Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

No offense intended, but who would go close enough to get a picture of a baby copperhead? Follow up: why?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Congratulations! That's awesome. Thrilled to hear that your commitment paid off. That's a long time.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Jesus man... That's some cold water on the festivities.

[Why can't I insert a photo of Debbie Downer here?]

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

The chance of two people in your age category succumbing in the next ten years is ridiculously low. In twenty years, still low. Once one climbs over 70, there's more risk. But I think the data supporting that broad assumption derives from a set including tens of millions of people who smoked, ate like shit, and didn't get cancer screenings. I doubt the actuarial tables keep pace with medical science and behavioral changes as well as they should.

The maturity one acquires by our ages also makes one a much more chill parent. In the late 20s/early 30s, its arguable one is still a child (I remain one presently in certain regards), and will overreact, be neurotic, or helicopter parent. This fucks up kids, IMO. Having seen more in life and being cooler and more even-keeled as a result of that experience will probably create a calm home and thus a much more well adjusted kid.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

1. Photo of baby snake I took today. Isn’t that cute?
2. That’s a baby copperhead.

ETA we weren’t on the path together. And yes I can run faster than she can. And my son but only for distances greater than a mile.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Maybe, maybe not. While RT gives a good analysis of her risk factors, I think the more compelling point is that you just never know. You. Never. Know. I just went to the memorial service of a biking friend who was in his 40s, in fantastic shape, had two young daughters, and succumbed to a blood cancer that killed him about six weeks after diagnosis. Making plans about your life based on what you perceive to be the statistical odds of you living to a certain age strikes me as the wrong way of looking at things. I thought I would live forever. I now know I will not. But RT is having a child because that is what she wants, and that is what she has wanted for a long time. And now it is becoming a reality and that is fantastic, and she is overjoyed and that is fantastic, and I hope they live to be a million years old and get to know their grandchildren and great grandchildren and great great grandchildren. And if for some reason they don’t, well, nobody can predict the future. But right now, here in the present, RT is having a child, and that is fantastic.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Did you mean to post a photo?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I am just glad Paigow isn't here to see what you've become:mad::(:confused:

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Paigow is always here. Her spiritual energy runs through each of us in every post we make.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Man, this brings a tear to my eyes. This is really serious circle of life shit.

https://allears.net/wp-content/uploa...le-of-life.jpg

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I think it's time for LT to take a position. Just say no fuckin way to Shitareli.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1447573756688404486

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

True story: for a while I was P’s sister’s Facebook friend. On the surface the opposite of her. Suburban mom, sort of well off. But over time it became clear she was way more crazy than Paig’s.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

My wife and I had a joint project of hiking all of a nearby regional park. I had to take the lead because she kept missing the snakes on the trail.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Congratulations!!

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I went to get the most uninteresting and unimportant of health care matters addressed two months ago and subsequently spent a week waiting to be tested for a very, very bad disease.

I'm fine. But the surprises are indeed just that. The disease that had to be ruled out was insanely rare, and what I'd had that mimicked it even more rare.

What will get us is usually not a surprise. But to your broader point, I agree. Data are useful, but they'll also sap your appetite for life. I hear all these pundits pondering why people aren't filling all these empty jobs. It's not unemployment benefits. It's not even lousy pay, though that is significant. I think it's because considering your own mortality as the world has for the past nearly two years, people have said "Fuck this... I'm not going to run on the hamster wheel as The Man and the The Systems, and the reams of data they tell me support living as they want me to live - obediently, helping fatten their wallets - say I must."

Fuck the Protestant Work Ethic. It's a lie sold to service the most pernicious bastardizations of Capitalism. The only currency of consequence is time and experience. One should of course live her life cognizant of the data, but to let it control one like some form of Grand Empirical Master? Fuck that. Life's too short.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Radical Sebastian is Radical.

https://nomadflag.com/wp-content/upl...onic-image.jpg

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

FOH, Che was an idiot. He wasted his life. He hated the man in its suits and ties, but he didn't realize his rebel garb was as much a uniform. And revolution is a fucking full time job, its like billing 4000 hours a year. Fuck that man! Giving all your precious time to help the people? Sebby isn’t a flunky for anyone, man. Sebby's time is for Sebby, not some group.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

And he was a torturer (and petty thief from people who were kindly to him).

LessinPula, Croatia

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

The CIA called him "fairly intellectual for a Latino".

