September 2020 – Page 13 – Splendid Isolation

Oh, Really?

September 2, 2020 Kim du Toit Marketing / Advertising, Travels

Given the uncertainties of COVID-19, major airlines stopped charging penalties to change your ticket through the end of 2020. Now, United Airlines says it’s locking in the policy — it’ll be free to change in 2021 as well…

That sounds great, until you finish the sentence:

…as long as you didn’t book the low-price basic economy seats fare.

Which accounts for the vast majority of airline tickets sold. But wait! There’s more:

Apparently this wallet-gouging feature will not apply to international travel — which is the type of ticket most likely to be affected by borders closed off by the Chinkvirus for the foreseeable future.

Here’s the best part:

Since 2010, Chicago-based United has scooped up nearly $6.5 billion in change fees. Last year, it took in $625 million, third behind Delta and American, according to Transportation Department figures.

I already have a built-in animus against United Airlines, for reasons too many and varied to tell; so it will be a cold day in Hell when they drag me kicking and screaming onto one of their foul airliners.

Update: And right on cue, from American Airlines in my inbox today:

Laying Eggs

September 2, 2020 Kim du Toit Grammar Nazism

Anyone see something wrong with this news headline?

It’s in the sub-headline.

You do not “lay” on a mattress; you lie on a mattress. You do not lay down; you lie down. “Lay down” is used as a verb requiring an object, e.g. “laying down a barrage” or even “laying down a carpet” — although to the ultra-picky, one just “lays a carpet” (the “down” is understood).

Chickens lay eggs, builders lay bricks (bricklayers), decorators lay carpets (carpetlayers, which has fallen out of use, and “carpet layers” has come into vogue, although “carpet layers” strictly speaking means a number of carpets lying (not laying) on top of one another).

In sexual slang, men lay women — historically, when a man “laid a woman down” or “lay (past tense of the verb) down with a woman”, it was a euphemism for having sex, hence “getting laid”.

If you get confused about all this, just remember: Hens lay eggs. It’s a transitive verb, requiring an object.

The key word is “lie”. Any time you use the word as an expression of becoming recumbent, it’s “lie”: lie down, lie on a bed and so on. The only time one would say “lay on a bed” is when it happened in the past, e.g. “She lay asleep on the bed last night, clutching her teddy bear.”

“She was laying on the bed” always begs the question: “Laying what? Eggs? Bricks?” The correct expression is: “She was lying on the bed.”

As to the correctness of having homeless Eastern Europeans lying [sic] on mattresses outside Park Lane shops: that is a topic for another time.

Applause

September 2, 2020 Kim du Toit Bad News, Food & Drink, Vermin

…for the pub owners involved in this little hoo-hah:

AN “obnoxious” group of drinkers were branded “entitled little toddlers” by a furious pub owner after they complained about staff online.

…and you must follow the link to enjoy the whole thing fully.

What amazes me is that the complainers aren’t a bunch of youngins, who as a group have been known to behave appallingly (I speak from experience); instead, they were people in their 40s and 50s., celebrating someone’s 50th birthday. Read the owner’s description of the night’s festivities, and marvel at the staff’s restraint.

Me, I would have tossed their uncouth and un-mannered asses out onto the street probably about half an hour in.

Frying Pan To Fire

September 2, 2020 Kim du Toit Crime, Immigration

Seen here:

Imagine leaving the high-tax, no-guns environment of Manhattan, and ending up in New Jersey, Connecticut and downstate New York, all places where taxes are low, gun ownership is encouraged, and…

Sorry, I can only stand so much snark.

Another Chink In Our Security

September 1, 2020 Kim du Toit Marxists, Seen On Campus

Here we go again:

A University of California-Los Angeles researcher has been arrested for allegedly throwing away a damaged hard drive while the FBI was investigating him for transferring sensitive U.S. data to China’s National University of Defense Technology.

As I noted in my post on a previous such incident, it would be a terrible thing if the spying motherfucker’s name was something like Professor Laydback Surferdude — but no, he’s an omelet-complexioned virus-spreader:

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday that 29-year-old Guan Lei “falsely den[ied] his association with the Chinese military” during interviews with federal law enforcement officials. Lei has since admitted that he participated in Chinese military training.
According to authorities, one of Lei’s faculty advisors in China also served in the Chinese military.
The Justice Department further alleged that Lei hid digital files from federal law enforcement and lied about having contact with the Chinese consulate during his time in the U.S.

I’m generally not a huge fan of piling on offenses just to add to the sentence, but I’m going to make an exception in this case because the little prick is so young. So: destruction of evidence (20 years), lying to a federal agent (5 years) and espionage (25 years), all sentences to run consecutively.

Or we could just shoot him in the back of the head, and make his family pay for the bullet — it’s what the ChiComs do to spies, after all.

I’m getting heartily sick of both this spying nonsense, and the aiding and abetting being given by academia.

We need to clean house, thoroughly, by expelling all Chinese nationals from faculty positions in academia. And before the profs start squealing about “loss of intellectual capital” or some such bullshit, I would suggest that the only loss of intellectual capital is being caused by having these spies sending our work back to their Commie bosses. Should our academic wailers wish to continue to work with these assholes, they should be quite free to do so: in China.