Hammer Mill Days

Feeling a bit reflective this week. And no, it's not because I'm standing in front of a mirror. That's just narcissism - whole different category of crazy. Besides, all of my mirrors cracked years ago. Let me start from the beginning. This week I was trying to program Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to make guacamole, which is a challenge in as much as his programming consists of setting a combination of three-position switches in a certain configuration for a given task. Of course, Marvin was built by a mad scientist (Mitch Macaphee), so there's no guide for what configuration will deliver what outcome, which leaves only trial and error. I was getting close to guacamole (I had found the right combination for gazpacho), but strangely I ended up programming him to replay demo recordings from our earliest days. (Who would've thunk those two things would be one toggle-click away from one another?) Well, that got me thinking back to the days of yore (or days of...

There's been a lot of crowing about how great the economy is now, with low unemployment, marginally rising wages, etc. (Sure, only 20,000 jobs were gained last month, but what the hell ... rich people are making a lot of money, and that brings the average up.) Every administration takes any opportunity to exaggerate their accomplishments, but this claim of "full employment" is frankly laughable and doesn't hold up to even the slightest scrutiny. What lurks behind the seemingly strong job numbers is the fact that many, many of these "jobs" are not really jobs at all. I'm referring to the vaunted "Gig Economy", which currently employs about 36% of all American workers - a staggering statistic. This isn't a Trump-only thing - the gig phenomenon really got going under Obama, and they presented these "jobs" and part-time employment as evidence of their success, just as the current administration does (though with a bit less verve)...