November 2023 – Page 5 – Splendid Isolation

Apparently, Gen Z has decided that a skillset isn’t the most important thing you need in the workplace because morale and smiles are more important than all that efficiency nonsense, right?

I remember “personality hires” back when I was in the supermarket business. We referred to them as “baggers”, because a) they didn’t need much in the way of job skills, and b) customers liked it when they interacted with young smileyfaces at the end of their transaction.

The best part was when these inkstains on the corporate blotting paper decided that they “deserved” either a salary increase or promotion just because they’d been on the job for a couple months.

It’s been a while, so I’ve forgotten the corporate-speak for “you must be out of your fucking mind” or its companion statement, “fuck off and come back when you’ve proved why I shouldn’t fire you right now”.

If the only thing you’re bringing to a job — any job — is your “personality”, you may as well resign yourself to a life of poverty. Or prostitution (e.g. in the public relations industry, don’t get me started).

Fucking entitled wankers.

Unreality

November 22, 2023 Kim du Toit Lists

Time again for one of those stupid polls done by some organization I’ve never heard of, which ranks the “Best of” — this time, of cities around the world to live in. The criteria seem quite reasonable:

The results are based on scores across three key categories – liveability, lovability and prosperity, with dozens of factors taken into account. These include educational attainment, GDP per capita, poverty rate, the number of quality restaurants, shops and nightclubs; walkability, the number of mapped bike routes, quality parks and museums.

They cock it up somewhat by including “number of recommendations on sites such as Tripadvisor, Google, Facebook and Instagram” because those are generally driven by booster bots and paid “influencers” (same thing, really), but whatever. Here are the Top 20:

1 – London
2 – Paris
3 – New York, U.S.
4 – Tokyo
5 – Singapore
6 – Dubai, United Arab Emirates
7 – San Francisco, U.S.
8 – Barcelona, Spain
9 – Amsterdam, Netherlands
10 – Seoul, South Korea
11 – Rome, Italy
12 – Prague, Czechia
13 – Madrid, Spain
14 – Berlin, Germany
15 – Los Angeles, U.S.
16 – Chicago, U.S.
17 – Washington D.C., U.S.
18 – Beijing, China
19 – Istanbul, Turkey
20 – Dublin, Ireland

…and to my Murkin Readers, at least, this would cause coffee-splattered screens and keyboards, because the five U.S. cities listed are the ones showing the greatest outward migration and desertion by the people who actually live there. (And this is also true of the other U.S. cities in the 30-50 group.)

And where are these “refugees” going, according to actual census data? To Orlando (53), Miami (55), Atlanta (65), Houston (68), Nashville (71), Dallas (73) and Charlotte (92). And it’s got nothing to do with the warmer weather, either.

It is, as they say, to LOL. If the list was entitled “Nice Places To Visit (but you wouldn’t want to live there), then it might have some (but not much) credence, with regard to the U.S. cities anyway.

Forty years ago, this list may have been true — and maybe not even then — but today? As they say in New York (3): fuggeddabahdit.

As for the furrin cities, and based solely on my experiences there, I’d have no issue with living in London or Paris, but certainly Amsterdam (9) would rank higher than either, and Vienna (21) would be in the top 5.

Probably the only ranking I agree with is Baltimore (100). It’s a total shithole, and deservedly placed well below such garden spots as Beijing (18!) and Bogotá (81).

Comparative Paradise

November 22, 2023 Kim du Toit Africa

Here’s an interesting development:

South Africa is planning to withdraw from UN conventions so the government can restrict immigration and send refugees back to countries that are not deemed dangerous.

Indeed, the nation’s statistics agency said last month there were more than 2.4 million migrants in South Africa last year, with the highest percentage coming from neighboring Zimbabwe at 45.5 per cent, followed by Mozambique and Lesotho.

‘Migration between countries is driven largely by the quest for economic opportunities, political instability, and increasingly, environmental hazards,’ said Statistics South Africa.

A little-known fact about Seffrica is that it’s seen as a Mecca, so to speak, by all the other sub-Saharan African countries (a.k.a. shitholes) because it’s seen as the best-functioning country in the sub-continent, with the greatest opportunities for jobs.

Fact: Seffrica has an “official” unemployment rate of over 48%, and in some areas it’s a lot higher.

Fact: Most Black Seffricans loathe the “immigrants” from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Malawi et al., and they display their enmity in the traditional manner: murder, disembowelment, amputation and immolation (when they can find any gasoline, that is). In fact, if you subtract the murders of migrants from the statistics, then the national murder rate drops quite substantially (to about double that of South Side Chicago, for instance). And those are the official (i.e. reported) murders; most go unreported, and un-investigated by the world’s most incompetent and corrupt police force.

Fact: Violent crime perpetrated by said “immigrants” and “asylum seekers” is obscenely high. A huge number of the carjacking gangs, burglary rings and so on are organized and staffed by the above, and one of Seffrica’s most notorious serial killers (recently captured) was a native Mozambican.

So it’s no surprise that the Seffrican government has taken the stance that it has:

Mr Motsoaledi said the ruling African National Congress (ANC) had made a ‘serious mistake’ when it signed up to international agreements without seeking exceptions from certain clauses. Other countries had opted out of giving refugees the same rights as citizens.

The government minister said that the current liberal laws, which saw the ANC open up South Africa’s borders to migrants and asylum seekers at the end of apartheid rule in 1994, were now outdated and needed a ‘radical overhaul’.

Mr Motsoaledi is now pushing for people seeking asylum in South Africa to stay in the first safe country they enter – a proposal that will largely affect those from other African nations.

Under this plan, refugees from Malawi will have to stay in Zambia and not go further south (through Zimbabwe) to get to the Promised Land.

If all this sounds familiar to my Murkin and Brit Readers, it should. Plus ça change, plus la même chose.

Change Of Season, Change Of Mood

November 22, 2023 Kim du Toit House & Home

We’ve had our first cool days here in north Texas — not the cold snap of a week ago, but that gentle cool of autumn. So I had to change the wallpaper on Ye Olde Laptoppe, from this:

…to this:

Unlike the earlier pic, I know where this one is (because I took the pic myself; open in new tab or window to embiggen, feel free to copy).

It’s just outside Belfast, Maine, looking out over the Passagassawakeag River (yeah, I know; stupid Indian name, they could have just called it the “Belfast River”, but noooo).

I wish we had mist here in the Dallas area… or decent rivers, for that matter.

Kim’s Black Friday Half-Dozen – Rifles

November 21, 2023 Kim du Toit Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

Collectors Firearms is publicizing their Black Friday Sale, and I thought I’d shuffle over to the Curio & Relic (C&R) department to see which caught my fancy. (Not that I can afford any of them, of course, but the 20% discounts being offered make these rifles at least reachable for anyone with a few hundred buck or so to spare.) Links in description.

Mosin M44 Trunk Gun