Friday Eve [DOT 12/11/2020]

12/11/20 MegMegMcGee 78

Welcome!

Yesterday’s DOT was filled with lots of great pro tips for newbies.

Also, lots of reading for you to still catch up on, so I’ll keep it short and sweet for Thursday AKA Friday Jr.

I think it’s time to start working from home again. This is not great headed into Thanksgiving.

New US coronavirus cases top 140,000, a record high for daily count
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/11/health/us-coronavirus-wednesday/index.html

As usual, getting the short end of the stick.

Virtual schooling has largely forced moms, not dads, to quit work. It will hurt the economy for years.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2020/11/06/women-workforce-jobs-report/

Sprots!

Stonks!

Stock futures flat after Nasdaq’s comeback session
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/11/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html

I love this song.

This is Nestor erasure. [Am I too online? I’m too online.]

Headed into the Weeknd…

Have a great day!

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78 Comments

  1. Of all the Trumps I think I like Tiffany the best. She hasn’t had a ton of plastic surgery. She is dating legitimate billionaire who’s kind of hot in a young oligarch way. She was raised outside the noxious bubble of TrumpWorld. She went to (or maybe graduated from) Georgetown Law, and while Georgetown was caught up in the payola scandal that saw Aunt Becky shipped off to the pen I can’t imagine The Donald doing any more than the bare minimum for her, so she probably got in on her merits. Plus I suspect she’s fun and can hold her liquor.

      • For all the Melania bashing I bet she is a wonderful, protective mother. Barron might have been the result of a contractual agreement but she and the staff seem to take good care of him. 
         
        I will lay 50/50 odds (better get on this soon) that come January 21st Mel files for divorce and take Barron with her. Trump probably wouldn’t miss either of them but it would infuriate him to shell out yet more spousal and child support, money that he doesn’t have. Like Al Capone getting nabbed for tax evasion, not his homicidal past, it might be this divorce that finally lays bare just how bankrupt he is. 
         
        Did you see that Trump is being courted to write a memoir? Talk about a Grim(m) Fairy Tale.

        • Let’s say that there’s a scale that goes from 0 (loathe) to 10 (would chat and interact with often.) Donald Trump be a -20 (would run screaming from the room), Don Jr. would be a -10 (“are you hearing yourself talk?”) Eric would be a -5 (“no the bathroom is over there. Do you need help?”) and Ivanka would be a 0 (“tell me again how your Chinese slave labor clothing would up in the clearance racks at TJ Maxx before they cut ties altogether. And what is it like touching Jared? Kind of waxy and Madame Tussaud’s?”) We used to throw a huge holiday open house every year, we had to cut it back somewhat because it was getting out of hand, we’d have 200 people over the course of the day and about 100 at any one time. But I would invite Tiff to that for the novelty factor alone. I’ll give her a 3.

      • At Barron’s age most kids are embarrassed by their parents anyway. Hopefully seeing his father as a raging lunatic on the world stage will keep Barron from ever admiring trump or wanting to follow in his footsteps.

        • Well, Melania clearly despises Trump (watch any of the supercuts of her yanking her hand away from him at every opportunity). So that’s probably bled over onto Barron to some extent, since she’s apparently the more “active” parent. On the other hand, she’s pretty obviously a sociopath, too, so I dunno. Maybe boarding school will win out. Nurture over nature.
           
          I find it unlikely that he’ll ever be able to do much damage on a wide scale, though. He’s not going to have access to the Trump grift machine, which likely won’t survive his father, anyway. The two imbeciles and Ivanka sure won’t cut him any piece of the pie, so he’ll be stuck with whatever payout Melania can wrangle. 

    • I think Tiff is probably her own kind of awful. I remember Marla Maples and Tiff trying to get free haircuts for trump’s inauguration and flipping out when the woman refused.

      https://www.teenvogue.com/story/marla-maples-tiffany-trump-inauguration-day-hairstylist-controversy

      That was probably more on Marla than Tiffany, but she seems to want to be in the trump camp. That alone makes her suspect in my book. Let’s not forget her recent, and embarrassing, stumping for daddy pride tour. 

      https://mashable.com/article/tiffany-trump-pride-speech/

      But she wouldn’t be the first young woman with daddy issues doing questionable things for her father’s attention.  It does make me angry when people attack her appearance. She’s neither fat nor ugly, even if she was that has no bearing on her or her family. And graduating from Georgetown Law is an accomplishment.

