Tag: Suckage

Things that totally suck

Tectonic Shift

Economics

ZMan has a typically-mordant look at the global economy:

The Global American Empire has been supported for the past half century by a novel form of seigniorage. This is the difference between the value of money and the cost to produce and distribute it. In the old days, the king would make a profit from the minting of coins used in his kingdom. This was usually a tax added to the total cost of a coin on top of the cost of production. This was the king’s profit from coinage.

Since the Louvre accords in the 1980s, Washington has been able to swap securities for newly printed banknotes by the Federal Reserve. This would normally impose an inflation tax on the public, but the dollar being the reserve currency of the world spread this tax over the global economy. Inflation rates in the United States remained low, as long as global growth remained high and the world was willing to tolerate this system.

The bigger issue is that the rest of the world is losing interest in the system that profits Washington at their expense. China has been manipulating its currency for a few years as a way to prevent Washington from exporting inflation to Beijing. She has also been quietly building parallel financial structures, along with Russia and India, in order to escape the perfidious rules imposed by Washington.

Which means that if the $US is replaced by some other form of currency, we’re fucked.  The only bright side of that scenario is that other currencies are even more shaky than ours (yuan coff coff)  and a commodity-based system such as gold is impossible because quite frankly, there is no commodity on Earth large enough to replace the dollar without a radical devaluation of, well, everything.

Sobering stuff, all the same.  Read all of it.

Crash Diet

Bad News

Well, I suppose that’s one way of losing weight:

“For the first time, this generation is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want.  And we have a very entitled generation that has never had to sacrifice.”

I don’t know how much credence to give this alarm — I can’t vouch for the source and quite frankly, I find it hard to believe anyone these days — but having just paid $106 to fill my Tiguan over the weekend, I’m still in shock so all the stuff on the article seems plausible.

Worse till, even if it’s halfway true, there’s going to be a whole bunch of pain going on, and the current Maladministration is going to make things worse and not better, before we can try to correct it in November.

The Usual Grump

Clothing, Gratuitous Chick Pics, Grooming

…about clothing, and the appropriate wearing thereof.  First, the plaudits.

I have always had an old-man crush on Anya Taylor-Joy, the chick from that chess movie, and her latest appearance did nothing to end that for me:

 

Best legs I’ve seen in quite a while, so why shouldn’t she show them off?

Her boyfriend, despite looking a little like a taller Frodo Baggins, was at least appropriately attired:

The same stylish and appropriate attire did not extend to some of the rest of the male(?) attendees.  The Skarsgård boy (Anya’s co-star in the movie) wore a tee shirt:

…while the editor of British Vogue  looked like a morning Tube commuter:

…and the whole thing went rapidly downhill from there:

 

This post has been brewing for a while, because a couple weeks ago at some other movie premiere / red carpet thing, we were treated to this horrifying nonsense:

 

Seriously?  At a formal evening event?

Compare the above with the 1940 Academy Awards banquet:

‘Nuff said.

Over-Complexity

Drive Time, Old Fartism, Technology, Two-Minute Hate

The nice thing about getting into a car, back in the day when I first got into a car is that it was like a fork:  everything about it was self-evident, and it was easy to use (hold the end without the pointy bits, stab your food with it and convey said food to your mouth).  It even allowed for different styles of use, e.g. the American (hold the food still while cutting it into baby-sized pieces, then transfer fork to right hand, slide the fork under the food and shovel said food into your mouth).

I pass no judgment about the American way other than it’s fucking stupid and it’s the way a child eats.

Anyway, the same methodology applied to a car of an earlier era:  you open the door with the handle thoughtfully attached to the outside, get in and sit down;  then insert key into ignition and turn the engine on, put the car into gear, release the handbrake and off you go.  (A couple of steps have been omitted for sake of brevity.)  Then when you get to your destination, you pull up the handbrake, turn off the car, open the door with the handle thoughtfully supplied, and get out to go to the pub.

None of the above required a user’s manual or anything other than a thirty-second explanation from an adult.

Compare that simple procedure to this concatenation of silliness:

Jeremy Clarkson was test driving a brand-new Maserati MC20 when he and Lisa decided to drive the motor to their local pub, where they were planning to indulge in a fish pie, but the couple soon realised they couldn’t get out.

Jeremy said: ‘We were in the car and five minutes after that we were in the pub’s car park. And five minutes after that we were still in the pub car park because neither of us could find anything that even remotely resembled a door handle’.

‘Eventually I turned on my phone’s torch and found the little button that you must press to unlatch the door, and then we were out.

‘And then I was back inside very smartly because the car was starting to roll down a hill.’

After finally discovering a button that activated the handbrake, Jeremy thought he had fixed the issue only to hear ‘bonging noises’ when he got out of the vehicle.

‘After an hour of swearing and wondering out loud whether it would have been easier to stay at home and make a soufflé out of ant hearts, I called a colleague, who said that to engage ‘park’ and turn out the lights I had to stop the engine twice.

‘So I pushed the button to turn the motor off, then pushed it again. Which caused it to start. I then called the colleague again, who said that when I pushed the button the second time my foot had to be off the brake pedal. And he was right, which meant that we just caught last orders.’

