click
Jul 7, 2023
Have You Seen This Man?
No, I'm not going to do the milk carton thing. Not because I've suddenly decided I'm above doing something so trite and stale and sophomoric and whatever. I just couldn't get it to look right.
 |
| Gen Sergei Surovikin |
Known as General Armageddon, and a Putin darling, that Surovikin guy has gone missing. He hasn't been seen in public since a couple of days after Prigozhin's mutiny fizzled, during which time, he missed his wife's birthday.
That doesn't mean he's been disappeared met with a tragic accident. There's a host of possibly legit reasons, none of which come readily to mind at the moment.
He needs not to count on being welcomed back into the slimy embrace of the Russian Kleptocracy though, because any given big shot (even in a fairly decent government or business) has a hundred guys looking to torpedo his ass so they can step in to replace him, taking all the goodies that go with that position.
So yeah - I think he's either totally fucked, or semi-fucked, but fucked all the same.
Welcome To The Future
The Boomer Mantra:
- Lunch is for wimps
- Only the strong survive
- Fuck it - I'll sleep when I'm dead
 |
| I am a master of the universe |
The original “latchkey kids” are grown up, in the boss’s seat and ready to make the rules. If that’s OK?
The average age of incoming C.E.O.s is around 54. While American government remains squarely in the hands of baby boomers — and while its leadership, at least in certain branches, becomes noticeably older — corporate boardrooms are undergoing a transition. It’s Gen X’s moment, that generation most known for being crowded out of sweeping cultural age analyses by millennials on one end and boomers on the other.
Or as Patton Oswalt, a Gen X comedian, put it: “Gen X is trending, which probably means that, uh … eh, whatever. Nevermind.”
There are plenty of fair critiques of those generational analyses. People are far more complicated than the year they were born — in Gen X’s case, some time between 1965 and 1980. But it’s still true that with new leaders often come new rules. For the country’s newest chief executives, that has meant more trust in flexible and informal ways of working.
Take Darby Equipment, a manufacturing company in Tulsa, where remote flexibility for years seemed like an alien concept. The former chief executive, Bob Darby, reigned the company, a family business, with a commitment to an in-person regimen. People were expected to show up on time, sit at their desks and stay until evening, no matter what was going on in their personal lives.
His sons, Ryan and Bobby Darby, nudged their father to consider when he might step down. But the elder Mr. Darby couldn’t imagine the company functioning without him. Employees called him the “pacesetter”: He arrived every morning before 8 a.m., which encouraged others to do the same. When Mr. Darby’s sons asked him whether he’d like to carve out more time for golfing and fishing, he scoffed at the idea.
“He was basically telling us he didn’t think we were going to be able to keep all the balls in the air,” said Ryan Darby, 47.
During the pandemic, the elder Mr. Darby decided to retire. His sons stepped into company leadership with a fresh set of notions about where and when the work could get done. They’re more comfortable with some employees working remotely.
The labor force participation of people over 55 was near its lowest rate in 15 years last fall. And the average age of incoming chief executives has been on the decline.
Research from Stanford points to generational divides on remote work. Workers over 55 (mostly boomers) prefer to work remotely around 35 percent of the time, while workers in their early twenties (Gen Z) preferred to be remote about 45 percent of the time and workers in their 30s and 40s preferred to work from home closer to half the time. In other words, Gen Xers have become the unlikely warriors for flexible work.
Of course, stage of life comes into play. A survey of 120,000 American workers, also from Stanford, found that desired remote work levels were 7 percent higher among those living with children under 18.
“Gen X are the latchkey kids — we grew up very independent,” said Robert Glazer, 47, the founder of the marketing company Acceleration Partners. “Gen X was one of the first generations to expect a little more from work, trying to set boundaries but not expecting the workplace to change around them.”
When companies were first calling people back to the office, many assumed that the youngest workers would be the most rebellious. The reality has been more complicated. In many cases, executives say, young people are eager to be back in the office and surrounded by colleagues, while middle-aged employees with child and elder care responsibilities are fighting to keep their afternoon freedoms.
David Burkus, a consultant and the author of “Under New Management,” advises dozens of companies on management issues, including return-to-office plans. He’s seen firsthand the generational divisions underlying them. This was particularly salient for a law firm he recently consulted for to send some 700 lawyers back to the office.
“Baby boomers, who were predominantly empty nesters, were pushing to get people back in the office,” he said. “Then you had Gen Xers and geriatric millennials pushing for flexibility.”
“I went into it expecting it to be clear that the younger you are, the more flexibility you want,” he added. “I didn’t find that.”
