Making license plates is so yesterday

Up in Maine, there's a store that's part of the state prison system. The Maine Prison Showroom sells items made by  incarcerated folks. Wooden items (that's where I got my toast tongs), jewelry, apparel (anyone interested in a Shawshank Prison cap?), other goods.

Prisoners get paid an hourly wage to produce the goods, and hopefully pick up a skill or craft while they're at it. State license plates, by the way, have historically been manufactured in Maine's prisons, but manufacture is being temporatily offshored to Canada - of all places - because the equipment and facility need to be modernized.

Massachusetts also has manufacturing facilities in its prisons, producing a variety of goods, including clothing (for Department of Corrections employees only), mattresses, and flags. And license plates. Most states do. 

Neither Maine nor Massachusetts has call centers where prisoners work, which I'm thankful for, because it seems kind of creepy to me. Even though I can appreciate that it is important for inmates to have work, and I'm all in favor of having opportunities for prisoners to do something productive (work, attend classes, etc.), I still wouldn't be all that comfortable talking to someone imprisoned when I was looking for support for something or other. Or to be on the receiving end of a spam sales call being made by someone doing time. I'm sure they screen folks who get these jobs, and I'm sure the prisoners have limited access to the personal and financial data of those of us on the outside, but I still find the idea a bit offputting. (This said even though, through my volunteer work, I regularly interact with folks who've been in prison. I know they've been in prison, btw, because they tell me. I don't have access to any shelter guests' files.)

But Oklahoma does run prison-based call centers: 

As of Aug. 21, call centers are active at four state prisons: James Crabtree in Helena, Mabel Bassett in McLoud, Lexington Correctional in Lexington and Joseph Harp in Lexington.

The contracts specify that the call centers may engage in “telemarketing and political polling activity.” HBW Leads agreed to pay the Department of Corrections $10 per inmate hour worked. Prisoners employed at the call centers earn $2 per hour, plus possible bonuses for generating leads or completing surveys.

The remaining $8 per hour is allocated as overhead for Oklahoma Correctional Industries, a self-supporting sub-entity of the Department of Corrections that provides work programs and job training to inmates. (Source: Oklahoma Voice)

Well, take home - take cell? - pay of $2 an hour sounds a bit skimpy, but it's more than prisoners in Maine and Massachusetts make for factory work.

But political polling seems like an ultra-creepy use of inmate time, and it turns out that, what the prisoners are doing isn't exactly polling. The calls are directly political. Which is a not supposed to happen.

Steve Wilbanks is one of the four prisoners interviewed for the article I saw. And the only one willing to use his name. The others feared reprisals. (Not that that would happen. Especially not in a righteous state like Oklahoma.)

Wilbanks said there were statements specifying that calls were paid for by Make Liberty Win, a Virginia-based super PAC that aims to help elect conservative lawmakers.

“They weren’t surveys at all, they were campaigning,” he said. “They just had one question at the end of the call: ‘Do we have your vote for such and such?’”

Multiple inmates said they felt uneasy making partisan phone calls. Two indicated that they had been in prison so long that they were not familiar with the names of political candidates. One was unsure what MAGA or a Trump Republican was.

“We were talking about the swamp and everything like that,” Wilbanks said. “I don’t even know what a swamp is. I’ve been in prison too long to catch up on some of these terms.

...“They definitely know what they’re doing is a no-no,” one of the inmates said.

The calls coming from inside the Big House were pretty much push-polling, "in which the caller masquerades as a pollster but intends to influence voters."

But the Oklahoma Department of Corrections has stated that what the inmates are doing falls technically within the description of political polling, and that they are in full compliance with state and federal law. 

Make Liberty Win, the PAC in question here, works through an outfit called Visible Trends, which does live campaign calling. 

“We go directly to the voters’ doorsteps, cellphones, and mailboxes to mobilize them to oust RINOs and socialist Democrats alike,” reads Make Liberty Win’s mission statement.

Which is probably easy-peasier in some states than in others. C.f., Okalahoma, although I can't imagine that there all that many RINOs and socialist Democrats to oust there. (The PAC didn't know that Visible Trends was using prison call centers.)

