Sgt Hulka Uncut

uncensored opinion and technical information on stuff

Archive for category Other Topics

Democracy In Montana

Oct 19

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Evil Motherfuckers, Good Ideas, Politics | Comments off

Now you all know I lay heaps of shit on the USA, and in particular the hillbillies that can come from the place I grew up. But there are pockets of resistance even in a seriously “Red” state that Trump won by a significant margin in 2016.

They have this tradition in the western USA of universities of making signs out of white rocks on the mountainsides to advertise say an “L” for Loyola University or a big “M” for the University of Montana.

So, see what some inventive folks have done to welcome Trump to a campaign rally in Missoula today.
image001
Screen Shot 2018-10-19 at 11.32.33 am

Finding out your heroes are cretins

Jan 1

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Good Ideas, Other Topics | Comments off

I remember one of the funniest things I saw early in my life in Australia was a poster of all the rare fish endemic to NSW published by the NSW Department of Parks and Wildlife. A very detailed scientific poster showing habitat and a painting (or lithograph) of something like 20 species of fish with other scientific facts about them (latin name, etc.) and . . . well the ‘and’ is punchline which was a 1 to 4 star rating of how “good eating” they are.

OK, so its a little dark humour, but funny as shit to have a government department playing straight man to a joke they didn’t know existed. I am reminded of this again today as I read about the namer of my favourite bird (Gouldian Finch) and, as a conservationist, his proclivity to consume the birds he examined and described in paint and words. Mmm mmm, them Rosellas are gorgeous , and tasty.
Screen Shot 2018-01-01 at 10.53.22 am

Something for all of us to consider as we examine the conflicted and sometimes dark pasts of people with just celebrity or perhaps even our heroes as they continue to be exposed in the coming year. Beware the hero, because his arrival always heralds the demise of commoners such as yourself. Let’s just hope I don’t find out J Willard Gibbs died trying to make gold out of straw and shit or something.

Hmmm, maybe I was on to something . . .

Dec 14

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Evil Motherfuckers, Other Topics | Comments off

Because with even USA Today after you, clearly the word for you is repulsive. #repulsive

Sure, I also do movie reviews

Nov 5

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Good Ideas, Other Topics | Comments off

OK, so lets say you are like me and you’re just a touch over anymore superhero films. Even the best more recent ones (Wonder Woman) always end up being a little bit formulaic and frankly, a little bit shit. So, I’ve pretty much sworn off the things, especially if theres a whole tag team of them required to take down a single baddie.

However, the new Thor might be an exception, as they have decided to get some real talent to direct it. If you have never seen any of Taika Waititi, then you are hoping for a pleasant surprise, and maybe it will approach some of his best work, which if you haven’t checked out you should devote 2 minutes to. After that maybe check out Eagle vs Shark, Boy, or What We Do in the Shadows

I’m With That Dick . . .

Sep 22

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Good Ideas, Other Topics, Politics, Science | Comments off

. . . or why the ABC should have all its funding eliminated for censoring me.

OK, in case you missed a very good Hard Quiz Last night in which Jim showed how to play (spoiler alert – by being a freak in his level of knowledge on his special subject AND on how to play game to win) you should try to catch it on iview, or wherever you stream or download content regularly (even, YouTube apparently) Here are the players:

Me on Hard Quiz

OK, so my decision to try to get on the show was one of those really long considered decisions I have made in my life, prompted by someone sitting next to you while watching season 1 and saying, “You should go on that show, you’re a fucking smartarse”

Having really no response to that, and a computer in my lap at the time, I logged into the advertised site, answered a few details about myself, took a quick test, and bada bing, I’m in. OK, so it was a bit more detailed than that, as after the quiz I had to do a Skype interview with a producer and take another untimed test in person. Now, since I live in the remotest part of the earth, and doing it all remotely, I’m thinking I might have been the only person in the west that applied and they let me in to meet a regional diversity policy foisted on the show by a Senate Estimates Committee.

