Recently in rants Category

BBC NEWS | Business | 850 jobs go at Mini car factory

The UK has a cradle to grave welfare state that may, arguably look after the body, but the real damage is done to the mind.

"I've worked here for three-and-a-half years and now I'm being sacked for no reason. I've been used."

What else did they think they were doing? Of course they were used that's the whole bloody point. Rather than being people that are in , at least illusory, control  of their lives the opposite seems to be the mindset.  

Yeah we really need another  President that believes any means necessary to hold onto central power is justifiable.  :(  That protectionist  tariffs are a good thing and that  arresting people that oppose you peacefully was valid.  How can one get such a great reputation in history for just the words and not the actions? 
Can Lincoln's playbook help Obama in the years ahead? - CNN.com

# There are several similarities between the two politicians
# Historians say Obama can use Lincoln's strategies to help him lead the country

I hate the cars that states make.  Think about it  Yugo, Lada, Skoda , Trabant   and anything British Leyland, Austin put out are not known for anything other than their  abject crapness. Some of these have gone onto great things after being privatised though. To be told that by people that have probably flown more carbon unhappy miles in their campaign than most of us will in our lives is equally frustrating.


Here's what annoys me.  These companies   DO already make efficient cars  but people will not BUY  them.  They don't need to retool  much. They make  world cars,  GM and FORD make successful small vehicles that work quite well in every other country  apart from the US because we all know that a good anti pollution measure in CA , in one big town in CA ,is  valid for the rest of the nation :(    We had that crap in the UK were the short distances we traveled and the ambient temperatures made our cars pollute more with the early catalytic converters  but it's the thought that counts.

 


Transcript: 'I'm going to confront this economic crisis,' Obama says - CNN.com

I would like to see the administration do everything it can to accelerate the retooling assistance that Congress has already enacted. In addition, I have made it a high priority for my transition team to work on additional policy options to help the auto industry adjust, weather the financial crisis, and succeed in producing fuel-efficient cars here in the United States of America.

Can this smart man be this stupid?  Of course not but he's hoping you won't notice that.   Which body mandated that loans had to be given to those that couldn't afford them? This is a man that believes society can be made  just by stealing  , at the point of a gun,   showing concern for his cash cow's feelings suggests that no  it's not stupidity   just,  for the want of a less  polarizing term , evil.

McCain suspends campaign, calls for Obama to do same - CNN.com

He said struggling homeowners must be taken care of in any economic recovery plan -- and that taxpayers should "not be spending one dime to reward the same Wall Street CEOs whose greed and irresponsibility got us into this mess.

Like most things in life, the universe and what’s still being called social media ,  you can pull up some aphorism from some Greek that’s been dead for  over two millenia to anchor your point to.   Do no harm isn’t a bad one,  and it’s  a lot easier to pull off than do no evil   yet neither are as compelling , or succinct as Wil Wheaton’s   “don’t be a dick”  as an almost libertarian reduction of the non aggression principle into  the vernacular.    (Sadly his writings on politics really don’t ultimately follow this   but   let’s not get into that) 

In short  it’s  a set of  rules  for the relationship between creators, promoters and fans  around  Sci Fi / Fantasy conventions which can be extrapolated to  most commercial  interactions. E.G   Are we customers, consumers, data points  or people that  want to get things done?

When you have a “voice” for a corporation engaged in social media  maybe it’s a good idea to think about the above because the mode of address you choose in 3/4 cases is going to be wrong

Can a corporation really be your friend?   Does this  construct sound real?   X is out buying yummy things  his  company make  ,  Y is out  watching their Movie  etc  Does this sound remotely like a relationship your engaged in?    If it doesn’t it’s for the obvious reason that it ISN’T. 

I love dealing with people from companies,  hate dealing with  company names that have a rotating cast of interchangeable  responses that would make Turing dance with glee. I can’t tell them apart from a machine or human either. 

Wer in ur boahdroomz wutchin yu wit intrst

*invisible pink unicorn  peace be unto her hooves.

This is to the tech crowd, the geeks e.g the people that should know better.

Nearly everything I’m seeing from the Pax08 concert has such poor sound / video that it’s a complete waste of time and energy yet this crap is getting 4 and 5 stars. Here’s where it bugs me. The crappy sound and video in a sane world would be “mediated” by the crowd and given an appropriate rating but it seems that it’s totally broken in the cases of geek centric clips. Self recognition doesn’t = ****/***** stars dumb ******/*******

You are today’s equivalent of the idiots in sports stadiums with their GN14 flashes trying to reach out all the way to center field. Either drop the money on a reasonable recorder or just leave it in your pocket.

