HR - scourge of the business world - Part 3
Posted On: Thursday - April 19th 2018 7:31AM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Artificial Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity
(Continued from this post, as Exhibit A from the Peak Stupidity legal department was just an interlude.)
One thing I promised to disucss, back in the 1st post of the series on the scourge of "Human Resources", is computer selection of prospective employees, hence the Artificial Stupidity topic key is attached. You would think this may be a good thing. I had discussed how HR people normally don't know a whole lot about the jobs that they are there to hire people for. Why NOT let
How about let the manager looking for an employee just get the information he needs and hire whomever he wants? That's way too old-school, I guess, and the reader may well ask, what about in today's economy, when there may be 2,000 applicants for some technical job? OK, I can see the need for some computer screening. It makes sense to have some on-line info with basic numbers and qualifications that can be screened to weed out most of the applicants as just not qualified - they'd be a waste of time to talk to on the phone. The problem is that these HR people (damn them, again?!) are involved in this process too.
There is no way, without inside information, to know whether you, the applicant, may be missing some simple things on your resume, which the software has a a real boner for. The HR people, as written about earlier, only know the buzzwords, but don't understand the technical fields. They have no idea what people will really be doing with their time, meaning also no idea what the resume shows the applicant having done before during his work history. It's really not any better sometime, and can even be worse, because bugging the hell out of a software program does not have the same effect as bugging the hell out of some HR lady, until she caves.
The 2nd thing that is going on, is that I believe the on-line application processes are designed as a way to weed people out just based on difficulty of use. It's the modern method versus what used to be a look at the grammar, spelling, and manner of speech of an applicant. Yeah, it still never had anything directly to do with the job, unless it was for a book editor or a press spokesman. However, the old way was a measure of written/verbal skills, meaning part (ONLY) of general intelligence. Now, I guess, getting through the on-line process is your test. I did this a few years ago. While well qualified and having good experience for the technical position, I failed miserably on the on-line process - I guess, cause I never heard back, and I had emailed to get help to finish the on-line shit!
I think things involving corporate employment, at any larger than the family or 20-person business level, have gotten pretty miserable. Back to my on-line experience, I did have thoughts of just driving over to the workplace in question and trying to talk to people. It wasn't very far away. I figured, probably rightly, that the best that would happen is that after telling me that everything is on-line and they can't help me, they might just direct me to a desktop computer in the lobby to go through the same crap I did at home! I suppose it's always been more "It's not who what you know, it's who you
More discussion of modern computer testing in general has been on the future-post list for a while, so that'll be coming.
No comments - Click here to start thread
Chick-Fil-A foes hatch new hate campaign after 7-year incubation
Posted On: Wednesday - April 18th 2018 5:43PM MST
In Topics: Media Stupidity ctrl-left Bible/Religion
Yeah, our headline is stretching it a bit, but, as a pundit of no great renown, and low in the pecking order, I've gotta keep striving for eggcelence. What I was very surprised about, when reading Michelle Malkin's column today, was that it has been 7 years since that boycott/buycott deal involving Chick-Fil-A and the owner Truett Cathy, as coincidentally mentioned here on the Peak Stupidity blog just 2 days back. (I believe I used the phrase "a few years back" to refer to that boycott and successful retaliatory buycott, but I was thinking 3 or so - time flies indeed).
The New Yorker magazine, read by people such as Michelle Malkin (apparently), Steve Sailer, and a number of New Yorkers, seemed bent out of shape about the restaurant chain opening up its 4th "store" in NY City. It is seen as an "infiltration" by the NY-mag writer and I guess lots of illegally-immigrated, errr, infiltrators. Actually, I jest, because, the way things are today, I must admit that the illegal Chinese and Chick-ano folks really don't give a damn what Chick-Fil-A does, versus the cntrl-left crowd in NYC. The latter are either scared chickenshitless or more honestly just have much hate for the Christianity privately espoused by the owners of Chick-Fil-A and lots of people outside NY City.
Here's the problem per Mrs. Malkin's interpretation of the New Yorker anti-big-chicken article:
Chick-fil-A’s corporate mission to “glorify God” and “enrich the lives of everyone we touch” leaves The New Yorker scribe terminally heartsick about the “ulterior motive” of its restaurant execs. So do the founding family’s commitments to faithful marriages, strong families, Sundays off and the highest standards of character for their employees. The frightened New Yorker critic is especially perturbed by the “Bible verses” enshrined at Chick-fil-A’s Atlanta headquarters and by the restaurant’s popular bovine mascots — which he dubs “morbid” and the “ultimate evangelists” — whose ubiquity on New York billboards and subway corridors is akin to a “carpet bombing.”As I wrote before, it takes a stand-up guy to keep all of the over 2,000 locations closed on Sundays in the face of (some) customer pressure, and LOTS of corporate pressure from the beancounters. Peak Stupidity has much admiration for this guy Truett Cathy and the Fil-A family. Michelle Malkin continues:
Notice, by the way, how these hysterical Chick-fil-a-phobes have no qualms about the success of Jewish-owned delis or the spread of Muslim halal food shop operators in New York City who openly pay tribute to their faiths. Imagine a reporter freaking out over Quran verses or Torah citations hung up on a business owner’s wall. Welcome to Social Justice 101, where discriminating against Christian-owned business in the name of opposing discrimination is the definition of tolerance.Great stuff by this #2 pundit. Yeah, this time it's not a particularly pro-gay point of view that is riling up the cntrl-left, but just the fact that Christianity is still around and kicking somewhere. It's a shame that supporting Chick-fil-A by buying Mor Chikin is the only non-hazardous way of showing support for Christianity, at least in NY City. Well, let's not get into the long-term effects of the saturated fat on the inside of your arteries - may as well have just gone to the gay nightclubs, drunk colorful mixed drinks and read New Yorker articles, in that case. Wait... whose side are we on, anyway? I dunno, if anyone's the victim here, it's the chickens.
No comments - Click here to start thread
Global Climate DisruptionTM - The Politics (Part 6) on Takimag
Posted On: Wednesday - April 18th 2018 7:17AM MST
In Topics: Websites Global Climate Stupidity Pundits
Peak Stupidity has not discussed the Global Climate DisruptionOUR Trademark - don't you forget it! field of stupidity in quite a while, excepting yesterday's post. It has really not been in the news lately, as a sort of long-term, slow burn (oops, too soon?) form of stupidity. I also think that Americans are really getting wise to the scam, and the Lyin' Press is backing off for the time being. Before I lost most faith in any abilities of President Trump to make some real changes, there was his heartwarming rejection of the bogus Paris Accord (man, I miss THAT Trump), which also put the issue on the back burner, heheh!
However, just this morning, a guy named David Archibald published Climate Groupthink on Takimag. It is a historic (going back to the late 1980's, that is) overview of the politic aspects of climate research, hence our post title continues from Peak Stupidity blog writings of over a year back. Mr. Archibald's article is really a summary of Global Warming: A case study in groupthink. (.pdf download that I have NOT read yet) written by the eminent Englishman Christopher Booker. He is one of the few journalists, especially in the formerly-Great formerly-British police state, to have the guts and lack of stupidity, at the same time, to report widely on the corrupt political aspect of this part climate science.
A couple of things to mention about the article/website in question are:
1) Takimag, mentioned before on Peak Stupidity blog, has discontinued its comment section. That can really ruin a website experience - not really a factor here right now, haha. Often, I look forward to reading comments more than the articles on various sites. Takimag HAD used Disqus, like "Discuss", get it? (I didn't, for like, a coupla years!). I had never commented, as the Disqus software/company required registration, that turns me off. The commenters under the Takimag articles were very intelligent, but sometimes too focused on minute historical details, and I didn't usually follow them all. For the website itself, I don't think the guy, Mr. Takidopolis (or whatever, he's Greek) is a rich man that must not care about hits to the website. I could see them going down by 90%, because having comments brings many of the same readers back dozens of times to one page. If it's not for ad-money, then that's OK, because you'd really like to get a measure of unique visitors to the site anyway.
