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A compendium of reactions to recent news

Danielle Smith in a time warp

I note that in Alberta the Danielle Smith government has done a time warp and thinks they’re living under a 2035 federal government led by none other than 63-year-old Justin Trudeau! (I wonder if he’s still as beautiful as he is here and now in 2024?!) It’s Trudeau’s fault that whoever is in charge of electrical power in Alberta dropped the ball and had to buy power from the nasty, commie pinko NDP government in British Columbia! Yup, those nasty, commie pinkos are really good at running economies into the ground and then begging for help from right-wing economies, as we all know. Even Washington State in the good ol’ (definitely non-commie pinko) US of A had to buy power from us commie pinkos in the recent cold snap in this part of the world!

Editorialising teleprompter readers

I noticed last night (18 January) that Chris Gailus, one of the Global BC teleprompter readers, tried to make some sort of off-the-cuff editorial remark during the six-o-clock news, but stumbled and ended up dragging it our for more seconds than was really necessary. I can’t even remember what it was about, but I think it might have been about driving in Vancouver snow. Weirdly, a BBC teleprompter reader also made an editorial comment yesterday! I’m actually quite shocked at that, because I usually hold up their teleprompter readers as the epitome of professionalism, but I suppose standards are slipping there as well!

The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS)

There was a report on the news about the rise in the number of complaints from the public to the CCTS. It was a masterpiece to see the nuanced, massaged reactions from the cell-phone companies to the complaints they had received! “Yes, we know we have a huge number of complaints, and even one compliant is too many, but we have the fewest complaints per subscriber with ringworm!”, said the spokesperson for RogersBellTelus! Jesus H. Christ! What kind of warped and twisted upbringing and education do you have to have to come up with their beautiful lies?! (I think they call it “positive spin”!)

Milani Plumbing Vancouver review

Every time I see one of their ads on TV I just shake my head. We used to be good customers of theirs. Then we moved, and I guess we just used a plumber that was familiar with the townhouse complex in which we lived. Then we moved again, and when our first plumbing issue came up, who did we call? Milani, of course. There was no question and no hesitation. I don’t remember whether or not I was informed when I made the appointment or afterwards that they had a minimum $200 charge just for showing up (I’d have to re-read my notes), but it wouldn’t have made any difference because I assumed that the person who came out would do the job we needed and the bill would likely come out to more than $200 anyway. No problem.

But the guy that showed up essentially just told us what we already knew about the problem (“You have a problem!”) and had no intention of fixing it and installing what we wanted on the gas line! He was just there to collect the $200. When he left I was standing there $200 poorer and still with the plumbing problem! So I called Milani and complained, and I was informed several times by the person I spoke to that their service technicians don’t carry around the full stock of a Home Depot in their vans! WTF??! Who thinks that they do?! (Obviously that’s something drummed into their heads in what little training they get, and I’m sure they love telling stories around the water cooler about their stupid customers who they think expect that!) The problem we had needed just some expertise, and may have required some parts that any journeyman plumber would have in his tool kit, never mind in his spacious three-quarter-tonne van or one-tonne cube van. I will grant that we didn’t expect him to have the part we needed for the installation on the gas line, but we expected that we’d pay for the hot-water issue to be fixed, and then he’d come back — maybe another day — with the parts needed for the gas work. And we expected that the work for both would add up to more than $400!

Anyway, after I had been treated like an idiot by the idiot on the phone at Milani, I told them not to bother coming back with the part for the gas-line installation. Presumably it became part of the huge inventory that their plumbers carry around with them in their Home Depot-sized vans. We have never called them back to come and work on our plumbing ever since, and never will. But clearly they still get a lot of suckers paying them $200 a shot to come and do nothing for them; that’s how they pay for these expensive TV ads!

Instead of a flashy plumbing company who can afford to run TV ads we got an old guy (named Gabriel [Gabe] Khoo) in to do the work, and we’ve used him ever since. He shows up with a white van full of tools and parts and doesn’t rip us off for $200 a shot just to show up and tell us what we already know. He’s better than Milani Plumbing in Vancouver and their painted trucks and flashy uniforms any day!

The most moronic, nonsensical — and least surprising — war in history; Russia versus Ukraine

Flag of Ukraine

Flag of Ukraine.

