Tag: Stupid people

Skynet Hates You

Technology

Here’s one consequence of putting your trust in technology, this time from India:

Three men have died in a road accident after their car’s sat-nav sent them careening off the 30ft-high edge of an unfinished bridge. 

Their bodies, trapped inside the mangled car, weren’t discovered until 9:30am the next day, local media reported. 

Investigators found that the trio had been following an out-of-date map on Google Maps at speed. 

The mapping service allegedly told them to travel down the bridge, which had no signs indicating it was out of use after it suffered a collapse in 2022 following heavy flooding. 

Oops.

One would think that there should have been warning signposts about the bridge being down, but then again, this is Third World India.  Let’s review:

  • Trust technology:  not always wise.
  • Trust government:  also not always wise.

A life (-or-death) lesson, there.

LOL No

Corporate Fuckery, Gummint, Subsidies

If this doesn’t make you chortle, nothing will:

Executives at Ford Motor Company, General Motors (GM), and Stellantis are begging President-elect Donald Trump to keep in place President Joe Biden’s Electric Vehicle (EV) mandates. The plea comes as automakers have invested billions in EVs that have failed to turn a profit.

Aw diddums.  How my heart bleeds for your lost profits, you chiseling bastards.

What’s the old expression?  Oh yeah:  lie down with the dogs, get up with fleas.

Well, you kowtowed to the government stupidity, always forgetting the other old dictum:  what the government giveth, the government may take away.

Had there not been so much virtue-signaling from the auto manufacturers as they glommed onto those subsidies (#Jaguar #Volvo #etc), I might have had a little sympathy.  As it is, however, I don’t give a rat’s ass.

And I know the followup threat:  “Without subsidies, we’re going to have to close factories and lay off workers!”

Here’s a thought:  take all the executive bonuses you were going to pay your management — yeah, right down to junior levels — and pay those billions (and it is billions) into an independent investment fund, i.e. a fund that’s managed by a financial institution so that you can’t raid it whenever you feel like it (#PensionPlans), and let the interest payments go to the workers you’re going to lay off.

It won’t be enough, but it sure as hell is better than the alternative, which is continuing to make a product that nobody wants, partially (or mostly) funded by taxpayers.

You should have done your research before sinking to your knees — anyone with a brain could have told you that the whole eco-electrical boondoggle was doomed to failure, especially if it was going to be dependent on government building the charging-station infrastructure (and which we’ve already seen has been a catastrophic failure).

The best lessons are those which come through suffering;  so suffer, and learn.

You idiots.

Unnecessary Death

Morons & Idiots

I once knew a fellow-immigrant who had arrived in the U.S. because his parents had moved their family out of Iran.  When I asked why they’d done so, he replied, “They were Catholics.”

Here’s one that intrigued me:

UAE officials have arrested three people suspected of killing an Israeli Rabbi who went missing in Dubai.

…which makes me ask:  “What was a rabbi doing in an Arab country to begin with?”   Seems like you’re asking for trouble — like being a rabbi in Bradford or Dearborn, only worse.

Oh… this explains it:

He had been working for the Chabad movement in Abu Dhabi since late 2020 – when the UAE recognised Israel as a state.

For the benefit of my Gentile Readers, the Chabad Lubavitch movement is akin to the old London Missionary Society, which sent priests and nuns out into foreign lands to convert the natives to their specific brand of Christianity.  Chabad is the kosher version.

As with the Christians, though, who have traditionally come to a gruesome end (#CongoleseMurderAndRape) my sympathy is somewhat tempered by the questions: “What the hell were you thinking?” and “How else did you think this was going to end?”

It’s a little like hearing that the guy who made his living in a circus by putting his head into a lion’s mouth eventually had his head bitten off — and we’re all supposed to get the sadz because #OhTheHumanity.

Nope.  Try selling that at some other address.

I can say with absolute certainty that I am never going to get attacked by a shark, because I have no intention of ever swimming in the sea, even if someone tells me it’s all part of Saving Teh Whales or something.

Don’t go where you’re not wanted.

Update:  I couple of my Readers have written to remind me that Chabad does not go outside Israel to proselytize, but to minister to the existing Jewish population is there. I knew that, but my writing was sloppy, so thankee for the correction.

My last sentence, however, remains unchanged.  Why ANY Jews would willingly go to the UAE, or indeed to any Muslim country is beyond me.

Disappearing Products

Corporate Fuckery, Marketing / Advertising

I read this story about the redoubtable Martha Stewart with some interest:

Homemaking mogul Martha Stewart recently revealed that she’s been using the same exact container of liquid eyeliner for 15 to 20 years – and some experts are sounding the alarm over the practice.

In a new makeup tutorial, which she demonstrated for Allure, the 83-year-old admitted that she rotates through five tubes of the discontinued T. LeClerc liquid eyeliners.

In order to keep them looking good, Stewart shared that she just adds water to them, and they haven’t dried out – yet.

Let’s just ignore the usual panic-mongering of “experts” because fuck ’em:  Our Martha doesn’t seem to be suffering any harm, and she’s 83 years old, so she can do whatever the hell she wants.

I am more interested in the fact that T. LeClerc (whoever they are) discontinued the lady’s favorite makeup, despite her ringing endorsement thereof.  And if the star power of Martha Stewart can’t stop a beloved brand from disappearing of the shelves, what chance do we mere mortals have when it comes to our favorite products disappearing into the ether?  Why, none at all.

Here’s my own tale of woe.

