@TimStone doesn't that sorta line up with Trump's refusal to corporate with investigations into war crimes by US Soldiers?
not that it makes it better, just that it explains why he hasn't been using it as a comparion to his own investigation. eg "there these good soldiers are being put on trail because of a witch hunt not unlike the one i am dealing with"
surprised Farage didn't throw a punch which is what i would have expected. you see another far-right activist starting a punch on when he got milkshaked and Anning punched the kid when he got egged but when Morrison got eggs he didn't really do anything
@Memor-X I saw some other news that he'd sue the "radical remainer" that did it. Always fun when one sides radicals throw milkshakes... and the other sides radicals murder politicians
Really it's all basically the same thing folks, both sides have a few radicals! rolls eyes
@TimStone So question: Is he there as part of his position as senator of Vermont, so it's harder to block him from attending the meeting? Or are the workers naively assuming that the Walmart board is going to let one of the biggest opponents of capitalism into their meeting?
I don't know what all the rules are for board meetings of privately held companies but I assume there's something about "you can't just arbitrarily throw someone out"
but maybe there isn't and now the board has to figure out how to navigate that potential PR bomb
@TimStone Just to be clear, they're upset that Uber is taking too much of their fare, so they're artificially raising the fare so that Uber makes more money while simultaneously pissing off their customers?
I don't know much about how uber and taxi service works, so forgive me if this is a dumb question, but why don't uber drivers just become taxi drivers? Isn't it just really easy for Uber to fuck people over?
@HalfEmpty at least in the US there is usually a taxi licensing system and getting licensed (getting a "medallion") can be very, very expensive, c.f. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_medallion
I have never done any reading on cabbies or anything, which is surprising because my local papers were literally about nothing else a few years ago when uber arrived
@HalfEmpty I don't know why, but if I were to guess, I'd guess it's to limit tragedy-of-the-commons congestion caused by swarms of competing cabs; it's open for debate how well this works in practice
Cursory googling claims that another concern was cabbies being able to make a living wage, since pay is per-fare rather than per-hour; so if you have, e.g., 100 fares/day city-wide and a cabbie needs 10 fares/day to eat, having 40 cabbies means coverage is fine but most of them can't actually make enough money to survive.
So capping the number of active cabs prevents a constant boom-bust cycle there.
Coming late into this conversation about Uber/Lyft vs Taxis: it is pretty widely understood that Uber's literal business model is in skirting the costs and regulations of normal taxi services.
Some cities have caught on, and are fighting them hard on it
Others have capitulated
user15026
In general I find most stuff that can be labelled as gig economy style work is usually trying to get around some rules somewhere
user15026
All under the guise of "set your own hours! Choose your work! It will be magical!"
Uber has shown, time and time again, that they have no problem with breaking local laws, and are ok with paying the petty fines they seem to get when caught
but I have no sympathy for their business model, nor for their (reportedly atrocious) business practices, nor for the pathetic way they treat their drivers
@Ash Absolutely. Startups might as well say, "We don't care about labor laws! We'll work you into the ground!"
I've also heard that the "wear and tear on your vehicle" invisible cost is catching up to some drivers, and pretty substantially changes the "is this worth it" calculation
Not to mention the "your normal insurance doesn't cover Uber driving, and commercial insurance is too expensive" factor
> The company’s cultural dysfunction, it seems to me, stems from the very nature of the company’s competitive advantage: Uber’s business model is predicated on lawbreaking. And having grown through intentional illegality, Uber can’t easily pivot toward following the rules.
> Interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees, including several senior executives, describe a widely held view inside the company of the law as something to be tested. Travis Kalanick, the co-founder and former CEO, set up a legal department with that mandate early in his tenure. The approach created a spirit of rule-breaking that has now swamped the company in litigation and federal inquisition
> But nobody has the right to seize a single one of these machines and say, “This is mine; if you want to use it you must pay me a tax on each of your products,” any more than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right to say to the peasant, “This hill, this meadow belong to me, and you must pay me a tax on every sheaf of corn you reap, on every rick you build.”
> Justice Brad McBeer. Final answer. I’m writing about him now and I refuse to use his name. I’m writing Justice McBeer and leaving it to my editor to fix.
So, not sure how it works, or what the script actually is, but someone in another chat room made a "bookmarklet" that transforms a twitter link into a pastable chat comment
not even sure I understand what a "bookmarklet" is
@BradC You click it like a bookmark, but it doesn't necessarily open a new page, but instead does something useful, like filling the clipboard with the text of a tweet.
@MBraedley Makes sense. But unless I'm misunderstanding, that link just shows someone pasting in the results of their bookmarklet action, I don't see anywhere (on that page anyway) that I can see the script or how it works or use it myself
> "The Department has already begun the process of identifying, locating and reviewing the materials potentially responsive to the categories of documents," Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote Tuesday, "a process that will not continue should the Committee take the unnecessary and unproductive step of moving to hold the Attorney General in contempt."
"unnecessary and unproductive"?? Seems like it was pretty necessary and productive to me
> The recent fusillade of anti-abortion bills is the direct result of decades of Republican scheming—and Democratic neglect. “I can assure you that $100,000 in Alabama in 2018 would’ve gone so far,” says one Democratic donor, “instead of giving Beto more money than he knew what to do with.”
Which like, a particular set of skills, but the sense to figure a Congressperson wasn't asking him about a snack food should probably transcend those boundaries
@TimStone I love to say "this :clap: is :clap: why :clap: you :clap: need :clap: to :clap: vote :clap: blue :clap: no :clap: matter :clap: who :clap:" and then not actually support the thing you say is the reason to vote for you in any meaningful way
@TimStone Tell me again why he wasn't made the head of health and human services (or whatever it's called)? Not that he'd be any better at that, but at least he would have some past experience.
