Mostly Harmless

Mostly about my amusement

Category: Just Stupid (page 1 of 12)

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November 6, 2022 / 2 Comments

Oh, I do have a WordPress Blog.

It’s been ages since I last posted on my blog and I had been wanting to start again. What to talk about?

The Great Twitter to Mastodon Migration of 2022!

It’s not exactly a migration, it’s more like a mass exodus.

For anyone who’s not aware, Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter on October 27th, 2022. This was met by a lot of concerns from Twitter users. He likes to proclaim that he’s a “free speech absolutist” and if you think that means hate speech, anti-wokeness and anti-cancel culture then you are not wrong.

Note: “Wokeness” and “cancel culture” is not a thing. it never has been. Consequences, however are real.

In his first week he posted a nonsense conspiracy reply back to Hillary Clinton and subsequently deleted it. That was not bad but instead of apologizing for spreading that nonsense, he just kept mum. I’m glad he deleted it but, really how dumb do you have to be to go that way?

Then there was the matter of paying a monthly fee to get a “Blue Checkmark™”.

Putting aside the tone deaf “lords & peasants” nonsense, the idea is you pay and you get a blue checkmark seal of approval and other benefits.

It’s an awful idea. First, the existing blue checkmark was to let people know they were reading tweets from a verified person.

Do you follow Jeri Ryan? I do; she’s very cool.

The check mark is to let you know, that’s not a scammer pretending to be Jeri Ryan. Here’s her reply about the $8/month idea.

Verification has always been dodgy on Twitter. The rules changed, sometimes Twitter verified people and sometimes they did not.

The Blue Checkmark is not about spam or bots. It never has been. It’s about validating who that celebrity is.

Anyone who has had to deal with trolls and abusers know this is a bad idea. A scammer or phisher who pays for bulletproof hosting is not going to have a problem with $8/month if it helps them make their target dollars per month.

No one Begrudges Twitter Being Profitable

Twitter is (now) a private company. I don’t know if it has ever been profitable but Musk bought it for $44 billion and that was financed. Making money is a valid goal. This blue checkmark idea is just bad and no one should sign up for that.

Any website owner knows, advertising is king. No one likes ads. No one likes that a website shows me ad for that electronics I was browsing on Amazon. It is creepy. But it is an accepted way to make money on the Internet.

Elon Musk’s way of handling advertisers is typical Elon Musk.

That’s just a nonsense reply. Anyone who thinks it’s a “free speech in America” issue is not from this planet.

Just look at Ye’s troubles. Kanye West has lost major endorsements because he spews unapologetic anti-Semitic hate speech. Why would any brand want to be associated with that?

That’s always been the concern with Twitter being taken over my Elon Musk. Twitter has always been a hellscape when it comes to abuse. Sometimes they nailed it, other times they would routinely punish the wrong person and give the abuser a pass. With his treatment of hate speech/misinformation being “free speech” (it’s not) who wants to posting ads on that platform?

Mastodon is Federated and That’s a Good Thing

My first day really using Mastodon went like this.

  • I posted some toots. They’re called “toots”.
  • Someone replied at me “You smell Jewish” and their profile made it clear they were into “free speech”.
  • I reported them, added a couple of their posts that used the N-word to the report and blocked them.

It’s the Internet and I expected abusers. With a federated model I was not sure my report would mean anything. I was wrong!

Somewhere an admin got that report. They looked at it and I am sure they said “Oh. Yeah. That’s bad.” and banned the user.

There was no “We received your report”, there was no “That user does not violate the TOS”, they just dealt with it. Cool.

I’ll maintain both my Twitter account and my Mastodon account for now. It’s not a big deal, I do that today with Facebook and Twitter. I can be found at this URL.

https://mastodon.xyz/@jan_dembowski

Mastodon

I’ll see how it goes. Mastodon is currently a little slow and sometimes times out on me. That’s OK! That means people are joining it and that’s a good problem to have.

July 11, 2018

In America it’s pronounced “CUE”

I’m a little miffed and want to write this down.

My mother and I went to the local Giunta’s Meat Farms (it’s called MEAT FARMS, how can I not like that place?) and wanted to get a few bottles of wine. There’s a local wine and liquor shop on the other end of the same strip. We walked there to save time and a few miles.

This isn’t the place we normally buy wine at. Usually we go to a store on Old Country Road that is ran by a nice Korean American couple. They’re from Argentina and they speak Spanish perfectly. I’m ashamed of my 2 year-old level grammar when they speak. They’re nice and know their wine. Some of their recommendations have been very good.

