Tag: Regrettable Acts

FAFO

Crime, Law and Order, Morons & Idiots

I’m not a huge fan of the term “fuck around and find out” (or its past tense equivalent), meaning you wanna play games, you might not end up with the consequences you wanted.  I don’t know what the Brit expression of the above might be, but here’s a real-life example:

A marked police car was chasing after a [car driven by] men who were driving at high speeds through London before crashing outside Central Middlesex Hospital this morning.

Now that’s a lucky place to crash if ever there was one.  However:

A 17-year-old boy has been killed and a second is fighting for his life after the car struck a kerb and flipped over. 

The 17-year-old was pronounced dead shortly after the collision on Park Royal at around 5:25am. Two other men in the car at the time were rushed to hospital for treatment with their injuries first believed to be life threatening. One remains in a critical condition with the other now said to be stable but still receiving medical help.

A fourth passenger was not seriously hurt in the crash.

So the Gods of the Copybook Headings came through, in this case, because TANSTAAFL/Ride  (said Gods generally being the nemeses of the ungodly, as the ones dealing out the consequences.)

Of course, this being Britishland, there has to be An Inquiry, but I can’t see what for.  Little shits were driving a car (probably stolen, 2:1) and that recklessly through an urban area.  Had they collided with a pedestrian or another car, some innocent lives might have been lost.  As it was, nobody dead except those that should be.

Just this once, I’d like to be heading up the inquiry.  It would take about half an hour, and only that long because I’d order takeout pizza for everyone as we discussed the (very few) details before sending everyone on their way with no consequences for any of the cops, who were only doing their job, after all.

Of course, the parents of the deceased scrote(s, I’m hoping) will be all Weepy And Waily because their little Precious was a good boy who sang in the choir and they can’t imagine how he got involved in such Bad Company, and all the usual twaddle.  They should be billed for the replacement value of the wrecked car as a consequence for not supervising their still-minor child.  That they won’t be will just encourage similar negligence among other parents, unfortunately.

In case anyone has missed it, I’m not feeling in a very charitable mood today.

Update On Big Auto’s Duracell Drive

Corporate Fuckery, Corporate Wokism, Drive Time

Following on from yesterday’s post on VW, Mercedes and Stellantis (the bastards), there’s this:

Car makers slash EV prices, suspend production and extend petrol model availability as electric demand wanes

The global downturn in sales of EVs has been triggered by a cocktail of diverging policies on green incentives, range and charge anxiety among drivers and the fact prices haven’t come down as much as experts had forecast.

As such, 2024 has been awash with a wave of U-turns by legacy car firms in response to a lower-than-expected appetite for electric vehicles.

‘Appetite for EVs among consumers is quickly diminishing. There are many factors contributing to this, including the lack of clarity around incentives, high prices and concerns around the low residual value of EVs.’

Yeah, not to mention the paucity of charging points when your Duracell phuts out, the cost of replacing said Duracell when it becomes as worn out as Madonna’s box at a P Diddy White Party, and those pesky spontaneous combustion episodes — to name but some “consumer concerns”.

Looks like corporate obeisance to the great Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© is losing its luster, especially when that pesky cold hard cash is involved.  (Also see:  Germany restarting coal-fired electricity generating plants.)

This is especially rich:

‘The new pricing structure on Corsa Electric and Astra Electric is the latest in a number of measures we have taken to democratise access to electric vehicles.’\

“Democratize access”, my aching African-American white ass.  That’s just a fancy term for “getting rid of unwanted stock”.

But when it comes to weaselly corporate-speak, it’s hard to top this:

Volvo Cars chief executive Jim Rowan said: ‘We are resolute in our belief that our future is electric. An electric car provides a superior driving experience [nazzo fast, Guido] and increases possibilities for using advanced technologies that improve the overall customer experience [like having their every move tracked and sent to insurance companies and ad agencies].

‘However, it is clear that the transition to electrification will not be linear [ya think?], and customers and markets are moving at different speeds of adoption [or not moving at all, see above].

‘We are pragmatic and flexible [except of course when we try to coerce people into buying our Duracell cars by eliminating the ICE option completely], while retaining an industry-leading position on electrification and sustainability.’ [and I hope you’re the first to go out of business, Mr. Leader]

Wait… what’s this I’m experiencing?

