Category: Uncategorized

Mailvox: Breaking the Gamma

A reader writes of how using the SSH helped him to avoid trouble at the workplace:

I was recently able to use the SSH to manage an employee.

We had a new worker with us and from the first moment, I knew he’d be difficult. He turned up late, answered back, tried to tell experienced employees how to do the job, etc.  He wouldn’t cooperate with the guy he was assigned to work with, so I called him over and said, “There’s a hierarchy here, so if Marty tells you to do it a certain way, that’s how you need to do it.” He immediately got defensive, saying, “Where is this coming from? Why are you talking to me like this? You don’t need to talk to me that way.”

Thanks to your insights into the SSH, I realised that was he was doing was an attempt to make himself a victim, so I said, “Stop. This is not a conversation. The ONLY words you need to say are ‘I understand’. So… do you understand?”

Anyway, we didn’t have any further problems with him. My point is that before I read your SSH insights, I wouldn’t have recognised his behaviour for what it was and I certainly would not have known how to deal with it. So, thanks!

I’d still keep an eye on the guy. He may have enough sense to learn his place, or he may simply be waiting to take his shot at the hated workplace Alpha. Which is why, if the Gamma acts up again, the boss should not hesitate to get rid of him.

Obviously it works

Or they wouldn’t make such a big deal about trying to prevent people from taking it:

State Sen. Scott Jensen, a medical doctor, reports that pharmacists won’t fill hydroxychloroquine prescriptions for patients battling coronavirus.

Gov. Tim Walz has rescinded his March Executive Order 20-23, which effectively barred pharmacists from filling hydroxychloroquine prescriptions written to treat COVID-19. Despite this, Jensen says that pharmacists he’s contacted still won’t fill hydroxychloroquine prescriptions for patients suffering from the virus.

“I got on the phone and called pharmacists and said ‘if I write this hydroxychloroquine [prescription] will you fill it?’ And I was told no,” Jensen explained in a video he posted to Twitter on Friday.

“I said, ‘you’ve been filling my scripts for decades and decades and now you say no, why?’” the senator continued, further describing his conversation with pharmacists.

“It was clear that they [the pharmacists] were fearful, but what they said was ‘well it might set a precedent, the board might not like it, maybe we’ll run out,’” he said.

Alpha News was not able to independently verify Jensen’s claim that pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions written for hydroxychloroquine. However, he does not seem to be alone — doctors in other areas have also been denied the ability to use the drug.

A hospital in Michigan was told that it could not use hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients in its care, according to local media.

Although hydroxychloroquine has not been officially approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat COVID-19, Jensen and many others stand behind its “off label” use to treat the virus.

When doctors prescribe a drug to treat a condition that it was not specifically approved by the FDA to remedy, that prescription is considered off label. Up to one in five prescriptions are written for off-label purposes, according to the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics.

I don’t know why it’s so hard for the average individual to grasp that there are people in positions of power who want them dead. What do you think the likes of George Soros and Bill Gates intend when they talk about overpopulation being a problem?

Ding dong, New York is dead

I’d like to believe that New York City is dead forever, but I don’t know if I dare to hope:

BUT NYC ALWAYS COMES BACK

Yes it does. I lived three blocks from Ground Zero on 9/11. Downtown, where I lived, was destroyed, but it came roaring back within two years. Such sadness and hardship and then quickly that area became the most attractive area in New York.

And in 2008/2009, there was much suffering during the Great Recession, again much hardship, but things came roaring back.

But… this time is different. You’re never supposed to say that but this time it’s true. If you believe this time is no different, that NYC is resilient, I hope you’re right.

I don’t benefit from saying any of this. I love NYC. I was born there. I’ve lived there forever. I STILL live there. I love everything about NYC. I want 2019 back.

But this time is different.

One reason: Bandwidth.

In 2008, average bandwidth speeds were 3 megabits per second. That’s not enough for a Zoom meeting with reliable video quality. Now, it’s over 20 megabits per second. That’s more than enough for high-quality video.

There’s a before and after. BEFORE: No remote work. AFTER: Everyone can work remotely.

The difference: bandwidth got faster. And that’s basically it. People have left New York City and have moved completely into virtual worlds. The Time-Life Building doesn’t need to fill up again. Wall Street can now stretch across every street instead of just being one building in Manhattan.

We are officially AB: After Bandwidth. And for the entire history of NYC (the world) until now, we were BB: Before Bandwidth.

Remote learning, remote meetings, remote offices, remote performance, remote everything.

That’s what is different.

Best pandemic ever. It’s killing the centers of moral and physical filth. Look at all the lamentations for Gotham and the Hellmouth! When I go out, I don’t wear a mask out of fear or submission. I wear one out of pure unadulterated glee.

