Tag: Suckage

Things that totally suck

Changing Cards

Corporate Fuckery, Scam Artists

Last Monday morning I went out to run some errands — nothing fancy, just dropping off a document at the tax guy, paying for the sooper-seekrit mailbox, and a quick trip to Kroger for some top-up items.  Basically my spend was less than a hundred dollars, but I knew I had way more than that in the bank account, so no big deal, right?

Wrong.  I got home, check the email and there was a warning message from the bank saying I had less than $100 in my account (I am so glad I have this feature).  When I looked at the account, there was an ATM charge from some company for $336 dollars — a company I’d never heard of nor visited, and when I looked at the details, it noted that the transaction method was a “tap”.

Didn’t happen.

I then called the bank and told them about the fraudulent claim, which got the wheels turning.  Net result:  they changed the transaction to “pending”, but then the crap began:  policy is to issue a new card number/card, which takes ta-da!  up to five business days to process and deliver.  So basically, I end up without an ATM card for that period, plus I have to contact all the autopay vendors and give them the new card number so that my life can continue uninterrupted, without such things as wifi being disconnected and so on — you know the deal.

What disturbs me about all this is that apparently there’s no guarantee that a fraudulent transaction can be “clawed back” if it’s been made against a checking account — it’s considered your problem — but with a credit card, however, it’s the bank’s problem and they have all sorts of ways to get the money back.  Seems weird, but that’s banks for you.

I remember seeing one of those EeewwwChoob videos a while ago wherein some smart money guy said that he refused to use an ATM card, ever, and only used a credit card because of just such a situation.

Here’s my take:  I don’t owe a lot of money on my credit card, and thanks to an upcoming tax refund I could pay it all off without any problem.  (I normally pay 6x the “minimum” each month, so I don’t get stung too badly by their loanshark interest rates.)

I am thinking, now, that maybe I should do what the Smart Money Guy said, do away with the ATM card and treat the paid-off credit card like it’s an ATM card, and just pay the balance in full each month.  (I don’t spend a lot of money on the Visa card so this shouldn’t be a problem, and our income — from New Wife’s job and my SocSec gets automatically transferred out of our current accounts into an interest-bearing account anyway, so we never have that much cash in the current accounts.)  I have full faith in my and New Wife’s self-discipline to do this, by the way, so on that score there should be no problem.

My question for y’all:  if I do the above and pay off the credit card balance in full each month, is there a risk that Global MegaBank Inc. will realize that they’re making no money off their loansharking, only from their transaction fees, and cancel my credit card?

All input is welcome.

Bring Back The Killing

Corporate Fuckery, Military

This kind of crap really throws sand in my gears:

The US Army’s declining warfighting lethality is not a mystery—it’s a direct consequence of a feudal promotion system that rewards bureaucratic survival over bold leadership, misaligning senior-level priorities with the core mission of closing with and destroying the enemy. This patronage-based structure, decoupled from lethality metrics, incentivizes risk aversion and ethical compromises, eroding the force’s combat edge even as technology advances. We’ve invested billions in cutting-edge gear—Next-Gen Squad Weapons, advanced optics, and precision munitions—yet lethality is tanking. Fewer hits at Combat Training Centers (CTCs), slower quals, and dismal first-run crew scores tell the story. The root? Not tech.

Organizations host two groups—mission-dedicated (Type 1: warfighters) and bureaucracy-dedicated (Type 2: careerists). “The second group will gain and keep control,” Jerry Pournelle asserts, crafting rules that prioritize self-preservation over goals. In the Army, Type 2s dominate, sidelining Type 1s who champion core principles like honest readiness. They lose their “seat at the cool kids’ table,” as the system favors patrons over performance.

And:

Promotions rely on feudal patronage—loyalty to superiors, not lethality. As one analysis puts it, it’s a “bargain and sale” dynamic, decoupled from warfighting. Resources improve, but lethality drops because rewards measure compliance, not kills. We’ve optimized for career survival, not victory.

Read the whole thing if you need to have your good mood spoiled.

SecWar Pete Hegseth needs to get on top of this bullshit, and quickly.

Tranny Tragedy

Psychos, Tragedy

This time in Canuckistan:

The transgender gunman who murdered his mother and brother before killing six people in the second-deadliest school shooting in Canadian history is seen happily gripping a rifle in a disturbing photo.

Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, opened fire in the library at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia on Tuesday afternoon. 

A female teacher was killed, alongside three girls and two boys aged between 13 and 17.  

The shooter took his own life at the school. He killed his mother, Jennifer, and brother, Emmett, at their home beforehand, CTV News reported.

Photos show the teen looking somber at a birthday celebration and eating a meal with family – but then happily holding up a rifle. 

So much to note here, over and above the fact that the tranny shooter was a disturbed adolescent psycho (as so many of them are).  Psychos are gonna go psycho, and there doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it.

Of interest are some of the factoids surrounding the shooting itself, or rather the reaction to it.  Here’s one:

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police described the suspected shooter as a “gunperson” in a press conference on Tuesday’s attack at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia.

Ah yes, politically correct speech as always.  As the Bee noted, “Policeperson describes shooter as gunperson.”

Next, as any fule kno, all the gun control laws, regulations and the fuzz were useless and couldn’t prevent this attack:

The shooter, who was transitioning to female, used a handgun despite the freeze on handgun sales and transfers.