Oh, and one more thing, speaking of Duracell cars:

…not that any of my Readers would be affected, of course, being Sensible Chaps.

In Pursuit Of A Dream

Deep Thoughts

I was watching some Eeewwchoob show about the evils of the lottery and how it’s just a disguised tax on stupid people and the poor and yadda yadda yadda.

One of the statements was that if you were to win a lottery with an advertised value of, say, $100 million, if you chose to take the lump sum payout instead of the annual payout, you’d end up with only $26 million, after taxes and so on.  ($100 minus the “lump sum penalty minus income tax.)

“Only” $26 million.  (Here’s where the “opportunity cost” canard, so beloved of finance people and con artists, comes into play.)  In other words, you’d be “losing” $74 million dollars because It’s All A Big Ripoff, Man.  Except of course that you wouldn’t be losing anything, but gaining many millions that you never had before.

And I don’t want to hear the old hackneyed saying about whether you buy a lottery ticket or not, you still have about the same chance of winning — which would be true if nobody had ever, ever won a lottery prize.  But as the newspapers are full of stories about how X won a lottery and then went broke after only a few years boo hoo, we have to assume that at least some people hit the jackpot.  So while the odds against are cripplingly high, they are not impossible.

So I play the lottery every week.  I only drop a few bucks at a time, because my feeling is that a $2 ticket is the cheapest dream you can get, and in any event I don’t live close to a casino where the odds are better but the payout is pathetic.  And if you know how the stock market can be and is being manipulated by huge institutions and giant index funds like Blackrock and Vanguard, you’d forget trying that form of legalized gambling too.

And I’m not saying the following is true in my case, not at all.  But something has occurred to me, as I’ve watched the economic news get worse and worse (thank you FJB) and the outlook becomes gloomier and gloomier, with prices skyrocketing and incomes remaining stagnant or even decreasing, with more and more hints that Social Security will end at some point, etc. etc.

I can’t help wondering that if all that shit really does hit the fan:  how many truly desperate people will not just turn to crime, but might take (in Tammy Keel’s immortal words) a sack lunch and a Mauser to the roof of a tall building, in the ultimate expression of nihilistic fatalism and despair.

And I wonder too how many people right now are being held back from doing so by having just the faint hope of that little lottery ticket in their pocket.

Doing The Right Thing

Good Stuff, LGBTOSTFU, Resistance

Here’s some news that cheered me up over the weekend:

A girls’ field hockey team from Dighton-Rehoboth (D-R) Regional High School in Massachusetts has forfeited a planned game on September 17th because their opponent, Somerset-Berkley, has a male on their team.
Dighton-Rehoboth cited its new policy, approved on June 25, that allows players and/or coaches to opt out of competitions if the opposing team includes a member of the opposite sex.

And they’re aware of the consequences:

“We understand this forfeit will impact our chances for a league championship and possibly playoff eligibility, but we remain hopeful that other schools consider following suit to achieve safety and promote fair competition for female athletes.”

I actually know a lot about this topic.

You see, back in high school I played for the 1st XI hockey team for most of my time there — I was reasonably skilled but the fastest runner on the team, and speed made up for a lot of shortcomings.

Just for the hell of it, the coach arranged for a match against two girls’ high schools on consecutive Sundays, played on our field.  Both were considered top in the field, perennial competitors for the girls’ area championship.  We, in contrast, were no more than mediocre (we only had forty-odd boys to draw from, as most of the school played rugby).

So we approached the first match with some trepidation, because of course we’d never played against girls.

After the first five minutes we realized that our opposition was hopelessly outclassed.  We were faster, more skilled and more game-savvy, and we scored three goals in the space of a few minutes.  Thereafter we decided that we would only run backwards, and the flow of goals slowed to only a couple by half-time.

At that point, the respective coaches decided to split us up, five each of either gender per side (the goalies were irrelevant).

Only then did everyone start enjoying themselves, but even then we boys had a tacit agreement to slow down and make most of our passes to the girls (“to” not “at”, you bad people) rather than just playing to win.

And it was great fun.  But make no mistake, there was absolutely no comparison between the sexes.  Had we boys not altered the format and played like we were playing one of our bitter rivals, there’s no telling how badly we would have beaten the girls.

