Something I realized is that if I were black and had done some of the things I actually did as a kid and young adult, I’d probably be dead now.

You’d think we would’ve moved on from just randomly killing “inconvenient” black people.

You’d be wrong.

Nearly every day I see DAs on Reddit post photos of insects impaled on fences or thorns talking about “one in a million accident.”

No, it’s a shrike.

People don’t go outside much, I guess.

Entry-level jobs are disappearing.

Part of this can be explained by the fact that unlike in the past, companies refuse to train workers as they once did. But part of it is real, and unavoidable, as technology progresses.

And the number of entry-level jobs in computer systems and public relations are expected to grow over the next decade.

Ha, I can tell you that the forecast of more entry-level jobs in computer systems is absolutely not going to happen. Whatever consultant came up with that is completely wrong.

Entry-level jobs in IT are already being eliminated. This is ramping up daily. With data centers, increased automation in every aspect of IT work combined with nearly-effortless virtualization, those lower-tier IT jobs are simply going away. They won’t come back.

Right now, this fact is probably hidden in the numbers as more consultants are hired temporarily to put these new systems in place and to assist in the transition.

But once that’s done, nearly all of the lower-level entry ramp IT jobs such as help desk and junior system administrator will simply disappear. It’s already happening.

A company I used to work for recently automated many things that were manual, and is already getting by on roughly 30% fewer helpdesk staff.

That is happening in every field, not just IT. But that is the one I know best and I see evidence of it every day.

What’s been really odd to me lately is companies refusing to pay their workers more even when it hurts their bottom line and stock prices.

Even long term, this is not rational behavior. It is just spite, and a variety of class warfare.

Consider this: The American Trucking Associations has estimated that there was a shortage of 30,000 qualified drivers earlier this year, a number on track to rise to 200,000 over the next decade. Trucking companies are turning down business for want of workers.

Yet the idea that there is a huge shortage of truck drivers flies in the face of a jobless rate of more than 6 percent, not to mention Economics 101. The most basic of economic theories would suggest that when supply isn’t enough to meet demand, it’s because the price — in this case, truckers’ wages — is too low. Raise wages, and an ample supply of workers should follow.

But corporate America has become so parsimonious about paying workers outside the executive suite that meaningful wage increases may seem an unacceptable affront.

If businesses were truly rational – and run for profit only – then workers would be paid more as it would also make the business more profits. The evidence shows this clearly.

However, it wasn’t until I was in the business world for a number of years until I realized that profit is not the only story, and often isn’t even the primary narrative. Power matters just as much if not more than profits, despite what you might read elsewhere.

It is not well-known, but GM nearly financially destroyed itself in the 80s to fight unions. It would’ve made far more profits if it had worked with the unions. There are hundreds of examples of this, of course, even though it’s not discussed that much because “profits only” is the simplistic narrative that elides far too much and elucidates far too little.

I’ve personally worked at a company where an entire, very-profitable business unit was eviscerated after a merger so that executives elsewhere did not feel threatened by the more-competent unit.

Tell me what that has to do with profit. Nothing, of course. Like the lack of paying well even when it hurts the bottom line and the stock (thus bonuses, etc.), it’s often about power and its exercise.

I am too lazy to find all the studies – find them yourself, if you want – but most people don’t realize just how much richer are the rich than the rest of us, and how much better they live.

This is a vet clinic, by the way.

We go down another marble floored hallway and we go to the second concierge: this one is bigger since people sit there to pick up their pets after being left overnight. I had no wait time to make another appointment and we were immediately out of the concierge with the cherry wood, granite, and pristine marble where we were able to see our unsullied reflections.

I remember my mom going to the free clinic and waiting 4-6 hours to be seen. And how terrible the standard of care there was.

In this country, we allow the rich to treat their pets better than we treat our most vulnerable people. It is just disgusting.

I generally read and even enjoy bad military fiction, but this is just too far. Too far.

Freedom Is Never Free – After the President closes Guantanamo Bay to hold civilian trials for the terrorists, some of them are relocated to Hell’s Gate Prison in West Texas. Until a group of fanatical sleeper-cell shock troops launch an all-out assault to “liberate” their jailed comrades. There’s just one problem: they don’t know that Army Ranger Lucas Kincaid is working at Hell’s Gate. With the town’s high school team held hostage and in danger of being executed one by one, Kincaid assembles a ragtag band of survivors and aging hardcore cons into a lethal fighting force to keep the unholy warriors from their deadly mission. And Kincaid and his men are on their own – everyone, from the President on down, orders Kincaid to give in to the terrorists’ demands. But warrior Lucas Kincaid, out-numbered and out-gunned, won’t back down. One thing’s for sure: when the enemy gets to Hell, they’ll know America sent them.

I am laughing over here. Damn. What in the hell.

“…to keep the unholy warriors from their deadly mission…”

This book. It really exists. It does.