      Tiffany is probably the least terrible trump, but maybe only because she’s had less opportunity to join in on the grift. That does put her way ahead of Don Jr, Ivanka, and Eric.

    • I agree that Tiffany is the most appealing of the younger generation of Trumps, in the way that she’s the least rotten looking apple in the fruit drawer.  But also, she’s a horrible person and we only like her the best because he hates her the most and we hate him.   

  2. I understand that choosing to stay home with the kids is a financial sacrifice, but goddamn, having a job is not and never has been what it’s cracked up to be.  People can delude themselves all they want about achieving some kind of self-actualization through employment, but I have never in my life, not once, ever come home and said “I can’t wait to go back to work tomorrow.”  Fuck that shit. 

    • I think the broader point is less about the satisfaction of work and more about the increasing costs in time and money needed for childcare vs. the fact that two working parents will have to balance yet another thing that makes working not worth it for one spouse.
      I know people in midsize cities with supposedly reasonable costs of living who cannot afford to have a job it that means paying for care for two children. An on top of that they become glorified substitute teachers because the school administration can’t be bothered to plan.
      Unmentioned here is that women often earn less than men in similar job positions, so when the choices involve keeping the higher paycheck the woman ends up staying home more often than not.
      It’s where sexism in the workplace intersects with economic stress, a pandemic, and hollowed-out schools, i guess.

      • “Unmentioned here is that women often earn less than men in similar job positions, so when the choices involve keeping the higher paycheck the woman ends up staying home more often than not.”
        Also unmentioned, 
        The fact that, EVERY time an adult has to step out of the workforce, they lose income, losing Social Security payments, losing RETIREMENT income–often on more than one front, because there’s often nothing going into a 401-K (or WHICHEVER retirement device that person has!) and nothing going into their Social Security…
        Now, it can ABSOLUTELY be argued that for all of us in GenX and beyond, Social Security won’t be there anyway…
        But these women dropping out of the workforce are typically ALREADY making less than men, and going to thus earn less for retirement..
        And now that is getting compounded exponentially, nationwide.
        😕

    • I took off for 4 weeks from late March to late April, and I couldn’t WAIT to go back to work. And I work in public transportation. 
       
      Being trapped inside for a month fucking sucked ass.

      • Me, too. I begged to go back to the office. I’m there two days a week now. At first it was like Home Alone — two floors of office space mostly all to myself (I was pretty much the first person they let back in). After a couple of months, where I didn’t die, other people like me who are sick of home started coming in one or two days a week. It’s nice to see them, but I miss running around the empty offices sometimes. 

      • But was it work you missed, or being away from the house?  Yeah, being stuck at home can suck, but in normal times I could find plenty to do that doesn’t involve selling half my waking life to someone else.

        • There isn’t much “work” being done. It was def a combo of getting away from the house, seeing my coworkers,etc. Those 4 weeks def felt like house arrest. 

    • The only time in my life when I enjoyed going to work in that fashion was when I was working from home in my audio career.  The problem, of course, is that it was a terrible way to make a living as I was an independent contractor.  Eventually, the realities of living in this country forced me to get Earth Person Work.  Now, of course, I’m working from home, just in a different career.  So, I can say that while I’m not exactly stimulated by my work, I most certainly enjoy working from home again.

    • I think another large part of it is that women get penalized for taking a break from their careers, both financially and in terms of finding new jobs. Women are really uniquely vulnerable economically if they have families, and while typically having children is largely under their control (largely — fuck you, Republicans), COVID isn’t. 
       
