In an update to yesterday’s story about new labor laws, the state of Arkansas is requiring age verification for minors to access materials that are considered harmful. Okay, I can probably get behind that one. But at the same time Arkansas’s governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed into law a labor bill to remove age verification for those under 16.

Mike Masnick puts it best:

Too young to see a nipple, but never too young to be put to labor cleaning a meatpacking plant where you can have your own skin burned and blistered.

The Republican way.

James Payne narrates a series of films where he looks at great and important works of art. The latest episode is about the pointillist masterpiece by Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.

The lack of narrative means we really should look to the artist’s obsession with form, technique and theory — which is practically all he wrote about — and not to meaning or subject matter - which he didn’t write about at all. The painting is really his manifesto. His protagonists don’t have faces or body language, neither a history nor individuality. They are reduced to a hat, a corset, or a pet. They are just characters in his frieze. They exist only to give perfect balance to the composition.

Some paintings are designed for the viewer to “empathise with” but Seurat keeps us at arm’s length. We are not invited to “participate” in the promenade, and their psychological distance is clear. Both with their neighbors, and with us. It was ancient art that Seurat looked to — of Egypt and Greece. He once said that he “wanted to make modern people move about as they do on the Parthenon Frieze”, and placed them on canvases organized by harmonies of colour. It is what makes the painting so intriguing.

Highly recomend watching his excellent YouTube channel.

Combined with an aging population and workers generally demanding better compensation and benefits for their work, the US is currently facing a labor shortage. In a sensible capitalist system, businesses would be compelled to improve compensation and work conditions to attract employees. However, leave it to the Republican Party to present a novel idea: having children as young as 14 join the labor pool.

I have worked my whole life, and I support the idea of kids taking on jobs. It teaches them the values of hard work, discipline, and the importance of money—all positive aspects. However, it is crucial to recognize that these reasons are not why Republicans are pushing for these new regulations. Their primary motive is simply to benefit their wealthy donor class.

It is already concerning that we are forcing young children back into factories, but what’s truly tragic is that these laws are stripping away worker protections and shielding employers from liabilities at the expense of child safety.

As Jason Lalljee reporting for the Insider:

The laws take aim at the number of hours that children are allowed to work and protect employers from liabilities due to sickness or accidents. In the case of the latter, those employer protections dovetail with the kind of dangerous industries the bills are looking to prop up: construction in Minnesota, and meatpacking plants in Iowa. The bills come as efforts to expand legal working ages in other states have ramped up recently, and as the US has seen an increase in child labor violations since 2015.

These are not the mall/retail jobs or the local small business positions that many of us worked while growing up. These are potentially hazardous jobs that involve physical labor, leaving little time and energy for what children should be doing—getting educated and developing the social skills necessary to become productive members of society.

Besides, there is an obvious solution to the current labor shortage that has proven to be quite effective in filling labor gaps in the past.

And the Labor Board research bears it out:

The results indicate that higher wages along with additional non-wage benefits would have expanded the labor supply,

Should be obvious, but the pursuit of profit has led certain members of the business class to prioritize hiring children instead of providing a living wage to adults.

From being able to support a family with only the husband salary, to barely supporting it even with two full time salaries, all the way back to child labor. The transformation back into feudalism is nearly complete. Hope you’re happy with the freedom to develop your slave career.

To the parents who are about to send their kids to the factories and slaughter houses, you might want to read The Jungle by Upton Sinclaire.

Jason Barr, a professor at Rutgers, has a plan to expand NYC by building an entirely new borough of the city – “New Manhattan” – by reclaiming 1,760 acres of the surrounding rivers and ocean.

The point is that while such a plan might cost maybe $100 billion to build, the market value of the new buildings can be worth an order of magnitude more by virtue of the new housing, new offices, new retail, new hotels, new museums, new schools, etc.

Now that’s an ambitious proposal - it would be an amazing project if this gets funded.

It is pitch black, you are likely to be eaten by a grue.

I spent the entire summer of 1985 exploring the Zork I: The Great Under Ground Empire on the C64 that my parents had purchased from one of my neighbors. I can’t tell you how many nights were spent getting eaten by Grues and getting mugged by that pesky thief.

Needless to say I had a messy graph paper based map that I had created - although they looked nothing like these. Ah, the good old days!

Dominion Voting Systems, seeking motion for a summary judgment against Fox “News”:

Finally. Fox has conceded what it knew all along. The charges Fox broadcast against Dominion are false. Fox does not spend a word of its brief arguing the truth of any accused statement. Fox has produced no evidence — none, zero — supporting those lies. This concession should come as no surprise. Discovery into Fox has proven that from the top of the organization to the bottom, Fox always knew the absurdity of the Dominion “stolen election” story. Now, having failed to put in any evidence to the contrary (because no such evidence exists), Fox has conceded the falsity of the Dominion allegations it broadcast.

