Sunday Nonsense, 19/09/21

Because everything is closed and you have nothing better to do.

Bed Of Nails Aims For Sales.

 I logged into Facebook the other day, presumably because I hate myself on some deep level.

 For years now, the big blue bullshit barn has been tinkering around, trying to find what makes the most appealing setup for its users, without once realising that the best iteration of itself was a simple scrolling news feed in which people could tell each other what they were doing or thinking. 

 Determined  never to go back to the model that made them successful, Facebook now tends to show me a feed that is 70% ads and 30% posts from a couple of days ago that are generating interaction and "likes." You'd better hope that when you die someone leaves a little sad emoji under it, or the news will be buried under an avalanche of online product scams and one well shot photo of someone's dinner. 

 On this particular occasion, I was advertised a Muscle Mat, because I'm the kind of all-protein-diet, superswole gym bro who only lives to move iron. 

 Or because something in the murky algorithms is aware I own at least one dumbell. Either way, the muscle mat was a mat covered in sharp, pointy plastic that allegedly stimulates blood flow to the skin when you lie on it in order to aid muscle recovery after one of my no-doubt Herculean workouts. Forty nine pounds, which is about fifty five bucks.

 Which is odd, because a few weeks ago I was offered a Shakti Mat, because Facebook also thinks I'm the sort of lithe, vegan yoga practitioner who needs to align his chakras before he can get anything done for the day.

 The idea behind a Shakti mat is that it's a mat covered in sharp, pointy plastic that improves flow of blood to the skin in order to help with the flow of your chi and purify you of toxins. Sixty nine bucks, or fifty pounds.

 

On a totally unrelated note, here's a doormat I saw for fourteen pounds at work. The idea behind it is that it’s a mat covered in hard, pointy plastic to scrape the shit off your boots and also align their chakras and improve their blood flow when they’re done working out, I guess.

 I haven't tried lying on it yet, because I'm not a fucking dickhead.

An Honour and a Privilege

There’s a rumour going around that Gavin Williamson, the recently outed education secretary who was in charge of a series of embarrassing and disastrous U-turns over what, exactly, schools were going to do about the pandemic, is going to be knighted.

A number of people find this suspicious, as Williamson was an utter failure in his position and his approval numbers amongst Conservative voters were always terrible. As a career politician and former Chief Whip of the Party, it was surmised by cynical people that he only clung to his job because he had dirt on everyone else, an allegation that seems to be supported by the fact that he might soon become Sir Gavin despite being, without sounding overly harsh, useless and universally hated.

I have to confess that like a lot of people in the UK, I don’t really understand the honours system. If you’re knighted you get to put “Sir” in front of your name, and nobody else gives a shit. But unlike a lot of people in the UK, I have a decent supply of free time and masochism, so I decided to look into it. If this isn’t your bag, skip on down to the “Golf” section. Yes, really.

The Most Noble Order of the Garter: These are people the current monarch personally picks because they’re her favourite. Recipients include people like Kaiser Wilhelm, who was stripped of the title over the whole “starting World War I” business, and Emperor Hirohito of Japan, who was stripped of the title over World War II, during which his country carried out inumerable war crimes and acts of torture. Fortunately, he was given his title back in 1971, because who remembers what the Japanese got up to on his watch, anyway?!

The Most Honourable Order Of The Bath: Named for an ancient bathing ceremony involved in becoming a knight, something like a baptism, recipients of this honour include Benito Mussolini (anulled due, once again, to the global conflict he had a hand in), noted genocide fan Robert Mugabe, and brutal Romanian starvation architect Nicolae Ceausescu. The palace were savvy enough to revoke his title twenty four whole hours before his own people dragged him into the street and beheaded him.

The Most Distinguished Order Of St. Michael And St. George: Originally a military honour, this one seems to now mostly go to people who work as foreign diplomats. As such, we’ve never heard of most of them (Sir Tomasi Puapua, Governor-General of Tuvalu, for example.) Nobody has been stripped of this title for a while, so I assume these people are low-profile enough that their crimes don’t make the news.

The Distinguished Service Order: Another military award, mostly defunct by the looks of it.

The Royal Victorian Order: Invented by Queen Victoria, this is another one where the monarch gets to personally give a reward to people who have served them well. The environmentalist Cyril Littlewood had one of these, before they found out he sexually abused young girls. Hubert Chesshyre, who according to Wikipedia did a year in the army before taking up dressing in a silly frock and waving Royal flags for the rest of his life, was also a Knight of the Royal Victoria Order before they found out he sexually abused young boys.

