Lock Up Your Schools, The Transgenders Are Coming!

There I was, just minding my own business, when an ad from Dear South Africa - that's right, the petition website portraying itself as a civic-minded action entity - crossed my feed.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed the heading "Have your say on the Department of Basic Education's gender ideology training programme".

The...what?

The actual FUCK did I just read?

Wait-a-minute... Why is this even an issue?

And if you're thinking "this is bound to be another case of hysterical screaming, and panicked arm-waving again", well - you'd be perfectly right.

Too Much Money, Too Little Sense

Y'know, the very furthest thing from my mind when I was finally able to buy my first brand new car some years ago, was to try and see whether it was bulletproof - least of all by actually taking a gun, and shooting it. Like, with a gun. Deliberately. For reals.

 

And people have been doing it - Americans, naturally, because this vehicle, the Tesla Cybertruck, won't be available anywhere else. The main reason for this is that no other country, apparently, has as low an appreciation for the safety of its citizens as America.

A Goose-Step Too Far

So J.K. Rowling is a Holocaust denier now.

Since she first kicked the door of her right wing closet open a good few years ago now to launch an unprovoked 'total war' against transwomen, Rowling started taking large steps - you might say goose-steps - up the staircase of fascism, and with each step, the sound becoming increasingly reminiscent of the ominous stomp of jack-boots.

Even before Rowling started crowing the anti-science TERF rhetoric which gathered to her a new base of transphobes to feed from the trough at her feet, there were those who had reservations about her anti-Semitic characterizations of the goblins in her stories, just as much as there were those who undoubtedly enjoyed and approved of them.

But as I watched over the past few years, I saw Rowling being increasingly fawned over by the sort of low-brow creatures like those who cheered on while Magnus Hirschfeld's institute and all his pioneering work in understanding and helping transgender women was fed to the incinerator of base national-socialist populism. 

So you see, for some time, I've had a pretty fair idea that it wouldn't be too long before she went full neo-Nazi.

As it turns out, I wasn't wrong.

Bonfire Of The Inhumanities a.k.a. The Great Israel-Gaza Shit-Show

I just got called 'anti-Semitic' for commenting on a shared quote by JFK in the 1960s (oddly enough shortly before he was assassinated) in which he criticized Zionism, for saying that I thought it was possible that it was why he was assassinated...

The quote was later found to be fake, but nevertheless, I feel my comment was relevant in the light of the information available at the time. Even so, my suggestion was taken to be 'anti-Semitic' and 'offensive'.

'Offensive' I understand - people are 'offended' by all sorts of things all the time. Most of the time, there's an increasing reason to be offended. Sometimes, though, that reason is that they're idiots.

"Anti-Semitic"...

I shit you not.

Let's take a closer look at this issue, shall we? Firstly, do the people using it even know what anti-Semitism is?

The Kids Are Alright

For the hundredth time this month, it feels like, I saw someone around my age posting a meme praising Generation X for being "the last great generation" - apparently "before all these sissies were born". That set me to thinking.

Yeah, us Gen Xers.... we're tough, but for all the wrong reasons.

Thoughts on Forgiveness

I've come to wonder why there is such a powerful emphasis on forgiving those who hurt us in modern society?

The answer, naturally, is religion - specifically Christianity, which places a disproportionate burden on the individual to forgive all transgressions committed against them, no matter what they were, or how much they were hurt by them.

These are my thoughts on the subject.

The Microsoft Challenge

Has anyone wondered why new computers are always so slow?

It used to be expected of older, physically slower PCs, but these days it's true even of brand new computers.

 

I mean, back in the day - when I first started working as a PC technician back in 1999, I had a 486DX 100mhz with 48mb of RAM using Windows 98 2nd edition, and that was faster than most of the newer PC's I've used since. Such was my expertise back then that I rigged up a live toggle switch to the jumper settings on the board so that - while the PC was running - I could overclock it to 120mhz - play my first-person shooters - and then set it back down to 100mhz again. I even managed to play Heretic and Hexen on it smoothly, and without any trouble. I even built a cooling duct over the CPU and heat sink that ran to a fan at the front of the case to improve cooling and stability, and occasionally augmented that by placing a saucer filled with ice cubes in front of the case so that chilled air would be sucked in!

But then we got newer, faster PCs - with more RAM, bigger multi-core CPUs - and much, much bigger Windows.

The Pride Flag Murder - A Reflection

Last week in California, Laura Ann “Lauri” Carleton, a 66 year old woman was shot dead in cold blood by someone who can only be described as a domestic terrorist who took issue with a rainbow flag displayed outside her business. 

The terrorist in question was named as one Travis Ikeguchi, a slavering and brainwashed devotee of the Trump/MAGA cult.

While this event may appear at first glance to be a simple hate crime, or yet another commonplace shooting incident, one of many that has already taken place across the USA just this year alone, there are actually more facets to this event than initially meet the eye.

OceanGate - A Recipe For Stupid Deaths

The incident with the OceanGate Titan submarine disaster - from beginning to end - reads like a recipe for stupid deaths. 

Think about it: You've got rampant corner-cutting to save costs, use of the wrong materials (carbon fiber instead of steel) to build a deep-ocean submersible in the first place, no back-up systems and reduced safety practices, poor maintenance and industrial safety compliance, lack of oversight or regulation, and pervasive greed and suicidal risk-taking. It's all in there. The only really amazing thing about this is that it took so long for something serious to go wrong. (1, 2, 3)

Port Elizabeth & The Appalling State Of The Place: A Justified Rant

Port Elizabeth - my home town, the city on the southeast coast of South Africa's Eastern Cape province - has long been the mounting cause for concern and anger on the part of many residents - but aside from them, on my part as well.