Joy Meier, who runs human resources for the 4,000 employees at E2open, a supply chain software company, has also watched those generational differences unfold as she surveyed employees about their return-to-office preferences.
Ms. Meier, 49, found that many young workers wanted to be in person, sometimes even five days a week, describing a sense of loneliness at home and an eagerness to jump start their careers; a handful even departed the company in pursuit of more in-office time. Many senior employees wanted to be in the office, too, because that was how they’d spent their whole lives. (Some also had less comfort with technology.) Then there were the Gen Xers, like Ms. Meier, who has four children at home and embraced the company’s hybrid policy, which requires most staffers to come in three days a week.
“There’s definitely more of a desire for flexibility among people who are advanced in their careers and have family commitments,” she said.
She recalled years before the pandemic watching a female colleague anxiously negotiate for the ability to leave the office at 3 p.m. to pick up her children from school. “She was so happy when her boss approved that,” Ms. Meier said. “That was a unique thing back then.”
At Darby Equipment, the company’s new pacesetter is Aaron Soto, the director of operations. Mr. Soto, 44, is also sensitive to the workplace’s shifting generational norms. He recognizes that some of the junior employees want positive reinforcement frequently, he said, so he keeps a spreadsheet tracking how many thank-you cards each employee has received from managers.
Of course, talking about generational divisions can easily backslide into finger pointing. Management experts point out that most of the variance in workplace performance isn’t about how old someone is, but how good their boss is. Broad generational brushstrokes can paper over the deeper conversations needed between workers and their bosses.
“The single best predictor for whether folks will succeed at work is the competence of their boss, regardless of generation,” said Melissa Nightingale, a co-founder of Raw Signal Group, a management training firm. “That boss is on the hook for their on-boarding, their feedback, their career growth and more. If the boss can’t do those things, they’re screwed.”
Still, when old bosses leave and new ones arrive, there are opportunities for rethinking. Workers who benefit from leaving the office early for school pickup can say so. Workers who want more feedback can ask for it. There’s a chance to look at the way things have always been done and ask: Why?
“A lot of experts make it sound like you’re putting people in boxes based on their birth year, but what we want people to understand is that generations are clues, not a box,” said Jason Dorsey, a workplace researcher. “Just because you’re born in a certain year doesn’t mean someone knows everything about you.”
Generations change as they grow up, too. For years, Gen X seemed defined by a vexed sense of aimlessness. As Winona Ryder’s character in “Reality Bites” puts it: “I was really going to be something by the age of 23.” The angst, for many, is fading. Cue a sense of workplace confidence; they became something.
Twilla Brooks, 48, recalled that when she was starting her career, as an assistant buyer for Robinsons-May, a former department store chain, she had to be in the office before her boss arrived and stay until her boss left. She raced through Los Angeles traffic before 8 a.m., petrified of letting her manager down, because in her words: “That was what you needed to do in order to make it.”
Last year, Ms. Brooks left an executive role at Walmart to start her own marketing company. Now, with no office, she decides where and when to work. “There’s a lot more flexibility in my schedule,” she said. “Because it’s my schedule.”
It's Not "Theory"
It's not a theory. It doesn't even rise to the level of hypothesis. It's idle speculation. It's purely conjecture. It's a fantasy. It's made up - sometimes on the spot - and it's junk. It's low-level bullshit designed to appeal to gullible rubes with inadequate mental horsepower, in order to bilk them out of their money, and to get them lined up to follow a particular ideology. Because money and power always always always go together.
What I need is for people (lookin' at you, Press Poodles) to start identifying all this shit as Junk Think. Conspiracy Fantasy. Almost anything you care to name it, but not "theory", goddammit.
Members of Michael Protzman’s conspiracy cult abandoned their families and spent their life savings to follow him to Trump rallies around the country.
The leader of a QAnon cult who convinced thousands of people that former president John F. Kennedy and his son JFK, Jr. are still alive has died, VICE News can exclusively report.
Michael Protzman, 60, died last Friday in the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota a week after an accident at the Meadow Valley Motocross track in Millville, Minnesota. Protzman’s death was confirmed to VICE News in a phone call with the Minnesota Department of Health.
Protzman died as a result of “multiple blunt force injuries” after he “lost control of his dirt bike” according to a report from the Southern Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner’s Office, which was obtained by VICE News.
Protzman, who was known to his followers as Negative 48, was from Federal Way in Washington State and owned a demolition company prior to his emergence as a QAnon guru in early 2021.
