Category: annoying people

Today’s chuckles

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We had a lovely school concert last week (as briefly documented here), but what if school concerts were like festivals?

I mean, no offence intended, but yeah, you might think twice.

We’ve been through this one before.

Just with slightly different terminology. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

In fact, if anything, the mental images conjured up by these descriptions are actually more accurate.

Look, Climate Change is a real thing…

But don’t worry. Whoever the Big Orange Goon puts in charge of the USA’s Environmental Department will surely sort it all out. After all, President (Elect) Spanky McLiarface is doing wonderful work already, putting a rabid anti-vaxxer in charge of Health, doubling the number of wankers in charge of Government Efficiency, and putting this tosser as head of Defence:

Of course, he later claimed he was joking about that (you decide), but he’s still deadly serious about…

Women in the military:

“I’m straight up just saying, we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” he explained. “Our institutions don’t have to incentivize that in places where traditionally—not traditionally, over history—men in those positions are more capable.”

About who he thinks is going to command the military:

He wrote that “affirmative action posts have skyrocketed, with ‘firsts’ being the most important factor in filling new commanders. We will not stop until trans-lesbian Black females run everything!”

About how stupid Ivy League graduates are:

“I have a new rule, the more elite the university and advanced a graduate is, the dumber they are. If you went to an Ivy League, prove that you have any common sense at all.”

Hegseth went to Princeton and Harvard, which actually does kind of prove his point.

And about how he just wants to get along with everyone:

“Next to the communist Chinese and their global ambitions, Islamism is the most dangerous threat to freedom in the world. It cannot be negotiated with, coexisted with, or understood; it must be exposed, marginalized, and crushed,” he wrote in American Crusade.

Wait. What?

A simple error

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When paying for something – even if it’s just 80 cents – always be absolutely sure what you are paying for.

I love this cartoon, because I’m a bit of a pendant when it comes to the correct use of language. And details are important, otherwise a sentence – like above – could mean something entirely different.

Good luck in the Battle Zone, brave warrior.

Vaguely related…

“They said they had never seen anything like it. It was like a trolley dash.
I had two hammers, hobnail boots. I was doing four at once.“

Vaguely related again…

I got an email from a supplier earlier today proudly sharing these facts in the blurb:

And they should be proud, because 6000 is a great number, and so 6000+ must be even better.
Sadly though, they’ve illustrated this amazing stat with… er… 4 stars.

And the very first testimonial they shared, cited their “attention to detail”. Oops.

I know we’re fast approaching December, and many places and people are already dreaming of summer holidays, but really…

Why yes, that extra N was entirely intentional. But thanks for noticing.

“This is geo-engineering”

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Spoiler: It’s not.

But there are some loons out there who still believe that it might be. Like these two:

“Concerned Citizen” – if that is his real name – shares a 12 second video of Devon, UK, with the caption:

What part of this looks ******** normal to you?

Honestly, the only bit that looks a bit weird is the sunshine in October, but even in the UK, that can happen from time to time.

But he’s going on about the aircraft contrails in the sky (best place for them, by the way).

And as ScottFree – if that is his real name – adds:

First they gave us disease, next its famine. The West is clearly under attack by dark forces. These are not contrails, this is geo-engineering.

Either that or Devon finds itself right underneath the main trans-Atlantic route from Europe to the Americas. I wonder which it could be?

I guess the only sure fire way to know is to see what the geo-engineering boffins of the “dark forces” have geo-engineered for Devon. Tornadoes? Hurricanes? Hail? Locusts?

Ugh. It’s worse than that.

My god. It’s going to be vaguely mild and partly cloudy for the foreseeable future.

The absolute bastards! How could they?

I mean, if you did have the power to geo-engineer the weather everywhere, firstly, why would you do it over Devon, which is pretty, but is also pretty inconsequential?
And secondly, is that really the best that you can manage? A variation of two degrees and some sunny spells over a 8 day period? Is the apprentice in charge this week or something? Start with the basics and then maybe add a shower or two next Wednesday?

Honestly, sometimes it feels like these twitter people just make shit up because they’re morons.

