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'Job Creating' Sprint T-Mobile Merger Triggers Estimated 6,000 Non-Covid Layoffs

Back when T-Mobile and Sprint were trying to gain regulatory approval for their $26 billion merger, executives repeatedly promised the deal would create jobs. Not just a few jobs, but oodles of jobs. Despite the fact that US telecom history indicates such deals almost always trigger mass layoffs, the media dutifully repeated T-Mobile and Sprint executive claims that the deal would create "more than 3,500 additional full-time U.S. employees in the first year and 11,000 more people by 2024."

About that.

Before the ink on the deal was even dry, T-Mobile began shutting down its Metro prepaid business and laying off impacted employees. When asked about the conflicting promises, T-Mobile refused to respond to press inquiries. Now that shutdown has accelerated, with estimates that roughly 6,000 employees at the T-Mobile subsidiary have been laid off as the freshly-merged company closes unwanted prepaid retailers. T-Mobile says the move, which has nothing to do with COVID-19, is just them "optimizing their retail footprint." Industry insiders aren't amused:

"Peter Adderton, the founder of Boost Mobile in Australia and in the U.S. who has been a vocal advocate for the Boost brand and for dealers since the merger was first proposed, figures the latest closures affect about 6,000 people. He cited one dealer who said he has to close 95 stores, some as early as May 1.

In their arguments leading up to the merger finally getting approved, executives at both T-Mobile and Sprint argued that it would not lead to the kind of job losses that many opponents were predicting. They pledged to create jobs, not cut them.

“The whole thing is exactly how we called it, and no one is calling them out. It’s so disingenuous,” Adderton told Fierce, adding that it’s not because of COVID-19. Many retailers in other industries are closing stores during the crisis but plan to reopen once it’s safe to do so."

None of this should be a surprise to anybody. Everybody from unions to Wall Street stock jocks had predicted the deal would trigger anywhere between 15,000 and 30,000 layoffs over time as redundant support, retail, and middle management positions were eliminated. It's what always happens in major US telecom mergers. There is 40 years of very clear, hard data speaking to this point. Yet in a blog post last year (likely to be deleted by this time next year), T-Mobile CEO John Legere not only insisted layoffs would never happen, he effectively accused unions, experts, consumer groups, and a long line of economists of lying:

"This merger is all about creating new, high-quality, high-paying jobs, and the New T-Mobile will be jobs-positive from Day One and every day thereafter. That’s not just a promise. That’s not just a commitment. It’s a fact....These combined efforts will create nearly 5,600 new American customer care jobs by 2021. And New T-Mobile will employ 7,500+ more care professionals by 2024 than the standalone companies would have."

That was never going to happen. Less competition and revolving door, captured regulators and a broken court system means there's less than zero incentive for T-Mobile to do much of anything the company promised while it was wooing regulators. And of course such employment growth is even less likely to happen under a pandemic, which will provide "wonderful" cover for cuts that were going to happen anyway.

Having watched more telecom megadeals like this than I can count, what usually happens is the companies leave things generally alone for about a year to keep employees calm and make it seem like deal critics were being hyperbolic. Then, once the press and public is no longer paying attention (which never takes long), the hatchets come out and the downsizing begins. When the layoffs and reduced competition inevitably arrives, they're either ignored or blamed on something else. In this case, inevitably, COVID-19.

In a few years, the regulators who approved the deal will have moved on to think tank, legal or lobbying positions at the same companies they "regulated." The same press that over-hyped pre-merger promises won't follow back up, because there's no money in that kind of hindsight policy reporting or consumer advocacy. And executives like John Legere (who just quit T-Mobile after selling his $17.5 million NYC penthouse to Giorgio Armani) are dutifully rewarded, with the real world market and human cost of mindless merger mania quickly and intentionally forgotten.




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12/18/16 - The sound of digging




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GGMM E9: беспроводные наушники с костной проводимостью за $36

Сегодня мы нашли для вас на AliExpress ещё одну модель беспроводных наушников с костной проводимостью звука.




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Featured - What is the biggest difference between academic research and industrial research?

I would like to thank AGreenMonster for these great questions for discussion. I am going to answer these from my perspective, which is from a life science company. I welcome anyone to give their feedback as well. In fact, if any of the readers out there feels like they have a lot to share, I would be happy to host your article on my blog so that you may provide more details. Just drop me a line.Hi; (read more)

Source: Suzy - Discipline: BioTech




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Featured - My Biggest Lab Mistake (and why I don't leave home without socks)

My grad schools days are long behind me, and as time goes on, my memories of the pain and suffering become more of a blur. But, there was one day that I will never forget.  Not only did I lose an entire days work, but I was lucky to avoid serious injury. It was the day I made the biggest mistake I ever made in the lab.My graduate school was in a southern area of the country where obnoxio; (read more)

Source: Suzy - Discipline: Misc




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Digging up Positivity - Furry charity and good news - February 2020 (Transcript)

Video from Thabo Meerkat, transcribed

Welcome to another edition of Digging Up Positivity! This episode is dedicated to the many volunteers that make all those amazing conventions and charities possible. But besides them, we are covering some animation news and other (maybe otter?) tidbits!

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Digging up Positivity - Furry charity and good news - April 2020

Video from Thabo Meerkat, transcribed

Hey there, and welcome to the April 2020 edition of Digging Up Positivity from a rapidly changing world. But even in these weird times, there are still a lot of positive things to be found!

read more




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Residents Oppose Cost of Berlin Police Department Move to Bigger Space

William Brighenti, who founded the Berlin Property Owners Association, argued that the town can’t afford a new police headquarters, and police should look to clear space in their current building. He thinks one way to accomplish this is to get rid of tactical gear. Continue reading




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An EggBot Brunch Party

Heather Seeba wrote in to let us know about a gathering she has hosted around the EggBot. The EggBot brunches have been big hits with my friends. Seeing the fascination and excitement showing new people my EggBot has to be my favorite part of playing with it. The inspiration came when I took the ‘bot … Continue reading An EggBot Brunch Party




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Daily Squiggly Sudoku: Sat 9-May-2020




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Making Treat-filled Easter Eggs on the 3D printer

3D printing is a slow process. A hot nozzle heats up and squirts molten hot plastic in a carefully determined pattern to form a three dimentional object. It's like using a hot glue gun to squirt out an entire sculpture. It takes time.




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IBM Study Indicates Organisations in New Zealand are Struggling to Find and Nurture Effective Future Leaders

One in four A/NZ executives believe their organisations excel in leadership development New Zealand executives focusing on bringing back retired employees The Social Network: Largely absent from A/NZ organisations




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【雑誌+Web】『Oggi 2020年3月号』1/28発売 礼真琴/柚香光 掲載!!/Oggi.jp スペシャルトーク【吉沢 亮 × 柚香 光 × 礼 真琴】

Web記事 写真・記事 Oggi.jp スペシャルトーク 【吉沢 亮 × 柚香 光 × 礼 真琴】 それぞれのステージで輝くということ -私たちの仕事論- 【PR】スペシャルトーク【吉沢 亮 × 柚香 光 × 礼 真琴】それぞれのステージで輝くということ -私たちの仕事論-https://t....




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BIGGGstyle

2019.9.12うす塁斗明日は THE CIRCUS新宿文化センタープレビュー公演てやつまぁ初日で続きをみる

『著作権保護のため、記事の一部のみ表示されております。』




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Framed by MichiganMuggle [R]

With Voldemort dead, Harry Potter is training to be an Auror and is finally back together with Ginny Weasley. But when a young woman dies of poisoning at the Ministry’s Midsummer Ball, Harry is the first suspect, and he can only uncover the true murderer by working with his childhood rival, Draco Malfoy.




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Triggers, FlashForward, and Me

A piece I finished five years ago today, on April 15, 2012, for the blog of Gollancz, my UK publisher: Triggers, FlashForward, and Me by Robert J. Sawyer Thanks to the good people at Gollancz, I was recently interviewed in SFX, the world’s top-selling English-language magazine devoted to science fiction. I spoke in that interview […]





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The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It The coronavirus has...



The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It 

The coronavirus has starkly revealed what most of us already knew: The concentration of wealth in America has created a a health care system in which the wealthy can buy care others can’t. 

It’s also created an education system in which the super-rich can buy admission to college for their children, a political system in which they can buy Congress and the presidency,  and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail. 

Almost everyone else has been hurled into a dystopia of bureaucratic arbitrariness, corporate indifference, and the legal and financial sinkholes that have become hallmarks of modern American life.

The system is rigged. But we can fix it.

Today, the great divide in American politics isn’t between right and left. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none. 

Forget politics as you’ve come to see it – as contests between Democrats and Republicans. The real divide is between democracy and oligarchy.

The market has been organized to serve the wealthy. Since 1980, the percentage of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest four hundred Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent.

The three wealthiest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population. Big corporations, CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have vastly more influence on public policy than the average American. Wealth and power have become one and the same.

As the oligarchs tighten their hold over our system, they have lambasted efforts to rein in their greed as “socialism”, which, to them, means getting something for doing nothing.

But “getting something for doing nothing” seems to better describe the handouts being given to large corporations and their CEOs. 

General Motors, for example, has received $600 million in federal contracts and $500 million in tax breaks since Donald Trump took office. Much of this “corporate welfare” has gone to executives, including CEO Mary Barra, who raked in almost $22 million in compensation in 2018 alone. GM employees, on the other hand, have faced over 14,000 layoffs and the closing of three assembly plants and two component factories.

And now, in the midst of a pandemic, big corporations are getting $500 billion from taxpayers. 

Our system, it turns out, does practice one form of socialism – socialism for the rich. Everyone else is subject to harsh capitalism.

Socialism for the rich means people at the top are not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many, means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control, and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.

Among those who are particularly complicit in rigging the system are the CEOs of America’s corporate behemoths. 

Take Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, whose net worth is $1.4 billion. He comes as close as anyone to embodying the American system as it functions today.

Dimon describes himself as “a patriot before I’m the CEO of JPMorgan.”

He brags about the corporate philanthropy of his bank, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to his company’s net income, which in 2018 was $30.7 billion – roughly one hundred times the size of his company’s investment program for America’s poor cities. 

Much of JP Morgan’s income gain in 2018 came from savings from the giant Republican tax cut enacted at the end of 2017 – a tax cut that Dimon intensively lobbied Congress for.

Dimon doesn’t acknowledge the inconsistencies between his self-image as “patriot first” and his role as CEO of America’s largest bank. He doesn’t understand how he has hijacked the system.

Perhaps he should read my new book.

To understand how the system has been hijacked, we must understand how it went from being accountable to all stakeholders – not just stockholders but also workers, consumers, and citizens in the communities where companies are headquartered and do business – to intensely shareholder-focused capitalism.

In the post-WWII era, American capitalism assumed that large corporations had responsibilities to all their stakeholders. CEOs of that era saw themselves as “corporate statesmen” responsible for the common good.

But by the 1980s, shareholder capitalism (which focuses on maximizing profits) replaced stakeholder capitalism. That was largely due to the corporate raiders – ultra-rich investors who hollowed-out once-thriving companies and left workers to fend for themselves.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for example, targeted major companies like Texaco and Nabisco by acquiring enough shares of their stock to force major changes that increased their stock value – such as suppressing wages, fighting unions, laying off workers, abandoning communities for cheaper labor elsewhere, and taking on debt – and then selling his shares for a fat profit. In 1985, after winning control of Trans World Airlines, he loaded the airline with more than $500 million in debt, stripped it of its assets, and pocketed nearly $500 million in profits.

As a result of the hostile takeovers mounted by Icahn and other raiders, a wholly different understanding about the purpose of the corporation emerged.

Even the threat of hostile takeovers forced CEOs to fall in line by maximizing shareholder profits over all else. The corporate statesmen of previous decades became the corporate butchers of the 1980s and 1990s, whose nearly exclusive focus was to “cut out the fat” and make their companies “lean and mean.”

As power increased for the wealthy and large corporations at the top, it shifted in exactly the opposite direction for workers. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. Today, 6.4 percent of them are.

The wave of hostile takeovers pushed employers to raise profits and share prices by cutting payroll costs and crushing unions, which led to a redistribution of income and wealth from workers to the richest 1 percent. Corporations have fired workers who try to organize and have mounted campaigns against union votes. All the while, corporations have been relocating to states with few labor protections and so-called “right-to-work” laws that weaken workers’ ability to join unions.

Power is a zero-sum game. People gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.

The oligarchy has triumphed because no one has paid attention to the system as a whole – to the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from strong unions to giant corporations with few labor protections, and from regulated to unchecked finance.

As power has shifted to large corporations, workers have been left to fend for themselves. Most Americans developed 3 key coping mechanisms to keep afloat.

The first mechanism was women entering the paid workforce. Starting in the late 1970s, women went into paid work in record numbers, in large part to prop up family incomes, as the wages of male workers stagnated or declined. 

Then, by the late 1990s, even two incomes wasn’t enough to keep many families above water, causing them to turn to the next coping mechanism: working longer hours. By the mid-2000s a growing number of people took on two or three jobs, often demanding 50 hours or more per week.

Once the second coping mechanism was exhausted, workers turned to their last option: drawing down savings and borrowing to the hilt. The only way Americans could keep consuming was to go deeper into debt. By 2007, household debt had exploded, with the typical American household owing 138 percent of its after-tax income. Home mortgage debt soared as housing values continued to rise. Consumers refinanced their homes with even larger mortgages and used their homes as collateral for additional loans.

This last coping mechanism came to an abrupt end in 2008 when the debt bubbles burst, causing the financial crisis. Only then did Americans begin to realize what had happened to them, and to the system as a whole. That’s when our politics began to turn ugly.  

So what do we do about it? The answer is found in politics and rooted in power.

The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and form a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything America must do.

The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition. Lucky for them, Trump is a pro at pitting native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, white people against people of color. His goal is cynicism, disruption, and division. Trump and the oligarchy behind him have been able to rig the system and then whip around to complain loudly that the system is rigged.

But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable.

As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again.

In order for real change to occur – in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves – the locus of power in the system will have to change.

The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead. Together, we will dismantle the oligarchy. Together, we will fix the system.




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24 Things, Potentially, But History Suggests Otherwise. Thing 2.






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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Stealth Out and Touch the Egg Wrong

In the latest episode of their mephitic podcast, Ken and Robin talk playing the secret assassin, sand pirate GPS spoofing, Clark Ashton Smith, and the terrible name megalosaurus almost had.



  • Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

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Mel Baggs, 1980-2020

I was really sad to learn of the death of Mel Baggs. I have been following Mel's writing for many years and learned a great deal about disability and activist communities.

In particular, Mel disabused me of the view of autism that says, autism is all very well if you're also highly intelligent, but it's a terrible tragedy to be autistic as well as intellectually disabled, or autistic and non-speaking, or "low-functioning". And in general lots of concrete ways of being a respectful fellow citizen towards the the kinds of disabled people who don't get much activism airtime.

It seems that Mel didn't die "of" Coronavirus in the strict sense of the word, but of complications of a number of other illnesses and conditions. Mel had posted a fair bit recently about not getting access to needed personal care as an indirect result of the pandemic and the dangerously inadequate official response to it. I don't know whether inadequate care was a contributory factor in Mel's death but it did cause a lot of suffering, and I have seen way too many reports of people not getting the care they need, and I'm not even that plugged in to the disability community.

Anyway. Mel was someone I admired greatly, and a huge influence on me, and the world is poorer.

comments




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Marco Antoniotti: Digging CLAST

Again, after ELS 2020, I went back to double check the actual status of some of my libraries (after an embarrassing nag by Marco Heisig :) who caught me sleeping).

I updated the documentation of CLAST, and checked that its current status is ok; the only change I had to make was to conform to the latest ASDF expectations for test systems. Of course, you may find many more bugs.

CLAST is a library that produces abstract syntax trees munging Common Lisp sources. To do so, it relies on CLtL2 environments, which, as we all know, are in a sorry state in many implementations. Yet, CLAST is usable, at least for people who are ... CLAZY enough to use it.

(cheers)






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Pocket-Sized #1006: “Hot Sauce Aggression”

Hot Sauce Aggression In this Pocket-Sized episode #1006, Marc Abrahams shows an unfamiliar research study to Dany Adams. Dramatic readings and reactions ensue. The research mentioned in this episode is featured in the special Ig: the Triumph of Miss Sweetie Poo issue (Vol. 7, #1) of the Annals of Improbable Research Magazine. Remember, our Patreon donors, on most levels, get […]




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Should You Stay Or Should You Go - Bugging In Vs Bugging Out

To bug in or to bug out that is the question. Nobody can argue that being prepared in case of an emergency or disaster is a bad thing. If your like myself and live in an area that’s prone to natural disasters (in my case earthquakes) you would be very stupid not to have some level of preparation. For many this means having a bug out bag packed with all the survival goodies one could ever want and ready to go at all times. Again I think it’s a very smart idea and I have one myself. But just because you have a bug out bag, doesn’t mean bugging out is your only option when the SHTF...............




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7 Tips To Be A Successful Guest Blogger

Guest blogging or guest posting depending on how you call it is another way you can spread the word about your site by attracting visitors you might not normally get. If done right it’ll not only build good relationships with other sites but can drive that every so sought after targeted traffic to your site. The problem is getting it right, all too often guest posts are nothing but a long winded advertisement for their site that offers nothing of any real value. A spammy guest post won’t do you any good other then give your site a bad reputation. Here are some tips to be a successful guest blogger............





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F&S leggen ene krans namens de veteranen (NRC, ma, 04-05-20)




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F&s leggen vijf mei uit (NRC, di, 05-05-20)




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Hygger.io: универсальная система управления проектами для продуктовых компаний

В продуктовых компаниях сегодня не обойтись без инструментов для сбора идей и обратной связи, распределения задач, приоритизации, планирования и мониторинга, а также внутреннего взаимодействия между отделами. Часто для этих целей сотрудники заводят аккаунты в нескольких платформах для управления продуктами. Это неудобно. Особенно, когда разработчики сидят в JIRA, а менеджеры проектов, маркетологи и другие сотрудники составляют свои доски с планами в Trello или Asana.




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This Easy Decorating Move Will Make Your Living Room Feel Bigger and Brighter

Fake the look of additional space by subtraction! READ MORE...




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Violent and aggressive children. Caring for those who care

The topic of domestic violence is an emotive one conjuring visions of child abuse by parents or carers, or marital violence, in general abuse by men of their wives or partners. According to published police statistics in Scotland for the years of 2012 – 13 male violence of women accounted for 80% of all domestic abuse, and in 2014 over 2,600 children in Scotland were identified as needing protection from abuse. This is particularly concerning since the NSPCC suggests that, for every child who has been identified, there are 8 other children who are at risk but who are ‘under the radar’. These statistics, highlighting the underlying nature of inter-family abuse relationships, i.e. the abuse of less powerful and more vulnerable family members by more powerful adults, undoubtedly account for the majority of the abuse situations within family homes. However this is, sadly, not the whole story. Understanding abuse within a family means recognising the impact of sibling aggression on every family member. It also needs to encompass the growing recognition of child to parent aggression and it is this latter aspect of inter-family relationships with which this article is primarily concerned.




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#21: The Muggle Invasion




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#138: This Is SnoggCast




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#216: Do House Elves Lay Eggs?

PotterCast, our Harry Potter podcast, is here today to bring you its 216th episode of Harry Potter news, discussion, and fun.  First, the PotterCasters sort through the latest news, which include stories about Jo Rowling becoming a special edition Barbie doll, Deathly Hallows, filming news from Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), and more.

 

Episode 216 — Do House Elves Lay Eggs?

Find the latest episode and explore PotterCast interviews, discussions and more at PotterCast.com

Visit the-leaky-cauldron.org for the latest and greatest from Harry Potter's Wizard World.




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#296: The Very Secret and Amazing Life of Arabella Figg

This week: we go through the week's Potter news, including the new Wizarding World app as well as the upcoming release of the graphic edition of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire!

This week's What About That: Arabella Figg is here to change all our SEO results. Who was she? What's her history? Was she married? Was she gay?

Also: squibs in the wizarding world: what does it mean to be a squib? What's the deal with the book and the quill? Why was it mean to Neville? WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER BE MEAN TO NEVILLE?

Also this week from Mischief Media: Listen to A Story Most Queer, now available wherever you listen!

Don't forget that we have a Patreon where you can get extra (sorting-related!) content!

By the way: never listen to what number we call the show inside the recording. We're gonna stop doing that.

Also, in the drums: John explains Brexit! 

Produced by Adam Molina // Assoc. Produced by Kylie Madden




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15.1: PotterCast Vs. MuggleCast LIVE from LeakyCon Boston 2019!

Check out our new naming system! It's Season 15, episode 1! 
 
Featuring MuggleCast's Micah Tanenbuam and Eric Scull, as well as Louis Cordice (who played for MuggleCast) and Chris Rankin, who hosted!
 

There are three games in this episode! We recommend putting yourself into the mode of a contestant as you listen to the first.

Remember!

  1. Visit Mischief Merch to purchase this limited edition PotterCast: After All This Time shirt.
  2. Don’t forget that we have a Patreon where you can get extra (sorting-related!) content!
  3. Check out our new sponsor, Shaker and Spoon




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Real-life struggles




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WilliamHiggins: Viktor Lubak

Viktor Lubak is a good looking guy who is due for a massage. He looks very good as he strips down to his underwear, showing off his hot body. Then he lays, face down, on the bed ready for the massage. The masseur arrives and takes some oil into his hands as he gets to... View Article

The post WilliamHiggins: Viktor Lubak appeared first on QueerClick.




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Piggy Poggy Pog

Piggy Poggy Pog - is quite a complex, nice-looking 2D platformer in which you must escape from the farm playing for a pig named Poggy . In this game you go through the levels, collecting a certain number of acorns. After you collect all the acorns on the level, you have go to the next level. Be careful on your way there are various traps, such as sharp peaks and life-threatening Poggy plant. Coming into contact with them, the pig will instantly die and the level starts over. Try your luck and maybe you will get off this damn farm... KEY FEATURES: - Animated graphics. - Simple, funny gameplay. - A large number of levels.




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eggs

While I've been very good at keeping up with my Differences of the Day on Twitter, the blog posts have got(ten) fewer and f{a/u}rther in between. I'm committing this month (and hopefully from now on) to do one a week, and the way I'm going to make that feel more do-able is to piggyback on the work I've done for the #DotDs. Lately, I've been doing a lot of themed weeks of differences, and those can be built up into a nice little blog post.

I decided on #EggWeek because I was newly part of Egg Club. The first rule of Egg Club is that a generous member of our neighbo(u)rhood goes to a farm outside town and buys eggs from 'very happy chickens'. The second rule of Egg Club is that those of us with standing orders show up at her house with money and something to put the eggs in (we'll get to that, below).


Here are #EggWeek  differences I noted, and some information added-on by the tweople who responded to the tweets.

AmE has a vocabulary for fried-egg cooking that BrE doesn't, which starts from the assumption that if you want your eggs well-done, then you should flip them over. In UK, flipping is less common. In a (BrE) caff or (orig. AmE) greasy spoon and in some homes, a well-done egg is achieved by spooning the cooking fat over the egg. In my American life, I've never seen anyone fry an egg in enough fat to be able to spoon it. At any rate, the AmE vocabulary includes:
  • sunny-side up = not flipped
  • over easy = flipped over for just long enough that the egg white is cooked on both sides. Yolk should still be runny.
  • over medium = flipped over and cooked for a 'medium' amount of time/yolk-runniness
  • over hard = flipped over and cooked until the yolk is solid
BrE egg yolks can be described as dippy if they are nice and runny. A dippy egg is a soft-boiled egg into which you can dip your toast to get some nice yolk on it. 

That leads us to a difference that is more cultural than linguistic: in UK, soft-boiled eggs (often just called boiled eggs in this context) are just about always presented in an egg cup. I know some Americans own egg cups and use them, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Some UK folks proposed to me that this is because Americans don't eat soft-boiled eggs, but that's just not true. I once had a 70-something-day streak of having two boiled eggs and two slices of toast every evening for dinner. (This was back in my poor earning-rand-but-paying-back-student-loans-in-dollars days. You might think I'd have got(ten) sick of boiled eggs, but it's still one of my favo(u)rite meals. Only now I can afford some asparagus to go with it.)

But when I posted photos side-by-side  of British-style boiled-egg presentation and American-style, several British Twitterfolk protested that the American eggs were poached (righthand photo). No, they were boiled eggs that had been peeled and put on toast—which is exactly the way I eat them. (I am making myself hungry now. I guess I know what's for lunch.) The picture on the left is BrE egg and soldiers, the soldiers being the lengthwise-sliced toast strips.




Of course, this posting resulted in lots of people trying to tell me that the British way of eating boiled eggs is superior. You can have it, it's not for me. (My mother-in-law has given us several egg cups, perhaps because she couldn't find any at our house. I mostly store small kitchen bits in them.) Putting the egg on toast lets you give it a single and wide-spreading sprinkling of salt and (if you like) pepper. Peeling them is much easier if the eggs are fresh, which is what makes Egg Club so worth my while. The store-bought eggs I get in the UK are generally not as easy to peel. When I was a kid, a soft-boiled egg was a regular first foray in to the world of the eating after a stomach bug. My mom would peel it, and put it into a bowl, so you could smash it and dip your toast in it. But on toast is the grown-up way to go.  (And much easier than poaching, especially if you want to make a few of them.)

Egg cartons  are often called egg boxes in BrE:



The sandwich filling made of hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise is called egg mayonnaise in BrE, which Americans perceive as a pleonasm: all mayonnaise is made of eggs, so of course it's egg mayonnaise! But if you're perceiving it that way, you're probably imagining the stress pattern of the phrase as the same as you'd say herb mayonnaise for mayonnaise with herbs in it. The trick is to hear it like it's 'egg in the mayonnaise style'. The pronunciation of the mayonnaise is English, not French, but it follows a French food syntax (as we've seen before).  This concoction is called egg salad in AmE, though a lot of Americans would put in other ingredients as well to flavo(u)r the (orig. AmE) combo. This pattern holds for other mixes of bits of food with mayo: tuna mayonnaise/salad, chicken mayonnaise/salad.

There was one more #DotD in #EggWeek: whether scrambled egg is a count noun or a mass noun. In AmE, you can have a scrambled egg, but you wouldn't have scrambled egg. When you've got a bunch of it and you can't tell how many eggs are there, AmE goes for scrambled eggs. So, BrE scrambled egg on toast = AmE scrambled eggs on toast. I've covered this one before, so if you want to have a conversation about count and mass nouns, please see this old post.


One week of blogging down, many to go!

PS: I meant to point out another difference between US and UK (and European generally, I think) eggs: American eggs need to be refrigerated, British ones don't. Here's an article about why.

Egg cartons/boxes
colo(u)r-coded by size
PPS: What counts as a 'large' egg or a 'medium' egg differs too. Possibly not in the direction that you'd think. Have a look at Wikipedia

When I go to the shop to buy eggs in England, my choices seem to have more to do with how the chickens were raised than with the size of the eggs, whereas in US supermarkets, there seems to be more variety available in egg size, more clearly label(l)ed—e.g. in different colo(u)red cartons. You can see the difference in this photo of eggs on the shelf (not the fridge) in a UK chain versus this at our supermarket in NY state.

PPPS: It is very hard to get a white-shelled chicken egg in the UK. I go through a crisis about this every Easter when I'm trying to dye eggs (like the good American parent that I am, or try to be). I end up just leaving them in the dye extra-long and have dark colo(u)rs instead of pastel ones. In the US, white-shelled was the norm when I was growing up, but brown ones have become more and more common, on the mistaken belief that they are somehow more 'natural'. It's the species of chicken involved that determines the shell colo(u)r.




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TRIGGER TIME DURING QUARANTINE TIME

Trapped at home. Many if not most ranges closed, depending where you are. How can shooter folk get some trigger time for skill maintenance, recreation, and the all-important boredom prevention? Airgun fun is quiet…don’t forget eye protection. Well, for one Read more




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The Struggles Of Composing A Rap Song

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Reader Squee: Snuggly

Haggis_30 says: "My kitten Mowgli thought my brand new mohair scarf would make a perfect blanket on a cold night. He is always burying himself in clothing and blankets. Very cute!"

Mowgli knows what every squee kitty knows, humans can't say 'no' to a warm, snuggly cat!

-Sally Squeeps

Do you have a squee pet that you want to share with the world? Send us your pet pictures and stories, and they could end up on Daily Squee!




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Episode 551 - The Goggles Do Nothing

On this week's show I'm joined by Andrew Allen for a good chunk of Arsenal chat, looking back at the Vitoria game, another disappointing performance, Unai Emery's football and his future, the importance of a win this weekend and more. Then it's Leicester fan Joe Brewin to take a look at Brendan Rodgers, Jamie Vardy, and the threat they pose to the Gunners this weekend. Finally, some light relief as I chat to the creator of the fantastic Simpsons Arsenal Twitter account, how it got started, some favourite bits and episodes, and more extremely cromulent Simpsons related content.


Follow Andrew - @AAllenSport

Follow Joe - @JoeBrewinFFT

Follow SimpsonArsenal - @SimpsonsArsenal

 

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Aggressive Home Business Lead Generation Using Video Leverage - Why Top Marketers Use This Method

If you are serious about home business lead generation using video marketing you know that it takes a lot of work and dedication to create your content. This article will reveal why the top marketers use video leverage to generate hundreds of leads.