#this is primarily about salaried employees

[ziskeyt]

over the past few jobs i've had since like 2018 i've been very good at enforcing my time boundaries. recently, i've had a number of comments about this in the form of others who feel envious of my ability to sign off. so today i am here as a professional adult to tell you: you have to make your job listen to you. you have to tell your job when you work. i'm not magically some outlier about this, i'm not special, i'm just a person who read my work contract and makes my company adhere to what we agreed. the point is: you need to determine your work boundaries and you have to be the one to maintain them.

the job i really nailed down doing this was before i went to grad school and had to balance that time, and before i had my stroke and became disabled. i was just working a job as an admin assistant / marketing coordinator to four (4!) real estate sales people (realtors). if you know anything about realtors you likely know they work all the time. all of it. they are working. or schmoozing, but that's still work for them. so, in that industry a lot of admins end up working long hours to get reports out, create marketing collateral, fill in lease abstracts, what have you. it's extremely normalized. all the old guard of older women admins at every job i've had in real estate would work beyond the 9-5. so, how'd i do it?

perhaps it's because they were sales people that me saying i would work 9-5 but come in 8-4 on the days they wanted an 8am meeting helped, perhaps they intrinsically understood the value of my time. but i doubt it, because again, i worked in an industry where practically every other admin worked long hours for no reason. but i did tell them they could have my phone for emergencies and that was it, if they needed me once i went home it was going to wait until i was back in the morning. there are so very few, so minuscule in number, situations where your business job will ever have an after hours emergency that you need to work overtime unpaid for. everything else? it's not that urgent. they can wait. and they did. i worked my 8-4 on mondays and 9-5 the other days for months. you may think, "oh but if i leave at 5 and others are still working i might hinder my ability to get a promotion" and if you work at a place where that is the case, that is well beyond the only thing inherently wrong with your work environment and you should look for something else. i worked commercial real estate, not only did i get promotions, i was headhunted from competitors and offered better pay and positions. and in every firm i saw the admins working beyond their hours. every single one. and people would comment on me not working until 7pm in a jealous way, but again. i wasn't doing anything special. i just wasn't letting the company out of the agreement it made with me. during the time i was doing part time grad school and full time work i just told my bosses, (and my potential ones when i interviewed for those "our dick's bigger than yours" games cre firms play with each other), that i would work 8-1 on days i had to commute to school and make up my hours other days. i didn't ask for this. i laid it out to my bosses and said this is how it is going to be. i said if there was ever anything absolutely urgent they could try and email me while i was in class but i would be unlikely to respond. my work never suffered for me working my agreed upon hours, nor when i needed to shuffle them to accommodate school. and sure, if you have an unreasonable boss it is going to be incredibly difficult to get them to respect your time because they do not respect you. either you can try and make it work, try and fight for yourself every single day, or you get a new job. i have had garbage bosses who neither respected my time nor me as a person. i cannot advise how you change those people, only that you need to get the fuck away from them as soon as you are able. no job is worth your health, mental or physical. here in ontario you have the right to disconnect now, the right legally to turn off your phone and ignore your work emails and calls. you may not live in ontario so i do not know what your legal rights are, but i will say to read your work contract. get familiar with your rights as an employee. if you're confused about anything call your local law school they tend to have student phone banks for questions and i've used them for some help with employment law questions i've had in the past. the thing is, you sign a contract to accept a job, but the company also signed this contract. you are held to adhering to it in order to continue to have your job. so, too, you should hold the company to it in order to keep having you. You are the asset. make them remember that.

[hyperlexichypatia]

This is a semi spinoff of this post, but really its own thought.

When a job pays less than a living wage, it generally attracts one of two types of employees:

Desperate people (usually poor and/or otherwise marginalized or with barriers to employment), who will take any job, no matter how bad, because they need the money, or

Independently wealthy people (usually well-off retirees, students being supported by their families, or women with well-off husbands*), who don't care about the pay scale because they don't need the money anyway.**

And sometimes, organizations will intentionally keep a job low-paying or non-paying with the deliberate intent of narrowing their pool to that second category.

People sometimes bring this up when discussing the salaries of elected officials -- yes, most politicians are paid more than most "regular people," but they're not paid enough to sustain the expensive lifestyle politicians have to maintain, and that's on purpose. It's not an oversight, and it's not primarily about cost-cutting. It's a deliberate barrier to ensure that only rich people can run for office.

The same is true, albeit to less severe effect, of unpaid internships -- the benefit of "hiring" an unpaid intern isn't (just) that you don't have to pay them; it's also that you can ensure that all your workers are rich, or at least middle-class.

When nonprofits brag about how little of their budget goes to "overhead" and "salaries", as if those terms were synonymous with "waste," what they're really saying is "All our employees are financially comfortable enough that they don't worry about being underpaid. Our staff has no socioeconomic diversity, and probably very little ethnic or cultural diversity." ***

This isn't a secret. I'm not blowing anything wide open here. People very openly admit that they think underpaid workers are better, because they're "not in it for the money." This is frequently cited as a reason, for example, that private school teachers are "better" than public school teachers -- they're paid less, so they're not "in it for the money," so they must be working out of the goodness of their hearts. I keep seeing these cursed ads for a pet-sitting service where the petsitters aren't paid, which is a selling point, because they're "not in it for the money."

"In it for the money" is the worst thing a worker could be, of course. Heaven forbid they be so greedy and entitled and selfish as to expect their full-time labor to enable them to pay for basic living expenses. I get this all the time as a public library worker, when I point out how underfunded and underpaid we are. "But... you're not doing it for the money, right?" And I'm supposed to laugh and say "No, no, I'd do it for free, of course!"

Except, see, I have these pesky little human needs, like food. And I can't get a cart full of groceries and explain to the cashier that I don't have any money, but I have just so much job satisfaction!

And it's gendered, of course it's gendered. The subtext of "But you're not doing it for the money, of course" is "But how much pin money do you really need, little lady? Doesn't your husband give you a proper allowance?"

Conceptually, it's just an extension of the upper-class cultural norm that "polite" (rich) people "don't talk about money" (because if you have to think about how much money you have or how much you need, you're insufficiently rich).

*Gendered language very much intentional.

**Disabled people are more likely to be in the first category (most disabled people are poor, and being disabled is expensive), but are usually talked about as if they're in the second category. We're told that disabled people sorting clothing for $1.03 an hour are "So happy to be here" and "Just want to be included," and it's not like they need the money, since, as we all know, disability benefits are ample and generous [heavy sarcasm].

***Unless, of course, they're a nonprofit whose "mission" involves "job placement," in which case what they're saying is "We exploit the poor and desperate people we're purporting to help." Either way, "We pay our employees like crap" is nothing to brag about.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Antitrust is a labor issue

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

This is huge: yesterday, the FTC finalized a rule banning noncompete agreements for every American worker. That means that the person working the register at a Wendy's can switch to the fry-trap at McD's for an extra $0.25/hour, without their boss suing them:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes

The median worker laboring under a noncompete is a fast-food worker making close to minimum wage. You know who doesn't have to worry about noncompetes? High tech workers in Silicon Valley, because California already banned noncompetes, as did Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington.

