Yes, We Are On About Bus Factors Again
Sorry if that title sounds like a line from "Starry Trek", even though there is a fair bit of warping going on in this Intro.
Yesterday we focussed on a British variant of both Malicious Compliance and Bus Factor. I had another example of same, which would have taken up the whole of the blog so I held it over. Art!
Miss Gia Kelly
This isn't that, in case you were wondering, I did this completely out of left field and am making it up as I go along. This, lest ye be unaware, is a shot from "The Seeds Of Death", from the Second Doctor's iteration. In this particular future matter transmission has taken over completely from physical means of travel, with ubiquitous "Trans-Mat" booths allowing people to travel instantly from their departure booth to the destination one. Art!
Rendered obsolete. HAR HAR!
Sounds very efficient, doesn't it?
HOLD HARD. You see, the T-Mat system is controlled from a base on the Moon, which is no problem to get to thanks to T-Mat itself.
Nobody seems to have considered what to do if T-Mat Control on the Moon breaks down, and nobody can reach it.
Ooops.
At a later point in the serial, Miss Kelly takes two Hapless Minions and travels by the emergency T-Mat link to the Moon. Her senior opines:
RADNOR: Miss Kelly! She's a fool. If we lose her, nothing can save us.
Well, the Bus Factor Of One comes back to bite Radnor et al with a vengeance, as she's kidnapped by the Ice Warriors, who are up to mischief.
Even if we only assume a slight increase in Earth's population, you've got eight billion people completely dependent on A SINGLE PERSON? That's logic warped into four dimensions. Art!
The State of Maine. Where they have been trying to roll out a new HR and payroll system for at least 8 years, because the old one is - well, a bit of a basket case, to be frank. The database went live in 1981 and has not been updated successfully since then. The most recent attempt was tackled by a company called Workday, who were supposed to bring Maine's state HR database up to the very second with a cloud-based system.
It all fell through with mutual condemnations, Workday claiming that the data imported was hopelessly inaccurate and riddled with errors. The State, it seemed, was hiring the cheapest admin staff possible, who were not up to scratch. This is not a doddle, I've checked and there are over 11,000 federal employees in Maine, and one thing employers know NOT to do is muck around with people's pay. Art!
Workday, who are a large and reputable company (18,800 employees at last count), pulled the plug. This has potential consequences for all state employees, because the legacy system is cuttingly described as "A 40-year old system programmed in an obsolete language only one State employee knows how to use".
Bus Factor Zero now boarding!
What happens when they go on leave? Get sick? Retire? Get abducted by the Ice Warriors, whom are always up for causing mayhem and mischief. It'll all end in tears, I tell you, tears.
The Lovely Did Get Farewelled
I've just finished the novel "Farewell, My Lovely" and Dog Buns! she may have been lovely to look at but wow that lady was sheer poison in a dress.
I can confirm that a 'torcher' is indeed a torch singer, one of those ladies who warble endlessly about how their man is a sack of excrement in a suit but won't leave him, because he's got the keys to the drinks cabinet. Art!
The general consensus is that Marlowe isn't interested in romantic female companionship in either "The Big Sleep" or "Farewell, My Lovely" but Conrad isn't so sure. The character Ann Riordan, who has had big googly eyes for Ol' Phil all novel long, ends up saying "I like to be kissed, damn you!"
- and then the action jumps forward three months. Hmmmmm.
Deploy More Roy!
Roy Cross, the resident artist at Airfix, who had to be able to turn his palette to any kind of combat aircraft, armoured fighting vehicle or naval vessel, across centuries if not millennia. Art!
This is the original artwork, before it got cropped and scaled to fit onto a 1/72 scale aircraft box full of plastic parts. This, for your information, is a Teuton Henschel HS 129, a ground-attack aircraft that bristled with guns. Art!
Mister Freud would like a word .....
As you can see, it was intended to be a flying anti-tank gun, because it was armed with an anti-tank gun. This variant had 14 shells in a rotary magazine situated behind the cockpit and delivered quite a punch. Because ground-attack was dangerous to life and limb, the aircraft had lots of armour and the cockpit boasted 3" armoured glass, which all had the effect of making it slow to recover from diving, meaning the opposition's anti-aircraft gunners got longer to shoot at it. Swings and roundabouts.
Frans Hals
One of the advantages of having a mind like a skip is that you can always count on the obscure or unusual rising to the surface, coming to one's attention and then being used for blog content.
Like Frans Hals. Who is he or was he? O I thought you'd never ask!
He was a Dutch painter, born 1583, waltzed off this mortal coil in 1666, so he had a pretty good innings for a seventeenth-century chap in Europe. Art!
In an era where the well-off expected extremely precise and detailed portraits, Hals was noticeably different, with his brush strokes being clearly visible. This gave his work a life and animation that more refined techniques simply couldn't manage, and he was obtaining commissions right up until the coil-waltzing bit. Art!
Notice the knowing smirk on matey's face. He may be clad in funeral black, but his mind isn't, and Ol' Franny has got him dead to rights.
This style was very influential and painters even in the 19th century learned to appreciate it by copying Hals.
The real question is, why on earth did this pop up in my head? I can only think it's some strange connection forged by mention of Roy.
Only In South Canada
The loonwaffles are out in force across The Pond. Biden pulling out of the 2024 Presidential race has sent them into a frenzy of frothing insanity, because everyone knows <insert stupid belief with no evidence>. Art!
Nothing is going to convince the swivel-eyed brain-donors that he's really alive, and especially going on television and doing a live broadcast. "Deep Fake", "Photoshop", "CGI", "A body double", "A robot" will all be mentioned. Yesteryon I witnessed a Tweet from an entity calling itself "Global Press" which I won't bother to bold and tuapify because they don't deserve it. They put up a Tweet thus:
When challenged to provide details of the 'verified source', GP immediately closed their website and abandoned Twitter. Of course, that hasn't stopped the Army Of The Dead In The Head from proliferating fake stories and pictures, and they will absolutely double down on this and insist it's real.
One thing I've noticed about Pumpkinhead in the past couple of days is that he's very, very angry that Biden dropped out, and others have speculated he's dropped millions of dollars on television and press adverts lambasting Somnolent Joe. Suddenly he's the oldest candidate for Prez in South Canadian history, and I'll bet those comments send him into a frothing rage akin to the loonwaffles.
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