Protzman rose to notoriety in 2021, when the Telegram channel he ran garnered tens of thousands of followers. In that channel, Protzman mixed QAnon conspiracies with a bastardized version of Gematria, a Jewish numerology system, which he claimed to be able to use to predict the future.
Protzman gained national attention in November 2021 when he convinced hundreds of his followers to travel from all across the U.S. to Dallas, where he claimed that JFK and JFK Jr. would reappear at Dealey Plaza, on the spot where JFK was assassinated in 1963.
When that didn’t happen, Protzman’s conspiracies simply changed, and over the next 18 months he would alter and change his predictions to suit his needs and keep his followers on board. Ultimately he claimed that he was in direct contact with former President Donald Trump and that Trump was in fact JFK Jr. in disguise.
After the Dallas gathering, Protzman spent 18 months crisscrossing the U.S., attending multiple Trump rallies. He was accompanied by a rotating band of followers, whom he ordered to cover his accommodation and food costs.
Numerous followers abandoned their families and spent their life savings following Protzman.
“She left her children for this and doesn't even care,” Katy Garner, whose sister fell under Protzman’s spell, told VICE News in 2021.
“She is missing birthdays and holidays for this. She truly believes this is all real and we are the crazy ones for trying to get her to come home. But she won’t, I don’t believe she will ever come back from this. We are in mourning.”
“Protzman impacted the lives of so many families in such a negative way, families were torn apart, many members lost their assets due to following him,” an open-source researcher going by the name ‘Karma,’ who has tracked this cult closely since its inception, told VICE News. “Some of these families will never be the same. I do hope those that followed him, reach out to their families and make amends.”
After his accident two weeks ago, details about Protzman’s condition were tightly controlled by his inner circle of half a dozen followers. While they initially told followers in an online chat that Protzman had a “potential brain injury” and told them to pray for him, the inner circle has refused to answer any follow up questions about his condition.
The inner circle shut down comments on his channels and in at least one case, kicked a follower out of their Truth Social group after they asked a question about Protzman’s condition this week.
Shelly Mullinax, who was one of Protzman’s earliest followers but had a falling out with him and other members of the group last year, remains convinced of the conspiracies Protzman concocted about JFK. She believes his death is all part of the plan.
“If that was the plan that God had for him, I know that everything is going to be revealed soon,” Mullinax told VICE News on Wednesday.
Mullinax said that in recent days someone in her group had claimed Protzman “was taken out” but she dismissed that.
She did however claim that the person who died was in fact just one version of Michael Protzman, “the evil version” and that the good Michael Protzman—who is in fact JFK Jr. in a mask—is still alive and well.
VICE News spoke to several family members of Protzman’s followers and all said that their loved ones have dismissed the news of Protzman’s death as fake. In another Telegram channel populated with Protzman’s followers, one admin wrote that they would be removing all posts regarding his death “until we have absolute verification.”
In one case however, one of Protzmans’ followers has put her name forward as a potential replacement leader of the group. “They killed Michael Protzman’s character so I take over Negative48 crew, follow me,” the follower wrote on Facebook.
“Protzman’s death won’t change anything right away, I believe new conspiracies surrounding his death will evolve,” Karma said. “But I do think his followers will dwindle and move on to other influencers over time.”
Ad Busters:
Yeah, You Betcha
Sign me up - you go first though.
"... just gotta work on that landing a little bit."
A Thought
Right now, America's gotta be the only country in the world where you see a guy wearing a flag on his t-shirt, or flying a flag in his pickup truck, and you think, "Yeah - he's prob'ly racist as fuck."
hat tip = Ron Perlman
Jul 6, 2023
About That Evers Guys
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed off on a two-year spending plan Wednesday after gutting a Republican tax cut and using his broad veto powers to increase school funding for centuries.
Evers angered Republicans with both moves, with some saying the Democratic governor was going back on deals he had made with them.
He got creative with his use of the partial veto in this budget, which is the third passed by a Republican Legislature that he’s signed.
Evers reduced the GOP income tax cut from $3.5 billion to $175 million, and did away entirely with lower rates for the two highest earning brackets. He also used his partial veto power to increase how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425.
Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425.
Evers, a former state education secretary and teacher, had proposed allowing revenue limits to increase with inflation. Under his veto, unless it’s undone by a future Legislature and governor, Evers said schools will have “predictable long-term spending authority.”
“There are lots of wins here,” Evers said of the budget at a signing ceremony surrounded by Democratic lawmakers, local leaders, members of his Cabinet and others.
