571 karma · joined June 20, 2013
You can't just go to small claims court and say "I make $50/hr, and I've spent 20 hours on this, so I also demand an extra $1000"
I take "online banking disruption" with a huge grain of salt now. I'm fine taking some risk with investments, or business, or what I actually spend my money on, but the sort of day-to-day banking and payment systems aren't something I really like gambling with. I want to know that my paycheck will be in my account on or before the 1st each month. I want to know that -- if I need to -- I can pay my mortgage 5 days before it's due, and I'll be fine. There's too much uncertainty in the world already to add uncertainty on to THAT with your checking and credit card accounts.
If you don't use the card exclusively, and you use it for low-risk things, it may not be a big deal. But I certainly wouldn't be comfortable relying on it.
This law does not prohibit the offender from _making a profile_ on these sites, but from accessing them altogether. So any site that allows users (news commenters, product reviewers, whatever) to have a "user profile" page cannot be accessed.
Amazon.com meets these criteria: https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AGRXMFWYARWR...
Stack Overflow meets these criteria: https://stackoverflow.com/users/8131287/data-scientist
Github, all of Google, Wikipedia, ALSO meet this criteria. (Although Hacker News does not)
There are a few key things that are problematic with the wording of this law:
1. "Facilitates the social introduction between two or more persons for the purposes of friendship, meeting other persons, or information exchanges." The key word is "or" Every website is involved in information exchanges. This effectively does not limit the scope of the law.
2. The requirements of the profile pages contain "and" statements, but they're fairly generic. Name or username/nickname, photographs, and links placed somehow to other friends and associates. If there's a profile page, you can usually access some sort of activity log of the user (comments they've replied to, which may lead to users they've interacted with directly or indirectly) The only real limit here is the photograph, which not all websites (like Hacker News) have.
3. There is an exception involving "Has as its primary purpose the facilitation of commercial transactions involving goods or services between its members or visitors." However, this does not exclude sites like Amazon, given the strict wording of the law. Members are not exchanging goods with each other. This would exclude sites like Craigslist.
4. There is another exception: "Provides only one of the following discrete services: photo-sharing, electronic mail, instant messenger, or chat room or message board platform" The problem with this is that there aren't many "discrete service" websites that exist anymore. Google provides all of these services, Yahoo provides all of these services. Hotmail provides all of these services. Services like chats, forums, e-mail, and photo sharing are often bundled by a huge collection of other services.
5. The vague wording of "Web site" Is it a single domain? A single corporate entity? A single subdomain? The vague wording only works in favor of the law here.
If someone propositions me at a bar, I can roll my eyes and walk away. If a friend propositions me, I can say "no" and decide whether or not I want to continue being friends with them. If my manager propositions me, I'm put in a -- not just an "uncomfortable" position -- but a really bad one that might seriously impact my life and my family's life.
About a year ago I momentarily misinterpreted a conversation over company chat with my new manager and thought he was about to sexually proposition me -- similar to what Fowler experienced. I don't want to give too many details, but it turned out to be _entirely_ harmless, there was just a cultural divide and he had a poor choice of words and the rest of the conversational context was unfortunate, but I pretty quickly figured out what he was talking about without him being any the wiser. But in that one second, it was like my entire world stopped. Like, heart pounding, vision narrowing, stomach dropped.
I'm a 28 year old woman, I've been propositioned plenty of times before (from "graphic drunk bar type stuff" to "politely asked on a date by a co-worker in another department" -- not a big deal in either case), but it's never caused such an immediate physical reaction like that. My mind just started racing, trying desperately to figure out how to handle it, staring at the screen in a literal physical cold sweat, and coming up with nothing good.
I was new in the company and I needed my manager's approval to succeed. He sits right across from me. I had just gotten married two weeks before, just gotten back from my honeymoon, my savings are depleted and I can't pay my mortgage without my job. My husband can't support both of us. I barely know my manager -- what would he do if I said "no"? If someone's capable of overstepping a huge boundary like this -- sexually propositioning a new employee they're managing -- what else are they capable of? Is this what I'd have to deal with for the rest of my time at the company? How do I stop it? Can I stop it? There are no female co-workers in the office -- there's no one to talk to for help.
I'm very glad (understatement) that this turned out to not be the case, and my momentary panic was just the result of a misunderstanding, but it really gave me insight into the problem that cases of sexual harassment like this can cause. This is NOT just "one adult asking another adult if they want to have sex." I've been asked for sex before -- even by relative strangers. I've asked other people for sex before. Heck, in my younger, single, wild days, I've consented to sex with relative strangers! I've gone on to have good friendships with people I've turned down sex from. I'll even admit to fantasizing about the odd boss or co-worker over the years, sure, but I keep it in my head. But actually being propositioned by a manager, in real life, on a Tuesday morning at your desk, in the real world with real world implications? It was absolutely terrifying for reasons that have nothing to do with sex.
