Oil baron's son? Well, right this way!

One of my brother's has a childhood friend who's nickname in his early twenties was Id. Rugged, good looking, and a genuinely good guy, Id was a heavy-drinking, party-loving wild child. Some of the stories... (One included an encounter he and my brother had with a rabid racoon...) Fortunately, Id outgrew his idness and went on to live life on the straight and narrow. 

I haven't thought of Id being Id in years. But, although Id was never a conman, grifter, crook, the first thing I thought of when I read about Nicholas Bryant was here's a guy who's pure id. And unlike Id, who figured it out on his own before he did himself or anyone else irreparable harm, it looks like Nicholas Bryant will have plenty of time in prison to work on his ego and superego. 

Bryant was doing not so much with his young life, but - having played around with check kiting and rent avoidance - he was onto the concept of the grift. So he landed on some sort of scheme that was making him excellent money (he claims $60K a month) running some type of fraudulent oil-related business that I can't quite figure out. But it involved hiring and scamming subcontractors, including a childhood friend. 

But the directly paying schemes weren't enough to fund the glorious lifestyle he wanted. So he concocted a "scheme using payment platforms to send fake payments" for luxury travel and pricey goods. 

He said the scheme began in January 2020, when he and a friend were spending a Thursday evening at a Topgolf in Dallas—when they agreed that “playing a round of golf in Scottsdale” would be way more fun. On a whim, he said he started calling charter companies and was surprised when they were able to fly to Arizona soon after.

“We did the trip no problem and when I asked how I am going to pay for it, [the sales representative] said I could wire the money,” he said, noting he “just Googled third-party wire transfers” and learned that these systems would send over confirmation payments that he later learned could cancel.

The delayed payment confirmations, he said, was how he was able to “get away with it for so long.” But, he noted, he was constantly hounded by private jet companies when they realized that he did not pay. 

"I would just stop taking their calls,” he said. “I just went crazy.” (Source: Daily Beast)

Poor baby. Imagine having to dodge all those calls. 

But as stressful as all those pesky calls were, Bryant remained pretty insouciant, which I guess is pretty easy if you have no inner core and live solely for what (someone else's) money can buy, and having no concept of what the future might hold for him. 

 “I was living life,” he said. “I was spending 50, 70, $100,000 dollars a day at the peak. I was so far deep into it it didn’t really matter.”

Anyway, soon his social media accounts were popping with images of Nicky-boy living large. 

For over a year, scammed his way to the high life, creating new identities as some fake oil tycoon's son or another as he went his merry way.

“I took private jets and stayed at the most expensive Airbnbs and hotels. Went deep sea fishing and toured everything that was possible,” Bryant said this week, noting that he has a lot of remorse over his actions. “I bought and drove five different high-end cars.”

“By far my most favorite trip was to [Turks] and Caicos. I spent two weeks on the island from fishing to sailing yachts. I stayed in a $30,000-a-night house. It was amazing,” he added.

In all, prosecutors estimate Bryant stole approximately $1.5 million in the fraud scheme.

He also conned a contractor into beginning construction on a million dollar house. (Seriously, what kind of contractor would keep pouring money down the cellar hole of a house if a payment hadn't cleared? My home reno was for a lot less than a million dollars, and I knew the contractor. I can't imagine he would have kept on the job if a check had bounced.) 

Having admitted that the "allegations against him 'are pretty much true'", Bryant is cooling his heels in the Lubbock County Detention Center, which I'm assuming is a far piece from the $30K a night house he once lounged around in. He's awaiting sentencing, and could get 20 years. 

Here's how Bryant's scheme worked well enough to sucker 50 businesses and individuals:

What the now 26-year-old Bryant has admitted is that, between 2020 and 2021, he would use online platforms like QuickBooks to send payment confirmations without ever intending to pay up. It would take days, however, before vendors and businesses would learn that Bryant had canceled that transaction before the money was sent through. By then, Bryant told The Daily Beast, he had already enjoyed the jet ride or the lavish excursion and vanished.

Talk about living in and for the moment. 

In the end, prosecutors say, Bryant took at least 17 private jet flights, stayed in numerous high-end hotels, spent half a day on a 90-foot yacht with friends where he demanded a steak and champagne dinner, and obtained five luxury cars worth $500,000.

Rather than concentrating solely on making public noises about remorse, Bryant must be driving his lawyer crazy with his comments from the jailhouse. 

Bryant told The Daily Beast that while he thought it was “crazy they are comparing me to both” [Anna Delvy] Sorokin and [Frank] Abagnale—he feels like he’s got the notorious swindlers beat.

“My story might be more wild than theirs! I can almost guarantee it!” he added.

I don't imagine Nicholas Bryant will ever have much by way of a superego, but where's your ego when you need it. Surely, his ego would have whispered in his ear not to be crowing about his crimes. 

It's pretty amazing how many folks Bryant was able to con. And I'll give him this. He was pretty fast on his feet. What tripped him up was trying to book the same private charter company for both legs of a trip from Lubbock to Miami to Houston and back. The company was looking for its money, and not just a promise of it, when Bryant went into avoidance mode. Rather than risk being confronted at the airport by the charter company, he high-tailed it over to a Porsche dealer. Who he managed to con out of an SUV. 

But a Porsche SUV wasn't quite enough. A month later, he was arrested while "he was at a car dealership attempting to buy an Audi and a Maserati."

Bryant is now making some moo-moo noises about remorse.

“It was fun, but I definitely do regret it. A lot of these companies are good, hard-working people. They built these companies up and it’s hard to take a $100,000 loss. And I did that to 50 people,” Bryant said in a Wednesday phone call, his thick southern accent choking up. “It’s definitely weird to look at pictures and think wow I was just living in the moment.”

Depend on how the sentencing goes, Bryant may have plenty o' time to live in plenty o' prison moments. May he draw some comfort from spinning tales for his fellow inmates about his exploits. 

“He always seemed to have friends and talk about how his father was in the oil business,” one high-school friend who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of personal safety, told The Daily Beast. “But he was always a piece of shit too. There was just always something with him.”

Frank Abegnale was bullshitter and con artist, but at least he had interesting stories to tell about his personas (pilot, doctor, professor, etc.). Anna Delvey/Sorokin was a bullshitter and con artist, but at least she had a real interest in the arts. 

Nicholas Bryant? Looks kind of soulless to me. All this waste of his young life just so he could create a rich kid fantasy life for himself.

As for Id? If something were to happen to my brother, Id's one of the first people I'd call. And he'd be there for my brother in a nano-second. 

Too rotten for words

I really don't want to dwell on Elon Musk, but he does tend to keep popping up. And like a mole in Whack-a-Mole, once that little heady pops up, I just want to whack him (metaphorically) with my black mallet (virtual). 

