Seven Words You Can’t Say on The Internet

Not just the exact same seven words, but even in the same order.

Winning Science Project Idea

Can’t think of a good idea for this year’s annual school science fair project?
Something impressive, something others haven’t done?

Here’s my suggestion:
invent a dog poop sensor
for Roombas.

As long as it works well, it doesn’t even have to win.
You can just skip college entirely and go straight to nouveau riche, like Steve Jobs.

I won’t even ask for 10%.
Just the occasional freebie
for my personal use.

And now, for something completely familiar…

Six years later, the Democrats do another 180°.

Check out today’s update to our 2016 posting, And now for something completely different.

Never cooperate with the media

I’m taking advantage of my blog to help preserve a trenchant posting that my pal Andy Barniskis made in 1999 on the USENET group talk.politics.guns. As far as I can tell, it’s entirely fallen off the Internet except for one page that isn’t particularly easy to find or read. I’m remedying that.

Remember that even a genuinely sympathetic reporter is in the employ of an avowed enemy

As a card-carrying curmudgeon, I’m always embarrassed when someone comes along with an opinion more cynical than mine—and then they persuade me they are right. When that happens I feel obligated to confess it in public.

My gun club has been approached by several reporters from the broadcast media recently, and has (to their credit) taken what I regarded as a very paranoid stance with them. My personal experience (and I emphasize, personal) with the media has been mostly positive; that is, I have had few complaints with the way they have treated my statements about gun rights, and their reporting of issues I have been involved with has been generally objective. Not always, but generally. So, I regarded the gun club’s stance as being a little too far on the side of caution.

I was wrong, and a friend showed me with a few words how if I had given things even a moment’s deeper thought, I would have realized it–from past experience. My friend reminded me of something that had happened almost 10 years ago, that I had forgotten, in part from taking too short a view.

Look For The XOWKLUQT Label

It’s become transparently apparent to me (even without web searching for articles on the syndrome) that there is a buttload of Chinese junk merchants opening up “stores” on Amazon, each of which they name by tossing a set of Scrabble dice. I assume this is to allow them to sell crap products for a few months, then if they run into unsustainable quality and returns issues and bad reviews, they can fold up their store and create a new store with a different nonsense name and the same junk products, in order to outrun the pitchfork mob. It’s like the Amazon version of declaring bankruptcy, but without any of the regulation and protections.

Some of the obvious candidates from my own browsing history:

S-Miton, Jiasitemeijia, Metree, Dovewill, Baomain, Vseer, Tekit, Modket, Havit, eNylo, Oranmay, Palram, Readsky, Enonci, Yacaye, Ohuhu, Kootans, WATCHYOURNAME (which seems to be actual crack pipes and glass bongs), and my favorite two so far—Puredick and Pooplunch. 

All of these were pretty clearly computer generated for anonymity by people who don’t speak English, and I’ll be surprised if any of them will still be on Amazon in a year.

I might buy low-risk items like “plastic J-channel wire raceway” from one of these names, but certainly never anything electronic or expensive, and certainly never anything that could spontaneously combust for no reason (such as a “Puredick” laptop battery).

In fact, I was in the market for “button-style crimp wire connectors” recently for a recent project, and briefly considered “S-Miton’s” offering before I read the reviews:

I went through 5 before 1 good 1, at that rate better off using something else because the time you spend trying to find a good one you could have already finished the job.

Many were already crushed, and unusable. Inconsistency in the amount of dielectric gel inside them. Only orders these because the name brand ones were out of stock at the time. Whatever cost savings is eaten up by the amount of bad ones you’ll have to throw out.

Every time you try to crimp two utp cables you might end up using like a dozen Uys instead of eight. They only punch one cable and the other ends up loose. Therefore, you have to cut them both and recrimping again and again until you get both cables crimped.

I mean, how bad does a factory have to be to screw up a simple crimp connector?

Don’t expect trouble-free quality from the weird-named Amazon stores. 

Can’t we just go see Hamilton?

Here is one of the viewing recommendations my TiVo gave me last night:

Is this like the Tickle Me Elmo thing back in 1996 — everybody wants one, but there aren’t any?

For Ourselves and Our Prosperity…

From a recent mailing from the National Motorists’ Association:

California

Verra Mobility and Hertz Car Rental settled a toll road lawsuit with the City of San Francisco in February 2019. The city sued both companies two years ago because the PlatePass toll-charging service they operate together had been gouging users of the Golden Gate Bridge. Verra Mobility (renamed ticket camera company America Traffic Solutions) and Hertz were charging customers for the cost of tolls and automated traffic tickets along with administrative fees, often when drivers weren’t using toll roads. In a settlement, both companies agreed to pay the city of San Francisco $3.6 Million, instead of refunds to car renters.

Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that the sole rationale for instituting government was to secure men’s unalienable rights, including those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The government of San Francisco has apparently decided that it has a more important purpose: to divert stolen funds to its own coffers rather than return them to the victims.

Red, White, or Yellow Pill?

Thousands of disaffected paranoids worldwide apparently subscribe to the popular premise that we are, in fact, all living in The Matrix.

After a review of American society since the elections of Obama and Trump, I’ve become convinced of a premise that makes much more sense:

We are, in fact, all living in The Onion.

Flinger Pointing

Here’s a gem from the website of our illustrious Social Security Administration.

When you “click here for help,” you get:

But… but… that’s been standard operating procedure in the federal government for decades, hasn’t it?

For small values of “anywhere…”

Is there an award for overpromising and underdelivering? I have a nominee…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note to all of you who don’t happen to live in one of these ten megalopolises: wherever it is you live, it’s nowhere.

Thanks for the egoboo, Postmates Inc.