It's not just right-wing political outfits that have used prison call centers. Mike Bloomberg's go-nowhere campaign for president worked through a third party that, unbeknownst to campaign staff, hired prisoners. 

In terms of what data inmates had access to, for political calls it was just name and phone number. But the Oklahoma crew also did calls for an insurance company, and they had access to names, addresses, current insurers, and sometimes dates of birth and email addresses. TMI, in my book.

Prison telemarketing has its champions. Call center organizations cite reduced recidivism rates, durable and transferable skills, and opportunities for inmates who are anxious to learn.

All in favor of that, but still creeped out by potential access to private data. And absolutely not in favor of them doing campaigning calls. 

...By way of contrast, an ACLU report on prison labor highlighted legislation nationwide that enabled various industries to exploit workers behind bars.

“The United States has put in place a system of domestic laws and policies designed to exploit the labor of those incarcerated rather than to strengthen their capacity to productively participate in society,” the report said.

Gotta say that I'm leaning ACLU here. All in favor of work for prisoners, but maybe don't make it so exploitative. And pay them reasonable wages so they have something more for their families, or a nest egg accumulated for when they're released. 

On balance, the Oklahoma prisoners liked the fact that doing call center work was relatively lucrative when compared with the other in-prison options. Which in Oklahoma, as it turns out, is not much. It may even be zip. So there's that. 

I occasionally pick up the phone and answer a political poll. Mostly not. That "potential spam" warning can be a deal breaker. 

But years ago, I received regular polling calls - looking for donations - from the Republican Party. I have no idea where they got my information to begin with, as I've been a registered Democrat since the jump. I'm guessing it was because at one point I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal. Anyway, in the presidential election year of 2012, I got regular calls which all began with an unhinged, pre-recorded, over the top message from Newt Gingrich, attacking President Obama every which way, while stopping a bit short of using the n-word. After listening to Newt, an actual human came on the line and asked what my reaction to what I'd heard was. I'd mostly say I thought it was untrue and way too nasty, but - hoping for a donation - the human on the other end of the line kept with me, asking me who my candidate of choice was. We didn't have the word "troll" in 2012, other than the troll under the bridge in Three Billy Goats Gruff. But my trollish answer was always Michele Bachmann who, back in the day, was considered something of a kook, even by Republican standards. (She should have hung in there!)

The human would then ask me for a donation, starting with a $100 ask, and moving down by increments to as low a $5. 

Finally, after about four or five calls - truly, they were relentless, probably because I was one of the few people to actually hang on after the Gingrich screed rather than hang up- the human asked, "You're not a Republican, are you?" 

Well, B-I-N-G-O.

That was the last call I received. 

Wonder whether he was an inmate. 

And wonder what they're vicious, over the top screed is this time around. 

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Image Source: Correction Enterprises

Jobs of the job-bereft future

Olivia Ferney, who is 25, is a "luxury-travel specialist." She doesn't have any particular background in mondo deluxe. Her parents were school teachers. 

But a couple of years ago, she was in a club in Miami where she met Troy Arnold, the founder of Top Tier Travel, an agency that specializes in luxury travel. She was job hunting, he was hiring, and, as it turned out, it was a marriage made in heaven. (Well, it's not a marriage yet, but the couple's engaged.)

Turns out, Top Tier was doing just fine, working with billionaires who wanted someone else to make sure they could "go places and eat things,"* without having to rub shoulders with any of the hoi or the polloi. But the business wasn't really taking off. 

Prior to the arrival of Ferney on the scene, Top Tier had gotten its business based on "word of mouth and discretion." Turns out that Ferney was pretty darned good at social media and began posting videos of the over-the-top trips and events she was planning. She now has 2 million followers who gobble up her videos. 

Of course, those 2 million followers aren't buying what Top Tier is selling. They're gawkers. But all those gawkers have been good for building Ferney's brand, and that of Top Tier. 

Ferney is on Time's list of this year's "top 100 digital influencers."

And Fifth Season, the production company behind “Severance” and “Killing Eve,” has signed a deal with Ferney and her business partner and fiancé, Troy Arnold, for a scripted series based on their agency, Top Tier Travel. (Source: NY Times)

Clients pay through the nose for the privilege of having Ferney and the Top Tier team cater to their every whim. 

