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Opinion

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Breakdown of the Rule of Law in the United States of America

Dec 3rd, 2024
by Craig.
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Tattered American flag.

Tattered American flag

What we’re seeing down in the good ol’ U.S. of A., with Joe Biden pardoning his son, is a classic example of unintended consequences and the down side of the reason that all of trump’s supporters love him: his inability to think before he opens his big yap. Many people seem to consider it somehow endearing that a politician can talk just as freely and openly as a drunkard down at the pub, but anyone with a brain knows that just about anything they say “after a few” down at the pub cannot and should not be counted on in the morning.

And yet, trump can barrack out the word “tariff” and all of his acolytes cheer as if they even know what the word means, never mind how tariffs would affect their grocery bills, making the inflation they blame on Biden (but which is worldwide) look like child’s play.

This is what I see as having happened in this case:

  • 2020: trump pardons (among other people) the convicted felon (Charles Kushner), pardon my redundancy, who is the father-in-law of his daughter, Ivanka, as well as a bunch of his other supporters who have broken the law to support him.
  • 2021: trump sets his private army of ne’er-do-wells on the US Congress in attempts to hijack the counting of votes of the Electoral College and (seemingly) have his Vice President (Mike Pence) and Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) assassinated. They fail.
  • 2024: The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) rules that the President of the United States (POTUS) is immune from prosecution, which means the action to try and convict trump of treason in the case of the January 6th self-coup attempt essentially comes to a grinding halt. (How an attempt at a coup can be considered an “official act” is beyond the understanding of my miniscule intellect.)
  • 2024: trump is elected President of the United States, again, to the dismay of over 50% of the population of the United States.
  • 2024: trump nominates Kash Patel — who has made far-ranging promises that echo trump’s promises of revenge and retribution, completely contrary to the ethos of the Rule of Law — for the post of Director of the FBI. Oh, and he also nominates said convicted felon, Charles Kushner, to the post of Ambassador to France.
  • 2024: Biden sees what is coming down the pike and, despite previous assurances that he would not pardon Hunter Biden, decides to do so because it has become clear to him that there’s no way Hunter will be treated according to the Rule of Law under which Joe previously promised not to pardon him. So what we have here is one President flouting the Rule of Law (even if pardons are, technically, legal) to combat the entirely predictable flouting of the Rule of Law of an incoming president.
  • 2024: Predictably, trump and his cry-baby supporters cry foul.

And, of course, as about a million other people have noted, now that a convicted felon has been allowed to run for and win the office of President of the United States, why should there be fetters on the activities and freedoms of other felons? Why incarcerate them? Why prevent them from holding certain jobs, like ambassadorships? Why prevent them from voting? And why conform to various other laws and norms and follow the Rule of Law?!

As I said to someone recently, the maxim that “crime doesn’t pay” is sure taking a hit these days, especially from the “royalty” that are running the United States!

Hard to take the Aussie Pie Guy (or Resourcecode Media Inc.) seriously

Nov 17th, 2024
by Craig.
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In Vancouver there is a company called Aussie Pie Guy. I have to admit, I like their pies. I haven’t tried them all, but the Trifecta Pie is pretty darn tasty. I recommend them.

But their website makes me want to chunder.

Take a look at the screenshot below. How many spelling mistakes and other errors can you find in the four sentences? By my count there are five!:

  • “favorite” –> favourite
  • “savory” –> savoury (x2)
  • “flavor” –> flavour
  • “aussie” –> Aussie (it’s a proper noun)

They claim to produce “Australian-themed … pies” in Canada, both of which are Commonwealth countries that (for the most part) use British English, not American English! At least the punctuation and grammar are passable. And I’ll give them the capitalisation error; I suppose it looks better from a marketing perspective if the lone word doesn’t clash or cause confusion with the name of their company.

But this website is apparently made by a company that bills themselves with the slogan, “Multi Language Website Design, Development and Translation“! Uh, yeah, sure! I speak French, passably, but I don’t claim that I’m bilingual and market myself as such to paying customers! But if you know my definition of the word “marketing“, you’ll understand.

Aussie Pie Guy website screenshot, 2024-11-16.

