I think your question is misguided. Democracy doesn’t mean a two-party system race to the bottom. Democracy can see democratically elected politicians that better resonate with each individual voter by eliminating first past the post voting and using ranked choice voting instead. The problem isn’t that “half the country disagrees”. You can’t please everyone. The problem is that we’ve been divided and weaponized against each other, so the tribalism keeps us from finding common ground we may have. I doubt anyone votes FOR a candidate anymore. They seem to just vote AGAINST another candidate. Democracy works. It’s our implementation of it that’s failing.

I would assume that’s exactly what they’d do when he’s released after his sentence is served.

I lost my job six months ago and am currently struggling to find another. Even if I did find another job that paid what I was getting paid before, I would not and could not pay for your cancer medication. But that doesn’t mean I would choose to turn a blind eye to it. I would continue to fight for basic human rights to water, food, a home, and healthcare, because that’s what I’ve believed in and will continue to believe in. Maybe I wouldn’t change anything in your lifetime or mine, but I’ll still try. And maybe in a few generations, once we’re gone, we opened the door for them to have those things that allow us to keep our dignity.

I won’t pretend to know how you feel, so I won’t give you any platitudes. How you choose to live your life is your own decision, and I won’t insult you by pitying you. Your struggle doesn’t mean it’s impossible for you to make somebody else’s life any better or worse, though, just through simple human interactions. Sure, people are starving, dying, and going through much worse than me, or even you. That takes nothing away from the problems we encounter, the joy or pain we feel. I’ll do what I can to influence my circumstance, because nobody gets to tell me I can’t do something. When possible, I’ll try to do the same for others, even if nobody sees it or gives me a pat on the back. I’ll hold out hope that others might do the same for me when they can, but I won’t expect it because I’m not owed it.

I’m not saying any of this to prove I’m better than you in any way or to win an Internet argument. Call me whatever names you like. I promise I won’t respond beyond this comment. I simply wish you well, or at least better than at present.

Buddy, I hope you have a better day than you’re currently having. I’m not sure what purpose putting your opinion on the Internet served if you were going to pretend it and any responses to it are pointless. Take care of yourself, man. You’re talking like nothing and nobody matters. In the cosmic sense, you’re right. Humanity, is just a flash in the pan, so none of us individually matters. In a human sense, even a small act of kindness might change somebody else’s life, and I think those moments DO matter. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life and I genuinely hope you don’t misconstrue what I’m saying. I do actually hope you can live just a small amount less cynically and can see some positivity, despite how our political system and news keep pushing the negative in our faces day after day. I don’t think hope is just for fools.

It feels like you completely ignored my argument against outlawing fast cars and simply moved to your argument about SUVs and trucks. If you choose to hand-wave my points because you’re “thinking of the children”, then I see no merit in your argument. And you’re saying that what I said is invalid because I believe the bill will pass? But that you can say whatever because you’re fed up with the government’s ineffectiveness so you’re just being bombastic? That detracts from your own statements, if you’re admitting your own rhetoric is just for effect because you have no faith in politicians.

I’m not talking about SUVs, trucks, politicians, or the US legal system. You made a point that cars that drive over 65 shouldn’t be made, and I countered. I don’t hear anything from you except “politicians won’t fix it” while turning around and saying “fast cars should be illegal”, which would require those very same politicians you’ve lost faith in to somehow be effective enough to pass that very legislation.

You talk as if cars are appliances. Hell, even appliances go overboard. Why does a toaster or fridge need WiFi? Why does my washer or dryer have downloadable custom cycles? Because innovation is what sets companies and products apart. It’s not always done “right”, but who’s to judge if a feature is superfluous? You? What makes you qualified?

Cars aren’t just machines to get you from A to B. They certainly can be, but they’re also a fashion item, a status symbol, marvels of engineering, and a tool for testing your skill. Cars can be taken to a racetrack and driven hard. Just because something is being misused doesn’t mean it should either be illegal or shouldn’t be made. Your view on this is incredibly myopic. Just because you aren’t into cars doesn’t mean the “right” thing to do is make all cars the same. And before you suggest making fast cars track only, that would be absurd and make the hobby even less approachable. Not everyone can have two vehicles (apartment buildings that only allow one vehicle, or a city with limited parking). That would be the same as when governments require permits for a product or activity, but make the permits impossible to get.

