ArtieShaw

Far as I know it’s just the one song by Vincent E.L. And it’s, uh, not serious. But kinda fun.

Fuck the fire department
Dropping by unannounced just to fry your apartment
If they can’t find a fire they’re like “Why don’t we start them?”
I’m tired of arson
Fuck the fire department

I cry out in bargaining, eyes to the garden
Begging release from the fire department
I might get a pardon if I do what they ask of me
Act passively
And don’t do anything drastically

Clap at their pageantry, bow and scrape
Say it’s sour grapes from people out of shape
You’re here for our sake
And we’re grateful for all you do
You’re still gonna burn my house down, aren’t you?

I’m out of house, home, and every single possession
Out of the frying pan and into depression
Escaped physical aggression
Into fiscal oppression
Still don’t know what they meant by
“Let this be a lesson!”

We’re living in an infernocracy
Things are not how we
Think they ought to be
It’s a mockery but I ain’t laughing
My world’s on fire and I’m dying gasping

Under cabinet manual jar opener. It’s flat and mounts under your cabinet of choice. Easy to use, but also easy to forget it’s there! I sometime find myself jar in hand and half-way to wherever my husband is before I remember that I no longer need his skills.

Electric candle lighter. Rechargeable lighter with long neck. Eliminates the need for matches or standard lighters. The noise it makes does scare one of the cats, though. I haven’t tried it on campfires yet, but I think that was something the ad said it could do.

For me, it was an accident. I had a degree in a hard science, but realized that academia would drive me mad. My first job was in a relatively small industry and I just kept on with it until I knew the requirements to making a safe and quality product.

The fear of being fired exists, but you have to know when and where to ask those questions. I ask our vendors whether their employees have a right to form a union if they want one, for example. I also know that our plant managers are deeply opposed to our own employees having that option.

Eventually that question is going to come up. It’ll probably come from a consultant that we hire to evaluate us. It won’t be me unless there’s a situation where it would be awkward not to ask about it. For example, if an HR rep is dumb enough to tell us we’re perfectly free in that regard, I’d be sorely tempted to ask when that policy changed.

ES&G (Environmental, Social, & Governance) policies are starting to become a common thing. They seem to have started at large corporations and they, in turn, drive their smaller partners to adopt similar policies. They want to present a face of sustainable and accountable practices, free from corruption, blah blah blah.

I work for a medium to small company and it has become part of my job to ask awkward questions of our vendors. Our corporate customers are pressing us on our practices, and we press our vendors as part of a “sustainable and ethical supply chain”. Not all companies are well prepared to answer these questions, but some are. In general, the US lags behind Asia and Europe when it comes to this. At least in my industry. So that’s a big caveat.

How do we know they’re not lying? One tool is that independent third party auditors can assess a company and gauge its strengths and weaknesses. (Ecovadis is a name I’ve seen many times during these discussions, but there are others.) These auditors live or die by their reputations, so they have an interest in staying honest.

In the case of these nitrogen vendors (one of which is used by my employer), this is an easy ES&G win. The amount of nitrogen sold to executioners is vanishingly small, whereas we buy it by the tanker. It’s definitely on the short list of awkward questions I would ask them.

The term ‘greenwashing’ will come up. And trust me, because I’m a cynical bitch with a hair-trigger bullshit meter, I’ve used it myself. But I’m cautiously optimistic that questions like this can move companies in a better direction. Part of that has to do with the look of confusion and horror when I visit vendors in deep red states and start asking questions about labor, safety, and the environmental impact of their operations. They don’t want to do waste or emissions remediation, but they also don’t want to lose our business. (I’m honestly enjoying this new direction my work is taking.)

Chicago suburbs. It’s sort of an interconnected area, so this takes place over two adjoining towns.

There was a very public and stupid feud that took place between two middle aged men. Some of it played out in real life and some was documented on that now defunct website, Topix. One of them had been close friends with the the police officer who was convicted of killing at least one wife. I think he was also a cop. In any case, he was very vocal in defending Drew and anything the other guy said about the murder trial really seemed to get his goat.

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

The other guy claimed to be connected with the Chicago outfit. Or the cop claimed he was. I don’t remember.

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

Basically, it was two vaguely mobbed up guys in their 50s engaging in a very public and embarrassing battle of fists and wits in an otherwise unassuming suburb. They would trade insults on Topix, get into slap fights with each other at the local supermarket, and generally just behave like leaded gasoline sniffing idiots. Neither could just walk away from it. Both used their real full names.

Good guess. The golf course isn’t doing any irrigation in February.

He was truly a Superb Owl.

@superbowl

$70k USD - 3 bed, 2.5 bath, 1400sq ft., 0.3 acre lot, two stories and a detached garage. The interior needs plenty of non-cosmetic work (e.g. - new flooring)

$75k USD - 2 bed, 1 bath, 800sq ft., 0.15 acre lot; newly redone floors, electric and paint.

After that, there’s about 10 more in the 125-150K range.

When mine wants to cuddle, she has learned to place her paws gently against my skin.

Any movement means claws come out.

It’s very effective.

I watched the Gormenghast miniseries on the Space Channel many many years ago and eventually read the books. They were interesting. Not something I’d want to revisit, but definitely weird.

It’s time to pay the price.

In the US I’d count action by the national guard. We had one of those in 1970, but the kids didn’t put up much of a resistance so it wasn’t a prolonged battle.

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

There may be others, but this springs to mind.

I fly a lot for work and I also do a fair bit of failure point and risk analysis as part of my job, so this is interesting to me in a couple of ways. Airports and airlines honestly do a decent job of checking that the people on the plane are the ones who are supposed to be there. A failure like this is reasonably unusual.