The place we went today had a person who felt the need to educate my mother about wine and tried to convince her that she wanted a rosé. She doesn’t like that type of wine, said so and he continued his hard sell. She and I shortly told him “thanks, but we know what we’re looking for”.

Mom has been educated about wine well before he was born. I swear, he was mansplaining wine to her.

As we’re checking out, Mom asked him if the store carries Don Q rum. She pronounced it “don COO”. He looked at us weird and feigned that he didn’t know what we meant. Finally he says

Oh, you mean “dän CUE”. No, we don’t carry it.

To which I replied

We’re Puerto Rican, we pronounce it “don COO”.

No big deal, right? While we are finishing up paying for the wine, that’s when he explained.

In America it’s pronounced “CUE”. You can try stores in Brentwood or Wyandanch.

Oh. That’s how it is in “America”. Good to know.

A little background about Long Island. Both of those towns are considered “minority” places and not in a flattering way. You know when that Orange Racist, who’s also currently president, talks about MS-13? He’s usually using Brentwood as his example.

There’s nothing wrong with those places and yeah, we’ve been to both towns before. There are some amazing Hispanic restaurants in Brentwood.

As we’re walking out and I’m holding the door for Mom, she clearly says out loud:

We are never shopping in this store again.

Unless that person’s brain condition got to his ears, he received the message loud and clear. In America we can choose which stores we shop in. **** that guy and his racist attitude.

July 3, 2015

That time, and that time and the other time

Hey, remember that time when

  • Reviewing a male IT candidate to hire, in the closed room meeting where someone said “Don’t hire him, he’s about the right age for having a baby”?
  • Or that time in another closed room meeting someone else said “I’m going to remove points from that candidate because he’s a man“?
  • Or that time someone else said “I don’t like his attitude, he’s bossy”?
  • Or that time the women crowded around the one man in the room and talked over him? His idea was eventually the one that solve the problem but a week was wasted because he was a man. You remember that time, right?
  • Or the time a women got in a man’s face at work and started screaming at him because in her native culture men don’t talk to women with authority?
  • Or that time at work when women questioned a man’s sexual preferences behind his back because he was effective and managed his project well?
  • Or that time when an extremely well qualified man with certifications, training and experience came to present his company’s product and all the women did was fawn over his looks? That meeting where the women could not even remember the product name or function?
  • Or my favorite, where a man and all of his work was dismissed with a one syllable word that’s not ever used in polite company? You have to remember that time.

None of that ever happened, you have to replace all the above male references with female.

Once you’ve done that, then you have to realize that it happens all the time. I’ve seen it and I’ve almost always replied with “Stop and take that back. I’m not kidding, you will be reported to HR.” The one time I didn’t was when another two coworkers beat me to the punch.

The amount of bullshit professional women deal with is exhausting to look at. To. Look. At. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live with that nonsense day in and day out.

No actually, I can imagine it. I married the smartest woman I know. I do that weird thing where I like to listen to women and I talk to her all the time.

I’ve heard what it was like for her to be a professional with a) an MBA in International Business, b) a second MBA degree in Advanced Accounting, c) being a CPA and d) many years of experience in corporate america managing a department of 40 people. It wasn’t easy for her ever and the misogynistic nonsense was a constant drag. It was a real and tangible component of every work day.

How different would the world be if the playing field removed that nonsense? What else could women accomplish if they didn’t have to deal with the weight of this crap and microaggression?

*Re reads Lily’s education and experience*

Wow. Did I marry up.

I’m a man in an industry that caters to, coddle and promotes men. I get the benefit of that just by showing up. I’m not diminishing my accomplishments. But I have to acknowledge that another group has to work harder than I do to get to the same place. By default. That’s just stupid and stamping that out has to continue.

This whole post is because I read the comments. I do not think that a few vocal trolls replying in large volume indicates how a community is in reality. But it is the trolls that will cost any group of people members from joining or staying just to avoid that bullshit. That would be the worst and I do not ever want to see that in any community I associate with.

September 3, 2014

“If anyone else drives the car, we will impound it.”

Nice blog post title. That’s the memory that sticks out from my Dollar Rent A Car experience. It turns out that Lily and I do not react well to being treated badly when doing something innocuous like renting a car. I’ll explain.

Oh, and if you do rent a car? Call your insurance company and credit card first. You may not need to pay for extra car insurance from the rental company.

