Category: annoying people

One ocean and over a thousand kilometres of coastline

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That’s what our erstwhile absolutely [redacted] useless Minister of Transport has apparently found and added to the nations seaboard.

I mean, it’s pretty well known that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet at Cape Agulhas, the former continuing right up to Europe and across to the Americas, the latter heading east to… well… India and across to Australia. That’s just two oceans though, and the name is well represented in SA, from wine to aquariums to marathons. Because there isn’t a third ocean around South Africa.
Google “three oceans” and your only real hit is a company in Hull UK, whose claim to fame appears to be making corrugated cardboard from fish waste.

I’ve no idea either.

But hey, maybe he’s talking about the Southern Ocean. Butno: that doesn’t touch South Africa at all. It’s WAY south of even us.

Ocean - Wikipedia

In fact, if you are going to suggest that we are “surrounded” by three oceans, you’re kind of implying that Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique make up that third ocean.

Which they don’t. Namibia is mostly sand, Botswana is mostly elephants, Zimbabwe is mostly corrupt politicians and Mozambique is our local Al-Shabab terrorist hangout. Those are land, and don’t represent the constituent parts of an ocean.

But that’s not the only thing he is wrong on: South Africa is big, but it’s not 3,900 kilometers of coastline big:

Now, I don’t expect anyone – even a government minister – to necessarily know that 2,850km figure offhand. But where did 3,900 come from, and why would anyone not check it before putting it on a press release and allowing this meat clown to tweet it?

It smacks of complete ineptitude. Almost like they don’t know what they are doing.
How surprising. /s

And finally, what a brilliant and innovative plan to try to capitalise on the strategic geographical position of South Africa as far as shipping routes are concerned. Just 370 years and a couple of weeks after one Jan van Riebeeck came up with pretty much the same idea. Of course, it turned out that Jan and his organisation weren’t the nicest guys around, and so Fikile and the ANC will be right at home in their company.

Census debacle

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We have to do a census thing. It’s been at least 10 years since the last one and we need to stand up and be counted – for reasons. There’s an option to do it online (thank the heavens) and I gladly grasped that with both hands, so that the beagle wouldn’t eat the local volunteer. But then I noticed that the URL it sent me to ended with gov.za and my heart sank.
It’ll be shit, I thought.
And it is.
Because in true South African government style, the UI is just horrible, nothing works properly and the things it is asking me are… well… bizarre.

Like:

So, I put our house number (let’s say it’s 25) and then “House”, because we live in a house (I didn’t think it actually needed to know what colour it was from the Plascon range) and now – even though it said that it was going to ask for my address later in the process – it thinks my address is “25 House”. Which is going to get it rejected immediately.
Perhaps a field asking for – I don’t know – my “Address” might have been a better way forward. Because no-one wanting your details in any other circumstance asks:

OK, and could I have your name, unit/flat number and further description of the structure/unit, please?

Do they?

And who lives at “500 Green House”, anyway? The SA Post Office isn’t going to be able to deliver anything to you with an address like that, are they? Mind you, the SA Post Office is so dysfunctional and wrecked by corruption and theft that it isn’t really able to deliver anything to anyone anyway, so why not go for 500 Green House? Just for the giggles.

And it’s already a LOT of work. Especially if you have moved from “8 House” to “25 House” since the last census. Which we have. So I tell it that we’ve moved and it asks “where from?”, but won’t allow me to enter anything but Athlone, Belhar or Bellville. So now I’ve moved from Belhar simply because at least it’s an answer I can give, and it asks “Why did you move?”.

I mean, have you seen Belhar?

But more seriously, I selected that the household had moved. Just moved house. No divorce, no fire, no death or destruction: we just moved house. But then, even though it already knows exactly who lives in my household, I have to jump through all the same hoops for my wife. And my son. And my daughter. One of us now comes from Athlone. I think it’s the missus.

Ugh. Just populate the form for me.
I don’t have time for 176 drop down menus for each person – most of which don’t work (the menus, not the people) – when I’ve already given you all the same information, anyway.

And I wasn’t even halfway through the very first section.