Each client of Top Tier Travel must fork over an annual fee of $100,000 and agree to book $1 million in yearly travel. 

Make that travel or whim execution. And while $1 million may seem like a lot to devote to ultra-non-discretionary spending in any given year, it all adds up if you're a billionaire who wants Ferney to fly to Paris to pick up the largest croissant that the City of Light has to offer because your daughter wants one. Or you're willing to shell out $2.25 million for a week's rental of a yacht so you can cruise around the Côte d'Azur,

Then there was the med-tech entrepreneur who wanted to make a big splash to celebrate closing a mega business deal. 

That big splash involved uncorking $226K worth of champagne - 125 bottles of Perrier Jouet Grand Brut, 50 bottles of Dom Pérignon Brut Luminus and five bottles of Dos Hombres Blanco tequila - and setting the Guinness world record for "largest champagne presentation."

“No one is really even going to drink the champagne,” Ferney said, noting that her plan called for scores of servers to blast the partygoers with bubbly.

...They hoisted bottles of Dom Pérignon above their heads. At a signal from Diplo [celebrity DJ], corks popped. Some servers began hosing down a dancer ensconced in a prop Martini glass, while others sprayed champagne at the crowd, thus achieving a Guinness-worthy feat that was the equivalent, in terms of pointless excess, to scaling Mt. Everest.

It almost goes without saying that this happened in Vegas, demonstrating yet again that there's plenty that happens in Vegas that doesn't stay in Vegas. (Although the party animal entrepreneur paying for this spray spree wanted to remain anonymous.)

Re all this excess, Arnold says:

"Basically, we have normalized what’s insane.”

That seems to be happening a lot lately. (C.f., Washington DC.) 

Ferney's take: 

“Our job is to execute, not judge.” 

She also says that, when it comes to the wealthy, there's "at least one misconception:"

“People think the superrich are unhappy,” she said. “They’re not.”

Good to know. Damn!

Anyway, I was thinking what an inane job Freny has, what a foolish use of someone's energy, brains, and creativity - talents that could be put to something a bit more for the good. (Unlike Top Tier, Pink Slip's unpaid job is to both execute and judge.)

And then I got to thinking, and my thinking is the Ferney is really onto something. Once AI ingests all the jobs out there, the only jobs in the job-bereft future may well be those that cater to the ultra-wealthy, the only folks who'll be able to afford to hire actual humans. For the rest of us, the kids will be taught by AI. Robots will provide our healthcare. ChatGPT will be our shrink. 

How often am I going to have to write "O brave new world?"

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*This is a nod to the Three Stooges. Like most women, I was not a huge fan. Like most men, my husband was. There's a classic line from one of their movies - a line my husband often quoted when we were heading out to dinner - in which one of the Stooges' dates gets in the car and says "Let's go places and eat things." Now you know. 

Image Source: Vector Stock

Me? I'd live on Pesky Lane. And you?

In my Worcester neighborhood, there was a clutch of streets with Native American names. Or Native American-ish names.
 Wyola. Utica. Delawanda. Alsada. Tallawanda. The only street named for an actual tribe was Seminole. I'm guessing that these streets were laid out in the 1920's, when there was a general fascination with things Native American. In my mind's eye, going up and down these streets, I'd venture a guesss that the houses were all built between the 1920's and 1950's. 

Anway, it was a curiosity and those street names were a lot more interesting in most of those in my 'hood. Blaine Ave. Henderson. Varnum. Sylvan. Brookline. 

The lone fanciful name was Eureka Street. 

But as a kid, I liked the idea of a "themed" neighborhood, and I envied my friends who lived on one of the streets with a cool "Indian" name.

So as a childhood fan of having a street naming scheme, and a lifetime fan of the Boston Red Sox, I was keenly interested in learning of a Herriman, Utah, subdivision that has streets named for Red Sox players. 

These are not necessarily the all-time greatest players. No Ted Williams Boulevard. No Tris Speaker Lane. No David Ortiz Street. No Pedro Martinez Avenue. No Carl Yastrzemski Road. (Well, you can't blame them for that omission. Who wants to spell Yastremski, let alone pay for the longer street sign?)

No the players who had streets named after them were the favorites of one non-Red Sox Nation native Brandon Parr "a land development project manager with EDGEhomes and lifelong Sox fan." 