Aussie Pie Guy website screenshot, 2024-11-16

America and communism

Nov 15th, 2024
by Craig.
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United Socialist States of America flag.

United Socialist States of America flag (Samdir3 CC BY-SA 3.0).

The way that Americans seem to have a penchant for labelling anyone they disagree with — particularly Republicans labelling Democrats — as “communist” has always troubled me. The problem is ignorance. A good friend of mine — a former resident of the United States — who is well educated in this area says that he won’t talk to anyone about communism unless they have read all of a reading list by authors such as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, etc. I don’t remember the full list, but I myself have not met the prerequisite. Among them I vaguely recall “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx. At best I have read a number of excerpts of a few of the texts in my friend’s list from text books from a college political science course.

But today, in 2024, I am stunned by the extent to which right-leaning American politicians are siding with former communists, particularly one vladimir putin. You may have heard of him: he started the first war in Europe since the end of World War II in 1945 by sending Russian troops to invade Ukraine, troops that were immediately defeated in their push for Kyiv. The current American president-elect — donald trump — and his nominee for the cabinet position of Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, both (by all accounts) support putin, and trump claims that he plans to end the war within 24 hours of taking office, if not before! It is widely expected that he will do this by denying any further military assistance to Ukraine and twisting the arm of Volodymyr Zelenskyy (president of Ukraine) into ceding Ukrainian territory to putin.

To someone whose country’s west-leaning government was abandoned by the United States of America to the communist terrorists — supported by the Soviet Union and China — against which we fought in the 1970s, this actually shouldn’t be surprising. So welcome to the club, Mr. Zelenskyy, the club of people that have been fighting on the side of America and to bring the freedom of the West to your country, but in whose faces America has spat.

But is this really surprising behaviour by a president-elect who has nominated an anti-vaxxer as the Secretary of Health, and a suspected criminal as the Attorney General?!

OMG, I’m stunned

Nov 7th, 2024
by Craig.
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Tattered American flag.

Tattered American flag

Despite the supposed neck-and-neck polls, I didn’t think it was conceivable that a nation that bills itself as the smartest, richest and most successful could actually vote in a potential (probable?) dictator and an actual convicted felon. Under normal circumstances I’d say, “Thank the gods for term limits,” but that may be the smallest thing he will change, if predictions are correct. If I was Liz Cheney right now, I’d be very concerned for my safety.

But what I’m not surprised about is that Americans, once again, gave a female candidate the heave-ho. Other countries have been electing woman politicians as president and prime minister and whatnot for years, but America stubbornly refuses to join even the 20th century, never mind the 21st. Listen, I don’t think anyone should vote for a woman (or anyone else) just because of what she (or he) has between their legs but, my god, I just don’t get it. What is with these people?!

It’s actually a good thing that I am in the process of winding down my business, because it’s time I closed my accounts in that shithole, about-to-be-third-world country. That will make two Third World countries I’ve pulled out of this year! I have just a couple of months to whip around and visit what few friends I have there before I close the border to myself for at least four years.

BC General Election 2024: Official results

Oct 29th, 2024
by Craig.
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Vote with an x.

Vote (cropped, Alan Cleaver CC BY 2.0).

The final results of the 19 October 2024 BC General Election are in, and the losers are the voters of British Columbia. Congratulations!

Wait, what? Oh, you were expecting that I was going to celebrate the winner?! Nope, with every election we have I become more and more convinced that the electoral system we use in this province and country was designed by morons. I mean, on the face of it, winner takes all just makes sense, right? You and your friends are deciding where to go for dinner. It has long been my contention that the bigger the group, the more likely it is that you’re all going to end up at White Spot in this part of the world. (Probably Wetherspoons in the UK.) White Spot is a good, run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-road restaurant, with something to please just about everyone so, just as I said, the bigger the group the more likely it is that there are going to be people who reject a pizza place, a steak place, an “ethnic” place of one stripe or another, or whatever someone in the group will vote against. So someone in the group says, “What about White Spot?” “Yeah, OK, I guess,” grumbles just about everyone. The steak guy can get a half decent (but overdone) steak, the pizza guy can probably get a flatbread thing, the person who wanted something “ethnic” can probably get something resembling a curry or that has had some curry powder waved in its general direction, people can get burgers, and off you go. Ain’t majority rule great?!

