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Techno-Snooping

Technology

Let’s hear it for the companies who are spying on us:

The only Alexa I’d ever let into my house is a wonderful lady friend thus named.  The electronic snooper and spy?  Well, I guess somebody could put one into my house at some point, but the recordings would be kinda boring, because I’d be dead.

Bloody hell, it’s bad enough that the bastard government alphabet agencies might want to climb up my ass on a 24/7 basis, simply because I once wrote that I wanted to beat Ted “Swimmer” Kennedy to death with a lead pipe;  and that ever since the fat prick died, I’ve wanted to pour a bottle of Glenmorangie 10-year-old over his grave (after first passing the stuff through my kidneys).

Now the post-adolescent techno-weenies want their turn at my asshole, just because I buy books and deodorant from their poxy company?  Fuck ’em.

News Roundup

Bad News

— Scientists find traces of cocaine in freshwater shrimp — so everybody panic:  we’re all gonna DIIIIEEEEEEEE!   I wonder where they sampled the freshwater shrimp;  from the Orinoco River in Colombia? [warning: contains Enya]

— Piss off, tourists! — Amsterdam has finally had enough (as bemoaned on this website some time ago).  Bugger.

— “We’re not going to tell you how to live” — If only they weren’t such boring socialists with shitty gun laws, I’d live there.

— Socialists Go Ultra-Crazy On Gun Confiscation — Fuck off, Spartacus.  And take all your socialist control-freak buddies with you.  Or:  keep it up and watch Trump win 40 states in 2020.

— All over the world, everybody hates their gummint — Don’t even bother asking the Venezuelans.  The Chinese would be the same, except that if they admit it, they get shot.  By their gummint.

Coincidence? I Think Not

Men & Women

In yesterday’s Daily Mail, we discovered that people are bonking less:

A major study found there has been a steep decline in rates of intimacy since 2001, with fewer than half of Britons now having sex once a week.
Scientists said that ‘life in the digital age’ was partly to blame – with couples now too distracted by Netflix, social media or their phones to focus on each other.

However, in the article which appeared right next to it, I think the true reason for the bonking decline manifested itself:

Britons are drinking LESS alcohol than they did 10 years ago despite rising rates across the world ‘because health conscious youngsters are shunning the habit’

Frankly, while there may be anecdotal evidence that it’s all because youngins are more health conscious, I myself think that the the true cause of the bonking decline is the lack of booze coupled with feral feminism, with digital media (phones, Netflix etc.) a distant third.  Let’s face it:  unappealing women and no booze do not set the scene for coupling, so to speak.

I can’t remember where I read it, but the Old Fart Set (baby boomers) are shagging like crazy, maybe more than ever (to judge by the soaring pox rates), not only because we’re not slaves to our phones, but also because we aren’t as affected by the health bullshit and continue to drink.  And finally, our Old Broads, despite having been at the forefront of (now called “first wave”) feminism, aren’t as fucked up by what feminism has become — male-bashing and misogyny — and are thus more likely to want to slip between the sheets after a few gins.

That’s my thesis, anyway, and it’s just as plausible as anything proposed by the “scientists” (actually, researchers — the two are not the same).

Perennial Question

Literature

I was idly looking at the graphic below, which depicts Britain’s new royal line of succession:

Now like for most people, the succession thing is about as interesting to me as which rain droplet will reach the bottom of the windowpane first, but it does bring to mind a question which has bothered me since high school, and has never been satisfactorily answered.

It’s Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  Now as any fule kno, the plot is that Hamlet’s eeeevil uncle Claudius poisoned Hamlet’s father the king, then married Hamlet’s mother Gertrude to become the new king.

Given that Hamlet was alive when his father was murdered and was therefore first in the line of succession, why did Hamlet not become king?  If I understand the rules properly, when the king dies, his wife becomes irrelevant to the whole thing, and anyone she marries afterwards even less relevant.  Claudius, therefore, had absolutely no claim to the throne (despite being Hamlet’s father’s brother) and could never have become king, unless he’d had Hamlet killed beforehand.

Or does / did Denmark have a different succession plan?  I don’t think so.