So I can tell you that having even one boy playing on a girl’s team is going to make a huge difference, especially if that boy plays aggressively, like the boy in the linked article did.  (Shame on him, by the way.  Even at my advanced age, I’d love to play against him and show him what real –but quite legal — aggression is like when you have it inflicted on you*.)

Some things cannot be changed, no matter how many “valid” arguments are made in favor of the change.

And good for the folks at Dighton-Rehoboth for acknowledging that fact.

*That’s a tale for another time, but someone remind me to tell the story of Kim And The Beauty Queen some day.

New Ban?

Government Thugs, Mocking Furriners, Nannies

This is an interesting development:

Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, prime minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and ‘onto the footy fields’.

Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, he  said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a ‘scourge’.

The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said.

The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16.

Age verification trials are being held over the coming months, the centre-left leader said, though analysts said they doubted it was technically possible to enforce an online age limit.

Loath as I am to give any kind of credit to the OzGov, foul totalitarian nanny bastards that they are, I can’t help but wonder whether a) this can work and b) if it does work, will it benefit teens in any way?  Given that teens nowadays appear to have absolutely no problem in accessing porn — even porn sites protected by “age walls” — I’m somewhat skeptical about it all.

It’s probably just the usual “We have to do something!” posturing so common among all politicians.

(Just an aside:  Albanese’s “center-left” philosophy is somewhere around that of Bernie Sanders, politically speaking.)

Work Ethic

Good Stuff, Gummint

The State (i.e. governments large and small) can always find ways to stifle individuality, especially when that individuality manifests itself in young people.  Here’s a recent example:

Bored and looking for something to do this summer, Danny Doherty hatched a plan to raise money for his brother’s hockey team by selling homemade ice cream.

But a few days after setting up a stand and serving up vanilla, shaved chocolate and fluffernutter to about 20 people, Danny’s family received a letter from the Norwood Board of Health ordering it shut down. Town officials had received a complaint and said that the 12-year-old’s scheme violated the Massachusetts Food Code, a state regulation.

No surprises there, this being Massachusetts.  (My only question:  who complained?  Some goody-goody, or someone fronting for the local ice cream shop?  Either way, they need a swift slap.)

Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I lived in in one of the Chicagoland suburbs — Palatine, a modest middle-class neighborhood of the kind that’s so Norman Rockwell it’s almost a caricature.  And while my house itself was small, it sat on just over a quarter-acre, which meant a large lawn in the backyard.  Said lawn took well over two hour to cut and edge, and in the short but warm, fecund Chicago summers, the grass grew quickly, meaning it had to be cut at least weekly;  actually, I would cut it about five times a month.  And it was a hot, sweaty business:  Chicago’s summers can be sticky, especially when contrasted with its icy winters.

At that point I was working from home (long before it became the cool thing to do) because the company was based near Fort Lauderdale.  And I really couldn’t afford to spend the time doing the lawn.  Anyway, one afternoon I was just about to go out and cut the thing when the doorbell rang.  When I opened it, there were two boys standing there, aged about ten.

“Cut your lawn for ten bucks?”

Hell, yes.

Whereupon these two little buggers (each had their own, okay, most likely Dad’s lawnmower) cut the lawn — good grief, they ran behind the mowers, and the grass was cut to almost professional standard in just about fifteen minutes.  They didn’t do edging (“Our Dads won’t let us because they say it’s dangerous”) but that was really just a half-hour job, and easily done after 5 o’clock.

“See you again next week, boys?”

They actually sounded surprised.  “You want us to come back?”

Hell, yes.  And over the next couple years, I never cut my own lawn again. And nor did a lot of my neighbors, once I told them about these kids at the next block party.  These boys made an absolute fortune, and worked their tails off.

And if the local council gauleiters  had ever tried to stop these kids from earning some money from good, honest hard work, I do believe that the neighborhood dads would have burned down their offices.  They didn’t interfere, of course, either because they never learned about these budding entrepreneurs or because they just ignored them (as they should).

Now I’m not suggesting that whenever Gummint does what they did to young Danny Doherty above, the neighborhood dads should torch their offices or tar and feather the bastards.  That would be incitement, and I’m never going to do that no sirree not me not ever.

But I sure as hell wouldn’t try to stop those irate folks if they did.  I would offer to hold their coats, however, just as a good neighbor should.