There is just so much, but this one particularly sticks in my craw.

A Twitter engineer was laid off in the first post-Musk blood letting, when he got rid of - what?  - 75% of his employees.

The severance package was reasonably good. Three months. Even in a faltering tech market (there have been major layoffs at Facebook, among other giants of the industry) someone should be able to find a new job. 

Within weeks, the engineer was called back. His work was too important, he was told. His presence was essential to the operations of the platform. Et blah-di-blah-blah.

The engineer was relieved. He was on an H1B visa, which he'd lose if he didn't find a job during the 60 day grace period that H1B visa-holders are allowed to find a job before being forced to leave the country. 

Our H1B engineer was back working. Then Elon Musk decreed that everyone who wanted to stay with the company had to sign a pledge to work long hours, at high intensity - Twitter Hardcore! - or leave the company. Many employees quit. I haven't seen any breakdown of the demographics, but I'm guessing that a larger portion of H1B holders took that pledge than those who didn't risk deportation if they didn't have a job.

But Mr. Musk figured he needed to do more to cement his reputation as an HR nightmare.

He issued a mandate that engineers would need to submit samples of their key lines of code for his review. Send him some screenshots. He, along with a tribunal of trusted code reviewers from Tesla, would look through and deliver a thumb's up or a thumb's down.

I hung around tech long enough to think that this is ridiculous. There's more than one way to write code and while some code is clearly better than others - more parsimonious, the techies I knew used to say - just because yours is different than what Elon Musk thinks is good doesn't make yours wrong wrong. Or Elon Musk's right right.

Coding is created in a context. And often coding is a team sport. 

Coders were also asked to submit some bullet points on what they were up to, but evaluating code should actually be pretty simple. And it's not done by panel reveiw. The ultimate test: does it work?

The thought of this panel of Tesla engineers combing through snippets of Twitter code and passing judgement strikes me as absurd. Make that ABSURD with a capital A-B-S-U-R-D.

The first image that came into my mind was the Salem Witch Trials. I saw Goody Proctor dancing with the devil. 

I'd say that they should be ashamed of themselves, but they're probably all caught up in the Cult of Musk. 

Hope the H1B visa engineer who was just laid off - with a paltry 4 weeks severance package rather than 3 months - finds a job quickly. 

Elon Musk. Too rotten for words. 

Cooking

This year, I "did" Thanksgiving. Not a big deal. There were only four of us. But, 2-4-6-8, when you're putting on a meal, I don't think if makes that much difference until you get a bit up into the double digits. Cooking is cooking.

The truth is, I never have liked cooking all that much. (Baking's a different story. Baking I enjoy. Baking 'R' Us.)

Oh, I can cook, and put a decent meal on the table. But I'm not the kind who likes to curl up with a good cook book. And I don't make anything too tricky, nothing too fancy. 

So Thanksgiving, which is all pretty straightforward, is right up my cooking alley. 

Or so you'd think.

The one unstraightforward aspect of putting the Thanksgiving Feast on the table was, surprisingly, figuring out the turkey.

Four people - one a vegetarian (and, yes, I did make a separate vegetarian dish for her) - so: a smallish turkey breast (6.5 pounds: enough for the non-vegetarians to have ample enough to take home for sandwiches). 

But how long and at what temp?

I should have just looked it up in Joy of Cooking, but I googled.

Bad move.

Thirteen minutes a pound, at 325 degrees? That sounded like a recipe for food poisoning.

Twenty minutes a pound, at 350 degrees? That was more like it.

But even following that formula, it turned out the turkey needed another 45 minutes to get itself done.

We kept checking. And checking. 

I had my meat thermometer. My sister brought her meat thermometer. And the turkey, although not a Butterball (are you out of your mind?), had one of those little pop-up, built-in thermometers. Pop goes the eyeball! Turkey done!

My menu was pretty simple: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans almandine, rolls, and - thanks to my sister Trish - squash, cranberry sauce, and gravy (which Trish got at a local place and doctored with Gravy Master). Desserts we had galore. I made apple crisp, my niece Caroline made cookies and some boozy chocolate things, and Trish made cookies, too.

A very nice holiday meal with people I love. 

Working in the kitchen with Trish to get everything on the table (once that eyeball had popped), I couldn't help but think back to the holiday dinners that my mother and my Aunt Margaret put on for so many years, usually for somewhere around 15-20 people.

Our families spent all of our holidays together, and over the decades, Liz and Peg perfected their act. Aprons on, they worked with the precision of circus performers: peeling, mashing, shredding, carving. 

Both of them had very small kitchens. If either of them had more than 10 square feet of counterspace, I'd be surprised. There was no such thing as a microwave.  And neither one of them needed a thermometer to tell when a turkey was done. (Well, mostly that was the case.)

But somehow, they managed to juggle it all. 

Thanksgiving, in particular, was a vegetable spree. None of this two-veggie (plus tian, in my case) nonsense. Corn. Green beans. Squash. Cauliflower. Turnip. One year, my mother neglected to make creamed onions, which became apparent when my Uncle Ralph asked that someone passed him the creamed onions. From then on, creamed onions were informally referred to as Ralphs. And they were never again forgotten.

We also had two types of gravy: giblet and, for those of us more faint of heart, plain. 

Somehow, they kept it all going, pots and pans nestled against each other on the burners, keeping everything warm. Slotting the pies (apple, mince, pecan) into the over to warm once the main meal was out and on the table

Liz and Peg didn't want anyone else in the kitchen with them when they were working. Just as well, since there was no room in either kitchen for many helpers. 

Clean up, yes. We were welcomed in. Food prep and cooking: no one was wanted.

There was an occasional fiasco, beyond the creamed onion crime. 

My aunt had a turkey roaster (vintage 1940 or so), and, after nobly serving her family for decades, by the mid 1970's it was on the fritz. One holiday, the turkey was, alas, raw.

I remember my cousin Barbara's son Rich saying, "But, Grammy, this turkey is ..." And watching as his mother's hand shot out to cover his mouth before he could get the word "raw" out. We all judiciously tucked the turkey beneath a bit of squash, a half-eaten dinner roll. Nothing was said at the time, but I believe that was it for the turkey roaster.

My Thanksgiving was lovely. I have more leftovers in my fridge than I can shake a stick at. But it also made me a bit nostalgic for the days of Liz and Peg, kitchen performers par excellence, doing their holiday thing. 

Black Friday? Yawn...

Is it my imagination, or is Black Friday not quite the crazy-fest it used to be?

Not that I've ever done any Black Friday shopping. I mean, I like my TV as much as the next guy does, but I wouldn't stand in the cold for six hours for the privilege of risking getting trampled so I could storm Walmart where I'd end up fighting another shopper so I could get one for a hundred bucks off. 

