Do labor laws in the US consider uber drivers or coffee shop musicians the same no matter how many hours they work ?
Well, in the US the individual has (had?) the right to work as a free agent, to enter into a contract with another for his or her labor as long as it was not breaking the law in any way.
It seems that, more and more, it's been determined by the more Left-leaning in the US that people are not the best arbiters of their own best interests and that government should insert itself into any & every contractual agreement and set arbitrary preconditions, boundaries, and limits. While many are implemented with good intentions and some *are* necessary to prevent crime and fraud, many are in the government's and their crony large business's interests, not the citizen's interests..
If the city owns the poles why should the federal government be allowed to dictate the rental price?
Well, let's look at that.
What are on the poles besides power? Cable carrying data.
What's in this data? All sorts of communications, both private and commercial, including financial transactions.
Is all this commerce, commercial transactions, and private personal communications limited to within city limits or even State borders? No, it spans all States and even international borders.
What part of government regulates interstate and international trade, communications, monetary transactions, and commerce?
Labor laws including but not limited to minimum-wage laws if they are considered employees rather than independent contract workers.
Of course the government would not go after him as that would look bad, so they go after the business he contracts for. Same with the musician, they'd go after the coffee shop owners which, if they haven't the money to pay employee wages for a part-time one-man singer/guitarist act, means they effectively stop him by removing the option to choose to do it.
Any fair analysis would tag the vehicle as a business expense, because it is a necessity for the business.
A few things.
Does "fair analysis" as used here mean roughly what the IRS considers a 'business' and what it does *not* consider a 'business'? In order to be considered a 'business' it must clear some hurdles.
For example, would someone, let's say a musician/singer, who plays at the local coffee shop for two hours once a month for $75 be a 'business'? Because the IRS would call it a 'hobby enterprise' at best where you simply file a 1099 with your normal return.
There are also other hurdles and tests it must meet to be a business. An Uber driver who met those hurdles would likely be considered a personal transportation contractor.
Back to the music scene, if that coffee shop musician played a couple hours 5 nights a week, would that make him an employee due minimum wage and company benefits?
If he only wants to play a few hours a month and is fine with making less than $10/hr because he does it for fun and publicity along with a little extra guitar-string money and makes less than $10/hr, should the government stop him? If an Uber driver just wants to drive a few hours here and there and is fine with netting less than $10/hr after expenses, should the government stop him?
These are some of the questions that must be answered.
How much it's spending on the signs has been redacted.
That right there. That disgusts me. How dare a government hide such information from the voting public that's paying for it all.
"Sit down and shut up, Prole, or we'll civil-forfeit everything you own and parallel-construct your ass into a life sentence in PMITA prison!" -- Government
Ain't freedom grand?
Hey everyone, let's allow the government an even wider scope and give it more power over more of our lives and give it more of our money to do it with! What could possibly go wrong?/s
It's an interesting talk but I absolutely can't understand why a physicist would hold such a talk at a physics conference at CERN.
Simple.
Because it is negatively affecting a physics conference at CERN, not some random gender-studies organization's conference.
Why is CERN engaging in Post-Modern anti-Enlightenment political correctness when it should only be concerned with *scientific* correctness? Post Modernism is anathema to science. Science is a Meritocracy or else you're not engaged in science but rather politics.
I'm sorry that you wish for a place where you can order murders with impunity
It already exists.
It's called "government".
I want a place where I can securely communicate with others to organize to peacefully change the government so it no longer routinely engages in things like murder, parallel construction, and warrant-less domestic surveillance to serve the political and ideological agendas of those in power.
No, it is not. See quantum mechanics versus Einsteinian relativity. Also, the event horizon of super-massive black holes. It does most of the time for most things, but that doesn't mean it always does for everything all of the time.
I mean, if it always behaved consistently we wouldn't be here discussing and debating things like 'missing dark matter' now, would we?
That will soon be a requirement for boards of director, too.
At least one homosexual and one trans-gender on the board.
