AP: CEOs got hefty pay raises in 2023 while inflation burdened American workers’ budgets... "The median pay package for CEOs rose to $16.3 million, up 12.6 percent, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. Meanwhile, wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers rose 4.1 percent through 2023. At half the companies in this year’s pay survey, it would take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale almost 200 years to make what their CEO did."
@ai6yr a few years back (pre covid) there were back to back red flag power outages in Marin, we had 3 maybe 4 days without power then another 2 days a few days after the power came back. Thankfully no extreme heatwave. Folk with money grabbed hotels in sf and those who couldn’t travel or didn’t know what to expect stayed. I got much more emergency conscious after that. Now I always think about that George Carlin set where no electricity leads to the end of the world.
@ninahatfield@ai6yr yes was a shock to me. Gas pumps down, traffic lights out, local super markets giving away food as backups for fridges only managing 2 days. One thing I notice here is that solar is not an option for a lot of house (hills, trees etc) and other backups can be too costly with no chance for renters. For me the idea of local micro grids and local storage feels like the way to go. Need to break the "I'm ok, I've got a back up system for my $5m house" to community level solutions.
"Reverse networking" -- the process of getting to know a lot of people in a lot of other companies, because they have all left the company you knew them at. #career#networking
@ai6yr oh I thought “reverse networking” was when you slowly, deliberately lose contact with people you worked with until you can (hopefully) delete your linkedin profile
@JimsPhotos Run, run, Reynard, run, run, run
You've got to run for an hour and you're still not done
You've got to run, run, Reynard, run, run, run
Away, away, away, away, away
@ai6yr it feels like we’ve let over privileged teenage boys take the wheel. From cybertrucks to ai fantasy girls, it’s all got very discarded gym sock. Think they all need their internet access removed and made to go outside and help people instead
"Look what these wonderful ideas did to our house... Asbestos worked the miracle. J-M Asbestos Roofing Shingles and J-M Asbestos Siding Shingles. Charming as weathered wood; fire-, weather- and wear-proof."
@ai6yr i ‘love’ all the miracle things we discovered we could add to other things to ‘improve’ them - lead was a huge one that came up again and again. From artists dying from making lead based white paint (since the middle ages) to victorian women and their poisonous face cream and makeup on to Midgley and ‘this will stop that engine rattle’.
In the current digital world I can’t help but think AI is the new lead, poisoning and corrupting everything it’s added to.
@qurlyjoe@ai6yr the commodification of plastics makes past pervasiveness of lead look like a knocking over a paint pot.
Anyone know who the Thomas Midgley of the plastics world is?
I’d definitely like to include (as a special mention even if minor impact) whoever put micro plastic beads in skin care etc.
When watching people being interviewed at home or in their office on cable news, etc., they often have their book collection clearly visible in the background. Do you ever make an effort to read the titles of those books?
Dwell magazine's Alana Hope Levinson has written a thoughtful feature on the joy of "puttering" — relaxing by carrying out low-stakes household chores — and you can read it here. But we got distracted by the language used in the article, since, she claims, "puttering" can also be referred to as "piddling," and where we come from, you certainly don't go piddling around the house. What word do you use for the pastime of puttering?
I love the name of these weird black fungi that I see growing on oak trees in northern California: cramp balls (Annulohypoxylon thouarsianum). They're maybe 8cm or so in diameter.