Water rights are the opposite of late stage capitalism. It’s silly to enforce when we’re talking about a residential rain barrel, but when we’re talking on much larger scales is critical. When creeks are drying up because landowners are building catchment ponds, water rights start to look pretty good.

Sure, Amazon doesn’t want hundreds of extra lawsuits, but the staff also don’t want to waste their money on legal fees for a suit that’s a guaranteed loss. Case law is very well-established.

What’s with the assumption that it’s the law that is keeping Amazon from mass-firing staff who won’t come in?

The approach they’re taking is just a smart business decision. It allows them to spread the disruptions out so they’re more manageable, to keep employees who’s skills justify flexibility in the WFH rules, and prevents the PR impact of a mass termination.

The laws are pretty different for contract workers vs W2 employees. W2 employees can have contracts, but it’s really rare outside of unions. Conditions of employment can in most cases be changed at the employers discretion.

I feel a little bit like I’m defending Amazon here, but I’m really trying to highlight that our worker protections are crap in the US. Unions are really the way to go if employees want security. Tech industry has way too few unions.

This is true for contract workers, but I believe we’re talking about W2 employees, who rarely have a contract if they’re not part of a union.

Do you have experience with employment law?

An employee could argue discrimination, but they’d have to have evidence that it was due to a protected class to have any success, and those cases are notoriously hard to prove. In every state that I’m aware of, they can fire people selectively for not coming into the office, while keeping others employed.

Employment laws are state-by-state, but I don’t know a single one where it’s illegal to fire someone for not coming into the office.

There’s no way this is accurate.

I have a baby monitor, and considered using an IP camera before buying it. The reason I like mine is because I’ve got a separate little handheld monitor on RF instead of wifi. There’s a handful of situations where it’s fine in very handy. Our nanny could use it without us having to set her up with any tech. Works while traveling without having to deal with hotel Wi-Fi or hot spots. Works outside much further than my wifi reaches. I like the RF.

I this this is too harsh.

Nah those are Turnips.

What the hell. That classifies almost anyone who goes on vacation as rich.

You wouldn’t be at burning man then. It’s obviously a very different experience.

There’s a somewhat universal standard for publishing transit information. Not all agencies are fully compliant, but most are on some level.

The repositories for the big distros are so full that you rarely need to ever install anything that isn’t already there for you. I use a crapload of software, and I have literally one thing that I’ve installed that I downloaded from the internet. All updates are handled by the package manager, so there aren’t dozens of services running to check for updates. Installing software on linux was already so much easier, byt Flatpak and SNAP have made it absurdity simple.

On windows, you literally go to some website download an executable, and run it. Every time I need to do it for work, I’m shocked that it’s such a messy and insecure setup.

Maybe it’s because I’m so accustomed to Excel, but Libreoffice Calc is so painful to use. Not the app that’s going to win people over.

It’s mostly the being rich thing.

It’s really sad that something like this gets so much news coverage and international support, while poor people are facing similar fates and we all pretend it’s not happening.

I understand the news coverage. These are folks who are relatable to a lot of western audiences. People aspire to their wealth. The international support and rescue efforts though are a little shameful. You don’t see this kind of efforts when it’s migrants fleeing war and oppression.

I see the attention on the war in Ukraine similarly. What Russia is doing is shameful and I’m glad Ukraine is getting so much help. At the same time Yemen has it much worse. Hardly anyone even knows there is a war happening there, but it’s American built bombs that are dropping on neighborhoods. They’re not quite white and relatable enough to get us all putting their flag on our Twitter profiles.