Now got a FOURTH interview for the same job. Which is good, I suppose, but come on, guys, make your minds up. At least this one's with the CEO so there's really nowhere else to escalate afterwards (board of directors?)
1: good luck, ajay!
Have you prepared an answer to the inevitable, "So, ajay, what does two plus two equal?"
That's a lot of interviews. I still haven't heard back from mine.
Our hiring process is a ridiculous number of interviews as well, but the last couple are rubber stamps -- the immediate levels of management make the decision, and then the higher-ups bless the successful candidate. Hopefully you're going through a similar process.
"So, ajay, what does two plus two equal?"
Sometimes it makes four. Sometimes it makes five. Sometimes it makes three. Sometimes it is all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.
tomorrow is the last day my lovely little house is mine. I know know of no arithmetic to make that five days. Next month, on the other hand, is 31 days of woodworm or wet rot. who knows what horror lurks beneath the horrible carpets?
Take the floors down to their natural linoleum.
||
NMM to Sheikh Sabah, the Emir of Kuwait and the last of the moderating figures in the region who helped to reign in the craziness of MBS and MBZ after Sultan Qaboos died in January.
|>
9: that's very sad. I remember visiting him with my dad. Dad generally thought highly of him.
Cassandane went across the country to help her parents move her aunt into a nursing home, since dementia is advancing. So I've been single parenting a five-year-old for six days now and still have over a week of it ahead of me. (Exact time uncertain since Cassandane will quarantine at a friend's condo near the airport until she can get a negative coronavirus test before actually returning home.) I hesitate to complain since I know Thorn essentially does so for not one kid but three, on a regular basis rather than temporarily, with other complications, but still, it is... not fun.
9: sorry, I'm being a little bitch, but... rein.
6: I believe I've found the definitive answer.
I was in kindergarten, some years after the civil war ended, when the American ambassador came to visit our school with an entourage of reporters and sycophants. The ambassador engaged a number of kids in conversation. He surprised me at the bottom of the slide, asking me directly in English, "How much is two and two?" Without pausing I said, "Are you buying or selling?"
7. There is a woodworm subplot in the current and final season of Last Tango in Halifax. Was someone here looking for high-quality non-violent fare recently? Last Tango is really quite good.
Not technically an ekranoplan, but ekranoman?
I don't know why they feel the need to talk about saving lives instead of, "If you could do this, you know you would too."
I can see how flying jets suits would lead to a need for more paramedics.
If the paramedics are needed, you're going too slow.
1: Good luck! That feels like way too many interviews, unless you're working directly for the CEO?
7: I must have missed what's going on in some other thread. Were you in a rental (maybe for the summer) that you're giving up, or is this actually a house that you own that you're selling?
11: That sounds miserable on both ends; hope it's over as swift as possible and you're soon sharing duties again.
Nothing thrilling going on from my end, save that my wife took off the whole weekend, so we got to share all 3 days together. It was a nice breath of fresh air, and really seemed to help her get realigned. Unfortunately, she headed back into last week of the month sales, so that's always a source of more than usual stress, and October's probably going to be terrible for all retail -- just for election year held-breath, not even including the compounding effects of no corona relief, etc.
Today is my birthday. Not the best circumstances for celebration, but it's been fine so far.
20: Yes, of course. I forgot and should have remembered. Happy Birthday, teo.
22: No worries. Happy birthday to you too.
19: actually selling a house that I own (well, almost entirely -- the bank had some claim in it). Moving to a larger place down the road with Ume. It is sufficiently old that the front room needs damp proofing because the level of the road outside has risen since the original damp course was made. The fireplaces are massive, more 17th and 19th century, and the woodworm the size of linguine. it should be a lot of fun.
Today I sold the bicycle on which I rode - slowly - 15 miles to a hospital appointment while starting a heart attack eight years ago.
Happy birthday, teo and BG! Remember not to blow out all the candles -- you'll need the candle light to read your Epictetus tonight.
Jetpacks on the fells. Ekranoplans on the lakes.
Swallows & Amazons For Ever!
Swallows and Amazons inspired manga about young kids flying jetpacks and elekranoplans over the Lake District?
