The Dream Job That Wasn’t | The New Republic

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The Dream Job That Wasn’t | The New Republic

My dream did not materialize, but as I entered the workforce, my early sense of what a dream job actually was only deepened. I wanted to do something I cared about and have my life taken care of in the process, but I always had some understanding that even the most fulfilling, best-paid job in the world would also still be work. After all, no one sees a horse pulling a cart and thinks that they aren’t laboring. Horses aren’t doing laps with fidgety nine-year-olds in their off-hours. No one says to a horse, “If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.ȁ

Some of this is only becoming more obvious, including to myself, in an era when stable, full-time employment is evaporating, and holding on to any job is its own kind of feat. The Economic Policy Institute calculates that the failed political response to the pandemic has left nearly 16 percent of the workforce—26.8 million people—unemployed or employed but losing hours and pay. And having work isn’t necessarily a guarantee against hardship—even before the current recession, one in nine workers received wages too low to get out of poverty, even if they worked full-time hours. But the idea of a dream job is still catnip. There’s a slew of self-help articles advertising tips on how to Land Your ream Job by the End of the Year or 9 Genuine Steps to Quit Your Job and ulfill Your ream. Indeed.com lists info for 25 dream jobs, three-quarters of which have an average national salary of less than $50,000 per year.

Trump’s premeditated election lie lit the fire – Axios

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Off the rails: Trump’s premeditated election lie lit the fire – Axios

or weeks, Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory on election night — even if he lost. But the real-time results, punctuated by ox’s shocking call, upended his plans and began his unraveling.

Trump had planned for Americans to go to bed on Nov. 3 celebrating — or resigned to — his re-election. The maps they saw on TV should be bathed in red. But at 11:20 p.m. that vision fell apart, as the nation’s leading news channel among conservatives became the first outlet to call Arizona for Joe Biden. Inside the White House, Trump's inner circle erupted in horror.

Over the next two months, Trump took the nation down with him as he descended into denial, despair and a reckless revenge streak that fueled a deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol by his backers seeking to overturn the election. This triggered a constitutional crisis and a bipartisan push to impeach Trump on his way out the door, to try to cast him out of American politics for good.

But in four years, Trump had remade the Republican Party in his own image, inspiring and activating tens of millions of Americans who weren’t abandoning him anytime soon. He’d once bragged he could shoot another person on ifth Avenue and not lose his voters. In reality, many of them had eagerly lined up to commit violence on his behalf.

How the 1968 Sanitation Workers’ Strike Expanded the Civil Rights Struggle – HISTORY

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How the 1968 Sanitation Workers’ Strike Expanded the Civil Rights Struggle – HISTORY

On ebruary 12, 1968, 1,300 Black sanitation workers in Memphis began a strike to demand better working conditions and higher pay. Their stand marked an early fight for financial justice for workers of color as part of the civil rights movement. The strike also drew Martin Luther King, Jr. and fatefully became the setting for his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintopȁ speech and his assassination.

Hauling trash, sometimes in the pouring rain, was a taxing and dirty job. Yet the city of Memphis expected garbage collectors to work long hours for meager wages and without overtime pay. Their compensation, 65 cents per hour, was so low that many were eligible for welfare and food stamps.

January 18, 2021 Morning

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Good morning! Today is Martin Luther King Jr Day. β™₯ The holiday formerly known as Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, it was changed to honor M.L. King after Ronnie Reagan decided he needed to win more black votes, and the consternation of some states, most notably Arizona which had rather racist representatives and didn’t want to honor an insurrectionist. Today also is Winnie the Pooh Day 🍯 ! The day we mark the birthday of A. A. Milne, the man who created the beloved bear who had a thing for honey. Nowadays, bears are mostly interested in rummaging through rednecks’ burn barrels in Tioga County, PA to chew on half burnt moldy ham sandwiches and turkey carcasses flavored with burnt plastic. πŸ”₯ Yum. Next Monday is 5 PM Sunset πŸŒ‡ . Yes, the days have grown noticeably longer then they were a few weeks ago. 🌞 I’ve noticed it in the evening, although it’s not a pronounced as I’m not waiting downtown to catch the bus home at 5 PM. 🚏 Cloudy, some red sky to the south, above one degree of freezing at 33 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ Just imagine how much nicer it would be if we used Celsius? Be a half degree a I recon. I’ll take some honey. There is a southwest breeze at 6 mph. πŸƒ. There is a dusting of snow on the ground. β˜ƒ Temperatures will drop below freezing at around 6 pm. β˜ƒοΈ

M. L. King Day will have a chance of snow showers before 2pm, then a slight chance of rain and snow showers between 2pm and 4pm, then a slight chance of snow showers after 4pm. I’d call that pretty cloudy 🌦, with a high of 38 degrees at 2pm. Eight degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around February 26th. Southwest wind 6 to 13 mph becoming northwest in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning, which became snow by afternoon. The high last year was 30 degrees. The record high of 59 was set in 1973. 7.9 inches of snow fell back in 1891.❄

My foot is feeling better ever since I got the athlete’s foot cream on it, πŸ‘£ and let it soaked. Amazing how fast as a bad athlete’s foot infection can go away when you kill off the fungus. I’ve been trying to make sure to change my socks more regularly, 🧦 and hopefully it won’t become a problem. I did get out for my evening walk, which was pleasant 🚢 and not too cold. Forgot my muzzle, I mean to the non-III’ers, my mask but that was fine I didn’t see anyone on the street. 😷 I’ve not decided on whether or not I’ll go for a walk this morning, but I could go out to Five Rivers as it’sΒ  a work holiday. 🐦 Not real nice day but who doesn’t like a good walk? Maybe I could do Van Dyke Preserve then walk out along the farms on Meads Road out to Five Rivers like I did last weekend. Or maybe that’s a crazy an overly ambitious idea, and I shouldn’t see if I could injure my foot first.