It was a month ago today that Russia invaded Ukraine, the first (as I understand it) inter-state invasion in Europe since the end of the Second World War in 1945, 77 years ago … over three quarters of a century! I am speechless. Europe has been united in order to prevent such a catastrophe from ever breaking out again (“Never again!”), and one madman with a personal agenda based on a twisted understanding of history has changed that.

I really don’t have it in me to try and put together some coherent piece to add to the billions of litres of ink already spilled on this topic, much of it written by people far more erudite (and paid far more) than me, so I’m going to make a few little notes.

“Madman”

That term, “madman”, has been top of mind for me since I saw his speech denying the existence of Ukraine over a month ago. In news coverage I saw a comment by one American Republican senator that vladimir putin “didn’t seem right”, or words to that effect. I thought exactly the same, and several people have made similar comments since. On the other hand, I came across this piece by Joanna Williams in “Spiked”: “The war in Ukraine is not about Putin’s mental health“. To be honest it sounds like something written by a contrarian, but that seems to be Spiked’s raison d’être.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Unlike his Afghan counterpart on 15 August 2021, Zelenskyy stayed the course and stayed in his office in Kyiv. He turned down an American offer to evacuate him and his family with the statement, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” The guy is a fucking hero. As a politician and as a human he is probably loaded with flaws, as are all of us, but as the President of Ukraine and the leader of a country invaded by the biggest country in the world, he has and will continue to have my undying respect. I’ve often said that instead of wars, the leaders of countries should get in a ring with each other and fight until there is a TKO; despite his self-manufactured manly image, putin probably wouldn’t last thirty seconds again Zelenskyy.

Peace talks

These have been a joke since day one. I get it; whatever side you are on, you walk into “talks” asking for the world, and you eventually settle for less. But why are there even peace talks? Don’t you talk first in order to avoid a fight, and only then fight? I suppose the Ukrainians have been talking to the Russians since 2014, when the Russians invaded Crimea and, nudge nudge, wink wink, “didn’t” invade the Donbas, but clearly that talking has gone nowhere in eight years. What little it did result in, the Minsk agreements, weren’t worth the paper they were written on in putin’s mind, and he started his “special military operation” (“war”, or “invasion”, to most of us) against Ukraine anyway. Hindsight is great, but if you can’t sort out a problem in eight years, both sides are probably not trying hard enough.

Not even Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, can be taken seriously. His first condition for Ukraine is to surrender and give the Russians everything they want … which, by the way, they are failing to get by military means.

Refugees

When the war is over, the countries that have taken in refugees should sue Russia for their expenses. Why not? Actually, not that I’m starting to draw up a peace treaty, but the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 was too harsh on Germany (it’s generally accepted) and contributed to the start of World War II. I suppose this will all need to be considered in time.

Russia’s words

I understand that all sides in conflict lie, but the lengths to which Russia has taken this stretch credibility. Starting before the war they accused the West of being “alarmist” and “hysterical” in their warning about a war. I mean, it’s just a joke. Now they claim they’re not targeting civilians, as missile after missile blows up residential blocks of flats, schools and hospitals. And “de-nazification”?! Not even in 1940s Germany was everyone a Nazi! How do you “save” the Russian-speaking people in Ukraine by killing them?!

Western aid to Ukraine

I realise how high the stakes are, but the West has let down Ukraine. The analogy I’ve heard — and analogies do have their limits — is one of a big bully on a playground beating a little kid. The little kid calls out to other kids to ask for help, but they demur, claiming the bully has a knife. Of course, the “knife” in this case is far bigger — nuclear weapons — but we are so far down that path already. I don’t want to suggest that talking isn’t worth it, but the reason that putin has decided that the West is weak is precisely because we have not stood up to him. If we don’t stand up to him now, he will keep pushing. Why wouldn’t he? There are Russian speaking minorities in countries all around Russia’s western border — even more now that Russians are abandoning the country while they can — and those countries will likely suffer the same fate as the Donbas in Ukraine.

So what do we do? Do we implement the no-fly zone that Ukraine has asked for? NATO says they will not, but do they really think that they can stay out of this fight forever? If the Baltic states suffer in the same way the Donbas has, will NATO really turn a blind eye? They can’t. It will be blatantly obvious that Russia will have launched a proxy attack on one or more of those NATO countries, and NATO will be treaty-bound to step in. And then what? You guessed it, we’re a shaky trigger finger away from nukes. I hope you’re practising to kiss your arse goodbye.

