Category: annoying people

Turk 2

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A special post for the graphs produced by @arfness on the northern border incursion into my twitter account my new found Turkish twitter followers.

This one, showing the number of accounts following me who have listed Turkish as their first language.

There were those two on the left when I went to bed last night. And then, suddenly… there were those others as well.

And this one, showing how the the first language of my followers “changed somewhat”:

Decent, normal organic growth of followers on the left, main language: sick-coloured English. Then MASSIVE growth (shape of top of graph is shape of top of Table Mountain), mainly cerise-coloured Turkish.

What’s going on? Maybe this:

Over the last couple of days, tweets promoting Turkey’s invasion of Syria containing non-sequitur mentions of trending topics and hashtags have started to pop up, mostly from accounts with few followers created July 2019 or later.

So yes, it’s possible that my twitter account is being used to add legitimacy to these Turkish-based accounts, so that they can continue to spread their pro-Turkey propaganda. It’s a bit like money-laundering, but without any financial gain. Certainly for me.

What happens next? Probably nothing, but then who knows?

I’ll keep you informed.

 

UPDATE: Interesting article on Twitter bots (may also include Turks).

 

Thanks @arfness.

Turked

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Overnight, around 6,000 Turkish-based bots followed me on Twitter.

Here are just a few of them…

The number is wholly coincidental (and will soon be wholly incorrect, as I’m still accumulating high quality followers from Istanbul even as I write).

I don’t know exactly why this is happening, but just for safety’s sake, I’m going to limit my tweeting pertaining to the current situation in Northern Syria for the moment, as I’m concerned that any three letter codeword involving a P and a couple of Ks could set them all off which would make my account even more unusable.

Hopefully, twitter will note this unusual activity and will clamp down on them (and not me), allowing me to return to my regular* (and entirely justified) criticism of R3c3p Erd0gan.

 

UPDATE: Despite some amazing data analysis by @arfness, we’re still none the wiser. He did make some amazing graphs though.

* never mentioned him before.

Opt out

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I received an SMS from motoring company Subaru this evening. I’d imagine that they have my number because we looked at buying a Subaru, before eventually not buying a Subaru. But they make you fill in all the information for marketing purposes (like this SMS) before you get to see the goods, and you comply, because you want to stay on the good side of the salesperson, just in case.

Decent deal, and… no… wait. That’s not why we’re here.

You’ll note that the sms has an opt-out.co link at the bottom. I chose to use it.
I’ve moved on since I signed up with Subaru. (Great car, small boot.)

It (the link, not the car) took me a site where I had to enter the cellphone number that they contacted me on. Fair enough – that’s clearly a only a campaign (9930) specific link. I entered my number.

On the next screen, they made me read the SMS message that they’d just sent me. That was a bit odd, since if it was the wrong message, there was no option to say “er… actually no – that wasn’t it”; there was just a continue button at the bottom. But ok, I’ll jump through your weird hoops. I clicked the button.

And when I clicked it, I got this:

“If you receive another sms from the current campaigns [sic] kindly ignore it.”

Wut? Really? Time for this gif, I think:

If I wanted to just ignore “another sms from the current campaigns [sic]”, I would have done exactly that. I don’t want to receive the sms to ignore.

That’s kind of the point.

I want to opt out. (It’s a difficult concept to grasp, I know.)

I’m no legal beagle, but I’m pretty sure that this really isn’t how this works.
This isn’t how any of this works.

I’m going to be on the lookout for another sms from the current campaigns [sic] and then when I get one, I am going to sue Subaru for every last cent that they have be really rather irritated about the whole thing.

Honestly, how difficult can this sort of stuff be?

(Beach fisher)men are trash

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Much like cyclists, it’s the 98% of beach fishermen that give the other 2% a bad name. The beaches of Cape Agulhas are hugely popular with beach fishermen because of the rich variety of fish to be found there. Consequently, the beaches of Cape Agulhas are also hugely littered with the detritus from this pastime, because of the rich variety of beach fishermen to be found there.

I recently posted this photograph of the literally miles of fishing line that we picked up on a quick walk along the beach in Suiderstrand.

And the fact is that we could have gone back and done it again the following day. Or walked the other way along the beach and collected the same amount again. The waste from casual beach fishermen is ubiquitous, and by far the biggest polluter of our local shores.

But it doesn’t end there. Fishing is a communal activity, and that sort of communal activity in South Africa demands some sort of liquid accompaniment. Thus beer cans and brandy bottles are also left all over the rocks, clearly it being far too much effort to pop them back into the bag you brought them in and drop them into the bin back at the parking lot before you illegally weave your way home.

But it doesn’t end there, either. Because a day out on the beach with plenty of brandy can really get the metabolism going, and so the local dunes are littered with piles of human excrement and bog roll. Never have the services of the local puff adder population been more in demand. One bite on the balls of a crouching miscreant would surely see a massive and immediate drop in this disgusting behaviour.

I recognise that I’m not painting a particularly pretty picture of the area, which is sad, because it is a particularly pretty area. I’m just tired of it being ruined by dirty, lazy, uncaring fishermen, especially when the facilities which mean that all of this sort of behaviour is completely unnecessary, are right there next to where they parked their cars.

And, as ever, SANParks and the local law enforcement are impotent and invisible. Try flying your drone in the National Park though (no, I haven’t) and they’d be all over you like an aggressive lichen.

Right. I’m done. I’ll be clearing up some more fishing line off the beach this weekend, and I’m going to keep this soapbox safely here in case I need to get back on it at some time in the near future.

Which will inevitably happen.

Drugby

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Yeah, some footballers might dive a bit (something I hate, by the way) but if you think all footballers dive a bit, and we’re going to be going down the road of tarring entire sporting codes with the same messy brush, then… wow… this:

Cage rattlage via this guy.

But hey. Obviously, not everyone’s at it, and these figures are for the UK. But with one case of doping and one case of alleged ‘Roid Rage just ahead of the Springbok World Cup squad announcement (no, I’m not providing links, you do the legwork), I don’t think it’s an exclusively UK thing.

So next time Suarez flings himself over the outstretched leg of a defender absolutely nothing, just be mindful that while he’s a complete twat, his latest urine sample was clearly unsullied by illegal substances.

Just saying.