2) The writer here, Mr. Archibald, at least in this article, did not write a nicely flowing, readable article like that of a Fred Reed or John Derbyshire. The order of things in this overview of the GCD politics is therefore not clear, and it doesn't seem very thorough. It's probably that he just wanted to quickly excerpt the important parts of the Booker report, kind of like me, in a minute. Hey, this isn't really a review, so it's not a big deal. The facts are still the facts, and they are pretty damning for the Climate Hoax pushers, in this article's case, the ones in Science.
To whit (hey I LIKE that!):
The scientific establishment in the U.S. and Europe were solidly on board the global-warming hoax from at least thirty years ago, before the evidence for it had even been concocted. Of course, any dissent from this was not tolerated; from page 13:But, as Lindzen noted, it had soon become clear that any proposals deemed likely to be at all ambivalent over global warming were highly unlikely to be accepted. He recalled how, in the winter of 1989, the National Science Foundation had withdrawn funding from one of his MIT colleagues, Professor Reginald Newell, when his data analyses failed to show that the previous century had seen a net warming (one reviewer suggested that his results were ‘dangerous to humanity’).
Back in the 1990s some of the original participants in the global-warming industry thought they were involved in doing real science, thus this amusing story from page 20 about an IPCC report from 1995:There's nothing at all wrong with scientific controversy; that's how science is often done. It's the politics that come in due to, as usual, GOVERNMENTS. The money to do all this work at universities all over the western world was given not by some companies or organizations that need science done, as in other fields where the results are immediately useful. Note, that is not the case here. Live off of the government teat, and you must obey her every whim, and the biggest one here was that "We are Doomed! We must show that in red/yellow/green 3-D graphs. Make sure everyone knows we are doomed. I don't want to hear any of that 'we're not doomed' shit!" OK, that's the face of it, but really it's more about "I want TOTAL CONTROL ... of energy use, production, and living in general!" To whit [WTF does that even mean?! Ed.]But no one was more surprised by this than several of the scientific contributors to those same pages, who had earlier signed off the text as an accurate record of what they had agreed. These now much-quoted words had not appeared in the draft they formally approved at a meeting in Madrid in November 1995.
In clear breach of one of the IPCC’s strictest rules, these two cited papers had not even yet been published. What astonished the scientists even more, however, was to discover that no less than 15 key statements from their agreed text had been deleted. And each of these had expressed serious doubt over the human contribution to global warming.
Because there was no evidence for global warming in the climate record, beyond normal variation, evidence for it had to be fabricated. One of these fabrications was Michael Mann’s hockey-stick graph that got rid of the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period. This was exposed by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who found that:I had no idea the Russians were involved, but then they've always been good in science. It sounds like were stand-up guys on this political science issue, but then caved in the end (you'd think the cntrl-left would LUV this guy Putin, but he must have gone off script again with all the peacemongering and stuff).In essence it seemed that Mann’s algorithm was ‘mining’ the underlying data for hockey-stick shapes, and therefore would give a hockey stick result from whatever data was fed into it.[ PS NOTE - remember all our writing about math models and proving the models? - Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, summarized here and here.]
Despite having the gumption to throw out a thousand years’ worth of climate data in pursuit of his hockey stick, Mann is a sensitive soul with a fragile self-identity. He went on to sue Mark Steyn and others for alleged defamation. Another unpleasant individual prominent at the time was the smarmy Tony Blair, then prime minister of the U.K., who sent a delegation headed by Sir David King to a climate seminar in Moscow organized by Putin’s economic adviser, Alexander Ilarionov. King behaved abominably. The Russians had recently emerged from seventy years of a totalitarian regime enforcing groupthink and were quick to recognize global warming for what it was, as told on page 28:He went on to speak witheringly about the ‘distorted and falsified’ data used to promote the ‘consensus,’ mentioning the ‘hockey stick.’ And he then tore apart the behaviour of King and his colleagues, pointing out their complete inability to answer scientific questions and referring to those ‘ugly scenes’ that had ‘prevented the seminar from proceeding normally.’
Ilarionov ended with a peroration warning that the world seemed once again to be up against a ‘man-hating, totalitarian ideology,’ dealing in ‘misinformation, falsification, fabrication, mythology and propaganda,’ in an attempt ‘to prove the alleged validity’ of its theory. No one listening to this storming rejection of all the ‘consensus’ stood for could have guessed that, four months later, on a private initiative by Tony Blair, President Putin would do a complete U-turn. In return for Russia being allowed to join the World Trade Organization on very favourable terms, it would now ratify the Kyoto Treaty.
I'll give you one hopeful thought here, in the midst of the Trump administration stupidity and all the rest that are leading us to the peak. We just haven't heard so much of the Global Climate DisruptionTM crap, so we can be thankful for that. Pretty soon, the way this is trending, I won't even have to be anxious about talking to a neighbor about the weather.
No comments - Click here to start thread
Self Immolation at the Peak of Stupidity
Posted On: Tuesday - April 17th 2018 8:38AM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders General Stupidity Humor Global Climate Stupidity
If you're going to kill yourself, setting yourself on fire is the most painful way anyone could think of. It is the nastiest sort of pain, and as much as I've got jokes galore on this one, the pain involved makes it hard to even write ones on this guy (warning - links to Fox branch of Lyin' Press). I understand that Mr. Dave Buckel, as a lawyer for the transgendered, the planet, and all other under-represented entities, wanted to make a show and horrify the world. Yes, I am horrified, but only by the utter stupidity of his act.
Many Buddhist monks did this same horrible act on themselves in Vietnam, during the war days. I have lots more respect for them, as they at least knew (I suppose) where they were going next. They knew the horrible pain they would face, if only for a minute, and they didn't have as many worldly things to lose compared to an American lawyer. I think Mr. Buckel may have been too stupid to even know how burning himself would feel. In addition to that stupidity, it's the purpose of his self-immolation that brings out stupidity-induced humor of this blogger.
This act by David Buckel was apparently (from a letter that the flames must have missed) in protest of against the use of fossil fuels. No, he is not a chemist, but a lawyer, as I stated earlier. That's a real shame, too. Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Buckel, in the next life, but how is combustion of your body not going to make more of the "greenhouse gasses" that your
What did Mr. Buckel think - his body wasn't made out of hydrocarbons and his shit didn't stink? The thing is, if this shyster lawyer could have stayed alive representing "The Planet" in various courts of law in various jurisdictions and maybe even accumulated body mass, he could have at least practiced what he preached, as a human carbon sink. "Stay alive, sequester the carbon" - that's what they say or should say, if these Global Climate DisruptionTM idiots had just enough brainpower to come up with good sayings (hey, guys, for the 1st one - no charge!) With this act of combustion, David Buckel was responsible for an immediate emission of toxic quantities of CO2 (along with water, a much stronger greenhouse gas, but, first rule of Climate Club: WE! DON'T! TALK! ABOUT! WATER!) No, ever heard "ashes to ashes, dust to dust", Mr. Buckel? Those ashes are carbon too. But, OK, you may have been so proud of yourself for getting through college and law school without a lick of chemistry - don't want to hang out with those autistic geeks, eh? Now look atcha!
OK, you may say, the process of combining the Hydrogen in the body with Oxygen to make water, and the Carbon with Oxygen to make Carbon Dioxide would happen any way that this guy died? That is true, rotting, the process of being processed by bacteria, will result in the same elements - dust to dust. Sure, but how about a massive dose of formaldehyde and a vacuum-sealed casket? Now that there's some Carbon sequestration, I tells ya. Maybe next time.
Did Dave Buckel even go through the permit process for burning in a public park - Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NYC? The treehuggers are really big on the whole permitting thing, so let's hope so.
Anyway, from the Lamda Legal family, λ being the Greek letter for gay, apparently, not to mention wavelength, an eigenvalue of a matrix, linear electric charge density, and of course, the latent heat of vaporization of a substance on a per-mole basis, we read:
This is a tremendous loss for our Lambda Legal family, but also for the entire movement for social justice.You say that like it's a bad thing. That's not the half of it anyway. This has been a huge loss of latent stupidity. OTOT, this is countered by a small gain for those who like warmer weather and don't ever want to see snow again. We'd really never like to see anyone get burned like this either. Are we at the peak,yet?
* Please see the Peak Stupidity blog's 5-part series on "There is no working model of the world's climate, dammit!" with the Global Climate Stupidity topic key for all the background on our opinions on this topic.
