Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

Thanks for the link, Buchanan. That confirms what should have been obvious to everyone. Of course, if this were the summer then I'm 100% certain The Media would have cast this as "Reinfection Possible" instead of "Reinfection Highly Unlikely"

[CGVT]

The war against Uber and Lyft by the Left continues. The two innovating rideshare companies managed to stave off California's bullshit with a statewide vote that repealed a bill requiring the two companies to treat drives as employees instead of independent contractors (which, they so clearly fucking are).

Welp, entere New York. Unforuntately, this time it's through the courts. http://www.courts.state.ny.us/report...2020_07645.htm

So, even though drives have not set schedule, can work as little or as often as they want, can refuse rides and can cancel accepted rides, they are employees. Now, I've never worked at a job where I can literally set my own schedule from 0 hours to 60+ hours. That doesn't seem like an employee-employer relationship to me. But, hey, The Left hates "gig" jobs. HATES THEM.

However, to be fair, I'll give anyone who is interested 1 guess at which group of interested workers were the driving force behind this particular lawsuit.

I drove for Uber for about a year to make a few bucks to get my last kid through school. I drove the drunks around on weekend nights and actually enjoyed it. Once I figured out when and where to be, I was putting about an extra grand to $1200 a month in the bank. Of course, after gas and added vehicle expenses I really netted much less. There is no way I would want to do it to try to make a living, but as a side gig it was not bad. I quit in March because of COVID.

I don't support the "Make us employees!" bullshit but there are some issues with your statement (imagine that). It's a little more gray than you make it out to be. Yes, a driver can refuse rides, but if his acceptance rate gets too low, he gets kicked from he platform. He can cancel accepted rides too, but if his cancellation rate gets too high he gets kicked from the platform. As a driver, you don't know where your trip is going and how long it is going to be until you start the trip on the app. If it is a crappy trip and you cancel, it goes against you. Too high a cancellation rate and you are no longer driving. When a trip pops up, you have it shows direction and distance to the pickup, but you don't know how long the trip will be. You have about 15 seconds to decide if you want to take the trip or not. I've picked up people that were going less than two blocks from one bar to another. It may be a ten minute trek to pick up a 5 minute, minimum fare ride (less than 3 bucks for the driver in most markets) or it could be an "good" trip making you twenty or thirty bucks. You have no idea until you get to the pickup and ask the rider/start the trip on the app. Uber changed is so you could see the info on the trip, but it was tied to your acceptance rate. If you actually used it to make decisions on whether to take a trip or not and you declined too may trips, you lost the ability to see the info. Kind of a shit-filled twinkie. Looked good on the outside, but wait until you take a bite...

I don't know of any other contractors that take jobs without all of the information needed to see it if will be profitable or not.

Having said that, drivers are obviously more contractor than employee and these lawsuits are bullshit.

And if you take an Uber or Lyft, for Christ's sake tip the driver, especially on those short rides. You'd be surprised at how many cheap bastards don't tip. The driver makes about 40% of what you pay. A few bucks per trip can make a huge difference for a driver's bottom line.

[AlabamAlum]

Roger Clinton: drugs, disorderly behavior, influence peddling clown. Took money and promised people contracts with the Clinton Foundation (etc). He looked at Billy Carter and said, “hold my beer.”

...and, yeah, big brother Bill pardoned him and bought him a house in California

[AlabamAlum]

Okay. Enough politics for me. I’ve spent all morning crushing Coke cans....It’s soda pressing. Get it? SODA PRESSING!!!!

Ahem. I’ll show myself out.

[iam416]

I drove for Uber for about a year to make a few bucks to get my last kid through school. I drove the drunks around on weekend nights and actually enjoyed it. Once I figured out when and where to be, I was putting about an extra grand to $1200 a month in the bank. Of course, after gas and added vehicle expenses I really netted much less. There is no way I would want to do it to try to make a living, but as a side gig it was not bad. I quit in March because of COVID.

I don't support the "Make us employees!" bullshit but there are some issues with your statement (imagine that). It's a little more gray than you make it out to be. Yes, a driver can refuse rides, but if his acceptance rate gets too low, he gets kicked from he platform. He can cancel accepted rides too, but if his cancellation rate gets too high he gets kicked from the platform. As a driver, you don't know where your trip is going and how long it is going to be until you start the trip on the app. If it is a crappy trip and you cancel, it goes against you. Too high a cancellation rate and you are no longer driving. When a trip pops up, you have it shows direction and distance to the pickup, but you don't know how long the trip will be. You have about 15 seconds to decide if you want to take the trip or not. I've picked up people that were going less than two blocks from one bar to another. It may be a ten minute trek to pick up a 5 minute, minimum fare ride (less than 3 bucks for the driver in most markets) or it could be an "good" trip making you twenty or thirty bucks. You have no idea until you get to the pickup and ask the rider/start the trip on the app. Uber changed is so you could see the info on the trip, but it was tied to your acceptance rate. If you actually used it to make decisions on whether to take a trip or not and you declined too may trips, you lost the ability to see the info. Kind of a shit-filled twinkie. Looked good on the outside, but wait until you take a bite...