Oh, I may be doing a tiny bit of shopping. I.e., if I'm in the mood, I'll go to Paper Source and see if I can get Thanksgiving cards (for next year) on sale. 

I'm someone who likes to send greeting cards, and I really like to send greeting cards that I got for half-price the day after a holiday.

Mostly what I'll be doing is walking off my Thanksgiving dinner, making room for a big ol' turkey, stuffing, cranberry, and pickle sandwich. (I might even stop by Whole Foods and see if I can find a loaf Nashoba Brook Bakery Harvest Bread. Pecans. Walnuts. Apricots. Cranberries. Figs. The perfect bread for this sandwich.)

Maybe I'll start writing my Christmas cards. Maybe I'll clean my office. Maybe I'll watch the rest of The Crown. 

Black Friday? Yawn...

We may get a little rain.

Maybe I'll just go take a nap. 

Thanksgiving Wreath, Thanksgiving Wreath

I don't do much by way of Thanksgiving decoration. I did have some gourds that I bought in October, but they all went moldy. I do have some orange tulips on my dining room table, and I got fall-themed cocktail napkins - I'm using "real" cloth napkins for dinner; and not that we'll be having "cocktails" before dinner, cider or wine for us - and some fall-themed paper towels for the guest bathroom.

Oh, I have a nearby Home Goods, so I could have gone all out with festive-ing my place up for Thanksgiving.

But my holiday decorating is pretty much reserved for Christmas. One lovely tree, coming right up. Etc.

So there's no Thanksgiving wreath on my door. 

I don't remember Thanksgiving wreaths being much of a thing in the past, but these days you can get a wreath for just about any occasion. Valentine's Day. St. Patrick's Day. Easter. Fourth of July. Halloween. Thanksgiving. And, of course, Christmas.

Wreaths? They're definitely a thing now. And if I were the sort of person who felt the need to hang a Thanksgiving wreath, it would be a live wreath from Crate & Barrel. 

Or the like.

Tasteful, of course. No goofy turkey in a Pilgrim's hat, which seems to grace a lot of what's out there. Something lovely to look at. Something that smells good.

But I didn't buy one. So there's nothing on my door, tasteful or tacky. Just the orange tulips on my table.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

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I've always loved Thanksgiving. Even Thanksgiving during that first terrible covid year, when my "feast" was a homemade sausage, peppers and onions sub and some store-bought pecan pie. Here's my last year's post on this holiday. 

Turkey Trot

Well, Turkey Day is upon us, and come the morrow, I'll be throwing mine in the roasting pan.  

I know a lot of people don't like turkey, but I'm not one of them. I much enjoy an occasional turkey dinner - mashed potatoes, stuffing (with plenty of Bell's Seasoning in it), gravy, cranberry sauce, squash, etc. - and I really love the leftovers. I'm already looking forward to Friday's sandwich. 

What's not to like about a sandwich, made using bread, that also contains a layer of stuffing. Carbo packing at its finest. Yummy!

My turkey, of course, began and likely ended its life on a turkey farm. And it was no doubt a white, domestic turkey. 

I don't actually think I've ever seen a domestic turkey IRL. But over the last decade or so I've seen plenty of wild turkeys.

I remember the first time I saw one.

It was a Sunday. Summertime. I was leaving the Cape with my brother and niece, and we were in stall-and-crawl traffic on Route 6, heading off the Cape. While we were stalling, my brother pointed out that a turkey was making its way through the stalled traffic a car ahead of us.

"This will not end well," he predicted.

He was right.

Traffic west was barely moving. Traffic east was sparse, and moving fast. 

Our turkey hopped over the barrier separating the Mid Cape Highway West from the Mid Cape Highway East and met his fate. Blood, guts, feathers. The turkey parts were flying. 

Why did the turkey cross the road? To get to the other side? Not this guy!

Fortunately, we were a couple of cars away, so there was only a little blood and no guts on Rich's windshield 

Turkeys on the Cape are one thing. There are a lot of wooded areas, especially flanking the highway.

But Massachusetts turkeys are not confined to the Cape, or to our more rural necks of the woods. These days, they're all over the Boston metro, and they're a terrible, nasty invasive species.

Most of the ones I see are in Brookline, a Boston close-in suburb where my sister Kath lives. 

Brookline has been infested for a good long time now.

The wild turkeys travel in packs, and sometimes there's a gang of young turkey thugs waiting at the Beaconsfield T-stop so they can stalk some hapless detraining passenger. 

I've had them follow me out, and I can never remember the rules of engagement. Don't make eye contact? Stare them down? Unfurl an umbrella and wave it at them? Wave your arms and make threatening noises? Curl up in fetal position and hope they pass you by?

I find myself hovering at as much of a distance I can maintain from them  - that they'll allow me to maintain from them - and text my brother-in-law, who's always up on the latest.

With grim regularity, there are articles in the paper, news spots on TV, reporting on the latest turkey assault and battery incident in Boston and its environs. The pregnant woman who was attacked. The older man cornered on his porch. The cars that are having their wheel coverings and doors pecked in. A rafter of turkeys waddling across the street. 

These turkeys, they're aggressive. They're ugly. They're everywhere. A couple of summers ago, I even saw one in a tree in my couldn't-be-more-urban neighborhood. A (turkey) pox on their houses. Or nests. Or perches. Or wherever they live.

Wild turkeys! Ugh! Second only to Canada geese on my list of despised fauna. 

And Boston isn't the only place that's turkey plagued. Across the country, they're showing up where they didn't used to be showing up, and where they're not all that welcome.

One place they're showing up is Madison, Wisconsin, where photojournalist Anne Readel became intrigued by their courtship displays.  So she began taking pictures and (wish) boning up on turkeys. The result was a recent article in the New York Times. 

Reading Readel, I learned that male turkeys, or toms, "form lifelong flocks with their brothers...These bands of brothers cooperated to court females, or hens, and chase off competing males." Reproductively, only the alpha male in the flock gets the girl. The roles of the others are confined to being "wingmen" or "backup dancers." (Come on, let me see you shake your tail feather, baby.)

It's not one big tail-shaking, wing-spreading love fest, of course. The turkey boys all vie to become the alpha male. 

While males are aggressive with each other, they aren’t aggressive toward females and do not force copulations, despite being twice the size of their mating partners. So while males may strut with abandon, females ultimately choose their mates. They’re picky about partners and know what they want: males with long snoods.

Snoods are the fingerlike fleshy protuberances that flop over a turkey’s beak. The animals can contract and relax muscles and blood vessels in their head and neck, causing changes in the organ’s length and color. A tom sporting a long red snood draws the attention of hens like flies to honey — although, to their credit, the hens manage to be coy about it.

The article goes on, and on, as to why having a "killer snood" and other properties makes evolutionary sense.  