That concession is no small thing. Thirty percent or more of Americans still believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. The heart of that lie remains the false conspiracy theory that Fox legitimized and mainstreamed starting on November 8 — that Dominion stole the election, using secret algorithms in its software originally designed for a Venezuelan dictator. Because of these lies, Dominion now may be “one of the most demonized brands in the United States or the world.” Dominion employees still endure threats and harassment. So it matters that Fox in private ridiculed — and never believed — the lie. And it matters that Fox has now in this litigation conceded these allegations were false.

[…]

Fox seeks a First Amendment license to knowingly spread lies. Fox would have this Court create an absolute legal immunity for knowingly spreading false allegations — lies — for profit, regardless of how absurd the lies are, regardless how many people in the chain of command know the lies are false, and regardless how many people are hurt — so long as the false claims are “newsworthy.” Fox proffers a completely made-up “rule,” contrary to decades of jurisprudence since New York Times v. Sullivan. As Judge Nichols ruled in rejecting MyPillow’s analogous argument that the First Amendment provides “blanket protection” from defamation for statements about a “‘public debate in a public forum,’” “there is no such immunity. Instead, the First Amendment safeguards our ‘profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,’ by limiting viable defamation claims to provably false statements made with actual malice.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if its granted with all of the evidence that has been out in the public.

From The Gaurdian:

The image draws inspiration from the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, known to be a black belt in judo, and depicts a young judoka representing Ukraine knocking down a grown man.

The phrase “FCK PTN” in Cyrillic has been added to the lower left part of the new stamp.

And you can purchase your own stamp sheet directly from the Ukraine postal service here - they are shipping world wide! I have ordered mine it will be framed and placed on my office wall.

Anyone who thinks Rihanna’s horrible lip syncing awful display of a show was good, watch Prince demonstrate how it’s done.

No lip-syncing. Just one man and his guitar in the Purple Rain. Oh yea, and there was a supposedly football game going on.

Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) is the poster child for this epidemic in the Republican party. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.) are the newest members to be outed for their misrepresentation to voters.

Republicans are no longer just lying about the world around them — about climate change or vaccines or voter fraud — they’re increasingly lying about themselves.

[..]

When a party decides to peddle in lies and propaganda, they can expect liars and propagandists to fill their ranks. When the incentive to mislead voters is greater than any incentive to tell the truth, you wind up with a party of charlatans. In other word’s, today’s GOP.

So you’ve all heard about the massive layoffs in the Tech industry right? Hopefully you are all reading this at work - some of you are quietly quitting, I bet :)  The reasons given are that times are tough and the economy is entering a recession phase. 

With the latest economic numbers this does not make any sense: Market is up over 10% YTD. Lowest unemployment rate in the last 50 years. Consumer demand is strong  (retail, travel, and luxury). The companies that laid off thousands of employees (Microsoft, Meta, Google, etc..) are all making profits.  Quite a few are making record profits. 

So what gives? Why are these companies laying off employees in what appears to be a random / unclear pattern? It really doesn’t matter regarding performance, seniority or group.  Reading LinkedIn posts it appears that 14 year old veterans of Google as well as new hires are being let go.  And let go in the most inhumane, insensitive ways.  You would think a company that proclaims to “Do No Evil” would know better. 

Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, answers this very question in an excellent interview by Melissa De Witt: 

Why are so many tech companies laying people off right now?

The tech industry layoffs are basically an instance of social contagion, in which companies imitate what others are doing. If you look for reasons for why companies do layoffs, the reason is that everybody else is doing it. Layoffs are the result of imitative behavior and are not particularly evidence-based.

I’ve had people say to me that they know layoffs are harmful to company well-being, let alone the well-being of employees, and don’t accomplish much, but everybody is doing layoffs and their board is asking why they aren’t doing layoffs also.

Do you think layoffs in tech are some indication of a tech bubble bursting or the company preparing for a recession?

Could there be a tech recession? Yes. Was there a bubble in valuations? Absolutely. Did Meta overhire? Probably. But is that why they are laying people off? Of course not. Meta has plenty of money. These companies are all making money. They are doing it because other companies are doing it.

Bingo.  In the current business environment, it’s fashionable to dismiss employees.  I can’t help to think 6-12 months from now you are going to see a hiring frenzy by these same companies.  Except this time, future candidates will think twice about drinking the kool-aid.  And no amount of fancy slogans or advertisement will change that.

Which begs the question: Why are CEOs who openly claim responsibility are not facing any accountability?

The cuts will affect jobs globally and across the entire company, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai told employees in an email on Friday, writing that he takes “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.

There is no way you can convince me that any CEO who is worth his job would allow 12000+ people that are not needed to be hired.  That to me is an admission that the CEO neglected his fiscal management duties. 

Image by Cuban cartoonist Osvaldo Gutierrez Gomez. With the increased scrutiny of and legal repercussions feared by school librarians and the never-ending gun violence in our communities, it’s a striking commentary of what are priorities are in America.

