In 2016, police busted a Bordeaux vintner who was blending poor-quality wine with high-end Saint-Émilions, Lalande-de-Pomerols and Listrac-Médocs to sell to major supermarkets under prestigious labels.

It was a challenge to learn to harness him, guide him slowly back between the fills of the carriage, then to fasten the right buckles and snaps, making the harness and buggy all ready for travel to church or to town.

An equally important advantage of a system of planned obsolescence would be its function in providing a new reservoir from which to draw income for the operation of the Government.

Since first tossing its cartoonish, good-time cock-rock to the masses in the early ’00s, The Darkness has always fallen back on this defense: The band is a joke, but hey, it’s a good joke. With Hot Cakes—the group’s third album, and first since reforming last year—the laughter has died. In its place is the sad wheeze of the last surviving party balloon slowly, listlessly deflating.