TMI... 

But let's talk some turkey. Conservation efforts to protect wild turkeys have paid off. In spades. And now they're a menace, flocks of pesky pests. Maybe it's  time to do a bit of de-conserving. 

World Cup runneth under

Well, the World Cup kicked off on Sunday. I think. At any rate, it kicked off without me. As much as I am a sports fan, the World Cup is not my jam.

I was thinking that, if the US makes it to the finals - and that's a big if, as in 'as if' - I might put it on. But the final is on December 18th, and I'm busy that day. So...

If FIFA - Féderation Internationale de Football Association  the governing body which "governs" football (American English: soccer) - weren't such a rotten organization, and if I didn't find the sport (soccer/football) not all that thrilling, I'd actually think that the World Cup is a great idea. 

Universal language of sport. Make football, not war. Bringing the world together. Etc. 

But FIFA has long had a reputation for corruption - money changing hands in exchange for your country being selected as the World Cup site. And soccer/football? I can get caught up in any sport while I'm watching it. I mean, I keep forgetting that I'm an expert in the luge, and then I turn on the winter Olympics. But soccer/football? Sure, I can get excited in the moment. But mostly I'm meh.

The 2022 World Cup (which occurs every four years) is, quite controversially, being held in Qatar.

Arab nations have a well-earned reputation for sportswashing, i.e., using sports to burnish an image, elevate a brand. Hoping that no one notices the way a country treats women, LGBTQ+ people, migrant workers. Admittedly, there's plenty of room for improvement in the good old USA when it comes to all of the above. Still, I'd rather be a woman, gay, a migrant worker, etc. here than in any Arab there.  

Of course, Arab countries aren't the only sportswashers. Russia practically invented it (c.f., Russia hosting the 2018 World Cup). But they are really into it. 

There's LIV Golf League, founded to take on the PGA major golf tournaments monopoly and funded by the Saudis. And Abu Dhabi's Formula One (racing) Grand Prix. And, now, the Qatar World Cup.

Qatar isn't that populous a nation. There are 2.3 million people there, give or take, but the vast, vast, vast majority aren't Qataris. They're ex-pats. Who hang out in Qatar because it's exceedingly rich. Petroleum has made it one of the wealthiest nations on earth. 

And, since the late 20th century, it's crept a bit, a bit at a time, into the modern world. E.g., women can vote. Still...

For all Qatar’s progress though, it will be tested over the next month as it hosts the World Cup — an event that has invited a degree of scrutiny and criticism the country has rarely experienced and that threatens a global image carefully cultivated over the years through creative diplomacy, humanitarian work and commercial endeavors like sponsorship of sports.

Recent weeks have brought renewed attention to the plight of migrant workers who suffered or died building the infrastructure for the event, and to concerns over how LGBTQ fans will be received in a country that criminalizes homosexuality. In the past two days, the debate shifted to outrage over a decision to ban beer at stadiums. (Source: Washington Post)

I'm guessing that the no beer in the stadiums rule is the one that's most rankling the fans who've descended on Qatar. Just how will the football hooligans hooligan it up without being able to hoist a cold one?

And then there was this late-breaking World Cup-Qatar story. 

Fans who have travelled to Qatar as part of a controversial paid-for supporters programme have been told by Qatari authorities that their cash has been cut.

The Fan Leader Network is a scheme run by the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, the Qatari agency responsible for the World Cup. It has recruited supporters from around the globe, offering travel and accommodation and a place at the World Cup opening ceremony in return for enthusiasm and positive social media content. But the Guardian can reveal that a per diem payment for food and drink, upon which some supporters were depending, was cancelled just as fans were packing to travel to the Gulf. (Source: The Guardian)

Qatar pushed back, claiming that the "daily allowance" was never meant to be a quid pro quo but, rather it was intended to provide "a small uplift" to the personal expense money that the hired fans were supposed to bring with them. 

Even though they're no longer getting a per diem, the Fan Leader Network fan networkers are still getting flown in and put up, and being comped tickets to opening matches. In return, they're being asked to like and re-share positive posts. 

... and fans have reportedly been asked to flag social media content critical of the event.

Sounds like classic payola pay-to-play to me, with a bit of please-do-some-snitching on the side. You'd think that would be worth keeping the per diem going. After all, Qatar seems to be going all in on sportswashing. (The World Cup is by no means their only game in the sports arena.) You'd think they could have kept paying their social media members of the social media version of the world's oldest profession.

Anyway, I'm not likely to see any of of the paid fans social media posts. I'm way too meh on World Cup. For me, the World Cup underfloweth, that's for sure. 

Other than to say, Go USA. Failing that, Go Wales. And if that doesn't work, Go Germany. (Guess a fan's gotta fan...)

Elizabeth Holmes, Jailbird

Elizabeth Holmes and I go back a long way. I've written about her several times since June 2016, most recently last September, when the question was whether she was 'schemer or naif.' I went with schemer, and it looks like the law felt the same way. And now she's about to add another descriptor: jailbird. 

In truth, I was surprised that she got 11+ years. 

I thought she'd get a heavy fine, and a light sentence. Maybe even home confinement, which would let her play with her babies - the son born in July 2021, and the baby she's pregnant with how, who may end up being born in prison. 

Instead of wearing an ankle bracelet and playing with her kiddos, she'll be behind the bars. Her second child may be born while she's there.

The entrepreneur — who started Theranos as a Stanford University dropout and grew it into a company with a peak valuation of $9 billion — was convicted in January of misleading investors that her technology could run hundreds of tests from just a few drops of blood. In reality, the company was relying on technology from other companies to run the tests.

She was convicted of four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud after a four-month-long trial that featured testimony and tales of billionaire investors, former U.S. officials’ endorsement and patients who had used the company’s technology. Holmes also took the stand over the course of seven days in emotional testimony defending her actions as being in good faith and denying that she was aware of the fraud. (Source: Washington Post)

Part of her defense was to blame Theranos problems on her partner (both in business and in pleasure), Sunny Balwani, who was portrayed in court by Holmes' attorneys as something of a Svengali to her poor, little ol' Trilby. (Balwani was also convicted and awaits sentencing. I'm sure he's sweating plenty, just about now.)

What a terrible waste...but, boy, did she have it coming. 

Everyone puffs their products, but there's a line between puffery and deliberately misleading others (investors and customers). And the line here wasn't all that fine.

Holmes might not have fallen so hard if she'd been bullshitting about software that helped boost productivity, an app that helped walkers count their steps, an online system for organizing recipes. But she was bullshitting about something - the potential for a faulty diagnosis based on bogus test results - that could have been life or death. 