The fact that the country's largest economies, encompassing the most "knowledge-intensive" industries, could operate without shitty bosses being able to shackle their best workers to their stupid workplaces for years after those workers told them to shove it shows you what a goddamned lie noncompetes are based on. The idea that companies can't raise capital or thrive if their know-how can walk out the door, secreted away in the skulls of their ungrateful workers, is bullshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

Remember when OpenAI's board briefly fired founder Sam Altman and Microsoft offered to hire him and 700 of his techies? If "noncompetes block investments" was true, you'd think they'd have a hard time raising money, but no, they're still pulling in billions in investor capital (primarily from Microsoft itself!). This is likewise true of Anthropic, the company's major rival, which was founded by (wait for it), two former OpenAI employees.

Indeed, Silicon Valley couldn't have come into existence without California's ban on noncompetes – the first silicon company, Shockley Semiconductors, was founded by a malignant, delusional eugenicist who also couldn't manage a lemonade stand. His eight most senior employees (the "Traitorous Eight") quit his shitty company to found Fairchild Semiconductor, a rather successful chip shop – but not nearly so successful as the company that two of Fairchild's top employees founded after they quit: Intel:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/the-traitorous-eight-and-the-battle-of-germanium-valley/

Likewise a lie: the tale that noncompetes raise wages. This theory – beloved of people whose skulls are so filled with Efficient Market Hypothesis Brain-Worms that they've got worms dangling out of their nostrils and eye-sockets – holds that the right to sign a noncompete is an asset that workers can trade to their employers in exchange for better pay. This is absolutely true, provided you ignore reality.

Remember: the median noncompete-bound worker is a fast food employee making near minimum wage. The major application of noncompetes is preventing that worker from getting a raise from a rival fast-food franchisee. Those workers are losing wages due to noncompetes. Meanwhile, the highest paid workers in the country are all clustered in a a couple of cities in northern California, pulling down sky-high salaries in a state where noncompetes have been illegal since the gold rush.

If a capitalist wants to retain their workers, they can compete. Offer your workers get better treatment and better wages. That's how capitalism's alchemy is supposed to work: competition transmogrifies the base metal of a capitalist's greed into the noble gold of public benefit by making success contingent on offering better products to your customers than your rivals – and better jobs to your workers than those rivals are willing to pay. However, capitalists hate capitalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/18/in-extremis-veritas/#the-winnah

Capitalists hate capitalism so much that they're suing the FTC, in MAGA's beloved Fifth Circuit, before a Trump-appointed judge. The case was brought by Trump's financial advisors, Ryan LLC, who are using it to drum up business from corporations that hate Biden's new taxes on the wealthy and stepped up IRS enforcement on rich tax-cheats.

Will they win? It's hard to say. Despite what you may have heard, the case against the FTC order is very weak, as Matt Stoller explains here:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/ftc-enrages-corporate-america-by

The FTC's statutory authority to block noncompetes comes from Section 5 of the FTC Act, which bans "unfair methods of competition" (hard to imagine a less fair method than indenturing your workers). Section 6(g) of the Act lets the FTC make rules to enforce Section 5's ban on unfairness. Both are good law – 6(g) has been used many times (26 times in the five years from 1968-73 alone!).

The DC Circuit court upheld the FTC's right to "promulgate rules defining the meaning of the statutory standards of the illegality the Commission is empowered to prevent" in 1973, and in 1974, Congress changed the FTC Act, but left this rulemaking power intact.

The lawyer suing the FTC – Anton Scalia's larvum, a pismire named Eugene Scalia – has some wild theories as to why none of this matters. He says that because the law hasn't been enforced since the ancient days of the (checks notes) 1970s, it no longer applies. He says that the mountain of precedent supporting the FTC's authority "hasn't aged well." He says that other antitrust statutes don't work the same as the FTC Act. Finally, he says that this rule is a big economic move and that it should be up to Congress to make it.

Stoller makes short work of these arguments. The thing that tells you whether a law is good is its text and precedent, "not whether a lawyer thinks a precedent is old and bad." Likewise, the fact that other antitrust laws is irrelevant "because, well, they are other antitrust laws, not this antitrust law." And as to whether this is Congress's job because it's economically significant, "so what?" Congress gave the FTC this power.

Now, none of this matters if the Supreme Court strikes down the rule, and what's more, if they do, they might also neuter the FTC's rulemaking power in the bargain. But again: so what? How is it better for the FTC to do nothing, and preserve a power that it never uses, than it is for the Commission to free the 35-40 million American workers whose bosses get to use the US court system to force them to do a job they hate?

The FTC's rule doesn't just ban noncompetes – it also bans TRAPs ("training repayment agreement provisions"), which require employees to pay their bosses thousands of dollars if they quit, get laid off, or are fired:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

The FTC's job is to protect Americans from businesses that cheat. This is them, doing their job. If the Supreme Court strikes this down, it further delegitimizes the court, and spells out exactly who the GOP works for.

This is part of the long history of antitrust and labor. From its earliest days, antitrust law was "aimed at dollars, not men" – in other words, antitrust law was always designed to smash corporate power in order to protect workers. But over and over again, the courts refused to believe that Congress truly wanted American workers to get legal protection from the wealthy predators who had fastened their mouth-parts on those workers' throats. So over and over – and over and over – Congress passed new antitrust laws that clarified the purpose of antitrust, using words so small that even federal judges could understand them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

After decades of comatose inaction, Biden's FTC has restored its role as a protector of labor, explicitly tackling competition through a worker protection lens. This week, the Commission blocked the merger of Capri Holdings and Tapestry Inc, a pair of giant conglomerates that have, between them, bought up nearly every "affordable luxury" brand (Versace, Jimmy Choo, Michael Kors, Kate Spade, Coach, Stuart Weitzman, etc).

You may not care about "affordable luxury" handbags, but you should care about the basis on which the FTC blocked this merger. As David Dayen explains for The American Prospect: 33,000 workers employed by these two companies would lose the wage-competition that drives them to pay skilled sales-clerks more to cross the mall floor and switch stores:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-04-24-challenge-fashion-merger-new-antitrust-philosophy/

In other words, the FTC is blocking a $8.5b merger that would turn an oligopoly into a monopoly explicitly to protect workers from the power of bosses to suppress their wages. What's more, the vote was unanimous, include the Commission's freshly appointed (and frankly, pretty terrible) Republican commissioners:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-moves-block-tapestrys-acquisition-capri

A lot of people are (understandably) worried that if Biden doesn't survive the coming election that the raft of excellent rules enacted by his agencies will die along with his presidency. Here we have evidence that the Biden administration's anti-corporate agenda has become institutionalized, acquiring a bipartisan durability.

And while there hasn't been a lot of press about that anti-corporate agenda, it's pretty goddamned huge. Back in 2021, Tim Wu (then working in the White wrote an executive order on competition that identified 72 actions the agencies could take to blunt the power of corporations to harm everyday Americans:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Biden's agency heads took that plan and ran with it, demonstrating the revolutionary power of technical administrative competence and proving that being good at your job is praxis:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

In just the past week, there's been a storm of astoundingly good new rules finalized by the agencies:

A minimum staffing ratio for nursing homes;

The founding of the American Climate Corps;

A guarantee of overtime benefits;

A ban on financial advisors cheating retirement savers;

Medical privacy rules that protect out-of-state abortions;

A ban on junk fees in mortgage servicing;

Conservation for 13m Arctic acres in Alaska;

Classifying "forever chemicals" as hazardous substances;

A requirement for federal agencies to buy sustainable products;

Closing the gun-show loophole.

That's just a partial list, and it's only Thursday.

