Tao 2.0

Missed you too, Jason.

Hey all. My job recently had me looking through a few hours of TikTok videos which got me thinking about the last online community I actually liked interacting with, so popped back over here to see what's happening. Hope y'all are good, more or less. Seems like I still maybe know a few people on this forum? Anyway, politics are funny and hope everyone here is mostly alright.

Shit, I can't believe anyone remembers that. But yeah, that guy was a fucking creep. Not because of his preferences, and I do empathize with his situation and all, but just the approach. There is no situation where approaching someone in a minivan is ever going to work in your favor, unless you're literally someone's mom and carrying badly needed orange slices.

I'm going to go ahead and take credit for this as it's obviously on account of my scathing post here last weekend. You're welcome, Queens.

While I get the sentiment (we only get, like, 5 federal holidays off in my office, and if implemented this certainly wouldn't be one of them), you're missing one of the finer points: this is also meant to address the chronic lack of qualified poll workers. Across bipartisan lines, through red and blue states, election officials (something like 85-90%?) say recruiting enough volunteer poll workers to work for free on election day is basically a biannual epidemic. That's why it's generally senior citizens and other retirees who do it, but fewer and fewer are showing up. In addition to the federal holiday, one of the provisions (and I'm paraphrasing from memory, but mostly on-point) would allow some federal workers to apply to gain additional paid time off -- hence Turkey-Neck's rants about "a week of paid leave" -- if they agree to spend it training and then working the polls on their new federal holiday off. In theory, more trained workers means less election day fiascos, machine errors knocking out entire polling stations for hours at a time, and lines wrapping around the block that discourage workers who can only take an hour out of their day to vote, but not four hours to wait in a line because a polling location is down to one functional machine and one poor volunteer named Barbara who's been on her feet for 15 hours trying to organize the mess. So yeah, most businesses won't give employees the day off. But by making it federal and allowing for more trained poll workers, you're taking the process from being a grueling day-long process for many people, especially those in crowded urban areas (which, of course as Mitch knows, tend to vote Blue), and making it a 20 minute stopover on a worker's lunch break. But long lines deter people from voting or cause them to exit the line early when they realize the baby sitter leaves at 6pm, which Mitchistopheles is obviously aware of. Hence his real problem with the federal holiday issue. [Also, sorry for reviving old-ish threads, but I promised last time I came back here that it wouldn't be a drive-by posting, but then I forgot my password, then remembered it today, plus I'm getting over the flu and my roommate is on to the 8th hour of her "Say Yes To The Dress" marathon, so you're all stuck with me.]

Wait, which of our two countries is supposed to be known for its fine coffee products, again?

This story is one of the greatest things to happen to my week. This is better than the new season of True Detective. Are Bezos and his investigation-bro basically going to start their own privatized version of the NSA? Is he going to buy the Pinkerton's next and restore them to their former glory as his personal army? Can they investigate who came up with that "Bezos Exposes Pecker" hed first, the NYP or HuffPost?? THERE IS SO MUCH I NEED TO KNOW NOW TELL ME SLOWLY AND PLEASE ALLOW JAMES EARL JONES TO NARRATE. (Also, mini-story, used to have this occasional drinking buddy at my local bar, middle-aged dude always in a suit-no-tie with kind of a Mark Cuban vibe but a lot more hair gel. I was down and out on my job this one time and ready to take ANY other offer (and still am, being at the same job), even going so far as to swallow my pride and apply for the NY Post at one point. Anyway, I'm drinking and talking to this guy and, after a few whiskeys, launch into this rant about all these initiatives I'm trying to do at my magazine and how stupid and stuck in the past they are and he starts pressing me for specifics, and after a kind of interesting/spirited hour of back-and-forth, dude basically offers me a job on the spot. I jump on it and tell him I'm in, sign me up right there, write a contract on a cocktail napkin and, oh, where are you some publishing executive at again, buddy? He tells me AMI; he's one of David Pecker's right-hand guys. I kinda take a long pause, down the rest of my drink, and tell him the amount of whiskey it would take for me to be able work there and still live with myself, would actually kill me.)

