Hello Pilgrims
It's a sad fact that if you've held an admin job like I have, for any length of time, you will inevitably come across one of the more puzzlingly stupid information conventions there is. To wit: the South Canadian date format. Art!
This, lest ye be unaware, is a 'Super Atomic Bomber', or what AI the Art Generator thinks one looks like. Because putting up a date format as an illo would be boring as reading pi to a million places.
ANYWAY here in the world of Sensible, we write the date as DayDay-MonthMonth-YearYear, as, for example, 15/07/2025, meaning the fifteenth of July, two-thousand-and-twenty-five. Logical and straightforward, right? Not so in South Canada, because for no good reason they have adopted the MM-DD-YY format. This is - and you may be ahead of me here - STUPID. There are people out there who contort logic, common sense and lucidity into pretzel-in-a-black-hole distortions to explain this away.
At first glance, this seems like America being America again as this formatting breaks the logical informational hierarchy, but as it turns out it’s actually more usable in the context of everyday communication as it reveals information in a manner that requires less cognitive effort.
UTTER DRIVEL! Art!
 |
| Super Atomic Bomber again |
Well, this convention has serious repercussions at times, particularly in the tale of Malicious Compliance, Pro-Revenge and Cover Your Bottom I am about to relate.
Canadian Administrative Narrator, hereafter CAN, worked in a major business entity in Ontario, which he (or even she) coyly didn't identify, but which one can deduce from the fact that they later quote a whole slew of C-Suite management, which you don't see in three-men-and-a-dog enterprises. Art!
They were quite familiar with the Stupid Date Convention, seeing as they did so much business with the South Canadians to the south of British America. To make sure that their own business records would sort properly by date, CAN used the notation '15th July 2025' and had done during their employment, which is logical, consistent and familiar with everyone. Solid, right?
WRONG.
Enter Date Unhappy Bumbletuck Manager, hereafter DUMB, whom castigated CAN about their date format, and how it needed to be changed, PRONTO, to a mm-dd-yy format.
CAN had been through a few rodeos by this point, and conducted their back and forth exchange by e-mail, because THIS CREATES A (VIRTUAL) PAPER TRAIL which stands as evidence. Mostly, it consisted of CAN telling DUMB how had an idea it was, with DUMB flexing his manglement muscles and ordering the change to be made.
Cue malicious compliance. Art!
CAN did the work, which piled up $4,000 worth of overtime changing decades of dates to the new, STUPID, format, which tanked productivity in Service and Sales, who couldn't find any documents by date. We're talking a drop of 50% here, which ought to have clued-in DUMB to have - er - dumb his idea was.
DUMB then got revenge, they thought, by giving CAN two weeks notice, because that $4,000 had come out of DUMB's budget and probably tanked his hopes of getting a bonus. Weep for DUMB, people, weep for him.
As passive-aggressive retaliation, CAN e-mailed their entire e-mail chain to the Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer, explaining about the disastrous date change, so they could 'cascade to their employees' since CAN would be long gone by then. Art!
 |
| More dramatic than CAN rubbing their hands with glee |
There were consequences for this mucking about with date data. For one, DUMB was fired, and was both angry and STUPID - that word does keep cropping up, doesn't it? - enough to ring CAN and rant down the phone at being fired - and got promptly hung up on.
Another, more pleasant phone call came from the CEO. They offered CAN the management position DUMB previously held, at a 10% increase and a $5,000 honorarium to revert the dates. They didn't backfill CAN's position so still came out on top in terms of salary. This is wise management.
To end things, CAN ran an automated script that reverted the dates overnight. No $4,000-worth of overtime.
The moral of the story is that Medjoul dates are the best, even if Conrad can only have one per day. Diabetes, you know. Art!
More Of Ridiculously Dangerous Pastimes That Make You Passed Times
Yes, we are back to the 'sport' or 'hobby' or 'apprentice death wish occupation' known as 'cave-diving', and back to the Mount Gambier region of Australian, where the limestone geology has produced lots of underground caves that are completely flooded. Art!
This is the Kilsby Sinkhole, as it is today, where you can clearly see man-made infrastructure added in for safety reasons.
None of which existed in 1969. This is when two inexperienced divers only trained in open-water diving decided they were going to dive to 50 metres. Without proper underwater torches, watches, back-up air supply or a proper air-mix in their tanks in the first place. Unsurprisingly they were both found drowned at 40 metres by another diver who noted that their tanks still had air. The suspicion is that they didn't use the proper air-mix for this depth of water and thus ended up suffering from nitrogen narcosis, which as I've cautioned before is like tripping off your head. Not what you need or want 40 metres down in a dark flooded cave.
Wiser counsels warn that this kind of amateurish foolishness would never be tolerated today, where divers have to undergo intensive and specific training for cave diving. I shall take their word for it. Art!
Brrrrrrr
When Ross Killed Off An Entire Population
No, I'm not talking about David Schwimmer's character in some goofy sit-com from the Eighties called 'Fiends' or 'Demons' or similar. Although that means we can now sling in an illo of him for the ladies. Art!
Of course - obviously! - I am taking liberties here, since the 'Ross' in question is actually 'Rosstat', the state statistics agency in Modern-day Mordor, whose employees are going to be targeted by DOGE any day now, thanks to the lack of work available.
You see, Ruffia is undergoing a bit of a population 'contraction' at present, which was reflected in the data Rosstat provided up to March of this year. In January and February of this year 195,400 children were born in Mordorvia. 90,000 of those being in February.
Cue a chorus of mockery from nasty horrid Western media, who widely and loudly reported that this was the lowest birth rate in Ruffia since 1800. Art!
Ruffian military 2026
This embarrassed Putinpot, whom promptly declared that birth and mortality rates were now an official state secret. Whatever, dude. The reluctance of families into bringing children forth in Mordorvia won't cease because you got a strop on and threw your toys out of the pram. An apt metaphor, one feels.
Pretty soon it will be illegal for the Ruffians to discuss the weather, gravity or where your lap goes when you stand up.
DO YOU WANT SKYNET? BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET SKYNET!
I keep warning and you, Hom. Sap. keep ignoring me. Well, don't come crying when you have to kowtow to your robot overlords. Art!
The AI piloting system achieved the equivalent of a million flight hours in just 72 hours of simulated learning
Fully autonomous fighter jets could be operational within years.
THIS IS LITERALLY HOW SKYNET BEGAN!
To quote a certain Doctor Morbius "The meddling fools!" After all, with AI running autonomous warplanes, what can possibly go wrong? Art!
There's even a documentary about it. You have been warned.
The Most Boring Hobby In The World Rediscovered
Conrad has, in the past, copied over all the 'Goofs' present on IMDB, put them in chronological and running order, and then gone over the target film repeatedly, to see if what is listed is correct or not. Art!
"Where Eagles Dare" is the case in point. I have just dug up a Word document listing all the Goofs, with Conrad's judgement against each of them. There's a lot of work in there. I may have to post it up in instalments for your elucidation and entertainment, with illos. I bet you can hardly wait.
Finally -
The weather is back to the normal grey disgustrous dismality, Hooray!
No comments:
Post a Comment