#in the food industry

[thingsorganizedneatly]

Did you know that there is a Toaster Museum????

[reasonsforhope]

Federal regulators on Tuesday [April 23, 2024] enacted a nationwide ban on new noncompete agreements, which keep millions of Americans — from minimum-wage earners to CEOs — from switching jobs within their industries.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday afternoon voted 3-to-2 to approve the new rule, which will ban noncompetes for all workers when the regulations take effect in 120 days [So, the ban starts in early September, 2024!]. For senior executives, existing noncompetes can remain in force. For all other employees, existing noncompetes are not enforceable.

[That's right: if you're currently under a noncompete agreement, it's completely invalid as of September 2024! You're free!!]

The antitrust and consumer protection agency heard from thousands of people who said they had been harmed by noncompetes, illustrating how the agreements are "robbing people of their economic liberty," FTC Chair Lina Khan said. 

The FTC commissioners voted along party lines, with its two Republicans arguing the agency lacked the jurisdiction to enact the rule and that such moves should be made in Congress...

Why it matters

The new rule could impact tens of millions of workers, said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. 

"For nonunion workers, the only leverage they have is their ability to quit their job," Shierholz told CBS MoneyWatch. "Noncompetes don't just stop you from taking a job — they stop you from starting your own business."

Since proposing the new rule, the FTC has received more than 26,000 public comments on the regulations. The final rule adopted "would generally prevent most employers from using noncompete clauses," the FTC said in a statement.

The agency's action comes more than two years after President Biden directed the agency to "curtail the unfair use" of noncompetes, under which employees effectively sign away future work opportunities in their industry as a condition of keeping their current job. The president's executive order urged the FTC to target such labor restrictions and others that improperly constrain employees from seeking work.

"The freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy," Khan said in a statement making the case for axing noncompetes. "Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand."

Real-life consequences

In laying out its rationale for banishing noncompetes from the labor landscape, the FTC offered real-life examples of how the agreements can hurt workers.

In one case, a single father earned about $11 an hour as a security guard for a Florida firm, but resigned a few weeks after taking the job when his child care fell through. Months later, he took a job as a security guard at a bank, making nearly $15 an hour. But the bank terminated his employment after receiving a letter from the man's prior employer stating he had signed a two-year noncompete.

In another example, a factory manager at a textile company saw his paycheck dry up after the 2008 financial crisis. A rival textile company offered him a better job and a big raise, but his noncompete blocked him from taking it, according to the FTC. A subsequent legal battle took three years, wiping out his savings. 

-via CBS Moneywatch, April 24, 2024

--

Note:

A lot of people think that noncompete agreements are only a white-collar issue, but they absolutely affect blue-collar workers too, as you can see from the security guard anecdote.

In fact, one in six food and service workers are bound by noncompete agreements. That's right - one in six food workers can't leave Burger King to work for Wendy's [hypothetical example], in the name of "trade secrets." (x, x, x)

Noncompete agreements also restrict workers in industries from tech and video games to neighborhood yoga studios. "The White House estimates that tens of millions of workers are subject to noncompete agreements, even in states like California where they're banned." (x, x, x)

The FTC estimates that the ban will lead to "the creation of 8,500 new businesses annually, an average annual pay increase of $524 for workers, lower health care costs, and as many as 29,000 more patents each year for the next decade." (x)

Clearer explanation of noncompete agreements below the cut.

Noncompete agreements can restrict workers from leaving for a better job or starting their own business.

Noncompetes often effectively coerce workers into staying in jobs they want to leave, and even force them to leave a profession or relocate.

Noncompetes can prevent workers from accepting higher-paying jobs, and even curtail the pay of workers not subject to them directly.

Of the more than 26,000 comments received by the FTC, more than 25,000 supported banning noncompetes. 

[probablyasocialecologist]

The global food economy is massively inefficient. The need for standardized products means tons of edible food are destroyed or left to rot. This is one reason more than one-third of the global food supply is wasted or lost; for the U.S., the figure is closer to one-half. The logic of global trade results in massive quantities of identical products being simultaneously imported and exported—a needless waste of fossil fuels and an enormous addition to greenhouse gas emissions. In a typical year, for example, the U.S. imports more than 400,000 tons of potatoes and 1 million tons of beef while exporting almost the same tonnage. The same is true of many other food commodities and countries. The same logic leads to shipping foods worldwide simply to reduce labor costs for processing. Shrimp harvested off the coast of Scotland, for example, are shipped 6,000 miles to Thailand to be peeled, then shipped 6,000 miles back to the UK to be sold to consumers. The supposed efficiency of monocultural production is based on output per unit of labor, which is maximized by replacing jobs with chemical- and energy-intensive technology. Measured by output per acre, however—a far more relevant metric—smaller-scale farms are typically 8 to 20 times more productive.

5 November 2024

[gottastim]

criminisiicecream on ig

[reality-detective]

Food Industry 🤔

[baaad-omens]

doing some research on parapsychology as a field. in short, it's the study of how the supernatural relates to psychology, and is largely regarded as pseudoscience with only a handful of people studying it, and very very few universities will even offer a parapsych program.

so… martin, buddy, did you just google 'what degrees do people get for paranormal research' and go with the first one that popped up? you did didn't you. idiot.

