Brexit

I’ve been following it and as it hits 15 hours away, I have finally come to a true thought, one I believe completely.

I wish you all the best. I wish the UK, EU, and associated parties the best luck going forward. I hope you all get the best outcome in this timeline.

That goes for the sides I disagree with as much or more than those I agree with. For a while I avoided this conclusion because it sounded like a cop-out, but I don’t think it is. The UK and EU are T. Roosevelt’s men in the arena, and I have no criticism from the bleachers. Good luck to all of you.

Flu Shot

I’ve just gotten a flu shot a couple days ago, and now my entire shoulder is sore. Specifically the lateral deltoid, the muscle I got the shot in, hurts with the ache centered on the injection site, but there’s a hint of aching all over that shoulder. This is a listed side-effect, and the paper says contact a doctor if it doesn’t go away in a few days. The paper says there’s nothing to worry about.

However I know the truth: I have Elephant Man Disease.

It’s unrelated to the shot. They just happened to coincide in timing! This is it: my doom. Goodbye cruel world; you’re getting so dark.

Ethics 1

In light of some current events, I’ve been thinking about ethics in public officials. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about what is impeachable.

Ethics for public officials are and must be different than for private citizens.

I have a friend who managed a bikeshop. On weekdays he closed at 7 pm. One day a customer came in at 6:30 with a two hour repair.

My friend said, “Come back tomorrow around noon, and it will be ready.”

The customer replied, “I need it tonight. I have a race tomorrow morning.”

My friend demurred. “It’s a two hour job, and I close in thirty minutes.”

The customer said, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars plus whatever the cost of the repair is.”

“Come back in two hours,” and my friend stayed open to get it done.

I think that’s perfectly reasonable for him. He’s in business to make money, bikes are his money, and the customer paid a little extra to get something a little extra.

But imagine the same situation for, say, a border guard.

BG: “The crossing is closed for the night.”

Customer: “I’ll give you a hundred dollars to keep it open for me.”

That’s clearly wrong. What’s more, that’s not just bad behavior; that should be illegal.

Cost Cutting

Boeing and Nissan are classic examples of cutting costs too far. You do have to spend money to make money, and if you cut expenses to the bone, it explodes on you.

Music

I’ve been listening to a fair bit of Perturbator recently. I saw him live outside Baltimore, and it was a short music-festival set, 30 minutes or so. Lively. He got me into synthwave. Strong recommend.

AirBnB

Dealing with AirBnB is a lot like dealing with pushy used car salesmen: spam I can’t opt out of, texts I can’t opt out of, and pushy messages when I just wanted to ask a question.

Selective reality

One of the Evil Overlord Tips is “My secret lair will have ventilation shafts too small to crawl through.”

Do the people who write these lists realize that henchmen* have to breathe?

Poor ventilation kills a lot of people in poorer countries today. Not only do poisonous gases get trapped, but diseases spread quickly. The army of henchmen will all have pneumonia and influenza within a few weeks if they’re working in a poorly ventilated stuffy lair. Now this may explain the general incompetence of persons of hench, but I can’t imagine any evil overlord intentionally deciding to give everyone the flu. So the lair needs big aircon systems. Which need large vent shafts. Plus, if the evil overlord is manufacturing explosive doom chemicals in-lair, those doom chemicals are going to need ventilation. Does the overlord want to compress his doom-chemicals in high-flow, low cross-section ventilation shafts?

What’s going on here is the notion that I can attack you with common sense, but you can’t attack me. If I point out the security failings of large vent shafts, you’re not allowed to point out that otherwise all of my henchmen will have pneumonia. Teddy Roosevelt had a message about this.

*I say henchmen, because it’s almost always men. If an evil overlord has an army, the movie is going to be directed at men. Therefore the main character will almost always be a man so the primary audience can identify with him. If the hero breaks into a lair and beats up a bunch of male henchmen it’s a good action sequence, but if he beats up a bunch of recognizable human women, it’s problematic. So the minions have to be insects, aliens, other creatures, or men. Male actors in uniforms are a lot cheaper than good CGI.

At least for action movies, but I haven’t seen any evil overlords with lairs full of henchmen in not-action movies. I’m very curious if there are any exceptions.