VIVA LAS VEGAS!

Recently my family went on a vacation to Las Vegas. Our flight was delayed so we arrived about 1 AM New York time and everyone from the flight was tired.

McCarran airport organizes its rental car companies offsite and we took a quick shuttle bus to the location. When we got to the Dollar counter the gentleman pulled up our reservation, looked at our ID, credit card, etc.

Soon we got down to brass tacks.

Him: “Which of these insurance plans do you want?”
Me: None of them, thank you.

The plans were arranged on a card like so.

  1. Buy this one! This one! Me! Be safe! Safest!
  2. Meh. OK then, suit yourself. But I hope nothing bad happens for your sake.
  3. You. Cheap. Bastard. You suck. See if I care.

You get the idea. The minimum plan was an additional $25 per day that we didn’t need.

Him: “What? What? You are going to drive the car with no insurance?”
Me: We have that covered via our car insurance and the credit card.

Did I mention that Lily and I have traveled before? Not our first time at the rodeo.

The credit card I used covers almost up to the KBB value of the rental car and that’s a secondary insurance. With our main auto insurance it covers more; we called both companies and checked.

Him: “Where are you from?”
Me: New York.
Him: “Well, this is Nevada, not New York. It’s different here. Your coverage doesn’t work here.”

Gee, thanks buddy. I thought we were in Newark, NJ. I’m sure you know what you are talking about.

This led to more scintillating conversation where both my wife and I were treated like idiots. The rep behind the counter kept interrupting us, explained to us repeatedly that we had to select and buy an insurance option from him.

Him: “You are going to rent this car without insurance??”
Me: No, we have-
Him: “Do you understand that if ANYTHING happens to this car we will come after YOU?”
Me: I expect that-
Him: “Are you prepared to replace this car?”

Seriously, that happened. I get that they feel that they need to “inform” the customer. But I work in support too and that’s never an appropriate way to talk to people let alone customers.

Me: So, you are refusing to rent us that car?

Now that sped things up. He began to angrily process our reservation. Honestly, he was acting like we were stealing food from his family.

Him: “Who is going to drive the car?”
Me: Just me.

And that’s when he said it. I’ll just make this a little bigger to stress that.

impound-the-car

I snorted out loud at that one. For a second I really wanted to get into it with this malcontent and ask “Even if I use valet parking and how would you know?” but we were wasting enough time. We didn’t come to here to spend time with Dollar Rent A Car.

I do all the driving on vacations. I like to, it’s not really a problem for me. I would have preferred to have added Lily as a driver but I didn’t want to prolong this any further.

While waiting for my papers I did shoot off this tweet.

Twitter is a good venue for complaining.

Hello? Dollar Rent A Car? This is not how you ever treat customers.

It’s just a car rental. While that may be a big deal for a car rental company, it’s only something I do maybe once a year. And I did accept and drive off with the car so I wasn’t mortally offended.

Next time I need a car? There’s no chance that I’ll even consider Dollar again. It’s not that I think Dollar a “bad” company but after that first impression why would I ever give them my business or recommend them to anyone?

When I’m the customer you only get one pass at me with your stunning ignorance and bad attitude.

June 24, 2014

There is no anonymity on the Internet

Well, at least in the U.S. there really isn’t. This morning around 2 AM EDT a troll followed me from a topic on the WordPress forums from Denver, Colorado.

He’d poked around for about 30 minutes with his Android tablet using Firefox (likely from his parents basement) and left a racist contact form submission about my wife and how I “struck out with pretty white girls and ended up in the bottom of the social barrel”.

There’s something really sad and pathetic about someone posting that from their parent’s basement after midnight their local time.

None of that bothers me; trolls on the Internet have been around forever. I’ve heard that in the work place (though that was 20 years ago) and hey, it’s the Internet.

Had he left anything remotely threatening then instead of a blog post I’d be preserving log data for law enforcement and making some calls this morning.

What irks me is when a plugin developer follows me home to continue an argument or leave a “<EXPLETIVE DELETED> YOU!” message. When that happens I don’t get angry but I do get disappointed. It doesn’t happen often as most WordPress developers are cool.

Troll are bad. WordPress developers losing their mind? More sad than anything else. I expect people who contribute to the community to be better than that. 😉

March 5, 2014

I’ll take “Find a new radio station” for $100 Alex

On the short ride to the train station just now I just heard this stupidity.

“If you were a single woman what would you prefer your ex-boyfriend tell people about you and why you broke up?