Poland has offered their old MiG-29s to the Ukrainian Air Force. Predictably, Russia claims they will consider this a provocation on the part of NATO, completely ignoring the fact that they have used Belarusian territory to launch their invasion. If they can use Belarus, why can the Ukrainians not use Poland? Sadly, the U.S. [rejected] Poland’s offer of fighter jets for Ukraine, calling it “untenable”. It’s at this point that you look at NATO and wonder if the alliance has somehow managed to paint themselves into a corner. It brings to mind the not-so-old adage, “Too big to fail.” Well, maybe NATO is too big to be useful if their own founding documents tie their own hands behind their back. But what’s the solution, or a better situation? I don’t really know, but the status quo is not working. As Zelenskyy himself asks, “How many civilians have to be killed before NATO will take the situation seriously?” (to paraphrase). He’s not wrong to ask the question, and it points out what I asked above: “Does NATO really think that they can stay out of this fight forever?”

Plain speaking from two former Irish presidents

Both Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson, former Irish presidents, has some rather undiplomatic and non-neutral words for putin. (“Former presidents united in condemnation of Ukrainian invasion.“) McAleese:

She described the Russian President as “demagogic”, “moronic” and an “appalling anti-human man” who she hoped the Russian people would one day find it “within their power to neutralise”.

On whether the Russian people could rebel and prove their own President’s downfall, Ms McAleese said she thought this was “the best hope”.

“It wouldn’t be the first time the Russians have done this… they have the courage, now they have to find it” she said.

“I’ve never been a person who ever had contempt for another human being, I’ve never been contemptuous. But I certainly am now.”
— The Late Late Show (@RTELateLateShow) March 11, 2022

Ms Robinson said: “There is no doubt that Putin is very well protected, until suddenly maybe he is not.”

Robinson puts it well: It may only be someone within his circle that will set putin straight, but according to other reports he has “coup proofed” himself over the last twenty years. This is to the disadvantage of Russia, and it may well result in the downfall of human civilisation. All because he doesn’t want to hear any truth spoken to him.

The BBC is geographically challenged

Several times (not just once) in the early days of the war … sorry, “special military operation” … the BBC stated that Poland was “directly east of Ukraine”. (See screenshot.) I have no words for that level of stupidity. Ironically, though, that’s where I go for most of my international news.

BBC says Poland is east of Ukraine (crop)

BBC says Poland is east of Ukraine.

Slava Ukraini!

A note about the “mainstream media”

What does “mainstream” mean? Here’s the definition according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary:

mainstream
n. (the mainstream) normal or conventional ideas, attitudes, or activities.
adj. belonging to or characteristic of the mainstream.

Here’s an example: Bob and Sue have a disagreement over something. They have 20 mutual friends, and 15 of them agree with Sue and 5 agree with Bob. The “mainstream” of their mutual friends agree with Sue, but under the logic of the anti-vaxxers Bob is right because the “mainstream” can’t be trusted!

This is the logic under which the anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and anti-mandates people operate, when they call for everything from the de-funding of the “mainstream media” (MSM) to their execution.

I get it. I don’t ever want to be in a situation where I have a mob of reporters banging on my door for one reason or another, but the media does have a job to do. Part of that job, sadly, is to bang on certain peoples’ doors! Do they make mistakes? Sure they do, and one would hope that they would own up to those mistakes when they make them. There are ways to (at least) try and hold the media responsible for their mistakes.

I know that the media is biased. Everyone on this planet is biased, and it’s nigh on impossible to create an organisation that is one hundred percent neutral. As long as you’re aware of the biases of where you’re getting your news, you can read that news through that filter, and get the story from other sources as well and then decided for yourself where the truth likely lies. I’ve read stories from different sources that describe the same event in very different terms. But it’s up to me (and you) to seek out other reliable news sources and collate that information to determine what you believe to be the most likely version of the truth. However, those sources need to be reliable, and the Twitter feed of some left- or right-wing nut — or even my blog! — is not a reliable news source.

