I loved his line from the Breakfast Show this morning:
Diana Ross: let’s just say that she’s not exactly over-endowed with humility.
I do so enjoy it when presenters “break the rules”, and share the truth about allegedly untouchable (although) prima-donna pop stars.
As South Africa ends the last of its Covid restrictions, including the mask mandate (which most people have been ignoring anyway) and without any visible safety net in place, it’s well worth remembering that a simple government decree does not end an pandemic.
And I have to say that those anti-maskers claiming “victory” with lines like:
“After our two years of tireless campaigning…”
…do look very much like someone asserting that “Christmas came around in December again this year, thanks to our almost 12 month struggle with the authorities”. You can’t claim that you won if the thing you wanted to happen was going to happen anyway. What next? Taking credit for tomorrow’s sunrise?
And of course this was always going to happen. As I described in the link above, this is a natural (if premature) progression back to “normal life”. And whether or not you agree with the mask mandates, there’s plenty of evidence that they saved many thousands of lives. It’s also probably worth noting that you’ll likely be able to identify the epidemiologists and the microbiologists in your local supermarket or other crowded indoor space, because they’ll be the ones still choosing to wear a mask.
I’m not saying that there will be any sudden huge rise in case numbers. We’re sitting nicely in the trough at the end of the fifth wave. What I am saying is that because of the lack of rules on masking now, when the time comes again that there is Covid around in the community, it will spread much more quickly and easily. And that won’t be a good thing.
So why now? What suddenly changed?
Surely only a cynic would suggest that they might have rushed the big news of the scrapping of the regulations to coincide with the release of the final part of the State Capture report which was hugely critical of the ANC government, including the role of the current president.
Not that I’m that distrustful*.
* I absolutely am.
Thanks to the work of the Ramsey Bay Over Saturation Society and their insistence on pumping up the Lightroom sliders to unbelievable levels, we’re now all painfully aware of the #RBOSS phenomenon.
Using software to make shots look better than they actually were is fine. Of course it is. It’s when you go WAAAYYY over the top that it gets silly and ugly and then when you have the audacity to suggest on social media that “it came out of the camera like that”, well, then we’re really heading way down the road of RBOSS wankerdom.
It’s just deceitful karma-harvesting and it pisses me (and a lot of other people) off.
Quite reasonably.
I’m talking about stuff like this, this and this. It even spread to Bergen, which really doesn’t need assistance in looking good in photos.
But all of that (literally) pales into insignificance with what I saw on a Sheffield Facebook group this morning. Because… I mean… even when a sunset is spectacular, you can’t claim that it looked… that it looked… like this:
What in the ever living fishcake has happened here?
This isn’t “Tonight’s sunset over the village” as the protagonist claims. This (I think) used to be Aston on the border of Sheffield. But this isn’t a sunset. This is the actual star crashing into our planet. This is thermonuclear detonation. Billions of megatons of raw explosive power blasting out streams of plasmatic energy across the rolling hills of South Yorkshire. Every atom right across the Western sky exploding in perfect synchronicity, creating an ultra-electromagnetic shockwave that instantly kills everything in its path.
And it’s not helped by comments such as “Absolutely gorgeous!!! [several heart emojis]” or “breathtaking!”. The only breath that’s being taken here is your final one as the blast of hyper-energy – having melted your eyeballs in a nanosecond – sucks the very last molecules of oxygen from your lungs, leaving merely a smouldering pile of desiccated remnants where you once stood.
What makes it impossibly worse is that this guy sells images from his drone. It’s his business. He wants you to pay for this kind of thing. Money. Real money.
To be honest, this is beyond RBOSS. No-one could have known that the technology to over-saturate to these sort of levels even existed. We simply didn’t think it would ever be possible, but this guy has unashamedly gone multi-Sharples.
End times are upon us.
It’s amazing to watch how someone intelligent, well-qualified, erudite and seemingly sensible can be dragged from their lofty perch into the depths of conspiracy theories, wild accusations, dodgy political affiliations and suggestions, and general weirdness. And it’s interesting to see how this decline gathers pace and the theories get more bizarre as the downward spiral progresses.
Like coins whirling around a gravity well. (You’ll know it when you see it.)
Yes, like that. Starting quietly and smoothly, seemingly all under control, but gradually getting faster and faster and more and more frantic before plunging into the big black hole.