Thankfully others suffered this so I didn't need to. Way back when he first announced I read his platform ,seriously. Then wrote a letter. I got back an invitation to send money and NO response to my inquiry. I left a socialist state to come to a socialist state with nicer teeth :)

Hit & Run: 2008 Convention > The Shorter Barack Obama - Reason Magazine

Government cannot solve all our problems. Just the ones involving energy, education, work, the weather, cities, the countryside, sick children, sick mothers, joblessness, hopelessness, and frightening foreigners who do not live in Iraq. Now if you'll all look under your seats, every one of you is going home with a new car!

Daddy you can let go now.....

At a recent Father-Daughter Purity Ball, the girls ranged from college age to a tiny 4-year-old dressed in purple who climbed into her father's arms to be carried

I wonder if they take a toddler to AA too? These people , these people that define innocence yet take their fucking 4 year old ( is there irony in there folks? ) to events like this. I am nowhere near taking Dobh, or myself , to a fetish ball in the near future but maybe I need to take a play from my 'moral superiors'.

I can only hope that they are trying to create a super sexually fucked up batch of women to compete with the Catholic education / Baptist pastor's daughter that have been highly reviewed by some of my friends.

I can see a JoCo song  / mashup for this little guy.   But I digress.

It’s really going to be the future soon.  Wall-E  is one future but let’s me just say that  I have nothing to add to the   97% rating that he’s enjoying over there on Rotten Tomatoes.

Why this movie works for me.

Wall-E has more character than the prior Pixar incarnations because you come to him pure, he doesn’t need to fit into car shape, rat shape, fish shape or any of the pre existing personalities from the toy box. 700 years of exposure to our ephemera and the worst that happen to him is show tunes. ( maybe the right wing folks had a point;) )   Wall-e  being seen as  antithetic  to the humans that made him is a point made in many  reviews  has been annoying me.

I  have to be simplistic here and claim that the  US division of thought  falls into right /left wing ideologies ( basically the same fundamental idiocy that reaches divergent conclusions on how it’s best to steal from others for their own benefit, a setup you may  know  better as democracy.) 

This movie has been seen as  a massively pro environment/ anti capitalist movie  by both ends of the moebius strip  so I find myself on familiar ground  in the contrarian position that both sides are wrong.

So in my usual  Socratic ( that means avoiding having to actually solve shit;) )  manner  I have some questions and observations about both side.

1) How is this movie anti capitalist?  The  monopoly position is not practically achievable in capitalism without the intervention of the state and BnL didn’t get that way without help.

2)  How is Wall-e not a reflection on those that created him, how can we be the bad guys in this piece?   Humans  made it to  space,  they made a fricking society that looks pretty close to socialism ( cradle to grave all needs met)  and it pretty much looked like what the  left has wanted to sell us for decades.  They also tried to solve the problem. 

3) The bit I really don’t like.   Farming. We get to the stars  I  and the idea that  we circumvent millennia of improvements to go back to  nature. As if to think that  farming is a default human condition.

I was brought up on a farm have a non romantic view of animals(  unlike the Welsh) and have managed to escape the daily need to hunt food, shelter and the myriad other niceties of living pre dentistry , pre anesthesia  and pre Tetris.  The environment, would it help to call it location? in Wall-e is a background and necessary for his existence, character development.  Basically the framework isn’t built to hang your ideas of the world on and  both sides do this movie a disservice by trying.

To end on a rant.

People that find this liberal really need to get a dictionary and perspective. The root of conservative means what again? It's more than a greeny trope and can just as easily be seen as an indictment on a socialized system that keeps people stupid , fat and reliant on the state ( corp) from cradle to grave. Seriously politics are what's stopping most of you from enjoying one of the more touching love stories/ characters in the last few years.

Why bother saving our place on this planet if this is the kind of thought that we're preserving?

I used to shop here, used to. Sadly I can't take em seriously anymore. The same bullshit I saw with local atheist groups, e.g Bush's god =bad, Kerry's , Gore, Edwards and now Obama's is fine. Suggests that there's a lack of ethical rigor from a store that seems to be in favour of principle over profit. That Obama has a peace symbol sticker for the O in the name is hilarity itself that an overt theist is a poster child for the reality based community is desperatly sad. Crazy.. is crazy.

Don't Make Me Come Down There sticker
$2.00
Don't Make Me Come Down There sticker. Just a subtle warning from the Almighty, to his so-called followers, lest they continue spreading hatred and division in His name!

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