Breakfast this day was scrambled eggs with chopped peppers and ham. 🍳 It was a pretty good breakfast and now after having another cup or two of coffee β˜• I should clean up the kitchen next and get the bed made so I can get out. I don’t want to dilly around too much and waste all day, although the weather isn’t going to be great.☁ But it’s silly to delay all day. It will be dark out before you know it, despite the longer days.πŸŒ† What’s the Gordon Lightfoot song I was listening to on the bus the other day?

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:07 pm with sun having an altitude of 26.9Β° from the due south horizon (-43.9Β° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 11.8 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour πŸ… starts at 4:08 pm with the sun in the southwest (235Β°). πŸ“Έ The sunset is in the west-southwest (243Β°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:51 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 16 seconds with dusk around 5:22 pm, which is one minute and 13 seconds later than yesterday. πŸŒ‡ At dusk you’ll see the First Quarter πŸŒ“ Moon in the south-southwest (195Β°) at an altitude of 45Β° from the horizon, 249,828 miles away. πŸš€ The best time to look at the stars is after 5:57 pm. At sunset, look for snow showers 🌨 and temperatures around 37 degrees. Warm enough the roads will be fine. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 13 mph. Tomorrow will have 9 hours and 32 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 52 seconds over today.

This afternoon going out to the folks house for Sunday dinner, πŸ˜‹ and I also want to get the rest of the system updates installed on the Winders side of my laptop and get that Cisco program installed so they can telnet in and get all the VPN network drives mounted. πŸ’» At least I won’t have to be going downtown as much now when I need to file paperwork or get things off the server, or as mostly has been happening, asking friends to send me files that I need off the server. I really hate using Winders, but sometimes you just got to do it because it’s popular because of all the commercial advertising. If only the feds has stuck to their UNIX-mandate a few more years longer.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy πŸŒ₯, with a low of 22 degrees at 6am. Eight degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 4th. Maximum wind chill around 19 at 12am; Northwest wind 6 to 11 mph becoming light after midnight. In 2020, we had light snow. It got down to 17 degrees. The record low of -28 occurred back in 1971.

Cold next weekend with temperatures running 7 degrees below normal but otherwise sunny. πŸ˜ƒ Finally, some sun, but you’ll be using your heat. Welcome to the poor house with all your money going to the frackers! And probably 50 cents to the dirt-poor dairy farmer getting a royalty check for the 10 acres of cropland they forfeited for two decades. Saturday, partly sunny, with a high near 26. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 22. Typical average high for the weekend is 31 degrees. While the temperature normally this time of year starts to moderate with the longer days and higher sun angle, it’s

🌹🌻🌼Only 61 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼Tomorrow marks 60 days, if you do the math. But I expect many cold, much colder then today, days before then.

As previously noted, next Monday is 5 PM Sunset πŸŒ‡ when the sun will be setting at 5:00 pm with dusk at 5:30 pm. On that day in 2020, we had rain and temperatures between 39 and 22 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 31 degrees. We hit a record high of 61 back in 1938.

Dog in the Mouth

Measuring the stress in the rental industry | FRED Blog

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Measuring the stress in the rental industry | FRED Blog

The pandemic has tormented many sectors of the economy. The sector we highlight today is rental companies, whose income is captured in the Quarterly Services Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau.

This survey covers only a sample of the rental sector: businesses that employ workers but not, for example, individual landlords. Also, the space being rented may be apartments, residential houses, or commercial real estate. But these data can still be a good proxy for the entire real estate rental industry.

What’s clear from the RE graph above is that income in this sector has dropped considerably during the pandemic. It was obvious that there would be effects from the nationwide eviction moratorium for unpaid rent. It is unclear, though, whether this is the only mechanism at work here, as there are also reports of substantial moves from rented apartments to owned houses. Regardless, this drop in rental income is unprecedented. The sector is recuperating now, and we’ll be watching to see when it returns to its pre-pandemic level.

True Story of Winnie the Pooh | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine

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True Story of Winnie the Pooh | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine

In the main branch of the New York Public Library, there lives a group of wild animals that call the children’s section home. Together, in one cage, are a young pig, a donkey, a tiger, a kangaroo, and a bear known the world over as Winnie-the-Pooh. The bear is not the red-shirted “tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluffȁ found in cribs around the world, more a regular ole’ fuzzy variety, a simple knock-around bear. But he’s still Pooh, a bit matted down, a bit overly loved, but in great shape considering he’ll soon be 100 years old. The original Pooh is amazingly still alive, well into the 21st-century, in both literary and animated forms.