More obvious shit I should not need to point out..

Ever call a corporation, bank, utility company, government office, shop or business?

Yes. Of course.

Then their telephone system took control. This is good tech. You need to sort the calls, route them to the best destination.

After this phase you move to being put on hold (because staff are expensive and at some point you will likely hang up). And this is where the tech gets evil.

Today I have been joyously (sarcasm) informed that things are particularly busy but that within around ten minutes my call will be dealt with. So what do I get to listen to, on speaker, for ten minutes?

Ring Tones

For fucking real? And, wait for it, interrupted every thirty seconds with a badly compressed message of a grimacing female informing me that things are particularly busy right now but still she expect my call to be answered "shortly".

Or that all the agents are currently busy and again, my call will be answered "shortly", which means around 10-60 minutes.

No one likes ring tones, whichever end you're at.

Or their favourite piece of classical music twisted into some ear-fucking continual crescendo.

Or ring tones. Ring tones is waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

Why-Oh-Why?

The other day it was no-fade-in madly compressed elevator muzak turned up to 11.5. And so on.

This is all completely mental. What we obviously need to be hearing is..

CALMING SOUNDS

This isn't only good for the caller, but the telephone operator at the other end about to get an earful of WHY-THE-FUCKFUCK?!?

It's so completely obvious and yet no one does it. Why?

You would think all these blue-chip companies and government departments would have been on it, binaural beats tech, the works, but no; stupid messages and audio designed to COMPLETELY FUCKING ANNOY.

It's almost like it's intentional.

;o)

Rigs to Visitor Centres

Okay, it's not got quite the same ring to it as "Rigs to reefs", but it solves all the problems and is a win for everyone.

I'm referring to those Californian oil rigs, and indeed all oil rigs which reach the end of their production life. What do you do with them?

Sounds simple. You decommission them. Thing is, in the decades sat on the ocean floor, life moved in. Lots of life. For sea creatures, these massive interlaced metal structures make wonderful homes. And there's the rub.

Scientists want to preserve them, environmentalists want to remove them, or preserve them, depending on the particular group of environmentalists. Oil companies are obliged to decommission them (which is expensive) and governments want whatever get most votes at the next election.

I have the solution.

Step one, cut the top off the rig. That's ugly. Recycle the materials.

Step two, replace top with visitor centre.

It should be sunken down a few meters and have a glass floor area for visitors to enjoy the reef close-up, as well as easy access to the reef for scientific purposes, divers and such. In the future, kids will wonder at how stupid we were

It should also have a nice dome or something on top so a) ships don't bump into it and b) it's less ugly than an oil rig.

It goes without saying that the oil company which sucked trillions of dollars worth of oil from the earth during the rig's lifetime foots the bill for all this. Still cheaper than a full decommissioning. So, win-win-win.

;o)

Israel

After all that nonsense with Hespress1, I admit I've kept intentionally dark on the whole "Middle East Situation". However, after the events of the weekend I feel it's about time I let you know where I stand.

My position is very simple. I concur with international law; you have a legal right to resist your occupier. In fact, you are obliged to do so.

Now, I'm not saying I agree with the methods, but I can imagine what decades of brutal occupation can do to a people and just because the western world is either ignorant or complicit (or both) in the atrocities that have become normalised in the Israeli military, it doesn't mean I need to be.

I would, in an effort to foster a more balanced view of the situation, point you to Al Jazeera; a surprisingly good media outlet; maybe this or this would be a good place to start.

It's not easy reading if you used to being fed the usual "Holy" image of Israel. As Braintax says, "I hate Israel but I don't hate Israelis", or words to that effect. It's a vicious state, with a long history of doing nasty shit. Not that "Great Britain" (which Scotland is currently within) is much better; but as that history is more ancient, we like to think "we've come a long way since then", which to some extent is true.

Not so Israel. And even today, they are not alone. Around the world nations eradicate whole peoples and we just change channel. The Uyghurs, Albanians, right back to the Darfuri, the list goes on and on.

Blogging won't change that, of course, but it might encourage you to examine your assumptions and put yourself into the shoes of your average Palestinian in the Gaza Strip; living in fear of death, day in day out, watching your religious places desecrated, your friends and family tortured and killed. With no respite. Everyone has a breaking point.

Timing is everything, I guess. And planning. It's certainly useful that Iran can take six billion of funds they had earmarked for citizen welfare, medicine and such and immediately transfer it into supporting what may end up being a drawn-out campaign. Nice one USA!

