Free Republic

An investor at famed Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz is the latest VC to get involved in the debate around "fake work" in the tech industry. In an interview published Monday with Emily Sundberg for her Substack newsletter "Feed Me," Andreessen Horowitz general partner David Ulevitch called Google "an amazing example" of a corporation employing people in "BS jobs." "As we (society / our economy) prioritize conglomerates and megacorps, irrelevant jobs proliferate," he said. "Anyone who works in a 10,000+ person or larger white-collar job company knows that a bunch of the people can probably be let go tomorrow and...

Without vital US military support there is a real danger Ukraine could end up losing this war - not immediately but in the longer term. President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington to spell that out, hoping that he can persuade Congress to pass a $60bn aid package that has stalled amid a row over US border security. On Sunday, Ukraine's first lady, Olena Zelenska, warned Ukraine is in mortal danger without continuing American support. Western officials have told the BBC they remain confident the US administration will find a way out of the current impasse. But even if President Biden...

Jane Fraser said that it was important for employees to collaborate Other Wall Street bosses have expressed frustration at staff working from home Ms Fraser is more open to idea of flexible working than other banking bosses But, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, she said a line had to be drawn Larry Fink, of BlackRock, simply said that ‘remote working has not worked' The British boss of Wall Street banking giant Citigroup yesterday warned that slackers working from home will be hauled back to the office for coaching. Jane Fraser said that it was important for employees to...

We’re now finding out the damaging consequences of the mandated return to office. And it’s not a pretty picture. A trio of compelling reports—the Greenhouse Candidate Experience report, the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), and Unispace’s Returning for Good report—collectively paint a stark picture of this brewing storm.Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. And almost a third (29%) of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment. In other words, employers knew the mandates would cause some attrition, but they...

Alternative source: https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1681355980976852992 The Dossier has acquired a new Department of Defense (DOD) memo that goes into great detail on the topic of “care of service members who identify as transgender.” The document, which is not classified but has long remained unavailable to Americans, is being published here for the first time for public consumption. The 34 page memo details the enormous perks granted to service members who identify as transgender. Anyway, here’s some of the “highlights” found within the document: Taxpayer funded “care” for transgender service members includes: speech/voice therapy cross-sex hormones, laser hair removal, voice feminization surgery, facialcontouring,...

For any young worker who needs to hear this, your power in the labour market won’t last and quietly quitting could be setting you up to get loudly fired, says for Bloomberg Opinion.NEW YORK: Every generation faces a sceptical reception in the labour force. Baby boomers were called self-centred, Gen X was lazy and millennials were considered entitled. For Gen Z, it’s the same - but different. When I was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, there was the normal buzz about economic conditions and climate change. But everyone I spoke with mainly wanted to...

A Seattle Pacific University professor claims that white supremacy permeates introductory physics classes. It’s research that is meant to explain why so few black people are in the field of study. But it reads like a parody. Dr. Amy Robertson (“a chronically ill and disabled, physics-Ph.D.-holding, thin wealthy white woman”) and equity consultant Rev. W. Tali Hairston (“an African American male and lifelong learner, researcher, and educator of equity-inclusive frameworks”) use critical race theory to claim that racism and white supremacy are endemic to college- and graduate-level physics courses. The study’s authors acknowledge that their research is instructed by their...

Teachers in San Francisco and nearby Oakland, California, are demanding their school districts take more COVID-19 precautions amid the surge of omicron, with some members allegedly threatening walkouts. ...More than 700 people have signed an online petition calling for a "sickout" Thursday. "Omicron breaks through vaccines and boosters and has a short incubation period. We need regular mandatory testing for all employees and students to ensure that major outbreaks do not occur, especially BEFORE we return to sites," the petition states. "Everyone in schools must be screened, and if ‘we can’t afford it,’ we shouldn’t be opening at all."... ......

I thought COVID-19 anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers were a unique phenomenon of American stupidity, but having just returned from a two-week trip to England, I fear that the reckless response to a virus that has killed almost 5 million people worldwide is not an American thing — it’s a human thing. Many of us who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and who have committed to the discomfort of wearing masks in indoor public places, have spent the better part of a year fuming at the estimated 93 million Americans who are eligible to receive the vaccine but refuse it — and...

Awright, just where were you angry, white, religious (racist, obviously) voters on the election? Apparently, your vote %age dropped from 2016, compared to almost every other ethnic, religious, whatever group. Had it held steady or increased like every other group, the DNC would have had to cheat even more to put BeijingBiden into office. This quote is particularly galling: “In reality, the majority of overall Trump voters came from a combination of women and minorities. And the percentage of his voters grew in every category except white males, which actually dropped.” It is all YOUR fault!

