Car Parking Magic

This is not a paid post or an ad. It’s just a very cool idea (with an introductory offer, nogal!).

I used the “new” Admyt app to do some car parking earlier this week. While it might be commonplace in some countries for ANPR and an app to bill you for parking, in SA it still feels like some kind of magic as the car park barrier lifts in front of you as you pull in at the Waterfront parking lot.

Yo, VIP!

And there’s no more fumbling and stumbling around for change or worrying about misplaced or missing tickets. When you’re done, just get into your car, and drive out of the car park.

Magic again.

You can get the app on Apple here, or Google here. Then use this code:

TRE162273

to get R10 off your first parking bill (a promo that covered my parking on my recent Waterfront visit).

It’s very cool. Give it a go.

When you know…

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.

Meanwhile, in South Africa…

Here’s today’s news:

> Stage 5 loadshedding: meaning an average of 10 hours without electricity each day.

Here’s our local supermarket’s tongue-in-cheek repsonse:

Yes, those are candles. A huge array of many different types of candle.
And yes, that light top right was being powered by a generator.

> There’s a massive fuel price increase this week because the government has f*****d the Rand:

“Motorists are in for a shocking fuel price increase from Wednesday. The price of petrol will go up by R1.71 per litre, diesel by R2.84 and paraffin by R2.78.”

> The President is attending the inauguration of Zimbabwe’s President, even though the entire world knows that the election was more rigged than a particularly complex 19th Century tea clipper:

…the elections were marred by controversy – including issues with the voters’ roll, the banning of opposition rallies, reports of biased state media coverage and voter intimidation.

> Cyril will then be heading home to “address the nation”, and tell us that the enquiry by the SA government into whether the SA government supplied arms to Russia has found out that the SA government didn’t supply arms to Russia, but the SA government can’t show us the SA government report exonerating the SA government, because that would “jeopardise the work of the SA armed forces”.

> And all this is being rubbed like salt into an open wound as the ANC shitterati dance with each other while the country falls apart:

“The mood [fire emoji] [fire emoji]”?
Is it,? That’s weird, because the mood is very different across everyone else in the country. But then I guess that it’s easy to be happy and dancey when your continual mismanagement, gross incompetence and widespread corruption only negatively affect other people.

Ugh. Trash.

Strike One

Of course, the intended effect of a strike or any other industrial action is to demonstrate the value of the service that industry provides, simply by withdrawing it. And there’s no question that the taxi industry in Cape Town (and South Africa) provides a very valuable service.

However, if you then have to resort to intimidation and violence to prevent people from circumnavigating your withdrawn service, then that does rather undermine the message that your service is irreplaceable.

And not allowing individuals to make their own decisions about how they choose to get around has implications far beyond the apparently spurious reasons for calling the strike in the first place.

But it’s all become a power game now, and the taxi bosses don’t care that hundreds of thousands of breadwinners aren’t able to get to work, get paid and put food on the family table. They’re happy to overlook the fact that kids can’t get to school with exams just a couple of months away. They have no qualms about healthcare facilities for the most vulnerable being closed. And they might pass lip service about “peaceful protest” in open letters, but the fact is that they are more than happy to sit on their thrones while their underlings fight each other and everyone else.

If it’s a battle for hearts and minds – which so many of these disputes seems to come down to in the end – you’d think that maybe they’ve lost this one. But with the alternatives too sparse and too risky to use, it’s not like it won’t just be business as usual anyway when the strike ends (allegedly) on Thursday.

It’s been a while…

It’s been a while since we did a pub quiz. 4 years was one estimate. I’m not sure that it was quite that long, but it was certainly pre-pandemic – BTV.

And so we re-mortgaged our houses and headed off to the Fireman’s quiz last night.

Fireman’s markets itself as a true English-style pub, and I had always thought of that being more because of the traditional ambiance rather than the ridiculous prices for beer and food.

Now it’s both.

Thankfully, it seems that we haven’t lost it. Some good general knowledge, a shot of educated guessery, some excellent groupthink moments and a couple of fortuitous gambles:

Oysters?!? Wrapped in bacon?!?! Oysters??

Related.

…and we finished in a creditable second place out of the 30+ teams playing on the night, a mere 1 point behind the winners.

And we couldn’t really fault ourselves for any of the three questions we got wrong on the night.

So that’ll do, pig. That’ll do.

Will we head back again soon?
Probably, but we’ll need time to save up a bit before we can buy another pizza.