[itsapmseymour]

So I remember reading that post that called Omelettes, fancy egg tacos,

Which I get, but considering most of the omelettes I have had are rolled up…

Call that

Call that

An Egg Roll

[dosesofcommonsense]

A cured patient is money lost

[memphisfoodnotbombs]

“They got money for war, but can’t feed the poor. - Tupac Shakur”

“No US Military aid to Israel”

Anti-war sticker spotted in Albany, New York

Via @radicalgraff

#Palestine #FreePalestine #Israel #MilitaryIndustrialComplex #2Pac #TupacShakur #NoWarButClassWar #Poverty #FeedThePoor #FoodIsAHumanRight #FoodNotBombs #CeaseFire #CeasefireNow #FoodNotBombsMemphis #MemphisFoodNotBombs #Graffiti #RadicalGraffiti #Leftist #Leftists #humanitarianism #ProPeace #AntiWar #AbolishWar #EndAllWars #JewishVoicesForPeace

[kelsonius]

What I find really interesting about Dungeon Meshi is how it explores the role of humans/humanoids in an ecosystem and what is okay to consume.

Take the kelpie for example. Senshi is attached to the kelpie that frequently joins him while he's fishing, even naming her. Marcille also thinks it's cute and supports the idea of Senshi riding it. After that doesn't turn out well Senshi apologises while delivering the killing blow, appearing remorseful. Nevertheless, he himself sets out to salvage usable ingredients from the now deceased kelpie and even Marcille uses some of its fat for soap.

That is an example of exactly the type of relationship I think humans should have with livestock animals. I'm mostly vegan (occasional exceptions made for fish and eggs) both because of the environmental and animal rights issues with large scale livestock farming/the meat industry. However, I very much support a harmonious approach shown by indigenous peoples and small scale farming for example. Where, similar to Senshi and the kelpie, the animal lives a good life and is loved by its keepers until it is killed and all its parts are utilised.

There is also something to be said about people's involvement in the slaughter of animals so they respect the origin of their favourite products, like Marcille with the soap, since that is likely one of the reasons people currently consume animal products in such copious amounts. I regrettably didn't save the post in my drafts, but I saw someone on here talk about how far removed we are in the west from the origin of our meat products and how absurd it is that people are disgusted by a fish served with its head for example.

Meanwhile, Laios and Chilchuck are arguing over whether it's okay to eat a fish-man since it resembles a humanoid. Laios naturally wants to eat everything but Chilchuck has reservations when it comes to humanoids. This comes up in later episodes as well, where the rest of the crew appears to have fewer reservations since the creatures are being killed in self-defense and they're now seeing the utility of not letting resources go to waste.

Now I wonder if they'll take it as far as cannibalism, but humanoids are already a close metaphor. In any case, it is a great way to showcase how the arbitrary values we attribute to different species influences what we consider to be acceptable food, even though it's all just meat. I mean, I could never slaughter a cat for example but somehow would be fine with eating human flesh...

[lilithism1848]

[unbfacts]

The U.S. holds about 1.4 billion pounds of cheese, primarily owned by private companies and stored in facilities like Missouri's underground warehouses.

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[probablyasocialecologist]

A key issue in understanding who feeds the world is the distinction between calories produced and calories delivered. Simply because a farming method produces a lot of calories, does not mean that those calories are going towards feeding people. Calories can be wasted or channeled into animal feed, biofuels, and other non-food uses, complicating how we assess methods for alleviating hunger. Emily Cassidy and her team studied this phenomenon across major agricultural countries. They found that in India, for example, 89% of produced crop calories went to feeding people during the study period. In Brazil, however, that number was 45%. In the United States, which produces the most gross calories out of any country studied, it was only 27%.

Backgrounder: Small Scale Farmers and Peasants Still Feed the World

[letterful]

Jean Madar, chairman and CEO of InterParfums Inc, recently told Bloomberg that fragrance is part of a person’s “core identity”. And while cosmetic companies can face criticism for conflating external products with existential outcomes [...] perfume conveniently sidesteps the problems of the flesh. It’s not trying to change how you look, but how you feel, and, for the span of a spritz at least, it does. In the age of wellness-as-beauty and neurocosmetics, the science of scent is marketing gold.

[...] I wonder if what we’re after here is not a sense of self but a (related) sense of life.

I say “we” because – despite my documented skepticism of beauty brands – I, too, am powerless against a good perfume ad.

Last month, casually depressed and subconsciously seeking comfort and some sort of release, I spent $240 on a scent called Tears by Régime de Fleurs. “What a luxury to weep,” the website read. It described the perfume as “emotion in liquid form, the romance and the sadness”. It promised “nostalgia” too, with notes of lilac to remind me of my grandmother’s front yard and frankincense to call up childhood Sundays spent in incense-blessed church pews. I suppose I wanted Tears to take me back to a time when someone who loved me baked me cookies every week, when I believed in God and goodness, and life stretched ahead of me in an endless expanse of hope and potential.

Of course, it didn’t do that. It smelled fine. I felt something, for a second. But I was still me, and I was still mostly numb.

I thought of that perfume the other day while reading the preface to Henry James’s 1902 novel The Wings of the Dove. James summarized it as the story “of a young person conscious of a great capacity for life” – someone “passionately desiring” to “achieve, however briefly and brokenly, the sense of having lived”.

Something clicked: how to explain Tears if not a brief and broken sense of having cried?

[reality-detective]

Coca-Cola insider spills the truth about how they gaslight the public. 🤔