PS: For the family of this guy, I'm so sorry. I guess you all knew he was a nutball, but what happened is terrible.
No comments - Click here to start thread
Boycotts, Buycotts, and CEOs ... Part 3
Posted On: Monday - April 16th 2018 6:23PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Economics Big-Biz Stupidity
(continued from this post but could follow directly from the previous one)
I had some more to say about boycotts and the like, so the previous post was a bit out of order. Who cares.
That list of a baker's dozen companies that one could boycott in order to stand up for Laura Ingraham could be seen as very useful but could also illustrate some of the futility of spending significant time and brainpower to help. As I stated though, these boycotts and buycotts are about the only way individuals CAN make any kind of difference in the political and cultural scene as money does talk. The Chick-Fil-A example of a buycott was so successful, in my opinion that some of the cntrl-left on the other side of that deal, at least the ones with IQs above room temperature (Fahrenheit too!), may really have second thoughts about opening their mouths like this. Good deal. I wonder if it was the best thing to happen to the Chick-Fil-A franchise ever, as once you get a taste of that spicy chicken sandwich, there's no boycott left in you. Whether you like gay people, don't care, or really don't want them around you, you have to admit that the man makes a pretty good bird (sorry, old Seinfeld reference).
Smith & Wesson handguns learned a good lesson about 10-15 years ago when they cowardly caved in to the gun-grabbers on some issue I can't remember. What I do remember is that they took a big hit, and were in bankruptcy. They changed their tune after that. The NRA did a great job in spreading the word, and the gun-owners can be a disciplined bunch.
On other hand, can you take the time and energy upon making any purchase, whether this is "people you should be doing business with"? It can make one neurotic, or at least neurotic-looking, enough to hear the old pretty-good advice "You need to know how to pick your battles" on a daily basis. You may be the one in the restaurant on your first, and probably last, date with a lady saying "No, don't order that! That tuna is not dolphin-safe. (Stick with the melted-cheese sandwiches, made in a good-old fashioned cheese plant in
The problem will also be that some of these corporations may be on your side in one cultural conflict but have run their mouths or directed their money toward another policy that you detest. You can't have a simultaneous boycott and buycott. By that point, just buy what the hell you need. and get out. You've got to live your life, and things are so complicated that the company marketing people won't have any idea what kind of "cott" they are undergoing; sales go down, and sales go up.
An additional problem is the size and scope of Big Biz corporations. If you don't like what Procter & Gamble is up to, how could you possibly boycott all of their products without basically going off the grid (more power, oops, less power, to you if you do, but it's a big move)? They make all kinds of stuff. Imagine if, as often does happen, you reckon you should stop buying Huggies diapers due to their corporate PC BS (just an example, mind you) and will pay the extra money, just to show 'em, and buy Pampers. Who knows if both brands come from the same company, though, and maybe even the same factory? Big Biz may be laughing all the way to the bank on some of these deals, if the customers are not really diligent.
I guess the wrap-up here is this: When we can, a group of consumers can hit a business quick, if we are individually disciplined. Letting them know why if also helpful*, but the change in the money coming in is like a punch in the gut to them. At least keep it up for a month or two. However, some of the open-ended one with dozens of companies to watch out for are usually not worth it, unless there is an easy switch to make. In the long term, you're probably going to continue eating the chikin you crave ...
* .. such as by leaving stuff right at the counter. "Oh, I just saw on my phone that your company is doing such-and-such BS. Here, keep your stuff, I gotta go down the street. Don't take it personally, but y'all ought to give your corporate people a call." That is both productive AND fun ... BUT borders on neurotic.
No comments - Click here to start thread
Boycotts, Buycotts, and CEOs ... Part 2
Posted On: Monday - April 16th 2018 5:31PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Economics Big-Biz Stupidity
(continued from this post)
Now, let me discuss the last part, the CEOs who should shut their mouths more. The guy I ran into a few days back was a very high-frequency passenger on Delta Airlines. These days the big airlines, and especially Delta, have a tendency to really kiss the asses of their "Gold", "Emerald" or whatever precious metal/mineral-based customers are tops. They have their good reasons - that these are the customers that pay the real money-making fares and they are the only customers who have any loyalty. The twice-a-year vacationers may get treated very well on a flight, but if one finds a $20 lower fare next year on a different airline, he is likely going to bail for that. The internet has made this worse, I think.
This particular gentleman was fairly and rightfully pissed off about Delta's (and United's too, BTW) scrapping of their NRA discounts about a month back. The funny thing is, I had read that it wasn't more than a few dozen people out of millions that had availed themselves of it. The head honchos of Delta had to jump into the political fray after the Florida school shooting, and bad-mouth the NRA. Maybe they figured jerking the discount would only bother that score or so of customers, but see, it's the talk that pissed lots of people off. Because another of the 3 huge airlines left in the US did this same move, I really doubt that a boycott would be of any use. People may talk, but the high-dollar loyal passengers will stick with their status and perks, and the low-dollar ones will still shop the lowest fare that gets them from here to there and back.
However, a strongly worded letter by one, or maybe many, of the passengers that Delta kisses the asses of may make a difference in how much the CEO will mouth off next time. The immediate damage to Delta's bottom line this time was due to the outrage by the good gun-appreciating folks in the government of Georgia. Hey, Peak Stupidity does not praise government very often, so take a shot. We won't get you drunk on this one. Anyway, the ironic part here was that the buddy-buddy (bills-of-attainder notwithstanding anymore) deal of an exemption of fuel taxes at Atlanta Hartsfield since Delta's operation there is BIG BIZ, had apparently expired already. Therefore, the tax could be implemented again with no law required, just "hey, how 'bout this? We just noticed ...." Heckuva job,
No comments - Click here to start thread
Boycotts, Buycotts, and CEOs who should shut their mouths more.
Posted On: Monday - April 16th 2018 12:24PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Economics ctrl-left Big-Biz Stupidity
The concept of boycotts and the newer thing, "buycotts" are not forms of stupidity themselves, in fact, far from it. It's the stupidity that initiates these informal consumer actions and the stupidity that goes with it all that require mention here on Peak Stupidity. The impetus for this post was a talk with a man, to be mentioned more later on, about the Delta Airlines executive's mouthing off about the NRA a month or more back.
Lately, I've read about Laura Ingraham and her troubles with Fox News due to her accurate but offensive statement about the gun-control high-school soy-boy twit, David Hogg. (BTW, any network that would go ahead and use "Accurate but Offensive" as their logo - no charge, guys - may be one to get me back watching the TV once in a while!) Anyway, Mrs. Imgraham's tweet to the twit caused her detractors to encourage viewers to boycott her Fox News show, and then spontaneously caused various sponsors to cave in as advertisers due to the usual cowardice and stupidity of their executives. That can, in turn, cause a boycott by Ingraham's and sanity's fans of those companies in question. I will write more on how the Peak Stupidity blog could be doing this stuff all day, but just for this time here are these companies, in case our reader(s) want(s) to make a U-ey, if he were for some reason reading this post in an Office Depot parking lot:
Rachael Ray’s Nutrish pet food brand (true story—I gave that to my dog once, and he puked), Expedia, TripAdvisor, Wayfair, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Hulu, Office Depot, Atlantis, Paradise Resort, Honda, Liberty Mutual, Progressive, and Jenny Craig.That is a partial list, BTW, and comes from Memo to Laura Ingraham: Never Beg by a Mr. David Cole on Takimag.com. I've written about this website before, most recently here regarding the great anti-PC writer Jim Goad. This particular article by Mr. Cole is about more than just the Ingraham brouhaha, and includes his own experience with the cntrl-left's tendencies to try to ruin careers due to their being offended. "Don't apologize if you were right." is his point.