  1. You’re a bitch
  2. You’re a slut
  3. You’re crazy

What do you think?”

The two women on the show liked options 2 and 3. The guy who asked the question thought option 1 was best. I’d have paid money to hear one of women say something like “Really? Are you out of your mind? I don’t date lowlifes.” That may have happened, I switched to another station before I could listen to more.

Yes, it’s FM morning radio and not NPR but seriously? I mean pre-teens tune into that station. I don’t think my 12 and 10 year-olds listen to that station but I’m going to check.

Jan looks for coffee on the train and find none. That’s a pity.

I tend to jump around the radio looking for music and often settle on the current “they’re not WLIR from the 80s but they’ll do today” station. At least not-WLIR plays a lot of Green Day and Foo Fighters. They’re not really better but the music selection is alright.

Normally the first station is all about yucks and phone pranks. There’s another Long Island FM station that has insane reality TV type setup morning nonsense and I don’t even bother with them anymore. I get the appeal of low brow humor (insert fart joke HERE) but that’s just too stupid.

There’s low brow and then there’s misogyny and that’s not funny at all.

August 20, 2011

I must be on a Jon Stewart roll

Okay, if you follow Fox news and you buy into the whole “class warfare” nonsense, then you too are an imbecile. You can still watch Fox news (no idea why myself) but don’t buy the spin.

When Warren Buffet talks about closing loop holes, people should understand that he know’s what he’s talking about. He should be the sort of person Fox would listen to: self-made and wealthy. He’s a smart and very successful. So now he’s a socialist…? How did they form that conclusion?

Read up on it over at the Atlantic Wire. Naturally they have videos and those are worth watching. It’s fun to note that you can’t even talk about raising taxes with some people but they have no problem raising taxes on everyone else.

April 19, 2011

Oompa Loompa for President?

I’m finding it really amazing that this extremely talented con-artist talks about running for the office of the POTUS and the press just eat it up. What next, Howard Stern for office?

And don’t think I’m being negative by referring to someone as a con-artist; except for banks (who likes them anyway?) I don’t think he’s ever needed to pilfer from old ladies. It’s not easy on him going on a press road show while pimping his television program.

What does this character have that qualifies him for office? He appeals to the racist birthers, he’s a to-big-to-fail business man, and he has a show on TV. Oh, and he see hatred coming from the eyes of Bill Crosby.

Except for demonizing President Obama, does this bad comb-over qualify get Tea Party branding? I thought they were for smaller government and debt, not “let’s make a deal because I can’t pay my loans”. It is true that he is wealthy and gets away with a lot, but does the “Tax Enough Already” crowd see this man as their candidate?

The only good thing for the GOP is that the other nuts in the field are beginning to look rational and sane. I can easily see Rudy starting his new campaign with “Hey, at least I’m not that guy!”

January 9, 2011

Arizona shooting

Not a good week for Arizona.

“The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately Arizona I think is the capital. We are the Mecca for prejudice for prejudice and bigotry,”

via ABC News: Police Hunt for ‘Person of Interest’ in Tucson Shooting

Yesterday a deranged murderer interrupted a gathering arranged by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. She was shot and is in critical condition. 6 innocent people were killed including a 9-year-old child.

The Not-Our-Fault reverse blame game started immediately. Some shrieking radical right-wing blogs wasted no time declaring that the shooter was not one of theirs. This always starts with “the victims are in our prayers” but degenerates into “the left are scum”. This is not a surprise since I rarely come across a conservative blog that’s not a radical pool of nuts. Some of the sites I frequent were actually subdued. The commentators? Not so much.

That doesn’t surprise me. Blog comments are easy and do attract the radical fringe.

Naturally, many people are pointing the finger at the half-term governor. I think that’s only partially correct. When you have political protests and people talk about armed insurrection, they’re culpable for atrocities like this one. The half-term governor is more at fault because she claims to be a leader.

Leaders take responsibility, so except for some quaint statements I’m not anticipating much from her.

You can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater and claim no responsibility when someone get’s trampled in a stampede. That the shooter may not be Tea Party inspired doesn’t change the fact that they were encouraging people to do this.

Do you think if this happens again, the radicals will stand up and say “yep, that one was ours. Here’s his membership card.” Also, why is this not being called a terrorist act?

I’m just asking. Don’t worry, I don’t like to incite violence either.

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Jan Dembowski

Jan Dembowski

I am a software enthusiast who is easily amused and definitely mostly harmless.

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