Why the rush? As Gerard Edic writes for The American Prospect, finalizing these rules now protects them from the Congressional Review Act, a gimmick created by Newt Gingrich in 1996 that lets the next Senate wipe out administrative rules created in the months before a federal election:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-23-biden-administration-regulations-congressional-review-act/

In other words, this is more dazzling administrative competence from the technically brilliant agencies that have labored quietly and effectively since 2020. Even laggards like Pete Buttigieg have gotten in on the act, despite a very poor showing in the early years of the Biden administration:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

Despite those unpromising beginnings, the DOT has gotten onboard the trains it regulates, and passed a great rule that forces airlines to refund your money if they charge you for services they don't deliver:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/24/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-rules-to-deliver-automatic-refunds-and-protect-consumers-from-surprise-junk-fees-in-air-travel/

The rule also bans junk fees and forces airlines to compensate you for late flights, finally giving American travelers the same rights their European cousins have enjoyed for two decades.

It's the latest in a string of muscular actions taken by the DOT, a period that coincides with the transfer of Jen Howard from her role as chief of staff to FTC chair Lina Khan to a new gig as the DOT's chief of competition enforcement:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-25-transportation-departments-new-path/

Under Howard's stewardship, the DOT blocked the merger of Spirit and Jetblue, and presided over the lowest flight cancellation rate in more than decade:

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/2023-numbers-more-flights-fewer-cancellations-more-consumer-protections

All that, along with a suite of protections for fliers, mark a huge turning point in the US aviation industry's long and worsening abusive relationship with the American public. There's more in the offing, too including a ban on charging families extra for adjacent seats, rules to make flying with wheelchairs easier, and a ban on airlines selling passenger's private information to data brokers.

There's plenty going on in the world – and in the Biden administration – that you have every right to be furious and/or depressed about. But these expert agencies, staffed by experts, have brought on a tsunami of rules that will make every working American better off in a myriad of ways. Those material improvements in our lives will, in turn, free us up to fight the bigger, existential fights for a livable planet, free from genocide.

It may not be a good time to be alive, but it's a much better time than it was just last week.

And it's only Thursday.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

[teecupangel]

Sorry for another ask but my brain came up with a good question. What if Desmond ended up in the Lackadaisy world? (1920s anthro, bootlegging cats). It would be a perfect fit for him. He could run a speakeasy and he’d be adorable as a cat. Not sure what kind though.

Nah, it’s good. As long as you guys are okay with the fact that I am… uuhhh… 2ish months late with the replies hahahaha

My first idea is to make Desmond a mix breed with unknown 'lineage' as a way to call on his colorful ‘genetic makeup’. He’d also be primarily white with different colors (black, gray, brown, orange) mixed in. His right front paw would be completely black though and he would still have a scar on his lips that makes his left whiskers shorter than the right.

I’m also kinda imagining that he’s not part of Lackadaisy or any of the gangs. He woke up in this world and believes that it’s like… his old world but with anthropomorphic cats. The whole Prohibition thing sucks like hell and he knows he can get rich if he makes a speakeasy…

That wasn’t his original plan though. He was just checking out the place and it turns out… well… there was an empty ‘bar’ that just fell on his lap.

To be more exact, this was apparently owned his late grandma “Minerva” and he had inherited it. The establishment itself was a small grocery store with a fake bottom by the cashier where the speakeasy was.

And…

Old grandma Minerva’s room full of bottles of imported alcohol. Enough alcohol for every person in New York to have alcoholic poisoning.

(Okay, I’m setting this in New York because Desmond would find it ironic that his speakeasy is in the same location as Bad Weather but, if we’re sticking with the webtoon’s setting of St Louis, Missouri, we can set it like a couple of blocks away from Little Daisy Cafe.)

And old grandma Minerva has employees who need the salary to live so…

Desmond is cleaning up Minerva’s messes… again.

.

Minerva, the anthro cat, is a pure white cat breed of some kind. Desmond technically took over the identity of a real anthro cat by the name of Desmond Miles. All he knows about this Desmond Miles is that he’s from the country who came to the ‘big city’ to take care of grandma Minerva’s affairs after her death and receive his inheritance.

Desmond will absolutely make use of his bartending skills and make his speakeasy famous (unfortunate for Lackadaisy though)

Rocky flirts him with (and lot of ‘customers’ flirt with him to be fair) but Desmond knows he isn’t serious so he just flirts back. He doesn’t take any offers though because he’s still trying to get used to being an anthro cat and what it all ‘entails’.

The speakeasy is named Bad Weather, of course.

Desmond gets a singer for the speakeasy because he thinks that should always be in a ‘bar’.

Desmond may or may not be trying to create a Brotherhood of his own. He is absolutely creating an information network, of course. Many of which are stray kittens he had taken in with their own rooms on the second floor of grocery. They also help with the grocery store and the older ones are usually the cashiers.

[mesetacadre]

Re: flexibility, I've been wondering - what is there to say about the impact of remote work on productivity and profit, inasmuch as it can be measured?

I can only comment on the IT sector, and only superficially: multiple employers have cited the transition to remote/hybrid work as the primary cause of the not-insignificant decrease in efficiency currently observed in companies worldwide. On the managers' end, it's being portrayed as e.g. a shift in priorities, with younger people especially being more willing to change jobs frequently and not feeling tethered to a single employer - at least according to recent Microsoft Work Trend Index reports that I (unfortunately) had to analyze LOL. Does flexibilization yield tangible profits in the "white collar"* department, too, or is it primarily and exclusively a tool of exploitation of "unskilled"* laborers, migrants, et cetera?

Asking this because the surge in popularity of remote work is certainly an unprecedented development, I'm trying to find the correct framework within which to assess its importance. (Unless this is outside your area of interest/expertise...)

Hi Adam, first I would be cautious of what some employers attribute to be the cause of lost productivity, they can lie as much as they want. It is well known how, for example, retailers in the US state of California assign loss from imagined future profits as well as actual losses from other causes to shoplifting when actual lost sales from shoplifting is as significant as a small accounting error. Taking them at face value still, I'd argue that the context of remote work is far from neutral, having been instituted rashly during the economic slowdown that the pandemic forced. I've also heard the complete opposite from other employers, such as my mother's, which has instituted a hybrid work regime *after already having established the required infrastructure and protocols* and it seems to increase productivity by the same mechanism that a shortened work week increases productivity, worker morale.

A well-implemented hybrid or completely remote work regime does increase productivity, not only because of better employee performance in some cases, but also because it can allow the capitalist to cut down on costs, a very intuitive example of this could be having to afford less physical space for an office, since not everyone has to be present to work, and there could not even be an office. Flexibilization, when done well for the employer, always increases profit margins because it makes the worker more subservient to the needs of the capitalist, it allows them to choose when and for how long the worker works, for example, or to never have to pay the salary corresponding to a full work week.

I'd also tell you not to confuse the general trend for what a subset of workers want. The trend towards flexibilization and the higher mobility of young workers between jobs is imposed on them by this trend, by shortening average contracts (Taking again Spain as an example, the average contract for people younger than 30 got as low as 17 days last year, and nowadays 0-day contracts are becoming more common). Nobody wants to work for less than a week for a salary lower than the minimum wage, it is being imposed in the name of "flexicurity", as they call it. Look it up, the European Commission avows it.

Perhaps traditional office jobs can benefit less from this very rapid hiring-firing process because of the needed education for some positions, but as long as there is a reserve labor pool of people who have worked at multiple of these places, and as long as they can continue to play with work schedules and regimes, they very much still benefit from flexibilization.

