Tag: Suckage

Things that totally suck

3 Modern Things I Have Never Done

3 Inexplicable Things

…which most other people seem to have done:

  • Used a car’s embedded navigation system.  (Okay, I did try — once — to use the Tiguan’s navsys, but gave up after three tries and resorted to the phone instead.  To be fair, the VW system was very clunky — 2013 era — so maybe it has improved since then, but now I just use the awful Waze app to venture to Parts Unknown because I became familiar with it during the Uber Years.  And New Wife’s 2015 Fiat 500 has no such thing on its spartan dashboard.)
  • Bought anything from TEMU.  (A lot of Millennials and Gen Z kids seem to love this Amazon-like thing, but that Chinese factory-direct-to-user model… I trust it not.  Plus long delivery times, especially when compared to Amazon, and from what I gather, returns are almost impossible — “not worth the hassle” seems to be a common statement, and with that renowned Chinese build quality?  Pass.)
  • Bought or used any Apple product.  (My purchase of an Apple IIe computer back in 1982 doesn’t count, because it was the only PC available at the time, and I only used it for 6 months before dumping it for an IBM PC.  But the modern Apple products like MacBook and iPhone?  Not one.)

Feel free to add your list of “never used or bought”, in Comments.

California Dreaming

Marxists, Politics

Here’s a little more news from California, this time over a ballot measure that will install rent control.

The only honest assertion that proponents of a rent control initiative make in their campaign ads is the fact that rent is too high in California. But rent control will make things even worse. As it is, most developers will not do business in California. Why try to build a subdivision in Silicon Valley, where the permits may take 10-20 years to get approved, when they can go to Texas and get plans approved in 10-20 weeks? Why build anything in a state where at any moment another environmentalist organization can file a lawsuit that will take millions of dollars and several years to resolve?

I have a clear and simple philosophy in terms of anything to do with the Golden Shower State and its doings:  California’s example in the “laboratory of the states” is where we learn precisely what not to do — i.e. when California does some thing or other, the best policy is to do the polar opposite.

Rent control is just the latest in a long, long line of stupid policies from the Left.

And yes, we all know (or should) that rent control eventually causes a shortage of housing — we’ve already seen that on Planet Manhattan — but hey;  if California wants to compound their stupidity (e.g. as in the above, of making new home builds almost impossible) with still further stupidity (rent control of existing homes), why should the rest of the states with a cumulative IQ above room temperature not just sit back, point and giggle when the whole state blows up?

Sorry, I just had a vision of California blowing up cataclysmically.  So please forgive me while I go off to that warm, wonderful place created by the prospect.

Wrong Priorities

Gummint, Two-Minute Hate

Well, isn’t that special:

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted on Wednesday that “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.” One reason for that is that under Biden-Harris, FEMA spent $650 million this fiscal year providing services and housing to illegal aliens. And $364 million the year before that.

If you thought the Federal Emergency Management Agency was just in the business of providing relief to Americans of all creeds and colors when disaster strikes, let’s just say that the Biden-Harris administration has broadened the agency’s portfolio to include non-emergency aid to folks who aren’t even supposed to be here.

And:

Imagine blowing your family’s rainy day money on a down payment for a car you can’t properly afford. You tell yourself you’ll put the money back before the next rainy day crisis comes along. But before you do, a hailstorm takes out your roof.

That’s how the government spends your money because when the hailstorm hits and there’s not enough money for the insurance deductible, they aren’t the ones who have to suffer.

In any other circumstances, there’d be some kind of consequence (e.g. hanging) for mis-allocation of government funds that end up endangering the lives of citizens, but these are the times we live in.

Read the linked article to get the full flavor of the bastardy.

…And Speaking Of Big Auto

Business, Drive Time, Management

From the fools who bet on EVs as being the Next Big Thing:  Volkswagen and Mercedes.

Yeah… screw you and your little Duracell cars, screw you for buying into the Big Manufactured Panic stemming from the Global Warming Climate Cooling Change© hucksters, and screw you for trying to force us into buying your shitty fad products by cutting back production of regular internal combustion-engined cars and trucks.

And while we’re on high-level fools in Big Auto, ladies and gentlemen, I give you:  Stellantis.  This is what you get, and deservedly so when you let finance people run an engineering business.  Let me count the ways:

  • Misreading your core customers
  • Forcing inferior and low-demand products onto the market
  • Reducing product offerings when your competition offers choice (and having those remaining products be simply me-too choices, which you’re always going to lose especially when your products are less reliable and more costly)
  • Making long-term decisions based on doomsday (and fallacious) predictions
  • Sacrificing long-term growth for short-term profits (see below)
  • Ignoring basic marketing principles, e.g. when faced with growing reserve stock levels, increasing prices rather than cutting them.

