Category: annoying people

No-one likes us, we don’t care

Posted on

Uh-oh. Here I go again.

Oh no. Some words have happened. It seems that England, through to the semi-finals of the Rugby World Cup, aren’t very popular with several of the other nations, because… well… they’re England, I suppose.

Traditional rivalries with Scotland, Wales and the haw-hee-haw Frenchies are fair enough, maybe even Ireland, but I can’t believe that Italy are really all that bothered. Maybe after the football this evening? Still, let’s post the meme anyway…

And, while you can argue that they had an easier draw and and and… it would seem to me that England are also the only unbeaten team at the tournament. (And if their draw was so easy, how come theirs is the only pool producing two semifinalists?!? How curious.)

Not that that counts for very much of course, but it is still a STAT.

Interestingly, the same ref that SA got for their quarter final will be doing their semi final against England as well. The French didn’t really seem to like him very much:

And incredibly, there were even threats from Saffas in a game that they won!

As well as the more usual pre-game nastiness:

Hmm. (Also: Double E, Double F, if you could, please?)

I once remarked that watching a stadium concert from the back wasn’t like being “at” a concert:

For the entire performance, I couldn’t get away from the fact that I was watching a concert, not being at a concert.

And that’s how it feels watching the people watching the rugby. I have zero investment in the sport and so I can concentrate on what’s going on in the surroundings. And those things are often very strange.

Look, I get that SA are a great team, I get that it was a big win against France, and I really get that the country really needs this World Cup win. Oh God, I get it.

But the arrogance that has followed the victory over France and the feeling that the Boks are as good as World Cup Winners already – and if they’re not, then it’ll be because of the referee?

Meh – I really don’t need that.

Quiche

Posted on

“Fancy a quickie for dinner?”
“I think you’ll find that it’s pronounced QUICHE!”

But this is a quickie. Hugely busy day and still stuff to do before this evening, when we are also doing stuff.

So here are a couple of links:

Is it because it’s driving through a horrific bit of Sheffield where bus peltage is actually the least of your worries? Spoiler: it is.

Also, this:

Decency long left the building at X. It flows from the very top. When former executive Yoel Roth, whom Musk wrongly accused of being a pedophile, warned recently about hate speech on X, CEO Linda Yaccarino’s first reaction was to play down his concerns. On Monday, Musk followed up: “I have rarely seen evil in as pure a form as Yoel Roth.”

More final nails are being added at an alarming rate.

It’s quarter final time (to moan)

Posted on

The Rugby World Cup is currently happening. Millions of people across some of the biggest nations on earth have absolutely no idea that the competition is on, or that rugby even exists.

But for (some) of the nations taking part, it’s really very important.

Cue fresh outrage then at the quarter final draw, which will see two of the world’s top four teams leaving the tournament. It does seem that those top four teams: Ireland, France, South Africa and New Zealand could beat any one of each other, or anyone else on any given day, so in the eyes of the purists, that would be likely be the ideal semi-final lineup.

A quick note: at some point in every knockout competition you have to say goodbye to all but one of the teams involved.

And look, two things here.
Number one: we’ve known about the way the pools were drawn for a long, long time, so why start grumbling again now? Are you genuinely expecting them to change things around ahead of the weekend so that your team can progress with minimal effort?
Number two: just arranging for the best four teams to be in the semis? Well, that’s not how tournaments work. If it were, why bother with the rest of it (and see below at this point)?
Just have the semis and the final. In fact, why not just have a final between the best two teams in the world? Or – fuck it all and just give the trophy to Ireland, who are currently world number 1*.

Easy. Time, money, anguish all saved.

But no, actually don’t do this, because just about the only excitement at this tournament has been provided by the smaller nations. There’s absolutely no joy in watching a 80 point romp of some top country’s B-team over some part-timers from a bit of Europe or Africa that no-one’s ever heard of.
Dull as dishwater. Literally pointless (for one side, at least).

So relax, naaiers. If your team is good enough to be world champions, they’ll have to be able to be good enough to beat all the other teams to get there: those like England or Fiji or Wales or Argentina, plus whoever else makes it through from that top 4.
And it’s worth noting that all 8 of the quarter finalists were in the Top 10 in the world when this whole thing started, so it really does seem that it’s where you choose to draw your imaginary outrage threshold that matters.