Now, back to our point, the buying and not buying or viewing and not viewing can go both ways, and back-and-forth a bit. Sometimes things can backfire nicely against the cntrl-left crowd when it takes offense. The Chick-fil-a deal of a few years back is the best example of this in my memory. Here it was the executive who didn't so much mouth off like the Delta Exec, but only expressed his own opinion about gays and gayness in some interview or some manner that made it public. He had made absolutely no store policy regarding homo-sexuality, as customers are customers and chicken don't even have time for homosexuality these days in the nasty factory farms, even if they have the inclination. Well, once his offended detractors decided to boycott, the non-necessarily anti-homo, but more reasonable, supporters started a buycott so huge that it would make you think a shrewd ad-guy working for Chick-Fil-A had thought the whole thing up himself*. No, I don't think so by any stretch, as Mr. Dan Cathy, the president (and heir of the founder) sounds like a very principled guy. Even if I have a big hankering from the spicy chicken sandwich on a Sunday, I have an abiding respect for a man who keeps the business closed each and very Sunday. This is even at airports where the rent must be outrageous, not to mention the 1/7 cut in the general top-line! There, you other PC cowardly CEOs, is a man of principle.
Back to the level of the peons who may decide not to watch Fox News until Mrs. Ingraham is off the air, or back on the air, or to buy lots of stuff from Office Depot before you
This week should be a good one for blogging, and our apologies for tailing off early last week.
* as is Peak Stupidity's opinion about the mid-1980's "New Coke" thing.
No comments - Click here to start thread
HR - scourge of the business world - Exhibit A - Toby Flenderson
Posted On: Thursday - April 12th 2018 7:49PM MST
In Topics: Big-Biz Stupidity
In the previous post, earlier today, on the topic of "Human Resources" I was very remiss in not including any discussion of my favorite TV HR personality, Mr. Toby Flenderson, of The Office. Yes, the show is 10 years old or so, and no, I don't watch TV now, but this explains why I believe The Office was THE FUNNIEST show EVER on TV. Yes, it's above Seinfeld, IMO.
"Dunder-Mifflen Paper Company" of Scranton, Pennsylvania, is the supposed setting of this show. This branch office of the NY City-based company has only 10-12 people or so, so in real life this would be a place free from the scourge of HR. However, the show has Toby as a corporate-placed HR guy who works in the back, and is detested by the boss, Mr. Micheal Scott.
Let me tell you, I don't place stock in actors/actresses and who plays this or that character in the movies, as the reader may have noticed from a couple of Peak Stupidity movie reviews here and here. Who cares? If it's entertaining, keep watching. If it's not, or even is but has a clear political agenda, then don't. That said, let me tell you, Steve Carell, who plays Michael Scott is really amazing. He plays a guy who is underconfident and not all that bright, but acts like he is confident and bright for his staff. It's really funny stuff, and Micheal Scott's scenes with HR-loser-guy Toby Flenderson make for some of the funniest moments. Youtube has big collections of this stuff, so here's just a very good compilation of the best.
Would that all HR representatives were like Toby Flenderson?! It'd be a much more pleasant world at the office.
No comments - Click here to start thread
HR - scourge of the business world - Part 2 - HR on the job
Posted On: Thursday - April 12th 2018 10:41AM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Globalists Big-Biz Stupidity
The Peak Stupidity blog's expose, if I may [No, you MAY NOT! - Ed.] on the scourge of the workaday world, often called the "Human Resources" department, started with this post ten days back. We had promised to get right back on it, top priority!. Anyway, back to it, I will discuss the problem with the HR departments one you have gotten through their BS to get a job and are in the working world.
These people never go away, see. You thought that you had answered all the idiotic questions with the right answers, as found via hours of previous searching on-line, filled out all their idiotic beauracratic paperwork, and had finally got to your cube to do something resembling a JOB. OK, you may get some work done for the time being, but from now on you must watch your step. This is the "current year". People get very offended by lots of different things these days, even when they are supposed to be working hard. This is MUCH more a factor in a working environment that contains non-white people, especially non-Oriental either, and women. It's not the individuals of these categories that do some of the admin. jobs, or work in some other departments but ones that you may work with directly that can be worrisome. Well, unless you work in a small business, which would thankfully have no HR department anyway, you are going to be mixed up with lots of people that can cause problems due to their mystical offendable properties.
That's where the HR people remain a scourge throughout one's career, in the Big Biz environment especially. The 1980's-'90's annoyance level out of HR regarding difficult long processes of hiring people who will do a good job, or getting the health plan paperwork straight, or some damn surveys about whatever-the-hell are behind us. The 2010's level of annoyance from HR departments comes from their powerful role as the front-line troops of the PC Police. If you don't watch what you say, how much you roll your eyes at company stupdity, and how much you disparage the company's PC garbage (especially at the "All Hands" meetings), you may have to again talk to these people. Nobody wants that. HR is the Big-Biz enforcer of all things PC. They relish this shit, and they get on airliners to go to conferences to learn from other HR people who relish this shit. It gives them lots of power over current employees, which adds to their previously existing power over prospective employees. You've just got to watch the hell out for anyone from HR, as they may get a paycheck created from the sweat of your brow, but they are the enemy, make no mistake. Nobody is safe anymore, from you, the lowliest cube-dweller, to the guy that carries the big coffee mug and RUNS the All Hands meetings.
I've been discussing the world of big business, but this stuff is a worry down to the level of a place with say 20-50 people. Without HR, the PC stuff may still be around at a low level, but enforcement can be different or, in the best world, even nonexistent. If a women associate brings up some bogus harrassment charge, for instance, a good boss can take care of it via common sense. Yeah, if it's not bogus, then he may want to fire you. If it is (usually the case), the best way would be for him to take the woman very, very seriously at a meeting, tell her how you, the hard-working guy, are now on probation of some sort, and this IS NOT TO BE TAKEN LIGHTLY. Later on, at the bar, your boss may tell you, once it's loud enough in there, that you need not worry, this women is worthless, and during the next company belt-tightening campaign, perhaps next week, she will be told that, due to restructuring her department will have to make 100% cutbacks. "See ya."
Lastly, I attached the Globalists topic key to this post for a reason. Long-ago free America, and it's powerful economy, were powered by small business. Some small business became Big-Biz, surely, but there was always the chance for someone out of the blue to compete with new ideas and bright, hard-working people. Our Globalist elites HATE HATE HATE small business, and that carries over into the policies of the Feral and State governments. They don't want any more competition, just a world of third-world-type non-questioning peons, with themselves at the top, like the broken-glass-topped-fenced elites of Mexico. The enforcement of PC through Big-Biz, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Gov and their Globalist owners has been working pretty well. Small business has some kind of LOOPHOLE to where they can just get work done and shit! It's NOT FAIR! Look for ways in which small business will be forced to be more compliant with the cntrl-left PC bullshit in the near future. "No, you won't get away with this, Hogan!" [/Colonel Klink finger-wagging]
No comments - Click here to start thread
Fidel Castro on Meet the Press
Posted On: Wednesday - April 11th 2018 8:38PM MST
In Topics: Commies TV, aka Gov't Media History Media Stupidity
During my 4 or 5 minutes of research, well, really just searching for pictures for yesterday's post on the TV talking head pundits, I read some information on the Meet the Press show. Along with being amazed that the show has been on since near the beginning of broadcast TV, for 7 decades, in fact, Peak Stupidity has learned that there was a show with the Commie Fidel Castro as the guest. It was in 1959 and only a few months after Castro had taken over the island/country of Cuba from the corrupt leader Bautista.
Maybe Castro had to get a medical procedure done or just wanted to spend some time on a flush toilet, but he was right there in the NBC studios with 3 panelists and the show host, named Lawrence Spivak. NBC has the full archived show on their site. I bet a lot of Cubans over the next 50 years wished some well-meaning nut had taken him out right then and there and saved lots of misery for that country.
Back in 1959 it was the American press asking tough questions to the Commies, both foreign and domestic. This lady, Miss May Craig of Maine, asked "Doctor" Castro some tough questions.
Going back even further this article on the history of the show relates how Whittaker Chambers, a big pundit of the time denounced a man named Alger Hiss as a Communist on the show in 1948. The Communist Mr. Hiss sued Chambers for defamation for some unknown reason, since he WAS a Communist. A few years later, in 1951, Senator Joe McCarthy came on for his 5th appearance with a pistol in his lap (what a country!), as he was worried about assasins. How much better would our political history have been if McCarthy had been on 8 years later, on the same episode with Fidel Castro!
Nowadays, it's the Communists asking the questions, albeit without the hats:
Oftentimes, it's just Commie-on-Commie:
Speaking of talking heads, here is one of The Talking Heads, Mr. David Byrne, apparently inerviewing himself. It is one wacky video, but fairly funny. I'll put up some music from his band soon.