Final 2024 BC general election voting results.

Final 2024 BC general election voting results

And so here in British Columbia the NDP have just squeaked by with a 47-seat majority, an absolute bare minimum majority required in a 93-seat house. (And already the Conservatives are promising to bring down the government! Way to read the room guys!) The 46 seats they had until the recounts were completed over the weekend — actually, they weren’t really recounts, they were the counting of mail-in, out-of-district and other miscellaneous ballots — was one seat short of the majority, and they would have required at least one MLA from another party to pass legislation.

Of course, the NDP are happy! Phew! We can get our agenda done! But the fact is that 55.13% of the province voted against the NDP, the majority of voters! (Sound familiar?! 56.73% voted against the Conservatives.) Don’t get me wrong, of the two main parties in the contest I’d far prefer the NDP to win over the Conservatives who, as I said in my earlier post, are led by a mentally and socially deficient anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist who would be premier of the province had the Conservatives won! So thank the gods that they didn’t win, but the issue I have is that everyone seems to think that a minority government is “bad”, when in actual fact a minority government is the absolute best we can possibly hope for in a first-past-the-post system, where it’s usually one dictatorship after another! If you’re using a system where the majority of voters do not get what they voted for, how can you possibly think that that’s the best possible voting system?!

But I’m farting into the wind, because BC voters have twice (or maybe it’s three times, I’ve lost count) rejected some kind of proportional representation system because the maths were “too hard”!

Initial 2024 BC general election voting results.

Initial 2024 BC general election voting results

Let me go back to my White Spot example. Based on my own experience I’m not a big fan of the various food-delivery services out there, but here’s a possible variation on the example I gave: The majority of the group would probably vote against White Spot, not because White Spot is crap (I do love some of their dishes, so I don’t want you to think I have a hate on for them), but because the steak guy would kill for a good steak, and the pizza guy really wants a meat-lover’s pizza right now, and someone really wants a good goat curry. So head for some venue where you can have fun and that will allow you to call in a food delivery, and order from the places that specialise in those foods and eat what you actually want! Maybe it sounds a bit too “pie in the sky”, but you all get to vote on what you want to eat and you all get what you want! In PR, if 40% vote for the NDP, 40% vote for the Conservatives, 10% vote for the Greens, and 10% vote for the Rhinoceros Party, that’s exactly how the seats are divvied up in the legislature (or parliament).

If a group of friends can come up with an arrangement that suits all of them for dinner for the evening, how can a province or country not come up with an electoral system that actually pleases all of the voters all of the time?! I’m not so stupid that I think I know better than Abraham Lincoln but, my god, just about anything has to be better than this farcical first-past-the-post system in which we find ourselves every election cycle where (in this case) 55.13% of the electorate get told to suck it up for another four years. That won’t end well when the revolution happens.

Abandon Harris ’24

Oct 19th, 2024
by Craig.
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Yesterday evening I watched a CBC news story that focused on ex-Palestinians (and Arabs in general) in Michigan who have mounted the “Abandon Harris ’24” campaign, which aims to ensure that Kamala Harris is not elected president of the United States in their election next month. I did a web search and it turns out that this is actually a national movement.

I am blown away by how short-sighted these people are. One Muslim woman said, “If the consequence is a trump presidency, so be it.” I wonder if she has thought this through. Given the incredibly anti-Islamic stands that trump has taken, and given the extent of his fascist statements about mass deportations and turning the United States military on its own citizens (naturalised and not) or “the enemy within”, what makes her so sure that she will not be on the first boat or plane of deportations if she helps him win?

Also in the piece a Muslim or Arab man was interviewed outside either a mosque or perhaps some sort of Islamic cultural centre. He was standing in front of a green awning marked, “WOMEN ENTRANCE”, and in the background was another green awning; there was no way to see what kind of entrance that one was, but I can only assume it was the “MAN ENTRANCE”. I’m well aware that Muslims don’t allow men and women to mix — just like other religions based on the stone-age teachings of one prophet or another — but this interview was obviously conducted in the “free” United States of America! I am an immigrant myself (just not to the United States, thank the gods and my parents) and if I had behaved the way these Palestinians are behaving — including fostering sex discrimination — I myself (and my family) would probably have been deported!

