Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 24/4/24]

24/4/24 MegMegMcGee 27

Hope everyone’s week is going well so far. We are having some delightful weather here in DC.

He sits like a kindergartener
Ex-publisher details ‘catch and kill’ at Trump’s hush money trial
https://wapo.st/4b7yUPn

Because that ends well

Student Gaza protests: top Republicans call on Biden to send in federal officers
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/23/university-protests-arrests-yale-nyu-columbia

Dead, they want women dead.

‘How sick do they have to get?’ Doctors brace for US supreme court hearing on emergency abortions
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/23/supreme-court-verdict-emergency-abortions-patients-doctors

Sprots!
Justice Department settles with Larry Nassar victims for $138.7 million
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2024/04/23/justice-department-larry-nassar-victims-settlement

Stonks!

Dow rallies 200 points, S&P 500 surges 1% as strong earnings drive gains: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/22/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

Today in things that made Meg laugh way too hard:

Have a super day!

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27 Comments

  1. Just à propos of nothing, and this is really for RIP, I just read Philip Larkin described as the patron saint of hypochondria. I know that we both share an appreciation of the works from the gloomy, solitary librarian from Hull.

    Imagine walking up to the main desk at the Hull Central Library. Larkin died in 1985 so you would have done this.

    “Hi! I’m looking for something light, something that would make a good beach read. My girlfriends and I are going on a package holiday to Benidorm. I don’t know how much time I’m going to have for reading but I thought–”

    “Eichmann in Jerusalem. Second floor, aisle six.”

  3. The Federal Trade Commission has voted to end nearly all noncompete agreements and require companies to inform workers that exisiting rules no long apply:

    https://www.npr.org/2024/04/23/1246655366/ftc-bans-noncompete-agreements-lina-khan

    “We heard from employees who, because of noncompetes, were stuck in abusive workplaces,” she said. “One person noted when an employer merged with an organization whose religious principles conflicted with their own, a noncompete kept the worker locked in place and unable to freely switch to a job that didn’t conflict with their religious practices.”

    These accounts, [FTC Chair Lina Khan] said, “pointed to the basic reality of how robbing people of their economic liberty also robs them of all sorts of other freedoms.”

    The FTC estimates about 30 million people, or one in five American workers, from minimum wage earners to CEOs, are bound by noncompetes. It says the policy change could lead to increased wages totaling nearly $300 billion per year by encouraging people to swap jobs freely.

    Big corporations have fought tooth and nail for noncompetes. They’ve already gone judge shopping in Texas to block this, so there’s a good chance we’ll see another right wing activist issue a national injunction to block it in the hopes that the Supreme Court will invent a reason why it’s invalid.

    • Better Half has been under non-competes since the day he graduated college (he joined an executive management training program.) When he was young this wasn’t really a problem, because he was jumping around exploring different industries, and then he came to the industry he’s in now. It’s a tiny niche portion (but extremely lucrative, at least for the owner) of Vast Global Finance and everyone knows everyone so you could, theoretically, be stuck. However, a lot of this is CA-centered, and I think non-competes are already illegal there. The last job he took, where he still is, is a private company HQ’d in CA. He had several meetings and finally came the offer. There were no non-competes nor NDAs. He has problems with his company but indentured servitude is not one of them.

      • Depending on the industry, I can see some non-competes and NDAs being reasonable. If Coca-Cola doesn’t want a VP to take their formula over to PepsiCo., sure. But when it gets down to “You can’t use your Subway sandwich artist skills at Jimmy Johns” then it’s like give me a f’n break, you’re obviously just intimidating employees to keep wages low.

        • The good news for corporations is they can still still sue former employees of Arby’s for leaking the secret to Horsey sauce. There are protections for corporations that remain in place for protecting IP and trade secrets, but what goes away is the vague claim that there’s a corporate “way” with ineffable attitudes and thought processes which McKinsey needs to be able to stop an employee from bringing to Deloitte.