No comments - Click here to start thread
Michelle Malkin - in the right / no sense of the big picture
Posted On: Wednesday - April 11th 2018 9:01AM MST
In Topics: US Police State Pundits Liberty/Libertarianism Educational Stupidity Socialism/Communism Female Stupidity
This is the 2nd post* here on the Peak Stupidity blog in which we are bringing up a good article by Michelle Malkin as a result of something bad - female stupidity, and the egregious error made about a century ago of allowing women to vote in America (it should be up to the various States, anyway). Please, keep in mind that we LIKE Michelle Malkin and consider her number 2 woman pundit in all Americastan.
Mrs. Malkin's latest article, The Student Data-Mining Scandal Under Our Noses is about the usual Big Brother spying that goes on everyday, whether directly government implemented or indirectly government implemented via the Facebutts and Google's of the new information age. I won't get into Michelle's article here, as the ubiquitous spy network and apparatus has been good subject for a long-time-upcoming post, and that's not my point here.
The point is that, in this article, Mrs. Malkin writes about more egregiousness, this time involving "our kids" in the education system. (Peak Stupidity likes to call it a system of indoctrination centers, to be more truthful.) Yes, the women care about "our children", "our schools", and "our neighborhoods" a whole lot. Is it more than the men? Should only women be voting in local elections? See, this gets down to the problem. The women only see the small-term and local stuff. They do not think like men (at least lots of 'em) who understand the big picture and the root causes. Women like to think they have more compassion, but compassion combined with stupidity is only a recipe for creating more evil.
Let's look at just this educational stupidity example here. The gist of the article is that all these tablets and software systems being used in schools in a MANDATORY fashion have been set up to advertise to, and spy on the searchs of, THE CHILDREN. Hey, where were you when the US Feral Congress voted in an unconstitutional Department of Education, Mrs. Malkin? OK, in the womb, I! GET! THAT! No, seriously, where was the opposition to the Carter Administration supported Feral Dept of Ed., and the HEW (anyone remember that?) before that? All these major increases in BIG GOV authority are valiantly fought off by conservative MEN. The women, at least single ones, vote way more often for BIG DADDY STATE, as a replacement for a traditional husband. They do not think long term, to the time they may have children that may be harrassed by BIG GOV. It's just "let's have some compassion!" and "Give some money to these sorry-ass people here, and those sorry-ass people there.", with no thinking on the fact that that money is coming from the labor of many hard-working men, who now have less for their families.
It's been one Socialist scheme after another, none of which can be rolled back without a war or a Greater Depression. (Yeah, ole Ronnie promised to end the Dept. of Ed while campaigning in 1980, but I'll give him a pass, as the Democrats had big majority in the House of Reps., so it wasn't under his control.) The John Birchers, hard-core Libertarians and masses of conservative men have been trying to fight this stuff for > 8 freakin' decades, from the time of Roosevelt-the-Socialist, but they had women's vote against them. Now, Michelle Malkin suggests new laws to force BIG DATA to somehow keep things private. First of all, it's software/computers - what privacy? More importantly, this is just asking for new laws to complicate things to try to fix UNFORESEEN (by some) PROBLEMS that have come up since we allowed a Socialist Police State to form.
Regarding specifically the most important realm in which Socialism has run rampant in destroying our culture, our children in the Gov Indoctrination Camps (schools, that is), Michelle Malkin homeshcools, as Peak Stupidty has praised before (in a 3-part series, TWO, and THREE.) Why are we picking on her, of all pundits, for this example? I think the fact that she clearly sees the problems, yet I have not read squat-all of the words "US Constitution" in her writing, is the answer. Maybe I missed some her writing in the past in which she mentioned out lost liberties and the police state, but probably not.**
No, this trial period in women's suffarage has shown piss-poor results. We will have to end it, if we want a free country back. Guess who agrees with me on that - # 1 pundit, Miss Ann Coulter.
* Here is the first one, in which I said Part 2 may come "tonight". Ooops.
** If I am corrected, and find out Mrs. Malkin is an avowed Constitutionalist, then I'll strike out her name in these two post and replace it with "some women". (I guess!)
No comments - Click here to start thread
Pundit vs. pundit during the slow death of the Lyin' Press
Posted On: Tuesday - April 10th 2018 1:38PM MST
In Topics: Internets TV, aka Gov't Media Pundits Media Stupidity
I just read another good James Kirkpatrick article (here on unz, for comments) about a supposed conservative pundit at The Atlantic magazine who lasted only a month before being terminated for writing something that other pundits didn't like. Maybe it was something with too much truth in it, I dunno, but either way, it's a pundit-eat-pundit world out there. That's what this post is about. It's not particularly about the information in Mr. Kirkpatrick's VDare article itself, but the article is a good example of Peak Stupidity's thesis here.
There've been pundits around, telling us what to make of current events (doesn't that bring back memories), or politics, for as long as people could read, I suppose. Back in the past, they wrote for newspapers, which got delivered to the doorstep TWICE a day back in the past. I don't have data at my fingertips, but I don't think there's any doubt that, even though literacy numbers may have been lower way back in America's past, those who could read and write did it on average at quite a higher level. Just read some tweets, if you don't believe me here. OK, you're back already, great. Due to the newspaper being pretty much the ONLY source of news, the pundits with their opinions of what we should think about it all were much bigger figures (at least in the "written" world). There were guys like Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle, H.R. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun and others who were not just stars in their day but are still quoted and talked about to this day.
When TV came about, after some years of the same 3 channels - occasionally with that static-y obnoxious ORIGINAL "learning channel", PBS up there in the high VHF range - there had been established the television version of the pundits. I don't know when people started getting back from church so early, but these Sunday morning shows, such as "Meet the Press" were established more than 1/2 a century ago.
Same old Gibber-Jabber, different haircuts and furniture
Oh, and they got books on the shelves behind them instead of a whole bunch of TVs. Classy!
Now, to the present day, the print world is dying a slow, but decreasingly-slow death due to the www, and that is a good thing. The internet has allowed anyone to be a pundit, and to me, that's also a good thing. The big shots in the current magazines or legacy newspapers, or on the internet versions of these, have to work a lot harder and don't have the job security of a Herb Caen. In the article linked to near the top, and hundreds or thousands like it "printed" every day, the people under discussion in the article are often other pundits. "Pundit-A's article last week, was subject to a nasty review by Pundit-B, who received lots of likes, but also was torn to shreds by Pundit-C, who is not always right, so let me set him straight here." This crosses over into the TV-pundit world too. "Pundit-C will be interviewed by TV-Pundit-D on his show come Sunday morning, and I will point out his stupidity on my blog Monday and interview Pundit-E about it"
It's all in their pundit world, and one wonders how important all the discussion is, even though it may be about all the major problems of the day. It could be VERY IMPORTANT stuff for the public to know about (some of the time), but these guys need to think about once in a while that, hey, not 10 % of the American public has ever heard the names of any of you people, and maybe 2 % read any of you people consistently! What's the point, then?
Hey, that hits close to home! Yeah, the Peak Stupidity blog also has our posts about how we LUV Ann Coulter, and how this other pundit is a complete dipshit, and so on. It's not that much of the time, though if we can help it. I've been trying to get away from that. Do all the millions of pundits (thanks, internet!) out there do it just to get their opinions that they really believe in out there? Sure, but some are trying to make a living at it. Maybe it numbers less than 10,000 of them that do, and those ones have to play the pundit game, and many may even forget trying to stand for their own beliefs and just play along to try to enter the world of Big Pundit. At a slightly lower level are the ones who write what they believe (no matter how stupid, believe me, I've seen it!) that may get a chance to have columns on unz.com or others, depending on their political inclinations.
How does all this gibber-jabber get out to the American public though? It's still about TV, unfortunately. One pundit gets read by a bigger pundit, who is in turn says something that interests a bigger pundit, who is widely read by someone who goes on TV on Sunday morning. Then, a chunk of the American public, and, more importantly some of the a-holes in power, may hear of this idea. That's the way it works for now, though it sounds like a Dr. Suess book. The smaller, but usually wiser pundits might be followed more if the public would get the hell off the TV, as we have recommended at the Peak Stupidity blog for years, well, months running.