Stellantis has broken each and every one of those oh-so basic rules, and the people who will pay the price are their employees, who are going to be laid off as their workplaces end up being shuttered.  Now, of course, they’re scrambling… in the face of being sued by shareholders.

Sadly, the people who have made all these disastrous business decisions will be fine thanks to generous severance packages and bonuses.  (Tavares’s compensation last year was worth $40 million, for example.)

instead of facing the proper consequences of public flogging followed by hanging.

Which Way Did You Vote, Again?

Disaster, Politics

Which is probably the best way to view this inexcusable behavior in the storm-struck western Carolinas:

I should also say, when I flew here on Sunday, they actually stopped us from going in, the sheriff’s department. And it was because of a bunch of politics that they were claiming was the Speaker of the House of North Carolina that was preventing us from even going in and trying to kick us out, which I have clarified today with North Carolina politicians that reached out to me — good on them — and they were like, “That’s complete bullshit. Speaker of the House has nothing. He wants you guys there.”

But this is the kind of political BS that is happening here right now. Like, everyone’s trying to be in charge without taking any type of action. Nobody wants to coordinate with anybody. Everybody wants to pretend like they’re being a hero while these people are literally fucking dying in the mountains. And these people, like I’m saying, these people are on limited medication. They’re running out of oxygen, and there’s no one going to get them.

And:

Howard pointed out that some of his colleagues are funding their rescue missions out of their own pockets. At the same time, Air Force helicopters are grounded and personnel aren’t working because they’re awaiting Title 10 orders that aren’t coming from above.

“There’s military helicopters all over here sitting on the ground, and they can’t do nothing,” he vented. “Even my JSOC boys in Fayetteville, they can’t get orders if they’re not here. It is just the most disgusting thing, and they’re killing these people. And I don’t know why they’re doing it.”

Howard said that he doesn’t “know what kind of conspiracy” is behind this bureaucratic nightmare. In my more cynical moments, I can’t help but wonder if Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) and the Biden-Harris administration are willing to let Republican voters in a reliably red part of the state fend for themselves — and die. I don’t want to believe that, but it’s hard to shake that gut feeling.”

I know, I know:  it’s usually easier to ascribe bad outcomes to inefficiency than to a malevolent conspiracy.  But I just can’t shake off the memorable words of former SecState James Baker III, “Fuck ’em.  They’re not gonna vote for us, anyway.”

Tight Fitting

Travels, Two-Minute Hate

…or to put it more succinctly, trying to fit 500lbs of lard into a single economy airline seat.

A photo of a plus-sized passenger struggling to fit between the armrests on a plane has sparked a fierce debate over whether obese travellers should have to pay for an extra seat. 

The man was snapped by a fellow traveller as he squeezed into his aisle seat during a flight from Helsinki to Copenhagen on Monday.

‘This guy sat behind me on my flight from Helsinki to Copenhagen yesterday,’ the man who took the photo wrote on Facebook. 

‘I felt sorry for him and the guy next to him in the middle seat, both of whom must have felt very uncomfortable for the short flight.  Maybe it’s time for airlines to address situations like this in a thoughtful and sensitive way.’

And the pic:

There are two points to be made here.  The first is that while it’s true that airlines have shrunk their economy-class seats to the point where even a heroin-addicted model has to squeeze into it, if they had to cater to dimensions like the above, they’d have to install fucking sofas.

The second point is that when it comes to situations like the above, there is no debate:  Fatso and his elephantine buddies should have to pay for two seats (in his case, maybe even an entire row). And by the way:  Helsinki to Copenhagen?  Catch the train, Doublewide.  In the goods carriage, if necessary.

Finally, there’s no need for airlines to address this in a “thoughtful and sensitive way” because if they can’t refuse service to people of this tonnage and volume, they should at least be able to charge for the extra weight — as they have no problem doing with oversized luggage — not to mention having to turn the main cabin into a de facto  cargo hold.

And I say this as a man who once was almost reduced [sic]  to asking for a seatbelt extension.  (Thank gawd that’s in my rearview mirror, never to return.)

It’s bollocks.  Fatties should have to pay more for their additional accommodation inside the limited space of a flying aluminum tube.  End of statement, period, THE END.