Likewise, I think we all think Sebby is fairly intellectual for a (something). I'm just not sure what that something is.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I sincerely have always believed the Protestant Work Ethic, and particularly the Calvinist suggestion that "work is its own reward," preposterous propaganda designed to serve holders of capital and those in political power.

It requires only the most basic rationality to see right through this narrative/control mechanism. Covid appears to have been the shock of recognition that compelled hundreds of millions around the world out of the self-delusion that frenetic busywork (one is far more productive when not wasting time putting on silly corporate casual uniforms and commuting) is virtuous.

I see these two trends irritating the fuck out of the ole men in monogrammed shirts losing their minds about not having all of their staff walking around the floors of their office buildings:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...rating/620382/

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinio...ty-ncna1166861

The second of those links addresses the most important aspect of Covid: Rethinking legacy structures and behaviors.

Why waste time commuting to jobs that don't require it? Why commute when it actually hampers productivity? Why run huge offices with massive carbon footprints just so workers can be seen within them by managers?

(Why does it matter that workers be "seen" working at all? If you give workers tasks, isn't the completion of the task all the proof that's needed?)

Business travel? Everyone likes it now and then... but why is that wasteful expenditure allowed? Other than to provide managers with excuses to see the world?

If it okay to let prisoners out of jail for compassionate release reasons (to avoid dying of Covid), then surely these people are deemed low risk to society. So then why were they jailed for so long in the first place?

If corporate America is truly obsessed with efficiency, and it should be, why do so many legacy behaviors that impede efficiency exist? Maybe because a lot of what we call "work" isn't work at all? Maybe a lot of it is politicking within the office, careerism?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I was with you up to the "business travel" snark.

There will be no questioning of my trips to Thailand, Malta, or Hong Kong on here. Each of those was mission critical. I drank every drink solely for the team.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I probably should have selected a better example of waste. Business travel is often unnecessary, but it does enrich the traveler in useful ways. A better example of massive waste we can all agree upon would be:

The Giant Steak Dinner With Clients Where Someone Who Doesn't Drink Wine But Thinks He Knows It Conspicuously Orders Lots Of Expensive Wine And All The Appetizers On The Menu

This mindless ritual combines a massive carbon footprint (cow methane) with decrease in productivity (next day's hangover) with near incurable damage to worker morale (realizing just what a goddamn bores your boss and clients really are).

I can make a steak as good as any I can buy at home. In fact, I frequently do. Without cheating by putting butter on it. And steaming vegetable sides isn't exactly high cuisine, unless one enjoys rock-hard asparagus thicker than ski poles.

"Ooooh, a football sized baked potato! With a 14 oz bowl of butter on the side! Heaven! And mac and cheese. Decadence defined!"

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

When I was a new GP at my last biglaw my Tier 1 auto supplier client was sold to a mega Tier 1. We also successfully settled a big plaintiff’s case. To celebrate I took the 2 in-house attorneys and the business guy who was head of the division, along with my partner to a very swank out there restaurant. It made sense as they each were going elsewhere and controlled millions in potential lawyer fees.

My partner had recently come back to Detroit from a few years working in wine country. During the course of a very liquid dinner I heard him chatting up the Sommelier, “$250 per bottle? That’s a great price for that wine.”

I thought he was just talking shop, but turns out that is what we were drinking. And it’s on my firm card. The bill was like $2000, $1250 for wine.

And I’m thinking do I tip 20%? There is no difference in work from bringing out a $50 bottle or a $250 bottle, right? But in the end I tipped 20%. And like I said, it did make sense to wine and dine those 3.

The next week our passive aggressive CEO sent out a firm wide email:

“Be wise with your firm expenses. Do you really think a client will send you work because you bought a $100 bottle of wine instead of. $50 bottle?”

I went to her office and explained that I had no idea what partner was ordering. She said she wasn’t writing about me. We had another partner that had a standing reservation each month at the most expensive restaurant around here. He’d take random people where he had some plausible reason why the person might be able to send work.

