From Glenn Reynolds, commenting on this nonsense:
If I were a young single guy, I’d be inclined to bank a bunch of sperm, then get a vasectomy. For men, that’s pretty much the only way to achieve “reproductive rights.”
Tag: Things that totally suck
It Started With “Gay”
…or maybe it was “grass”, but either way, the result was the same: a perfectly good word was hijacked by bastards in order to make something socially unsavory become more acceptable. Hence “gay” for homosexual — deeply ironic considering that homosexuals in general are the gloomiest and most unhappy people on the planet.
Now, of course, we have a similar situation, only now it’s words hijacked by Big Tech:
According to a study by the University of Leeds, which looked at datasets of informal conversations, all mentions of the word ‘tweet’ in the Nineties referred to birdsong, while one in 100 do now.
We need not despair that, in future, our children will think of a remote data-storage system when they hear the word ‘cloud’. But we should offset it by teaching them the names of clouds.
We need not despair that, in future, our children will think of a remote data-storage system when they hear the word ‘cloud’. But we should offset it by teaching them the names of clouds.
Seven in ten uses of ‘web’ in the same period referred to spiders: this has become one in ten.
‘Field’, ‘fibre’, ‘cloud’, ‘branch’ and ‘net’ have all changed meanings, too, co-opted for commercial or technological ends.
This is the living mutability of language, the way it shifts to keep tight its embrace with the world. But there is an edge of loss to this change.
Now, the speaker is not contemplating a sky or the running twists of water, the slender might of a spider’s web, or pasture, trees or the music of birds. He or she refers to a ‘virtual’ world, conjured in pixels.
What the tech firms call ‘disruption’, when they destroy old trading networks, is one of the forces of our time. Populist politicians disrupt electoral tribes*; the Leeds study shows that technology [is] disrupting language itself.
I have a very dear lady friend with the ancient and lovely name of “Alexa”. She’s considering renaming herself as “Lexie” (a nickname), simply because Amazon’s electronic Stasi toy has become ubiquitous in ordinary conversation — and that’s not to mention all the jokes made when people get introduced to her. (As she puts it, you can only hear “Alexa? Turn on the coffeemaker” so many times before it starts getting really old.)
And it’s all quite unnecessary. Tech firms should actually create names for their products instead of lazily co-opting existing words or names.
We can talk about homosexuals and hippies some other time.
*Actually, no. All politicians create electoral tribes; “populist politicians” (e.g. Nigel Farage and Donald Trump) simply create new electoral tribes out of elements of those electoral tribes made by establishment politicians.
Executioner’s Song
Every time I rethink my position on the death penalty — i.e. that maybe I should reconsider my support thereof — I somehow stumble across a story like this one:
A convicted killer who had already murdered one girlfriend was left free to kill a second following a catalogue of police and probation service blunders, a jury has ruled.
Paul O’Hara, 48, was on life licence after serving 15 years for killing a former partner when he met businesswoman Cherylee Shennan.
They began a relationship but within weeks manipulative O’Hara, who had been diagnosed with psychopathic traits in prison, began controlling and beating the 40-year-old mother of one.
Over the following months police missed several chances to stop the ‘high-risk violent predator’.
When unprepared and unarmed officers did finally go to Miss Shennan’s home, O’Hara attacked them before stabbing his girlfriend to death.
So basically, this murderous asswipe was out on parole when he killed Victim #2.
Everyone who favors the abolition of execution for murder is all “O noes, what about the innocent people wrongly convicted?” when in fact they should be all “O noes, what about the innocent people killed by assholes wrongly freed?”
It’s bullshit. Anyone convicted of murder should be locked away forever while the appeals process grinds on, then executed. There should be NO parole (or “life licence” — what a crock of shit) for convicted murderers, ever.
Unless, maybe, we go all Hammurabi and if a parole board releases a murderer who then goes on to murder someone else, then the members of the parole board responsible should also face life imprisonment (or execution — a.k.a. Full Hammurabi) for having allowed Murder #2.