           

  4. I saw a picture of the banana seat and laughed uproariously last night. If my wife did not kill me for purchasing that and putting it in the living room, she’d definitely kill me because I’d be singing “Yes We Have No Bananas” every time I entered the room.

  5. It is 0% surprising and at least 60-75% hilarious that the we’re-not-right-wing-we-just-love-free-speech-for-racists campus speech warriors are now gibbering unintelligibly about how schools need to call in the National Guard to put down these protests. I’m shocked! SHOCKED … well, not that shocked.

    • …it’s a damn shame…there was a time when that sitcom was pretty sharp…but she is some kind of an object lesson

      …if you compare her trajectory to the one that took john goodman from dan to barton fink & the big lebowski all the way to that angry video blogging guy in treme & his turn in alpha house

      …she could have been…I dunno…more like jo brand…but something curdled & she’s all bile now or something?

      • I think she was kind of always this way? Trump’s best and worst feature is that he made a lot of people who were quietly terrible suddenly very open about their terribleness. Plus before she was a Hollywood type — which comes with a certain expectation on political views — she was a comedian, which is a VERY different animal in terms of political stripes.

        But as always with people like that is once they go politically crazy, it only ever gets worse, never better. It’s like JK Rowling being just constitutionally unable to shut up about trans people. It’s basically a brain disease.

         

        • …I think you’re right that the potential was always there…she just used to be more self-aware…& just generally aware…so she could triangulate who she targeted…& a bit of withering scorn from a sardonic matriarch was fresh as takes go…at least at the time…& that feeling that it rode the edge a little the way curb your enthusiasm was good at broadened the appeal enough to get ratings that made it a show that “mattered”

          …don’t think darlene or the sister that was in at least one scream movie or the rest of the (in places pretty successful) careers the various ones who didn’t go on to be in the big bang theory have had particularly suggest it was widespread…though I seem to recall tom arnold maybe not being the greatest

          …I dunno…would james woods be sadder if he’d been funnier first?

          …looking at john cleese…I’m thinking… probably, yeah?

  7. Almost forgot: This is by far the dumbest bill of Biden’s term and it’s appalling that he’s going to sign it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/23/tiktok-ban-senate-vote-sale-biden/

    What Tik Tok does is no different from what Facebook and Google and Twitter do, but because it’s a TERRIFYING CHINESE APP it must be banned rather than making actual fixes to data privacy law. This is the sort of shit that worries me about Biden’s chances come November because this is all downside, no upside.

    • …in…for want of a better term…performative terms…I can see how it acts as a signal that he aims to “do something about” tech & the ways it can be leveraged by hostile interests…so I see where he might, let’s say, be less inclined to not sign it than he is to sign it

      …but in the sense that it continues a seemingly unbroken streak for “major” legislation about regulation of tech…which is that the more you read…the more it ticks the “tell me you don’t understand this stuff without saying you don’t understand this stuff” box

      …it’s like that quote about the guy who believed the hype until elon talked about something they knew a bit about & after that he wouldn’t ride in a tesla…it steadily erodes attempts to believe there’s a baseline understanding of what needs to be achieved or in what context that could or couldn’t happen…& if it’s true about this thing…it gets harder not to believe about another…& if it’s all window-dressing that’s hiding the cracks in the glass by jumping up & down hollering about the broken windows theory then what’s the point, even

      …damned if I know what the counter is beyond just bone-deep, dyed in the wool obstinacy & a desire not to give the fuckers the satisfaction…but the approach supposedly beloved of kremlin types to have schemes with failure modes that still ratchet the advantage & initiative in the preferred direction is kind of like the business of not caring if the guy fucked a pig provided you can get him to deny it

      …I mean…sure…it’d be way more effective to have an honest accounting of how the shit works & which parts are functionally necessary enough to justify the potential for abuse or malicious enterprise…& what sort of risk is worth the disadvantages inherent in the levels of overkill required to improve the “strategic” position or relationship with tacit-to-explicitly adversarial interests

      …& then forge a bipartisan & bicameral legislative project that might even achieve it

      …but that’s so unrealistic even climate change denialists are looking at it like it’s taking the piss?