Getaway

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There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the cover of local travel magazine Getaway this month. That’s because the magazine – well known for its featuring of high quality, local photography – has published its most recent edition with an agency-supplied, AI-generated image on the front cover.

No laws against doing that. No rules were broken, but it does seem a bit of a poor show.

Local ‘tog Jean Tresfon complains that there is no need for them to buy in their images from an agency anyway, given the talent that is available in SA. And he’s absolutely right on that. It’s lazy and it suggests that the publishers are just in it to get the magazine (full of ads) out there, rather than actually caring about the content or audience.

And veteran journo Gus Silber agrees that the use of an AI image is alarming:

There is a genuine concern among media workers that AI is going to take their jobs. If you are using it to replace human photography, then you are making a statement. Getaway needs to explain if their policies allow the use of AI, and when they use it, they must acknowledge it.

Of course, Gus is also right.

But while they are both correct, they’ve also both overlooked the biggest issue in this whole debacle, which comes as a quote from Ryan Vrede, the head of motoring and travel at Habari Media, which owns and publishes Getaway:

OK. But this does raise another question:
How did absolutely no-one look at the front cover of your magazine before it was published?

Because… well…

(click here for bigger)

You don’t have to be Sherlock “Boom Boom” Holmes to spot that this has “an AI element” to it. And that’s an understatement of note. Amazingly, someone did notice, albeit after the magazine had been published and distributed:

Captioned “Natural Wonder” by the magazine, closer inspection by professional photographer Des Jacobs found that although the image may be a “wonder”, there is very little about it that’s natural.

Thank goodness he’s a professional. Because obviously, no-one with simple amateur skills could ever have deduced that this was an AI image.

[deadpan] It’s so very realistic.

I’d already noted the online kerfuffle before I first saw the cover image, so my AI-detecting senses were already piqued, meaning that I can’t really be a fair judge of whether or not I thought that this was an AI-generated image. But looking at it, there were three things that I noted which might have nudged me in the direction of thinking that maybe it was an AI-generated image:

  1. It’s actually very clearly an AI-generated image.
  2. It looks NOTHING like the Blyde River Canyon that it’s meant to depict, and
  3. WTF?!? Are you kidding me, Ryan? How on earth can anyone claim to not see that this outlandish, cartoon wankery is made by a dodgy artificially “intelligent” computer?!?!?

Literally…

Sorry. We f***ed up. We’ll make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

…is all you needed to say.

But Ryan, with this absolute gem of a line:

You’re either telling us that you’re really stupid, or that you think we’re really stupid.

And each of those options look about as good as the “Blyde River Canyon” on your magazine cover.

Last night’s quiz

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I’m always interested about the varying standards of local pub quizzes. There are two main things at play here: the average difficulty of the questions, and the ability of the competing teams. And there are well known examples of all four of the possible outcomes from these two variables at quizzes in Cape Town.

Last night’s quiz turned out to be the easiest from this point of view: without wanting to sound rude, the standard of the teams playing wasn’t great, and the level of questions was fairly basic. I’m comparing this with other quizzes we sometimes attend where at least one of the two variables is set to “difficult” mode.

Still, it was good fun, good company and nice to win some good prizes.

What last night’s quiz did offer – aside from the winnings and the enjoyment – was the most annoying woman in quiz history.

And I’ve been doing pub quizzes for 30 years.

We all know at least one of those people who always need to be the centre of attention, even when they’re actually already it, but for all the wrong reasons.

This lady was like that, but on steroids cocaine.
Loud, shrill, squeaky – ruining everyone’s evening.

God, she was irritating.

Even her teammates were embarrassed. One of them actually left early rather than continue to sit next to her.

There were numerous warnings from the host, but he tried valiantly to keep it good-natured until, during the second half of the evening, she decided to shout out the answer to a question, at which point he (quite reasonably) snapped, looking her directly in the eye and delivering the long-overdue and much-appreciated line:

Shut the f**k up!

Delicious.

I mean, sadly it had very little effect, but it got a decent cheer from the audience, and it was genuinely a nice thing to hear.

Thankfully, all of the other good things about the evening just about outweighed the mouthy bint. And thus, we will likely be back to defend our title next time around.