Speaking of the TV pundits, a few years back I ran into the right half of this TV power couple, a man named James Carville, or "the Ragin' Cajun", while traveling through Louisiana. Hey we like cajuns here at Peak Stupidly, but not this fuckin' guy. He was President Clinton's press secretary or some such, and then moved onto TV to spout his form of gibber-jab on Sunday mornings. It's been going on for many years, and this revolving door, or pundit-to-politician-to-pundit-to-grave pipeline seems to be a big thing. The worst of it is that, with plenty of exceptions, like the illustrious Pat Buchanan, many of these people don't really stand for anything. They just say whatever it takes to REMAIN ON TV. The Ragin' Cajun above WAS (just found out upon searching for the picture about their big "D") married to Mary Matalin, who was big in republican politics earlier. Come on, it's one thing to marry some lady who may be a lefty at heart but it's not her damn living. The marriage of these two pieces of, uh, work, proves they they don't really give a damn much about principles. It was just a good Big Pundit living to these two. I have just slightly more respect for the idiot Communist who actually believes in his form of stupidity ... just slightly.
I think it was a Sunday when I ran into the guy. Once my friend pointed him out, and after leaving him alone for a little bit, I came up to him and said "Hey, are you still on TV?" "Yeah" was all he said. "Oh, I'm off TV. I'm on the internet now."
No comments - Click here to start thread
Knife control in London - some well-forecast stupidity
Posted On: Monday - April 9th 2018 8:33AM MST
In Topics: Liberty/Libertarianism Race/Genetics
(BTW, that "Socialist Worker" source of this image cracks me up. I guess the Socialist Worker won't mind the Peak Stupidity blog stealing their graphic, as
Socialism is ALL ABOUT sharing, innit, Govner?)
For the 2nd month in a row, London has had more murders than NY City. This is one of those ideas the American patriotic 2nd Amendment crowd used to discuss maybe 10 to 25 years ago coming to the headlines on Drudge. (He linked to this article on The Daily Wire entitled "London's Mayor Declares Intense New 'Knife Control' Policies To Stop Epidemic Of Stabbings".) Be warned that there is a large photo of the new Moslem London Mayor on top. That guy comes into play here in this disussion.
London has seen a dramatic uptick in murder rates, surpassing even New York City in the number of homicides every month since the beginning of 2018. It has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, and, technically, knives carried "without good reason" are off limits to anyone under the age of 18.We Americans were laughed at for the simple very-common-sense memes (though they weren't "memes" back in the 1990's) that "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.", "God made men and women - Sam Colt made them equal", and "Next thing they'll have to do is start on knife control ..." although the latter didn't read as well on a bumper sticker, granted. These common-sense ideas are true, but it sure takes the anti-freedom crowd a long time to admit anything. They could rightfully be called learning-disabled, but as a voluntary form of stupidity, not genetic, we have no sympathy for the stupid fucks.
An epidemic of stabbings and acid attacks in London has gotten so bad that London mayor Sadiq Khan is announcing broad new "knife control" policies designed to keep these weapons of war out of the hands of Londoners looking to cause others harm.
Khan announced Friday that the city has created a "violent crime taskforce of 120 officers" tasked with rooting out knife-wielding individuals in public spaces, and is pumping nearly $50 million dollars into the Metropolitan Police department so that they can better arm themselves against knife attacks.
Parliament is also set to take up heavy "knife control" legislation when it resumes this week. The U.K. government is expected to introduce a ban on online knife sales and home knife deliveries, declare it "illegal to possess zombie knives and knuckledusters in private" — "zombie knives" are those defined as being manufactured for the purpose of being used as a person-to-person weapon.That's pretty much most of the short article so you don't have to look at the smarmy London
Hahahaaa! Hahahahahaaaaaa!Oh, and
WTF did we tell you 20 years ago, you British twits! I'm not one of those "I told you so" guys, but dammit, I! TOLD! YOU! SO!OK, now, one could very rightly point out that the major increase in violence up through murder in formerly-Great formerly Britain is due to the large influx of Moslem and other foreign people into the land over the last 20 years (especially). Yes, with 98% white British, as in the past, I doubt we'd see these numbers. However, how does that negate this example of Peak Stupidity? If the Brits had kept their guns AND not let so large an influx of un-assimilable foreigners in, there also wouldn't be very many murders. One can easily compare white murder (and other violence) rates, in the US, especially in areas that are (or were) almost all white and get the same numbers as old-timey England. It's the people, stupid! [/bizarro-Clinton]
"If it's JUST the people then does it even matter whether we have gun-control or not?" is the next question. Yeah, well, if you want the ability to keep the government beast somewhat wary and have a fighting chance to stop it's policies, yes, you need as much firepower as you have the money for. Oh, that's not to mention that "when knives are outlawed, only outlaws will have knives."
A couple of last points here:
I guess it's a good thing the British don't eat a lot of steak, right? I mean, who needs one of those assault knives anyway, when a butter knife will do? To stem the violence, I think that even the butter knives should be limited, maybe to a purchase of one per month. How many do you need!? After all, it ain't like the servants still steal the silverware like in Dickensonian times. The current stuff is not worth losing one's butler position for, as it's just cheap China-made crap, which, come to think of it, probably matches pretty well with the China. Much of the China nowadays is, well, errrr, just cheap China-made crap.
Regarding the mayor of London, now, I watched a short clip with Mr. Nigel Farage, British patriot, debating some crowd of smarmy British elite jackasses on a panel, with that per-Mayoral Khan on the panel. Man, he comes off as one smarmy jackass (and I'm really coming to like that word, oh, both "smarmy" and "jackass".) It's one thing to listen to the young people of various diverse roots talk in that posh English, as mentioned here with regard to Ann Coulter's audience at the Oxford Union. It's another thing for some Moslem sharia-prone smarmy adult jackass to talk like that. You'll really want to punch him, mark my words. (Yes, you CAN mark them, as I was one of the guys saying "pretty soon they'll be saying we need knife control, hahahaa!".)
No comments - Click here to start thread
The status of Peak Stupidity
Posted On: Saturday - April 7th 2018 10:56PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Websites
... the website, that is, remains unchanged. We are still at a state of max-vigilance regarding the stupidity, but yes, this has been a slow week, with a longer than oft-seen gap in posts since the past Tuesday.
We also offer apologies for the lack of editing of the short post with the sad song/video on the Great War, as I could have sworn WWI had ended in November of 1917 rather than 1918. Firstly, yeah, we don't really have an editor [see, this is just me, adding more humor - Editor], though we could use one lots of the time. Yeah, also, I do know there is google (won't use them) and bing and duckduckgo (the latter being the duckgo-to site for searches for this writer). However, it slows me down to look details up, and as long as I think I've got the facts straight, I don't go to the search engine in the middle of writing. It would have helped to avoid Tuesday's big gaffe. Lastly, on this WWI history, I realize I'd confused the ending of the Russian Czarist government, very related to the country's involvment in that war, and the start of the inarguable worst experiment in Communism every run, to the ending of the war itself.
The Peak Stupidity blog did discuss the century-ago start of that biggest (so far) experiment in Commie stupidity (see also here and here.) somewhat near the appropriate century-anniversary date. We plan on remembering the stupidity implemented at the end of The Great War also at the appropriate time.
The big boo-boo noted here was only noticed 3 days or so later due to a chance reading of some material, hence the correction only by Friday. The lack of posting has been due to some serious amount of travelling with no lack of internet or things to write about, but just a lack of time to sit down for the writing of a post. Do not be alarmed, readers - we are still in business here, documenting this global peak in stupidity of the world.
No comments - Click here to start thread
The Great War and remembrance of some massive sadness
Posted On: Tuesday - April 3rd 2018 7:04PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Music History
I've read John Keegan's book, maybe 10 years back, and I don't recall it ever really coming up with a serious reason the deaths of these 10's of millions of young men were even remotely necessary.
Instead of some brief synopsis of the Great War, or links to some real history, I will just show you this video/song called The Green Fields of France. It's by a group of musicians named The Furies with Davey Arthur. I'd never heard of them. It doesn't matter.
