What is wrong with Texas’ public services? First that electricity debacle, now they can’t send an alert?

I’m standing by my theory that the powers that be in this country want to prune We The People down, passively.

For the first time ever, I’m interested in watching and episode of Voyager. But just this Q episode.

The dislike of Hillary was deeply entrenched. When Bill Clinton was elected and Hillary was First Lady they worked on a preliminary plan for universal healthcare that was dumped. Hillary was involved in the drafting of the plan.

This was a time when the 24h news cycle, via CNN, was only on the cusp of getting started. The nightly news, still in full swing, said awful things about her. They said she should stay in her lane and, worse, that she should be picking out china and curtains instead. They sneered at her on air with great contempt. Not Fox. ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN. All 4 were outraged by her stepping out of line as First Lady.

I cannot imagine this pervasive attitude wasn’t present in the Boomer+ vote.

In addition, Malcom Gladwell addressed some pervasive societal issues in Season 1 of his podcast in an episode called The Lady Vanishes. He predicted her loss.

And if you watched the hearing, she used the same email format as Colin Powell.

It’s the hypocrisy that bothers me. Roast anyone who is out of line, either party, but instead they take a stance of overinflating things like jeans and the tan suit and then ignore serious indiscretions and illegal activity on the right.

Start leaving AirBnB reviews: minus one star for lack of duck.

Of course, but it sets an example, proves to people that Linux can be mainstream and usable well beyond the corners where that mindset already exists.

It’s excellent advertising and promotion.

It’s informative to drink in how much the right parrots one another without discussion. You learn the bylines. You learn the “it’s because…”, and the “what about”s.

There’s no discussion. No argument. No inkling that Trump could, maybe, possibly, slightly? be wrong about anything, so there’s no discussion. Only repeat statements numbering like images in an infinity mirror.

And it quickly turns into no discussion with you. Statements start with: I know you don’t like (guns) but…

Actually I own….

But I own a…

Are you listening…

No, you hate guns.

And so on. It’s more than a little horrifying.

The left has its problems, but when you throw a bunch of cats in a big bag together and tell them to be nice it’s at least varied, interesting, and a bit unpredictable. There’s room for discussion, always, and everyone on the left can be wrong.

Fillion’s response is gold.

At this point, I have to believe they want a systemic purge, to prune the population.

Imperfect Foods used to deliver weekly, perishables included, and they ended up being bought out by Misfit Market. Now, it’s overpriced crunchy product, like shopping Whole Foods from home instead of saving on ugly carrots, grapefruit sized cabbage, and overstock.

They’re not out of business yet. There is a market for perishables and produce delivery. and people are used to Amazon so they may win on this, sadly.

This is what is needed to push back on Microsoft.

If it financially works, then that is brilliant.

Women’s lib has a lot more work to do now that this man has been in office. It’s been a difficult climb over the last 50 years, and now a severe backslide.

We’ve endured for millennia without it, and that’s not ok. Then, this guy shows up and wants to throw us back to being objects of entitlement. Or uteruses with life support systems attached.

Post pandemic the contracts profess to pay the same as staff but those contracts are taking the room/board stipend, blending it with the hourly rate, and presenting it all as hourly income, when the stipend isn’t something that should count against income when in fact, stipend is only allowable by the IRS in situations where living expenses are duplicated.

In essence what these new contracts are doing is not acknowledging expense duplication, as if these nurses don’t already have a rent or mortgage, alongside all the household bills like renters insurance or electricity, that continue to be paid in tandem with a long term furnished rental in another state. And are they even accumulating retirement beyond an IRA?

The 2 weeks off is also unpaid. The strangest expense detail is this. Income tax is paid to each state which is somehow legal under the contracted circumstances. The home state and the state worked.

While the details are fascinating, that is not my point in bringing it up. I’m more interested in the work pattern. 13 wks on. 2 wks off. The nurses who talk about travel love it, even when the pay is lower than what staffers make either with the blended rate or after subtracting room/board stipends. As such, I think we need to look to the work pattern.

It’s the Lemm.ee shutdown as of the last week of June. So, here we are.

During the pandemic, a large swath of hospital systems, both psych and medical, contracted with nurses to travel to work for them on 13 wk contracts. There were some significantly high contracts in the midst of the pandemic, mainly through a company called Krucial. However, the Krucial contracts were not normal work weeks but five 12hr shifts every week, with significant overtime. Overtime in travel contracts was typically above the standard 1.5x hourly rate most hourly workers are accustomed to. The weekly rates on these contracts made news. I say this so we can move past it to the standard contracts where we can talk about lack of burnout.

The normal travel contract was typically 36hrs a week, a standard work week for the hourly nurse, with elevated OT. Rates were stronger than precovid, which was a strong lure, but the industry at large had not increased staff nurse pay with cost of living, most of the industry not seeing much in hourly rate increases past the years 2000-2008 which was some significantly bad wage stagnation. California was and is, as always, the exception in this practice. Post COVID, many states now pay nurses in keeping with the normal contract rates they originally left their staff jobs for. OT on staff is 1.5x but extra shifts beyond an FTE will often contain an extra $20-30/hr after OT is factored in, or a flat $200-500 per extra 12h shift. As such, many nurses who left for travel are back on staff and not traveling.

Even so, there were nurses who would not leave travel even though hospitals were offering better deals on the financial side, to be staff. More money, less movement sounds good, right?

Not for some. Burnout due to scheduling and lack of time off remains a problem for nursing staff. Meanwhile, travel contracts work like this: 13wks on, with roughly two weeks off in between. If a nurse opts to sign on for another 13wks at the same location, 1-2 weeks off is typically offered in between the old contract and the new. In addition, they can take Christmas off.

Less pay than staff, now, but a swath of nurses stick with travel regardless because they aren’t burning out. Travel nurses don’t typically burn out. Think about why. What would your own hourly work feel like on a 13wks on, 2wks off rotation?

Many people are going to and have to follow money, but this real life experiment has demonstrated how much less money people will take when they can to just not have to work every single week of their lives. There’s a lesson here that corporate America will likely never heed.

Trump has already bee confirmed as a rapist by the legal system.

Did any of us really believe this list would ever be released?

Earned on the backs of working class.

Did Amazon ever acknowledge or deign to negotiate with the unions formed by their workers?

https://youtu.be/ChgIkbg0x80