I don't know of any other contractors that take jobs without all of the information needed to see it if will be profitable or not.

Having said that, drivers are obviously more contractor than employee and these lawsuits are bullshit.

And if you take an Uber or Lyft, for Christ's sake tip the driver, especially on those short rides. You'd be surprised at how many cheap bastards don't tip. The driver makes about 40% of what you pay. A few bucks per trip can make a huge difference for a driver's bottom line.

Thank you for your insight, CGVT. Even with that gray area filled in, I still feel rather strongly that they're employees. Without going too far into it, most Uber/Lfyt drivers are like you -- very much part-time, very flexible schedule, making money in a "side hustle." Defining those folks as employees will effectively end that option, at least for folks in that State. I'm obviously not saying anything new or nonbvious. But, it's still worth noting that the business model creates a two-way advantageous street (as evidenced by the massive success of the platforms) and is predicated almost entirely on drivers like you.

To answer my question that no one answered -- the New York Taxi Alliance is, of course, funding these lawsuits. That's the American way -- if you can't compete then protect your market share through governmental/regulatory bodies and intervention. That's neither left nor right in practice because both sides do it. In this case, it's left, but whatever.

The fundamental thing I find most irritating about it is that the paternalism of it all - the idea that these folks ostensibly need "protected" when, in fact, it's exactly the type of money-making opportunity the vast majority of them want. And, what really needs protected is the interest group -- in this case, taxis.

[lineygoblue]

Kind of a shit-filled twinkie. Looked good on the outside, but wait until you take a bite...

Great analogy.

I intend to steal and use this during Michigan's 2021 football season.

Fair warning, and all that ...

[Jeff Buchanan]

Thanks for the link, Buchanan. That confirms what should have been obvious to everyone. Of course, if this were the summer then I'm 100% certain The Media would have cast this as "Reinfection Possible" instead of "Reinfection Highly Unlikely"

There's ton more stuff floating around out there relevant to the trajectory of SARS-CoV-2. It's not getting attention becasue first, it's hard to understand and can't be covered in a live news cast or even well in print and it's still speculative ...... like is that color red or burnt orange, green or turquois. Hard to know and I'm fine with it except when the speculation has a negative bent to it, and as you point out, it makes the evening headline news.

This mutation thing is interesting stuff. TBF, the evidence seems to be tilting towards the new variant being more transmissible but that conclusion is not a slam dunk. This sort of mutation is called positive because it aids the propagation and survival of the virus. Doubters think this increased transmissibility is being balanced by other mutations that are negative. The net effect is a virus with increased transmissibility but a shorter life span or less virulence or both. These are time and data collection dependent and the jury should still be out on most of them.

The bottom line is that the number of COVID cases is going to decline over the next 60d and more dramatically over the next 6 months as vaccines reach scale. Fewer people are going to die and the CFR will dive along with hospitalizations. Scenes of field hospitals and refrigerated trucks standing by to serve as temporary morgues in SoCal will end - have you noticed that none of these are being used?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Meanwhile...

The EU and the UK announce they've reached a trade deal about a week ahead of the deadline of a 'hard brexit'

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/24/brexit-uk-eu-strike-historic-trade-deal.html

[iam416]

Completely unsurprising.

[CGVT]

Thank you for your insight, CGVT. Even with that gray area filled in, I still feel rather strongly that they're employees. Without going too far into it, most Uber/Lfyt drivers are like you -- very much part-time, very flexible schedule, making money in a "side hustle." Defining those folks as employees will effectively end that option, at least for folks in that State. I'm obviously not saying anything new or nonbvious. But, it's still worth noting that the business model creates a two-way advantageous street (as evidenced by the massive success of the platforms) and is predicated almost entirely on drivers like you.

To answer my question that no one answered -- the New York Taxi Alliance is, of course, funding these lawsuits. That's the American way -- if you can't compete then protect your market share through governmental/regulatory bodies and intervention. That's neither left nor right in practice because both sides do it. In this case, it's left, but whatever.