With respect to the so-called Freedom/Trucker Convoy, the fact that they bash the media, don’t invite them to their so-called press conferences, and walk out of said press conferences without answering any of the questions they would find difficult, is clear evidence to me that they don’t have the courage of their convictions.

A summary of where I stand

I unintentionally did a series of posts last weekend, prompted by the idiots occupying Ottawa, so I suppose I should come clean on why I think they are idiots.

I’m all for disagreement, but all sides must be willing to take in all of the facts and then make the clear choice on the correct course of action. Now, this is easier said than done, I get it, especially on issues where choices are made and positions are set based on different guiding principles. (The abortion debate is a very clear example.) But under the pandemic there seems to be this undercurrent of denialism of science prevalent among a certain segment of the population. I’ve never seen any information from these people that stands up to scrutiny, whereas the information I’ve seen espoused by health and disease professionals — i.e., trained professionals, people who have studied the science for decades — is very persuasive to me. Combine misinformation with fatigue and you have a recipe for disaster, as people latch onto examples of misinformation that appeal to their biases and personal experiences, not to mention their wanting to get rid of the cause of their fatigue.

Further combine this with information siloing and you have a fatal combination. It’s the bane of our time. The likes of Facebook, Instagram (both owned by the same company) and Twitter won’t make money if you move off of their platforms — i.e., go to work, go to bed, have dinner, leave the computer or put down your phone — and while you’re on their platforms they make more money if they can keep you clicking. As has been made abundantly clear recently, as if it was hard to figure out intuitively, negative news results in more clicking and more sharing, and bigger profits for the likes of Facebook. And all of the Internet giants want you to feel good — it’s ironic that feeling angry apparently makes people feel good, but that’s a psychological debate for another day — and so if you show them that you love conspiracy theories, guess what? They’re going to feed you more conspiracy theories! Before you know it, you’re down the rabbit hole, getting all of your biases and prejudices confirmed, and the next thing you know you’re claiming that vaccines (which have been around for centuries) actually kill people. I have received a dozen or a couple of dozen vaccines against various diseases in my life, and none of them have killed me!

So that’s why, I believe, many people have succumbed to the false beliefs they now hold. These beliefs are complete and utter bullshit:

  • Vaccines will kill you.
  • All of us “sheep” — i.e., those of us who believe science and scientists — are all part of a huge conspiracy.
  • Cooperating with others in society to attempt to reduce the spread of disease is an abridgement of my “freedom”.
  • Trump won the 2020 US election.

I know the names of some of these idiots, and you might too: Jason Kenney, Scott Moe, Pierre Poilievre, Candice Bergen and Andrew Scheer … among others. I don’t actually know if these five believe the four points above specifically — I actually don’t believe they would — but they have sided with people who believe these things. Kenney in particular looked recently like he couldn’t comply with the truckers’ demands fast enough, falling all over himself to ignore the scientists advising him, to straddle the fence in a way that would hurt if he had any balls; Moe looked like a frightened or cowed child with his deer-in-the-headlights look as he started rolling back “mandates” as quickly as he could! As for Poilievre, Bergen and Scheer, well, the Conservative Party is so desperate right now to look relevant that they’d try anything, and that included (before they reversed course) supporting the occupation of Ottawa by anti-vaxxers and -maskers who do believe the above lies.

I’d suggest that the Ottawa Police Service better get their shit together by Friday.

It’s past time for electoral reform in Canada

I don’t want to draw too long a bow here, but the current protests in Canada highlight the fact that our electoral system is broken. The current government is in power despite not winning a majority of the votes in the last (2021) election. The Liberal Party won only 32.62% of the vote, while the Conservative Party won 34.34% of the vote. (And while the New Democratic Party won 15.98% of the vote, they won only 25 seats, while the Bloc Québécois [who only run for seats in one province!] won 32 seats with only 7.63% of the vote, less than half as many votes!) Anyone with a brain would tell you that a system which produces these numbers is flat out broken!

So while the majority of Canadians have been vaccinated, and understand short-term pain for long-term gain, it’s not rocket science to figure out how the noisy band of malcontents that have descended on Ottawa, Coutts, Emerson and Windsor (among a number of provincial capitals) have managed to attract such a following. I still believe that the majority of Canadians do not support them, and I also still believe that these protests are being driven by right-wing extremists from both Canada and the United States, but this doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of Canadians, 67.38%, did not vote for the party currently in power.

