Alligators, they're getting bitey again.
Kameron Hurley on "Hustle Culture." "No one wants to hear that the cure for burnout is to do less… There is no advice here. No magic beans. Only an acknowledgement that hustle culture is slowly killing us. Hustle culture invites a return to company towns and feudal systems, with even less security. Hustle culture is a lie. The hustle can’t save you if it kills you first." All the feels. Full disclosure, while I'm not writing much these days, I have a day job (42+ hours), the night thing (16 to 32 hours), freelance (I've cut way back, so only rarely but then it's about 6 to 8 hours), and the t-shirt thing (about 10-20 hours), plus about 10 to 12 hours of commuting (all times per week). (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)
Ikea's "Room for families." I feel I've seen this one before. Ikea bring the Simpson's living room to real life. (Grokked from CC Finley)
"A slew of environmental factors must come together at the same time for the great ice voids to open up. The research, published Monday in the journal Nature, used observations taken from big floats in the remote ocean, NASA satellites, and even sensors attached to the heads of elephant seals to show how the ocean under the ice gets mixed up, like a bartender shaking up a cocktail. Ultimately, this mixing transports relatively warmer water up to the surface." And as the oceans get warmer, more and larger ice openings are occurring (although that's not stated that way in the article).
You might remember me rattling on about what happens when a buffer reaches capacity in a chemical experiment. Whelp… "Scientists have begun to make ambitious new measurements of how much CO2 it absorbs, using deep-diving floats that travel to far corners of the ocean. Last September, with the new data in hand, researchers reported that rather than sucking up CO2, parts of the ocean near Antarctica are actually burping the gas back into the atmosphere during the dark and cold of winter. That suggests the Southern Ocean is more of a fair-weather friend than scientists had hoped." The oceans of the Earth are already warmer than they've ever been, and it's not even July yet. We're boned.
"Is your daily coffee habit worth the money?… Suze Orman, financial expert and best-selling author of 'Women and Money,' doesn’t think so… Let’s say you spend around $100 on coffee each month. If you were to put that $100 into a Roth IRA instead, after 40 years the money would have grown to around $1 million with a 12 percent rate of return. Even with a seven percent rate of return, you’d still have around $250,000." Okay, time to call bullshit on a lot of things here. First off, I like Suze Orman. I don't like everything about her, but yes, you should get smart about your finances. This is also partly the "30 books" argument all over again. What she is really saying is look at some expenses you have that you can do without. And doing calculations of, "Sure, it's only $2.50, but I buy it every workday so that makes it about $12.50 a week, or $650 a year." It's easier to stop spending $650 than it is to deny a little pleasure for $2.50. But you can also take this too far, and it also smacks of "if only those kids we're buying avocado toast they'd be able to afford houses." I could buy ice tea for $5 a gallon and get shitty tea, or spend some time, brew it by the gallon, and spend about $1.20 (not counting time) for pretty decent tea. When I was a young professional, I would buy lunch somewhere. At the time $5 was an average target, I tried to keep it below $3, and I ate a bunch of crap (Taco Hell bean burritos for instance). At the night thing they sometimes still buy lunch/dinner and it's about $10 now. At the day thing I eat prepared salad (about $2 per service, also lower calorie). At the night thing I have a yogurt, sandwich, and apple (about $4). And I take a lot of flack for it. Sometimes I buy something with my coworkers in a camaraderie sense, but it's maybe 1 in 10 times I'm asked. I like my money, I like eating better with my wife than with my coworkers, though. So I prioritize. So should you. If the spending is on automatic it's easy to lose track. Now then, let's talk about the 12% or 7%. Let me call bullshit here. Can you get that in the short term? Yes. Long term you'll be lucky at 5%. Also, Roth IRAs? Sounds good (pay taxes now, not when you pull the money out), but let me ask you two tings. One, looking at the trend, individual taxes aren't going up so much (they will in the future, or at least that's how I'm betting), so the argument about "do you think taxes will ever go down" is kind of a hollow argument now. Two, do you really think you'll be in the same tax bracket when you retire as you're in now? If you think you can save enough that you'll be making more in retirement than you are while you're working (I actually do know of a few instances of this, BTW) than Roth's are a good bet. I predict I will be in a much lower bracket when I retire (if I even make enough that the IRS thinks it's worthwhile for me to pay taxes I'll consider myself lucky). So Roths are a bad bet for me. But here's the end advice, don't give up everything that makes you happy or gets you through the day. I'm sure Suze buys enough wine to offset her savings on coffee. Do look at your spending in the long run (sure, it's only a buck a day, but thats $260/year from work days). If you'd rather spend $260 on a couple of good dinners instead, then prioritize those. Oh, and maybe paying people an actual fucking living wage so saving a buck a day wasn't the difference between being able to live or not might be a better option. (Grokked from a lot of people)
"Nearly 200 business leaders have signed an open letter arguing US moves to restrict abortion are 'bad for business'… The campaign comes as several US states have passed or are considering stricter new abortion laws." Their argument isn't so much on the balefulness of the laws and the mindset that they stem from, instead it's based on companies not being able to meet diversity goals if women avoid those states. This won't have much of an effect because the goal is to outlaw abortion, sexual education, family planning, a women's health services nation-wide. And then where will these business go?
