Tag: Stupid people

Giving Up

Africa, Bad News

Of course, I read this with great regret and sadness, because it’s my home town being written off:

Johannesburg: The slow death of a city that may have outlived its purpose

Johannesburg is in an advanced state of decay, destruction, ruin, crime, waste, and all of it seems, sometimes, like a mirror image of South African society. We grieve over the once-great city in a veritable cult of grief.

But we are too afraid to look in the mirror because our vanity overwhelms our misery — we are, after all, a great people, and a great people we have to remain…

In and around the city, the families and communities in its suburbs and on the periphery are struggling to live full lives. As days and weeks go by, the denizens are losing reason to value their surroundings. The taps run dry frequently, energy supply is interrupted regularly, flagship institutions, and all those little things like roads, pavements, pedestrian crossings, traffic signs, road signs and robots are bleeding like wounds that will not heal on a body in terminal decline.

The city is depleted, and lacking in the nutrients and the energy necessary to bring it back to full functionality.

We can point, as we may, to mismanagement, maladministration, lack of planning, a lack of foresight and vision. We can, also, consider Johannesburg as a city that has reached the end of its natural life and is approaching the end of its purpose.

Johannesburg, as we came to know it, was established by European settler colonists in about 1886 for the sole purpose of exploiting the gold buried in the rocks below. Those gold deposits are finite. If it’s not entirely finite, mining it is becoming more expensive, while demand may well increase.

Yeah, what the hell.  It’s just a shell of a place, an aggregation of concrete, glass and tarmac:  it’s too difficult to govern or manage, so why bother?

One might also say the same thing about Manhattan or Los Angeles.  In fact, one might say the same thing about all the major cities of the world, where concentration of the population has become too difficult and in most cases, too dangerous.

So let the animals take over and feast on the bones.  And when the bones are gone and the animals need to go further afield to survive… then what?

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time to go to the range.

Sand In The Shoe

Corporate Fuckery, Drive Time, Technology, Two-Minute Hate

Over here, a couple of guys gripe about ten most irritating things about modern cars.  To save you time, I’ve listed them here, with my thoughts:

  • Beeping — It’s like being locked in your car with a nagging Catholic/Jewish mother:  do this, don’t do that, why haven’t you etc. etc.  Whether it’s seatbelts, lane changing (more of that later) or any one of the many things that someone else thinks that you should/shouldn’t do, I am often tempted just to cut the fucking wires to the speaker.
  • Wireless phone chargers — I haven’t come across this nonsense myself because I last bought a car in 2015, but the guys in the video sum it up perfectly:  it makes your phone hot, and doesn’t perform as advertised unless your phone is perfectly positioned.  It’s all part of making everything bluetoothed instead of cabled.
  • Artificial engine noise — First they soundproof the car, and then because some drivers would actually like to hear the sound the car makes, or want their car to sound all shouty without the necessary engine to make it so, the car pipes in fake engine noise.  If that’s not a good analogy for the A.I./fake/digital/artificial times we live in, I can’t think of a better one.
  • Voice-activated assist — I call this “creeping Alexa”, where one has to rely on some fucking software to recognize your voice (which it often can’t, with comical / disastrous consequences), all instead of you just turning a switch or pushing a button.  And speaking of which:
  • Screen buttons instead of actual switches — There’s no excuse for this, and this has nothing to do with “safety” (the usual excuse) because the plain fact of the matter is that screen switches are cheaper than mechanical switches, and that saves the manufacturer money (which savings are never passed on to the customer, needless to say).  And speaking of safety:  the screen buttons require that one be at the correct screen to enable the things to work;  if not, one has to scroll backwards or forwards until the correct screen puts in an appearance — and all this requires taking one hand off the steering wheel for an extended period, and taking one’s eyes off the road.  Anyone else see a potential problem here?
  • Modern headlights are too bright — I’ve noticed this trend, and it’s fucking dangerous to other drivers, especially in rainy and/or night-time conditions.  You’re not having to land an airliner on a narrow runway;  you’re driving down a street, FFS, with oncoming traffic.  (And if you’re out in the boonies and need brighter lights, add a spotlight bar.)
  • High-gloss finishes (e.g. piano black) — I don’t even like shiny finishes on gun stocks (hello, Browning!), and I see no need for something similar in a car that is basically a dust/fingerprint collector.
  • Subscription services / features — Once again, just another way for auto manufacturers to bleed money out of the customer once the car has been sold.  The nice part of this is that not having some of these features (seat warmers, etc.) has the effect of taking us back to earlier times when we managed perfectly well without all these luxury geegaws.  But I await with bated breath the time when things like windshield wipers, turn signals and high beams all become something you have to pay monthly fees for, instead of them just being part of the (horribly-inflated) sticker price of the car.  And when I say “bated breath”, I mean when the breath becomes “unbated”, that will be a signal to load up the AK.
  • Start/stop buttons — I have ranted about this piece of automotive excrescence more times than I can count.  Yes, I know that you can disable the thing;  but the latest wheeze from these godless fucks is to make it reset every time you switch off the car, which means you have to disable the function as part of the starting procedure every time you want to drive somewhere.   The days of getting in, turning a key and moving on are so far in the distant past that one wonders how the Three Wise Men made it to Bethlehem without satnav — which, by the way, is fast becoming yet another subscription service.
  • Lane assist / traffic distancing — It’s one thing when these functions beep at you as a warning;  it’s another thing altogether when the functions takes over the driving for you.  Apart from the foul nanny philosophy behind the thing, it can also be life-threatening.