Much ink has been spilled on the assertion that the only ones to gain from a change in the electoral system to one that includes some form of proportional representation would be the NDP and the Greens. There’s no doubt about that, but (a) opposing electoral reform for that reason is short-sighted (and mean), and (b) that doesn’t imply that the two major parties (Liberals and Conservatives) can’t benefit themselves.

I also believe that Justin Trudeau and the Liberals don’t want to enact electoral reform, not because it would help the NDP and the Greens, but because they see how fractured the Conservative Party is, and that allowing proportional representation would allow the Conservative Party to split (the People’s Party of Canada already did), yet ultimately form government because two or more conservative-leaning parties could easily win a majority (or at least the biggest bloc of seats) and form a coalition government. So ironically, if the Conservative Party would just take their collective heads out of their ass and stop parroting the Liberal line that they can’t do electoral reform, they might actually gain from it … and significantly!

The beginning of civil war in Canada?

I’m not trying to be alarmist with this title, but the actions of a minority of Canadians are having very negative effects on their fellow Canadians. Some have gone as far as to refer to it as “terrorism”, and if you’re in Ottawa in the middle of it and you can’t sleep at night because of the blaring of horns, that adjective is all too real to you. It’s a classic torture technique to deprive your captive of sleep, and the residents of Ottawa in the vicinity of the occupiers of the city are indeed captives, as are the people being laid off because their employers can’t receive the deliveries they’re expecting across our borders.

So if your actions go beyond simple “peaceful” protest and start very negatively affecting the lives of your follow citizens — whether that effect is death or something slightly less drastic, like depriving them of sleep and income — how is that fundamentally different from an actual shooting civil war? The protestors make the point that if they don’t have this great an effect their point will be ignored. Well, they may be right. However, if you’re such a small minority and your demands are so great — as seems to be the case here — then your point, your demands, should be ignored! Every single one of us in a civilised society has to live within the confines of behaviour accepted by the majority. Anyone who has ever read Lord of the Flies learnt the alternative in high school!

How did we get here? As I said in my last post, this ostensibly started out as a trucker protest by people who opposed “vaccine mandates”. However, it has clearly morphed. The thousands of participants are clearly not the 10-15% of truckers who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Others have glommed onto their protest. Who are the others? That seems to be the biggest unanswered question here, and I sure don’t have the answer. The current federal government is a minority government, which means that most Canadians didn’t vote for them, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party. Personally speaking I am one of them, but as much as Justin Trudeau irks me, and as much as I have written against him and his leadership on my blog, I support his stance against this array of yobbos, and I think their calls for him to be jailed are abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous.

But why do these people honestly think that they can make this demand? Because they’re extremists who all talk to each other in their own little social-media bubbles. People on both sides of the political spectrum make this mistake and come to different extremist conclusions. In addition to coming to the conclusion that they can call for the overthrow of a duly elected government before the next scheduled election, they advocate for the jailing and execution of the politicians, and the “lying media”, the “fake news”. It’s just bizarre. No matter what beliefs you hold, you cannot reasonably come to the conclusion that you can effectively segregate the population and eliminate every last person who disagrees with you. That guy standing next to you on the protest line likely has a slightly different position to you on any number of issues, so should he/she be executed too? If you answer “yes”, who will be left standing next to you?! Nobody, that’s who.

I used to think that America was on the verge of civil war, and we reasonable people in Canada would be watching the refugees streaming across the border into our civilised country. However, it’s becoming clear that many Americans, mainstream politicians (e.g., Trump, Cruz) and underground right-wing extremists, are treating Canada as the fifty-first state. And we may actually be! The people behind the protests are the sheep of the American right-wing movement (and they even carry their flags!), and they are blindly (and very rapidly!) importing American civil-war politics into a country that simply doesn’t need that garbage!

The supply chain is falling, the supply chain is falling!

With apologies to Chicken Little.

If I hear another news story about the failing supply chain I’m going to scream. It seems that the term “supply chain” is the latest buzzword. I suppose the pandemic, global weather events and/or inflation have not helped things, but society seems to be coming to grips with the fact that we can’t have everything we want at our fingertips all of the time. The attitude that we should is what has led us into overusing and abusing the planet’s resources, which leads to destruction of the environment, which leads to the aforementioned global weather events … and so the vicious circle goes.