Wilbur??

I was wondering if there was a thread in here on the tax return situation. I find it kind of sad and kind of hilarious and I'm going to write many words about it now because this is how I plan on releasing steam after a longstanding embargo of talking politics on any of my own social medias. So! I'm not even going to "I told you so" GOP supporters on this, because, frankly, all working class people are in the same boat and we all got fucked by the new tax law. And that's me fully aware that tax refunds and total taxes paid are not the same thing. I'm just honestly surprised the Pols in Power, who only got into power thanks to their +12 Broadsword of Insincere Populism, didn't realize that the majority of Americans still think refunds = taxes. When I read a year ago that they were planning on messing with IRS withholding tables to try and "fake" wage increases and create support for the tax package before the midterms, I couldn't help but think "Hah, rookie fucking mistake." Classic out-of-touch rich people error, thinking in terms of percentages and not real money, and not having anyone on staff to tell them how regular people view their finances. The GOP is perplexed that the average tax-payer isn't breaking down any TCJA increases to their paychecks, averaging it against health insurance increases and/or decreased deductions, projecting it over four fiscal quarters and then figuring out what the gross increase was before adding in whatever interest gains they prospectively could have gotten if they had invested that $1.50 a week in the private market, which the plan would technically allow them to do, rather than leaving it with a zero-interest IRS withholding account just to get back a year later? Seriously?? I'm bored by that sentence and I just wrote it! I mean, does it make sense on paper? Arguably (could still debate/hate the finer shit-fuck points of the tax law, but just taking the perspective of GOP lawmakers). Do 75% of Americans care? Hell no, they only care about the number they see on the check of the one big financial windfall they get each year (remember, we're not talking about people who by-and-large receive stock dividends, or Christmas bonuses, or fat annual commission checks based on corporate profit). It's the same attitude when Wilbur Ross said he doesn't understand why federal workers were on bread lines during the government shutdown instead of taking out a low-interest loan from a credit union and ask their grocery store to just front them Cheez-Its and diapers on an IOU. That's what someone says who has never lived paycheck to paycheck and doesn't understand how being broke works. That said, while it may pale in comparison to the administration's other offenses, this is the kind of accessible flashpoint that actually can unite both sides of the middle class and hopefully convert more than a few voters. I say this as someone who came from a family of right-wingers who only ever voted that way because TAX CUTS, and nothing else. For a lot of Republican voters, tax cuts are the beginning and the end of the appeal, taking on almost mythical properties. And for many, that number is based on what they see in their refund each year. It's one of the few things that actually defies spin, in a way, because no politician can tell Jerry from Ohio that he has money he doesn't see. Dems actually have an opportunity here to get outraged with everyone who feels they got screwed (whether they did or not), and use it as the most tangible evidence to prove to them that they got conned by Ryan/McConnell et al. Now we just get to see if they use it or fuck it up. [Edited for typos.]

(That said, given all the recently announcements, I am markedly unenthusiastic about most of the candidates, and potential candidates, so far. I hope that changes. Like... I really hope that changes.)

Once when I was running this restaurant in Brooklyn, one of my barbacks showed up 2 hours late to brunch service with no phone call because of a hangover. He immediately went to the kitchen window where there were some extra fries we were all snacking on. I told him if he touched a single one of those fries after being late, I had the right to slap the shit out of him at any time of my choosing during service. He paused, weighed the options, gave me a "Fuck you" shrug, then shoved a handful of fries in his mouth. I tortured him through most of service by acting like the slap was coming but it never did. Until we were switching over to dinner, when he came up from basement storage and I was hiding around a corner and gave him a very light-to-moderate slap across the face. He laughed at me and said, "That was it?" Then he realized the other barback he screwed over with his tardiness had coated my hand in Tiger Balm just before I slapped him. I think some even got up his nose. Justice was served. #Tao2020