If things like the 4 day work week or remote work are popular within the general working population it still doesn't change that the class who ultimately benefits from it is not our own, and our efforts should be directed to educating workers so they understand that no benefit can be gained within capitalism that does not benefit the bourgeois class 10 times as much, and that it still does not change the immutable exploitative nature of salary work.

[raleigh-edward]

How do you think RC makes money despite all these diamond rushes? They have increased the frequency of dr also does it not cause them loss?

Hello anon, I thought a bit about this and have arrived at my own conclusion regarding the same. Now this is what I personally inferred so I advise you to take it with a grain of salt.

The revenue generation model of newspapers and magazines is the closest to these free apps for gaming or otherwise.

Newspapers usually cost a few cents, which is minimal considering the amount of money that goes into production which also includes the salaries of the employees. Even if the newspaper has a million subscribers, their total added expenditure is nowhere close to the production investment.

So one might think how are these publication houses making profits? It is simple, their subscribers are not only their customers but their products. Allow me to elaborate, advertising agencies agree to put their advertisements in newspapers and magazines based on their reach which means their total number of subscribers. The publication houses charge generous amounts for these advertisements and that becomes their primary source of revenue.

I believe this is RC's revenue model too. They make money primarily through paid advertisements on their app. The readers who spend money on in-app purchases are very less so that amount is not exactly contributing significantly to RC's revenue.

Diamond rush events contrary to popular opinion are actually profitable for RC. Why? Readers are very likely to read, replay and re-read books during diamond rush events, hence this is the time when there is the most traffic on their app, which works as a perfect incentive for potential advertisers.

It is highly unlikely that a corporation would take a decision that harms them economically, if Diamond rush events were actually causing them losses they wouldn't have increased their frequency.

Based on their financial documents that are public, they seem to be making minimal profits, but I can assure you that they are making enough to stay afloat. If they were to actually capitalise on the ad revenue model to its fullest potential like most western apps do, they might even be able to increase their profits while simultaneously keeping diamond rush events for non-paying users.

Apologies for the lengthy answer, but I hope this helped!

[rainbowsky]

I am so happy for DD "breaking into film" as you have put it! Excited for him to continue growing in his career and getting access to more projects he loves. Getting to learn from people like Leung Chiuwai! I can definitely see how this is a step forward in his career.

That said, I'm a little confused what the difference is* that makes DD a film actor and GG still a drama actor.** I know it's been a few years since GG starred in Jade Dynasty, but that wasn't a small movie. And yet GG continued doing dramas after. What makes Jade Dynasty "not count" (and what makes Wu Ming DO count) toward making them film-vs-drama actors?

*Or was, until GG was cast in LOCH!

**Yes, I know the lines between these somewhat-ambiguous categories are blurry! Obviously actors may choose to do both or go back and forth throughout their careers. But I understand the opportunity, status, recognition, and money are in film.

Thank you for your lovely responses and I hope you're doing well!

Hi Faery-snow! 😊

I'm not quite sure why you have the impression that there is such a big difference between what DD is doing and what GG is doing. They are both working to build serious acting careers, and both of them appear to be pursuing film projects.

Despite having done Jade Dynasty, I think GG is still perceived primarily as a drama actor simply because he's only been filming dramas, and all of the projects from him that are expected to launch in the next year or so are dramas.

Where Dreams Begin

The Longest Promise

Sunshine With Me

Whereas DD has been filming movies, two of which have already been released and two of which have not yet been released (Formed Police Unit, One and Only), plus his next project is expected to be a film (Mermaid with Cheng Er, director of Hidden Blade).

It is true that his most recent project was a drama, which wrapped filming last month (Golden Journey with Li Qin, a propaganda drama about a bank employee who turns to the C/CP after discovering corruption among those he works under) but he seems to be primarily focused on film, and has been rubbing elbows with a lot of big film directors.

If they are both trying to transition to film then it might seem like DD is somewhat ahead in that process, but they are both in transition in their careers. I don't think you could call either of them a film actor at this point. They are simply actors.

It is not a contest. They will both take the career paths that are best for them and that take them where they want to be based on the opportunities they have. GG's new film is a huge opportunity that will definitely make an impression, and hopefully take him far.

There is nothing wrong with filming dramas. Some of the big film actors still film dramas from time to time.

My hope is that they continue to do films, because it leaves more flexibility in their schedules (as the filming tends to be less time-consuming and demanding than a drama that has dozens of episodes). I also think that films are a bit of a safer bet than dramas given how frequently dramas get held back and delayed and have to go back through review again and again.

Films are also much more accessible than dramas because they only require a viewing commitment of a few hours, whereas dramas can require a commitment of 40 hours or more. Therefore there is much more opportunity for films to be exposed to a wider audience.

As a result, films tend to be taken more seriously pretty much everywhere in the world, and by extension, film actors tend to be taken more seriously.

Given the budget limitations around actor salaries that are placed upon dramas by the government, it's possible that actors will make more money for less demanding work with film vs dramas.

These are some of the considerations that could be at play for actors when planning their next career moves.

But to answer your question, I don't think there is really much difference between what they are trying to do/have achieved in their careers so far. They both have a ways to go before they will be fully accepted as serious actors, whether in film or drama. They both have a ways to go before they can shed their traffic star image.

[marciabrady]

did you see that jodi benson is applauding the lyric and story changes to the remake? does that make you feel like the energy is of the film is the same as the original?

I'm going to preface this by saying that I haven't been a fan of any of the live action remakes and that, while I do admire Jodi, I can be objective about what's going on.

Before I state my opinion, let me start with just listing some facts: Jodi is currently a Disney employee and relies primarily on her Disney salary for her income and livelihood. Jodi has become very deferential to Disney and has contradicted herself and changed her opinion many times in the past, vacillating between what was arguably her authentic opinion and a PR answer (for instance, she was pretty vocal about having a lot of difficulties with the creative team of the third movie and disliking it, before changing her tune entirely and giving seemingly rehearsed soundbites; she also did this when asked about the character of Ariel. Anytime she would give her take on how strong Ariel was or if the character was a good role model before 2019, she would always defend Ariel, but after 2019...well, we'll get into that later). Jodi has been vocal about getting in trouble with Disney in the past and having to adjust accordingly. Jodi is doing everything she can to maintain her relationship with the company and is trying to have her daughter hired into the company and possibly her son. Now, take all of those things into consideration, alongside the fact that anyone who's said anything against the live action remake has been essentially labeled as a bigot or problematic, etc, so it's impossible to really have any discourse about the film in a way that's earnest or isn't overly flowery and complimentary, which is what Jodi is doing.

I think art ceases to be art and becomes completely commercial the minute every person has the exact same take on the film, and this has been the case with this project since before even a single frame of it was shot. And, honestly, that kind of encapsulates why I don't think this film will be anything like the original? Well, it won't retain its energy, at least. Obviously they're ripping off the songs and the characters for their own gain.