It is people like these — who bring their country’s problems with them when they emigrate/immigrate — that give us immigrants a bad name.

I just wasted my vote in the 2024 British Columbia provincial general election

Oct 13th, 2024
by Craig.
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Vote with an x.

Vote (cropped, Alan Cleaver CC BY 2.0).

Yesterday I went to the District Electoral Office in my area and voted in an advance poll. I did it there and early because I expected an issue with my ID, but thankfully I didn’t have one. (At least that part of the provincial government was working properly, as opposed to the part responsible for my ID.) Anyway, since we’re still using the FPTP voting system inherited from middle ages England, I knew that my vote would be wasted because I voted for the Green Party headed by Sonia Furstenau instead of one of the two main parties, one of which is headed by a mentally and socially deficient anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist.

But oh well. I’ll just consider myself on the vanguard of proportional representation in a province that has its head buried firmly in its ass, having rejected PR in two referenda!

London Drugs have lost all credibility … and my business

Sep 26th, 2024
by Craig.
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London Drugs logo.It is ironic, and coincidental, that my last post — six months ago — was about London Drugs, and now it is again!

Anyone who lives in this area knows London Drugs. They’ve been around for decades, almost a century actually. They were a great place to get all sorts of stuff except your meat and vegetables, but especially electronics, foreign (especially British) chocolate bars and candies and (in the old days) get your film developed and photographs printed. But like I said in my last post, NO MORE! I considered my issue with their sub-par passport photos to be a one-off, niche problem that could easily be avoided, and I still planned to (and did) patronise them for other goods. Until yesterday.

Until 2019 I had my drug prescriptions with London Drugs, since they were almost right next door to me, but in that year I moved and there wasn’t a London Drugs near me so I transferred my prescriptions to a nearby Shoppers Drug Mart. Then I moved again, and the situation with the proximity of LD and Shoppers was the same.

Then this year it turned out that Shoppers and Loblaws were mistreating their pharmacists and over-billing the Ontario government. I’m not a big fan of dishonesty, theft and slavery, so I decided that I’d move back to London Drugs, despite the extra drive. Yesterday I went to LD to do just that, and fill a new prescription. After several minutes of the LD employee typing out my biography on her computer, she then informed me that my prescription would be ready in an hour and a half! Excuse me?! Did you say an hour and a half?! At Shoppers I generally have to wait ten minutes, if that, and in that time I usually wander around the store and pick up a chocolate bar or two, so their making me wait for just a few minutes is actually good (ironically) for their business! I don’t expect instant service, but come on, ten minutes isn’t a big deal but ninety minutes is!

So I told this LD employee all of that, and she claimed that the pharmacist was busy and that the best they could do was an hour. So I took back my prescription and said I would return to Shoppers and get it filled there. Which I did, only to have Shoppers — the same Shoppers I’ve been using for the last year and which previously filled prescriptions in ten minutes — tell me it would take half an hour! By this time, of course, I’m done fighting The System for the day, so I said, “Whatever. I’ll probably be back tomorrow, or next week.” I then left.

So I’m still unhappy with SDM, but I’ll look into other alternatives for my next prescription. (I think there’s a Pharmasave in the area.) But now I’m done with London Drugs completely. I even gave away an LD gift card I had until a few minutes ago. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t like to make two trips to accomplish one activity, especially when I’m burning fuel to do so! If all their fucking surveys and consumer focus groups don’t tell them that, then they deserve to go out of business!

This is the problem with reading/watching/listening to the news. If I didn’t, I’d have never known about the Shoppers/Loblaws dishonesty and I’d still be dealing with them.

Here’s more information about the way Loblaws/Shoppers are treating pharmacists and scamming taxpayers, from Wikipedia as of today:

In 2024, Shoppers Drug Mart was criticized for enacting sales quotas on pharmacists for MedsCheck, a government sponsored program in Ontario. MedsCheck reimburses healthcare providers for medication reviews, allowing for a maximum billing of $75 per patient, which led to the profitability of enacting sales targets. CBC News reported that approximately 1.4 million dollars was billed to the province for a week in February 2024. A class action lawsuit was filed against the company in regards to these quotas.