And Holmes might not have fallen so hard if she hadn't risen so high: billionaire, genius, cover girl (Forbes, Fortune, Inc....Glamour). The apple of the eye of a number of famous old men: Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Mattis. Everyone's darling. The "It Girl." The female Steve Jobs, whose black turtleneck uniform she copied.

And one of the only women entrepreneurs to have risen quite so high.

If she hadn't been so arrogant, so full of hubris, so fully convinced that an attractive young white woman who had been befriended by Kissinger, Shultz, and Mattis would ever do time. If she hadn't decided to have another child after she was convicted, in what looks like it may have been an attempt to garner some sympathy. Oh, that poor mother of two babies...Oh, those poor babies. 

Sigh.

Elizabeth Holmes has lost so much.

Wealth, reputation, freedom. Even her weirdly pretty looks.

But mostly - assuming her appeal fails - the opportunity to watch her children grow up.

She's going to prison in April. Her son won't even be two. His first memories of his mother will likely be of her behind bars. So will the first memories of child #2. Memories forged in those grotesque family meeting rooms with the bolted down plastic chairs and the vending machines selling too sugary, too salty snack foods. 

This is not a slap-on-the-wrist sentence.

Eleven years and change. 

And that translates into a lot of change that she'll miss seeing. First steps, first words, first day of school, first soccer game, first overnight. Outings, vacations, hanging around the family room eating popcorn and watching movies, birthday parties holidays. Her kids becoming adolescents. 

If she serves her full sentence, Holmes will be nearly 50 when she's released.

The separation from their kids happens to a lot of parents, of course. But mostly not to willowy blonde Stanford dropouts. 

A lot of what her kids will know about her, they'll find online, once they're old enough to google and/or find a way around parental streaming controls. 

Now the subject of an HBO documentary, a Hulu TV series, a best-selling book and multiple podcasts, Holmes has become one of the most famous tech start-up CEOs, as well as a cautionary tale for how badly an ambitious start-up can spin out of control.

Especially if greed, ambition, and a palpable desire to change the world are in play.

Although she was pretty stoic during her trial, Holmes became emotional and cried when her sentence was handed down. 

“I take responsibility for Theranos,” she said. “I regret my failings with every cell in my body.”

Too little, too late. (One of the reasons she got such a harsh sentence was that she hadn't appeared especially contrite.)

Holmes's partner and father of her children is Billy Evans, who wrote to the judge on Holmes's behalf, somewhat oddly:

...seeking to describe a different Holmes than had been portrayed in the media. He extolled her “willingness to sacrifice herself for the greater good is something I greatly admire in her.”

What sacrifice? And for what greater good? 

Even more oddly:

He also wrote that “earlier this year, while pregnant, she decided she wanted to swim the Golden Gate Bridge,” something that concerned Evans.

“Rain or shine she practiced, and her determination was overpowering the odds against her,” he wrote. “Two weeks before the event she made the cut off time, swimming the breaststroke. I was wrong, you would think by now I would learn to not discount her perseverance.”

I know that Alcatraz is closed for prison business, but am I the only one who read this and thought of the fact that, while a dozen or so inmates tried to escape Alcatraz and swim to shore, none is thought to have succeeded? Is something like that what Evans means by us not "discount[ing] her perseverance"?

Elizabeth Holmes, jailbird. What. A. Waste.  

 

Ticketmaster? I'd just like to shake it off. (Shake it off.)

I like Taylor Swift. I really do. I find her supremely talented and brilliant, and - old school me - I own quite a few of her CDs. So I was delighted when my sister told me that she and my niece were going to see if they could get tickets for her 2023 tour, and asked if I wanted to come with. Why, yes. Yes I would.

We agreed that both Molly and I would try to get in on the early registration by seeing if we could make the cut as verified Taylor Swift fans. 

Alas, although we signed up, we were not among the chosen few millions who gained entry into the first wave of the fray for tickets. Which meant that - blessedly - neither Molly nor I got sucked into in the first day cluster, in which some early birds were able to purchase tickets at face value, orders of magnitude more of those verified fans were left wanting. Waiting for hours only to get knocked out, once their trembling little finger was poised to hit the Purchase button. Thrown into the "dynamic pricing" jamboree during which, before your very eyes, the price you were just about to pay tripled - and even then, was scooped up before you considered whether you were going to pay triple the face value. Etc.

But, as Capital One cardholders, Molly and I were eligible for a second shot at early tickets.

Which meant queuing up on Wednesday for the privilege of waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

I was having double PTSD, double flashback.

To last spring, when I served time on Ticketmaster for Bruce Springsteen tickets for me and my sister (a BIG fan since high school). I made it into the verified fan for Boston pool; Trish - despite her longevity as a fan (I never was, until she won me over in 2007 by bringing me to a concert; I was sold) managed to claw her way into Albany, where tickets were a tiny bit more accessible than they were in Boston.

For Boston, although I went through the wait in the waiting room, the long queueing in the queue, and the mad dash for tickets, my desire was unrequited.

A few days later, things were looking marginally better in Albany, when Trish and I decided that a hotel, gas and tolls, and general wear and tear would cost us plenty. So, fuck it. I went back onto Ticketmaster and got us a couple of tickets for a boatload more than I originally intended to pay. They were for sale on Ticketmaster's legal scalping site, where those who get in early and grab extra tickets are able to mark them up and sell them. For joy! At least I know they're legitimate scalpers tickets, and not something I got off a guy in a dark alley near the Boston Garden.

I just mentioned that I was double PTSD-ing. Make that triple.

I had forgotten that before I got tickets for Boston, I'd spent the wee hours of a late winter's morning trying to get Bruce tickets for Trish, me, and Molly for Dublin (where Molly is studying for the year).

I actually had the tickets in (almost but not quite) virtual hand but, alas, couldn't pay, because Ticketmaster in Ireland requires you to have an Irish zip code in order to pay. Grrrrr, grrrrr, a thousand times grrrrrr. 

There went the fantasy of a quick, fun trip to Ireland to see The Boss.

At least we have Boston. (If I can trust the Ticketmaster app, since there's no such thing as a paper or even emailed-to-you tickets anymore.)

The other flashback was, of course, to the vaccine free-for-all of 2021. 

Back to Ticketmaster. 

You'd think there'd be a better way.

How about a lottery system where everyone can enter, and where they only chose as many winners (assuming each will purchase 4 or 6 tickets) as there are seats? Assign the windows during which they can buy their tickets, and guarantee they'll get some. Then free up everything else to the general public. 

Of course, this wouldn't allow Ticketmaster (and the performers) to reap the benefits of dynamic pricing.

I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas on how to improve the process.

But why should Ticketmaster (or the performers) give a hoot? If the artists are wildly popular - as are Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen, who are both probably more popular than vaccines even - both Ticketmaster and "the artists" make out brilliantly. Fan frustration, pain, suffering, agony diminishes for those who were able to find tickets. And for the rest of them, there's always next tour.

