Bitchin Dave's newsletter

Flori-duh is doing what it does best: leading the world in stupidity.  A few weeks ago, Florida's surgeon general announced a plan to end any and all vaccine mandates for any public-type things. And that stance is supported by the governor, of course. These "public things" include schools. Who needs to prevent communicable diseases in the classroom?  Make the plague great again!  Adults get sick and die, that's on them. But kids dying as a result of poor decisions by parents, and worse, the government? That's just sad.  Funny how the GOP is all about being pro-life before birth, but afterwards, not so much.  And for what it's worth, the surgeon general of Florida apparently let his medical license lapse, and hasn't been affiliated with any hospital for many years.  Both of which are in violation of the law, given the position he holds.  But why let pesky rules get in the way of an ideological agenda (which I guess is to make everyone sick?) === Workplace h...

I listened to a really interesting podcast about the Eleven Madison Park Restaurant in New York City.  I wanted to talk about that for a moment. (sorry in advance for the length!) The gist of the story is that the restaurant is a fine dining establishment and around five years ago, it was awarded three Michelin stars. It was heralded as one of the best restaurants in the world.  The chef/owner realized he had nothing else to accomplish; he had reached the summit and had done as much as he could.  And that's when he decided to challenge himself to achieve something new.  It was sort of an existential personal crisis, and his solution was to change the menu completely, to think about sustainability and long-term health of the planet. And so he closed, and re-opened a while later as a plant-based restaurant.  In his own words, this was not based on anything related to animal rights or about applying labels to it. This was simply about sustainability and challenging himself to do some ...

In the US, we have the major sports (the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA at the top) and there are teams that play in those leagues. But the wild part is that there's no threat of being demoted or being discharged from the league.  Some teams, then, are basically incentivized to not even bother trying to win (and just roll with it),  to keep payrolls low, or to do what is known as "tanking" where they attempt to lose on purpose in order to get some return in the long-term As fans, sometimes you get stuck wanting to root for the team you "love," but you know there's never going to be a championship, and you just accept it and maybe even remain hopeful that someday your team's fortunes will change. For their part, the leagues also see an opportunity to generate revenue, by imposing  hefty fees to relocate or to bring in a new franchise to that league (when they think it's the right time).   But meanwhile, in many other leagues (the English Premier league of soccer ...

Companies (large and small) tend to outsource their HR front end, relying on third parties to handle the voluminous applications that come into a job (in some cases it could literally be tens of thousands of applicants for a single job).  But these third parties may not be playing fair.  I read an  article about a lawsuit against the "Workday company," who offer this service.  The suit alleges that workday use some kind of automation (they refer to as AI, but I'm skeptical) to immediately (like within seconds) weed out candidates who the system determines are over 40 (based on years worked or degree dates or whatever). The company defends itself by saying that it's legitimate automation and it's looking at skills and experience for a job, and the kicker is that since there's no human involved it can't be age discrimination!  And in today's world, who knows? They may be "correct" in that assessment.  But the bigger picture is that the companie...