But really, I didn’t have a reason to write about this until the 10% of Canadian truckers who are not vaccinated against COVID got bees in their bonnets, and decided to drive from Vancouver to Ottawa.

It’s clear that this protest is no longer really led by the truckers, and has been co-opted by right-wing extremists who want another “January 6th” (a reference to the lame insurrection attempt in Washington DC in the United States), but this time in Canada. I haven’t personally seen the rhetoric apparently calling for the overthrow of the Canadian government (but it doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to know it exists), but I did see an idiot who claimed that they want every single member of parliament to resign and for all COVID-related mandates to be immediately rescinded.

*sigh*

News flash buddy: the federal government has no jurisdiction over COVID mandates, which are a health-care issue; those are mandated by the provincial and territorial governments! Secondly, I don’t know who you want governing the country after all of the MPs resign, but I sure don’t want it to be you and your “F🍁CK TRUDEAU” flag wavers! If you become prime minister that will surely get me off my couch!

The truckers got bees in their bonnets over the fact that the Canadian government now requires all cross-border truckers to be vaccinated. They seem to be too dense to understand that the Americans have the same requirement, and so even if the Canadian government folds tomorrow and rescinds the requirement, it won’t make one iota of difference!

If this isn’t an example of a minority (10%) holding a majority (90%) hostage, I don’t know what is. As for all of the flag wavers coming out along the route (and swelling occupations on weekends), it’s not a surprise that a population of about 40 million people has more than its fair share of idiots. Sadly, there is no IQ test required to vote but, if you believe the 10%, that voting requirement is surely in the works.

As a former trans-border trucker myself, I know that many of these guys have been supping with their American counterparts, guys (mostly) who are gun-rights champions and various other wackos. Enough said about that, except that the last thing we need in Canada is the left-right, my-way-or-the-highway, extremist divide that they suffer from down there. Not all trucking needs to cross the international border with the United States, so if you don’t want to take a vaccine that has a very high chance of preventing you from dying of a very transmissible airborne disease, then work a domestic route. It’s not rocket science dude.

I’ve had this piece sitting on my computer for the last week or two, and things have evolved since then. I’m just going to publish this as is — because none of it is no longer correct — and I’m going to write something more cogent and current.

Bizarre British “news” website: Eminetra

2-year-ol woman ... died in circumcision failure

2-year-old woman … died in circumcision failure.

We all know that the World Wide Web is not a bastion of excellence in spelling and grammar. John Walker (of Autodesk and AutoCAD fame) has a very interesting essay on his website entitled, “Strike Out: Reading Unedited Text“, where he gives examples of texts that are a complete waste of time to read because of spelling and grammatical errors.

But I think even he would be gobsmacked by the atrocious quality of the writing at a news website I recently discovered: Eminetra (https://eminetra.co.uk/about-us/). I’ve linked only to their “About Us” page where you can read one of their better-written pieces of text, but my god, just look at the screenshot of a link to just one article on their website! I did actually read the article, and contrary to the headline it’s not about the circumcision of a “2-year-old woman” (yes, a “2-year-old woman“, not girl), it’s about the circumcision of young boys. However, I’m not going into the topic of circumcision, male or female.

In the first article I read the author continually referred to the female subject of the article as “he”, and parts were written in the first person as if it was the subject of the article who was writing the article! In another article they couldn’t even get a quotation right (I could tell, as there was a picture of a handwritten journal from which they had quoted) and they misspelled a three-letter word in an organisation’s name! Several articles used words that seemed so out of context that I thought the text must have been machine-translated into another language, and then machine-translated back into English. (Try it sometime.) On top of that there are technical/HTML errors everywhere, likely caused by automated import of articles from the news feeds of other websites.

As if I was a rubber-necker at a train wreck, I read a few more articles. The website seems to be somehow connected to the British tabloid the “Daily Mail“. The major difference is that Eminetra seems to have been written by a child whose first language is not English. Whoever is writing the articles clearly has no command of any kind of thought process that would communicate to the reader the gist of a story, as each “article” (if you can even call them that) seems to be nothing more than a series of disjointed sentences.