Now go and watch the video — especially the last couple of minutes — because those guys are funny where I’m just fucking enraged.

Stupid Stupid Stupid

Corporate Fuckery, Drive Time

Yeah, this one’s going to turn out well for them:

Jaguar’s last ever petrol car came off the assembly line at the brand’s Midlands factory on Friday (19 December) ahead of its daring switch to all-electric vehicles next year.

The final Jaguar model with a combustion engine under its bonnet is an £80,000 high-performance F-Pace SVR SUV finished in black paint, according to the Jaguar Enthusiasts’ Club, which was in attendance as the Solihull factory officially signed off its last petrol model.

Under the bonnet is a burbling 5.0-litre supercharged V8 petrol engine – a stark contrast to the first ‘new Jaguar’ that will debut next year, which is a near-silent four-door GT that will cost almost twice as much, with a quoted £120,000 to £140,000 starting price.

While parent group JLR made no official announcement of the event, the Jaguar Enthusiasts’ Club says the final model is being gifted to the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust in Gaydon, where it will be retained as a museum piece.

The club said Friday was a ‘quiet, historic full stop’ for Jaguar’s 90-year relationship with the internal combustion engine.

Yeah, and they’re celebrating this piece of boneheaded idiocy?

No wonder the car, and the staff, are all wearing black:

I think a better payoff line would be:

“Pissing Away 90 Years Of Jaguar Heritage”

Oh, and “full stop” is what’s going to happen to Jaguar’s EV sales, but let’s not spoil the party.

Stopping The Drain

Africa

Friend and Reader Hank T. sends me a link to a website I’ve not seen before (and it has a most excellent title).  The post itself shines a light on the usual totalitarian reindeer games:

After leftists fundamentally transform a country, people must be prevented from escaping. South Africa is no exception.

A storm is breaking over the South African Afrikaner remnant. What is being framed publicly as a diplomatic incident is, in reality, an act of war carried out covertly and deliberately. We are bearing witness to something far more sinister than an isolated raid. This is a convergence point, political treachery, racial targeting, and spiritual warfare colliding in the open.

On Tuesday, December 16, 2025, a U.S.-affiliated refugee processing center in Johannesburg was raided by South African officials wearing khaki uniforms. The facility had been operating quietly, processing asylum applications from white South Africans, many of them Afrikaner farmers, under provisions authorized by executive order. The raid was calculated, hostile, and executed while U.S. immigration agents were on site. It was not just interference. It was a direct act of aggression.
These agents were forced to flee.

Calls to mind the construction of the Berlin Wall, dunnit?

At this point, I’d believe anything about the foul South African government, who are doing things to the people that are far, far worse than the evil apartheid regime ever did.

In case anyone thinks I’m exaggerating on this, here’s something to ponder:  at no point during the apartheid years did the government ever allow and encourage ordinary White people to slaughter Blacks without fear of prosecution.  Ask any White farmer how that’s going right now.

What saddens me is that when you talk to White South Africans, as I do regularly, they persist with the moonbeam nonsense about how beautiful the country is and how things aren’t as bad as portrayed.

Uh huh.