As for Taylor Swift, while I was still in the queue, Molly -  having gotten in ahead of me (I had gotten caught up in some server error hoohah) had already begun the fabulous Ticketmaster shopping experience. A lightbulb went off in my head, and it occurred to me that it might not be all that easy to find three tickets. So I texted her to go for two tickets (for herself and her mother) if that's all she could find. 

The luck of the Irish - did I mention that she's in Dublin? - was with Molly and she was able to score two tickets. At face value. Good thing she switched the number, because she had been looking for three tickets and was finding nothing. (In retrospect, we should have gone for four tickets and sold the fourth off at a scalper price to help cover our cost.)

While I'm a tiny bit disappointed, I will shake it off. (Shake it off.) I'm delighted for Trish and Molly. And was relieved to be able to quit out of the interminable wait to buy or not buy tickets. 

Meanwhile, Ticketmaster has announced that they're cancelling the ticket sale to the general public, which had been slated for today. Seems like between the verified presale and the Capital One presale, the concerts are just about sold out. 

BTW, since Molly won't be back in Boston for the local Taylor Swift concerts, the tickets are for Chicago in June. 

I will most likely go with them for the weekend. What's not to love about Chicago? (Other than the accent.)

Aside to my cousin Ellen: you around on June 4th for dinner while Molly and Trish are at the Taylor Swift concert?

Meanwhile, I am not able to shake off how I feel about Ticketmaster...

Twitter's death spiral? I gotta say it will free up some of my time.

I'm not a big Tweeter, but I do have a Twitter account and comment pretty regularly. I joined a while back, but didn't actually suit up until the 2000 election or thereabouts. I've enjoyed being on it. Among other things, I reconnected with two former colleagues and a guy I went to grammar school with and haven't laid eyes on in over 50 years. And I've made a few Twitter friends.

I have a modest number of followers - hovering between 865 and 870 - and enjoy seeing what those who I follow (a bit over 1,000) have to say. I have some name brand followers - Nancy Sinatra, Joyce Carol Oates - and follow a lot more "big name" tweeters (e.g., historian Michael Beschloss, Barack Obama. I follow a lot of political pundits (amateur and professional), a guy who takes beautiful photographs of the outer Cape, a couple of cute dog accounts, and someone who posts  pictures of Boston

On occasion, I've racked up a goodly number of "likes" - my record being a crack I made about Bill Barr. I was also banned - sent to "Twitmo" for a couple of days when someone reported another crack I'd made about Bill Barr. (For the life of me, I can't remember which crack got the thousand+ likes and which got me kicked off.)

Mostly, I thumb through Twitter multiple times a day looking for news, for comfort from those in my echo-chamber, and for snark that gives me an occasional laugh.

I waste way too much time on Twitter. (It is addictive.) So I've been following with a slightly open eye (mostly via Tweets) what's been going on with not-so-boy, not-so-wonder Elon Musk since he took the company over a few weeks ago. Which has been going one long cra spree, that's for sure.

For all his reputation for genius, it really does appear that Musk doesn't know what he's doing, other than flushing billions down the toilet and making stupid remarks.

It was no surprise that one of his first acts was to fire the top executives and the board, giving himself free rein. His next step was to lay about half of Twitter's 7500 employees off. Fell swoop, full sweep. (Twitter, having figured out that they were essential to operations, has since called back some of those who were let go.) He followed up the massive dump of employees by going one step further, and getting rid of most of the company's contractors. 

Employees and contractors for the most part found out they were without a job when they were shut out of email and apps like Slack.

This sounds heartless, that's because it is - but there's always a danger, especially in a tech company, that if you give any notice, someone may crash and burn the place on the way out the door.

Not content with getting rid of half the labor force, Musk decided to issue a back to the office edict, and is requiring any employee who wants to stay an employee to sign a pledge to "working long hours at high intensity." If they don't sign by 5 p.m. today, they're gone. Only the "hardcore" will survive.

Musk is also showing off his puerile, a-hole-ishness in other ways.

One employee, a techie, engaged with Musk via Twitter, trying to explain to Musk that he was wrong about something technical and suggesting that they DM about it, rather than publicly go back and forth on Twitter. He was fired, although if you looked at his exchange with the Great Musk, it was a pretty typical, likely on-the-spectrum communication with lots of info and few niceties.

Then there was the group of employees who were venting spleen about execs/Musk on Slack. This sort of venting has apparently always been part of the Twitter culture. No more. Word is that twenty or so employees were fired, via email, for violating a company policy that no one knew existed. And which very well may not. Until the other day.

Ah, Twitter. Ah, Musk.

While it has had profitable years, Twitter has a colossal burn rate, so the layoffs have not been surprising (other than the magnitude), nor have the rumors of bankruptcy.

When he bought Twitter - for $44B (imagine that!) - Musk "saddled" the company with debt AND promised that he was committed to both making/keeping the platform a free speech environment, while also trying to continue to eradicate hate speech and lies. He's held up at least some of his bargain here: he hasn't invited Trump back on. But the reaction to Musk's blundering around has mostly been negative. And the ration of brutal snark and shit he's received (much of it from Tweeps) has been huge.

I'm pretty certain there was plenty of bloat at Twitter, plenty of fat to cut, but Musk got rid of most of the "content moderators" who are dedicated to keeping the platform honest. The company has also fiddled around with its "Blue Check" system, through which accounts with certain prominence can be verified. So if you see Barack Obama with a blue check, you know that the tweet you're looking at is from him.  Now it's the Wild West on there. The information is less vetted and less safe. And some of what's been happening is ludicrous, and just hilarious. (More on that for another day.)

Musk is also toying with the idea of charging users. (If so, I'm gone. I have fun on Twitter, but not $8 a month worth of it.) And there are fears that the company will try to monetize its subscribers in other ways, like selling personal info.

Meanwhile, because of the uptick in impersonations, BS, and general clownery, many advertisers are walking away, leaving Twitter in an ever-more vicarious position.

While I'm keeping a bit of an eye on the goings on, I'm not obsessing about Twitter's fate.

I feel bad for those who've been let go, whether permanent employees or contractors. Getting laid off is never fun, and getting laid off around the holidays makes things even worse, as many hiring operations pretty much shut down after Thanksgiving. Plus other tech giants are also paring down, which means the outfits where a Twitter-ex might hope to find employment are also cutting back.

Still, having Twitter on your resume can't be a bad thing. Although if content moderators are out of work, and Facebook/Meta is also getting rid of tons of employees, the most obvious place to find work may not be all that obvious.

When all is said and done, if this is Twitter's death spiral, so be it. Others on Twitter - especially those with major followings who use their presence to build their brand (not my jam!) - are exploring the other Tweet-like platforms there.