The fundamental thing I find most irritating about it is that the paternalism of it all - the idea that these folks ostensibly need "protected" when, in fact, it's exactly the type of money-making opportunity the vast majority of them want. And, what really needs protected is the interest group -- in this case, taxis.

The Taxi Alliance already has its hooks into Uber in NY. Uber is capped on number of drivers and they actually started posting "open" times that riders had to sign up for. A new Uber driver in NY almost has to jump through as many hoops as a taxi driver trying to get his medallion. There are a lot of other places around the country where the taxi companies fucked Uber and Lyft over or tried to as well. Even here in Mobile it was long slog to get the city council to approve ride share and Mobile has no real taxi service to speak of.

BTW it is understandable that Uber doesn't want drivers to be able to easily cancel crappy rides. The entire model is based on providing quick relatively inexpensive service. If drivers can cancel every less than premium ride some people would never be picked up.

I saved my cancels for trips that I knew were going to suck. Any time I accepted a ride and it had me going to Wal-Mart it was an automatic cancel for me, cancellation rate be damned.

[crashcourse]

well merry christmas to all

scheduled to get the maderna vaccine next tuesday--hard to figure what to do--the vaccine that is unproven for long term effects or take your chances with covid that 99.9% of people survive.

Ultimately being in health care your almost obliged to take it--when you see multiple pateints a day--giving them something because your asymptomatic but in reality passing it to others

anyway at least nice and warm christmas this year instead of freezing my nuts off

[Jeff Buchanan]

More shocking COVID news, this time about the utter crapola students have had to endure at the hands of idiot school officials.......

“There’s been a tremendous failure of data on this,” said Brown University economist Emily Oster, who has studied Covid-19 and schools and said authorities often overreacted to the few cases that appeared in schools.

The effort, which has grown to track more than 9,000 schools and more than four million students doing in-person learning nationwide, found a biweekly infection rate of 0.22% among students and 0.42% among staff as of early November. The rate equates to 1.1 children and 2.1 staffers infected per 1,000 each week. The project’s preliminary results indicate that nationwide, students who attend school are infected at a rate that is 27% lower than the case rate of communities they live in.

I provided the link below. I skimmed it. My advise is not to bother reading it. Who is going to be held accountable when US students sink to the bottom of the ladder while East Asians and Southwest Indians get hired into a booming tech based economy ahead of them. Will government provide handouts to supplement the pay checks of our future Burger King and Walmart managers coming from a dwindling minority of whites who we're lucky enough to go to college but couldn't hack the sciences or engineering curriculums? And since children of color have already been identified as falling behind further in school than their white or Hispanic counterparts during the last 12 months of the pandemic, we can expect welfare programs to explode in the next 20 years or so.

I cannot over-state the damage to US education that COVID has wrought, a good deal of it avoidable.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-surge-schools-reopen-rethink-quarantines-11608247643?mod=hp_lead_pos6

[lineygoblue]

well merry christmas to all

scheduled to get the maderna vaccine next tuesday--hard to figure what to do--the vaccine that is unproven for long term effects or take your chances with covid that 99.9% of people survive.

Ultimately being in health care your almost obliged to take it--when you see multiple pateints a day--giving them something because your asymptomatic but in reality passing it to others

anyway at least nice and warm christmas this year instead of freezing my nuts off

I spoke to a couple nurses about the Moderna vaccine and they say the one they're most concerned about is the 2nd dose, which seems to be the one that makes some recipients ill. The first one seems to be no big deal.

I'll roll up my sleeve when both are offered to me. I survived the pin-cushion treatment when I went into boot camp, so I figure I can survive a couple pokes for Covid prevention.

During boot camp they gave us a shot the called the "water cooler shot". IOW, if you could walk the 10 feet or so to the water cooler after the shot without passing out, you were okay. All the guys in my company made it, but I admit I was a bit woozy after that one. It may have been the smallpox vaccine, but I'm not sure. Maybe Jeff knows.

[Dr. Strangelove]

A Christmas message from your President

Seriously, everybody have a merry Christmas tomorrow!

[lineygoblue]

I see no difference from what the Dems were saying just a year ago. They claimed that Donald Trump stole an election from Hillary Clinton via the Russians, and that he deserved to be impeached and removed from office for it. They gave it a good shot. And, Twitter never "corrected" the charges against him on their service.

Tomato / Tomahtoe

PDJT has a right to gripe as much as the Democrats have. Bad sport , .. sore loser, .. whatever. I don't see a lot of honorable character coming out of Washington DC these days on EITHER side of the aisle.