Recession proof

Or maybe not. Remember how I pointed out that there was going to be a crash this year? Now consider what Goldman Sachs was saying at the end of December:

Just months after almost everyone on Wall Street worried that a recession was just around the corner, Goldman Sachs said a downturn is unlikely over the next several years.

In fact, the firm’s economists stopped just short of saying that the U.S. economy is recession-proof.

An analysis Goldman conducted of the current potential risks to growth show that they are mostly muted. The report found that the pillars of the “Great Moderation” that began in the 1980s — low levels of volatility marked by sustainable growth and muted inflation, interrupted only by the financial crisis more than a decade ago — are still standing.

Investors could be excused for getting a little nervous over such calls, as optimism also was heavy in late 2007, just as the economy was about to enter the worst of the financial crisis.

So much for those “mostly muted” risks to growth.

Definitely default

A second timely ruling just dropped on Friday, and this one is most definitely not in Patreon’s favor. An August 14 decision by a US District Court judge has settled what had hitherto been the undefined “due date” of the new California law intended to prevent corporations from delaying and evading arbitrations, and it means that Patreon is in material default of every single one of the Bears’ 91 arbitrations. 
Dekker v. Vivint Solar, Inc., No. C 19-07918 WHA (N.D. Cal. Aug. 14, 2020)

The legislature expressly sought to avoid a “perverse incentive scheme” whereby ambiguity in the law allowed companies to delay adjudication, perhaps even affording them “an incentive to refuse to arbitrate claims . . . in the hope that the frustrated [employees and consumers] would simply abandon them.” Id. at 8 (quoting Brown v. Dillard’s, 430 F.3d 1004, 1012 (9th Cir. 2005)) (emphasis added).

Yet, this “perverse incentive scheme” remains a distinct possibility under defendants’ theory of the due date. At the hearing, defense counsel admitted that, in their view, if JAMS hypothetically granted a due date extension after defendants missed a first given due date, § 1281.97’s 30-day grace period would only begin after defendants missed the second due date (Dkt. No. 81 at 14). Under this view, the arbitrator could postpone time and again, delaying the 30-day grace period for as long as the arbitrator wished. This would subvert the whole point of the new law.

Finally, a similar action involving food delivery app Postmates illustrates how other arbitration providers have responded to the new California law. There, over ten thousand former and current Postmates drivers filed individual arbitration demands against Postmates with the American Arbitration Association on February 15, 2020, pursuant to the mandatory arbitration provisions in their contracts. The AAA notified Postmates of the filings and gave a payment due date of March 16. The AAA wrote that, subject to the newly enacted § 1281.97, “payment must be received by April 15, 2020 or the AAA may close the parties’ cases,” and that it would “not grant any extensions to this payment deadline.” Postmates, now owing over $4.6 million in initial filing fees, sought a TRO to enjoin the drivers from enforcing § 1281.97. The court denied Postmates’ request, finding, among other things, that payment of filing fees would not irreparably harm Postmates, and that the balances of equities favored the drivers, who “have an interest in having their claims heard in a timely matter.” Postmates Inc. v. 10,356 Individuals, No. CV 20-2783 PSG (JEMx), 2020 WL 1908302 at *4, 9 (C.D. Cal. Apr. 15, 2020) (Judge Philip Gutierrez).

There, with Postmates owing over $4.6 million in filing fees for over ten thousand arbitrations, the court refused to temporarily suspend the due date and buy Postmates more time. Here, on the other hand, defendants owed little more than $15,000 across the eight disputes. The district court also echoed California’s legislature when it weighed the competing interests and found that the drivers’ prevailed. “[The drivers] have an interest in being permitted to pursue their wage and hour claims in arbitration, which is supposed to be a speedy and inexpensive alternative to litigation.” Id. at *8 (internal quotations omitted). This decision, along with the clear legislative intent to prevent delays in commencing arbitration, points towards a strict enforcement of the 30-day grace period that begins upon defendants’ receipt of invoice.

When AAA said payment was due by April 15 without extensions, else the arbitrators could close their case, the court enforced that deadline. This order agrees with AAA’s view of § 1281.97. Here, the JAMS invoices stated that payment was due upon receipt. It is true that JAMS, perhaps in order to keep the business, was willing to let payment slide for a few weeks, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was due and payable upon receipt. Defendants then had 30 days to pay or be in material breach, even if JAMS was willing to wait. Waiting is delay, and delay is exactly what the legislature sought to stop.