Other countries have figured out how to handle this situation in different ways. Germany has a harder test for getting your license. Not every idiot can pass. Some countries in Europe make fines a percentage of your income instead of a flat fee. That means breaking the law hurts everyone to a similar degree, rather than rich people paying the fine without a second thought as just the cost of doing business. If you really have a problem with cars then at least get creative with your solution. Trying to stamp them out is genuinely worse than this proposed bill.

Exactly. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. You get what you (didn’t) pay for. If you try to cut employees by using AI then you deserve this. You also deserve this if you don’t pay your employees a decent wage. But they won’t learn anything from this.

It makes perfect sense. It’s about control by any means. The fact of the matter is that, by definition, conservatives don’t want progress. They’ll say and do anything to stand in the way of progress, even if it’s contradictory.

It’s annoying to me that sometimes I have to use Reddit because the only answer I can find to a problem I’m having is in a Reddit post or comment. I would prefer to never use it again, but I’ll settle for only using it when strictly necessary.

I also like tools like Honey or CamelCamelCamel, which show you the actual price changes over time, and you can decide when the right time to buy is. Obviously, you never know when something will go on sale in the future, but it at least helps you see how good the current price is compared to the past month or year.

If you’re upset that the average consumer won’t be able to shoot something of that quality with their iPhone, you’ve got to fix your expectations. The average consumer won’t even have the editing skills to pull that off, let alone any of the other myriad of tools required to turn recorded footage into a high quality production. As long as they only used iPhones, I don’t think it’s misleading at all to say it’s shot on an iPhone.

A master at their craft doesn’t need the best equipment to do their job well. Similarly, the average person won’t magically be able to produce outstanding results just because you give them an expensive camera. If anything, the fact that the event was shot on an iPhone is Apple taking aim at content creators and marketing the iPhone to them as an alternative to expensive camera equipment.

I don’t know if you recall, but Zillow was found to be price fixing as well a few years back. They were buying up real estate, then pumping the Zestimate of any houses they owned. I remember seeing people compiling data on Reddit, tracking home values before the house sold to Zillow, and after. Zillow is just as shitty, and just as much of a middle man. So, yes, Zillow can do a lot of what the Realtor does, but I’d argue we deserve better.

I doubt exclusion of men from this feature has anything to do with it being more work to add men. Hell, it’s actually LESS work to enable it for everyone than it is to add exclusions. Excluding men was a business decision, I’m sure.

Now, I’m in the privileged position of being male, so take this with a grain of salt, but I entirely disagree with the blatant sexism of this feature. I get the purpose, but it feels horribly misguided. Can women not commit violent or sexual crimes? Can nonbinary people not commit violent or sexual crimes? Only men can apparently commit these crimes, according to the people who thought this feature up. Sexual crimes by women, for example, go wildly underreported…Even if they were using statistics to justify how they implemented this feature, they didn’t do their homework.

FOR FREE?! Girl, you need to be getting paid for all that!

Awesome! Thanks, I learned a lot. I appreciate the insight.

I’m struggling to understand the role a grand jury played here and why they wrote a report. Maybe somebody with more legal experience can chime in and clear that up.

It’s my understanding that a grand jury is convened prior to indictment and consulted as a step to strengthen the prosecution of a case. The grand jury chooses to indict and can compel the testimony of those involved. This, however, sounds like it was past pre-trial phases. So what was the purpose of convening a grand jury at this point?

Then there’s the petit jury, which is the jury of 12 everyone thinks of when they hear the word “jury”, which is the group of people responsible for making a formal, unanimous decision at the end of a trial, assuming the defendant didn’t waive their right to a jury trial. It almost sounds like the article is talking about the petit jury, but makes a mistake and calls them a grand jury. Confusingly, I still don’t understand why a petit jury would be writing a report, either.

Since the jury is just made up of average people, who writes the report? How do they know what the format needs to be? The report sounds damning, but these people aren’t law enforcement or legal experts, so how much weight does their report carry? I think they’re right, mind you, especially given the judge’s admonishment of the police officer, but I’m just left with many more questions than answers.