It's hard to overstate how dire the conditions were that the original creative team was working under and how much was riding on this project- how inventive it was, how fresh a concept, how much it married a traditional reverence to the classic Disney films while marking a stamp all of its own to it. Time and time again, the success and novelty of this film has been accredited to one man- Howard Ashman. Howard Ashman did so much for the original production- he wrote some dialogue, he wrote the music, he performed key numbers for the talent to the point where they just copied whatever he did- he even invested his own money into the film. The fact that this was the first time an openly gay man had so much creative control over a project at Disney is something that, sadly to this day, is an outlier that has never happened again. This, married with some of the other gay talent working on the film- like Andreas Deja- infused a necessary element of queerness into the energy of production. Even the fact that Ursula was based on drag queen Divine, or the animator working on the scene where Ariel's grotto was destructed drew parallels of his father kicking him out when he came out...this is the definitive queer-coded fairytale for the gay community, going back to the original author and his artistic intent, and that's why I'm so happy that so many LGBTQIA+ people were able to contribute to the film in the 80s. When you mix that with how down animation was at the time and how animation would've ceased to exist at Disney, had this film not been successful, how the animators were pushed off the lot to working in trailers for the first time in the company's history...I think all of that contributed to lending an authentic energy of repression and being underground, etc, all things super necessary to illustrating the gay experience and having all of that ring through on screen. All of the people involved had something of being an outsider in society, too, which I think is perfect for the story of Ariel. Did you know about Jodi Benson before The Little Mermaid? No, of course you didn't, because she had virtually no fame and had auditioned for Ariel as a pity gift from Howard after the show she had been performing in had flopped, according to Jodi. Whenever she told her family and friends about the project, they laughed at her and told her the only people that do animation are ones whose careers are downhill and were so discouraging, until she finally stopped saying anything to them about it at all until the premiere where the success shocked everyone. Even Pat Carroll was a third choice- they wanted a different actress, and once they didn't get her and hired another one, she didn't work out either which is why they finally called Pat in. This film was solely riding on the creative energy and passion and love the creative team had for it and so many bets and stakes were on its back. The success of it came as a surprise to everyone, and it arguably reinvented animation and brought forth the animation period known as the Disney Renaissance.

Compare that to the 2023 film...literally nothing about it is inventive or edgy. It's the 100th live action film that is anything but the reimagining it's remarked as- it literally tries to be the same film as the animated which has already found success, down to naming the mermaid Ariel, giving her red hair, a green fin, a fish friend named Flounder and a crab named Sebastian, and other inventions that were created specifically for the 1989 film as opposed to going back to the original story and trying to be its own thing (every single live action Disney film does this which I think is so stupid honestly; like people being surprised that Sebastian and Flounder look like that...of course they do, because they were created for the medium of animation, not whatever this movie is try to be; how much better would Emma Watson's performance have seemed if she didn't have to live up to the animated Belle's songs or the iconic gold dress?). It rips off the same songs, which have since become Americana and already proven to be successful. In the age where so many critiques have come up regarding the original film, this movie softens both the characters of Ariel and Ursula to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible further illustrating that while the emphasis on the first film was to bring forth a reality to the characters of Ariel and King Triton, this movie just wants to be liked by everyone and has nothing to say.

While many people have stated that Halle's casting was progressive, every other principle character is portrayed by a white actor- Ursula, Eric, Ariel's Father, Vanessa, etc. The man that has taken over Howard Ashman's seat is painfully straight (sorry Lin Manuel, but I can't get on board) and has already written songs for huge Disney productions in the past (ever heard of Moana?) and is currently very popular (ever heard of Hamilton?). Besides, a Disney Princess being racebent isn't a new concept- as we saw with Brandi's Cinderella in the 1990s- and it isn't even new to this property, as we saw the voice actress of Moana playing Ariel in a live action version back in 2019. Remember when I mentioned how the original cast hadn't been super well known prior to the film's release? Halle was literally recognized by Beyonce and had already been in an established singing group with her sister and news of her casting was announced four years prior to the release of the film and super publicized- which, by the way, the marketing budget for this film is nearly double than the production budget for the original, so just think about that...Melissa McCarthy and Javier Bardem literally admitted to texting the director begging for a part, which they got since they were already bigshots in Hollywood. Speaking of Melissa, if Disney really wanted to be progressive or inclusive or be any of the things they're touting to be, I feel they should've hired a drag queen to portray Ursula. Instead, they gave us a white straight married woman from Illinois who's never sang a note in her life. I'm sorry but there's no way she was the best possible choice for the role. Also, outside of not hiring any substantial amount of queer talent or talent of color in front of or behind the camera, Disney has intentionally tried to distance themselves from the community and the subtext of the original movie's queerness. I already mentioned how Ursula was based on a drag queen, and it was Howard's invention that she had a fling with Triton in the past, which you can hear Pat confirming in this interview. This 2023 film makes them siblings...also, I'm sorry, I'll never get over the fact that the original author of the fairytale was part of the community, Howard was, and then they give us...Lin Manuel? There's so many things about the production of this film that make me so uncomfortable and it's all rooted back to the erasure. Which reminds me- Disney announced that they were taking a documentary based on Howard Ashman, his creative achievements and his struggle with AIDs, off of the Disney+ platform the same day they were going to release TLM 2023, before they later repented due to complaints. Aside from the erasure, it's also unsettling to me, as I mentioned before, that there's such a lack of diversity in the cast and it's nearly all white principals when this movie LITERALLY has advertised how "diverse" it is above all else.

In 2019 they announced they were going to set the film in the Caribbean, which I thought was new to this retelling and I was excited to see what it would've looked like and what the new music would've been etc...but this was back when they were planning on casting Harry Styles, a white British man, as Eric. I think having a white British man as the ruler of the Caribbeans is horrible optics, and when he backed out, they hired another white British man...it honestly doesn't sit well with me, especially when other young actors of color were auditioning and were allegedly encountering racism (just saying allegedly because I'm not trying to get sued lol). Also take into account that women of color that have actual talent when it comes to singing were auditioning to be Ursula, even women with pull and influence in the industry, before it was given to director friend Melissa McCarthy who begged for the role via text. Unfortunately, none of these topics are being addressed because Disney very smartly tied audience approval to this film on whether or not they agree with Halle's casting so people are treating it as above reproach and don't really want to speak out or discuss these really problematic elements of production for fear that they might come across as not being in support of Halle having gotten the role and, by extension, making it appear as though they don't support any leads of color.

Finally, where the original was a labor of love with barely any money going into it, fueled purely by a spirit of creativity and love and art, such is not the case with the remake. The remake doesn't offer anything new in the endless strings of live actions, which are doing the same thing with each film- down to how they're marketing the female talent (a strong woman who don't need no man!!). The director has even shown that he doesn't understand the character of Ariel multiple times and fed right into criticism that the talent from the original, like Jodi, used to speak out about before she was ironically silenced. Because she doesn't anymore...because Disney won't let her, allegedly. Jodi allegedly works with a speechwriter and you can kind of tell. I've met her and I've seen almost every panel she's been a part of, and when you ask her about an experience or a memory or her opinion, her stories change a lot. There are still the same truths to them, but she'll reveal different details in each, just the way you would when you're telling the same story to different people because anything that's natural isn't something that will be duplicated too much and there are going to be changes and shifts depending on when you tell it, who you tell it to, etc. Starting in 2019, Jodi stopped defending Ariel and began reciting a speech which she's repeated ad nauseam over how Ariel was appropriate for when she was made but, by virtue of how much "stronger" female characters are now, she'll pale in comparison to someone like Merida or Mulan. She claims you can't hold a 1989 portrayal up against a 2019 or 2023 one, because of course it would have aged...which is the opposite of what she used to say. I've heard her parrot this speech time and time again- and even in person. And that goes back to your original question...I wouldn't place my bets on the remake offering anything authentic or new if Jodi's saying it. Even aside from this, the BATB original cast have all said disparaging things about the remake, aside from Paige O'hara, who's continuously sung its and Emma Watson's praises (and what a coincidence that she's been invited to the premiere and gets more attention from Disney)...until you catch her on an off day or at a convention and she starts complaining about the darker tone, or the gun inclusion, or how Emma couldn't really sing but it was fine because she could act, or how she didn't approve of elements of the costuming...at the end of the day, these people are celebrities in their own right and have to do and say things that are canned tbh just to keep their likability up and remain palatable to the masses and hirable to Disney and Jodi's unfortunately sold out, in my opinion, in that way.