“I kind of started following [former Red Sox third baseman] Wade Boggs as a kid,” Parr explained in a phone interview. “And he joined the Red Sox in the ’80s, and I’ve been a fan ever since.” (Source: Boston.com)

Thus there's Pedroia Street. And Varitek Drive. Eovaldi Avenue. And, of course, Boggs Way. (All great players, by the way. Wade Boggs is a Hall of Famer. Dustin Pedroia and Jason Varitek are in the Red Sox Hall of Fame. And Nathan Eovaldi was a key player on the 2018 World Series championship team.)

The opportunity to name streets must be one of the funner aspects of Parr's job. And he went to town. 

“I thought it was just going to be kind of a fun idea to have something I could see every day that’s related to the Red Sox,” he said. “No one really gave me any pushback. I chose players that I have a connection with as I’ve been watching, and then some historical names like Fisk and Pesky and Remy, just to pay homage to some of the older guys as well.”

There was some pushback on Pesky Lane from someone not familiar with the great Johnny Pesky, a Red Sox Hall of Famer and someone who was associated with the Sox for over 60 years. (His number was retired.) The guy just associated the word pesky with annoyance. Parr set him straight. 

Jerry Remy is in the Red Sox Hall of Fame. Carlton Fisk is in the Hall of Fame Hall of Fame. Both of their numbers are retired. 

As for why so many other Red Sox greats didn't make the naming cut: Williams, Ortiz, and Martinez - three Hall of Famers - have common names that were already in use in town. Parr hasn't ruled out naming a street after Yastrzemski. He can always use Yaz instead. 

For Ted Williams, he might want to consider Splender Splinter or Teddy Ballgame. Big Papi would be obvious for Ortiz. There's nothing that obvious for Martinez (one of my personal favorites among Red Sox players). Maybe Petey isn't already in use. 

Anway, this sort of street naming isn't that out of the ordinary in Utah, where:

...quirky street names are actually pretty common around the greater Salt Lake region. In Herriman and other nearby cities and towns, you can find neighborhoods whose street names pay homage to “The Lord of the Rings,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe, wines, authors, Arthurian legends, and even “Wayne’s World.”

Wayne's World!!! Never would I ever, for Petey's sake, live on a street named for Wayne's World. Or Marvel superheroes, for that matter. To each his own.

But I'd be more than happy to live on Pesky Lane. Just as long as it was in Boston and not Herriman, Utah.

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Image Source: Boston.com Facebook

Guinness Adjudicator. Now there's a job for you.

I have a post coming up in which I pinkslip about a young woman (an influencer) whose company specializes in running over-the-top travel and events. One of the recent events she came up with made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the largest champagne bottle service presentation. Who even knew this was something one would compete for? 

There are, of course, dumber records than number of champagne corks popped. Like walking on beer bottles. Stuffing matches up your nose. And wearing the most ever pairs of socks put on in 30 seconds. (I've put on two pairs, which may or may not have taken 30 seconds to accomplish, but for the record, the record is 28 pairs.) 

But what I found interesting in doing a bit of poking around regarding Guinness, is that there is a professional position involved in all this record setting, and it's the job of Guinness Adjudicator. 

Based in 15 countries and speaking 18 languages, our 69 adjudicators are accomplished public speakers and are fully media-trained. They also create a highly effective focal point for photo opportunities and audience engagement.

If your event is taking place online or needs to reach multiple audiences in more than one location, our remote adjudicator services and video announcements are ideal for creating an air of prestige and positioning your online event as an authentic Guinness World Records attempt.

As well as verifying and announcing the record results, the adjudicator performs many other important roles including:

• Explaining the record guidelines and answering any questions ahead of the event
• Checking all measurements and any equipment required for the attempt
• Briefing stewards and carrying out spot checks (mass participation events only)
• Assessing and verifying the record attempt on the day
• Engaging the audience
• Participating in media interviews

Source: Guinness World Records 

Adjudicators are either staff members or contractors, and the pay doesn't sound all that great. According to the latest from ZipRecruiter, staffers make an average of about 62K (in Boston, $67K), but there's a pretty wide range of actual salaries. Contractors are paid by the gig, and can stand to make more. 

But what a strange job.

