quoththeraven

Paging @Gar1eth, who hasn't been around since mid-November (then again I've been gone since February or so): this year's Maccabeats Hanukkah song is a cover/parody of BTS' Dynamite.

Cover:

Original:

Live performance of original for NPR's Tiny Desk Concert

Yes, this is the same group I've been annoying you about for years and no, not planning on stopping anytime soon, not even if they win the Grammy for best duo or group pop performance for Dynamite. (Yes, they were nominated and I fully expect them to be invited to perform it at the Grammys.)

Answered my own question:

 

For the first time, Uber drivers and other gig workers would qualify for unemployment insurance as part of the Senate's $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill

 

Federal law says unemployment payments should be the same weekly pay as they would earn from their employer, capped by a maximum amount set by the state. The max amount varies by state. For instance, Florida's maximum is $275 a week; California's is $450 a week.

 

But the coronavirus stimulus bill also provides for four months of additional unemployment insurance, up to an additional $600 a week, for everyone who qualifies for unemployment, including gig workers.

 

The extended unemployment benefits in this bill attempt to protect workers "whether they work for small, medium or large businesses, along with the self-employed and workers in the gig economy," Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a press release.

So in other words gig workers get a flat $600 without having to prove income.

About the tax returns, they can't use 2019 because a) most of those returns aren't filed yet and b) the filing deadline has already been postponed. I haven't checked but I assume this includes postponing the payment requirement, or at least waiving penalties and interest for failure to pay by April 15th.

I took advantage of a 30 day free trial offer from Acorn because they have Midsomer Murders, which Netflix lost the rights to, but I plan on cancelling before the free trial runs out. So I'm binging the two seasons of Midsomer Murders I hadn't already seen.

Other than maybe spending more time on Twitter than usual, my daily routine is no different. (And honestly I don't really have a routine anymore.) But I have had sleep problems - at first I wasn't feeling sleepy enough early enough, and now getting back to sleep when I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom is a problem.

I practice social distancing most of the time anyway, but I went out twice in the past week: once to replace a charger for my cell phone and tablets, and once to go grocery shopping.

How come nobody's listed a bowel movement on their daily routine?

Because we don't need that level of detail.

I was fortunate in having a neighborhood friend who told me about masturbation before I tried it myself. He was a year older and had been doing it for a while. He pulled down his pants to demonstrate and told me I needed to do it in order to make jazz and I would need jazz to make babies some day (in hindsight, I think he meant jizz). I went home to try it and just like that, I become a devoted masturbater!

Lol, "jazz."

From the article:

 

Self-employed workers, those seeking part-time work, and workers who quit their job or can’t reach their place of work as a result of COVID-19 are among those eligible for benefits.

 

How do others read that?

 

The way I read it is that an escort or a massage therapist who is self-employed could make an unemployment claim. Does that sound right?

 

Obviously, escorts will have listed their occupations as something else. But it sounds like they are not just talking about people who worked for "traditional" employers.

Unemployment is supposed to apply to gig workers and the self-employed, yes, although that's a separate issue from the $1200 stimulus checks.

As I understand it, people like me who don't have to file tax returns will have to file one to get the $1200 payment, and it will take four months to get a check if the IRS doesn't have direct deposit information on file. I didn't file or have to file in 2018, and the same would be true this year and going forward. Moreover, I've changed bank accounts twice since I last got a refund.

Taxing those payments would be contrary to the point of making them. They also shouldn't count for means-tested benefits, either.

I went grocery shopping Sunday morning and they had tape up preventing entry into the produce section directly from the entrance and directing traffic around the adjacent bakery, deli and cheese sections in order to corral everyone checking out into a single line for checkout along one wall far away from the cash registers. There were no explanations, so I thought they were limiting entry (even though no one was monitoring it) until I saw that a line had formed and there was an employee directing people to cashiers. Fortunately by the time I was done there was no line, and it turned out the employee managing the flow of customers was also checking to see if you had more than one item that was being rationed.

There was absolutely no toilet paper despite signs limiting purchases (fortunately I'd bought some early in the month and didn't need any) and very little bottled water, but what got me the most was that the 18 pack of large store brand eggs I normally buy for $2 or thereabouts was completely out. I bought the least expensive eggs I saw, which were a dozen store brand brown cage free organic for $2.50. Unsurprisingly, egg purchases were also limited to one per customer along with bread and milk (there were adequate supplies of both, but I use lactose free milk, so I don't know about regular milk). I can already tell I'm going to need more bread, though.