Let’s hear it for Technology!

As Longtime Readers all know, I have a long and abiding passion for Maserati cars, despite the dreaded which causes fits of laughter among American engineers and drivers.

Now imagine that same applied to a system which (nominally) controls the “hand”-brake and door-“handle” functions, in addition to lights, mirrors, windshield wipers, turn indicators, window- and trunk controls, ignition, transmission and (gawd help us) onboard computer.

Compared to this mobile disaster area, even my old Fiat 124 looks like a dream come true.

Manual everything — gearbox, ignition, doors, windows, seats, rearview mirrors, turn indicators, trunk opener and even, on occasion (!), windshield wipers.

All this modern shit?  You can stick it.

Even for an MC20.

 

Stolen Vote!!!

Elections, Politics, Two-Minute Hate

I arrived at the polling station in a good mood, having established beforehand that yes, I was a registered voter and registered to vote in 3rd District TX withal.  Also, I found the address of the nearest polling station and off I went, all ready to cast my primary vote against that little crapweasel Rep. Van Taylor and for the righteous judge, Keith Self.

My good mood evaporated when I got my ballot paper.  There, at the top of the list were three names I’d never heard of before.  So I went back to the polling folks and said, “I think there’s something wrong — these aren’t the 3rd District Republican House candidates.”

“Oh,” came the reply, “you’ve been redistricted into the 4th District.”
“No I haven’t.  I checked on the official TXVote.org website just a couple hours ago, and according to them, I’m registered in the 3rd.”
“Ah,” came the airy reply, “I don’t think the website was updated in time.”

I didn’t do what I wanted to do because I’d left my guns in the car and anyway, I think it may be illegal to destroy those poxy voting machines with gunfire.

So I didn’t vote for any of the strangers, because I don’t know them.  I did, however, vote for the Usual Suspects — Jim Abbot, Ken Paxton and the other top Republican worms, and pretty much nobody else except the names I already knew from previous elections.  (I nearly voted for ex-LTC Allen West instead of Abbott in protest, but he can run again, and then I will.)

I was going to write to the Governor demanding heads on pikes, or worse, for the incompetent assholes who are supposed to do this stuff — aren’t computer systems wonderful? — but I had to allow my wrath to cool, because apparently it’s against the law to say some of the things I was going to say.

Anyway, all has ended well, because the little crapweasel has canceled his reelection campaign, no doubt because he was only going to lose the runoff to Judge Self as more and more voters realized what a little crapweasel he really is.  Strange that in an ultra-conservative district, voters aren’t going to take too kindly to his support of anti-Trumpers and shagging some houri  extramaritally.

Which means that a former LTC and -judge and staunch conservative is going to Washington on our behalf.  I mean their  behalf, because I’ve been shunted out of his district.  I have no idea what the 4th District is all about, and now I know how the Wandering Jew felt.

By the way, in learning about the candidates, I discovered that two of the Democrat nominees are an ex-Californian and ex-Bostonian respectively.  Fuck me, that didn’t take long.

And thankee muchly to the Loyal Readers who emailed me about Crapweasel’s withdrawal.

 

Two Takes, Same Conclusion

Military

First take:

You won’t hear this on CNN, but Putin’s Army of Darkness, in the most complex and ambitious ground maneuver operation since World War 2, following the Soviet “deep war” playbook, is also working on cutting off the Ukrainian army group in the Donbass from Kiev. This is by far the most capable (or only capable) large portion of the Ukrainian army. Yesterday, its main reserves of diesel fuel were destroyed from the air. It will soon be cut off and immobile.

Once that happens, the entire Donbass front collapses (they will no longer have a “front”), and BILLIONS of dollars in U.S.-funded or U.S.-supplied weaponry will be captured almost without a battle. (To be clear, it’s almost all U.S. funded or supplied—even most of the Soviet vintage stuff was bought and shipped in from Poland, Czechia, etc. by the CIA, “off the books” but well documented in videos of tank trains crossing the border into Ukraine, in 2015-2016.)

The Russians have finally entered Kharkov, Ukraine’s second largest city, very close to the Russian border. Previously, they had bypassed it the same way that America bypassed every town in southern Iraq to reach Baghdad in 2003. On Saturday night, they finally wasted all significant, organized resistance with a rain of thermobaric death in the outskirts. Today, they started to go in and mop up. Of course, it’s not a job for one day.

Second take:

It remains to be seen if Putin’s plan will succeed or fail, but what is clear is that there was a plan to invade Ukraine in force, and that plan has been executed since day one.

Ukrainian troops are putting up a valiant fight facing long odds and difficult conditions. Russia holds most if not all of the advantages.  It can, and has, attacked Ukraine from three different directions. The Russian military holds a decided advantage in manpower, as well as air, naval and armor superiority.  It has vast resources to draw on. While Ukraine has the support of much of the international community, which is providing weapons, Ukraine is fighting alone.

Believing Russia’s assault is going poorly may make us feel better but is at odds with the facts.

Sobering stuff.  And given the fog of war at the moment, both are plausible and well-reasoned arguments.