They make money because Guinness makes money from corporations who pay to have an adjudicator on hand so that they can make a backed-up claim in their marketing materials. E.g., Russell Stover set the record for the largest box of chocolates. For whatever reason, HSBC Global Procurement wanted to set an employee participation rate for "most people in a Mexican wave video relay." Lenovo? They set the record for "most laptops toppled in a domino fashion." What will they think of next?

Rather than ask what they would think of next, I tried to come up any records that the companies I worked for might have had a reasonable shot at setting.

While surely the record would have been broken by now, for its time, the product launch for Genuity's Black Rocket web-related services might have set the record for largest high-tech product launch expenditure that yielded nothing in return. (I believe that was the year before the company had its failed IPO - at the time the largest failed IPO in history - and started to descend into bankurptcy. Talk about bragging rights!)

One company I worked for had a product centered on IBM's OS/2 technology. (OS/2 was an operating system.) I think we could have set a record for how many times sales and marketing employees sat around pissing and moaning about our dependency on OS/2. Especially in the days after the cover story for one of the premiere tech magazines was about the demise of OS/2. The cover itself showed an Boot Hill style coffin labeled OS/2, with a lily on its top. Sigh.

I'm sure I could come up with a few more record setters that I was personally involved with back in the wayback of a day. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.

I do know that I never would have had the interest, let alone the budget, for hiring an adjudicator to adjudicate a record for us. 

I'm sure that at some point Guinness will figure out how to replace its adjudicators with AI, setting some sort of record in the process - "most Guinness adjudicators laid off by an AI in 60 second time slot" - but for now I'm guessing their jobs are safe.

So if you like to travel, measure, promote, and adjudicate, there might be a job for you out there.

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Image Source: The Smithsonian

I love the smell of Play-Doh in the morning

Few smells are as evocative of my childhood as the unmistakable smell of Play-Doh.

In the latter stages of the 1950s Play-Doh became available, and my parents - no one's idea of early adopters - glommed on to it, and Play-Doh quickly became a staple in our house, showing up in everyone's Christmas stocking.  (Interesting, I just found out - thanks, Wikipedia - that Play-Doh began life as a putty used to remove coal soot stains from wallpaper. Demand dropped off when folks switched from coal to natural gas or oil for heating.)

Ah, the smell of Play-Doh. 

And I'm apparently not the only one that finds an olfactory Rosebud moment in Play-Doh. In fact, in 2018, Play-Doh maker Hasbro trademarked the smell, which the company:

...formally describes as a unique scent formed through the combination of a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough. (Source: Hasbro)

I couldn't have come up with anything quite so wine-loverly. All I know is that my appreciation of the perfume that Play-Doh emits is the nose version of what a judge once said about smut. He couldn't quite describe it, but Potter Stewart said "I know it when I see it." Well, Play-Doh-wise: I know it when I breathe in that delectable aroma, an aroma that:

...makes the PLAY-DOH brand one of the few active and certainly most famous scent trademarks in the country.

On beyond the wonderful Play-Doh smell, I loved the fact that, when modeling clay came in dull, muted colors, Play-Doh was vibrant. Back in the day, it came in three colors: red, yellow, and blue. But as anyone who held a color wheel in kindergarten knew, with those colors you could make orange, green, and purple. Alas, you couldn't unmake the colors, so once you'd committed to those extra colors, you had less of the basics. 

Another advantage of Play-Doh over modeling clay was that it was more flexible, more pliable than clay. 

The only downside of Play-Doh was that if you didn't get it back into its cardboard container pdq - and if the jar wasn't hermetically sealed - it hardened up and got all crusty. You could quasi-restore it with a bit of water, but Play-Doh got stale fast. 

Play-Doh has, of course, morphed over the years with all sorts of brand extensions. For one thing, there are a lot more colors to work with, including pastels and sparkly ones. You can get all sorts of accessories, like cookie cutter molds, and there are kits along a lot of different themes: cooking, playing vet, etc. Inevitably, there are tie-ins to other kiddo brands, e.g., Peppa Pig Play-Doh kits. 

The company has also been climbing up the age ladder, with themed kits - Star Wars, Mandalorian - aimed at older kids and "kidults", 13 on up. 