Of course, this is going to end in tragedy.

And A Not-So Joyeux Noël To You

Behind Enemy Lines, Morons & Idiots

In our family’s Great Catholic Tour of Europe back in 2008, we ended our trip in Paris in late December.

Most unusually, I got sick — some kind of Frog flu — and so when the kids wanted to go out and join the crowds in the Champs-Élysées on New Year’s Eve, we sent them off with a couple bottles of cheap champagne, hoping like hell that they wouldn’t disappear from our lives forever.  They didn’t, of course, even though there were about 600,000 people jammed along that famous Paris thoroughfare, all partying like frat boys.  As the city of Paris made travel on the Metro free from 6pm till 6am on Jan 1, the kids went from our apartment on the Place de la Bastille all the way up to the Arc de Triomphe and had the time of their lives.


(yes, it was also witch’s tit cold)

I wouldn’t think of doing that nowadays, of course, but never mind because:

The Champs-Élysées has been Paris’s symbolic place for celebrations since the Liberation parade in 1944. This is the year it ends.

Paris has canceled the iconic New Year’s Eve concert on the Champs-Élysées due to security threats (by migrants; they won’t say it’s because of migrants, and they will never address the problem). They are at the point of no return.

Now the French will have to watch the fireworks on their televisions.

They brought it on themselves, of course:  the French brought Africa into France, and have discovered that in so doing, they’ve not turned Africans into Frenchmen, but France into Africa.

Telle stupidité.

Uh… What About Us Folks?

Politics, Subsidies, Taxes and Theft

FFS, I’m getting sick of this kind of bullshit.

The Trump administration is ramping up its America First Global Health Strategy in its latest efforts to ditch the traditional USAID model by delivering billions in aid directly to several countries in Africa.

Under the new model so far, which bypasses the propping up of the “NGO industrial complex,” the United States has signed six memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with six African countries totaling over $4 billion in direct U.S. investment matched by over $1.6 billion from signatory countries.

I have a better idea.  Instead of “investing” $4 billion in Africa, how about sending that kind of support to, oh, I dunno, our failing healthcare system right here in the U.S. of A.?

And by “system”, I don’t mean pharmaceutical companies or hospitals, either.  I’m talking about pumping up Medicare or Medicaid — you know, people who may actually have voted for the current Administration in last year’s elections?

If you want me to be really blunt, here’s what I really mean.

Most American voters do not give a flying fuck about Africa, and Africa’s health problems.  We Americans pay taxes, and we expect to see some kind of return from our government on those taxes in the form of civic improvements right here in the United States, not in shithole African countries that hate us, support our enemies like China, Iran and Russia, and live in a squalor of their own making.

Did I already mention that aid to Africa is the equivalent of pouring (taxpayer) dollars into a bottomless pit where it ends up filling the bank accounts of corrupt government officials?  I did?  Oh yeah, and note the date on which I said it.

I don’t care that $4 billion dollars is going to be spent “more efficiently” or whatever:  I want that $4 billion to be spent in the United States, and not in fucking Africa.  To repeat:  it’s our money, taken from us at gunpoint, and if it’s going to be spent, we should be the beneficiaries and not some fly-bitten cesspit-dwellers in a hellhole of their own making.

Or — and here’s another thought — you (that is, the Trump Administration) can take less of our hard-earned money away from us, thus taking away our need for government “assistance” in the first place.

If I recall correctly, reducing our tax burden was one of the signature promises of the Republicans last year prior to the elections.  Well, so far I’ve seen precious little of that activity taking place;  and sending our tax money to Africa does not improve my mood any.

I know, it’s a lot more complicated than that, there are all sorts of policy implications and socio-political goals etc. etc. etc.

Here’s what I’ve learned.  It’s always less complicated than it’s made out to be, and there is always a simpler solution than the one proposed.

I’m always hearing from DOGE (remember them?) how much money they’re supposedly “saving” us.  Well, it doesn’t seem like all these spending cutbacks are doing us — the taxpayers — much good, because the average American is still living in a shit-show of financial uncertainty and hardship.

So instead of some high-falutin’ pronouncement of “America First Global Health Strategy”, allow me to suggest that you just drop the “Global” part.  “America First Health Strategy” has a far better ring to it.

Keep our tax money at home, and reduce the amounts we have to pay.  It really is that simple, you fucking thieves and morons.