Wisconsin governors, both Republican and Democratic, have long used the broad partial veto power to reshape the state budget. It’s an act of gamesmanship between the governor and Legislature, as lawmakers try to craft bills in a way that are largely immune from creative vetoes.
Former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson holds the record for the most partial vetoes with 457 in 1991. Evers this year made 51.
In 2000, voters prohibited what was known as the “Vanna White” veto, which allowed governors to strike individual letters within words to create new meaning. And eight years later, the constitution was amended again to outlaw the “Frankenstein veto,” when the governor at the time struck words in two or more sentences to create a new sentence.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2020 struck down three of Evers’ partial vetoes as being too broad, but the justices could not agree on standards to guide future vetoes. The court flips from a conservative to liberal majority in August.
Republicans blasted the latest vetoes.
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said allowing the school revenue limit to increase effectively forever would result in “massive property tax increases” because schools will have the authority to raise those taxes if state aid isn’t enough to meet the per-pupil cost. He also said scaling back the tax cut put Wisconsin at an economic disadvantage to neighboring states that have lower rates.
“Legislative Republicans worked tirelessly over the last few months to block Governor Evers’ liberal tax and spending agenda,” Vos said in a statement. “Unfortunately, because of his powerful veto authority, he reinstated some of it today.”
Vos did not say if Republicans would attempt veto overrides, an effort that is almost certain to fail because they would need Democratic votes in the Assembly to get the two-thirds majority required by state law.
Republicans proposed tapping nearly half of the state’s projected $7 billion budget surplus to cut income taxes across the board and reduce the number of brackets from four to three.
Evers kept all four brackets. The remaining $175 million in tax cuts over the next two years are directed to the lowest two tax rates, paid by households earning less than $36,840 a year or individuals who make less than $27,630. Wealthier payers will also benefit from the cuts but must continue to pay higher rates on income that exceeds those limits.
Evers was unable to undo the $32 million cut to the University of Wisconsin, which was funding that Republicans said would have gone toward diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — programming and staff. The budget Evers signed does allow for the university to get the funding later if it can show it would go toward workforce development and not DEI.
Evers previously threatened to veto the entire budget over the UW cut. But on Wednesday, he used his partial veto to protect 188 DEI positions at UW that were slated for elimination under the Republican plan.
Another of Evers’ vetoes removed a measure that would have prohibited Medicaid payments for gender-affirming care. The governor accused Republicans of “perpetuating hateful, discriminatory, and anti-LGBTQ policies and rhetoric” with the proposal.
Evers ignored a call from 15 liberal advocacy and government watchdog groups that had urged him to “fight like hell for our collective future” and veto the entire budget, which they argued would further racial and economic inequality.
Evers said vetoing the entire budget would have left schools in the lurch and meant rejecting $125 million in funding to combat water pollution caused by so-called forever chemicals known as PFAS, along with turning down $525 million for affordable housing and pay raises for state workers.
No governor has vetoed the budget in its entirety since 1930.
The budget also increases pay for all state employees by 6% over the next two years, with higher increases for guards at the state’s understaffed state prisons.
Jul 5, 2023
Today's "Conservative" Meme
Well let's see:
- You're an ignorant fuck who apparently slept through the worst pandemic in over 100 years
- You're a complete asshole who has absolutely no respect for his audience
- You're a cynical manipulator who thinks peddling this kinda shit is how you make it big
(choose all that apply)
Today's MAGAt
Yup. Before the COVID vax, there were no strokes, no heart attacks, no deep vein thrombosis, no clot-related organ failure or pregnancy problems at all. Ever.
And, oh yeah - don't forget - everybody bled to death when they got even a minor cut or puncture wound, cuz - you know - no blood clotting.
I know, I know, she was just being a little over-the-top.
So maybe we can chalk it up to the very standard propaganda technique of Generalization.
Or maybe it's the obvious ...
That's probably not the case either.
Most of these Twitterati jagoffs are not stupid. But they are manipulative hucksters who play to an audience of rubes they don't respect, who either are actually that stupid and they swallow every little turd that floats by, or they're pretending it's just a big joke to get the Libs all riled up so as to keep all of us distracted while they're busy strip-mining everything from this and the next world - which they think makes them oh so gosh-darned clever. Wink wink nudge nudge. All the way to the bank. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
And never mind the middling probability that an awful lot of the big "influencers" on Twitter (and other social media platforms) are either bots themselves, or have had their popularity way over-inflated because of bots created specifically for the purpose of Band Wagon propaganda.
Whoa - it just now occurred to me that "social media" can be abbreviated as: S/M.
Coincidence? 🤨
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)