And here’s a full list of Loblaws’ stores — just in case, you know, you thought you should stop doing business with less honest companies — also from Wikipedia:

    • Dominion Stores
    • Extra Foods
    • Fortinos
    • Freshmart
    • Maxi
    • No Frills
    • No Name
    • President’s Choice
    • President’s Choice Financial
    • Provigo
    • Real Atlantic Superstore
    • Real Canadian Liquorstore
    • Real Canadian Superstore
    • Shoppers Drug Mart / Pharmaprix
    • SuperValu
    • T&T Supermarket
    • Valu-mart
    • Your Independent Grocer
    • Zehrs Markets

And here’s information about a May 2024 boycott of Loblaws, and other Loblaw controversies, including taking millions of dollars from the federal government … while, of course, not lowering prices but continuing to pad executive salaries!

IDstation and London Drugs passport photos

Mar 8th, 2024
by Craig.
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IDstation logo.

IDstation logo

I have had passport photos taken at London Drugs for years, but no more.

Turns out they are an agent of IDstation, to whom I was referred by the passport agency of one of the countries of which I am a citizen, who are advanced enough (unlike Canada) to take passport applications online. Great! So off I go to the nearest London Drugs to get my picture taken.

After waiting in line for a while I was finally served. I stated my reason for being there and confirmed that they used the IDstation service/system. They did, and then there was a lot of faffing around while they — three of them! — consulted the passport-photo requirements for my country … because, you know, they’re all so different! (According to the blurb at digitalphotosystems.nl, “Photomatic software is being used on many systems all over the world for passport photos …. Photomatic software automatically processes any image into a perfect passport photo. … The passport photo is checked on all official requirements for passport photos, as specified by the ICAO …. The ICAO check is a very important part of the Photomatic software because it will make sure the passport photo will not be rejected when used in offical [sic] applications for a passport, driving license of Visa. [sic]”) They eventually determined that the passport authorities for a number of countries (including mine) had recently been rejecting their passport photos, so they only agreed to taking my picture if I agreed to waive their guarantee, about which you can read on their website. (No surprise there, considering how bad the photo was!) Being the idiot I am, and with no other reasonable choice given my time constraints that day, I agreed. I mean, how hard can it be to fuck up a passport photo?! The people who had their photos rejected probably did something wrong that I won’t do.

London Drugs passport photo receipt.

London Drugs passport photo receipt

But since they were refusing to give me their guarantee (see scan of London Drugs receipt, across the top of which is handwritten, “Xxxx passport online Not gaurenteed [sic]”), and since they were presumably more adept at taking photos for Canadian passports, I decided to get photos for my Canadian passport taken as well, since it also expires in the near future. Looking back at the two pictures now, they’re like night and day! The Canadian passport photos would almost certainly have been accepted by the other country, but said country doesn’t accept scanned pictures, only the original JPEGs.

Anyway, when I submitted the JPEG to the other country’s passport office they rejected it because the “camera was too close”. With the benefit of hindsight I can now see that, as the requirement on their website is, “The photo must capture your image from head to mid torso.” (The Canadian one does.) The photo that London Drugs took barely took in my neck! If someone who takes passport photos all day can’t detect that error immediately they should be fired!

On the IDstation website they have a “File a complaint” option. I suppose they must get a lot of complaints! The problem is that the free-text field where you are supposed to describe your complaint severely limits how much text you can type (I can assure you that this blog post is far longer than my complaint!), but it doesn’t tell you how many characters you are allowed to submit. So this was what I ended up submitting:

My passport picture was rejected by the Xxxx government because they claimed the camera was too close.

I have more information, but your system says my “description is too long”, so you’ll have to reply by email to get the full description.

How do I have the $25.46 I wasted returned? Hmm, I paid using my credit card, so I suppose charging it back is one option.

