only have I seen this fail elsewhere in the world, but we have ample evidence right here in the U.S. to suggest that even with all these good intentions, it’s likely to fail here too.  But hey:  if it worked for the Mormons in Utah, who’s to say that it wouldn’t work in Georgia — if the right people get to congregate according to this plan.

Good for them, say I.  Just as long as they don’t expect too much help from government — because that, you see, would be un-Constitutional.

Wah Wah Wah

Eco-Crap, Media Assholes

I love reading articles like this one:

The Trump administration is seeking to fast track environmental reviews of dozens of major energy and infrastructure projects during the COVID-19 pandemic, including oil and gas drilling, hazardous fuel pipelines, wind farms and highway projects in multiple states, according to documents provided to The Associated Press.
…
More than 60 projects targeted for expedited environmental reviews were detailed in an attachment to a July 15 letter from Assistant Interior Secretary Katherine MacGregor to White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow.

That’s actually quite restrained (for the AP), but they soon start squealing butthurt:

Environmentalist Brett Hartl said the move to expedite major projects represents a “giveaway” to industries that curried favor with Trump.
“Building an LNG (liquefied natural gas) plant is not going to solve the problem that’s happening in the country,” said Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity. “This is where we’re potentially going to see environmental harm down the road, because they are skipping steps in the process.”

…as opposed to all the long-term problems caused by Green policies (e.g. banning controlled burns, eventually causing wildfires), but nemmind.  To continue:

Interior Department officials did not answer questions from the AP on how the environmental reviews are being expedited and whether any rules were being waived. The bid to speed up reviews is in line with the Trump administration’s greater emphasis on reduced regulatory burdens for corporations.
…
“For far too long, critically important infrastructure, energy and other economic development projects have been needlessly paralyzed by federal red tape,” spokesman Conner Swanson said.

But my favorite part comes towards the end:

The president’s June order directed federal officials to pursue emergency workarounds of bedrock environmental laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, to hasten completion of infrastructure projects to speed economic recovery.

Yeah… those “bedrock environmental laws” have been used for far too long to prevent or otherwise delay much-needed development — but the Trump administration is walking around or else blowing straight through the bullshit to get things done, and the Greens (as well as their lickspittles in, say, the Associated Press) are horrified.

I love the fact that for the Left, laws they don’t agree with (e.g. parts of the U.S. Constitution) can be ignored or overturned, but all their laws (most of which are, of course, un-Constitutional) are “bedrock law” and immune from change or even scrutiny.

Fuck ’em.