Tag: Suckage

Things that totally suck

News Roundup

Bad News, Funny Stuff

1)  British holidaymaker, 71, is shot dead on tourist paradise of Turks and Caicos as robbers burst into house to steal cash and jewellery —  fake news;  private citizens are banned from owning guns in T&C, so this couldn’t possibly have happened.

2)  British vegan activist is covered in blood when ‘farmers chase her down a motorway and shoot through her car window after she freed 16 of their rabbits’ —  looks like the Spanish farmers need more range time.

3)  ISIS strap suicide vests to COWS and blow the animals up in attack that failed to kill any humans in Iraq —  that’s the end of ISIS:  now they’ve pissed off PETA.  (Funny how there aren’t any “militant vegan activists” in Iraq…)

4)  Hundreds of illegal guns flood city after gun ban —  let’s hear it for “Australian-style” gun control.

5)  Women marry men for money — and if there aren’t men rich enough, they don’t marry at all.   Another big surprise.

6)  Bonk more, and life feels better —  another shocker, brought to you by !Science!

7)  Mugabe dies —  about time, and about forty years too late.  Africa wins again.

Copyright Maze

Legal Stuff, Two-Minute Hate

It appears that the U.S. Senate is getting serious about people using stuff they found on the Intarwebs:

A bi-partisan bill working its way through Congress could drastically change how copyright claims are processed, and would create a system to impose up to $30,000 in fines on anyone who shares protected material online.
In other words, the Congress wants to make it easier to sue people who send a meme or post images that they didn’t create themselves, essentially a giveaway to lawyers who sue unsuspecting suckers for a living.

…and once more, a little more of life’s pleasures is sucked dry by the lawyers and politicians.

One of these days, I can see people going to a party sued by the studios (especially the godless Disney Corporation) just for wearing a character’s costume without prior approval from an attorney at Bloodsucker, Lamprey and Leech LLP.

Having recently been sued (and forced to settle out of court) by some cocksucker and his copyright huckster attorney for using an old photograph (which can be found all over the Internet and which had no attribution when I found it, so copyright was impossible to establish in the first place), I know exactly what’s involved here.  (And if he or his shyster butt-buddy should chance to read this:  by not identifying you or the work involved, I’m not breaking the terms of our agreement, you money-grabbing motherfuckers.  It’s the principle  I’m talking about — not that either of you would even begin to comprehend the word.  FOAD.)

So as of today, expect to see only memes and such created by myself (e.g. see below), unless linked to the site of origin.

And that goes for the lawyers’ little lickspittles in the Senate as well.  FOAD all of you, too.

No It Isn’t, And Yes It Is

Food & Drink

Question asked:

“Is it just me? Or is raw onion in salad the work of the devil?”

Then follows hundreds of words of unnecessary justification.

I’ve heard of people who can eat an onion like one eats an apple, and I’m glad they’re identified so I can avoid them.  It’s akin to munching on cloves of raw garlic:  anti-social and disgusting.

Raw onion is foul — it smells like unwashed armpits, and it has no place in a mixed salad.  Period, end of statement.

Scarcity Scare Tactics

Business, Marketing / Advertising, Travels

Via Insty comes this silliness:

Companies in certain sectors use the same behavioral interventions repeatedly. Hotel booking websites are one example. Their sustained, repetitive use of scarcity (e.g., “Only two rooms left!”) and social proof (“16 other people viewed this room”) messaging is apparent even to a casual browser.
For Chris the implication was clear: this “scarcity” was just a sales ploy, not to be taken seriously.

Well, duh.  The oldest advertising gimmick is to threaten shortages:  “while supplies last”, “today only”, “limited to the first 50 customers”, and so on.

I’ve used Expedia quite a bit for my international travel planning (they usually handle cancellations better than the establishments themselves do), and the “only 1 room left” warning elicits a response from me of, “Oh well… if the room disappears I’ll just have to find another hotel.”