29. Sounds really good to me! I'd buy two! Just think of what they could do with jetpacks and ekranoplans. Leaves sailing dinghies and hiking in the Lake District in the dust.
Let me be the first to wish teo and BG happys birthday!
14: Last Tango is really good, as is pretty much anything by Sally Wainwright: Scott & Bailey, Happy Valley, Gentleman Jack are all well worth the time to watch.
Also, Sir Kraab and I are doing fine, all things considered. We feel very fortunate given everything that's going on in the world.
Huh, turns out I know the guy who wrote the "I'm a liberal professor and Barrett is awesome."
Happy belated Birthday to teo and BG!
Thanks, all.
34: I think that kind of letter should be recognized as its own genre.
Happy birthday Teo and BG!
My daughter now texts me for backup when she gets into political arguments. I coach her with comments like "Unemployment is at 11%! Don't let them get away with claiming Trump has created jobs for black people."
I count this as a parenting win.
That is nice!
A friend of mine semi-recently discovered that his 10th grade son has been dabbling in Ben Shapiro, and then more recently it came out that the son is a full-blown Trump supporter. The friend is engaging the son in discussions, but also trying to tread a fine line that doesn't cause the son to wall off and disengage entirely. It sounds really awful.
Oy. That has to be awful. I don't know what you do.
It's genuinely bizarre to me that the overwhelming Democraticness of millennials really doesn't seem to be continuing with the next generation.
Gotta distinguish yourself from the olds.
No, really I have no idea.
Is this youngest group actually trending less progressive, or is it solidly progressive but marred by vulnerable, angry white boys getting scooped up by the underbelly of the internet?
It's always hard to tell how meaningful these are because surveys aren't designed for these kind of crosstabs, but there was a poll showing much higher approval of Trump among under 25 minorities than over 25 minorities last week. It's not just white boys. (But it is mostly boys.)
Socializing adolescent boys and young men has always been a problem.
Is it just the "Some people just want to watch the world burn" problem? Not exactly conservatism, but nihilism? That, maybe people grow out of.
Back in my day, we just endangered the lives of others and ourselves with careless drinking and driving. We didn't have the internet.
Back in 2008, I was teaching a gen ed class for first year students during Obama's election. The minority students mostly stated that they didn't experience racism, when it came up in personal reflections or class discussions about the election, etc. There was a strong "racism is over" vibe with these 18 year olds.
At the time, I thought it was because of the strong national opinion that "racism is over", plus the more salient economic parts - buying a house, applying for jobs, getting promoted in the workplace, getting a loan - wouldn't be visible to 18 year olds much yet. I figured in ten years they might have a different opinion, just from life itself. Police brutality existed, of course, but it was also more deniable in the pre-easy-recording era.
I would guess that 18 year olds in 2020 are much less likely to say racism is over. But I wonder if that's not a turn off to young angry minority boys, for reasons I can't fully tease apart. Not liking to align yourself with the victimized group, perhaps.
Or because they like the attacks on feminism.
40: some of that is the massively transformed media ecosystem since 2000, no? It really is nothing remotely like what we had when I was in high school in the 1990s. (This is a depressing topic but it does interest me.)
I appreciated this article about the "rainbow coalition of white supremacy" (from this thread):
They are among nearly a dozen black, Latino, and Asian participants at far-right rallies on the West Coast interviewed by The Daily Beast recently. They represent the new face of the far right that some scholars term "multiracial white supremacy."
The Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, which overlap, embrace an America-first nationalism that is less pro-white than it is anti-Muslim, anti-illegal immigrant, and anti-Black Lives Matter. "Proud Boys is multi-racial fraternity with thousands of members worldwide," a lawyer for the group's leader, Gavin McInnis, said in a statement. "The only requirements for membership are that a person must be biologically male and believe that the West is the best."
Daniel Martinez HoSang, associate professor at Yale University, co-author of the forthcoming Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, says "Multiculturalism has become a norm in society" and has spread from corporations and consumer culture to conservatism and the far-right. [...]
None of it is surprising to me, but it is kind of an amazing reflection on what things people consider worth fighting for. And, on preview, I think 47.last is right. (Poof, you're not oppressed!)