[freyjuseggr]

in my personal (American) experience, any "small business" big enough to have employees but small enough to not have to listen to labor laws (under 50 employees) is run by fucking ghouls who are actively anti-employee rights and who vote that way. if it's like, one person on etsy or at the farmers market selling their goods that's one thing but anyone who makes themselves a boss can and should be stolen from. infinite growth is the ideology of a cancer cell etc etc, if they love their product so much and don't want it to get stolen they should sell online if i'm being honest!

okay so im a bit short on time so at risk of coming across as, somewhat defensive, im going to directly quote an example from my life rather than try to pretend im not doing that, this isnt defensiveness though, im simply trying to understand.

1 it has not been my experience that size of a company has any correlation with being able to ignore labor laws, and in fact the larger the company is, the more likely they would be to know exactly what laws they could break and bend to avoid getting in legal trouble because they can afford a legal team. and also the risk of bringing up any kind of issue is much higher for an employee of a large corp, but maybe thats just me living in right to work states

2 my friend owns a business. the business model is directly based on providing a space for community. he owns a game "store" that is like 90% space to come in and play games. the LLC has 3 employees, of which he technically is one. he gets a salary from the LLC and it is not a lot. he already has a profit plan in place wherein a percentage goes back into the business to make it better and more functional for its purpose, and is going to start in the next year or so (he only just started this, and wasnt expecting to have hired anyone else yet) to have an employee profit sharing program where the remainder of profits from the LLC get split equally between employees.

i think the "infinite growth" here is primarily geared toward providing a service within the community, a space to exist in. do you extend this same attitude toward a bar? or coffee shop?

i know that this is a specific example for a general question, so i will add some more general stuff, but just a bit bc i gotta get to work. where should one sell things online? you mentioned etsy, should etsy, ebay, or amazon be getting a share of profits from online sales, why? what about a website where you pay for your own domain name? why is the online model better than having a brick and mortar storefront? because people who dont care are able to steal from it? why are we encouraging punishing the people who are significantly more likely to be affected by theft than corporations actively making our lives hell?

and also, to add, i know of a small business owner in my hometown, hes an ass and everyone hates him, and he owns a restaurant that is very successful. you cant steal from it, and its working out well for him. and hes well known for voting dem and also being the biggest ass. so i know they exist, but i still dont see how even if you could that stealing from him would count as direct action. you arent helping anyone really

[eccentric-ocean]

Late march / early april reading list

Will They Won't They by Ava Wilder

2 actors who are secret exes are forced to work together again. they hate each other (or are supposed to). The book is... fine, but I felt it liked a little spark and dragged at the end. Mostly I found it forgettable, which I promptly did.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh

This one was a gift from a friend and a lovely one. A korean mythology inspired YA novel. I liked the adventures and the world. I loved the writing style. The romance felt a bit like it came all at once, with little build-up, but I can forgive the author for that, as I enjoyed reading anyway.

We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian

I didn't think historical gay romance was a genre I would enjoy, primarily cuz I don't really want to read about queer people being miserable. Cat Sebastian manages to write a novel set in the 50s/60s in New York about two men falling in love that feels both rooted in that time AND hopeful. The characters definitely struggle with the laws and typical mindset of that time & place, but they still live their lives. Their love feels SO much bigger than their suffering. They build a community too. And the author has done her research, as evidenced by her note at the end. Also they're just fantastic characters, and the writing's very funny. I had a great time! And there is a cat in the story.

10 Things That Never Happened by Alexis Hall

My expectations were low for this, but I actually laughed and cried and stayed up embarrassingly late (or early actually) to read more. It also happens to be a gay romance but a modern british one. Between a lonely employee of a sheffield bed & bath store and his dickish london boss. The power imbalance is not a serious worry here, cuz the sheffield employee talks to his boss like he doesn't pay his salary. They quickly slide into a different dynamic for plot reasons. And the issue is resolved before they really get together. It's very funny also. MC has a very distinct voice & accent which I loved. Did the lie drag on a for a beat too long at the end? maybe. But honestly it's still a 5 star read for me. There is also a cat!! Only thing I regret is reading the ending sleep deprived. It doesn't hit as hard when you're bleary eyed, I'm sure I would've cried as I did earlier in the book.

[ahmed-s-f]

Christian ministries gangs in Egypt And sexual harassment Paul’s ministry

This article is about a real-life experience that happened to me

I joined a Christian ministry at an early age. The funny thing is that I did not know that it was a Christian ministry at all. It was a charitable organization that worked in secret for the benefit of a Christian institution.

I accepted the truth easily when I learned of it. The security situation is difficult and dangerous for Christians who work in Christian missionary work in Egypt.

An organization under the name FOF was working for one of the Christian ministries under the name Paul’s Ministry

This, of course, necessitates accepting small legal crimes such as the institution’s falsification of its papers and sources of income, and more importantly, accepting continuous lying to people under the pretext that this is for their benefit and to convey the Christian faith to them.

I did not understand how to combine lying and the Christian faith and how they should work together for the same goal

Then I began to realize the reality of the ministry under which I worked, that its work was similar to that of gangs. It was forbidden for anyone to know the name of its leader. His name was John W. Hanna, and he was hiding behind dozens of employees so that she could not reach him.

The institution’s financial resources were poor, and the money spent on development work was small, despite my knowledge that the ministry had an income in the millions, and property worth about 40 million Egyptian pounds ..

However, the Ministry’s employees monopolized that money for themselves, and that was the reason for the director’s secrecy. It came to the point of stealing my salary for three years and stealing donations that went specifically to specific people who did not get anything from them and did not even know they existed.

The biggest disaster is when I saw in our Christian ministry cases of sexual harassment of working women and those who were targeted, and because the harasser was related to the director, JOHN, he was not punished or even expelled from his position.

John’s ministry was offering money that should be given as non-refundable donations. They were offering it in the form of loans and forcing the beneficiaries to return it, which is an effective way to steal money. One person died due to health deteriorations due to John and Hana’s pressure on him to force him to return money that should have been Provided primarily as a donation

The service was also trading its money on the black market, which is a difficult to trace method they use to steal donation funds.

Threats were a common method. Those who complained about those who converted from Islam to Christianity were threatened to inform their Muslim families.. even though the work of the service is to protect those who converted to Christianity.

What is strange is that all neighboring ministries knew about these crimes, and despite that, no one dared to expose or fight them

In addition to wasting money on fake projects and failed projects, while dozens of new believers were suffering from poverty and the difficulty of life, Paul’s ministry was wasting money on projects that had not worked for a single day.

When I saw with the eyes of one of the new believers suffering after he was expelled from his home and his family pursued him, John refused to give him support to obtain housing even though he receives funding allocated for these cases.