And are we really supposed to believe that "Israeli Intelligence" had no clue this was brewing on their doorstep? As in MOSSAD. Yeah right.

What if instead Israel was behind it? Crack a few eggs, lose a few civilians, but BOOM! One huge opportunity to "cleanse" the Gaza Strip of all those nasty "militants" (and their friends and families) once and for all.

The world has looked the other way for decades while Israel blatantly broke international law, imprisoning and torturing an entire population; why should we expect anyone to take notice of the final stages of what looks increasingly like a meticulously planned ethnic cleansing? Even if it means wiping out millions of civilians in the process. "Well, we did tell them to get out of the way"

All they need is some "horrific" footage to show world leaders (in this century, getting cameras in useful places isn't even tradecraft any more) for ipso facto justification.

It's not the civilians they want out of the way, but foreign powers. Clever stuff.

;o)

Wegovy WTF?!?

Okay, I'm baffled.

Semaglutides will certainly have many uses, but weight loss???

My very own government's website states:



FIFTEEN PERCENT? Anyone could do that with diet and exercise alone in a month. Okay, a few choice natural herbal supplements may be required but still, a few months easy.

And to finance this madness on the NHS? WHAT? But then, our NHS seems a bit brain-dead; example (same page)..



They somehow believe that BMI can be accurately applied to individuals. Of course, BMI is only really useful when measuring populations; being what it was designed for.

So, for a measly 15% reduction in "bodyweight" (remember, muscle is heavier than fat), people are happily willing to risk nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, constipation, and abdominal pain.

Apparently, for most people these side-effects lessen or vanish after a few weeks of treatment (the human body can adapt to almost anything). Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) is also fairly common.

Less common yet more serious side-effects include pancreatitis, gallstones and a risk for thyroid cancer. And at a cost of around £75/month to the NHS, per fattie. Surely this money could be better spent.

It's like we're living in The Hunger Games or something. A preposterous consumer-logic circuit where corporations ravage our planet to produce extra food we don't need to make us fat while other corporations get fat on our fatness.

It's okay to have another burger cuz, Wegovy. Have two, and just increase your dose.

I get that there are non-hedonistic ways to get fat, people with genuine fat-causing health issues, but even then, how is this 15%+risk worth it when nature already produces perfectly safe alternatives?1 And even without supplementation, 15% fat-loss is something most people could achieve with better nutrition and regular brisk walks2.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Surely £75 could cover a monthly one-on-one session with professional therapists/nutritionists/fitness coach/etc., or better yet, all of them.

And then maybe individuals would not only be freed from whatever habits keep them fat, but enabled to make changes for themselves instead of handing over responsibility for their well-being to some drug company.

;o)

Where the unicorn lives...

Yes, of course it's going to be expensive. This is the basic where-the-unicorn-lives principle in action. Halting the destruction of the planet, I mean.

We these days fully realise that our very existence relies upon the delicate balance of nature - what's left of it - and that unless we act now to preserve what remains, we're fucked. What does this have to do with unicorns?

We've all seen something like this..



I think it originated in a printer's workshop where they had a sign which read..


Or something like that. But when it comes to fixing this planetary fuck-up, we can't not do a good job. That's not optional. And as for timescale, fast is now the only option. Or else we're fucked. Ergo, "cheap" is out of the question.

This is what happens when you leave stuff until the last minute.

Last December in Montreal, almost 200 governments agreed to conserve 30% of the world’s lands and oceans by 2030. But instead world leaders are now humming and ho-ing and scaling back environmental targets; diverting their energies and funds to war and conflict. Eh?

Our governments need to stop the madness and just fork over the cash required to get the job done. Or else we're all fucked. They don't seem to be bothered about anything more than the next election cycle.

And if your our leaders can't be bothered to prioritise the future of mankind itself, how can they expect common folk like us to give a shit?

Which partly explains why every time I walk the city streets, I pass dozens of stationary cars with their engines running, waste bins full of recycling, over-heated shops (with rows of alkaline batteries and bottled water, disposable wipes and single-use vapes.. AAARRRHHH!) and offices.. I could go on and on and on.

Mass stupidity starts at the top. Then we stupid masses choose stupider leaders and so this crazy feedback loop continues until you have actual muppets in government. Maybe this has already happened.

The second problem is that the trillions* needed to get the job done right mostly needs to be put into the hands of the world's indigenous people; as they are the only ones left with a clue of how to actually look after the planet and its myriad ecosystems.

I think it's easy to see where this is heading.

I wonder what's on the telly, eh?

;o)