I have been using the same brand of deodorant ever since I was old enough to start needing it, i.e. early adolescence (70 minus 13 equals 57 years of continuous, unbroken use).  This is it:


…taken from my purchase history at Amazon in 2021, when I last purchased a case of the stuff — because it had completely disappeared from all supermarket- and drugstore shelves.  I suspected it was going to be problematic to reorder it, hence my large purchase.

And of course, my gloomy prediction has indeed come to pass, because when I searched for it recently, I got this foul note:

Well, it won’t.  I’ve searched high and low, and it’s gone.

Some brief history of the brand is in order, before I continue.

Old Spice is one of those flagship brands, once manufactured by Shulton, and subsequently purchased by the loathsome Procter & Gamble company (may their little Cincinnati nostrils rot).  Old Spice is a remnant of the “heritage” brands;  almost uniquely among male toiletries, the research showed that it was the brand most likely to be purchased by young men adopting their father’s favorite.  Indeed, the Old Spice Classic deodorant and aftershave (the latter in that distinctive little white bottle with the gray press-in top) can still be found in stores, and it was my Dad’s aftershave, the only one I can remember him using — hence when it came time to buy deodorant and aftershave, it was the brand I first sampled.

Unfortunately, the Classic didn’t work for me — it was too pungent, and it didn’t smell the same on me as it did on my Dad (#DifferentPhysiology).  Even my Mom noticed the difference.  So I did the next thing:  I tried a variant — at the time the only variant — of Old Spice, and discovered the “Fresh” label.

It fit me like a glove:  smelled great, worked well (even with the dreaded Teenage Hormones) and — if I may be indiscreet for a moment — it played no small part in my youthful seductions.  I smelled good, always, and still do.

That may not last, however, because with the Classic Fresh having disappeared, I now have to try to find its replacement.  And to date, I can’t.

I must have tried every Old Spice variant — and there are now fucking dozens of them — on the market.

Fucking hell, what a shit show.

I’ve tried them all, but none smell good, in fact the reverse.  And for those Alert Readers who spotted the “Fresh” variant at the end of the second pic, it may actually be the worst of the lot:  oily, pungent and just foul.  They changed the formulation.

In its own small way, this is just a replica of the Coke / New Coke / Classic Coke marketing fuckup of the 1980s, except that P&G (may their armpits rot) are never going to reissue the Fresh variant in its original formula because #P&GAreAssholes.

And I’ve also tried some Brands Not Old Spice, with horrifying results.  Yeccchhh.  And this experimentation is expensive because of Bidenflation, where instead of just paying a few bucks for a stick of deodorant, nowadays one has to get a credit check first.

I know that in the grand scheme of things, the travails of some Elderly White Guy trying to find a decent replacement deodorant are indeed small potatoes.  But it still gets up my nose — literally, in many cases — that after over five decades of loyal use, some cunt in Marketing (aided and abetted by some cunt in Finance) has decided that my beloved product is no longer viable, and has tossed it into the trashcan of history, and me along with it.

I need to get to the range.

When The Traffic Lights Stopped

Mocking Furriners, Politics

For a nation that’s supposedly laden with hard-headed common sense and a strong work ethic but is in fact more left-wing than anything else, Germany has slammed into the wall that bedevils similar political philosophies all over:  they’ve run out of other people’s money to spend.

And with what is so common among nations afflicted with a multi-party political system, their latest coalition government has therefore collapsed, crucified by essentially three factors: immigration (and growing popular resistance thereto), insane socio-economic policies fueled by Green eco-nonsense (e.g. an EV mandate which has led to closure of auto factories and concomitant unemployment), and a screaming insistence (via a cordon sanitaire* ) on preventing anything resembling a “Right-wing” party (the Alternative for Germany — AfD) from coming to power, either outright or even by parliamentary coalition.  In no small part, this is because the German Left persists in labeling anything not left-wing as “Nazi” or “fascist”, which tactic may be familiar to my Murkin Readers.

The Germans can’t embark on deficit spending so beloved of Leftist governments (e.g. the UK’s Labour Party and the U.S. Democrats), because the German constitution forbids it.  Even when they try all sorts of accounting legerdemain, the German courts wag their judicial finger and say, “Nein.”

Of course, the solution is simple:  firstly, end the flood of Merkel-enabled immigration (which is proving to be, surprise surprise, an economic drain on even the well-funded German welfare state, not to mention a social flashpoint as the Muslim immigrants are violent and not assimilating into the Kultur );  and secondly, the German government should end the slavish adherence to radical Green policies which, as anyone with common sense knows, are impractical, costly and doomed to failure.

Unfortunately, those initiatives seem to be precisely the two main policies of the AfD political platform.  Oops.

For a very clear analysis of all the above, feel free to wander over here.

And thennnnn… there is the looming prospect of a Trump Administration which will refuse to bankroll any of this shit, will insist on Germany spending more on their military NATO obligations (which they can’t afford to do)  — and all this with the Russo-Ukranian war raging right on their doorstep.

An historical aside:  the leftwing SDP (Social Democrat Party) has been a political disaster pretty much since its inception, despite being traditionally the largest political party in Germany.  They pretty much enabled Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s by refusing to participate in any centrist government coalition, and they remain a political speed bump to this day.

The Krauts are in deep shit:  rocks are meeting hard places all over the polity, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of eco-insane Socialists.

In this modern German context, a “cordon sanitaire”  is shorthand for “stop the AfD from coming to power, by any means necessary”.  Hence the parliamentary alliance between three parties with diametrically-opposed philosophies (that has just collapsed).