It could have started with a little thing: maybe annoyance at CNN for alleged misreporting of any given incident, or perhaps their city council for not fixing a thing that they were supposed to. Before you know it, the US election was stolen and the mayor is a corruption-ridden gangster. And once we’ve done Trump and local politics, there’s Covid lockdowns and mask mandates. And suddenly we’re deep into accusing Hilary Clinton of paedophilia and delving ever deeper into the anti-vaxxer rabbit hole.
In a way, I think I understand the causes. It’s easy to feel powerless and unheard in this modern world. Like you’re the only one telling the truth, but no-one is listening as you scream into the abyss. And then, you find someone who tells you that they agree with you and you discover kinship and you begin to support their ideas too. Then there’s a group and suddenly, there’s strength in numbers, even when all they’re shouting out is complete bullshit.
It’s interesting to note a couple of things about this decline into insanity, though. Firstly, the way the information is shared by these people can often be very subtle. A quiet retweet, the sharing of a post, the mention of a controversial theory: nothing direct, nothing explicit. Almost like they know that they would be ridiculed if they outwardly and openly expressed their feelings or beliefs on the subject. And secondly, the limit of just how far they will go: there’s almost always an invisible line they won’t cross at the far-out nonsense of chemtrails and a flat earth.
Professor Timothy Cookbook is a prime example of both these approaches. But then there is plenty that he’s said and done that is every bit as bad as telling us that 5G is a New World Order plan to depopulate the planet, so we really shouldn’t applaud him for tacitly agreeing that yes, we all live on a big ball.
It’s almost funny to see these individuals spouting statements each one more desperate, more nonsensical and more demonstrably incorrect than the last, but of course there’s a serious side to it as well. Because when less intelligent, well-qualified, erudite and sensible people see educated, popular individuals saying these things, they may well choose to believe them. Well, of course you would, because these people are intelligent, well-qualified, erudite and sensible, so they must know what they’re talking about, right?
“With great power comes great responsibility”, sure. But sadly, with great power also comes great power, and that does seem to be all they actually care about. Because you must also understand that when everything goes to shit with the able assistance of these “thoughtleaders”, they’re not the ones who will suffer. They all have their comfortable lives and their escape plans.
We’re living in an ever more divided world, with viewpoints and opinions instantaneously amplified by social media echo chambers that support our every utterance and immediately decry and attack any dissenting voice. There’s no hope of rational argument or anyone’s mind being changed. Everyone is entrenched and knows their “truth”.
The only difference being that some of it is backed up by facts, and the rest is just a single tweet away from agreeing that the Lizard People and the Rothschilds are running the (flat) planet.
The biggest ever petrol price increase in South African history kicks in tonight at midnight. At present, the (government-regulated) petrol price is estimated to go up by an additional R3.50 for a litre of the good stuff. And while that might be nought pounds noughty-nought to you, that’s a massive amount to all South Africans, representing an overnight increase of around 16.6%.
And of course, that increase will be felt by businesses as well, and they will pass on their higher costs onto their consumers and so your man on the street is going to get smacked with even more increased prices for… well… for everything.
And that means that even more individuals and families are going to have to make some difficult decisions as to what they can and can’t afford, and as to what has to be let go.
Fortunately, one company has just helpfully raised their head above the parapet for me.
Yesterday, we were informed that my daughter’s music lesson this evening at a local music school (let’s call it the College of Stone for the purposes of this blog post) was cancelled due to loadshedding this evening.
I was actually impressed with their organisation. Letting us know what was going on over 24 hours in advance. Nice work.
However, due to some magic deity smiling down upon us, there is no loadshedding this evening.
So I call the good College people this afternoon just to check that the lesson is now going ahead as usual and they say no, because they “can’t reinstate a lesson once it’s been cancelled”.
Thankfully (for them), they can still charge us for it though.
Now, I wasn’t happy at the lesson being cancelled, even more so at still having to pay for it, but it’s not the College of Stone’s fault that loadshedding happens, and while my daughter shouldn’t have to miss out on her lesson thanks to the crappy local electricity monopoly and years of horrific corruption therein, nor should the College of Stone have to lose out on their income. I do get that.
But now there is no loadshedding – it’s what passes for a “good electricity day” in South Africa – and they’re still not providing the service we’re paying them for, even though there’s now no reason for them not to… well, to paraphrase Radiohead:
When I am
Kingmaking those difficult decisions, they will be first against the wall.
I’m well used to crappy service in South Africa, but this is a new low. The only positive is that it does make one of those upcoming unfortunate decisions a whole lot easier.