This insanity is not designed to actually work in the real world. It's meant to fail and create chaos. Then when people cry out to the government to "fix it" the government will say that, to prevent more chaos, the government will appoint itself the board of directors for all corporations. Create the problem then step in to 'save the day'.
I always thought that the anti-matter went in a different direction in time than the matter did, at the creation of the universe. That's why we can't 'see' it, because it's outside our observable universe.
This is actually sort of the thing I'm trying to describe, here. Since matter, energy, and gravity form space-time as we know it, then it would follow logically that antimatter would have it's own corollary that may not be directly detectable in the non-antimatter space-time universe. Since we aren't seeing vast antimatter nebulae, galaxies, etc, the antimatter has to be *somewhere*.
This probably is just proof that I'm not a physicist and have no idea what I'm talking about.:D
Haha! Right there with you! But hey, it's a very, very strange universe we live in. Einstein was just another faceless university student and Swiss patent office clerk, right? Not that I'd ever in the lifespan of a zillion universes compare myself to such a mind.
That may be something, but it is not antimatter. Antimatter and matter interact quite readily and so certainly do "see" each other.
Quite true, but that is antimatter that is created within the matter universe. Antimatter created at this universe's inception may be in it's own anti-space-time universe.
Anyone who attempts to create an internet that the US and 'Five-Eyes' nations cannot control and cannot ID and track down those using it will be destroyed, or outright killed as a last resort.
The US government and other Western governments like the UK and EU well know that the internet is one of, if not the greatest, threat to their authoritarian power and hegemony if not tightly under their control and monitoring.
I've always thought that antimatter was the missing 'dark matter' and that, as matter creates/is part of normal space-time, that antimatter/dark matter creates it's own sort of space-time that does not interact with normal space-time nor do the two types of matter 'see' each other as they effectively exist in different universes coexisting together but normally unable to interact or one be detected from the other because they exist in separate space-time 'bubbles'.
Last I checked, DuckDuckGo was powered by Yandex. Has this changed? Or are we to believe that in Soviet Russia, the search engine doesn't search you?
So what if the Russians do get everything? They don't care if Joe Random in the US, UK, etc is searching for drugs or torrent sites or whatever. You have FAR more to fear from Western governments as an individual, especially the US & UK, than Russia or even China.
More people by far are killed by their own government than die in wars between foreign nations.
...urging them to [use a] set of nuclear weapons in pique over an internal matter of the development team for Linux.
No, this is not just some spoiled coders in "pique" over some minor internal squabble.
This is a matter of basic principles of fairness and a stand to *save* the linux development team from Post-Modern identity-politics SJW hysteria and eventual self-destruction as the team tears itself apart with accusations from snowflakes and haters.
If this Post-Modernist insanity is allowed free reign the linux development team is DOOMED.
For the foreseeable future, NASA isn't even planning to go to the moon. They're planning to be a space station in cislunar orbit. It will be mad expensive, will not help in any way with actually getting to the Moon or Mars, isn't even really all that close to the Moon at all, and is generally going to be a huge waste of money. Between the Lunar Gateway and the Space Launch System, NASA won't have any money left over to go to the Moon's surface itself.
Thank you, I came here to say just about the same thing.
This is a jobs program for NASA employees and contractors, that's all. It's simply meant to maintain the status quo. NASA has no real intentions of going anywhere with manned missions. NASA, like all large organizations, especially large bureaucratic government agencies, has become far, far too risk-averse to ever do anything bold or novel. As someone who was alive to watch the first Mercury missions, it's very sad.
US manned space exploration has become the exclusive domain of private corporations like SpaceX. Bureaucracy whose first priority is CYA combined with PC politics and crony-capitalism has destroyed NASA as a space pioneering organization.
The SLS and the cis-Lunar station proposed will be useless for going to Mars. The most efficient method is going direct from Earth orbit to Mars. Now, an orbiting Mars station would be extremely useful but again, it's a risk-bridge far too far for an enormous risk-averse US government bureaucracy.