Knight Bachelor: Knights Bachelor are knights that don’t belong to any specific order, and are the lowest ranking Knights. I’m not certain, but I’m pretty sure this means they can only move in an L shape, three squares at a time. Their ranks formerly included two corrupt bankers (Fred Goodwin and James Crosby), George Castledine (stripped of his title for sexual misconduct), Allan Kemakeza (stripped for extortion) and Ron Brierly (stripped for child pornography.)

O.B.E., C.B.E, M.B.E etc.: Below the “proper” knights we have various Empire Awards, Order of the British Empire, Comander of the British Empire, and so on. Anything with a “B.E” at the end, basically, including awards for people who are not British citizens nor from countries where the Queen is head of state, at which point Honourary Knighthoods are awarded but the title of “Sir” is not allowed. These people can, however, put the relevant letters after their name, like Harvey Weinstein did before he was stripped of his titles for… Well, lots of things. Five other CBEs have been stripped of their titles for child abuse, including Rolf Harris, although some of them manage to hide it on Wikipedia by using the marginally more palatable term “sexual abuse” without clarifying, as in the case of Freddie Emery Wallace, that the abuse in question involved kids.

O.B.E’s, meanwhile, have been stripped from three people specifically for child sex offenses and a further six for various sexual assaults. With a little digging, all but one of these turned out to have involved children. Again.

M.B.Es, score eleven separate specific counts of child sex crime and five of other sexual assaults, three of which turn out to involve kids. An unknown from the other two is Janmadas Virgi Sudra, who (I’m not making this up) found a diamond that was used in the Royal Jewellery, which apparently got him well connected enough that he was able to scrub his records, as I can’t find details on his case.

Christ...

When breaking down these recipients of royal honours, I’ve only listed people guilty of really repugnant stuff. There are far more who got done for things like fraud or “improper conduct” or the like. I also didn’t investigate things like nonspecific breaches of conduct, although I suspect a lot of those will turn out to be child abuse, too. It goes without saying that plenty of people who have retained their titles are also probably guilty of horrendous things.

We’re also missing some real heavy hitters, like Sir Jimmy Savile, who was still a knight at the time of his death and thus cannot have his title stripped no matter how many women, children and corpses he molested. The same goes for prodigious paedophile MP Sir Cyril Smith, who died with his honours intact.

“But Luke,” a helpful straw man might pipe up, “There are lots of people given titles, surely given the sample size there were bound to be criminals?”

Well, yes, but with the exception of the world wars and Ceauscescu, the list above only contains cases since the year 2000.

With all of this in mind, the people who are complaining that Gavin Williamson shouldn’t get a knighthood are correct. He doesn’t seem anywhere near odious enough. The worst thing he’s done to children is disrupt their exams.

Golf - The Only Time I’ll Ever Write About It, I Promise.

Okay, that got a little rough. Let’s end on something lighter.

I hate golf. Or, more accurately, I hate people who play golf, because they’re always the sort of monied assholes who think they deserve to take up miles and miles of land and then make up silly rules about who is allowed on it and great, now I’m thinking about the monarchy again.

Something unlikely happened the other day, however, when I read an interesting golf fact, the super-rare Pokemon of facts.

In Scandinavia, there is a golf course that straddles the border between Finland and Sweden. If you hit your ball from the tee of the sixth hole, it will technically be in the air for a little over an hour as it crosses an international time line.

I thought this was a cheerful little diversion and I posted it to Reddit’s “Today I Learned” section, pretty much as worded above.

At least three people jumped down my throat in the comments because they felt like I’d used the word “technically” incorrectly.

I’m just about capable, due to brain medication and advancing years, to ignore arguments that I could get drawn into online. So I didn’t respond. For whatever it’s worth, the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary, via Google, is as follows:

According to a strict interpretation of the facts (ie: “technically”) you can strike a ball at noon on the sixth tee of that course and it will land at just after 1pm, and anyone who disagrees on Reddit can eat my entire asshole.

Nonetheless, it provided a nice encapsulation of why the internet can’t have nice things. Even a piece of passing whimsy will get attacked by some dreary pedant, and it’s exhausting.

Which is why you’re better off getting your internet via a subscription service, like this one. Via one easy click. If you haven’t already.

*Coughs.*