What the what?

Does no one know any history?

Wikipedia shows Anne Applebaum graduated from Yale, among other esteemed institutions of higher learning. Therefore she should know that this theory that trade partners would not go to war was thoroughly debunked by the outbreak of WWI.

Pre-WWI was the first great era of globalization – after that, global trade actually fell markedly for a variety of reasons.

Anyway, I’m not here to declaim about global trade other than to note that often even very educated people aren’t all that smart.

The five idiotic things (most of) the Left believes:

1) That communism can work, just that no one has yet done it correctly.

2) That there are absolutely no identifiable racial genetic differences, even when this harms people medically (diabetes, heart disease, etc. all  have racial genetic differing etiologies).

3) That absolutely no human evolution occurred above the neck.

4) That spewing more data at people is likely to change their minds.

5) That cultural relativism applied outside of an academic setting has any real value, or leads to greater freedom.

This is harder, because there are so, so many idiotic things the right (and in this I am including Libertarians) accepts as doctrine, but here are five idiotic things (most of) the Right believes:

1) That evolution did not occur at all.

2) That profit/affluence determines someone’s moral worth (ends justify means outlook, essentially).

3) That beating/hurting/killing someone is likely to change anyone’s or any group’s mind.

4) That women are subhuman.

5) That markets are self-regulating, a natural occurrence, and if the government would just get out of the way, we’d have a laissez-faire renaissance of the antediluvian free market bonanza.

Note that often these aren’t explicitly-stated beliefs, as either they are too outré to be stated aloud or written down, or they are just the subconscious machinations of group id that lead to observed action. But nevertheless, this is a pretty good encapsulation – at least as a first draft – of the manias that drive both sides to do the things they do.

Good interview with Ursula K. LeGuin, and this portion is so true.

And that, of course, is the lingering problem: The maintenance of an arbitrary division between “literature” and “genre,” the refusal to admit that every piece of fiction belongs to a genre, or several of genres.

The only real difference I’ve noticed between genres is that there is a different skew of quality at different time periods in their history.

For instance from what I can tell, something like 98% of literary fiction is utter crap right now, and about 95% of science fiction is also complete garbage.

Used to be, about 90% of science fiction was gutter crud, and about 85% of litfic was. So the ratios shift over time, but never in any genre is there really that much quality work to read.

If you think the current Firefox is terrible, prepare for the future.

A future of bullshit.

If you don’t want to watch all that — and who would? — here’s the gist.

No tabs; no bookmarks; no settings; forced updates that one can’t change; no extensions. Yeah, that’s right, a Firefox with no extensions.

And a UI that no one would understand. My partner’s mother got auto-updated to Australis (Firefox 29) and she was unable to use the browser until my girlfriend assisted her.

Yeah, it’s great for regular users. Just like this surely will be, of course.

That so many of the well-off lack economic knowledge has also puzzled me.

This is one of the reasons I don’t understand why the rich have become so focused on the short term. Their obsession with short-term profits is bad for them long-term. I would think that they would be the most vocal supporters of things like welfare (Food stamps!) and unemployment and education and all those things that allow the middle class to thrive. But in general, they aren’t. Maybe it isn’t that surprising, though. In my experience, people in business are often clueless about how the macroeconomy works.

What is odd is this obsession with the next quarter or the very short term even when it doesn’t benefit them (no bonus, etc.) to think and to behave this way.

Then I realized, though, that people get locked in to certain mindsets and cannot easily deviate from them. Take a poor person and give them a lot of money, they still behave like a poor person. It’s why many lottery winners are broke only a few years after winning millions.

But taking a not-very-smart person and giving them money does not — as we Americans tend to believe — make them smart. It just makes them rich.

There is also of course a certain ideology that is inculcated in various classes in the US, and straying from it is only done in rare cases, and by very exceptional people. Studies show this consistently.

The rich in their way are just as captured by the dominant sentiment as any other group — right now, that dominant disposition consists of rapacious neoliberalism sprinkled with disdain for anyone not obsessed with profit. Evidence against the benefit of this even to them does not matter. That’s how ideologies work, really.

Data caps exist only to preserve current cable monopolies. There is no other reason, technical or otherwise, no matter what you read anywhere.

If you wear pajamas or have ever worn them, you are evil because it is cultural appropriation.

Consider yourself appropriately vilified.

When I say that I am not a libertarian (by any means!) but have libertarian sympathies, this is what I am referring to.

The part about the aristocracy in nearly all times wishing to slow the velocity of money is really trenchant, and correct.

I’ve seen people say when a death occurs, “Why do they need an autopsy for that? It’s so obvious how he/she died!”

Great, you think you know how someone died. Aren’t you special.

But the best way to cover up a murder or other malfeasance is to make it look like some sort of other accident. And that’s the kind of thing you want to be sure about when it does happen.