When the corporate cancer is terminal

You’ll see companies doing crazy things like DC Comics is doing in the wake of a 30 percent staff reduction:

Lee shockingly revealed just how bad their lineup had been performing. He also detailed they would be reducing the lineup significantly. Lee stated, “That said, we will be reducing the size of the slate. But it’s about looking at everything and looking at the bottom 20 percent, 25 percent of the line that wasn’t breaking even or was losing money.”

When asked about promoting Marie Javins and Michele Wells to interim editors-in-chiefs, Lee committed the company to “diversity and inclusivity.”

He told THR, “We thought it would be a great pairing to bring them together to help draft and organize the content we’re doing along these lines. Across digital, across global, we want to make sure we have diversity and inclusivity, and making it in a way that we have authenticity to the storytelling that we’re doing.”

They’re going to keep diversiting and inclusiviting right up until they finally go out of business. The SJW Imperative demands total commitment!

Attention Castalia Subscribers

A message from our sponsor:

During our long months of social distancing we started to realize the value of other humans. After weeks of eating expired dippin’ dots and watching 90’s romcoms alone while talking to a gecko on the wall, being around other humans started to seem like a good idea. Especially once we realized that the gecko had been dead for at least a month, presumably from a bad batch of bat soup.

His name was Bobby. We buried him in a tiny mask.

This was the turning of the tide. It is time to reach out again, as we now realize in our heart that all humans are special, even those that support us at the lowest tier possible. And so, we embrace every patron because we know your real value, and not because we may feel vaguely guilty over completely blowing off last month for perfectly valid medical reasons concerning social and temporal distancing.

So, to all of our patrons, this month we will give you more than you ever asked for. With the gracious permission of the author, for July and August we are giving every patron the download codes for both the ebook and audiobook productions of both The Lawdog Files and The Lawdog Files: African Adventures.

The coupon will expire September 15, 2020, so you still have several weeks left to become a Castalia patron and avail yourself of what Squeaks the pygmy mongoose himself would swear was the most excellent opportunity since that magic day that Ali Cheap-Cheap dropped a burlap bag of “beef” on his personal residence.

Machiavelli and the Holocaust laws

From The History of Florence by Niccolo Machiavelli:

Nor is it possible for a public to enact a law more pernicious than one relating to matters which have long transpired.

Machiavelli was discussing here the fate of the ammoniti, or the descendants of the Ghibellines who were banned by law from holding any office of government in Florence after the victory of the Guelphic party in 1356. He states that this law “laid the foundation of many evils” and noted “none felt so particularly injured with it as the Ricci; for they knew themselves to have occasioned it, they saw it involved the ruin of the republic, and their enemies, the Albizzi, contrary to their intention, became great in consequence.”

History always repeats itself. The direct attacks on the First Amendment rights of Americans by U.S. citizens who are not, and never will be, Americans, are not only going to fail, they are going to ruin the republic and make great their enemies.

There is a reason the Prometheans don’t want you to study history and why the Shapiros and Pragers relentlessly lie about it and retroactively attempt to revise it. There is nothing new under the sun. If you know history and you recognize which patterns apply to current events, you will have a very good idea what is going to happen.

Twitter bans mask skeptics

It’s always interesting to see what SJW narrratives are not only being pushed, but are being actively enforced, by the Tech Cartel:

Conservative pundit Bill Mitchell has been kicked off Twitter, saying his opposition to face masks first earned him a suspension, which became permanent after he unwittingly violated the rules by tweeting from a second account. Mitchell announced his ban in a post on Parler on Friday, laying his Twitter handle to rest after accumulating more than 600,000 followers. Earning regular retweets from President Donald Trump, the account was a source of controversy, at times backing ‘QAnon’ conspiracy theories and voicing skepticism toward Covid-19, among other things.

Frankly, since I don’t pay much attention to the ever-shifting Corona-chan narratives, I was still vaguely under the impression that the Narrative was still insisting that masks were unnecessary for the general public.

In late February and early March as the COVID-19 outbreak began accelerating in the US, hospitals and health facilities experienced severe shortages of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. In response, experts like Fauci and the US Surgeon General Jerome Adams advised Americans against wearing masks. 

I imagine Twitter is going to be hell on margarine matters too.

Score one for the concerned consumers

And it’s a very big one. Patreon’s core strategy from the start has been to try carving out an exception to the arbitrations it imposes upon all of its users in order to avoid paying the required arbitration fees. This strategy has uniformly failed, as evidenced by decisions by the arbitration company, the arbitrators, and even the Superior Court judge.

Now Patreon’s attempt to avoid permitting the arbitrators to decide if its practices are deceptive and in violation of California law or not has been comprehensively shot down by the highest relevant authority. This means that its legal strategy has been a complete and comprehensive failure, as any informed observer could have told them it would be back in December when they implemented it.