To add insult to injury, the site then crashed. And I can’t get back in. So, long story short, I’ve given up. I’ll try again tomorrow now I’m more aware of the size of the mountain of bullshit between me and the finish line.
I will prepare with coffee and biltong and lock myself away in my office until it’s all done.

Right now though: some football, I think.

Petty Peter

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I don’t have a problem with anyone being religious. Just because I’m not, doesn’t mean that you can’t be.
But people like this really do give the religious (in this case, Christian, but it takes all sorts) community a bad rap:

Perhaps actually at Easter and not 10 days beforehand, Peter?

And this pathetic complaint will almost certainly be because he has seen a “Have a great Ramadan” poster at a store somewhere and is jealous of the attention that Islam is getting.

Get a life, Peter. And have a happy Easter.

More vaccine news

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Moonbats and and tinfoil headgear enthusiasts have long told us that the vaccine was full of microchips and nanobots and dead babies and actual Covid and Bill Gates sperm. That’s a lot of things to fit in a tiny syringe.
And one of the more enduring allegations was that of the presence of Graphene Oxide. Quite where the idea that there was any Graphene Oxide (GO) in there came from is a bit of a mystery. As is the reasoning behind the claims: there’s everything from mind control through to just plain old poisoning given for the alleged presence of GO in the Pfizer shot.

Image

One wonders what the other 1% might be made up of.

Obviously, the actual ingredients of the vaccine don’t include GO, although it is used in some medical treatments, specifically in delivering anti-cancer drugs to target organs.

But not in any Covid vaccine.

Something that the anti-vaxxers seem to have finally worked out, well… sort of.

So that 99% claim above was clearly 100% incorrect.

And the “base compounds” (they’re not compounds at all) that Graphene Oxide (or Graphene Hydroxide, depending on which bit they’re fantasising about in their message) is constructed from?

Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen.

Oh. So the same chemicals you might find in such nasty stuff as butter, sunflower oil, bacon, any and every type of sugar, all proteins, fats, bread products, eggs, blood, lentils, milk, you, me, the beagle: basically every living thing and all the stuff that living things produce.

And then somehow your phone is going to make the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen from the jab – not all the other billions and billions of those atoms that you’re already literally built of – into Graphene Oxide which is going to kill you.

Incidentally, if there was a method of making GO that easily, we’d surely jump at the chance. Right now, we have to treat graphene with some pretty horrific chemicals (Sulphuric acid, Nitric acid, Phosphoric acid, Potassium permanganate etc) under some ridiculous conditions (eg. 90oC for three or four days) to make the oxide.

So much easier just to wave a cellphone near your recently-vaccinated body. And, while we’re on the subject, pretty brave (or pretty foolish) to have shared that information by iMessage, given that those communications can only be sent using the alleged trigger instrument of GO assembly and instant death – the iPhone.

Of course, it’s all absolute bollocks. All completely fabricated and we can be pretty sure that there is no way that whoever wrote the message above has any access to mass spectroscopy equipment and know-how. That stuff is highly technical and they’re talking bullshit. And yet, people believe it.

Utterly bewildering and very worrying.

Go and get vaccinated. And keep using your phone.

You’ll be fine.

Day 732 – Is this even a real blog…?

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Is this even a real blog if I don’t submit some sort of thoughtpiece regarding the biggest news item to hit the world in the last few years, that being the… [checks notes] Chris Rock/Will Smith incident at the Oscars last night?

Amazingly, I might have pre-empted the whole thing anyway, because if I don’t share some wise words upon the “toxic masculinity” (ugh) or the “poor taste” humour (ugh) on display, then perhaps yesterday’s post comes into play.
And if I do mention either of them, but don’t somehow manage to get a tie-in to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, then I’m doing something very wrong.

Indeed, thank goodness that this little fracas has finally removed the story of the scary temperature anomalies at the North and South Poles from all our front pages this week, am I right?

(As an scientist, I can report that it is never, ever good news when you see a graph like that.)

Anyway, I wonder which celebrity is going to be nasty to one of their peers tomorrow? After all, there’s not much time to get all that vitriol into the news cycle before Armageddon.