The store wasn't crowded, but people weren't always staying the recommended six feet away. (And in some cases it was impossible - the aisles aren't that wide.) If I'm already stopped to get something, please don't stop within six feet of me, for crying out loud!

Parasite won! \o/ And received the most Oscars of any movie this year (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best International Feature).

Now if only Bangtan Sonyeondan could get a Grammy nomination...

Markopolos sent the SEC a long, rambling, Unabomber manifesto-like letter. The title alone screams “crank.”

I believe that was after he'd become exasperated that they weren't listening. And he wasn't the only one with expressed doubts.

Furthermore, he was right - it was a fraud, and a fraud in the way he thought was most likely (a Ponzi scheme rather than using front-running, which was the other possibility), its track record as reported in quarterly statements was impossible given market conditions, and the congressional panel he testified before after the arrest didn't treat him as a crank in this regard.

I was going to mention in my post that he should assume financial responsibility for his care, but quite frankly, at his age, he is would be covered by Medicare and likely a secondary insurance, so there is little chance he will absorb the cost.

However there is quite a bit of difference between at home dialysis or an upscale dialysis center and a prison dialysis unit, even assuming he is on dialysis. He could have end stage disease but not have reached the stage of needing dialysis. In addition, the bed at home would probably be a lot more comfortable. The TV or choice of reading material a lot more luxurious. Nice silk PJs and nurse to cater to every need. 18 months of that, likely extending to several years, seems hardly a prison sentence, more like an elegant exit from a life of excess.

This was the most helpful information in the entire thread. I am a little surprised that there would even be a prison dialysis unit, though. That seems a lot less cost effective than sending him to a nearby hospital outpatient dialysis unit. Or are dialysis machines portable enough and inexpensive enough to rent to be installed in prison infirmaries on an as needed basis?

I'm having some difficulty relating your response to my posting. My "Me too" was a response to a JJKrkwood posting, not a BnaC posting. As I intended to convey in my wondering about notoriety, I totally agree that treatment should not depend on notoriety.

Sorry, that was confusing. Only the first paragraph was a response to you, more specifically the last sentence. The rest was mostly a response to @BnaC.

I’ve never understood what he talked to LE when they came to his door. I know he had lived with the secret for a long time and needed to tell someone, but why not ask for a lawyer?

 

 

Playing hard to get helped him mislead people. If he’s turning away investors, he must be legit.

 

Goldman and Renaissance wouldn’t touch him. Someone at Renaissance sent a memo questioning his returns.

Asking for a lawyer would only have postponed the inevitable. Also it was whistleblowing by one or both sons that brought law enforcement to his door.

Why yes, I just spent time reading the Wikipedia entry on Madoff and reacquainting myself with what happened, as well as learning some things I didn't know before.

There were diligent investment entities that steered clear of Madoff. Made me think of the Keating 5 and how many retired folks lost everything due to Charles Keating's investment practices. Those folks thought they had chosen a safe investment class, and were not going for greedy returns.

Perhaps the benefit of diversifying is best learned the hard way.

Part of the reason some avoided Madoff's funds was the inability to do due diligence. Their accounting firm was small and they refused to provide documentation of the underlying investments.

I wonder if anyone who invested with Bernie ever questioned how he achieved his astronomical returns? Did they do much research or did excitement (greed?) Drive some investors?

 

In the deli escorts are often regarded as “TGTBT” I wonder if anyone considered that before investing?

I don't know about any investors, but a financial advisor in Boston, Harry Markopolos, went to the SEC starting in 2001 (Madoff was arrested late in 2008) and sounded the alarm about the unrealistically high and consistent rates of return. (Especially that even in down markets the returns hardly ever showed losses of value.) Because Madoff was well-connected and had a good reputation from his sales ability and from having been instrumental in forming NASDAQ and having sat on its Board of Governors and been its chairman, the SEC didn't take the allegations seriously. In addition, his niece, his firm's in-house attorney, dated an SEC supervisor and later married him after he left the SEC.

Being in prison is consistent with punishment and elimination of right to the pursuit of happiness. He did the crime, he does the time. Compassion to his disregards his victims.