      For me, a woman having a job provides a measure of self-protection. My mother used to tell the story of how she was sitting home one day with three small children and my father didn’t show up. This was long before cellphones or even commonly available telephones in rural Florida. She realized that if he’d met with some accident, she was utterly helpless. She’d be out on the street with three little kids in nothing flat. When my father finally showed up (don’t remember what happened — car trouble or somesuch) she told him in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t going to live like that and enrolled in college the next day. She got her master’s degree when she was pregnant with me. Mom was a force of nature. 
       
      I tell that story to my daughter. Don’t rely on someone else — you need to be able to take care of yourself. But being stuck home with the kids during a pandemic really impacts that. 

    • I work for a company that went totally online/home workers in 2012, so the initial pandemic had no effect. My two coworkers who are adding home school teacher to their roles of employee, wife, and mother are beyond stressed out. They can work totally flex hours, or fewer hours – but working extra hours because of school district tech/communication/organizational incompetence makes their heads explode. An additional problem is the isolation – there hasn’t been “an office” for coworker contact in years, and now there is extended social isolation too.

      I have hit my own pandemic/isolation wall (I am feeling grumpy as heck these days), and am stressing over the friends and family reactions when we cancel hosting the holidays. I’m a coward and haven’t made the official calls yet, but they need to happen. There are simply too many individuals with unsafe virus protocols, unmasked high risk activities, etc. And the virus case and death counts are rising at a record-breaking pace.

      OK! I think I am done whining. Thank you for listening.

    • I mean, fwiw, staying home with kids also isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.  There really is a major difference between parenting and childcare and childcare really is a job, with all of the stress and tedium and repetitiveness and thanklessness that you’d find in any job. And like anything else, some people are wonderful at childcare and enjoy it, but most honestly aren’t that good at it and don’t like doing the day in day out job of keeping a 4 year old entertained and educated for 8 hours a day (and this is true no matter how much you like your kid or enjoy being a parent).  And I’m mostly really invested in pointing this out because there’s an implication here that staying home is the same as not having to work and that’s not true, they’re simply doing a new kind of work that they may like even less than their current job.
      And that’s all true, but it doesn’t even touch on the fact that you’re starting off from a very bad factual place. These aren’t choices people are making, they’re things they’re having to be forced to do, and that makes all the difference in the world.  If women were choosing to stay home, kudos to them.  If they’re being forced to stay home, that’s very much a different story. 
      WIth all that said – I hope you have or find a job that is if not fulfilling, at least that you enjoy or don’t hate!

      • “There really is a major difference between parenting and childcare and childcare really is a job, with all of the stress and tedium and repetitiveness and thanklessness that you’d find in any job”
        THIS, TOO!!!
        As someone who’s IN a branch of childcare–
        I get to go HOME at the end of my work day, and *not* face anymore kids or uncompensated demands!!!
        I LOVE kids.
         
        I love WORKING with kids.
         
        I *also* know, that were I a parent, I would EITHER be a bad parent, or a bad SPED Paraprofessional. The 2/3 of my day *away* from work means I have the recharged emotional reserves to do my job and do it WELL.
         
        When one is with kids 24/7, 👏IT👏IS👏EXHAUSTING👏!!!👏
        Full stop.
         
        And HONESTLY, this job is NOT a job for everyone!
         
        Hell, as much as i LOVE Pre-k aged kiddos, *I* would be 100% MISERABLE if I had to spend ALL day, Every Day, with middle-school (or above!) aged kids, trying to get THEM to learn stuff, OR if I was stuck in an Infant/newborn room at a daycare allllll day** 
         
        This is HARD stuff.
        Lots of folks think that “teaching is EASY!” because of than stupid damn adage “Those who can’t DO, Teach.”
         
        But educators, and parents with tougher kiddos KNOW that GOOD education is HARD to do…
        Teaching POORLY is EASY!
         
        Teaching WELL is a DAMNED hard skill, and just like any OTHER job, is a literal struggle, when you’re suddenly taken *outside* your normal routine & skill set, and asked to “just do it!”
         
        We as a society WOULDN’T just take folks and say, “Now You are going to be a Mechanic–GO!” (or Pilot, Truck Driver, Nurse, Engineer, Dry Cleaner, Meat Cutter, Carpenter,  Short Order Cook, etc.), with out *at least* some weeks/months of training…
         
        But society seems to  EXPECT, that just because Women HAD children–even though they may have trained for work in an entirely different field–they will suddenly *magically* become the PERFECT, “Able to parent AND TEACH!” mom.
         