Oh and here's a Proud Boys explainer from Jane Coaston at Vox.
52: Yes, I surprised to see this from Jane Coaston today,
A note: the Proud Boys are not a "white supremacist" group, they are... a lot of other things (anti-Semitic, extremely violent, weird)
https://twitter.com/cjane87/status/1311324303040942080
But she has obviously spent a lot more time studying these groups than me..
I think there is a major, for lack of a better word, cringe factor with the Democratic Party specifically having its leaders be Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, etc. Excessive deference to the elderly aside (Donna Shalala? Steny Hoyer? Dianne Feinstein?), nobody ever wanted to hear these people talk. People who are bad communicators to begin with and have been out of touch for decades with what people care about who aren't empty-nest homeowners, if they ever were. The Republicans at least have people who make bold and clear public statements, crazy or malicious as they may be.
The strange thing is that the communication people who work for the Democrats are better, and a few people have a huge following (AOC, Bernie, people at the local level) but you need charismatic spokespeople who also has some actual power in the party. Can't Obama go back to the Senate?
Coaston's Vox piece pretty directly contradicts her notion that they aren't white supremacists. It's pretty credulous to buy into their line that they are merely "Western chauvinists." She seems to want to make a distinction here between "white supremacism" and "white nationalism," but I can't grasp what that means in the context of the Proud Boys. Seems like if you had to pick between the two, they'd be white supremacists.
By allowing more mercury and lead pollution, the Republican Party is expanding their base 20 years from now.
Honestly, it's been a bad decade for white people as a brand.
Yes, that tweet contrasts deeply with the linked article. It specifically profiles its founder McInnes as someone who said "I love being white" and wrote for VD*re. The only hint at anything different is where it says they permit nonwhite members - and I wonder if that's really white Latinos.
I am fully willing to believe most of our fascist youth organizations are composed of various ethic groups that are united in hating black people.
*ethnic groups. They are all in the same ethic group.
56: You get power in the party by getting people to vote for you -- which Bernie and AOC did, so people actually do listen to them. The idea that "the party" has some stranglehold on who gets the megaphone is waaaay oversold. The Republican Establishment always enforced much better party discipline, and they never would have gone for Trump if they'd had a choice.
57 et al: The article is better than the tweet, which I think has more or less been refuted. The group is a magnet for belligerent, opportunistic idiots who can pick and choose what they want to claim about their motives. It's WS/WN-friendly, has done a lot to promote both causes, and will continue to do a lot to promote both causes. However, it's also really impressively fucking stupid!
56 It's pretty rare to have high levels of charisma and competence in the same person. I have high hopes for AOC.
IMO, actual governance requires a whole lot more competence than charisma, but obviously some measure of charisma is a baseline requirement for elective office. But national charisma isn't just unimportant to a lot of jobs, it's probably counterproductive. Steny Hoyer doesn't care what I think of him: I'm not voting for him either as a congressman or for a leadership position in the House. To care what I think, he'd have to be be a different kind of person than he is. Would he still appeal to his colleagues? Would he still be effective at his job in the leadership?
I need to get off the internet, so I'll offer an analogy: we don't expect, or even want, every player on the field to be Tom Brady.
Legislative positions only provide a bully pulpit when the rich people who own the media outlets decide that it is in their interest that they should provide one. (Eg Newt Gingrich) McConnell, who has zero charisma, has enough power that when he talks, it gets reported. But only briefly, and only the bottom line.
The Vox piece is quite well done. Nobody should ever use Twitter for anything.
56: Not meaning to pick on you particularly, but I'm really starting to hate the current fashionable usage of "cringe". People are using it to mean something like "an esthetic reaction of distaste that I will stick by as substantively important without making any real argument about." The implication seems to be that if you were, I don't know, culturally sensitive in the right way, you'd understand that this esthetic failure being indicated demonstrates a moral failure, and I think it's pretty much always bullshit.
where it says they permit nonwhite members - and I wonder if that's really white Latinos.
See 52. It's truly anyone who is willing to be more racist, flag-humping, and generally OTT than his white brethren -- Afro-Latino, Samoan, Asian, Black American, etc.