How are his victims disregarded if he's sent home? I think they're disregarded by having to help pay for his care through their taxes when he bankrupted them!

I agree he likely shouldn't be released until it's clear he can't recover and goes into palliative care, but I am no expert in end-stage renal disease. If his life consists of dialysis treatment and not much else, I'm not sure it matters where he is, his quality of life is compromised. If he needs constant nursing attention, what difference does it make, and if the answer is "he shouldn't have comforts because he's in prison," to what extent does that amount to "he should only get minimal treatment because he's in prison and not everything we would otherwise provide if the patient weren't a notorious criminal"? That sounds to me like the treatment of his condition is being manipulated to be part of his punishment, which is what it's not supposed to be.

As for the right to the pursuit of happiness, you're confusing a rhetorical flourish from the Declaration of Independence with some sort of right and suggesting that prisoners don't get that. There is no such legally enforceable right (something Jefferson probably realized), but what rights prisoners do have suggest that they are just as entitled to pursue happiness within the circumstances they are in. Other than the terms of their confinement, they aren't meant to suffer more than others, and not even conservative judges are likely to take the view that prisoners who are ill are supposed to suffer more from their illness, or have treatment of their illness manipulated to make them worse off than the average unincarcerated person with the same condition, given the existence of a constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

@bigjoey, did Missouri not have an exception to the age of consent laws for relationships between people close in age (usually up to four years' difference) where one was underage and the other one wasn't? Laws without such exemptions are really kind of dumb.

My Ancestry DNA results have been revised now, over the past 18 months, three different times. Ancestry says that they submit "your DNA to a reference panel made up of thousands of people. Because reference panels and the way we analyze your DNA both change as we get more data, your ethnicity results can change as we get more data, too." They originally stated that I was 65% Irish/Scottish, but that number was recently revised to only 50%. I still think that I'm half Scotch and half Bourbon.

Those percentages aren't hard and fast numbers, which is why I reported the ranges. It makes sense that as they gather more information that some results might be revised. As you can see, my percentage of Korean heritage is much more definite than my European heritage, which isn't surprising considering how much more homogeneous Korea is than Western Europe.

Did you read the article I linked? The original source was an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. I don't know any journalistic standard that says the underlying data of such an article needs to be independently validated. The issue here was not the journalists.

 

You are mischaracterizing my position, probably because your argument is very weak. If my boss had objected, we would have been heading down to HR, who usually understand that having one person on the job sick is not a good idea since it may take out a whole department. Middle managers will get away with whatever they can.

 

Back to the specific discussion, you are really not making a good point here, basically saying that we all just need to get infected with communicable viruses.

I stand corrected. The doctors writing in the New England Journal of Medicine shouldn't have assumed she was asymptomatic without checking. That's not a journalistic problem, but it's a scientific problem because they didn't test one of their premises for veracity.

Otherwise you are deliberately mischaracterizing what I am saying. I'm not sure how "lack of sick pay and pressure from employers to be at work incentivizes people not to take time off when sick" amounts to "we all just need to get infected with communicable viruses." That's without even getting into whether one's symptoms are from communicable diseases, whether viruses or otherwise. Or are you saying it's reasonable to expect everyone to know off the bat when sometimes not even doctors know?

I've come to accept that you are prone to saying stuff that does not make any sense, so just letting you know, I have no idea what this has to do with being so ill you are taking drugs to treat your symptoms but still go to work.

 

 

 

The logic here is so attenuated as to be non-existent. Are you just arguing to argue? Just let me know, so I can add you to my ignore list.

 

I'll say it again, the standing recommendation if you are sick is to not go to work and infect your coworkers. Nothing to do with a pandemic. There is not a debate on this. The last time a coworker showed up sick at my job, I said, in front of our boss, "Either you're going home or I am". He went home.

I was referring to the news report that stirred up unnecessary worry by claiming she was asymptomatic because her colleagues were unaware of her symptoms without checking to see if that was actually true. That's no different from reporting rumors.

I don't disagree that people are better off staying home when they're sick, but that doesn't always happen, not because people want to work when ill but because they can't afford not to or their employer insists they be there unless they're in the hospital. Prearranged overseas travel adds another layer of complication. It's great that you tell other people to go home and your boss is okay with it, but to act like that's how it always happens beggars belief. (Or that every boss would allow a subordinate to dictate attendance.)