      • Yeah, I felt like from the jump that this was a bad and stupid and racist idea … but as soon as I saw the soft-focus Instagram ads about the Tik Tok ban being good I was like “Oh hell fucking no.”

        And the thing is: I really don’t understand what they’re so afraid of in regulating them. Mark Zuckerberg is gonna go more rich guy Republican? Oh noes! Elon Musk’s gonna make Twitter … more Nazi? Or give more money to the GOP? Google’s gonna get more evil? People mostly hate these companies! These aren’t the all-conquering heroes that the might have seemed like a decade ago. (And perversely, the best thing that could happen to some of these sites would be regulation forcing them to suck less and protect data better!)

        Edit to add: Should note that he’s under some pressure to sign this because it is of course tied to Ukraine aid, and he has to keep that ball rolling. Still, he and the Dems should hear about this for the rest of 2024 and not in a good way.

        • …it’s a sort of mercantile sabre-rattling…or at least I guess I read that as being the intention of those that pushed it?

          …&…at least to me…that’s dumb in several ways…for a start it’s not any kind of surgical edge they’re implying…more of a blunt & brittle thing that wouldn’t work in a chinese sword form…so it doesn’t land, even as a feint

          …it raises the spectre of any number of questions being begged about materials & supply chains & bottlenecks & who has all the best cards in the hardware game that even the lead in the “AI” slice of the pie doesn’t alter the way having all the battery components shifts the center of gravity in the EV market…but provides no answers beyond “yeah, we don’t really even seem to know what we should be asking ourselves”

          …& it somehow contrives to have the US…which allows even a dotard with a mouth like a sphincter & a tongue dripping with sewage say shit that embarrasses the entire establishment on a global stage so deeply is it all in on freedom of speech…look like it won’t allow a degree of free expression that the politburo are ok with

          …doesn’t overly matter that in terms of telemetry there’s arguably good reason to be doubtful that it doesn’t present some sort of risk…because they can’t express it in a way that makes enough people get it…because a person who doesn’t know what they’re talking about telling something to someone who doesn’t understand it mostly just results in an audience with a strong feeling that they aren’t getting the straight dope because they still don’t understand it after the explanation?

          • There is definitely some leftover “Reagan crushed us” terror among the old-ass Dem leadership, so there’s rarely appetite to regulate anything … but if you can make it about the scary foreign power instead of the always-noble-even-on-Jan.-6 businessman, I guess that’s OK.

            And absolutely, bang on, 100%, they don’t understand what they’re doing when it comes to tech, but even the mechanisms of what they want to do about Tik Tok are crazy-pants, and that should be something they can grok? You’re gonna make them sell to an American company? Like … at gunpoint? You’re going to make the app stores take them down if they don’t? Again, like … with UAV drones circling 1 Apple Park Way? And nobody thinks this might be a constitutional issue let alone like several other enormously thorny legal concerns?

            It’s bad law, handled as stupidly as possible, done by people who don’t even know what they’re afraid of or what they’re trying to fix. I’d say it’s the “Trump Administration” but they at least know what they’re afraid of.

  9. It’s always fun to have the Trump trial bring back the details of how Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were absolutely smeared by Trump but they completely knuckled under to him.

    There’s a tendency among the political press to smudge all political attacks together, and rationalize Trump on the grounds that Obama mocked Romney’s statement that corporations are people.

    But “SHOCKING CLAIMS: PERVY TED CRUZ CAUGHT CHEATING—WITH 5 SECRET MISTRESSES!” is not the same thing. It takes a boatload of rationalization to come up with a bothsides narrative, but it still happens.

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