They replied thusly:

From: IDstation Online <idstationmail@digitalphotosystems.nl>
Subject: You have a new response to the Complaint number 12906
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2024 21:28:27 +0000 (UTC)

Request number 12906

Dear customer,

You have a new response to your request from IDstation.Online. The response is as below:

I Suggest going back in store with the rejection letter. London Drugs will retake the photo and work with you on the issue.
Please do not reply to this email, it may not be tracked efficiently. To add any comments/response to your query, please click on the link below:

https://idstation.online/default/Support/AddNewResponse?queryID=12906&token=cNQgXSQ+3EgxMjkwNg==
The above link will be valid for 72 hrs.

Regards,
IDstation.Online
Navigate to FAQs (Sendgrid tracking link removed)

(I love the “Please do not reply to this email, it may not be tracked efficiently.” A complete load of bullshit. Either it will be received [and likely ignored] or it won’t be! Don’t give me this “may” crap.)

So I copied and pasted the link (because it was not a clickable link, as opposed to the tracked “Navigate to FAQs” link in their signature) but their system informed me, “An error occurred while processing your request.” I tried twice, both within about 24 hours. So I filed a new complaint as follows:

I received a response yesterday, but the response link provided failed. So I’m back here with your ridiculously short length limit. This is not going well for you in the public-relations department.

In that vein, I have decided not to bother returning to London Drugs to fight for my money. I will just focus my efforts on publicly discrediting both IDstation and London Drugs.

That’s all the space I have to explain my position! So long! See you in the court of public opinion!

That was 476 characters. My original attempt at this message was rejected as too long again because I had included the text of the error message (48 characters) their website gave me, so it seems their limit must be about 500 characters. Not sure how much useful information you can communicate in fewer than 500 characters, unless you’re just calling for “Help!” (4 characters, not including the exclamation point).

Ironically, in the Third World country where I’ll be travelling to, every bureaucrat wants a passport-style picture of you to attach to paperwork (the locals carry them around with their wads of cash), so I’ll use the four hard copies of my “digital” photo when I’m asked for one.

London Drugs logo.

London Drugs logo

Lesson learned: Take a list of the photo requirements and carefully inspect the photo against those requirements before you accept the photo. Don’t trust a gaggle of poorly trained amateurs/idiots to have a clue about what they are doing.

Some random musings, mostly about morons apparently

Mar 3rd, 2024
by Craig.
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Some bonehead named trump

I’ve had a note for several weeks to address the moronic comment some idiot named donald trump made about NATO members who don’t spend 2% of their GDP on defence spending. He seems to think that NATO members can simply be evicted from the alliance like delinquent tenants in one of his run-down tenement buildings. One of those countries is Canada. I’m not defending Canada’s apparent lack of spending on defence, especially in this day and age of increased Russian aggression, but here’s the thing, don: If Russia attacks and takes over Canada — we’re the country that is largely between you and Russia — as you have explicitly encouraged them to do, your problems on your southern border would look like a walk in the park compared to the problems you will have on your northern border!

Fucking moron.

Twitter/X

I know, I’m the last to note this, but Twitter feeds used to feature regularly in the search results for various things I look up online on a daily basis. But since that no-name idiot — Musk I think he calls himself — took it over, said results are less and less useful. For starters, you only get the one tweet, and Twitter refuses to display any replies. Given how often in the past I’ve spent way more time on reading replies that I should have, in some ways this is a good thing. But I’m sure my buddy Elon wasn’t worried about how much time Craig is wasting on Twitter. I don’t know what Musk is worried about, but maybe it’s his bandwidth bill. Or maybe he’s actually doing what he seemed to be setting out to do, which is kill Twitter. I wish I had so much money that I could literally piss $44 billion down the drain.

I also note now that when you try to load a Twitter feed you are often/usually forced to log in. You can no longer simply go to a Twitter feed (e.g., twitter.com/ninernet) and peruse the posts. If you can, the posts are all in random order rather than chronologically. Yeah, that’s exactly how you generate interest in your service, by restricting people from even viewing it and confusing them!