I was in awe of the gall.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Can't justify travel any more. For me the cases are equivalent when the meetings and deps are virtual. I am currently doing an inventory of my travel cards and figuring which one makes the cut. I can justify a card that lets me in all the United Clubs when I am traveling once a week. Once a year, not so much.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

It's all about the optics. Who gets the parade at work? The guy who spends 5 months and a million dollars in expenses on trial (while announcing it every day) to get a verdict but the company files CH11 the next day? Or the guy who quietly recovers $20 million dollars in actual money for a single person plaintiff but doesn't sing about it?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

How does a PI firm handle a lawyer running up expenses that aren't collected?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

They eat them. They can because some dipshit made the firm
$7 mil in fees for one case.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

This sort of thing does not happen in inhouse state agencies. At least where I am. Hell, people get fired for accepting baseball tickets from vendors.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

In case anyone is wondering, I am indeed more likely to send you work if you buy the $100 bottle of wine ($250 one is good too, but the jump from $50 to $100 in wine is mostly about quality and the jump from $100 to $250 is mostly about status and snobbery), but, Sebby is right, the steakhouse will do nothing for me and seems a profligate waste.

Also, none of that California shit. Ideally, a nice 1999 Ch. Musar.

It's all about knowing people's preferences for waste.

As to wasteful business expenses, the key really is that waste should be shared, because everyone enjoys partaking of something wasteful now and then. Whether it be the private box, the nice wine, the fancy dinner... make sure you cut your support staff in on some of the waste, be generous with your profligacy. Let everyone have their piece of the waste.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

At most big corporations too, today. I haven't been in big law for over 20 years. This same client is quite different now.

Like I have 5 admins that work closely with their two admins- one is in Illinois and one in CT. I thought it would great if they could all meet in person, so i proposed to the patent counsel that my firm would fly their two admins to Michigan for a day to meet. Way more practical then fly my 5 admins to IL and then CT.

Patent Counsel agreed it would be good for them to meet, but noted doing it would violate their policy against accepting what could be seen as something that could be seen as a bribe (whatever the term is). Understand, he took a trip to Detroit as being something that would be seen as a positive.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I've never met you, but I suspect we'd bond well in re: work ethic.

I can do office politics. I've been forced to get into all sorts of Machiavellian shenanigans and self-promoting shite. But I fucking hate it.

I view work in large organizations as a place of McFriends, and McPeers -- people and groups I interact with solely for the purpose of getting money I could use to live my actual life around organically-derived friends outside the office.

Every year I'd bitch about having posted crazy numbers, but still getting the same bonus as others with lesser results. In the end, I was kinda the sucker at the table, just a bit. If one can prance and preen and fake it to the top, he's probably smarter, or at least more shrewd, than people like me.

Those "actors" help flesh out the lie that the job is the brass ring, rather than an ATM one uses to get the actual brass ring (liquidity adequate to quit and live comfortably early on in life). People who just churn out numbers and openly despise the place are mercenaries. And management knows it.

I've never worked for anyone who wasn't absolutely certain that if I'd inherited a shit ton of money or won the lottery, I would quit in an instant. Being a better bullshitter might've been more lucrative.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Happens all the time. The guy running the costs is often not only bullshitting about how great his work is, but also the likelihood of success (winning and collecting, or settling well) of the case.

Churner is crunching through solid but unsexy cases with high likelihood of significant and early fee realization. Promoter is talking about all the neat theories and arguments and goings on in his case. What he's never talking is exactly how much the dollars are going to likely be and when exactly they're likely to arrive.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Or just bonus them out of the blue. YMMV, but in the few experiences where I managed numbers of people, in and out of law, I found that small bonuses here and there - just little reminders that management appreciates the work and will share - drive up morale.

It's also a nice feeling. If you have a good quarter and there's some cash sitting around, share some of it. A lot of employers are learning just how little loyalty employees had to them since Covid started. Maybe these whining managers should have treated their people a little bit better.

I see very little difference between people who use leverage to pay workers like shit and people who treat the wait staff poorly. Those people suck all the dicks, and they deserve all the wage inflation our current period of post-Covid inflation is going to stick up their asses.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I am totally here for this sort of thing:

https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incomin...pog5rjrt71.jpg
https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incomin...bhg5rjrt71.jpg
https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incomin...00h5rjrt71.jpg

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Sure. But a case comes in with $1M in expenses and nothing collected although the D offered $2m to settle. There is no penalty to the GP that made that choice?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

TBH, I have just blocked those numbers and said I lost my phone in a cab and don't have a new one.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Well, being that the settlement offer was https://c.tenor.com/_fjRxK385esAAAAC...hn-belushi.gif makes it easier. But you don't have to spend a million bucks to get zero in the end.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Agreed. Like getting a picture of the boss's new yacht or G5 is a great perk.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

My Harvard education taught me to treat staff better than that.