And while I’m still in a charitable mood, why hasn’t convicted cop-killer Wesley Cook (alias Mumia Abu-Jamar) been executed yet?
Old-Fashioned? Me?
I am often accused of being an old-fashioned man. This, despite the fact that I’m using a keyboard to enter my thoughts into a digital medium via a thing called the Internet. And hey, I prefer brass cartridges over muzzle-loading, so I’m not that old-fashioned (unlike some of my Readers, who believe that this brass thing is just a passing fad).
If you want to know what gets me going, however, consider the following pics, and guess why I tend to prefer tradition over modernity. We’ll open with the modern ones:
Interior design:
Cars: 
Handguns:
Women:
Men’s appearance:
Foods:
And you all know about my preferences in architecture: 
So yeah, I guess I am old-fashioned. Feel free to envy me.
VD Is Not Victory
Used to be that “VD” used to mean “Victory Day” — i.e. the day the war ended — but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, does it?
According to a report released earlier this year by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch, incidence rates of chlamydia in service men and women more than doubled from 2013 to 2018, gonorrhea infection rates also doubled for men and rose by 33 percent for women, and diagnoses of syphilis were nearly three times the number just 10 years ago.
Of course, the brass is always ready with a “DUH!” statement:
In a press release Wednesday, Defense Department officials said the increases can mean negative consequences for military readiness.
Ya think?
Then again, maybe the higher incidence of disease in our modern Armed Forces is, as the article puts it, just a parallel of the population as a whole.
Of course, the pox (of whatever flavor) is a perennial problem for any of the armed forces, whether invading armies, fighter jocks [sic] or dockside navies, as whores have always known that randy young soldiers of whatever branch are a prime target, so to speak, for their eager little cashboxes. And everyone, especially the military brass, knows it.
I recall reading somewhere that the British army sent to Spain and Portugal to oppose Napoleon’s Grand Army suffered infection rates of around 35%, but maybe that’s a feature of Spanish- and Portuguese totties, not to mention the ineffectual / non-existing prophylactics of the time.
And even the Edwardian-era U.S. Expeditionary Force sent to France in WWI became a walking pox factory, despite the Puritanic nature of American society at the time. As the song put it, “How Ya Gonna Keep ’em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree)?” (Translation: now that they’ve experienced the French flavor of booze and debauchery, they’re not going to listen to us when we tell them to be sober and chaste back home.”)
My favorite line, though, is that of the late Spike Milligan who, in recounting his artillery unit’s preparations for the invasion of North Africa in 1942, pointed out that each soldier was issued a single condom prior to landing. Milligan’s comment: “One? One? They must have been expecting a short war.”
‘Twas ever thus. The distinctly modern take on the increased poxiness of our modern Armed Forces is that it seems to be about the same for both male and female soldiers — which equality no doubt pleases Teh Feministicals greatly, but which I for one find ineffably sad.
More Of Those Things
I know that “keyless entry” systems are all the thing with cars these days, but forgive me if I’m just a little skeptical about their security:
Some new cars on the market are vulnerable to keyless thefts, tests have revealed.
Latest security ratings for seven models you can buy in showrooms today have been released by Thatcham Research, an independent automotive research centre.
Of the seven vehicles reviewed, four were found to offer ‘poor’ resistance to relay crimes that have spiraled in the last few years.
Actually, most cars offering this feature are vulnerable to being hacked by relay devices (available on amazon.com, of course). And if you don’t know how a relay device works, you need to disable your keyless system and go back to using a car key.
I of course have no desire ever to activate any keyless system when I come to replace the Tiguan, so none of the above will apply to me. And should my choice of car not have deactivation as an option, that choice will shift to another which does, or doesn’t even have the infernal system in the first place.
I am all for progress, by the way, if it represents actual progress and not just a nod to “convenience” (i.e. laziness). For example, I have always applauded the shift from front-stuffing muzzle-loaders to the brass cartridge — but should some techo-genius come up with an “electronically-activated triggering mechanism” to replace it, I’ll probably shoot him.
With a bullet launched from a brass cartridge case, most likely one of these:
