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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Athletes have always leveraged unfair advantages in sports. There’s a reason there’s super tall players in basketball and short ones in gymnastics. May be they should enforce that average height of teams must match global averages. Countries with fewer resources just can’t support athletes in many sports so why not make that more fair?

    There’s research showing that some women athletes (i.e., born with female reproductive organs) have higher testosterone levels than many men, and even some male athletes. So why are they allowed to compete in women sports instead of men?

    There’s a lot of ways to make sports more fair. Banning transgender people without fair science based facts is not one of them and is plain bigotry. It’s like saying an athlete on anti-depressants should be banned because they are happier and more motivated so have an unfair advantage.


    1. Rampant unchecked capitalism of recent decades has created large wealth disparities akin to the earlier decades of the last century. It is no longer possible for one person in a household with a regular job to support a modest lifestyle for their family. All benefits especially medical for the whole family, being completely intertwined with the current job reduces mobility and further feeds into the wealth gap by keeping wages low. It’s easier to blame the powerless for this state of affairs than the powerful because the powerless cannot object.
    2. The fear of the other has been accentuated by media and misinformation. Targeted algorithms feeding most of the information that is consumed has created echo chambers that reinforce existing beliefs and fears. The propaganda state has never had it easier.
    3. The large military and police has given never before control to the state about what is allowed to be protested. Combined with the day to day struggles, it’s extremely hard to come together for what is right. The ruling class is able to maintain the fine balance between absolute misery and general dissatisfaction that it is still better to struggle through a thankless job than to say fuck it. Failures of recent large uprisings like Middle East and Hong Kong have reinforced the futility of standing up against the rulers.
    4. Evil has many heads and there’s always one head that you can find alignment with. It could be the deregulation of businesses, lower taxes, anti abortion, racism, but as long as there’s one thing you can align on, the general sense of powerlessness makes it easier to overlook the other heads.
    5. The line between evil and good has never been murkier, especially with globalization. If you focus on the betterment of your community, it would be considered good, but what if it leads to suffering of others outside the community. Is it also evil? What is community - is it the people in your neighborhood, your religion, your country, fellow business owners? The fuzzier these lines are, the harder it is to untangle them.

  • Social media and their engagement maximizing algorithms.

    GenZ don’t watch TV or read print media so almost 100% of their news is getting filtered through an algorithm that has the sole purpose to keep them hooked. Hell, even search results are biased. One really has to go out of their way to get facts outside of a personalized feed.

    GenZ are definitely not the reason we have a buffoon as a president and a psychopath as his controller. This article about GenZs changing their views says more about their willingness to think critically than all the older voters who have chosen not to despite the 2017-21 hell.






  • Depending on the state you live in, and whether the lease specifically mentioned taking special care of the hardwood floors, this could very well be considered regular wear and tear. There does not appear to be intentional damage here.

    The landlord will also need to provide documentation prior to getting work done if they want you to cover the bill, at which point you’ll have the option to contest it.

    Check out tenant rights for your state to verify. Hopefully, you’ll also be more careful with hardwood floors in the future. Couches on wheels are no-bueno.



  • The way this article is written though makes it appear like a domestic vs foreign worker issue. You can just look at all the comments here shitting on foreign workers.

    An employer only posting jobs internally is definitely against the law so the entire focus here should be on

    1. Employers doing illegal shit
    2. USCIS rules that make it possible for this exploitation to occur - through role responsibility misrepresentations, starting a ticking clock of 60 days for laid off H1B workers to find a new job, and not allowing them to start their own businesses (unless ofc you have daddy’s money to lie on your visa applications).

  • It’s not about the 100k number. That’s just to say that we are not talking about minimum wage level salaries here. H1B requirements are very strict about equivalent pay for domestic and foreign workers. In my career, I have never been in a situation where at the same title, role responsibilities, and company tenure, there were significant differences in salary levels.

    This is 100% about employers laying off workers

    • hired at much higher salaries than the minimum (like 500k TC for a minimum 180k role) when the job market was competitive and now lowering them because the market has tilted to be employer friendly.
    • releasing unvested stock from experienced employees so they can grant much lower stocks to new employees.

    It affects both US and domestic workers equally.

    However it is the case that H1B workers have no other choice but to find themselves in these exploitative situations since they were also included in earlier layoffs and now have a clock ticking for them to leave the country in 60 days or find a new job. While domestic workers can spend more time exploring options or even starting their own businesses, which is an option not available to H1B workers.

    Ultimately, it’s misguided to make this a domestic vs foreign worker issue when it’s the employers who are being exploitative and taking advantage of the situation because they can.


  • I would love to see a source of this claim from the article for high skilled jobs. The H1B application requirements are so strict that you cannot hire them at lower wages than US workers.

    This has more to do with replacing experienced workers in “senior roles” with new workers in “junior roles”, except with the same role expectations.

    But yes, it is the case that H1B holders are more willing to be knowingly exploited to work in junior roles and lower salaries despite being fully aware of the shitty company practices. They are simply trying to live in a country they moved to legally, often studied in universities here, were included in the same layoffs, have to pay off the same mortgages, and often pay more taxes than equivalent domestic workers because none of the tax loopholes are available to them.

    So why blame them when it’s the employers who are skirting the law by misrepresenting role requirements rather than H1B workers stealing jobs?


  • Not the case for highly skilled roles that are likely the ones affected here.

    Each H1B application must include a DOL certification stating that the foreign worker will be paid a DOL specified minimum salary for the role, often exceeding 100k.

    In fact since no such certification is necessary for domestic workers, in theory, they could have been paid less than foreign workers.

    This has more to do with laying off experienced employees in senior roles and higher salary brackets and replacing them with “junior” roles at lower salaries, with the same work expectation.

    Layoffs are also a way to take back unvested stock from senior long-serving employees and granting new employees a fraction of that released stock. Just making it a requirement to automatically vest all stocks during layoffs will massively reduce the layoffs.


  • That is definitely a rule that

    • a job must be advertised and,
    • DOL certification attached to every H1B application stating that
      • the foreign worker is needed to be hired due to unavailability of domestic workers
      • the minimum salary at which that job will be filled.

    Additionally, when filing PERM, employers are required to prioritize domestic workers for 6 months after layoffs for the same role. Reference

    But this guy is notorious for finding loopholes and sucking off any dick/teet to skirt the law so here we are.

    This is not unique to Tesla either. With the job market tightening over the last 2-3 years, tech companies have been laying off experienced, higher paid workers (especially who were hired at highly competitive salaries during early pandemic) to replace them with new lower paid ones for the same role.

    The article misrepresents this as a domestic vs foreign workers issue instead of calling out the employer for lying about role responsibilities and exploiting junior employees for doing the same work as was expected from senior employees in the past.