Most of the services I know of are about $3-4 per user per month. Google, Amazon, and Rackspace are all either $3 or $4 per user.

You’re right. This is what happens when things are lax. Nobody wants to be bureaucratic for no reason. Everybody tries to avoid being too serious too soon. There’s a reason business jargon is its own meme. But there’s also a reason that things trend in that direction for established companies. You need structure for your managers and employees if you want to stop tripping over yourself and you want accountability.

I had a friend of mine recently approach me about an issue he was having with his employees at his small business. My first question was whether they have an employee handbook that says they can’t do the things he’s trying to prevent (drug or alcohol use on the clock). Working with heavy machinery doesn’t mix well with drugs and alcohol, but if people aren’t told they can’t then there’s a chance they will. This might sound obvious, but because they’re a small company they were trying to “be fun” and not stuffy. They had beer in the fridge at work for people to crack open on Friday afternoons after a long week. Unfortunately, they weren’t only drinking it on Friday afternoons, and they were also smoking weed on company grounds before operating heavy machinery. At some point you have to say enough is enough and drop the fun when people can’t be responsible.

Managing people is like being a therapist, a friend, a parent, and a lawyer all in one. And worse, people don’t seem to grow up much (if at all) beyond high school. People come to you with their personal problems (or sometimes don’t, but a performance issue may arise from a personal problem at home), people need encouragement and honest feedback, people need a firm hand and to be guided and given direction, and you also need to protect the company from potential litigation by saying the right thing or not saying the wrong thing, as well as the need to protect employees from themselves, each other, and third parties (contractors, vendors, clients, and customers). Managing is hard, and that’s why companies mandate HR training for management positions. Furthermore, cases are rarely, if ever, clear cut. Two people have a problem with each other? Time to put aside the work I had planned for today and go figure out why these two assholes can’t get along. It sounds like managers at LMG need more training, and Colton might not be the right person to lead HR. Employees need to be adults, but also need to be able to rely on management to help them resolve issues they can’t resolve themselves. Telling them to figure it out and talk to the other party isn’t good enough. LMG needs to do better

I often use the phrase “put on my big boy pants”, but have never told an employee to “put on their big boy/girl pants”. I’ve joked that “reading is fundamental” when I misread or skim something and come to the wrong conclusion, but never when somebody else does. That said, I’ve told an employee that they’re acting childish, and explained why I expected more from them. The issues I’m hearing seem to stem from just being relatively young people and being a relatively recently established company. You can’t talk to your employees like you talk to your friends. Hell, I was privileged enough to hire a friend recently, and I compartmentalize personal and work. If not, I might end up doing something that could damage the company. I know how much to trust him with, so it’s not like my personal experience with him doesn’t factor in at all, but I need to choose how much to share, when to share it, and how to share it, even if I want to tell him everything I might know about a particular situation. Maybe if he didn’t work for me I’d be more likely to share privileged information because he doesn’t work for the same company, but now that he does I need to make sure I don’t say something that puts him in a bad spot to know, and doesn’t put me in a bad spot if he slips up and divulges privileged knowledge. It sounds like some of the managers at LMG aren’t making these distinctions and simply approach work situations like they would personal ones.

“That’s not how I meant it” isn’t a valid defense, at least in the US, when it comes to HR complaints. It doesn’t matter what you meant, but how it was received by others. I’d say they overlooked this one rule a lot based on Madison’s writeup, and I’m not, at all, surprised. But, like I said, this comes down to poor training.

I just read through Madison’s whole account of what happened and all the comments here. I have a few key takeaways:

1. People are naive - Get shit in writing. Verbal promises aren’t worth a damn.
2. Experience matters - It sounds to me like Madison, Colton, and most of the management staff have no idea how to properly manage (up or down). This is a massive problem, but not a surprise. I can say the same for the people in the comments here. You WILL be in shitty situations at work. How you navigate them matters and will determine if your claims will be successful. The most important thing I can tell her, them, and all of you is KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!
3. Most people have no idea what they’re talking about - Everyone saying that the government needs to always be involved, or that this is why we need unions has no idea what the fuck they’re talking about. I’m not anti-union, I’m anti-bureaucracy. You think things moved too slowly when you asked for a mirror? Wait until there are MORE people in between that MUST be involved.
4. Her mental health is concerning - I don’t know if her mental health issues existed before LMG, but they don’t do much besides detract from her potentially valid points. I’m concerned this will be used to dismiss the issues she encountered rather than fix them. I, personally, didn’t have a high opinion of her when I saw her for the first time (I think it was one of the videos where fans get a custom computer). It makes me wonder how much of this is overblown, but that doesn’t mean her complaints are all invalid. This will be a tough road for her.

