…it’s the weekend!
I get to spend today driving for 6 hours to Cleveland. Got anything exciting on your weekend agenda?
Humanitarian costs mount as Russia pushes south; radiation levels stable after nuclear plant fire
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/04/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news/
Some crazy local news; my friend lives right across the street from this.
Silver Spring apartment explosion sends 10 to hospital, leaves others missing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/03/03/laytonsville-fire-apartment-collapse/
Sprots!
Winter Paralympics set to get underway in Beijing following exclusion of Russia and Belarus
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/03/sport/winter-paralympics-preview-ukraine-russia-spt-intl/index.html
Stonks!
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has thrust crypto into the spotlight and raised 3 big questions
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/04/russia-ukraine-war-cryptocurrencies-and-sanctions-in-the-spotlight-.html
Today’s turtle content:
Have a great Friday Deadsplinters!
If, for some reason, New York ever hosts an Olympics (Bloomberg and his Robert Moses, Dan Doctoroff, made a bid, I think, or proposed to make a bid, and there was practically rioting the streets) we should get the famously corrupt IOC to include a few New York-centric events in exchange, like the “20-Meter Free Throw”:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/whatisnewyork?src=hashtag_click
I’m impressed by his coworker who has no problem being just a couple of feet from the target. That’s a lot of trust.
And also, check out this article about WNYC. The management sounds like a mess.
“Cooper built a reputation for fostering an environment, in the words of Eve Batey, who used to work with Cooper at the Chronicle, that was very middle school. (Others said, in fairness, that it was more like high school.) “Easily once a week, someone would be like, ‘Audrey said this about you,’” Batey said. ”
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/audrey_cooper_wnyc_public_radio_merger.php
I am consistently amazed that shit like this keeps cropping up:
I’m currently watching my former company beg people to apply for their open positions, thanks to new management that believes in “leadership and turnover.”
When the fuck did turnover become something companies actually want to pursue? It’s the dumbest fucking management strategy, ever. What dipshit, university drop-out, tech lord came up with this?
It looks like this is the source document for that.
https://publicmediamergers.org/playbook/managing-a-merger
The way it puts turnover front and center is dumb, and on top of that it is awfully weak in concrete guidance. It’s padded late 20th Century management babble. There’s a cringeworthy example of monthly trophy swaps that sounds like something out of Office Space. You can see why a superficial leader would embrace it.
“Superficial” is correct. My old company’s new CEO is bizarre. He targeted successful departments (in terms of revenue) and completely ignored dysfunctional areas. In addition, overpaid and incompetent management was preserved, while staff (who performed all the actual work) were singled out.
Then the strong-arm tactics started. Anyone who asked questions was terminated (me, for example). The result was a terrorized and cowed staff.
I think your observation about “late 20th century” is spot-on. The reason this is backfiring now is:
1. Better communication. I started getting texts, calls, and messages within hours of support and to find out what happened — I was, bizarrely to me, a pretty popular guy at work.
2. Social media. The company is getting savaged on Glassdoor, to the point that it’s seriously impeding their recruiting ability — they’re literally begging people to apply on LinkedIn now and begging people who are quitting to reconsider.
3. An excellent job market, in defiance or maybe because of the pandemic.
Even those who weren’t targeted are so overworked and demoralized that they have been quitting in droves. The overpaid management can’t roll up their sleeves because they don’t know what to do. A lot of the stuff that we lower-level employees did was highly technical and it’s not something you can pick up during someone’s two-week notice. But management’s paychecks are big enough and their skills are so limited and outdated that they can’t leave.
There’s definitely been pandemic carryover in the white-collar job market and companies that have shrugged their shoulders and fucked around with the already-outdated bullshit they did circa 2019 are currently finding out. The workforce doesn’t feel the same way it did then, and for good reason!
Ah, yes. Classic Ivory Tower Syndrome at its finest.
I read that yesterday with great interest. I don’t listen to WYNC but I read Gothamist avidly. Gothamist, to me, is the saddest part.
This CJR piece hasn’t been mentioned there, no surprise, but they recently ran another rah-rah piece about another NYC site trying to unionize, I think the REI in SoHo. One commenter mentioned the hypocrisy of Gothamist covering union efforts, given its history pre-WNYC. Two of the irngleaders who aided the then owner are still around.
One of the commenters noted that the writers are obviously getting back by publishing Buzzfeed-level stories riddled with inaccuracies and typos. Upvotes galore.
It’s true, though, about the quality of the content at least. They don’t put out that much content, so one proofreader doubling as a fact-checker (many do, to ensure accuracy of names, for example) could cover the whole site, but who cares, it’s the internet, the readers are assumed to be barely literate and it’ll all be forgotten in a couple of hours.
Gothamist seems like a weird acquisition by WNYC unless they were planning on leaving it as a solely independent operation. It would be like GM buying Kellogs in the hopes of integrating cereal technology into SUVs.
I can see the overlap, they both have a mission to cover NYC, and how hard can it be to convert (digital) text to audio and vice versa? As they’re all learning, at least hard, if not very hard. The day Gothamist “pivots to video” like Get/Out Media did so disastrously will be the day to run for the exits. At least WNYC won’t be able to junk up the Gothamist site with useless kinja deals and barely/badly presented spon con, but I can see lots of banners “thanking” their generous corporate sponsors, like PBS has been doing for a while now.
GOAT
Turtle content! My turtle finds getting his tummy scrubbed objectional, too.
“Objectionable.” Note to self: Do not post prior to coffee. Grammar doesn’t come online until the third cup.
I can think of many more that we could arrest for this!
https://news.yahoo.com/former-fox-news-producer-sean-210134835.html?soc_src=community&soc_trk=tw
This is a good sign.
I love this man so much!
I’m tired of fat-shaming. He has so many deplorable failures of character to choose from. Being fat is not inherently bad and should not be lumped in with the rest.
Sorry, I didn’t even catch that.
His quadruple-downing on his transphobia in defense of JK Rowling among the worst.
China needs Ukraine’s grains to feed its people/livestock.
…not to pile on after the objection to the manatee line but sadly john cleese has said some unfortunately dumb stuff here & there since he made it to grumpy old git status…that said…I still love the vast majority of the material he’s contributed to & have done for about as long as I can remember
…so I still find him funny…except sometimes?
Same. Appreciate his Python work and some of the stuff since. Even read his autobiography, which was touching at times. But sometimes he says stupid stuff.
I meant that more of an in general statement and not like a call to cancel John Cleese.
…& I guess I meant that was how I took your comment & that I wasn’t looking to cancel anyone, either…but that I can see how a case might seem like it could be made that he’s maybe vulnerable to that sort of thing?