Recent post by a Google employee:
See, he’s talking about the after-life, while I’m more interested in the here-and-now. My response:
Author: Kim du Toit
Quote Of The Day
“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” — Hillary Bitch Clinton, October 10 2018
Fair enough. So let’s list a few of the things that I (and a great many others) stand for, and that I care about, in no specific order (and feel free to add any that I may have forgotten):
- The First and Second Amendments (and the other eight in the Bill of Rights, but most especially the first two)
- A Constitution that cannot be changed by any means other than by amendment, as laid down in the Constitution
- A tri-cameral government system, consisting of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches
- A judiciary that follows Constitutional precept rather than changing it by judicial fiat or through political belief
- The Electoral College
- Citizen-only voting, with proof of same required before doing so
- Secure borders and controlled immigration
- Low taxes
Now, using Clinton’s own rationale, and considering that her political party stands absolutely foursquare against, and seeks to destroy all the above, I would ask her to explain to me why I should ever be in any way “civil” towards Democrats (or their camp followers, the “Social” Democrats).
While she’s preparing her response, I’ll be down at the range.
Tole Ya So
As I suggested earlier in the week, male employers are going to think twice before hiring women in the future. Or maybe the future is now:
The Society for Human Resource Management published a report Thursday that documented the result of the movement that called on society to believe allegations of sexual harassment without question.
According to the study, nearly a third of executives report that they have “changed their behaviors to a moderate, great or very great extent to avoid behavior that could be perceived as sexual harassment.”
The CEO of the SHRM, Johnny C. Taylor Jr., explained that “some of the more concerning pieces of data that came out of the research are around the concern that there may be a backlash of sorts. There were men who specifically said I will not hire a woman going forward,” he explained. “Those who said they would hire a woman said they would not travel with one, and they, more importantly they would not engage in activities after business hours.”
But that’s not all. How about this development:
Amazon’s machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem.
The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters.
But the firm was ultimately forced to end the project after it found the system had taught itself to prefer male candidates over females.
When even machines, looking at the thing empirically and dispassionately, find reasons to disqualify women…
There ya go, ladies. Hope it was worth it.
That Said…
As I said in Comments to this post, torching a guy’s car just because of a bumper sticker is a felony. Sorta like this:
A man in Vancouver, WA returned to the bar he had left his truck at the night before to find charred remains of what used to be his Nissan Titan. On the previous night, Johnny MacKay opted to take an UBER home rather than take to the roads under the influence. He left his truck in the parking lot, expecting to drive it back the next day. Except some anti-Trump terrorists got it to first, setting it on fire.
This being the Pacific Northwest, don’t hold yer breath waiting for any arrests.
Here We Go Again
We’ve come across this foul bitch before. Fresh from her “triumph” of having a conservative guy ejected from a gym, Georgetown professor Christine “Anything But” Fair is back in the news, unfortunately:
A professor at Georgetown University known for making incendiary comments against supporters of President Donald Trump said white men deserve “miserable deaths” for supporting Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
C. Christine Fair, an associate professor at Georgetown in the School of Foreign Service, tweeted Saturday, saying white Republican men should die and an added bonus would be if women “castrate their corpses and feed them to swine.”
This folks, is what happens when you’re so ugly you can’t even get a pityfuck at a drunken frat kegger.
And her Ugly isn’t just on the surface; it permeates her entire being.
Yet she’s still employed at Georgetown, which used to be a reasonably-prestigious university. Now it seems that the place is as fucked-up, rancid and poxy as this example of its academia. Maybe they’re proud of her, which makes a sick kind of sense, I guess.
Over-Complicated
I am a lifelong VW fan. While VW isn’t the only brand I’ve ever driven (mostly due to circumstance and timing), over the years I’ve owned nine, starting with a humble panel van like this one (I played in a band so duh):
Note the extreme simplicity: divided flat windshield, swing-open doors, hard bumper over-riders, manually-adjusted rearview mirrors and single-beam headlights (the ones pictured are far sexier than mine were). And that’s just the exterior. The interior was equally spartan:
(This must have been a deluxe version — it had a radio. Mine didn’t even have seatbelts.)
The only things I ever replaced were the headlights because the originals were so weak that a car coming up from behind would cast my shadow into my beams), and a clutch plate (at about 80,000 miles). The engine was the mighty air-cooled 1600cc, which made uphill travel with a full load an exercise in patience (for the cars behind me).
I owned “Fred” (as the band nicknamed it) for eight years. Then I moved on, over the years driving a Beetle (original model), Golf, Passat wagon, three Jettas (!) and two Tiguans.
Imagine my surprise when (thanks to Insty) I read a review of the 2019 VW Jetta, which contained gems such as these:
Both Jettas we tested were top-of-the-line ($26,945 [WTF? — Kim]) SEL versions, so they came with all the bells and whistles. As an illustration of how interconnected all these various subsystems are, consider the following: switching among Eco, Normal, and Sport modes remaps the throttle, changes the transmission shift points, and can even tighten the steering. But it will also tweak how the adaptive cruise control behaves, changes the climate-control settings, and even changes the interior ambient lighting.
…and:
The interior tech might well be the Jetta’s strongest card. SEL Jettas come with the 10.25-inch “Digital Cockpit” display, a VW version of Audi’s “Virtual Cockpit” that I’ve raved about in the past. You can configure it to a great degree, from austere minimalism to information overload, and together with the MIB II infotainment system, the overall experience is slick. (Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, and MirrorLink are included.)
I should point out that my panel van had a new-car sticker price of about $4,000 in today’s currency, and my second (top of the line) Jetta had a sticker of $14,000 (also in today’s dollars), thus making the 2019 model nearly double the price, for nowhere close to double the utility.
I’m not saying that VW should return to the austerity of the panel van; hell, my old Fred made Fred Flintstone’s car look like a Cadillac — it was absolute hell on a cold or hot day, let me tell you, plus it was about as safe to drive as a mobility scooter on the Long Island Expressway. And no doubt some marketing genius at VW will tell you that this unheard-of luxury is what the market wants (while a VW accountant won’t tell you that all the doodads add thousands of dollars of profit per car, but they do). I have no problem with many of the safety features demanded of today’s cars, but I absolutely have to question the need for “Eco, Normal, and Sport” gearbox modes in a small passenger saloon car with a farty little 1400cc four-banger engine. (The next model year will feature VW’s superb 2.0-liter turbo engine — the same one used in my Tiguan — which will cause the 1400cc model’s sales to tank (you heard it here first) because given a choice between needless but anemic luxury and performance, only Alan Alda / Greenpeace types prefer the former.)
I also know that today’s “luxury” becomes tomorrow’s “indispensable”, such is the insidious upward creep of progress. But as VW cars have become more luxurious, the “People’s Car” has transformed itself into the “rich people’s” car, and VW has opened a gap at the bottom of the market (which they used to own) for car manufacturers from other countries to fill.
I’m going to quit now, because I’m sick of pissing into this particular wind. And my next Tiguan will have the “parking assist” software because of all the automotive luxuries ever designed, this is one of the few which actually makes sense. Yeah, I’m selling out.