Men now avoid women at work – another sign we’re being punished for #MeToo | Life and style | The Guardian

A new study has found US men appear to be following Mike Pence’s lead. Maybe they’re angry that #MeToo ever happened.

Source: Men now avoid women at work – another sign we’re being punished for #MeToo | Life and style | The Guardian

What a bizarre byline, and it’s telling just how vast the disparity in viewpoints is on this.

Years ago, I worked with several women in one small IT department.

  • One I didn’t work with. We became pretty good friends.
  • One was my boss. We didn’t get along with very well, though I respected her. We were both pretty hard-headed.
  • One was my co-sysadmin. She was just great, though she was really reserved, and we didn’t talk much.
  • And one was an absolute “section 8.”

What I mean is that this girl — she was very young — was looking for trouble. We ran into each other before she was assigned to my group. Despite her utter inexperience, she was put on a politically-important team; one that I wish I had been invited to be a part of. She was completely out of her depth with some minor tasks she had been given, and came to me for help. Obviously, I was already predisposed to not be forthcoming.

So it was that she came into my office, put both hands on my desk, leaned in, stuck her (perfect) chest out at me — and she was apparently cold, if you take my meaning — batted her eyelashes, and asked me for help I didn’t think she should need, if she were actually worthy of the responsibility given to her. I didn’t take the bait. I told her what she needed to know, and sent her on her way to finish figuring it out.

I moved groups. Rumors kept following her around. Every once in awhile, some dude would be implicated in doing something inappropriate towards her, and all the rumors just tracked according to what I had seen for myself. She was strutting around, and then complaining about the attention she was begging for. She was transferred into my group, and I just plain avoided her.

One day, out of nowhere, my boss walked into my office, sat down, and said — not asked — said, “You don’t like working with women, do you?” I was pretty sure that the “section 8” had been fulminating rumors about me to my boss, leveraging my already-strained relationship to reduce my influence in the group. I took a beat, realizing all of this, and then said that the situation was not equitable — even back in 2000 — and I was being cautious because of it. To explain, I told her the following story.

I had worked in our prototype and testing facility. In fact, I used to be one of the people on night shift that ran the tests, so I was pretty familiar with the processes.

In the engineering department, there was a husband and wife who were both engineers, and ran tests in the facility. They were yuppies: young, attractive, and well-groomed. Great people. I liked them immensely, and I hated that they moved away.

One day, the wife went to one of the test stand operators, and asked for an urgent test be run right away. The operator told her there were other tests in front of hers. The rumor was that she cupped her breasts, and said something like, “Oh, come on! You’ll do it for me, because I have these.” Of course, he ran her test.

Now, I knew her, and I knew the test stand operator. It was all in innocent fun, and it was a great thing about the old Arvin that this kind of thing could be done, and it not be a big deal. But this was post-Meritor takeover, and times were changing.

After relating the story, I asked my boss: What would have happened if the test stand operator had been a woman, and the husband went to her, cupped his privates, and suggested that she do his test next because he had that? Madness, right? Pandemonium. Firing on the spot. She agreed. I pointed out that we had started living in a very duplicitous society, and I was limiting my involvement with certain people because I was afraid of being implicated for something I didn’t intend.

She reluctantly conceded my point.

The rift of this double standard has only widened and deepened in the 25 years since, and I wouldn’t blame any man for protecting themselves from a potentially vindictive woman who does not like him. Mike Pence has taken a lot of flack for requiring his wife to attend any meeting between him and another woman. He is pilloried for his old-fashioned behavior, but even his detractors would have to admit in private that it’s the only way to make sure that he doesn’t get #metoo’d too, at some point.

The Government Controls the Horizontal and the Vertical

Feel Free to Panic Now

Welcome to today’s proof that the government “controls the horizontal and the vertical,” as the old TV show, the Outer Limits, used to say. I have all of this crap turned off. They pushed it through to everyone in the country anyway.

Take this as a reminder that every place you go, every text you send, every phone call you make, every email you send or receive, every web site you visit, every social media post, every thing you purchase by credit card… it’s all tracked and recorded. All someone in the bowels of the FBI or CIA has to do is put your name into a web app, and they can see it all, no warrant required. Edward Snowden told us about these systems a decade ago, and nothing has changed, except that he now has to spend the rest of his life in hiding.

Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show – The Globe and Mail

Investors have become more prevalent in Canada’s housing market, accounting for 30 per cent of all residential real estate purchases in the first part of this year, according to new data.

Source: Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show – The Globe and Mail

First they came for corporations, and I said nothing, because I didn’t own a corporation.

Then they came for retail chains, and I said nothing, because I didn’t own a retail chain.

Then they came for franchises, and I said nothing, because I was not a franchisee.

Then they came for housing, and now I can’t afford to buy a house.