Dilbert / Scott Adams

Speaking of Twitter and rich people who can piss away their wealth, Dilbert came back up on my radar recently. I used to read Dilbert daily, but one day it disappeared. Turns out it was unceremoniously dumped by its distributor after the author, Scott Adams, made what some people described as racist comments. Whatever. Now he continues his comic but you have to pay him US$7 a month for the privilege of reading it, or you can follow him on Twitter for US$3 a month. (I note that I can load his Twitter feed without being forced to log in! I don’t know why or how Twitter differentiates between one feed and another in that regard.)

But on his Twitter feed I note that he’s re-Tweeting Tucker Carlson and videos of teenagers fighting. Seriously? Teenagers fighting?! If that’s what this idiot considers to be “entertainment”, no thanks. I’ll pocket my hard-earned cash and not support some idiot who supports trump and considers teenagers beating each other up as entertainment.

Charities and their begging calls

I’ve just blocked the fourth number I’ve added to a list of Red Cross numbers that call us constantly. Why do they call us? Because we give them money every month! So we give them hundreds of dollars a year but they still want more! And they’re willing to call us many times a month/year for that purpose, and continue calling even though their calls don’t go through. I don’t get it. Maybe I should answer the next call and get them to cancel our monthly donation.

Android 12

I think I’ve made reference to Android 12 a couple of times on here. Actually, once. But goddammit, the idiots who made it are stupid. I know, I’m probably the only person in the world who plugs their phone in at night when they’re in bed, next to their bed (there are reasons), and I’m the only person in the world who crawls into bed with an already sleeping partner; so forgive me for thinking that I’m so special that developers should think of me. I’ve gone to great lengths to try and turn off just about every stupid, unnecessary bleep and bloop that my fucking phone makes, and yet, occasionally and for no obvious reason (but not every time!), my phone decides to let me, my sleeping partner and the fucking neighbours know that I’ve plugged in my phone! Hooray! Craig has plugged in his phone successfully! I can’t tell you how much my partner loves being woken up by this news. I have “Charging sounds and vibration” turned off, so I don’t know why Android ignores that directive … but only sometimes!

And while I’m on a rant about Android 12, let me give a special shout out to the 3CX app. For years I’ve had that running on this and previous phones and it never once “broke through” the do-not-disturb setting, but now it does. I don’t know whether or not I should blame Android or 3CX, but my money is on Android; after all, it’s the operating system, and that should control the installed apps, not the other way around. So now I have to remember to shut down that app so that it doesn’t wake me up in the middle of the night, as it did twice in one night a few nights ago!

RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine worth its weight in gold

In case any of you think that the communist government of Canada pays for all things medical, let me tell you that relatives, pensioners, just plonked down $540 for the two of them to each get the RSV vaccine. Wow! And I’m on the verge of plonking down $350 for the Shingrix shingles vaccine. One thing I can tell you though is that I won’t be getting the Shingrix vaccine at Shoppers Drug Mart. I have not been happy with the fact that they have virtually eliminated staffed check-out cash registers at their stores. I’m not a Luddite (says the guy writing a blog), but society needs to deal with the fact that we still have unemployment to deal with, and you don’t deal with it by bringing in machines to replace humans without a plan. They were also in the news recently for billing the Ontario government for unnecessary medical checks on patients.

In other news in Canada

Turkeys terrorize residents of small Quebec town. Sorry, apparently there was a serious aspect to this, as they were becoming aggressive and that was a danger to children, not to mention adults who don’t like to be scratched by sharp claws. But this video had me cracking up, as well as the woman shooting the video! 🙂

Brian Mulroney

Brian Mulroney died on Thursday, 29 February. As one would expect for a former Prime Minister, this was big news in Canada. It reminded me of the fact that he was the first and last Conservative Prime Minister for whom I voted, in the first election in which I could vote. As many people have said over the last few days, politics have changed since then and the Conservative Party itself has also changed since then. Now they have a leader who used to be known as a pit bull in Stephen Harper’s government, who caters to his “base” of anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and anti everything! Now you couldn’t make me vote for that party even if you put a gun to my head. Sadly, as Canadian politics go, he will be Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre in 2025. 🙁

Updated, 2024-03-08: Added the fact that Twitter/X posts are now all in random order rather than chronological.

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