        When–depending on the state, and area of Ed–their child’s teacher has *at least* a single bachelor’s degree plus licensure, and in certain cases, MASTERS degrees in *that particular area* of ed.
         
        Ffs, even IN Ed, folks specialize–we Pre-K folks DON’T work with high schoolers–we specialize in the littles…
        I feel TERRIBLE for these parents.💔💖
         
        This is HARD, it’s unfair, and in SO many ways, it’s financially awful, too.
        (**I LOVE kids once they’re mobile, but I am NOT one of the early ed folks who “just wants to sit and rock & snuggle with the babies!!!”–that would be a personal HELL for me, when i could be working ELSEWHERE in Pre-K!😉
        otoh, I’ve known MANY folks who luuuuuurrrrrve the babies, who LOATHE my favorite kiddos’ age–the 2’s & 3’s of toddlerhood–when kiddos are EVERYWHERE, getting into EVERYTHING, and learning they can have *opinions,* *feelings,* and can say, “No!”😉😁🤗)

  3. The people bemoaning Toobin’s firing are killing me. Is this really a thing we need to argue about?! I saw someone say “I’m sorry for what happened to you.” I mean, I know what he did and I know what the rightful consequences were (honestly, 3 weeks suspension before the firing was too generous, IMO) but I’m confused about what happened to him.

    • As a guy not a whole lot younger than him I’m baffled by what set him off. I don’t suffer from erectile dysfunction (I’m sure you’re all interested to know this) but the time and place has to be right. I can’t imagine a less erotic scenario than chatting with male and female coworkers on a Zoom call. Maybe he has an obsession with one of them?

      • It makes no sense! And people who are like, Aw, it was an honest mistake! Anyone could forget to turn off their Zoom camera.
        Ok, true, BUT WHY ARE YOU JERKING OFF AT A WORK FUNCTION??? The camera is not the problem here, people!

        • dear god THIS!!!
          The equivalent here ISN’T “going to the bathroom” like some folks (often dudes🙄) keep saying…
           
          The equivalent here, is the office AFFAIR where someone walks in on their co-workers going at it in the mailroom/closet/copier room/etc.
          THAT gets folks fired if it happens at work in most companies.
           
          And THAT was the “in-person” vs. “at home” equivalent here😒😒😒

      • “Maybe he has an obsession with one of them?”
         
        That was always my guess. And I suspect the other people on the Zoom call are asking themselves the same question. Which, again, seriously creepy. 

      • Well I’ll be honest yall.  Never, ever on a zoom call, but I’ve definitely been bored on a slow day while WFH and just decided to rub one out.
        My guess is that above anything (because he doesn’t seem to have done this to harass anyone purposefully), dude was just bored in an hours long meeting and figured he’d turn off his vids and sound, open up porn in another tab, and take a quick break. 

      • He probably enjoys the kind of creepy semi-public aspect of jerking off during a work meeting. It’s a transgressive and a little dominant (I can get away with this) or maybe exhibitionist… although as he’s found out, getting caught is less thrilling that he might have thought.

    • From a “not wanting to get sued” standpoint, I can see why the magazine suspended him for three weeks before firing him.  They have to document that they provided due process through an investigation before shitcanning him.  The fact that he actually did it and it was witnessed by a bunch of people is irrelevant when you’re talking about a lawsuit because lawyers can find all sorts of cute ways to get around the obvious, unless you’ve got all your documented ducks in a row.

  5. (testing first comment here)
    Today was my first day back to work after taking a week off to move; I’m actually glad to get back to work, in that odd way. I’m only 20% unpacked, and honestly only 98% moved — gotta go back to the apartment this weekend, finish clearing stuff out — but can take my time with the unpacking, as long as my work rig is set up, which it is.