So the entire plot of Hamlet, then, is a load of old bollocks:  the uncle’s accession to the throne being simply what Alfred Hitchcock called the “mcguffin” (a device upon which to hang a plot line, requiring the suspension of disbelief from the audience, e.g. John Huston’s stolen Maltese falcon, or Casablanca‘s “letters of transit signed by General de Gaulle”).

Not that I care, mind you;  without that Shakespearean mcguffin, we’d never have been given the deathless “To be, or not to be”  speech, or seen that old busybody Polonius get a rapier through his arras.

Conflicting Advice

SHTF

We are constantly being told about the merits of a “cashless” society, mostly by government agencies and other totalitarians who want to be able to see how We The People are spending our money, and for whom cash usage represents an anathema:  anonymous transactions.

It’s ironic, therefore, that Sweden, so long in the forefront of digital payments, seems to be having second thoughts about the whole thing:

Cashless payments are all the rage but people in Sweden have been told to squirrel away notes and coins in case of a cyber attack on the nation’s banks.
Digital payments offer convenience for both buyers and sellers alike and the Scandinavian nation has been an eager adopter of the technology.
Now, government experts are concerned that people could be left without any money should its computer networks become victim to an attack.
Sweden’s Civil Contingencies Agency has issued guidance to every household telling residents to stockpile ‘cash in small denominations’ for use in emergencies.
The warning will ring alarm bells around the world as developed nations increasingly make the move to a cashless society.

Trouble is, if the digital SHTF and all electronic banking becomes impossible, you’re going to need more than “cash in small denominations” to get by, unless you have many thousands of same at hand — and few people do, except for drug dealers [irony alert].

In most similar societal breakdowns in the past, alternatives to cash have been (in order of utility):  gold, liquor, cigarettes, ammunition and vaginas.

Most of my male Readers probably have on hand plenty of all but the last (to their everlasting credit), and cigarettes probably wouldn’t have much demand nowadays anyway (except in the rural areas, maybe).  But if you can’t afford gold, booze and ammo — and especially ammo — would work for a time, at least.

I can offer no advice concerning vaginas, but I suspect that if you have enough of the cash alternatives, you’d have little problem gaining access to the latter.  (My late stepfather once told me that after WWII, a pack of Lucky Strikes would get you an all-nighter with even the most beautiful Italian girls in Naples, but those were the days when everybody smoked.)

Better still would be to be married, so the whole vagina issue would become irrelevant.  (I still chuckle over Third-World society men offering up their “sisters” in exchange for food or money.  I was actually made such an offer — which I politely declined — by a guy in a Bangalore parking lot, in 2005.)

As it happens, the Swedes are fortunate in that they seem to have a plentiful supply of vaginas, which is probably just as well because Sweden’s relationship with its bullion dealers is problematic, to say the least:

Last month, Sweden’s largest precious metal dealer posted a notice that their bank account had been closed without their consent.
Tavex Guld & Valuta posted a notice on June 30th [2016 — K] that their bank account had been unilaterally closed. This left the dealer without an efficient way of accepting payments for good, racing to establish a new payment system.

As Tavex stated:

The banking system in Sweden is operated however vigorously towards a cashless society, as you probably are aware of, and Tavex has, as one of the largest wholesale suppliers of physical notes and investment metals in Sweden, as we see it become a target for the major commercial banks.

So on the one hand, Sweden’s government can and has moved towards a cashless society, but on the other hand they’re recommending that people hoard cash “under their mattress”.

The Swedes probably have plenty of booze lying around in their homes — they’re not renowned for being teetotallers —  but I doubt very much that they have much ammo at all, even in rural areas, as sales thereof are severely restricted because “nobody should need excessive quantities” of ammunition.  (Sound familiar?)

Thankfully, we are not Sweden, so my advice is to have lots of all the above — and especially guns and ammunition — on hand.  Don’t trust the Internet of Things to stay in operation forever, and do become independent of it when it falls over, regardless of cause.

Now, for all our government alphabet agencies:  how I spend my pitiful supply of money is nunya.  I only use cards for convenience, and most of my (ahem) “suspicious” purchases — those would be of guns and ammunition, you godless gummint snoops — have been anonymous.  So fuck you.