Man, as a New Yorker of utmost pragmatism (except when I'm hungry or someone is walking slow or standing on the left side of the escalator), I've had mixed feelings on this thing all along. The Fight The Power side of me of course defaults to "FUCK AMAZON AND FUCK THIS SHIT" but also, you know, we're basically a world capital and it makes sense to have these kinds of representatives of major corporations based in our city and paying our taxes and blah blah blah. And while 3 billion is a ridiculous amount of subsidies, half of that it would have been given to any other business, and I'm aware that even while it's shitty, it's not a giveaway if we're talking about credits on money we never even had in the first place. But you know what? After much consideration I'm going back to fuck Amazon and this proposal. The strong arm-bullshit just offends me on a personal level, and I think they're really shooting themselves in the foot with this new "Well maybe we'll take our ball and go home" tactic. They're sorely underestimating how stubborn New Yorkers are on the whole when it comes to thinking we're being conned or someone from outside of here can strong-arm us. Hell, we shoot ourselves in the feet regularly out of a misplaced sense of pride, this would be a drop in the bucket. But personal feelings aside, I just don't see this as a net gain for the city. Out of 25-30,000 supposed new jobs, so far their big PR outreach has been to guarantee twenty-five call-center jobs to NYCHA residents? Basically the total number of players in a single Knicks/Nets game? You know damn well the vast majority of these alleged $150,000/year jobs are not going to NYC residents. New York City already generated 72,000 new jobs last year organically, jobs that tend to be by and for New Yorkers, and spread throughout the city so they're not over-concentrated and creating a "company neighborhood" and pushing long-time residents out. So why should we be falling all over ourselves for a one-time influx of a fraction more? Nothing against cities that could use this kind of quick boost of employment -- take it and run, Virginia -- but frankly, we don't need it and we don't have the infrastructure or space to make it happen. LIC has already been completely changed by rezoning in recent years and the condo-'splosion along the waterfront, but run-of-the-mill gentrifying and cost-of-living increases aside, still remains a neighborhood. After spending a week-plus in Seattle last year for a work thing, I gotta say, I'm terrified of the idea of LIC turning into South Lake Union or whatever Amazon has rebranded their now-proprietary neighborhood. If they really want to be in the NY metro-area, go build a proper campus in Westchester where you have space and belong, and let your employees take the MNR down for the weekends to spend their money (or reverse commute). Or Long Island, and use a piece of your windfall to help pay to finish East Side Access and basically build yourselves a convenient little rail line your employees can take over. But this waterfront nonsense in a dense, already overcrowded area that can't absorb anymore is a ridiculous vanity project and New Yorkers aren't getting nearly enough of a benefit for some bullshit that, frankly, we're doing just fine without.

What industry you working in, again?

Okay, fuck it, you motivated me, I'm jumping back in to take another stab at it now. JUST YOU WAIT MOTHER I WILL MAKE YOU PROUD OF ME YET. Also... so what's up with y'all since I was around last? I guess America sorta-but-not-really elected a shitty landlord as its president or something? That's pretty weird.

Aw thanks, I've had my moments over the years. Christ, just dawned on me that I met a good number of you guys in the 90s. On Dreamcast. That said, how in the holy fuck do you get all the suits in Spider-man? Last trophy I need for 100% Platinum status, but I'm struggling to scrape up all the Challenge Tokens I need. Do you basically need to score Golds in every single Challenge? Because I'd like to... but they're challenging.

Alright, someone's gotta remove this "moderator approval" tag from my account, I want to bitch about how much applying for jobs sucks too. Also, I'm more or less here because I needed a distraction from fruitless weekend job hunting, so please don't fail me now. Double also, belated congratulations for anyone who got married/had kids/got an awesome job/got divorced/got 100% completion in Spider-man/ate a really good taco since I posted last. I'm proud of you all (mostly).

C'mon, my hit and runs over the past few years were way too infrequent to be "usual." That said, 17 hours later and 93% more sober and I'm still here! Okay, I'll move on to the other thread now. Thank you for your service.

Asking for a friend. Looks like there's a new site now and I am both simple minded and confused.