Author: Kim du Toit

Speed Bump #7,694

Grammar Nazism

Here we go again:

I don’t care about the story’s content or subject — on my interest scale, the hobbies of little fegelehs who jump into water rank somewhere below the sex lives of tarantulas — but FFS.

The knitting term is “PURL” and not “pearl”, you illiterate fucking scum of the earth.

There will come a time when I go over to Britishland and pay a visit to the offices of the Daily Mail, carrying my trusty cricket bat.  It will not be a pleasant site*.

 

*I know.  I just thought I’d pass it on.  Or you can take it as a pun.  Whatever.

News Roundup

Bad News

Yeah well, screw the Gummint.  Stale bread is horrible.  As is the news this week.


...I’m so old, I remember the regulation mandating that any federal employee found delinquent in their taxes be summarily fired.

In Election News:


...guilt about what?  Civilization?  Ending slavery?  [3,000 other random benefits to mankind omitted for space reasons… and while we’re there, space travel as well]


...hope he got that in cash.  Just sayin’.

Keeping the assholes at bay:


...don’t fuck mess with Texas.

In Global Jew Hate News:


...and when they get all revolutionary and jihad-y, it will make it easier to nuke them right there.

And:


...I’d have put them side by side, but no doubt the Izzies would have been equally offended.

In The Great Cultural Assimilation Project©:


…

Let’s hear it for Global Warming Climate Cooling Change©:


...and nobody (except anyone with common sense) saw it coming.

And contemplating the naval:


...actually, they’re just hiding them from Ukrainian drones.


...and about time.

Let’s see what inane shit comes out of 

       

...and just so we all know, “soft swinging” is defined as having sex with your regular partner in the same room with others also having sex with their partners, but without swapsies.  No big deal;  our close circle of friends did it all the way through college, back in the ’70s.  It was kinda fun.

And in Romance News:


...and for those of you who had forgotten about Lucy (and shame in you if you did), here’s a little memory-jogger or two:

And I believe that’s about all the silly news we can handle for now.

About That ’65 Mustang…

Drive Time, Surveillance Society

I haven’t actually purchased a Ford product since 2003 (F-150 FX4 so that I could move most of our stuff to a new house and not pay movers to do so).

I sure as hell wouldn’t buy one now, because they’re a bunch of fucking cop snitches:

Ford is trying to patent a way for its cars to report speeding drivers to the police.

A patent application from the automaker titled “Systems and Methods for Detecting Speeding Violations” was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Jul. 18 2024, and was originally filed by Ford Jan. 12, 2023.

In the application, Ford discusses using cars to monitor each other’s speeds. If one car detects that a nearby vehicle is being driven above the posted limit, it could use onboard cameras to photograph that vehicle. A report containing both speed data and images of the targeted vehicle could then be sent directly to a police car or roadside monitoring units via an Internet connection, according to Ford.

And if that doesn’t set your ass on fire, try this:

Using vehicles for speed surveillance would make cops’ jobs easier, as they wouldn’t have to quickly identify speeding violations and take off in pursuit, Ford notes in the application. It also means some of that work could be delegated to self-driving cars, which could be equipped to detect speeding violations, the automaker adds.

So it’s all-so-conveeenient for everybody, you see.

But wait!  There’s more!

Ford is now selling your driving data to a company called LexisNexis. This company is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets.
However, it turns out that LexisNexis is using your driving habits (acceleration, hard braking, speed and how fast you take corners) and forwarding this information on to insurance companies that then increase your insurance rates.

And if there’s one thing that insurance companies are known for, it’s their reluctance to generate more income  increase rates wherever they can.

If I were of an inclination to buy a car from Ford (and that’s a HUGE “if”), I’d go more for this kind of thing:

…or even better:

And for those of the truck persuasion:

Yeah, they’re old and (maybe) less reliable than the newest Fords… but at least they’re not continually spying on you while you drive them.

Bastards.

Three U.S. Speed Bumps

3 Inexplicable Things

As any fule kno, I yield to no man for the love of my adopted country.  I am an American by choice, and doubleplusproud I am to be that.

However:  there are three things peculiar to the U.S. that got up my nose soon after I arrived here, and they have continued to bug the hell out of me ever since.

1) Date format:  I know that we can do pretty much anything we want because Murka, but FFS why do we insist on mm/dd/yy (or /yyyy ever since Y2K) when the rest of the world uses dd/mm/yyyy?  It makes no sense, forces one to insert an unnecessary comma when writing out the date — e.g. November 19 COMMA 2024, to prevent numbers running into each other — when going with the universal format would just make things easier.  For everybody.

2) Gallons:  I have no problem with using Imperial weights and measures, because they make things easier for everyday life over the artificial metric system.  But why the hell do we have a liquid gallon that is smaller than the Imperial gallon?  I was looking at a lovely old car’s specs the other day, and saw that it had a “tiny” 15-gallon fuel tank — and then realized that it was a Jaguar, and they were quoting Imperial gallons (in this case 18 U.S. gallons).  I mean, we don’t have a mile that’s shorter than an Imperial mile — we could just go metric for that, don’t get me started — so why a use a smaller gallon measure?

3) Floor numbers:   When you step into an elevator / lift in any developed country outside the U.S., you see the selector thus:

…but in the U.S., it’s:    

Why no ground floor?  Once again, it’s something we do that nobody else does, and it often leads to confusion when talking to a non-Murkin.  FFS, every building has a floor that’s at ground-level, so why not use the “G” and say “ground floor”?

No doubt there are all sorts of sound reasons why we Murkins have gone our own way — and don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with that mindset, e.g.:

…but I do need to wave my hands when such non-conformity makes absolutely no sense at all.

In all three of the above cases.

No Chance Totty

Elections

I see that some Republican tart ran for office earlier in the year:

Of course, she ran as a conservative “independent” (“Republican” is the kiss of death  up there in Minneapolis).  That didn’t fool anyone, so she duly lost 46-54% to some liberal “independent”.  Yeah, her background is kinda shady too, so that may have had something to do with it.

Too bad, because:

Rather toothsome, wot?  We need to see more of that kind of representation, methinks.