    • Why are there always so many endless trips after you’ve moved the majority of your stuff? It’s like you go back, clear out the last of it except one thing, then go back to grab that one thing and suddenly there are 20 more things.  Repeat ad nauseum. 
      I dont know if you also secretly like unpacking but for me that is the fun part, so I hope you have a nice time the next several weeks nesting! and congrats on the new place!

      • So many things. But mostly just the kitchen, and most of that is gonna get tossed into the recycling dumpster — old dishes that the super-hard water has ruined, Goodwill pots, etc. I’m also going to half-ass the cleaning — my deposit was $200 17 years ago, I’ve amortized that loss, just keep it! — because nothing was new when I moved in, anyway, and it’ll all get ripped out/painted. The amount of things still there that I actually intend to keep should fill less than a carload.
        And yes, I am looking forward to winter nesting! With a whole lot of rearranging & reorganizing. I’d dedicated a lot of my previous storage space to the game convention work I’d done for the previous ten years — and since the game cons are cancelled probably through summer 2021, I just don’t need to have all that crap taking up so much space. Plus I HAVE A GARAGE NOW!!!!!, and once I get my garage cabinets assembled, I can store a bunch of formerly-inside stuff out there, in proper bins.

        • Oh god, the glory of a garage!  An outdoor space to put things in, so you can sit in your nice house and not see them!
          Also I didnt realize you’d been in your current place that long! Things seem like they pile up exponentially over the years, so dang, almost 20 years is a rough move for sure.

  6. On the “Sprots!” topic, I have always thought ESPN looks like a terrible place to work & I am a serious sports fan.  The management seems to have no loyalty and they act pretty heartless.  They recently had another big layoff wave and some of the layoffs seemed really random.  My favorite personality on the network is Dan LeBatard who basically makes fun of ESPN on his shows.  Well, they laid off one of his producers so he hired him back with his own money!  Dan is the best & most relatable of any sports guy on TV!  I would love nothing more than to have a beer and talk sports with this guy!
     
    https://www.yahoo.com/sports/dan-le-batard-will-rehire-and-pay-salary-of-producer-chris-cote-who-was-laid-off-by-espn-165754734.html

    • It’s always seemed like the hiring and programming has always been insanely tied into office politics, which isn’t surprising considering how long they have been insulated from serious business pressures.  They were making barrels of money no matter what they did, but now they see trouble and they don’t have a good idea how to build an audience that doesn’t go to them by default.

    • The LeBatard show is way more fun/interesting/engaging.  It’s better than ESPN’s current standard of watching old white guys bitch and moan about who was better… LeBron or Jordan… or hearing ex jocks complain that things were much better when they were younger.
       
       

      • Right!  That is my feelings exactly.  I used to watch some of the scream at each other shows but they just piss me off now.  Especially Wilbon & Kornheiser, LeBatard would go on that show and fuck shit up!  It was so funny, they stopped asking him on.

  8. “Texans gonna Texan”
     


     

  9. You know, I was reading this today:
     
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/military-shakeup-election-transition/2020/11/11/1623009e-2444-11eb-8599-406466ad1b8e_story.html?itid=hp-banner-main
     
    While reading, I was reminded of all those Republicans who were screaming about how President Obama wanted to CUT AND RUN by putting together a sustainable, planned, multi-year withdrawal from Afghanistan.  This, my friends, is what cutting and running actually looks like.  But, gee, I don’t seem to be hearing any complaints from Republicans.  I wonder why that is.

    • The GOPers have basically become their enemies from playing politics with reality to becoming the Redneck Communist Party where any deviation from dogma because of reality, sense or humanity is treated as a mortal sin and loyalty has to be protected by appointees (aka Zampolits.)
       
       

      • It’s tribalism at its absolute worst.  These people, and their rube followers, don’t give Fuck One about what is best for anything or anyone.  They only care about winning, however that “win” is defined or categorized.  So, if Trump yanks all the troops out of Afghanistan and the country devolves again into civil war, that’s a win for them.  If McConnell obstructs and lets the country burn over the next four years, that’s a win.  If SCOTUS surprises us and kills the ACA in its entirety and fucks over tens of millions of Republican poors who now don’t have health coverage, hey that’s win, too.

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