But, sitting in the green room with Jim and Carolyn I found out that they went to auditions in person in Sydney and Melbourne, with lots and lots of other people. So apparently the tests were a little harder than I thought, or there definitely IS a regional diversity policy. I was congratulating Jim after the taping about what an obsessive level of knowledge he had about the Rockford Files, a pretty obscure US tv show from the 70s. It turns out that he had only picked it so that it fit his plan to not just go on Hard Quiz, but to WIN Hard Quiz. He binge watched every old episode of the show (122 of them), wrote himself out ‘hundreds of pages’ of test questions and answers and memorised them, and also binge watched every episode of Hard Quiz to plan his tactics (when to answer fast and when to think a bit). Now that’s some commitment.

So, it was a really fun experience, but I now have to side with Dick Smith and Pauline Hanson to demand that all of the ABCs funding be cut for censoring me. Why? Well, they cut out both of my zinger lines, one of which would have fulfilled one of my lifelong ambitions of cursing on national television, and the other because it was too “political” obviously. Dicks.

In the introductions, Tom asked me “Why did you pick thermodynamics? So that no one could steal off you”. I said, “No it was just an obscure area of my university degree that I found myself repeatedly needing to explain in the past 20 years in order to discuss with people how things like climate change are real and clean coal is bullshit”.

Then, after the perpetual motion machine answer yo see int he episode, I said, “Thats also a lot like how clean coal works.” This is a 100% true and provable statement, and also funny (well, to me)

Now the ABC could not claim that they cut my first line due to content (the word shit) because Tom curses all the time, uses sexual innuendo like a maestro, and in fact said the work “fuck” later in the same episode. So clearly they are trying to stifle factual funny comment that disagrees with their alt-right view on climate change, ‘clean coal’, ‘cold fusion’, and anything else they disagree with. This is why they don’t meet their existing charter or the recent changes in media law that requires them to present material “based on the preponderance of evidence”.

For, if they were to do that, they would have to give me my own half hour show for a season (or maybe just a 1 hour special on 11 Feb) to lampoon complete unscientific crap like clean coal , and basically do a man-crush puff piece on J Willard Gibbs. I could probably get Andrew Dice Clay to narrate. But I digress.

So fuck the ABC and cut all their funding I say, as I have direct evidence of their extreme anti-science censoring of me. Who would have though that nonce Dick Smith would be correct?

Finally, to add insult to injury, they caused me to waste something like 2 to 3 minutes of my allotted 15. Bastards.

So, join my revolution. When I was a young fellow, I heard the world’s comic genius George Carlin identify the 7 words you can’t say on TV, and made a goal to do so. If you want to try, he also identified an excellent alternative. What you want to do is get on TV, but not be the focus of the camera, like in the shot but behind the presenter. And you want to mouth (not say) “I hope all you stupid fucking lip readers are looking in”.

Enjoy your day. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

The word you are looking for is ‘repulsive’

Oct 8

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Evil Motherfuckers, Other Topics, Politics | Comments off

So, finally we may have reached the point where Trump will lose significant support and endorsements for using language that was so vulgar and mysogynistic that even stalwart supporters reacted negatively. I believe that there will be a significant number of wives and girlfriends of white supremacists that will secretly vote for Hillary. Plenty of his core white male support will also have wives, daughters or mothers that could be the target of behaviour like that displayed by Donald Trump, and will also be repulsed by it.

I actually reckon that his campaign had jumped the shark last week when people started leaving his event about half way through the 40 minute rant after he was 80 minutes late. But hopefully this latest revelation is the end of him in this election. The racism, sexism, and bigotry to virtually every constituency I can think of already displayed didn’t seem to do it. Nor has the documented evidence of his poor business skills or the proclivity he has displayed to defraud anyone he encounters in business.

But his final failure is clearly the fact that he is a pathological liar. That’s right, a liar so complete that he believes his own lies and is deluded enough to think that audio, video or written records will somehow disappear, or can be explained away as some conspiracy theory.

Spy magazine clearly nailed it when they dubbed him a short fingered vulgarian in the ’80s.

Spot On

Feb 14

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Good Ideas, Other Topics | Comments off

I don’t actually comment on culture much, although I have my views. Sometimes though, you could comment, or you could just pass on those who you are surprised are residents of Dallas, TX but are appreciative that they are there.

You rock, Dale.

Woah there big fella!