I really don't think any other posting I could do would mean anything compared to the thoughts of these men dying for small pieces of ground at a young age, with all that future lost. I'll get back to it
No comments - Click here to start thread
The Lion of the Se
Posted On: Tuesday - April 3rd 2018 2:36AM MST
In Topics: Commies Movies
(pic lazily lifted from Brenda Walker's VDare article)
VDare.com is not the place to go to for movie reviews. (Neither is Peak Stupidity, come to think of it.) However, due to this ex-senator's role in creating the immigration nightmare we are experiencing, Mrs. Brenda Walker wrote here about a movie coming out on the Ted Kennedy-caused suffocation of a young lady long ago at a place on Massachusetts' Martha's Vineyard Island called Chappaquiddick. That word may not ring any bells for the younger readers, but the unintentional manslaughter, and it's intentional covering-up to try to keep this member of the ill-fated Kennedy clan "presidential material", are well-known to any Americans who followed politics right about until the time this guy died as a Senator . (Incidentally, Ted Kennedy has gotten a shout-out on the Peak Stupidity blog before. By "shout-out" here, we mean a verbal ass-kicking.)
There aren't many new movies that I get even a bit interested in seeing, but this may be one. I'd read a book about the Chappaquiddick incident way back, and it did not make the future Senator look good, let me tell you. In this PC, cntrl-left day-and-age, though, it'd be hard to know who the Hollywood people will back, a young lady who was let to suffocated in a car sunk in the water (her name was Mary Joe Kopechnee) or a guy who was instrumental in ruining the USA ... tough call these days.
I gotta say, I don't think the producers put a whole lot of thought into the title. OK, "Chappaquiddick" may pique the interest of the young people who know nothing about it and have never heard the word. For the rest of us, how about "Who's the U-Boat Commander?". Hahaaa! What, too soon?
No comments - Click here to start thread
Human Resources - scourge of the Big-Biz world
Posted On: Monday - April 2nd 2018 4:13PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity
(Yeah, I think I could place her in a good position...)
This first paragraph is just some housekeeping, as I have added a new topic key, Big-Biz Stupidity. It's very easy to do, but I have hesitated adding these as a good many of the older posts should have the new topic keys attached. It's time to add a few more new ones, and then go through all 620 posts and see what matches. It's not like we have a search function or anything, ha! Just due to time allotment, it's gonna have to be posting or updating the site, and I've been opting for posting above all.
Anyway, this post is about Big Business, and has the appropriate topic key now. Let's get to the point: It's these damn HR people, mostly women. Unless you've lived a charmed life, you would know that the acronym stands for Human Resources, the people formerly known as "personnel". Even the name change represents a step down in status of the employees they aim to hire or help in some way. "Personnel" is fairly plain English, and while the "Human" part sounds more, well, human, I don't feel like a "resource". "We've got $155 million in liquid assets, some $340 million in mechanical assets, including the CATS and Kubotas, and a net cash drain of $55 million in those human resources", and "We need about 40 more of those fluid mechanics engineering resources, say 25 more of those computer programming resources, and get rid of those 10 deadbeat marketing resources", is, I guess, how the company sees it. The Human Resources people are there to collect those resources. That name change was probably 30-40 years ago, and I'm not personelly (get it?) gonna change it, so let me get to the real problem with these human wasted resources.
It's not the administrative part of this HR job I have a problem with. In a big organization, you're gonna need a few people to take care of the health plan, the tax deductions, the vacation time, etc. to let people work at their real jobs. That's what you call, well, used to call, being a clerk, and that term went away even longer ago, I think. There's nothing wrong with it. Someone who works on brand-new software to approve vacation days, and get people signed up for this and that is still just as much of a clerk as the guy who did it on yellow legal pads, and kept open-ring binders in the 1970's. You do know Peak Stupidity HATES euphemisms, right?
It's the hiring part of the job that makes these HR (mostly) women into the tyrants of the working world. This goes back more than 2 decades for me, as, at a technical job, the boss was telling us that he wanted to hire this one guy who had experience at this certain job. "I don't know... we've got to get it through HR" he worried, and rightly so, cause I never saw the guy show up. WTF should the boss (of this group, anyway) not be able to hire whomever he feels like? I was shocked by this revelation. They are middlewomen, and just as people in the FIRE "industries" are nothing but middlemen, they get off on making the productive people bow down to them, due to their power in the hiring process.
HR people KNOW NOTHING about the jobs that they are hiring people to do. If they did, they'd probably be DOING those jobs, rather than making up fancy processes to screen out people. The Peak Stupidity blog staff [uh-huh? - Ed] is most familiar with the software field as far as this piece of stupidity goes. There are thousands of types of scripts or "packages" or "environments" or what-have-you that can be asked for in a job description. Many of these can be learned over a weekend. OK, it may take a while to get faster, but, damn, it's just not any big deal, but these are just mysterious black boxes to the HR women. "Oh, you don't 'have' php? Oooh, this is not gonna work.". "Oh, you use the open-source version of Word. Nah, you're not Big Corp material - I'm so sorry." It's easier just to have a friend that you used to "work for" to back you up for any little piece of software in the job description. Yeah, that's what I'm telling you. Just get the job - ever heard of OJT? That works, if you already have the smarts.
I could tell more stories, but Peak Stupidity doesn't like to reveal all, as you may have noticed. These HR clowns are traveling all over the world, BTW, acting like Queens of the Skies, going to Brazil to hire some people to bring back as cheap labor on H-1B visas, for instance - yes, I've talked to them. Apparently there are not enough smart people here ... well, not that can be bossed around as much as foreigners on "temporary" work visas. Even if you seem quite qualified for a job, you may find out that the ad is in place just to fulfill US law, but the description can be made tighter at will to screen out anyone who may be qualified but is not that specific work-visa guy that the ad was made to ass-cover.
Yet, one has to be on the best side for these people, so it's really not good to bring up any of this material herein during an interview with one of these "generalists". [disclaimer required per Peak Stupidity legal dept.]. The lack of knowledge in the fields that they are hiring for, combined with the abiltiy to force prospective employees to kiss ass, or at the very least, be nice, indeed turns these people into the scourge of the Big-Biz world. Then, since they are part of the corporate dead-mass, you've got to put up with this type of crap:
Whaaaa???
Due to blood pressure concerns the rest about this scourge of the Big-Biz world will be covered by two more short posts, I think, one on having to deal with the HR department when already on the job, and another involving computer-based selection of employees.
Comments (6)
"How are you doing today?" - Seriously?
Posted On: Saturday - March 31st 2018 7:49PM MST
In Topics: Humor Curmudgeonry Big-Biz Stupidity Customer Care
I'll start first with the Curmudgeonry part: Big Business likes total control of the actions of their employees these days. You've talked to people, I'm sure, on customer support (oops, "customer care") lines who are working off of a script. It's probably something like a flow chart, but so computerized that the dot-Indian named Conner may have a real problem if you interrupt with "how are you doing this morning?". He may even have to cntrl-alt-delete out of his system, and start all over. That tends to piss people off on both ends.
The big corps. really want to take judgement and decision-making away from the employees as much as they possibly can. Is it that this is really necessary, since we are after all, nearing Peak Stupidity? Nah, it's probably due to an oversupply of moronic MBA's. The stupid may exist on the other end versus the way the CEO sees it.
Anyway, lots of retail chains have cashiers who are trained to say the same one line to the customers, though maybe it changes every few years to shake up the whole corporate ladder as a new MBA comes up with something. "Have a nice day!" is kind of 1970's and only really worked in California, when there was still something left of it. For a while now, at the grocery store it's been "did you find everything OK?" I don't really get the question as well as I should after many hundreds of times hearing it. No, I usually have forgotten something. If I don't find something, I often ask - does that mean I should answer in the affirmative? I didn't come here for everything, cause some things are lots cheaper at another store. "Well, I'm here." is usually the answer. It's kind of noncommittal, seeing as the girl cashier does not really give a shit what I say. Her job is done.
Now, the most recent thing is just a simple "how are you doing today?" That's a lot better, almost like it's something people might say even if they haven't read and acknowledged the three memos from corporate. A few days back though (yeah, OK, finally to the humor part), after they'd just implemented this new MBA-thesis-inspired cashier-greeting-analysis-team-approved program, a lady customer in line was buying just one item. That's a good thing. I'm not much of a shopper and was ready to get out of there. The one item was tampons, and there was no hiding them, especially from an avowed expert.