65 I don't think people like Steny Hoyer are listening to Bernie Sanders. Especially not about how to do their jobs.
I think the 2020 nomination was Sanders' to lose, and that he did lose it by not expanding his coalition. Some of that is his indiscipline with respect to his more challenging followers, and some is his unwillingness to accept that he lost the 2016 nomination on Super Tuesday, for reasons that have nothing to do with the DNC or corporate sponsorship, and that he needed to find a way to win over middle-aged black people in the South.
69: Did you see the Contra video on the subject? Cringe turns out to be a surprisingly multifaceted concept, but a lot of those facets are fairly stupid and I think your take on its use in this context is right.
No, I basically don't consume any video content. Although that's the same woman I linked on cancel culture, and there was a transcript of that one -- is there a transcript of the cringe video?
does anyone else hate the tendency to turn perfectly good blogging into podcasts/video? Blogging I can read but blob media takes time and tends to form an irksome queue of stuff I have to get to.
Cosign 75 with emphatic strokes of my quill!
74: I checked - not yet, unfortunately.
Yeah, it's vexing that, apparently partially through the Algorithm, there has been a tendency toward super-long YouTube videos that could have been essays. Most of them not nearly as substantive as Wynn's.
Anyway, I'm not going to watch it, but if you wanted to repeat the good bits I'd be interested, she seemed smart.
Let's see... some historical internet anthropology about cringeposting, positing that sometimes the emotion of cringe is being vicariously embarrassed for the bad behavior of people who are too un-self-aware to be embarrassed for themselves. Some continuum from that to just plain "look at this awful person, something horrible should happen to them" postings, but that may be less cringe and more just vitriol. But eventually, relevant here, that a good chunk of cringe is ridiculing people whose attributes are similar to one's own in the big picture but just different or obtrusive enough to make you want to condemn them because "They're making us LOOK BAD", distancing from one's own doubts about oneself.
75 x100. But it's not new, right? Vlogging was going to destroy blogging in like 2010. But yes. I want to control my own pacing, thankyouverymuch, and I can read way faster than you can talk. And I can stop and start reading on a dime, as my attention flits to other things, and that's also annoying with video and podcasts.
I don't know if this is a national thing or not? But in central Texas, we're seeing these long caravan of Trump pick up trucks forming these long parades and gumming up the highways. Deliberately going slowly, etc. Definitely up in Austin, and around our parts, but I don't know if it's national or not?
Anyway, on the topic of multiracial white supremacists: my Latino neighbor, the one with the terrifying arsenal, was afixing a gigantic american flag to the back of his pick up truck the other day, and it gave me the shivers.
I'm not sure when it became a standard feature but the option to watch videos at 1.5 or 2x speed has been great. Some seminars or meetings at work are recorded and I prefer to watch the repay instead because it saves me half the time I would have spend watching live.
Nobody should ever use Twitter for anything.
Well, actually, I hadn't seen "Trump brags about extrajudicial killings" highlighted until now. I don't even know if this is horseshit or not -- did he actually order the killing, or just spontaneously decide to take credit for it?
I am bored, bored, bored, that's how I am
Correction, she doesn't say vitriol is not cringe, but has a more complex explanation, and uses a different word for it. From "reviewing our notes" near the end:
"The word cringe really describes two different emotions, either embarrassment or contempt. You can feel either one for yourself or for someone else. When you're embarrassed for someone else, we call that vicarious embarrassment. And that can mean cringing with someone who's embarrassed themselves, which I've argued is excluded in the internet usage of the word cringe. Or it can mean embarrassment for someone who isn't embarrassed themselves, in which case we say we're cringing at them. Now if someone who's part of your ingroup is embarrassing themselves, and by proxy embarrassing the ingroup that includes you, you feel 'ingroup cringe', which can involve both vicarious embarrassment and a kind of self-cringe. And on the contempt side, contempt for someone who shares traits in common with you, particularly if they're traits you have contempt for in yourself, can develop into 'morbid cringe', which is that obsession with a lolcow, that addiction to contemptuous gazing at a dark mirror in which you see everything you hate about yourself, or about your ingroup."