Conclusion: These guys obviously have more money than sense. One of the articles even ended just like this!

NEWS FLASH! Justin Trudeau is a hypocrite!

Justin Trudeau on a beach with surfboards.

Justin Trudeau on a beach with surfboards.

The same prime minister who gaslighted his female minister of justice and attorney general has once again shown his stupendous level of hypocrisy on this, Canada’s first Truth and Reconciliation Day (aka Orange Shirt Day), to jet off to the west coast of Canada, Tofino, to holiday during this “non-holiday”. This is after he was apparently invited by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc to participate in ceremonies today in Kamloops, BC, but neither he nor his office even gave the courtesy of a reply!

Non-fungible tokens, and other news

So Jack Dorsey’s selling of his first tweet came to my attention recently. Huh. I’ve just loaded it in my browser (you can too, by clicking the link), without paying anyone $2.5 million, or whatever it’s up to today. I can take a screenshot of it, print it on paper or to PDF, put a laurel of gold leaves around it, save it to my hard drive … and never look at it again.

On the other hand, if I had a few hundred million dollars I might buy the Mona Lisa, hang it on my wall, and impress my friends.

Maybe I’m an old fuddy-duddy already, but I get the latter, but not the former. I do own art in various forms — paintings (originals, not prints), sculptures, books, photographs, etc. — but just because you can (theoretically) make something digital “artificially scarce” doesn’t mean a damned thing to me. If you buy Jack’s tweet, how is that better than the screenshot I just took? How does it make you better than me, or perhaps how does it just make you better? Or ultimately, how does it make the world better? That last question is a question that more people should ask themselves more often.

Bizarre organisational names

The domain humana.org came to my attention today. No particular reason. But the organisation’s full name on their extended validation certificate caught my eye. “The Fed. for Ass. conn. to the I…”. See for yourself.

Humana SSL certificate

Humana SSL certificate.

This is apparently short for “The Federation for Associations connected to the International Humana People to People Movement”. (There’s probably a single German word for that, which would make sense seeing as they’re in Switzerland.) The abbreviation “ass” for the long word “association” (or “assemblies” in the case of “Assemblies of God”, or “Ass. of God” as you see on signs all over parts of Africa) always gets my puerile mind’s attention!

Anyway, my point is more about the long and involved name rather than the connection I make to someone’s buttocks.

Vaccines in Canada

Justin Trudeau is still, laughably, sticking to his “every Canadian will be vaccinated by the end of September” dog-and-pony routine, while others involved have finally admitted that they “hope” to have all of us vaccinated by Canada Day, July 1st. (Hey, three days before the Americans!) I’ll believe it when I see it, as at this point both the Americans and the Canadians seem to be tossing numbers in the air like crazed jugglers, for the amusement of the crazed public watching them on TV.

Royal wankers

Seemingly everyone and their donkey are talking about Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey recently. To me that’s a very good reason not to talk about it, but here we go anyway.

First, if one was actually able to talk to the couple as real people, they’re probably decent human beings, don’t get me wrong.

However, they are two of the most privileged people in the entire fucking world. I don’t care that Markle is female and half black — two of the traits that apparently make you less privileged — but she is more privileged than I will ever be in my life. And yet she married into the British Royal Family and is … surprised (?!) … that her life is not turning out like the Disney version of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”?! Give me a fucking break!

I have endless sympathy for Harry and what he lost when his mother was, essentially, murdered by the press, who are an extension of everyone who has ever bought a copy of a rag with lurid headlines. And I sure wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of their headlines and despicable behaviour, as Markle has been. However, she chose to be in that position. Yes, she did it for love, but some things aren’t worth love … or some love isn’t worth some things, however you want to regard it.

I don’t care if “The Firm” folds tomorrow and disappears. However, Harry and Markle are world class whiners who used up their fifteen minutes of fame long ago, and don’t deserve another second. I don’t care who apparently speculated on the hue of their first kid’s skin and their motivation; it is something to wonder about in a mixed-race union that produces children! It’s something that more than one cheating wife or girlfriend has had to be concerned about in the history of humanity! But their going on TV and complaining about how terrible their lives are — to the point of contemplating suicide — is an absolute joke. Other people have had to suffer far worse lives than those two, and someone should apprise them of that fact.