• she got through physical security (baggage and carry-on checks)
• to accomplish that, all she had to do was dodge the ID and boarding pass check.

That seems pretty feasible. If she was dressed vaguely like an employee it might have helped, but that’s just speculation. We’ve all seen the gorilla walk through the ball game - after we were told to look for him - so it’s not strictly necessary.

I have a harder time understanding how she could have boarded through the passenger line where they scan the passes.

I also have a slightly harder time understanding how she could have found a plane with open seats. I can view a seat map 12 hours ahead of boarding and see a plane with 10 open seats. When it comes time to board they’re completely full. But - part of this is because the airline shuttles regional pilots to their main hub via any available seat and they do it at the last minute. And here’s my further speculation: a flight from Nashville to LA is a long haul so this shuttling probably wouldn’t come into play. If she checked seat availability in advance, it probably would have been accurate and she could probably help herself to a seat that appeared open.

The final hurdle seems to be the one that caught her. The article doesn’t say exactly, but it says that authorities were waiting on the ground. Stewards have a flight manifest that lists every passenger by name and by seat. On rare occasions I’ve seen them checking the manifest as passengers board - for example, on overbooked flights where they’ve sold steward seats for take off and landing to passengers and they expect stewards to squat in the aisle. I’ve also heard anecdotally that if you’re acting like a weirdo they’ll look up who you are.

tldr: I could (and do!) give zero fucks about who won Sunday’s sports match, but can conceive of why it might be news, of of interest, to some people.

I like some of the names from Puritan New England.

Cutting Moody

Tristram Coffin

I like some of the names from Puritan New England.

Cutting Moody

Tristram Coffin

What made the difference for me was buying a really nice reusable bag. There’s a brand called Flip and Tumble. They’ll hold an absurd amount of stuff (something like 35lbs, if I remember correctly) and fold down into something smaller than a tennis ball. I keep two in the bottom of my purse and never need a bag. They are expensive (about $18 US), but I’ve had mine for almost 15 years.

This happened during street festivities for lunar new year, so a lot of people are connecting the dots. They don’t mention that the car was aggressively trying to drive through a crowd, but it seems like it was trying to make its way through a crowd.

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/why-did-a-san-francisco-crowd-light-waymos-driverless-vehicle-on-fire/

Multiple witnesses said Waymo’s navigation technology became confused by festivities and fireworks that were lit to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Witness Anirudh Koul said the driverless car “got stuck immediately in front.”

Another witness said the car’s presence in the middle of Chinatown’s celebrations triggered frustrations in the crowd. “You could feel the frustration when people were just trying to celebrate,” she told KRON4.

My cat(s) would never forgive me.

OK - I’m lying. They wouldn’t care but my husband would be super offended on their behalf.

Thanks for digging into this a little further. It seems like small town news stories that get national attention don’t always paint a full picture, particularly when there’s an obvious moral high ground and an obvious victim or villain. I had several questions, because the story wasn’t adding up.

What sort of monster would object to sheltering homeless in a cold snap? The entire city government, including the fire department?

There’s an established shelter next door. Why did no one object to that? <thanks for answering this one, btw>

Since when did small towns in northwest Ohio start persecuting churches for no apparent reason? (for anyone out of the US, this population tends to be deep red GOP, very devout churchgoers, etc.)

This isn’t the first time there has been a cold spell. It happens at least once a year in January or February. Do the homeless in this tiny town just freeze to death every year?

There’s clearly a lot more to the story, but with national coverage like this I’d guess they were able to take in enough donations to cover basic repairs to the property.

I’ve been through it many times and expect to see many more. Both as the subject of an acquisition and as an acquiree. You just have to wait and see. If they’re not immediately closing you down, there will be a transition period. Months to a year or more. That’s where you need to be looking for a new job if that seems like a remotely feasible option.

With regard to your personal decision, do not trust what you’re being told. The company wants a smooth transition and that means that the company wants to be the one making the decisions about who is working for them. They can and will lie.

The exception to this is if they ask you to stay on while they close out operations at your site. In that case they’ve already lowered the hammer, you’re on borrowed time anyway, and it doesn’t matter to them.

(Also - if you’re given this option, consider it carefully before accepting. The folks I know who have done this have described it as a depressing and completely unpleasant experience. They all claimed they wouldn’t do it again. If you choose to do so, ask for more money to compensate for the therapy you’ll need afterwards. Be bold with your offer because it’s a job that very few want to do.)

Generally speaking, the first thing that should happen is that the new company will harmonize efficiencies. This means cutting redundant departments, projects, or products. Expect to see a lot of strangers on site who are evaluating this. Non-specialized departments like finance, HR, legal, and support IT will be merged and streamlined. And do not expect that the highest performing department will survive. It’s often the cheapest one who does. If the team in Kentucky can do a good enough job, it makes no sense for them to retain a higher paid workforce in DC. I’ve seen that sort of thing happen. (It’s also sometimes a selling point for the company being bought. 🤮)

After that, it just depends on 1) why they bought you and 2) what they thought they were buying. If they find out that part of the acquired company isn’t something they want but is valuable enough to re-sell rather than shut down, you may be in for a head-spinning transition between several buyers.

Overall -

The experience is a big shake-up, but I’ve gone through eight or so unscathed as a mid level employee. It all depends on lots of things outside of your control. It will help if you can accept that these things are beyond your control or beyond your ability to foresee. I can also assure you that there’s a good probability that the people in charge won’t be making good or sensible decisions.

Expect to see many of your co-workers jump ship, but that’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes it’s the kick in the ass that people need to make a change. That’s often a very good thing.