I'm assuming that the younger generation interested in the alt-right would have been, in 1995, totally into Rand and going Galt. It's a phase -- young men like to hear that their problems with the world are because the world doesn't appreciate their genius -- but now the ones that didn't grow out of it have the Internet.
I did see an ostentatiously large pickup with an American flag and fascist-police ("thin blue line") flag drive through the middle of a local liberal suburb, while I was biking around last weekend. It was out of place and I suspect that was the point.
We have a mile long corridor where most of the big box stores are, and there's the occasional Trumper parade. I first noticed this summer seeing small groups of people lined up with folding chairs sitting on the grass along the route. Why are these people sitting along this ugly street, I asked myself. Later -- oh.
Another record Covid day in Montana. Broke the new case record set on 9/25, which broke the record set on 9/23. Which broke the record set on 9/18. Today's positive rate over 10%. Added about 10% to our active case numbers, both statewide and county.
It seems so quaint to have thought in mid-March that this was going to be a two or maybe even three month thing.
The Dakotas are trying to kill off as many as they can to help Trump.
A couple of weeks ago I happened by a mini pro-Trump demonstration in my neighborhood -- at the corner of Broadway and High which is typically a place where there are little anti-war or anti-Trump protests.
I'm not sure when it became a standard feature but the option to watch videos at 1.5 or 2x speed has been great.
I am also a big fan of this option.
62: Whenever a hate group says "We hate X and Y, but we don't hate Z" I feel confident that they will get around to hating Z eventually.
96 is an important point. Insular subcultures , good or bad, get more and more extreme.
96: And there's zero doubt when Y = Jews.
94: Broadway. That's in Clintonville, where I live.
Broad and High is the heart of downtown, right next to the State House. That's where the big demonstrations/protests are.
I used to work there, which is why I asked.
I don't remember the Clintonville street names anymore.
62: Whenever a hate group says "We hate X and Y, but we don't hate Z" I feel confident that they will get around to hating Z eventually.
"We hate blacks and Muslims, but we don't hate whites." Interesting.
69 is the most profound thing I've read today.
I have gotten around to hating everything.
I hate having apparently killed this thread.
It's the thread that can't be killed. It just reincarnates itself. One falls off the page and a new one, subject to the approval of the Communist Party of China, is born.
So, the ruling is out in Trump v. Bullock. Defeat for the President on the merits, and on the equities.
89: i wonder if that was my town.
In particular, the President's assertion that the pandemic is pretty much over in Montana didn't go over at all well.
106: I guess this thread felt lucky.
I finally read that Proud Boys thing above. They're fucked up in more ways that I thought.
With all that is wrong in America, this headline made me feel that there is still something right in America that endures,
The Army Rolls Out a New Weapon: Strategic Napping
It is about time. The US army is amazingly bad at getting enough sleep. When my interplanetary mercenaries were working with them a few years ago, the Americans were aghast to see our soldiers sleeping in the middle of the day. Our response was "Look, he was on duty 0400-1000, he's off duty now, so he's getting some rest because he's tired and he's back on again at 1400. Getting rest is important." But that just didn't compute. If our sergeant major saw us sleeping during the day, they said, he'd find some work for us to do.
Their officers just tried to stay awake constantly - you'd see them at two in the morning in the front of a Humvee with a Nespresso machine hooked in to the power feed, doing the nodding-dog act.
The reservists used to stay up all night at the weekend and then drive home on Sunday night - occasionally they'd nod off at the wheel and crash, they said, in a kind of that's-just-what-happens tone.
We always worked on the rule that if you're not on duty, and you've cleaned your kit and washed and had something to eat, then you should be sleeping. Whatever time of day it was. Because you never know when you'll get the next chance.
You read any number of war memoirs and soldiers are catching 40 winks whenever they could grab it.
There's a TV show filming locally, and a call for extras popped up on my feed. Not something for me, obviously, but I wonder just what an animal activist type is, and, really, what sort of scene this is going to be.
What we are looking for:
Women ages 21-70 animal activist types who are comfortable being topless. If you have no issue with this submit and then we will tell you more about the scene. If you have already been booked for this scene and want to submit please do. DO NOT send us topless photos please.