Which made me go directly to the British institution that supports our ministry to file a complaint with it, as it does not know what is happening in Egypt. It was the 3pministries Foundation.

I filed a formal complaint but they ignored it

Once again they ignored her

I had to file a complaint with a British ministry specializing in charitable institutions, which forced them to respond

Their response was very dry. They did not try to find out anything. They only sought to close the complaint. I sent them all the evidence of crimes in Egypt and of the incidents of theft and waste of money, but they did not take any reaction.

Then they just told me that they would stop replying to me or I would not text them again

I discovered that the organization ignored all crimes and did not mind their occurrence just to keep its work in Egypt afloat

And maintaining the flow of Muslims crossing over to Christianity, which means more money flowing to the Egyptian side Paul’s Ministry and the British side 3pministries

The funny thing is that the goal of spreading Christianity itself was not achieved due to the fact that most of the reports written about new believers are fake, they are composed positions written from imagination.

Most of the new believers quickly return to Islam due to lack of proper follow-up, because it simply no longer brings in money.

The spread of corruption in Arab Christian ministries is a disaster that must be looked at seriously

[billlockyer]

What Separates a 401(k) Plan from a Pension Plan

A 401(k) differs from a pension plan in that an employee can contribute to their retirement savings account through payroll deductions. Several employers also offer matching funds. On the other hand, pension plans are retirement accounts sponsored by employers and pay out a set sum of money when the employee retires. Your salary, number of years of service, and other factors will typically determine how much you receive.

It's crucial to comprehend the costs associated with a 401k or pension if you're considering getting one. The main causes of plan expenses are contributions, returns, and management fees. However, additional costs covered by the employer, such as administration and recordkeeping fees, can also impact the cost of a 401k. It would help if you asked for a fee schedule that lists all the costs related to your plan.

Asking about service fees, which vary by fund provider, is also a good idea. Some service providers charge fees for processing tax returns, moving assets between 401(k) plan providers, and other services. A typical pension has a cost advantage of 49% over a typical 401(k)-style retirement account, according to a recent National Institute on Retirement Security analysis. This cost advantage is primarily attributable to lower investment management fees, optimally balanced investment portfolios, and longevity risk pooling.

Employer-sponsored retirement savings vehicles include pensions and 401(k) plans, two distinct types. Even though they are both well-liked, one may be preferable to the other depending on your particular circumstances due to a few differences. A 401k and a pension are fundamentally different because a 401k allows you to choose how your money is invested. Several investment options are available, including stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

As a defined-benefit plan, a traditional pension lets you know exactly how much money you'll receive each month when you retire. The sum is determined by years of service and past salaries. The benefit is typically paid out in lump sums when you reach a certain age, a process known as vesting, or in monthly payments. However, you won't get the entire sum if you quit your job before becoming vested.

Employees can make pretax contributions to a savings account through an employer-sponsored retirement plan known as a 401(k). Employees are allowed to contribute up to a certain amount each year, and occasionally, employers match the contributions. Unlike a pension funded by the company, a 401k is based on your contributions and investments and promises to pay you a set amount of money over time. The most common kind of tax-deferred retirement account in the US is this one, which is referred to as a "defined contribution" plan.

Similar to a 401(k), pension plans have rules governing how much of your pension is tax-deductible and how much is not. General Rule, which makes use of life expectancy tables, is used to calculate the taxable portion. The general Rule can be found in IRS Publication 939, or the Simplified Method can be applied to determine a more exact figure.

Both a 401k and a pension plan offer a range of investment options. Your financial objectives and current financial situation, among other things, will influence the type of investment that is best for your retirement needs.

Employees can save for retirement through a 401(k), a defined-contribution plan, and benefit from tax breaks on their contributions. Employers frequently match these contributions. A pension plan, however, is better suited for investors who want a lifetime income guarantee after retirement. Government regulations and expert fund managers oversee the management of these plans.

By investing in various asset classes, including stocks and bonds, pension funds seek to diversify their portfolios. Additionally, they can invest in derivatives and alternative investments, reducing the risk of losing money on a single investment.

[bisexualvalve]

A study released last month shows links between Canada’s resource extraction industry and violence against Indigenous women and girls, and it links ‘man camps’ in this country to incidents of gender-based violence and crime.

The study was first announced by the Standing Committee on the Status of Women back in April, after originally being requested by Winnipeg Centre MP Leah Gazan.

Results of the approximately eight-month-long study were released in mid-December, and the study states there is “substantial evidence of a serious problem” regarding the resource industry and its employees and its links to violence against Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people across the country.

Included in the study is information about and detailed concerns regarding what are commonly referred to as ‘man camps’ which are temporary villages built to house primarily male workers who are working at a site temporarily, often on resource development projects.

It states there is evidence of men at these types of camps in Canada preying on Indigenous women and girls who live in the areas where camps are set up, and often doing so because they have little or no connection to the area where they are living temporarily.

“This increased rate of violence is largely the result of the migration into the camps of mostly non-Indigenous young men with high salaries and little to no stake in the host Indigenous community,” the study states.

The report also says there is evidence these ‘man camps’ are linked to increased rates of sex offences, and sex industry activities in communities nearby where they are set up.

During a news conference in Ottawa last month, Gazan said there needs to be more accountability within the resource extraction industry to combat violence against Indigenous women and girls, and she also called on the federal government to take steps and to put pressure on the industry to reduce those types of incidents.

“This study wasn’t about whether we agree with resource extraction or not. We have different opinions on that,” Gazan said. “But one thing we agree unanimously on is that we must have zero tolerance and we must stand united against violence against Indigenous women.”

The report also states the feds could be doing more to force changes within the industry to combat gender-based violence and sexual exploitation.

“This can be done by requiring companies to establish workplace safety plans and policies, track and report incidents of gender-based violence, educate workers about gender-based and sexual violence, cultural safety, and the effects of colonization on Indigenous peoples,” the report states.

According to Gazan, the study was conducted as a response to the report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, which was released in 2019.

And according to the National Inquiry’s final report, there is evidence of “transient workers” in Manitoba, and specifically in northern Manitoba, being linked to incidents of violence against Indigenous women and girls.

“A regional cumulative-effects assessment of hydroelectric development in Manitoba revealed that the arrival of a large transient workforce in northern Manitoba resulted in Indigenous women and children being targeted for racial and sexual violence,” the National Inquiry’s final report states.

— Dave Baxter is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

[inspireandaspire]

Kevin Trudeau`s Legal Troubles: A Deep Dive into the Criminal Claims (2024)”

Kevin Trudeau- Introduction

Kevin Trudeau, a television pitchman and author from Chicago, has been embroiled in numerous controversies over the years, primarily due to his misleading infomercials and fraudulent activities. Here is a summary of the key controversies surrounding him:

Kevin Trudeau- Criminal Contempt and Fraudulent Claims

Trudeau was convicted in 2014 of criminal contempt for violating a consent order in which he promised to stop making misleading ads about his weight-loss book, "The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About"[3][5][7][8][13].

He was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for his offenses[7][8][13].

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been involved in legal actions against Trudeau since the late 1990s, with allegations that he made false and unsubstantiated claims for various products, including weight loss and health remedies[9][11].

Kevin Trudeau- Financial Penalties and Asset Concealment

Trudeau was ordered to pay a $37.6 million fine for deceptive marketing, which he claimed he could not pay, asserting that he was penniless[9][11].

Despite his claims of insolvency, the FTC has accused him of hiding assets and continuing to lead a lavish lifestyle[5][6][10][16].

