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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: August 19th, 2023

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  • The fact that it’s nearly impossible to get liberal policies past a Senate where representation is heavily skewed in favor of Republicans does not equate to a conspiracy that the tiny margins Democrats are still sometimes able to eek out are then intentionally sabotaged. That’s some conspiratorial BS. The simple fact is that Dems are playing a rigged game and always have been. Both-sidesing the parties when one of those parties is full of literal Nazis is simply ignorant and requires a lot of mental gymnastics and outright ignorance to get onboard with.




  • While I agree with your anger and frustration, in sure you recognize how dangerous of a precedent that would be. Instead, we should be going full RICO on the entire Republican party.

    A huge chunk of the elected officials on that side of the aisle are actively working to subvert democracy in the US. Endorsing Trump in an official capacity should absolutely be seen as a participatory activity in that context and those elected officials who have engaged in that should be held to account. The justice department should be looking to use this as a sledgehammer if they want to crush the rampant fascism sweeping the Republicans and their base.







  • An anecdote:

    My high-paying tech job wants us back 2 days a week. I intentionally bought a house near a train that will get me to the downtown office in about 15 minutes while many of my coworkers live in the distant suburbs where commuting will require a lot more time and effort.

    Despite this, I STILL don’t go into the office. The biggest reasons:

    1. Nobody is there - it’s a ghost town.
    2. I’m far less productive while I’m there because I have to leave early to pick up my kids from school.
    3. My boss doesn’t go in at all - ever - due to extremely valid health reasons (his wife is undergoing cancer treatment).
    4. His boss moved out of state. Like way, way out of state. He’s got a nice office with a beautiful view. He doesn’t and can’t use it.
    5. My boss’s boss’s boss - (the CTO) moved to Florida and, rumor has it, lives full-time on his yacht.

    I mean… at some point we just have to acknowledge that our giant, empty office space would be much better suited as housing.



  • Yes, I think that’s the reasonable argument Google’s lawyers and PR will use - but your example kind of demonstrates why that argument falls flat. The service DHL is providing to Amazon is logistics and shipping. This is an established, well-regulated industry all its own.

    Meanwhile, at Google, this contractor’s services are listed in the article:

    ensuring music content is available and approved for YouTube Music’s 80 million subscribers worldwide

    That sounds an awful lot like running the service to me. These employees perform key YouTube-specific work on an ongoing basis. For all intents and purposes, they work for Google, in Google’s offices, on Google’s systems, but their paycheck comes from Cognizant. The services being rendered aren’t on the level of “you make the widget and we’ll transport it to stores around the country because we’re a shipping company”. This is more like “we employ people for you, but provide a flimsy air gap so you don’t have to treat them like actual employees. We sell legally plausible deniability as a service.”