I'm not. 

If Twitter's going, going, gone, I plan on taking a break from doom scrolling, from making pithy comments, from checking my "likes."

I plan on using my new found time wisely. Reading (something longer than 280 characters) and writing (something longer than 280 characters). Maybe the novel in me will finally make its way out!

Why you shouldn't always send a bot to do a human's work

Last week marked the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night (and following day) when the Nazis went on the rampage throughout Germany. Hundreds of synagogues were destroyed, thousands of businesses demolished, tens of thousands of Jewish men were rounded up and shipped off to Dachau. The homes of many Jews were ransacked, and dozens of Jews were killed.

There had been plenty of anti-Jewish laws enacted, plenty of persecution of German Jews up until then, but Kristallnacht is widely viewed as the beginning of the Holocaust.

In Germany, where they take facing their history very seriously - we could take a lesson or two - it is a day of remembrance and reflection. It's marked on German calendars, the same way that holidays are. But it's not exactly a jolly holiday. There's nothing Fröhlich Kristallnacht about it.

But KFC, which likes to tie promotions into holidays, apparently didn't know that. 

The fast-food chain sent an app alert on Wednesday, saying: "It's memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!" (Source: BBC)

JFC, KFC! (Make that a double JFC. Who wants "tender cheese" - whatever that is - on their "crispy chicken"?)

It's not as if the Colonel, or any human being, had anything to do with this message going out. It was a bot. 

The fast food chain said the "automated push notification" was "linked to calendars that include national observances".

It added that it "sincerely" apologised for the "unplanned, insensitive and unacceptable message" and said app communications had been suspended while an examination of them takes place.

I believe them. Surely no marketing human would have done something so dumb deliberately. 

Lesson learned. Maybe next time they need to have some human oversight. As in, someone checking the calendars to make sure that the days marked are something that's actually celebrated, as opposed to something not so happy-dappy as New Year's, Christmas, Oktoberfest, and whatever other holidays are observed in Germany. 

But even if a human had been doing some oversight, the truth is that a dunderhead might have overlooked this, assumed it was some quirky German holiday they'd never heard of, and - if they were completely lacking in curiosity - failed to do any research and gone ahead and okayed the "tender cheese" promotional message. 

And a very Fröhlich Kristallnacht to you and yours.

Anyway, after seeing this article, I came across another on why the Germans no longer use the term Kristallnacht.

The name - the Night of the Broken glass - came from all the windows that were broken, shards of glass littering/glittering the streets and sidewalks. But somewhere along the line, the Germans decided that the name was too prettifying, that it didn't reflect the true horror of the occasion. (As I said, Germany takes facing its history very seriously, and go deep on teaching about the Holocaust.)

In Germany: 

They refer to the events of November 9-10, 1938, as “the November Pogrom,” or variations on that term. That’s became to many in Germany, the term “Kristallnacht” — night of shattered glass — sounds incongruous.

“It has a pretty sound,” said Matthias Heine, a German journalist whose 2019 book examined the role of Nazi terms in the contemporary German vernacular. “When you know that it was a very serious and bloody and violent event, then this term isn’t acceptable anymore.” (Source: Times of Israel)

The bottom line for me is that even a trivial little marketing nothing - eat more chicken! - can go awry. And that you shouldn't always send a bot to do a human's work. These bastards are so not to be trusted. (Just imagine when they get smarter and closer to sentience...)

Never laugh when a hearse goes by

I'm all for hearses being repurposed. 

One of my favorite hitchhiking experiences - from way back in the day when people in general, and myself in particular actually stuck a thumb out when we wanted to get somewhere, i.e., 50+ years ago -  occurred when my friend Joyce and I, were heading home to Boston from a wacky hiking escapade on Mt. Washington in NH. We got picked up by a guy driving a beat up old hearse. We got driven to the NH-MA border, lying there, spread out, resting our heads on our backpacks, in the space in the back of the hearse reserved for the casket. 

I can't remember what the guy's plans were for the hearse. Something to do with a rock band, maybe?

Fast forward all those years, and there are folks in New Orleans who are turning hearses into arty, mobile businesses. Four of these businesses have been chronicled by Emily Kask. Kask is a NOLA photojournalist who had noticed a number of duded up hearses roaming the streets, and decided to focus on some of them in a project entitled "The Four Hearsewomen of New Orleans."

These stories of resurrection are an extension of artist culture, Kask says, in a city where people are not afraid to be themselves and where the idea of death isn’t as scary. “New Orleans has a different relationship around death,” said Ali Kane, who runs “Persephone the Tarot Hearse.” (Source: Washington Post)

I don't think the idea of death not being scary is the exclusive province of New Orleans. Ask anyone of a certain age who grew up Catholic. Sure, the nuns and priests used the idea of death as a scare tactic. How many stories did you hear about the couple who had sex after their high school prom and were killed in a car accident before they had time to get to confession. Which meant they went promptly to hell - no limbo, no purgatory, no nothing. Eternal damnation. Which, naturally, made death seem a bit scary. 

At the same time, Catholics back in the day - at least ethnic Catholics who lived in cities - also had a "different relationship around death" than the bland suburban white-bread Protestants we saw on Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. You lived around family. Around multiple generations. Cheek and jowl with your neighbors. People died. People you actually knew. Mostly - thankfully - they were old, and we all were well aware that it was natural for old folks to die. But sometimes the people who died weren't old. They were your parents age. Sometimes they were even your parents. Kids died, too. Blessedly not often, but often enough. The four-year-old brother of one of my childhood friends died of leukemia. We were about eight or nine when this happened. 

Not far from where we lived, a little girl visiting her grandparents was impaled on a tree in their backyard and died. We - including my friend with the sickly little brother - went off, wheeling our doll carriages, to take a look at the fatal tree, imagining that we actually saw blood.

Not that bad things didn't happen in those bland suburban precincts, but I'm guessing that kids who grew up around grandparents and great-aunts and great-uncles were just more aware of, less shielded from, what goes on when people die. (And a lot more people died at home, so we saw hearses do their pickups.)

And what went on was the people went to wakes and funerals. Including kids.

An embittering experience of my childhood was my parents not letting me go to the wake of a girl who was killed by a car. She was in eighth grade, I was in seventh. We weren't friends-friends, but we were all part of a larger troupe of girls who hung out together, and I spent plenty of time at her house. (Her house was exotic, as she had three older brothers, and her mother ran a beauty parlor out of their basement.) Anyway, my sister Kath - two years older than I - was allowed to go to the wake, where she got to see sweet, pretty D laid out in an angel gown. 

Although I'd been to several wakes and funerals by this point - including going with my friends, on our own (no parents) to the wake of a classmate's fathers - my parents thought I was too young - too histrionic, probably - to see the body of a friend my own age. I did get to go to the funeral, but missed the angel gown thing. 