Amen! Especially to civics education. I agree this all belongs in the school as well as the home. BUT, isn’t the problem that teenagers don’t understand the need and dis a course like this??

@keroscenefire and @bigjoey's responses suggest otherwise, although civics education is probably a bigger stretch than practical economics/law. Civics education is something that needs to begin in late elementary school rather than in high school.

I remember the days of discussing the Watergate hearings in an honors American history class in which George McGovern narrowly won a straw poll even though we lived in a predominantly Republican area. (I don't know if any of the other teachers conducted straw polks.) Our class was highly engaged, particularly since our teacher let a class member who later became a union organizer talk about the evidence against Nixon prior to the start of class.

Having taught this to seniors, I'd say about 70 percent or so of the the students really took it in and learned a lot from it. At that age, they really are about to buy their first car or rent their first apartment, so they were paying attention. My high school in particular has a lot of what we called "opportunity youth," so in many cases they weren't really learning this information for their parents or only some of it.

 

But you're right, about a third or so of the students blew off the class, but pretty much in the same way they blew off every class. Some kids just didn't really care about school or learning, regardless of the subject. They would be the ones asking, "When are we every going to need this stuff?" in math class and then coming to my class, filled with practical information that they would very likely use and saying the same thing.

Which suggests that it is useful and fills a need. There will always be people who are disengaged and blow it off. That still isn't a reason not to make it available.

Me too. While I'm definitely pro humane treatment of the incarcerated by the fact that, tragically, there are incarcerated individuals who are not guilty of the crimes with which they were charged. In this case, however, I'm put to wonder if the same end-of-life consideration would be given to inmates of lesser notoriety.

Why?

I agree with @BnaC's first sentence but none of the rest. Are you suggesting that only people who are not actually guilty are deserving of humane treatment?

Treatment shouldn't depend on notoriety. But punishment shouldn't be prolonged to the point where it's become irrelevant because the diagnosis and treatment themselves are a form of prison even for people who are living at home. Furthermore I adhere to a belief system that says all of us are deserving because none of us are.

I agree that entry into hospice is an appropriate time to release him. Being in prison is at odds with palliative care. Also I'm surprised I'm the only one interested in him or his family assuming the cost of his treatment, which, hello! is being paid by his victims along with everyone else.

impressed that, as the article says, the trustee has recovered about 75 cents on the dollar for the victims......

 

I don't know if Madoff receives dialysis or not......my Mother died of renal failure (her "choice" of several health issues she faced) and had excellent hospice care....it's a painless way to die and she didn't get set up for dialysis (again, her choice).......she was in not-horrible shape up until about 36 hours before she died, then she slept peacefully until the end.....

 

his lawyers claim he has about 18 months or less to go, despite already being in palliative care.....based on my Mother's experience (she had hospice for about two weeks because she just didn't seem to want/need it any earlier), he is not at all in bad shape now......I'd be ok with him going home in about 17.5 months.......

I understood the lawyers to be repeating what his doctor(s) said. In any event, that's really not enough to make a decision to release him on. While I'm no expert, I would expect end-stage renal disease to require dialysis if the prognosis is survival for 18 months. Subject, of course, to correction by people who know. This isn't something I'm going to research on my own.

Alternative universe:

 

i was pulled over. Opened my glove box and pulled out a shit ton of syringes (atropine, succinylcholine, lidocaine ... im an anesthesiologist, its normal to have these). No registration.

“Good evening Sir, may i have your license and registration?”

I hand over my license. “I can't find my registration .... “

“Thats ok,sir. Your tail light is out. People dont always know that. Get it fixed, Sir, and have s good night!”

Fortunately, he missed that my inspection was six months overdue ... which was fixed the next day. I love my toewn!

Would not have happened where I live. My car was totaled Christmas Eve day of 2015 by a woman visiting her family for Christmas and driving her brother's SUV into a one-way street the wrong way, also cutting across the lane I was traveling in opposite to her before she unexpectedly turned left right in front of me. Both insurance companies agreed she was in the wrong and 100% at fault. Yet she didn't receive a ticket. I did for an unregistered vehicle (my bad, I had forgotten to get it done on time, but I only paid the fine and didn't reregister because the car was totaled; I bought a used car of the same make, model and year from a dealership and they took care of the registration) and lack of insurance because I didn't have my insurance card with me. Resolving that took two court appearances and a $35 court fee.