You see, true  scarcity can and does work to drive a purchase decision — World Cup tickets being a good example because it’s one event, one time, one place — but all the artificial scarcity (as above) should get just a shrug from the prospective consumer.

Even more, if the establishment uses it constantly (e.g. Expedia), it becomes just white noise:  unless, of course, the customer is a stupid dickhead, in which case they get what they deserve.

The very best reaction to this ploy is to simply say, “Well, if I miss it this time, I’ll just find another vendor or postpone the purchase until the next sale.”  Department stores, who seem only to sell merchandise when it’s “On Sale”, have learned to their cost what happens when you turn discounted shopping into an everyday event:  people only buy during “sale” periods — which is why department stores are dying.

As for the various online travel sites:  if you do find an unbeatable deal for the hotel stay of your dreams at, say, Expedia, check the same hotel’s rates at one of the other booking sites as a backup before making your decision.  (By the way, if the deal “disappears”, try calling the hotel direct;  I once got a rate lower than Expedia’s “Great Deal” at an Edinburgh hotel during the Royal Military Tattoo Week simply by asking for it.)

And ignore the bullshit.

Monstrosities

Modernism

…and I’m not just talking about the Modernist buildings, either.  My own loathing of this architectural form is, I think, well documented (here, here).

What Theodore Dalrymple talks about is how awful the first actual Modernist architects were:  Gropius, Van Der Rohe and of course, the execrable Le Corbusier (to name but three) were all either pure totalitarians (Le Corbusier) or Nazi sympathizers and supporters.  But we all knew that.

What Dalrymple explains further is how this “school” of architectural thought has turned into the leitmotif  of all modern architectural teaching (just as Marxism has infected the liberal arts disciplines):

[He] knows that he is arguing not against an aesthetic, but against an ironclad ideology. The architectural Leninists have been determined so to indoctrinate the public that they hope and expect a generation will grow up knowing nothing but modernism, and therefore will be unable to judge it. (All judgment is comparative, as Doctor Johnson said.) In Paris recently, I saw an advertisement on the Métro (a few days before the fire in Notre-Dame) to the effect that Paris would not be Paris without the Centre Pompidou—which, of course, has a good claim to be the ugliest building in the world. In the face of such an advertisement promoted by the cultural elite, what ordinary person would dare demur?

That description of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, by the way, is not egregious:

…and that’s the “pretty” side. Here’s the hideous one:

I am also heartened by Dalrymple’s characterization of the horrible Tour Montparnasse  as “said to be the most hated building in Paris” (and with good reason):

Never a jihadi-piloted airliner when you need one…

Read the Dalrymple piece for the full horror.

Panic? Nazzo Fast, Guido

Bad News, Lies and Untruths

So… according to “Science”, a million species are going to become extinct in the next x years, Unless We Do Something About It.

There’s a word that describes sweeping statements like this.  What is it?  Ummm, nearly there, tip o’ my tongue… oh, that’s right:  it’s bullshit.  Let’s look at some of the numbers, courtesy of Mr. Jack Hellner:

Faunalytics, a group that helps save endangered animals, has only 3,000 animals on its endangered species list, so there’s reason to ask questions. Start with this: where does the one million number come from?
The public has repeatedly been told that humans are causing thousands of animals to go extinct each year, yet a study by National Autonomous University of Mexico in 2015 found only 477 identified species that have gone extinct since 1900, or around four per year.

There’s a lot more at the link;  go and see some even greater lies.

Here’s the takeaway, though:  every time — I mean every single time — that some organization starts screaming hysterically that We’re All Gonna DIIIIEEEEEE!!! Unless We Do Something NOW ! (and usually that “something” will be against our best interests, by the way), we should pull out our whips (both literal and metaphorical) and start beating these assholes like a dirty carpet.

And if those doomsayers are from any U.N.-related organizations, we should substitute spiked clubs* for whips.

*Waddya mean, you don’t have a spiked club?  Sheesh, do I have to do everything around here?