But I digress.

So, yes, I have no doubt that death is more okay in New Orleans than it is in plenty of other places. 

So, Ali Kane found a hearse for sale on Facebook Marketplace, and thought it was just the thing for her tarot parlor. She had it shipped from South Carolina and fitted it out with "velvet seats and LED lighting."

That ambiance draws in the tarot skeptics, says Kane, and many guests tell Kane they have never been in a Hearse before. Her usual response, with a bit of a wink, is “that’s true for most people.”

Then there's the artist Jane Tardo whose retrofitted hearse has a little rollercoaster in it. A rollercoaster for cell phones. People pay a buck a ride to have their cellphone film the ride. I get death more than I get this, but good luck to Tardo if she can make a go of giving cellphones rollercoaster rides. Talk about the infinite economy.

My favorite of the four horsewomen is Meghan Ackerman who, inspired by a friend who used an old hearse to ferry around his large works of art, thought a hearse would be a perfect venue for her taxidermy and cosplay businesses.

She used to travel and sell her ethical taxidermy in a cargo van, which never quite fit her style. “It wasn’t a statement piece; I like making a statement,” said Ackerman.

As a taxidermist, Ackerman says, “When I see a dead animal, I want to give it a new life.” So her hearse is still delivering a once-living being to a new resting place. “It brings people joy,” she said.

“I’m going to give him a second life, maybe he’ll be a circus performer, how do you think he’d look hanging from a trapeze bar?” said Meghan Ackerman. 

I don't think I'd want the taxidermied anything of an animal in my house, especially if it'd been an animal I knew and loved - ashes are one thing - but you gotta love this attitude toward life and death. 

It doesn't quite make me want to go to New Orleans, but it almost does.

Meanwhile, I'll be on the lookout for anything that looks like an erstwhile hearse roaming the streets of Boston.

And I'll make sure that I never laugh when a hearse goes by. Not that I'm inclined to. After all, I could be the next to die. But, more importantly, it might be someone's taxidermy or tarot business in there. 

Some businesses really ought to be out of business

Child labor is nothing new. I read somewhere that in the early years of the 20th century, children under the age of 16 made up nearly 20% of the workforce. Tens of thousands of child workers were under the age of 12. Kids were prized in the mills because they were small and nimble, and could get into tight spaces and run small machines. As you can imagine, this made for some pretty dangerous workplaces. 

The terrible working conditions in the meatpacking industry are nothing new either. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, a fictional account of the miserable life endured by immigrants in the Chicago slaughterhouses in 1906.  

While child labor and slaughterhouse horrors are nothing new, it's stunning that, despite the labor laws that were enacted in the early 1900's to fix some of the more egregious problems out there, plenty of egregious situations persist. 

But where there's a will, there's a way, and some companies always seem to manage to skirt the laws, especially when it comes to miserable, low wage, high awfulness industries that employ/exploit immigrant workers.

Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. was founded in Iowa - meatpacking central - nearly 50 years ago. They're now "accused of employing dozens of children to clean the killing floors of slaughterhouses during graveyard shifts."

The company:

...allegedly employed at least 31 kids — one as young as 13 — to work overnight cleaning shifts at three facilities in Nebraska and Minnesota, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.

Those practices would violate the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibits “oppressive child labor” and minors from working in any kind of hazardous employment, according to the complaint. The Department of Labor’s Child Labor Regulations designates many roles in slaughterhouse and meatpacking facilities as hazardous for minors.

In the court filing, U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh asked the Federal District Court of Nebraska to issue a temporary restraining order and nationwide preliminary injunction against the company to stop it from employing minors while the Labor Department continues its investigation. (Source: NBC News)

Evidence suggests that there are a lot more than the 31 kiddos they've found so far. (Meanwhile: Go, Boston boy, Marty Walsh!)

PSSI, of course, is blah-blahing about "zero tolerance," and blaming the problems on "rogue individuals."

I'm pretty sure that there's no explicit corporate policy allowing for child labor, but I'm guessing there's probably plenty of wink-wink-nudge-nudge, "I see nothing, I know nothing" going on there. There usually is. (And, surprise, surprise, PSSI "has been owned by a series of private equity funds since 2007.")

Let PSSI tut-tut all they want, but here's the thing:

The investigation found that minors cleaned the killing floors and various machines — including meat and bone cutting saws and a grinding machine — during the graveyard shifts, according to the complaint...

Interviews with the kids — which were conducted in Spanish, their first language, according to the complaint — revealed that several children began their shifts at the facilities at 11 p.m. and worked until 5, 6 or 7 a.m. Some worked up to six or seven days a week.

Some of the kids have suffered chemical burns. Meanwhile, some managers have tried to get rid of damning documents and text messages.

PSSI's overall record is not pristine. And not that you'd expect a pristine record for a company that cleans slaughterhouses, but with PSSI - which has one of the worst safety track records in the country when it comes to workplace injuries - there are things. 

...three PSSI workers have died on the job since 2018, including one who was decapitated cleaning a chicken chiller, according to Occupational Health and Safety Administration records highlighted in a March report by the watchdog group Private Equity Stakeholder Project.

And four others had accidents that resulted in amputations, according to the report.

The PE owners dispute the report. But of course.  

I always like to look at what a company under fire has to say for itself. There's nothing I could find on their website that addresses the latest from the Department of Labor. But there's no lack of corporate-speak messaging. 

Here's a smattering:

Bringing together experts in engineering, chemistry, and food safety to develop new ways to innovate for a safer, faster and smarter sanitation with shared sustainability goals to help conserve resources and save costs for our partners.

Hmmmm. One way to save costs is, of course, to hire desperate immigrants, so desperate that they'll let their kids work in dangerous conditions. 

Then there's this:

WHY COMPANIES ARE PARTNERING WITH US Together, we are your integrated food safety solutions partner safeguarding your people, products and brand through a food safety lens. With our sanitation, chemistry, pest and intervention solutions, we work together to ensure a safer food supply for all.

Ah, the old dazzle 'em with the old food safety lens.

And my personal favorite:

A MOMENT PERFECTED
You work hard to create moments of enjoyment.

Because nothing says a perfected moment of enjoyment like some poor bastard decapitated while cleaning a chicken chiller, or a 13 year old cleaning a bone saw or grinding machine in the middle of the night, when he should be home in bed getting the rest he needs to be ready to learn the next morning. 

I'm not going to blame the parents here. No, it's not good, and they shouldn't be letting their kids work all night, but can you imagine the dire conditions they've fled if having their children work cleaning a slaughterhouse seems like an improvement?

But I will blame PSSI. Shame on you, and the private equity investors you rode in on.