Work:Tuesday 10/13 &10/14
Covid test: Friday 10/9 in Missoula between 8-1:30 pm
Location: Hamilton
Rate: $400/8 on 10/13 and $200/8 on 10/14 +35 gas bump
Covid rate: $150.00
Category: Strong women
How we want you to submit:
Name
Age
Phone number
Height/weight
Sizes bustxwasitxhip size pant dress shoe size
Occupation
Town you live in
Please email us current photos
Anyone know patent law? Or maybe this is a general enough question for any lawyer. I'm having a minor dispute with a former employer. Terms of that employment were standard for the field which is they own any inventions patents working for them. I no longer work there but I am an inventor on some things they're filing so they have sent me assignment forms. I agree to assign to them, their heirs, assignees, blah blah blah all rights to the invention for no monetary consideration, and I also agree to perform any duties to prosecute the patent- signatures, affidavits, witnessing, testimony. Like most patents in this field, it's all extremely unlikely anything would get to that point.
Each time they send me this, I ask them to add written assurance that if they make me do something that takes significant time, like testifying in a patent proceeding, they'll pay me unspecified customary rates for experts in the field. My rationale being I'm not signing a document that says I'll work for them for free when I'm no longer an employee.
Twice they've agreed to this- once adding a paragraph agreeing, once with a separate letter. This time they're pushing back, asking why I always ask for this, that I'm the only person who's ever asked for this, it's a standard assignment agreement in the field, and every time I ask for this it takes their time to deal with it. I'm not sure why they claim the latter- we had agreed on language before so just put it in again.
AITA for not just signing what they put in front of me? Statements like "this is how everyone does it" make me even more pissed off.
Your position sounds very reasonable to me.
Seems reasonable to me. Although, if you're being asked to testify as a fact witness, paying you anything other than the ordinary nominal witness fee is going to be problematic.
In the broader context, how important to you is the goodwill of this former employer?
I finally read that Proud Boys thing above.
It has now been updated. You should have delayed another day.
116. I imagine "animal activist type" means aging hippie with experience of getting stuck in on demonstrations. What's the movie about?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_(American_TV_series)
I watched the first episode, in a local theater, but (IMHMHB) was so incensed by the fundamental misstatement of Montana water law that propelled a major plot point, I haven't been able to bring myself to watch any more of it.
I'm not watching it because I've been allergic to Kevin Costner ever since Waterworld.
I'm wondering if they're referring to PETA/"I'd rather go naked than wear fur" types?
Costner is said to be buying land hereabouts, so I guess we'll see him around now and again. Which is fine so long as he doesn't believe in any of that stupid shit about Montana water rights.
We drinks his own urine, after purification.
So, 429 new cases statewide, beating the previous record of 348, set yesterday.
125 Aren't those for recognizably famous people?
Getting filmed topless in Montana in mid-October could be something of a challenge. One would not be surprised to see temps in the 40s or lower in the morning, getting to the 60s, if they're lucky, in the afternoon. (Avg high in Hamilton for the whole month is 59F, Avg low is 32!)
My neighbors have workers fixing the exterior of their house. How many Journey songs do I have to listen to before I can shoot their radio?
I am not a lawyer, and these things depend a lot on jurisdiction, but once it gets past six, no jury in the world would convict you.
Of course, by that measure, "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin' " counts as two.
In this context, "Wheel in the Sky" is a stylized act, continuously producong through its performance that which it purports merely to describe, a fascinating instance where the use/mention distinction fails to apply.
It's even better that the repeated performance is not an intentional one, but rather a half-automated consequence of the top-40 song selection algorithm which (re)cycles the mantra of the song's repetitve chorus.
Remember how I'm letting my Calculus students take turns picking out a song to give everyone a break partway through a two hour class? We have in fact listened to Wheel In the Sky, the other day.
White boys like classic rock. I don't know if you knew that.
Also this is cracking me up: our beloved admin assistant, plus one lecturer, used to bring in treats at the beginning of each month for the department, and to celebrate all the birthdays for that month.