Feb 14

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Economics, Evil Motherfuckers, International, Other Topics | Comments off

OK, in an otherwise excellent post about the out of touchness of CEOs, Vyan goes way too far by saying:

“As a matter of fact most Investment people like Perkins, Zell or even Mitt Romney don’t actually do any real “work” at all, because their Money Does their Work For Them in the form of gaining interest and paying dividends.”

This is kinda bullshit. As a Director and company owner, I worked my way up from the bottom of a business I built myself with no outside investors gifting me anything, or inheriting the whole show. As a result of that, I also have a significant retirement investment account I manage myself and do quite well at, thank you. But if you think for a second that all the research, analysis and planning that I do to make sure I meet or exceed the markets I invest in isn’t work, then fuck you. If you think I shouldn’t use the advantage I have in intelligence, patience and opportunity to make the most of my time, money and ideas, then once again, fuck you. If I am smarter than you and as a result have a better job and am on the way to financial independence and you don’t like it, {ahem} well, you know the drill. It’s ok, I don’t need to be loved by all, but I bet I will be included in many people’s zombie plans, so I sleep OK.

What you should be focusing on is whether the whole package of labour, capital and ideas I am putting into a business and assess whether I am duly compensated for that. A good basis has always as a multiplier of the CEO salaries in comparison with the average worker salary. Way back after WWII it used to be in the 40s. When Ronnie the Raygun took office in the USA, it was 78. Its over 4000 today. Hmmmmmm, but what does the peak CEO do for the world? Isn’t he responsible for making the whole economy work, keeping liquidity maintained and other superhero type shit like that? well, fuck no obviously.

The same guys that inflate the big bubbles in the economy, overheat them with outright fraud and then watch as the fuckers explode while counting their fees based on the transaction, not the OUTCOME of the transaction, get 4000 times the average worker in their companies. And I understand that Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman’s actually spends the large amount of any given week wandering around the house in his undies eating chips, drinking beer and playing whatever Call of Duty is currently hot. And hey, I got no problem with that. You are basically describing my perfect weekend several times a year. But it ain’t worth 4000 times, is all I’m saying.

There’s a revolution coming, and things have gotten so out of balance in the balance between the return on money, ideas and labour in the world, that when it does occur, it’s going to be quite a shock to some, if the balance is corrected.

Cull The Beasts!

Jan 31

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Evil Motherfuckers, Science | Comments off

So, I’ve had a serious look at the shark cull issue, and want to add some analysis as a longer term lover of killing and eating beasts of all sizes. There is what appears to be an OK summary of the facts on The New Daily, and you can read them all for yourself and decide.

I wanted to read some more, as I was not convinced either way, and I want to avoid being biased, so I am going to need to see the estimates of the actual fall in $ from tourism directly attributable with Australia being seen as “dangerous” and then pull out of that body of danger that would surely include spiders, snakes, jellyfish, crocs and plants that are dangerous in this broad red land, and try to come up with something exceeding the $22 million anual cost estimate in the articles “for’ case.

And then I need to be able to answer the question, when exactly did tourists become fearful homebodies, and not see dangerous as a draw card?

I think it might be suss to spend $22 million for a reduction of 1 person killed per year so we can return to our normal rate of humans killed by sharks. Even if we could prove that what we proposed would do what we want it to. And the case for that is not good {cough, cough, by-catch, cough}

However, the facts on the side of which species are threatened and endangered are pretty solid. Here’s the “red list” details you might be familiar with from the IUCN, based on shitloads of peer reviewed evidence collection from scientists. Yeah, I know, those fucking scientists and the UN again. It’s like living with your mom, reading me regularly isn’t it?

So after examining the data, basically it’s easier to count the number of non-threatened species than threatened or endangered ones. For the common man, put it this way: you see a shark, I pretty much guarantee it’s either harmless and overfished to decimation by someone, or has lost or is losing habitat to the point that it is being killed out from fear and complacency and numbers are dwindling. Trust me, just about the last thing you want to be in this world is kinda slow, basically harmless, and look like a shark.