Trudeau’s ex-wife testified that he had gold bars hidden around their house and that he had filled a duffel bag with gold bars before making a trip to Guatemala[12].

Kevin Trudeau- Post-Prison Activities and Fan Support

After serving eight years of his 10-year sentence, Trudeau was released from federal prison[4].

Despite his criminal record, Trudeau has maintained a significant following. His fan club, founded by followers to support him financially, raised about $3 million, with only a little more than $1 million going to pay the FTC[1][5][13].

The FTC is investigating whether Trudeau is still hiding millions that he could be using to pay the fine[1].

Trudeau has been involved with the Global Information Network, a company he founded, which now counts him as a salaried employee[1].

Kevin Trudeau- Legal Proceedings and Court Orders

Trudeau has been found in contempt of court multiple times for failing to comply with court orders[1][16].

He has been ordered to provide a detailed accounting of his assets, including cash, gold bars, jewelry, vehicles, and safe deposit boxes[3].

The FTC has sent out refunds to consumers who bought Trudeau’s book based on the false claims made in his infomercials[17][18].

Kevin Trudeau- Public Perception and Criticism

Trudeau is often described as a scam artist and has been criticized for exploiting vulnerable individuals with his deceptive practices[20].

His activities have been widely covered in the media, with many expressing relief at his incarceration and skepticism about his claims[20].

In summary, Kevin Trudeau’s controversies stem from his repeated fraudulent activities, misleading claims in infomercials, and his attempts to evade financial penalties imposed by the courts. Despite his legal troubles, he has managed to retain a base of supporters who have contributed financially to his cause. The FTC continues to pursue the unpaid fines and to investigate Trudeau’s financial activities.

Citations:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2023/5/10/23719108/kevin-trudeau-fraud-pitchman-fan-club-millions-support-federal-trade-commission

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ducbi/I_work_for_kevin_trudeaus_latest_scam_the_global/?rd=46360

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2022/11/30/months-after-release-from-federal-prison-tv-pitchman-kevin-trudeau-called-for-jail-again

https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/11/17/23456107/kevin-trudeau-court-weight-loss-cure

https://bensons.org/news/2023/05/11/kevin-trudeau-found-guilty-contempt-time-sensitive-night-news

https://abc7chicago.com/who-is-kevin-trudeau-weight-loss-infomercial-pitch-man-net-worth-jail/12465996/

https://www.justice.gov/usa-ndl/il/weight-loss-infomercial-pitch-man-kevin-trudeau-sentenced-10-years-fraud

https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/17/justice/illinois-pitch-man/index.html

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2009/11/judge-orders-kevin-trudeau-pay-more-37-million-false-claims-weight-loss

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/04/26/ex-wife-of-tv-pitchman-kevin-trudeau-judge-he-hid-assets

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Trudeau

https://abc7chicago.com/kevin-trudeau-ex-assets-still-pony-up-millions-to-support-pitchman/13330596

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2023/7/16/fraudster-kevin-trudeau-empties-bank-accounts-told-judge-he-has-plenty-more-cash-gold

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2020/02/kevin-trudeau-assets-concealed

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/refunds/trudeau-faq

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former/tv-pitchman-kevin-trudeau-sentenced-928297

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/blog-post/kevin-trudeau-goes-jail-long-set

[katalyna-rose]

I work for a public school system. On Friday they announced a chatbot is being launched this month. Ngl I was horrified. The intent is good, it's meant to take a load off the clerical workers' (me included) shoulders and help connect families to needed community resources. We spend a TON of time just telling families about this and that resource they can use if they're in need, since my school especially but the whole district is in a low-income area and primarily serves POC, and because of this same issue our funding is garbage. My salary is garbage and not enough to live on, and the same is true for all employees in non-licensed positions.

In theory, I agree with this implementation. In theory, it will free up a lot of my time for more important things. But earlier this week I read about the airline whose chatbot wholesale invented a refund policy that doesn't exist, and the airline was forced by the courts to honor it (good, the way it should have gone down), and my fear is that the tech is just not there yet. Since I work for a public school, my fear is not that the school will be forced to pay money since that's not the service we offer. My fear is that it'll give bogus information, complicate the process for struggling families, and overall make a bad situation worse. For a lot of families, that could mean homelessness, food scarcity, even death. We have a lot of families in truly desperate situations who really need support, and my fear is that the chatbot will make it worse instead of helping.

AI as a tool has a lot of potential. I truly believe that. But as augmentation, not as a means to automate away jobs. And right now, it's just not developed enough, advanced enough, or managed enough to do what it potentially could.

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

[prarticle02]

Unlocking Retirement Savings: A Deep Dive into the EPF Calculator

In today's fast-paced world, planning for retirement is more crucial than ever. One of the most effective tools for managing your retirement savings in India is the Employees' Provident Fund (EPF). An EPF calculator can help you estimate your accumulated savings and plan your financial future. In this blog, we’ll explore what an EPF calculator is, how to use it, and why it’s an essential tool for employees.

What is the Employees' Provident Fund (EPF)?

The EPF is a government-sponsored retirement savings scheme in India, primarily aimed at salaried employees. It is managed by the Employees' Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) and mandates both employees and employers to contribute a percentage of the employee's salary to the fund. The contributions made to the EPF accumulate over time, providing a significant corpus for retirement.

Why Use an EPF Calculator?

An EPF calculator is a simple yet powerful tool that helps you estimate the total amount you can accumulate in your EPF account by the time you retire. Here are some key benefits of using the EPF calculator:

Clear Insights: It provides a clear picture of your potential savings, helping you understand how much you can expect at retirement.

Goal Setting: By estimating your future savings, you can set realistic financial goals for your retirement.

Informed Decisions: You can make informed decisions about increasing your contributions or adjusting your investment strategies based on the results.

Easy to Use: Most EPF calculators are user-friendly, requiring minimal information to generate estimates.

How to Use an EPF Calculator

Using an EPF calculator is straightforward. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you navigate the process:

1. Enter Your Monthly Salary

Start by inputting your basic monthly salary. This figure is crucial as both your contribution and your employer’s contribution are based on this amount.

2. Input Your EPF Contribution Percentage

Typically, both employees and employers contribute 12% of the basic salary towards the EPF. You may also include any additional voluntary contributions if applicable.

3. Specify the Interest Rate

The EPF typically offers an interest rate determined by the government each year. As of recent years, this rate has been around 8.5%. Input the expected interest rate for a more accurate estimate.

4. Set Your Years of Contribution

Decide how many years you plan to contribute to the EPF before retirement. This could range from a few years to 30 or more, depending on your career trajectory.

5. Click Calculate

After entering all necessary details, click the calculate button. The tool will provide an estimate of your total EPF corpus at retirement.

6. Analyze the Results

Review the output to understand your projected savings. The calculator may also break down contributions from both you and your employer, as well as the accumulated interest over the years.

Factors to Consider While Using the EPF Calculator

While the EPF calculator is a powerful tool, consider these factors for a more comprehensive approach:

Inflation: Remember that inflation can erode purchasing power. Factor this in when planning for your retirement needs.

Changing Salaries: Over the years, your salary may increase, impacting your EPF contributions. Consider future salary hikes when making projections.

Interest Rate Variability: The interest rate on EPF can change annually, so keep an eye on government announcements regarding changes.

Retirement Age: Your retirement age can affect your savings period. Adjust your calculations accordingly.