There's usually no reason for foul language. Except when it comes to flat earthers.
"Flat earthers... and conservatives...libertarians...Republicans...cis-gendered white males...those who have more money than me...or anyone I dislike or disagree with for any reason."
The problem here is the list of those it's PC to hate and abuse is fluid and changes with the political expediency and 'feelz' of the moment. This is intentional. Political correctness is a tool, a weapon really, for destroying a relatively cohesive society and turning groups against each other. It's a part of Post-Modernism which includes identity politics, whose entire goal by those who created it from the beginning was destroying Western Enlightenment principles and the modern West itself.
It's working a treat, too. Just look at the division, hatred, and destruction it has brought. Even Linux is being destroyed by it. This ideology is pure poison and it and those who promulgate it need to be stopped.
We do not believe unions are in the best interest of our customers, our shareholders, or most importantly, our associates
what a bunch of shit. their "associates" are absolutely the least of their concern.
Just because associates (employees) are not Amazon's (or other's) greatest concern does not mean that current-day unions are always or even mostly in the associate's (employee's) best interests.
Remember the Hostess Twinkies disaster? I'm sure those workers who lost their jobs when Hostess closed didn't feel like the union had *their* best interests in mind, and neither did all those who loved Twinkies at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
But governments can be trusted with built-in encryption backdoors.
Yes, that would certainly give citizens a powerful tool to keep track of those in their government and thus increase trust betw...oh, wait....
Strat
If many complain, or some PR is involved, they might.
"PR"?
So, being co-enablers to the mass censorship & surveillance of roughly three billion people is not sufficiently-bad PR?
Yikes!
I think that says more about us than it does about Google.
Strat
Do labor laws in the US consider uber drivers or coffee shop musicians the same no matter how many hours they work ?
Well, in the US the individual has (had?) the right to work as a free agent, to enter into a contract with another for his or her labor as long as it was not breaking the law in any way.
It seems that, more and more, it's been determined by the more Left-leaning in the US that people are not the best arbiters of their own best interests and that government should insert itself into any & every contractual agreement and set arbitrary preconditions, boundaries, and limits. While many are implemented with good intentions and some *are* necessary to prevent crime and fraud, many are in the government's and their crony large business's interests, not the citizen's interests..
Strat
If the city owns the poles why should the federal government be allowed to dictate the rental price?
Well, let's look at that.
What are on the poles besides power? Cable carrying data.
What's in this data? All sorts of communications, both private and commercial, including financial transactions.
Is all this commerce, commercial transactions, and private personal communications limited to within city limits or even State borders? No, it spans all States and even international borders.
What part of government regulates interstate and international trade, communications, monetary transactions, and commerce?
The Federal government.
Basic Civics is FUN!
Strat
Why would the gov stop him?
Labor laws including but not limited to minimum-wage laws if they are considered employees rather than independent contract workers.
Of course the government would not go after him as that would look bad, so they go after the business he contracts for. Same with the musician, they'd go after the coffee shop owners which, if they haven't the money to pay employee wages for a part-time one-man singer/guitarist act, means they effectively stop him by removing the option to choose to do it.
Strat
Any fair analysis would tag the vehicle as a business expense, because it is a necessity for the business.
A few things.
Does "fair analysis" as used here mean roughly what the IRS considers a 'business' and what it does *not* consider a 'business'? In order to be considered a 'business' it must clear some hurdles.
For example, would someone, let's say a musician/singer, who plays at the local coffee shop for two hours once a month for $75 be a 'business'? Because the IRS would call it a 'hobby enterprise' at best where you simply file a 1099 with your normal return.
There are also other hurdles and tests it must meet to be a business. An Uber driver who met those hurdles would likely be considered a personal transportation contractor.
Back to the music scene, if that coffee shop musician played a couple hours 5 nights a week, would that make him an employee due minimum wage and company benefits?
