Learning Adventures at Home Depot
Just getting back from Hawaii, visiting my aging mom.
She asked me to run her by Home Depot to pick up a few succulents and some potting soil, which I didn’t mind doing even though I personally don’t spend a dime there because of their enormous support for Trump.
Here’s something I learned about Home Depot as a representative of a large class of corporate employers, and the socioeconomics of our times. Since the pandemic, they have lost 100 employees–in that one store alone, on Kauai, Hawaii.
Now they’re hiring, but the only job offerings are part-time, perhaps 20 hours per week, enabling them so they can avoid paying any worker benefits. They don’t want one fulltime employee who will enjoy a secure position; they want two part time workers both of whom they can oppress with pending starvation.
These employees will be working 20 hours per week X 4 weeks/month X perhaps $15 per hour = $1200 per month minus taxes, where monthly rents for a room in a shared house are maybe $1000.
Enter the world of disinformation where the narrative here is “No one wants to work anymore.” We’ve all heard it.
One needs to congratulate the corporate world for its unbridled success in PR here. They’re starving their employees, while making it appear that the problem is the worker’s laziness. Kudos.
Here’s just one more voice from history calling forward in time, instructing us how to deal with the attempt to overthrow the United States government.
Here’s an interesting perspective from author, political activist, and social justice advocate Naomi Klein.
A reader sent me this, remarking: He’s still here, on duty, guarding the country. 
We’ve all read novels in which various plots threads with no apparent relationship to one another come together at the conclusion to form a unified and consistent package with no loose ends.
Here’s a gag that could apply at any point in our modern history, but it’s particularly timely now, given our concerns about Merrick Garland and the invisible set of procedures that are supposedly taking place within the walls of the U.S. Department of Justice.
From his Wikipedia page:
John Locke was one of the most influential thinkers of the European Enlightenment, whose works became central to the U.S. Constitution.
A reader asked me to comment on this article featuring the promise of a “hybrid triplane” design that could be put into place by 2030, offering very low-cost intercity travel– “airfares cheaper than rail.” The plane (see artist’s rendering) has a total capacity of 19 passengers.