If HR doesn't have to worry that I'm a bigger liability because of my gender (after all, the man sitting next to me also gets flex time and leeway to pick up his kids) that's a bonus for me.
The worst case is when there are no opportunities, or when they're so lopsided (14 weeks paid parental leave for women, 2 weeks for men) that you become a liability.
On a side note, I used to work in a small software startup where I was the only female. I was on my period at the time and also wanted to fix my hair, so I just brought my purse with me. I crossed paths with one of my co-workers on the way to the bathroom and he asked "Are you leaving?" I told him I was just going to the bathroom. He said "Why are you bringing your purse?"
I just looked him straight in the eyes, smiled, shook my head slightly, and said "Dan, never ask a woman why she's taking her purse to the bathroom." I'm pretty sure he walked away more embarrassed than I was ;)
But yeah, I'd rather do THAT once in a while than keep a freaking timer on my desk.
"Government shouldn't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case."
Try telling that to the IRS, or OSHA, or any one of a dozen other organizations tasked with certain aspect of US business oversight. If the IRS says "a preliminary investigation showed that you may be underpaying taxes, please show us business records for such-and-such" you absolutely have to do it. It has nothing to do with a lawsuit, even, although a lawsuit is certainly going to follow if you don't comply.
If OSHA says "there's a string of unusual injuries that we believe were easily preventable at your workplace, please turn over employee training records and we'd like to do a walkthrough of your work site" -- you can't just say "No"
In this case, Google, a federal contractor, is suspected by the Department of Labor for systematically underpaying women. They have EVERY RIGHT to request relevant US employee records. This isn't "asking Google to prove their case," this is a reasonable demand for data that they have the right to.
My dad always described Vietnam with a little head-shaking regret (he was born in Texas in 1957, so he was too young to be drafted, but we had family friends in the war). We didn't hear about it much in elementary school, but in middle school history classes we learned about the Gulf of Tonkin and the smoke and mirrors surrounding that, and why the war was so difficult and controversial compared to previous wars. In high school I had more in-depth modern American history class, studied the social repercussions of the war, the Kent State shootings, the protests, etc.
I'm not sure if it's the chronologic difference or the geographic distance, but not every schoolchild in the US learned "we won the war."
I knew the difference between dead and alive butterfly/moth wing positions, but never consciously noticed the difference in artistic depictions. Heck, I volunteer at the Boston Museum of Science every week and must have seen that Monarchs poster a hundred times without noticing.
Comparing art that "did it right" and art that "did it wrong" -- yeah, if you do it right, it looks a LOT more realistic and "lively," even if I wouldn't have known why before reading this article. I'll have to keep an eye out from now on!
Several reasons:
1. Tomatoes have a high acidity, but many other foods (I mean, wine, for crying out loud! From ubiquitous pewter glasses!) would have had a higher acidity. Vinegar was commonly used in a variety of dishes.
2. Lead poisoning is not usually a sudden event that causes you to say "My god! Must have been the tomatoes!" If there even was a connection, it would have taken a large scale analysis that would have more strongly identified that "people who eat off of pewter tend to get these symptoms." After all, it wasn't just the wealthy eating tomatoes. It just makes no sense that they could have linked the two, especially after all of the incredibly blatant health hazards that hadn't been linked together.
3. Tomatoes are clearly a member of the nightshade family, and this was known in the 1700's. Although lots of great things come from the family (chili peppers, tobacco!) they're often not things to mess with, and might kill you. Potatoes also had a similarly bad reputation because of this. An over-cautious biologist and a little misinformation (or perhaps an early variety of tomato with too much solanine or something nasty in its leaves) seems a lot more likely than "lead poisoning"
4. The source that was linked to for this "fact" is a book on growing Heirloom tomatoes that has nothing to back this up at all, and is far from a "scholarly resource" Seems like a lot of irresponsible reporting.
Unfortunately, agriculture is a major driver of deforestation (and forests are excellent at actually sequestering carbon in the ground). It also requires trucks, boats, and planes to haul supplies to farms, work the land, move water around, and transport the produce to stores. You have processing and packaging that rely on fossil resources (paper, plastic, metal cans...)
That doesn't even touch on the impact of meat production, which is several times worse for the environment.
Food consumption is absolutely not carbon neutral. You're far better off taking public transportation to work (if available) than walking or riding a bike, if you care about the environment.
Beyond that, I know a lot of poor kids who don't have video game consoles, and there literally isn't $50 in the budget for something that may or may not produce any value (not to mention the monitor, the peripherals, and taking up vast amounts of time on the family computer -- if one exists -- to figure out how to use it).