The key takeaway, again, is KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!! You have a complaint? Write it in an email. Send it to the intended recipient, and CC HR or BCC your personal email. If you don’t have a paper trail of issues, you will lose. You were asked by your manger or by HR to solve the problem yourself by talking to the other person? Get them to verify that in writing. They’ll backpedal REALLY quickly if they have any sense. A verbal warning? That means jack shit. It can’t be held against you because the company has no paper trail (see? This cuts both ways.) An agreement where they gave you certain assurances verbally? Email the person with a summary of the conversation as you understood it and ask for confirmation of your understanding.

All of this is how you protect yourself as an employee and as an employer. GET SHIT IN WRITING and then use those notes as proof if you need to appeal to a higher authority (HR, upper management, or the government arm responsible for labor issues). And yeah, people have trouble like this because people don’t speak out. You need to not just KNOW your rights, but also EXERCISE THEM.

I say all of this as somebody in a management position. Employees rarely know what the inner workings for disciplinary issues looks like, or how long it takes to be carried out. A complaint doesn’t simply result in termination unless it’s egregious (in which case your complaint needs to be DOCUMENTED BY YOU AS WELL, not just left in the hands of HR or management). I live my life by “trust but verify”. I only trust one person to act in my best interest, and that’s me, so I’m going to give me the best chance of doing that by DOCUMENTING EVERYTHING.

That said, you all need to understand that managing people doesn’t start with a management position. Every relationship needs to be managed and curated. You need something from Suzy? Ask her nicely. Still didn’t get that thing? Email her. Maybe she’s just busy or forgot (but you’ve started your paper trail). No response from Suzy? Follow up on your email and CC her manager. Consider CCing or BCCing your manager as well. Suzy may not like it, but you’re just doing your job. The same rules apply when you’re managing up. Sometimes you’ll get an absolute turd of a manager. It WILL happen, so be prepared to deal with it. It will absolutely suck to deal with, and you will be frustrated, but you’ll have documentation of your position, not a pissing contest between two people.

Am I getting my point across? You’re not a unique snowflake, you’re another cog in the machine. Protect yourself (and others!) by documenting and verifying. And if you see somebody being treated like shit, it’s your job to also raise that!!! Just because it’s not happening to you doesn’t mean you should ignore it. You felt uncomfortable when somebody else got publicly berated? FUCKING SAY SOMETHING! I had a rather incompetent manager start to chastise me in front of the employees I managed at the time. I was 18 or 19 back then. I asked her to stop and to follow me. We went to a separate area and I proceeded to explain to her that I didn’t appreciate what she did. Her complaints may have been valid, but the way she handled it was inappropriate, and I asked her to make sure that if she has a problem with me in the future to please bring it to me privately. She saw the problem and agreed that she was wrong in how she handled it, and thanked me for my handling of the situation. YOU CAN DO THIS, TOO! You can email HR and the CEO after he storms into your area and goes off on somebody. You can say that you felt unsafe in that moment, and that you don’t appreciate how that person was treated. You can stand up for others and for yourself. If you want to be successful in your career YOU NEED TO LEARN TO MANAGE UP!

That’s a very interesting approach, and may work for very specific applications. It seems unlikely most platforms or apps would adopt such an approach since it would be a very high burden to overcome for users to sign up, which is what let’s an app or platform grow. People are rather attached to money, but there’s also the other side of this. A user may not care about the fine and continue to break the rules as “the cost of doing business” because they’re wealthy.

It’s definitely going to be a technology that drives anonymity, and everything that comes with it, for better or worse. I can see a lot of good this can do, but also a lot of crime it can facilitate.