Private equity and investment banks have been buying up literally everything over the past 40 years, driving up prices, keeping all the profits for the so-called “1%”, pushing workers into government assistance, and forcing our civilization back into a modern form of feudalism. Will there ever come a day when we can get our governments to break them up, and recreate the actual “free” markets that capitalism was supposed to based on?

Mozilla Report Finds That New Cars Give Out Lots of Your Info

Bad news: your car is a spy. Every major car brand failed a recent privacy and security test from Mozilla. You’re probably driving around in a “privacy nightmare” that may collect information as sensitive as your race, health status, and sexual activity.

Source: Mozilla Report Finds That New Cars Give Out Lots of Your Info

This is not just about selling ads this time. This is about actual surveillance and — eventually — control. The governments of the world will make this a requirement, and make circumvention of it as illegal as copyright infringement.

In the US, the government will throw up its hands and say, “Don’t blame us! It’s the “free” market, and this must be what people want!” Meanwhile all the automakers will collude to do it, so that you can’t buy a car without it. Then they will collect the data in their “private,” “secure” servers, and either let the NSA have it, or not resist when they inevitably tap into it.

Some people will think this is a good thing, because then we could, say, throw literally everyone who was at J6 in prison! But then a conservative government gets thrust into power, and now they can go after everyone who was present at a BLM protest that turned violent (but I repeat myself). It is an evergreen human truth: Whatever power “we” let “them” have will eventually be used against “us.”

White House urges reauthorization of Section 702 spy powers

While there may be only three cases of intentional misconduct reported, the briefing does seem to gloss over the hundreds of thousands of instances of FBI misuse between 2020 and early 2021 alone — as well as the time and effort it takes to declassify these top-secret disclosures to give the public any insight into how these surveillance powers are being abused.

Source: White House urges reauthorization of Section 702 spy powers

Once and yet again, the UK press is doing the job the American press won’t or can’t do.

Runaway American “Capitalism”

The promise of Capitalism was, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your doorstep.” However, when people build better mousetraps these days, the mousetrap market leader just buys them, ruins the product, and forces people back to using the sucky mousetraps that led to the better one in the first place. We desperately need a new era of trustbusting the robber barons.

No Matter What Trump Does, Evangelicals Still Love Him

White evangelicals’ fascination with Trump won’t be the last time a large subset of the American public becomes enthralled by an authoritarian and incompetent politician.

Source: No Matter What Trump Does, Evangelicals Still Love Him

The better question is: What does this say about the state of American politics, that Trump is still somehow favorable in the minds of, say, a third of the country, compared to the rest of the field?

Me and My Impertinent Questions

That’s apparently what I get for calling him on conflating two very controversial, yet very different issues, and asking why he would do that. It’s too bad. I mean, I know we have different politics, but he’s a great writer with a lot to say, and he’s smack-dab on the money about the corporate “enshittification” of every online service, and, indeed, every business in America these days. On the other hand, he’s one of the charter members of the he-man Musk haters club, and says he’ll be “leaving” Twitter soon, so I guess I’ll have a chance to get blocked on Mastodon or something in the future.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a Democrat challenging Biden. But what is his platform? | Fox News

In announcing his long-shot candidacy for president Wednesday, Kennedy vowed to “end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism on our country.”

Source: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a Democrat challenging Biden. But what is his platform? | Fox News

“Threatening?” Threatening!? Threatening to impose…

We’re way past “threatening.”

But other than that, I like everything I’m hearing from of this guy.

Tucker Carlson departs Fox News, pushed out by Rupert Murdoch

Source: Tucker Carlson departs Fox News, pushed out by Rupert Murdoch

“Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News is, in part, an admission of the systemic lying, bullying and conspiracy-mongering claimed by our client, former top producer Abby Grossberg,” said Tanvir Rahman, one of Grossberg’s attorneys. “Mr. Carlson and his subordinates remain individual defendants in the [Southern District of New York] case, and we look forward to taking their depositions under oath in the very near term.”

Indeed!

Comedian Jon Stewart ridiculed Carlson to his face on CNN, telling him that “Crossfire,” was “hurting America.” Carlson was told by one network boss that he was too fat.

I remember this, and it was one of the most hypocritical things ever said. Stewart was doing the same thing, but hid behind the fact that his show was “comedy,” as though he wasn’t purposely trying to achieve the same effect as Crossfire, but with a different schtick. The exchange infuriated me at the time, and it still infuriates me today when the LA Times uses it to promote the idea that Stewart caught Carlson out on TV, and made a fool of him, but it’s just another perfect example of the blatant and shameless hypocrisy of our politics and media in the US.

History is already showing itself to be unkind due to these heavily-biased polemical platforms. This is why — love him or hate him — I am very excited about Musk’s promise that they will only censor Twitter according to the law, as I said they should, months ago, but cannot find to reference now.