Jeffrey Epstein's death may never be conclusively determined, because we're told standard practice in the area where he was detained is that cameras do not point inside cells. Sources familiar with the correctional facility in question tell TMZ, there are cameras in the Special Housing Unit -- the SHU -- but SOP is that cameras do not point into the cells. We're told cameras capture, among other things, the doors to each cell to determine if anyone walks in or out, but they don't point inside. One source familiar with the facility says the drill is for guards to pass...

Security cameras were rolling when Jeffrey Robert Sabiel, 50, and Santa Marie Walters, 32, stole a motorized shopping cart from a Walmart located on Missouri Avenue in Largo, according to an affidavit. Shortly after the theft was reported, the cart was spotted outside Jimmy's Sports Bar in Largo and an officer found the couple at the bar... After denying the theft, the couple admitted to taking the cart and was arrested on charges of grand theft. They were both booked into the Pinellas County Jail.

Of the 150,493,263 filers who submitted individual income tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service for the 2015 tax year, only 99,040,729 paid any income tax at all. Together, those Americans paid a record $1,457,891,441,000 in total income taxes -- for an average of $14,720 per taxpayer. The other 51,452,534 -- or about 34.2 percent of all filers -- did not pay a penny. Their average income tax payment was $0. This is a fundamental divide in the American tax system. On one side are those who do pay taxes; on the other, those who don't. And the divide gets...

Social incubator New Sun Rising has purchased a new headquarters that will create 20 jobs and a more sustainable Millvale, according to executive director Scott Wolovich. The nonprofit will move from a 700-square-foot space to the 10,000-square-foot former Loyal Order of the Moose No. 68 at 112 E. Sherman St. in Millvale. Millvale sustainability coordinator, Zaheen Hussain, will move from his current Millvale Community Library workspace to the new building, where he will work alongside New Sun Rising employees in a co-working space. The 412 Food Rescue co-founder and CEO Leah Lizarondo said her organization will use the kitchen to...

I have lost touch with my friend Mark, and, assuming he is alive, it will be some work to track him down, because he is periodically homeless or semi-homeless. My first impression was that his economic condition was mainly the result of his having been for many years a pretty good addict and a pretty poor motorcyclist, a combination that had predictable neurological consequences. I never knew Mark “before” — there is something in such men as Mark suggesting an irrevocably bifurcated life — but the better I got to know him, the more I came to believe that he...

Persistent users likely to be lower paid and have relationship difficulties Research found abusers ended up in a lower social class than their parents Also more prone to be in less skilled, prestigious jobs and to run into debt Study by Californian university followed children from birth up to age of 38The study, conducted by a team of researchers led by Magdalena Cerda at the University of California and Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt at Duke University, appeared in the journal Clinical Psychological Science. 'Our research does not support arguments for or against cannabis legalization,' said Cerda. 'But it does...

A Halifax-area restaurant owner has sparked a social media uproar by complaining that a “frustrating new generation” of employees with a poor work ethic has helped kill her business. A Facebook post Tuesday from Kim Stacey, owner of the now-defunct Emma’s Eatery, cites several reasons for the closure - but much of the online jousting is over her decision to highlight what she describes as the entitled attitude of young Nova Scotians. In her post, Stacey complains that during the nine years the Eastern Passage eatery was open, young employees demanded to be “paid dearly” for working shifts that did...

Last weekend was Labor Day Weekend, and ninety-four million Americans are still not in the labor force. Of course, there are many practical reasons for part of that number, retirement, genuine disability, jobs being held by illegals and people who have looked long and hard and just not been able to find a job and given up trying, to name a few. I have sympathy for the injured, the infirm, the people who for one physical or mental reason or another are unable to hold down a job, and I believe that they should have assistance. I believe in charity,...

A Bug’s Life 07.07.156:05 PM ET Breaking News: Worker Ants Really Lazy A new study out of the University of Arizona finds that ants specialize in inactivity. Good news for slackers! Turns out nature’s archetypal busybodies, worker ants, are lazy too.Researchers have actually been aware of ants’ slacker habits for a while, but they didn’t know whether the sluggish members of the Temnothorax rugatulus species of western North America were inactive or rather just taking a break.“It’s just the sort of a thing that anyone who’s ever worked on social insects has noticed: ‘Oh look, half of them are standing around...

An outraged mom is pleading with her son’s Brooklyn high school: Please educate my child! Annette Renaud, PTA president at the Secondary School for Journalism in Park Slope, is furious that her son got grades of 85 to 95 on his class work but failed Regents exams in the same subjects. “He wasn’t educated,” she said. “He can’t compete with students at Millennium, Brooklyn Tech or Stuyvesant. It’s a joke.” She says conditions are bad at the school, with one teacher allegedly selling jewelry instead of holding lessons and another frying doughnuts and leaving to do his laundry. Just 17...