The sum of Colin Barnett’s current argument is that Australia is being seen as too dangerous and is losing more than $22 million a year due to fear of surfing at one south coast surf spot, and he has a constituency there that has raised it as a big deal to him. Well, I got news for you folks down south. There are a bazillion good surf beaches on this tropical island continent of ours. If yours just happens to be currently or permanently experiencing a high concentration of sharks where you like the curl, too fucking bad. Basically, you are saying that your right to surf right there trumps the right of another species to exist. And I am not being theatric. Lets say there were only 3700 humans left in the world. That’s the number of Great Whites estimated to be swimming around in the pool that covers 66% of the planet’s surface.

Now, I know humans are fucking scary, but if there were only that few, I’d be doing everything I could to save them. They are a peak predator and they are an indicator species for the health of the ecosystem. Honestly, this is just like the controversy I have run into everywhere I’ve lived. Doesn’t the grizzly bear, mountain lion, grey wolf, shark, tiger, black rhino and every other fucking scary peak predator, or even those just holding up their part of the food chain, deserve enough space just to survive? Do we demand, as humans, access to all the space in the world, anytime that it suits us to a point where we drive other species to extinction? We are one bleak fucking species if that’s the case.

But there is an alternative, you know, If government feels that the ‘do nothing’ case is not strong enough and is compelled to fuck with something.

If you want to go all ultra-protectionist and remove the dangerous killer from the water, outlaw swimming and surfing.

Ever Feel Like A Mechanic . . .

Sep 20

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Economics, Evil Motherfuckers, International | Comments off

Reading the news this morning from the USA, “… House passes $40 billion cut to the food stamp program over the next 10 years”, and having seen the recent news from only a couple of days ago that was analysed across the business media across the political spectrum of perspectives, as represented in the following graph leads me to that position I am in occasionally with a client, where I end up saying, “See, now here’s your problem right here”

Productivity

Now, when I read that graph I arrived at what I believe to be an obvious conclusion. Clearly, however, many of the supposed experts who examined the same data arrived the conclusion: “Yes, that was pretty effective. Now what we want to do is make sure that the poor fuckers who have gained nothing for their input in increased productivity over the last 40 years now can’t even have the pittance that has been provided food assistance to keep them going when we heap out largess to the farming industry every few years. That’s the way you balance a budget.”

Really, at this point I don’t see how any other objective conclusion could be reached other than that this is one big natural experiment in psychohistory with the following thesis: How far can you push a (lower) middle class before they actually do start rioting in the streets and stringing up bankers they can find when they loot lower Manhattan?

I mean fucking honestly. There is no one I could find disputing the data in the graph above as I have been reading about the update in the research that I first read a year ago. Sure the WSJ puts quite a different spin on it than does The Nation, but neither dispute the facts. The middle class has lost any gains due to productivity for 40 years so that those supplying capital and those that run the major companies in the world can enrich themselves vastly. And, unless there is some significant outcry and political movement in the near future, the US may actually be at the point in society where they will let the poor and working poor starve (and freeze) to death. Fuck em, right? They won’t riot, they’ll be too hungry and tired from working their two fast food jobs. And fuck the new indentured class too – those students that thought they would get a leg up by borrowing to go to uni and instead found their aren’t any jobs in their field or anything similar, and they aren’t allowed to go bankrupt so they can just fight for a couple of those Walmart jobs themselves for 30 years to pay off their debt.

What will it take until someone says directly to the power, “See what you got here is a problem with your minimum wage. Unless you raise your minimum wage, you aren’t going to reduce the need for food stamps. And if you don’t raise that minimum to something like a living wage, your middle class (that drives 70% of GDP growth) is going to disappear.”

You might also want to consider the motivation and interest in continuing to participate in a civil society for folks in the middle and lower end of the spectrum. What would motivate someone to work a job at Taco Bell and a job at 7-11 for a grinding ability to just stay out of poverty their whole life as opposed to something illegal, when clearly those who are too big to jail would call it foolish.

Then consider how there always seems to be this exasperated search for motive when someone brings a shotgun into the office. I wonder if a society so steeped in inequity and so desperate to maintain access to guns doesn’t realise how close it is to an MO for a mass murder on a daily basis. Sure, you could say that all these people are random crazies, but then they aren’t covered for mental health care or even institutionalisation since Reagan’s time either. You are just getting used to how bad things have gotten for the majority, how disconnected ‘leaders’ are from subjects, and only lack a spark to set a lot on fire.