I have extended family living in rural Utah who don't even have a computer -- they use their phones for the Internet. You can debate back and forth about the cost of a phone vs. the cost of a cheap Desktop, but people need phones to function in society, for better or worse. Try figuring out what to do with a bottom tier smartphone, a limited data plan, and a Rasberry Pi that just arrived in the mail.
I volunteer at the Boston Museum of Science, working in the Tech Studio/engineering department, often showing off the latest "engineering toys" -- Little Bits, Rasberry pi, Scratch on an iPad that controls a Lego robot... Rich kid parents ask "Oh, where can I get this?" It's not a big deal for them to drop a couple hundred bucks on flavor-of-the-week programming toys. Poor kid parents are often interested and enjoy playing around with it at the Museum, but never ask about getting one themselves. It doesn't even occur to them.
Beyond THAT, there are a lot of majors that don't cost a lot of money. You can use the argument "X doesn't cost much to learn -- why haven't you done X before on your own time?" to apply to anyone.
My real estate agent was relatively new to the business, but she said she hadn't heard of anyone bringing climate change up as a factor in deciding which house to buy, which I thought was odd. My house is safe up to about a 10 meter rise now!
"Hidden Figures" was a great movie. But it's a movie that centers around characters _being female_. I don't think we necessarily need more movies around "women," we need screenwriters to not automatically default to making their characters male when gender doesn't drive the plot/interaction with other characters.
It's really handy to see how many people the activities attract, and who they appeal to most. You're tracked everywhere!
My spouse and I have done a ton of work on it, don't mind the maintenance issues, and we still get a kick out of just pointing to things and saying "that's ours!" (Okay, well... it's most the bank's. But still.)
I think "I'm sick of renting someone else's house" is a very non-negligible factor that's not often brought up in cost/benefit analyses like these.
But "primary caregiver" is a loaded term that goes beyond biological necessity. What if a woman's husband is quitting his job to take care of the kid(s) and the woman plans to return to work? Is she the secondary caregiver because she spends less of her time doing childcare than her husband? What if the primary caregiver is a nanny?
Even if HR says "Oh, nevermind what you actually plan to do, if you're pushing the kid out, we can mark you as primary" it creates a terrible start to things if you have two parents who set out with good intentions to share childcare efforts equally. HR is telling one parent they're the "primary" and another parent they're the "secondary" and they have to sign legally binding documents attesting to this. It's just ridiculous. I think it's a great example of good intentions backfiring dramatically.
> With a bit of good financial planning
How do you plan financially if your income (and your life in general) is uncertain? A major point in the article was that poverty leads to an inability to plan for the future, and increased stress as a result.
> Corn, Oatmeal, apples, banannas, etc.
So now you need bowls, utensils, hot water, a microwave, stove. You need safe and comfortable access to these things, you need a way to store food so that it won't be stolen. You might think that these are givens, but I lived in an illegal (but very cheap) apartment for a while with a communal kitchen where my food was regularly stolen / thrown out. The landlord would unplug the refrigerator almost every day to save on electricity costs, so a lot of wasted food and I stopped using the fridge. I was harassed and threatened in the kitchen, by residents who were on drugs/frustrated by life and taking it out on me. This made it very difficult to eat well on food stamps.
> And who needs a super expensive cell phone plan? I make do with 9$/month using USMobile.
You also probably have your own computer and Internet access. Without that, a smartphone could be your only way of accessing the Internet (something that's almost a necessity, especially for the poor) "Just go to a library" right? That's great if your town's taxes warrant a decent library with available computers and Internet access within walking distance (or convenient driving distance if you're fortunate enough to have a car).
> my parents would clip every last coupon on the magazine, to get the best deals.
My parents did the same thing. In their copious spare time, with ads delivered to the door of their home, and the ability to travel to multiple grocery stores, all vying for their grocery dollar, in pursuit of the best deal. Look at the trailer with the plywood extension in the article again. Do you think they're getting a stack of local grocery ads every Sunday morning from the neighborhood mailman? Do you think they peruse them over coffee in the morning saying "Wow honey, the single convenience store in town that survived the recession has eggs $1.09/dozen today!" "Oh? Sounds good! And the gas station is having a sale on milk!"
> Driving insurance can be less than 25$/mo if you get metromile.com
Great if you already have a car and can afford to maintain it and put gas in it. And that insurance probably isn't comprehensive, which leaves the poor more vulnerable to expensive emergency situations, especially if they require a car for work. A minor repair might be complete disaster if they don't have the cash, don't have access to credit, and then lose their job as a result.
I can't find any statistics that show women out-earning men, at any age or education level, in the US.