Finally, closer to home, there’s the usual storm brewing. Cue r/unpopularopinion, but when South Africa win, it’s because the team is amazing. When they lose, it’s because the referee was dodgy, because “World Rugby hates the Springboks”. If it’s not the coaching staff releasing hour long analysis videos undermining the officials’ performances after a defeat, it’s the fans doing the same – and getting copyright struck. Lol.

Never seems to happen after a win. The officiating was good in those games.
Your reminder that it’s fine to be irrational, as long as you know that you are being irrational.

And a quick look on the socials reveals that we’re prepping ahead of Saturday already:

This is good planning, because then you can look back and say “I told you so” after a defeat, or simply pretend you never mentioned anything if your team wins.

People, there is a better sport out there. It’s football. And there are some really choice matches on this weekend: Netherlands v France. Norway v Spain. Iran v Jordan (woah!). Wales v Croatia. South Africa v Eswatini (met eish, ja).

There is an alternative. If you’re going to get upset about the egg-chasing, use it.

* I checked this fact twice, to be sure, to be sure.

When you know…

Posted on

We’re not all experts at everything. If we were, not only would it be extremely taxing to keep up to date with all our areas of expertise (that being all of them), but also, it would rather diminish the use of the word “expert” in any sort of comparative sense. And so we should probably stick to our own lane, and get on with our own expert stuff, rather than trying to be a master of all trades, and a jack of none.

Or something.

I’ve mentioned on here more than once about the eye-opening experience of finding out just how many people considered themselves experts on microbiology when Covid came around. And just how misguided and plainly incorrect much of that “expertise” actually was. Because it’s reasonable to think that someone sharing their apparently learned opinion on something you don’t know about, should probably be talking sense until they start talking about something you know a lot about, and then you realise just how little they actually understand.

I’m not alone in feeling this way. This has been doing the rounds again today:

This, as the Loud Mouth Space Wanker drags what’s left of the rotting corpse of Twitter uphill in the driving rain, through the acidic, rocky mud towards the inevitability of the waiting teeth of the scrap grinder.
And while this is just an opinion piece, it’s an opinion piece by a real expert: one with over 18 years experience in covering media and technology stories:

Put it all together, and X isn’t just worth less than Musk paid for it, but likely less than its debt. Assume that the company’s revenue last year was $4.7 billion, based on results before it was taken private. If advertising has dropped by half, then this year’s sales should be a bit over $2.5 billion. Put that on the same enterprise-value-to-sales multiple as Snap, which is down to a mere 3 times, and X is worth around $8 billion.

Just because he has a lot of money (less now, of course) and a big mouth, doesn’t mean that he’s an expert at everything. Or perhaps, anything.

By all means stay away from his cars and rockets. It’s easily done.
There’s every chance that his software might not be around much longer for you to stay away from.

There’s always Juan

Posted on

As the biggest floods in living memory hit the Agulhas Plain…

…and farmers try desperately to save their livestock and livelihoods by appealing to the community to come out with small boats and help rescue drowning sheep…

Group member (in the truest sense of the word) Juan Otto shared this:

Basically translated:

“You counted them. Poor planning if you ask me (no-one did), [they] knew what was coming.”

In a world that needs far fewer Juan Ottos, don’t be a Juan Otto.

He might be thinking that it was poor planning. You might think the same. And you were both free to voice that opinion, but he chose to and you didn’t. Well done, you.

The bar here is so low that it’s a tripping hazard in hell, but great news: you’re not a twat.

A quick skim of Juan’s timeline reveals – aside from his cell phone number: oops! – the inevitable plaasmoorde links, a love of Steve Hofmeyr, Toyotas, guns and sea fishing, a deep hatred of Jacob Zuma (fair enough), a 2017 post claiming that the Russian nuclear deal had gone through (it never did), and an unhealthy obsession with sharing news of arrests for abalone poaching.
All with a lovely underlying theme of thinly veiled you-know-what.

Amazing. All the usual boxes ticked. I was shocked.

The fact that the warning was upped from a Level 6 to a Level 9 merely hours before the storm hit can’t have helped the farmers. Not that we should blame the meteorologists. These sorts of low pressure areas are volatile and unpredictable and their effects can be extremely localised.

As for the community, they apparently turned out in their numbers to help the two farms worst affected. I haven’t seen a count yet (which will likely upset Juan), but it seems like at least hundreds of animals were saved.

Well done, Struisbaai.
(Not you, Juan.)