If he only wants to play a few hours a month and is fine with making less than $10/hr because he does it for fun and publicity along with a little extra guitar-string money and makes less than $10/hr, should the government stop him? If an Uber driver just wants to drive a few hours here and there and is fine with netting less than $10/hr after expenses, should the government stop him?
These are some of the questions that must be answered.
Strat
"Sit down and shut up, Prole, or we'll civil-forfeit everything you own and parallel-construct your ass into a life sentence in PMITA prison!" -- Government
Ain't freedom grand?
Hey everyone, let's allow the government an even wider scope and give it more power over more of our lives and give it more of our money to do it with! What could possibly go wrong? /s
Strat
Strat
It's an interesting talk but I absolutely can't understand why a physicist would hold such a talk at a physics conference at CERN.
Simple.
Because it is negatively affecting a physics conference at CERN, not some random gender-studies organization's conference.
Why is CERN engaging in Post-Modern anti-Enlightenment political correctness when it should only be concerned with *scientific* correctness? Post Modernism is anathema to science. Science is a Meritocracy or else you're not engaged in science but rather politics.
Strat
I'm sorry that you wish for a place where you can order murders with impunity
It already exists.
It's called "government".
I want a place where I can securely communicate with others to organize to peacefully change the government so it no longer routinely engages in things like murder, parallel construction, and warrant-less domestic surveillance to serve the political and ideological agendas of those in power.
Strat
No, but it is obligated to behave consistently.
No, it is not. See quantum mechanics versus Einsteinian relativity. Also, the event horizon of super-massive black holes. It does most of the time for most things, but that doesn't mean it always does for everything all of the time.
I mean, if it always behaved consistently we wouldn't be here discussing and debating things like 'missing dark matter' now, would we?
Strat
That will soon be a requirement for boards of director, too.
At least one homosexual and one trans-gender on the board.
This insanity is not designed to actually work in the real world. It's meant to fail and create chaos. Then when people cry out to the government to "fix it" the government will say that, to prevent more chaos, the government will appoint itself the board of directors for all corporations. Create the problem then step in to 'save the day'.
At least the trains will run on time, right?
Strat
I always thought that the anti-matter went in a different direction in time than the matter did, at the creation of the universe. That's why we can't 'see' it, because it's outside our observable universe.
This is actually sort of the thing I'm trying to describe, here. Since matter, energy, and gravity form space-time as we know it, then it would follow logically that antimatter would have it's own corollary that may not be directly detectable in the non-antimatter space-time universe. Since we aren't seeing vast antimatter nebulae, galaxies, etc, the antimatter has to be *somewhere*.
This probably is just proof that I'm not a physicist and have no idea what I'm talking about. :D
Haha! Right there with you! But hey, it's a very, very strange universe we live in. Einstein was just another faceless university student and Swiss patent office clerk, right? Not that I'd ever in the lifespan of a zillion universes compare myself to such a mind.
Strat
That may be something, but it is not antimatter. Antimatter and matter interact quite readily and so certainly do "see" each other.
Quite true, but that is antimatter that is created within the matter universe. Antimatter created at this universe's inception may be in it's own anti-space-time universe.
Strat
By-pass shit like CloudFlare.
Anyone who attempts to create an internet that the US and 'Five-Eyes' nations cannot control and cannot ID and track down those using it will be destroyed, or outright killed as a last resort.
The US government and other Western governments like the UK and EU well know that the internet is one of, if not the greatest, threat to their authoritarian power and hegemony if not tightly under their control and monitoring.
Strat
falls down.
I've always thought that antimatter was the missing 'dark matter' and that, as matter creates/is part of normal space-time, that antimatter/dark matter creates it's own sort of space-time that does not interact with normal space-time nor do the two types of matter 'see' each other as they effectively exist in different universes coexisting together but normally unable to interact or one be detected from the other because they exist in separate space-time 'bubbles'.
Strat
What do you charge him with?
Acting as if he were an agent of a US TLA engaged in domestic intelligence operations.