"Millions of rent-burdened Americans face eviction filings and proceedings every year. On this week’s On the Media, what we think we know, and what we definitely don’t know, about America’s eviction crisis. Plus, how local journalists failed the Central Park Five."
"Customs and Border Protection said Monday that photos of travelers and license plates collected at one U.S. border point have been exposed in a malicious cyberattack in what a leading congressman called a 'major privacy breach.'" One of the novels I've abandoned was a cyberpunk thriller where the group aiding the protagonist hijack a police car and use its data uplink to spoof the facial recognition software of the government so that the cameras (which are everywhere, and also feed a HUD in the police car) don't recognize the person they're looking for. Having this type of data (actually being able to reverse engineer the data storage formatting) would be a great assistance to someone who wanted to do that.
How go the Trade Wars? "Senate Republicans want just one thing when it comes to Donald Trump’s global trade war: a cease-fire… It’s a move that would benefit not just their caucus, senators argue, but the president too." Concerned Senators are once again concerned.
"The U.S. economy may be pushed into a 'Trump recession' if Washington follows through on its threat to impose tariffs on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, says Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association." You're expecting rationality? This president doesn't even understand who exactly is paying the tariffs.
"A real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump… The fund’s value has risen fivefold since 2017, when Kushner was appointed a White House adviser, following earlier slower growth." I'm sure it's totally legit. Money for nothing, chicks for free. (Grokked from Chuck Wendig)
Want to see what entitlement looks like? "Reince Priebus, President Trump’s former chief of staff, has officially joined the Navy. At a commissioning ceremony Monday morning, Vice President Pence swore in Priebus as an ensign, an entry-level officer. Priebus and his family also met with Trump at the White House after the ceremony." Reince is 47. From the Navy's own website, "To serve as an Officer, you must be at least 19 and less than 42 years of age (depending on Officer specialty). Waivers are sometimes granted for positions that are in high demand." I can't believe Human Resource Officers are in "high demand." (Grokked from Chip Dawes)
"The Transportation Department under Secretary Elaine Chao designated a special liaison to help with grant applications and other priorities from her husband Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, paving the way for grants totaling at least $78 million for favored projects as McConnell prepared to campaign for reelection." It's not unusual for politicians to fight to get finding for their localities. What is unusual is to have the wife of a senator make special accommodations for their spouse to help funnel money to their state just before their re-election campaign.
Editorial opinion. "Photos from a Border Patrol processing center in El Paso showed people herded so tightly into cells that they had to stand on toilets to breathe. Memos surfaced by journalist Ken Klippenstein revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s failure to provide medical care was responsible for suicides and other deaths of detainees. These followed another report that showed that thousands of detainees are being brutally held in isolation cells just for being transgender or mentally ill." Arbeit macht frei. I mean, it's only work requirements. (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)
You might have noticed that I don't comment or publish links to the 2020 race too often, including not getting into "this candidate said they would do this" or "polls say" because right now it's all total bullshit when it comes to individual candidates. The field will shake down by Christmas. We might start with 10+ candidates until we hit Super Tuesday, but those will fall away fast. The only things I will post are things that will carry through the election, like this. "As former Vice President Joe Biden emerges as the Democratic primary's clear front-runner, Republicans are responding with a familiar strategy. A year and a half before the general election, conservative news outlets have already been taking a page from their Hillary Clinton playbooks, hitting back against the not-quite-presumptive Democratic nominee by making dubious claims about Biden's health and family business dealings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of those critiques are even coming from one of the Clintons' most persistent adversaries: Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer." One trick pony is gonna work that one trick. It's also a blatant example of the conservatives obsession with projection on their own faults onto others.
"There is a group of Republican House members, some of whom are on the Judiciary Committee, who positively love impeachment and are apparently dying to get one going, even if it's one they have to fight… I'm speaking, of course, of the Freedom Caucus, Donald Trump's most loyal House henchmen. They have opened more impeachment proceedings in just the last few years than any other group in history. As HuffPost has noted, the Freedom Caucus tried to impeach a whole bunch of Obama administration officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder and EPA head Gina McCarthy. They even drew up articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is of course a Trump appointee, just last year."
"House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler on Monday said he has struck a deal with the Justice Department to begin providing Congress with some documents from the Mueller Report related to obstruction of justice." It might just be a delay tactic.
"Today, @HouseJudiciary is holding a hearing on Presidential Obstruction & Other Crimes. These are the words Republicans have demanded us not to use…" A tweet with an image of a poster with all the phrases. They know he's a crook, they just don't care. (Grokked from Xopher Halftongue)
No comments:
Post a Comment