The cashier, with no thought whatsoever goes "how are you doing today?", per new store policy. "How the hell do you think she's doing, she's buying nothing but a pack of tampons? It's not like she's stocking up along with the rest of the groceries; this is more a flow issue.", I
PS: As someone who is somewhat familiar with computers and software, I can see a nice plug in (no, not literally) to the
No comments - Click here to start thread
The Healthcare Stasi and Women's Suffrage
Posted On: Friday - March 30th 2018 8:02PM MST
In Topics: US Police State Pundits Liberty/Libertarianism Healthcare Stupidity Female Stupidity
Yesterday's post on the pundit Michelle Malkin's article about government-supported coercion of dental patients brings up a larger point. She writes about a specific case of a family being ratted out for wanting to do their own thinking on whether, where, and when, to bring their kids to the dentist. She also does relate this case to others and not just in the dentistry field, in which Big-Gov, at various levels, is up in our business just due to the fact that socialized medicine has let them.
That's all fine, and it's important writing by Mrs. Malkin. We don't intend to make our larger point solely at the expense of our number 2 pundit, but this is about women and women-run societies in general. She's a woman. No, the Peak Stupidity blog has not brought up the "matriarchy" before, but the reader must be well aware of how much of the institutions in America are, if not women-run, heavily influenced. The women's "franchise", "suffrage", or right to vote has been a 100-year-long experiment for which the results are in - survey says: big, stupid failure! I will not bring up this as the bogeywoman behind all the destruction of this country by any means. Looking back, the FED, the income tax and all that financial stupidity were creations of men when only men voted. Still, this women's vote has been a really bad piece of stupidity, and is bearing it's fruit nowadays.
"How is this related to the "Healthcare Stasi" department of the US Police State and Michelle Malkin, for that matter?", the reader may rightly ask. Though I may be just speculating in regard to this pundit and the column in question, it can be used as an example of how the general way of thinking is different between men and woman. The families being brought up, and their difficulties with the heavy hand of government are a human interest story. The women want to see only the human side of everything, and not the principles, legal framework, or the basic system of governance that are the real root causes. Sure, Mrs. Malkin may be against the specific laws that allow the
However, does Mrs. Malkin or do almost any women write about, support, or vote for real bedrock Libertarian principles? I just don't notice many at all. Women tend to vote for BIG STATE more than men. They look at the small and medium picture, as do many men too, but it seems ONLY men can see the big picture and found and operate a society with real justice and rule-of-law. "Oh, have some compassion!" you hear from the women and womenized crowd. "Justice tempered with mercy" is a phrase you read, but you can't have real justice if mercy is given willy-nilly due to our feeeeelings.
This Police State we live under was created because not enough Americans have voted for and supported liberty over the years. The smaller parts, such as the tyranny of CPS, and the Educational Stupidity may be a problem for many women because that is where they "live", but these institutions are almost all full of women. None of them look at the bigger picture and would ever think of invoking the golden rule for once in their lives in addition to imagining unintended consequences. "What would happen if my dear kids got into this situation?" "Hmmm, could this policy end up being misused by those in power?" Nope, they don't do the kind of thinking the Founding Fathers of America did.
We just can't continue to have women running this place. It was bad enough with men in charge, as not enough of them were bright enough to fight the statists and the internal Commie invasion. With women that don't even think of basic principles, this shit-show won't last. That's our axiom here at Peak Stupidity - all of this stuff will end with the coming crash due to the Financial Stupidity and things get REAL. Women will be women and men will be men again at that time. Before then, we can only laugh at this stuff, hopefully from afar.
Lastly, I will repeat that this is no screed against Michelle Malkin, after having praised her just yesterday. It's just thoughts that came up upon reading her description of the problem without even one paragraph knocking Socialist, excuse me, "Single-Payer" medicine. In support of our opinion against the woman's vote, however, I will present as Exhibit A, our number 1 pundit, Miss Ann Coulter. She agrees with Peak Stupidity, though her reasoning is thus:
"I think [women] should be armed but should not vote. No, they all have to give up their vote, not just, you know, the lady clapping and me. The problem with women voting -- and your Communists will back me up on this -- is that, you know, women have no capacity to understand how money is earned. They have a lot of ideas on how to spend it. And when they take these polls, it's always more money on education, more money on child care, more money on day care.""We" are just more deeply in LUV every day. If just a few more women thought like Miss Coulter, we'd be rid of the expression "f___ing her brains out" in a jiffy.
[From Conservapedia]
No comments - Click here to start thread
Big-Gov and the Dental Branch of the American Stasi
Posted On: Thursday - March 29th 2018 11:33AM MST
In Topics: US Police State Pundits Liberty/Libertarianism US Feral Government Healthcare Stupidity
Mrs. Michelle Malkin would have to be 2nd to the Peak Stupidity blog's favorite of the few NSPs*, Miss Ann Coulter**. She is a long-term American, former Filipina, who does not always write on topics of interest to this blog, but never has written anything we've disagreed with either. BTW, does it help being a cutie to be our favorites here? Nah, this is coincidental, seriously. More about female pundits and the female mindset
Mirs. Malkin's latest column, "The Snitches in Your Kids’ Dental Office", is about the growing overarching US Police State stupidity as related to the medical, OK, healthcare industry. This stuff started a ways back, as doctor's offices came out with survey paperwork that included questions about guns in the home. OK, no matter what you think on gun safety, safety is NOT a health matter (yeah, it may CAUSE a health matter later if you poke your eye out, per Mom, but that's not the same thing). I didn't see any questions about swimming pools, with or without diving boards, how high you've got your water heater turned up ... that could go on and on. DO NOT answer these questions except with the standard NOYFB! Yeah, None Of Your Fucking Business is the new N/A.
With the modern State-induced bureaucracy pervasive in the medical industry, comes ways of Big-Gov collecting formerly-private information on you and your family, but in addition, coercing patients into actions based on the government's wishes. This one is not about the Feral Government directly, yet they are indirectly behind all of this, as the various States are now sack-hangers of Fed Gov due to various reasons to be the subject of an upcoming post (there's a lot of upcoming posts around here, dammit). Mrs. Malkin's story is about a family who is under the strong hand of BIG DENTISTRY, it seems. Keep in mind that this one story is not the whole picture. This stuff goes on a lot, but most parents do not raise the hell that they should. They meekly go along for various reasons (another post?!)
This is another "read the whole thing" deal (link near the top), but just a few excerpts here may help you see the problem. The gist of it:
Mom Trey Hoyumpa shared a letter last week on Facebook from a dental office called Smiles 4 Keeps in Bartonsville, Pennsylvania. It informed her that if she did not make a dental appointment for “regular professional cleanings” for her child, she could be charged with “dental neglect.” Citing a law called Pennsylvania Act 31 on child abuse recognition and reporting, the dental office threatened to report the mom to state authorities if she did not schedule an appointment.Now this faceboot part is part of the point of the continuation of this post later, regarding the female view of our societal problems. Yes, that includes Miss Malkin, probably.
Next here's discussion about the causes of Pennsylvania's ability to harass a family in this manner:
Brett Darken wrote: “Anyone familiar with ‘family court,’ DCF, state probate and guardianship courts know well this story. In any other context, it would be considered a threat, coercion and intimidation under RICO laws. But because it’s the government, it’s legal.”Yeah, OK, if you're gonna be a pundit, you've gotta make some puns, I GET THAT! (good ones too, I'll admit)
SNIP
Skenazy drills down to the core: “The issue here is how easy it is to drag a family into an abuse investigation, and how hard it is for the family, like an impacted molar, to get itself extracted.”
The real basic root cause, how people have let their governments get way too big and run their lives is not addressed. OK, maybe that's due to the length of the column, or just sticking to the smaller subject here. However, that's the stuff that never gets addressed, and the mostly female-run society that America is now, is a major contributing factor. That is the segue-way into part 2, to come hopefully tonight.
* Non Stupid Pundits
** Who just hit another column out-o-the-park with this latest sarcastic criticism of President Trump, titled "3-D Chess–It Only LOOKS Like Trump Is Throwing Away His Presidency!"
No comments - Click here to start thread