The new admin is sort of a dimwit. The way she is extending the celebration for covid times is to send out an email that says, (and I am quoting here) "Please find attached the recently updated list of our department birthdays, three of which are in October." Then she attached a spreadsheet with the full year's worth of birthdays.
It is giving me I Am Fun vibes.
Way up at 11: Cyrus, sorry you've drawn the highly undesirable "solo parenting during a pandemic" card this month. Truly, I cannot remember what it's like to have childcare during an entire workday, five days a week. Apparently I used to take it for granted, or something, but it's a distant not-even-memory now.
141: Another example of how people refuse to give Hillary credit for anything good! Her name is right there!
119- I don't care about pissing off the legal department at former employer. I'd rather not piss off the scientific leaders.
It's pretty common in this field to pay expert witnesses in patent litigation about $500/hr if something did get to that point, which almost certainly won't happen here- but since the document addresses it I feel like I have to as well. The language they want me to sign says I will testify "without charge" in any proceedings for them or for anyone they sell the patent too.
I guess what's making me mad is 1) they're complaining about how this adds to their work when all I'm asking is put back in language we already signed before; 2) they said no one else ever complains and just signs the standard form, why am I being difficult? 3) they've offered many reassurances they won't actually make me work for free (even though the language is the document says I would have to if they wanted.) I'd think lawyers would be the first to appreciate that legal language takes precedence over "trust us."
"trust us" and "whoever they sell the patent to" doesn't seem to go very well together.
Expert witnesses get paid to give opinions based on facts established by others, fact witnesses can be obligated, for $35 and mileage, to recount what they saw. (Is there even subpoena power for a PTO action? I don't know). They can rehire you for the day of the hearing, I suppose, at your former wage.
Your condition makes you unusable as a fact witness. Obviously you don't care, and they only barely do because, as you say, odds any individual patent is going to get litigated are pretty long.
I'll confess to a weakness for the PMJ version of Don't Stop Believin.
For obvious reasons, Streetlight People is always welcome.
|| This is from David Remnick's "By the Book" interview in the NYT
You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
Can't I just order in and read? I mean, what if Shakespeare eats with his mouth open and George Eliot fails to bring a cake?
Is this the most bizarrely sexist thing ever? He's inviting a long-deceased genius writer for dinner, and he expects her to bring cake? Note also the contrast between that and his expectations for Shakespeare.
David Remnick is cancelled!
||
They should make a new Remington Steele, but about George Eliot.
1: interview has just happened and I think it went very well...
Good luck, but it sounds like you won't even need it.
I nailed the question about rhumb lines.
They actually asked you that on the interview? That's my kind of question.
151: congratulations. 152 is exactly right.
Thanks guys. Should hear from them early next week...
157 That's quick. I still haven't heard back from my last interview. They told me end of September - early October. I figure next week I'll send a follow-up email.
Good luck, ajay! I'm now hoping this results in your having further interviews with seven random members of the nobility and then the Queen or something, because of some extremely convoluted ancient document that gives her the final say, at which point they explain to you what the job really is. If this happens, be advised that you will only get the job if you decline the offer twice. (Once it's all over... let's just say you won't have to do much house-hunting.)
The Queen has actually already given me one job, and I have a bit of paper on the way (not ancient, but convoluted, in the sense that it comes rolled up in a tube and you have to unroll it) in which she describes me as her trusty and well-beloved friend and says lots of other nice things about me.
Don't show that to the sixth nobleman, at all costs. (Once you step inside his house, though, it will be quite clear who he thinks the real monarch is.)
140: heh, thanks. For what it's worth, we have Atossa in a pod with four other families' kids and a pod leader from a company that used to focus on special ed services in the Before Time. School is harder for us it was than 12 months ago - distance learning takes thought and we host the pod one week a month, for example - but not nearly as bad as it was in April.
Monday and Tuesday night I would have said this was horrible anyway because we had some discipline problems, fights, whatever. Wednesday and Thursday were better. Then today at 5 AM she woke up with a fever and stomachache so bad I thought it was appendicitis. We just left the emergency room so I can confidently say it's not, but still, it's been a long day.