Police indicated the alleged shooter used a handgun and a long rifle. The type of long gun has yet to be made public by police, but the Associated Press noted, “The Canadian government has banned more than 2,500 makes and models of assault-style firearms in recent years.”

The ban includes “more than 1,500 models” of firearms then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made illegal on May 1, 2020.

Canada has a firearms license requirement, but the alleged shooter lacked a valid license. He had a license that expired in 2024, according to police.

Canada also has a red flag law yet, even though the alleged shooter was known to police, he was able to have two guns in his possession on Tuesday.

Ironically, police had attended the suspect’s family residence on multiple occasions over the past several years, dealing with mental health concerns of the suspect.

None of which laws worked in their intended purpose.  Looks like the dead tranny just used Daddy’s guns to kill Mommy and Bro before heading off to school for the grand finale.

There’s no other way to look at this:  Mentally-disturbed teenager gets hold of gun, perpetrates horrific crime in a school.  And the unpleasant part:  there’s nothing anyone can do about it, either before or after the fact.  There’s a cogent reason for “during”, mind you — an armed guard presence in schools, which may or may not help at least contain the killings — but nobody (except for some school administrators in the southern U.S. states) seems to be willing to entertain that suggestion.

So there are going to be more.

Once A Commie

Illegal immigrants, Unions

…always a Commie, even at the risk of sounding hypocritical:

American unions, once wary of — or even outright hostile — to immigration because of its threat towards American wages and bargaining power, are now at the forefront of the anti-ICE protests opposing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns.

Since President Donald Trump took office last year, several of America’s most prominent unions, like the Service Employees International Union, United Auto Workers, and others under the AFL-CIO umbrella, have opposed deportations of illegal immigrants and other ICE operations through general strikes, protests, and workplace training.

Oftentimes, these unions partner closely with radical leftist organizations to do so, such as the radical Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), the Marxist People’s Forum, the Revolutionary Communists of America, and local chapters of the Communist Party USA, as Just the News has previously documented. 

Unions under the AFL-CIO umbrella have been instrumental in organizing strikes across the country to protest Trump administration deportation operations. AFL-CIO even provides a tracking map for users to identify workers’ strikes organized by its affiliates.

So let’s see if I’ve got this right:  Trump’s major foreign policy initiatives have been directed towards “reshoring” manufacturing from Asia and back into the United States.  These initiatives, if successful, would create the construction of factories and the concomitant recruitment of labor forces here in the U.S., i.e. blue-collar jobs that labor unions are supposedly all about protecting.

But the unions are behind protests to send illegal immigrants — who have been instrumental in taking away blue-collar jobs from Americans and / or lowering the average wage for said jobs — back to Shitholia.

Does anyone else see the irony here?

Or should workers just start shooting their unions’ leadership?

That Paywall Thing

Business, Marketing / Advertising

I received a couple of emails from Readers about my earlier piece on creeping paywalls, and indeed Jamie Wilson at PJMedia wrote a very polite rebuttal thereof.

Like I said in my earlier post, I understand exactly how this all works.

I mean, as someone who has been trying to support himself by writing for the past two decades, I understand completely the need for being paid for one’s work.  I have no issue with that.

The problem I do have is that the cost of paywalls seems to be out of line with the product being offered.  Back when TIME Magazine was actually worth reading, I used to give TIME subs as Christmas- or birthday gifts to friends and family.  I don’t remember the cost, but it was something like $25 per annum — and that for a full magazine on a large number of topics of interest, not just politics, delivered weekly.

Compared to that, most online publications today fall woefully short.  Even Cathy Gyngell’s excellent TCW from the UK doesn’t compare, and sad to say, neither does the PJMedia complex, nor even Breitbart.  Don’t get me wrong:  I enjoy at that conservative stuff, oh yes I do.  But my life isn’t just politics, as even a cursory look at my blog will show, and thus I can find little good reason to spend what seems to be an awful lot of money on what is, after all, a niche interest.

To properly entertain myself, I once worked out that I’d have to spend about $300 a month on subs.  Won’t do it, even if I could afford it.  And when I could afford it, I could certainly afford to spend $90 per annum on Britain’s Country Life magazine, about $100 per annum on various gun magazines, and $30 per annum on pubs like Foreign Interest and Bill Buckley’s National Review (back when it was also worth reading), and so on.  All told, that’s much less than $300… a year.

When today’s online media can resolve the issue with micropayments, I would have no problem paying for Jamie’s or Stephen Green’s articles, as long as they cost me pennies.  Hell, I sell my historical novels (usually, about 100,000 words or so) for a couple of dollars each on Amazon, and each one might have taken me about a full year to write, with all the research involved.  A journalist/writer may charge, say, a dollar a word;  but the publication needs to sell it to a reader for fractions of pennies — something which seems to have escaped our modern publications.

Right now, they don’t.  Yes, a PJMedia sub doesn’t cost that much — but when they start writing content which can rival that of, say, a traditional daily newspaper (like the Daily Telegraph ) in terms of its breadth, I’ll think about it.  Until then, no.

Note, by the way, that Jamie Wilson’s article is accessed through an Internet archive link because when I originally tried to get to it, I was blocked.