Only US TLAs are authorized to snoop on US citizens within the US without warrant or probable cause and store the data. /s
Strat
I'll just leave this here.
https://youtu.be/wv6pfQTl-d4
"My boy!"
Strat
The company he created is more important than it's creator. So, the government can arbitrarily tell him that he must step down? I'd be very pissed.
This smells like the government's destruction of Tucker Motors on behalf of the Big Three.
"Elon! The cars...you made them too good!"
Strat
Last I checked, DuckDuckGo was powered by Yandex. Has this changed?
Or are we to believe that in Soviet Russia, the search engine doesn't search you?
So what if the Russians do get everything? They don't care if Joe Random in the US, UK, etc is searching for drugs or torrent sites or whatever. You have FAR more to fear from Western governments as an individual, especially the US & UK, than Russia or even China.
More people by far are killed by their own government than die in wars between foreign nations.
Strat
Every time I hear someone saying that something if "for principle", it is always to justify something that is purely spiteful.
That's selection-bias on your part.
Start listening to better people with better principles. I'd suggest the US Constitution and it's authors as a start.
Strat
...urging them to [use a] set of nuclear weapons in pique over an internal matter of the development team for Linux.
No, this is not just some spoiled coders in "pique" over some minor internal squabble.
This is a matter of basic principles of fairness and a stand to *save* the linux development team from Post-Modern identity-politics SJW hysteria and eventual self-destruction as the team tears itself apart with accusations from snowflakes and haters.
If this Post-Modernist insanity is allowed free reign the linux development team is DOOMED.
Its funny how PC types attack the person and not the argument.
The poor dears don't have a lot of other options when they have no facts or logic to refute with but, feeling 'triggered', *must* respond somehow.
Strat
For the foreseeable future, NASA isn't even planning to go to the moon. They're planning to be a space station in cislunar orbit. It will be mad expensive, will not help in any way with actually getting to the Moon or Mars, isn't even really all that close to the Moon at all, and is generally going to be a huge waste of money. Between the Lunar Gateway and the Space Launch System, NASA won't have any money left over to go to the Moon's surface itself.
Thank you, I came here to say just about the same thing.
This is a jobs program for NASA employees and contractors, that's all. It's simply meant to maintain the status quo. NASA has no real intentions of going anywhere with manned missions. NASA, like all large organizations, especially large bureaucratic government agencies, has become far, far too risk-averse to ever do anything bold or novel. As someone who was alive to watch the first Mercury missions, it's very sad.
US manned space exploration has become the exclusive domain of private corporations like SpaceX. Bureaucracy whose first priority is CYA combined with PC politics and crony-capitalism has destroyed NASA as a space pioneering organization.
The SLS and the cis-Lunar station proposed will be useless for going to Mars. The most efficient method is going direct from Earth orbit to Mars. Now, an orbiting Mars station would be extremely useful but again, it's a risk-bridge far too far for an enormous risk-averse US government bureaucracy.
Strat
There's usually no reason for foul language. Except when it comes to flat earthers.
"Flat earthers... and conservatives...libertarians...Republicans...cis-gendered white males...those who have more money than me...or anyone I dislike or disagree with for any reason."
The problem here is the list of those it's PC to hate and abuse is fluid and changes with the political expediency and 'feelz' of the moment. This is intentional. Political correctness is a tool, a weapon really, for destroying a relatively cohesive society and turning groups against each other. It's a part of Post-Modernism which includes identity politics, whose entire goal by those who created it from the beginning was destroying Western Enlightenment principles and the modern West itself.
It's working a treat, too. Just look at the division, hatred, and destruction it has brought. Even Linux is being destroyed by it. This ideology is pure poison and it and those who promulgate it need to be stopped.
Strat
Just because associates (employees) are not Amazon's (or other's) greatest concern does not mean that current-day unions are always or even mostly in the associate's (employee's) best interests.
Remember the Hostess Twinkies disaster? I'm sure those workers who lost their jobs when Hostess closed didn't feel like the union had *their* best interests in mind, and neither did all those who loved Twinkies at the time.
Strat