Isabel Fattal in an excellent article called ‘Contagion’ for The Atlantic:

Some argue that, as they wait out this intermission, CEOs are copying one another—laying off workers not simply as an unavoidable consequence of the changing economy, but because everybody else is doing it. “Chief executives are normal people who navigate uncertainty by copying behavior,” Derek writes. He cites the business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, who told Stanford News: “Was there a bubble in valuations? Absolutely … Did Meta overhire? Probably. But is that why they are laying people off? Of course not … These companies are all making money. They are doing it because other companies are doing it.”

This is a trend, a fad, a CEO fashion statement.  You are laying of 10,000, i see you and raise you to 12,000.  Because their investors are asking - “hey all the tech companies are laying off, why aren’t you?"  And they are - Google’s stock went up 5% after layoff of 12,000 employees.

Just Wait. In about 6-9 months they’ll be back on a hiring spree that was even bigger then before - and you know what? All of us tech workers who had chip on our shoulders, well that’s going to grow to a gigantic boulder. 

Personally, I can’t wait.  I am hearing it in the circles already.  Tech people are pissed - the media (which is controlled by the corporations anyways) are dumping article after article of the few who ride the wave, get lucky and are rewarded for being lazy and a drain on the business.  It makes good reading, and infuriates everyone in other industries.  And I don’t blame them - but most people in the tech industry work insane hours, are asked to do crazy things with limited budgets/time frames and are evaluated by the most sophisticated and toughest systems for employee evals.  

Sure tech workers get great perks, benefits and pay.  You know what - you too can join the party.  But you need the discipline to stay on top of the tech sector, work grueling hours, risk your mental sanity and at the end of it all have people telling you that you are spoiled children who need to be sent back to their rooms for a time out.  Shunned as a geek by the cool kids.  So yea.  Go ahead signup.  I dare you. 

See I told you that chip on the shoulder was going to get a lot bigger. 

Did you really think those 10,000-12,000 tech people were just sitting around sipping latte’s and playing video games all day? The hiring frenzy will ensue shortly, and with much greater frenzy.  Engineers are process people with excellent memory who thrive on data and the historical analysis of it.  You think they are going to forget how they were treated?

When those offers start flowing again, those crazy compensations will be back. As the old saying goes - “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

March 1st, 2023. This is the way.

Magnets are cool. Seriously. Check out the other amazing videos on using magnets - this sure beats Legos.

40% of Americans put off medical care in 2022 because it was too expensive. What are the US politicians arguing over? Drag queen story hour & trans gender athletes in high school sports. It is absolutely disgusting that America is the wealthiest country on Earth and yet has the same life expectancy as Cuba.

I just started to watch Stranger Things. Not because everyone was talking about it - but because of the nerd nostaglia factor. A bunch of middle school friends sit around playing Dungeons & Dragons, ridding around town on their bicycles at all hours of the night, and parents who don’t really care to know where there kids are every minute of the day.

They even have BASIC as a plot element. And the reference don’t end there - Commodore 64s, NES, Tandy and to my surprise and delight the Amiga!!!! Okay they didn’t get it all correct - but the mere fact it was there blew my mind.

Carl Svensson:

Of course it’s fun to see the Amiga make an appearance in a high profile show like Stranger Things, but I do feel they dropped the proverbial ball this time. After a pleasantly accurate depiction of mainframe BASIC, decades of hardcore Amiga zealotry forbids me from simply accepting this as a bit of telly. They clearly had all the makings of accuracy right there; the OS screenshots, icons, mouse pointer, even the block cursor. When it’s that close, fumbling with the details is somehow more annoying than just phoning it in completely. If there was a reason for it, it completely escapes me. Would Topaz and standard window titles have been terribly boring? Would C, BASIC or Assembly code look less appealing than HTML? We may never know.

Don’t even get me started on the season 4 soundtrack – Master Of Puppets!!!! Ah the 80s - the greatest decade!

I think we can all agree that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was an underbaked idea. Something that most of us would rather pretend never existed (much like the Star Wars prequels). This banter explains the whole situation:

George: Let's do aliens.
Steven: I don't wanna do aliens.

Years later...

George: Maybe you're right. We shouldn't do aliens.
Steven: George, I love ya!
George: We should do inter-dimensional beings.
Steven: What?!
George: Yeah, ever heard of string theory? They're from another dimension.
Steven: Fine! Fine... What do they look like?
George: They look like aliens.
Steven: facepalm

Moral of the story - George Lucas is a genius filmmaker - but he needs people around him that will reign him in. Heck even Star Wars: A New Hope was saved in the cutting room. If you watch some of the dialog and scenes that were cut or pre-editing - they were just painful. Utter crap.

Let’s hope with The Dial of Destiny - George had some really good people around him that held him in check.

A short film about photographer David Godlis documenting CBGB - ground zero for the punk & new wave scene in the late 1970s.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are back at it again - Indy is coming back in 2023. We have some old friends, new characters and the exotic locations, and the music theme. That music theme gets me every time.

Let’s hope this does not turn into Crystal Skull.