And now "Hasbro is unveiling its most grown-up brand to date."

The new line comprises a series of modeling compound kits that guide users through the process of turning putty into floral arrangements designed to be displayed. (Source: Wall Street Journal)

Unlike the Star Wars and Mandalorian, Blooms - the new product line - is aimed at crafters. Female crafters. 

Hasbro's CMO, Jason Bunge, has this to say about the market:

“We’re not manufacturing a new need state...We feel Blooms is meeting something that consumers are looking for.”

I'm only putting this bit in because of the term "new need state," which I guess is what we used to call a manufactured need. Anyway, Hasbro's marketing plans include:

...enlisting more than 200 creators, from professional influencers to niche fans of pottery, crafts or flower arranging. It’s also planning a full-day creator event in Brooklyn and hosting a hands-on crafting experience at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to stoke media buzz.

With Blooms, Hasbro may well be on to something. A lot of folks I know - including adults young and old - have taken up crafting with a vengance. It's engaging, stress-reducing, and entertaining, and, if the makers don't feel compelled to Insta everything they make, gets people away from their screens. (A while back, Legos launched a line of bouquet-crafting kits that are pretty pricey and have been pretty popular.)

Although I won't be buying a Blooms kit, I hope that Hasbro succeeds. As long as they don't try to tamper with the wonderfully evocative smell of Play-Doh. Reminds me of victory childhood, and I absolutely love it.

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Image Source: Smithsonian Mag

Four on the Floor. (Make that Five on the Floor.)

I saw on the news the other day that about 0.6% of cars sold in the US in 2025 had a manual transmission, and this has been the case since 2021. "To put that shift into perspective, in 1980 manual transmissions made up almost 35% of new vehicles sold in the U.S." (Source: Reader's Digest)

In 1980, I didn't own a car. But when I bought my first car in 1986, it was a used manual - a 1980 rusted out Honda Civic I bought from a colleague for $2K. I needed that car to commute to the 'burbs, where my company had moved. (Ugh.) 

When I got my Honda, I had had some experience driving a stick, but it had been a while. I learned to drive a standard when my friend Joyce and I drove cross country in her Karmann Ghia, but most of my driving was on the highway. Joyce did much of the city driving, including in the hills of San Francisco, and the scarier driving in the national parks. 

The Karmann Ghia, like my Civic to be, had a four-on-the-floor gearbox. 

During our trip, I never got all that skilled, particularly with downshifting. To downshift, I would throw the car into neutral and then make my way to the right gear.

But when I needed a car, I decided - what the hell - to get a manual, which was available and cheap. My friend Michele took me out for a few practice ones in her Ford Escort, and I paid for a few lessons with a driving instructor - a young Hispanic man who came to my lessons wearing a sharp sports jacket and a yellow bowtie. 

When I first learned to drive in 1966, the family car was an automatic, so that's what I learned on. Although certainly everyone's father (and any mother who had a license: many didn't, including mine) knew how to drive a manual, the family car of almost everyone I knew was an automatic, which had become quite popular in the 1950s. 

The one exception was my friend Diane, whose family car was a three-on-the-tree (i.e., gears mounted on the steering column) station wagon that also lacked power brakes and power steering. Watching her drive that car was a workout in itself. 

Our friend Kathy wanted to learn to drive a manual, and Diane taught her. Kathy's family car was a nifty Dodge Dart with a press button automatic shift. No heavy lifting on that one. (I may have "driven" Diane's station wagon one time in a parking lot, as I have a vague memory of trying to steer the beast while I was bucking it from first to second.)

After a couple of years of noble commuting use, my Honda Civic died. Something to do with a bearing rod? I got $100 for the trade in, a deal negotiated Honda sight unseen, by my friend Tony, who spoke to the salesman in Greek. When I brought the car in, coughing and sputtering all the way, to pick up my new Mercury Tracer, the dealer said that, if he'd seen the car, he wouldn't even have given me the hundred bucks. 

My new Mercury was five-on-the-floor, as somewhere along the line a new gear - fifth - had been introduced. 

I had the Tracer, which I really enjoyed driving - other than the fact that it was to commute to a job I despised - until I got a job on public transpo. I put an ad in the Want Advertiser and sold my Tracer pretty quickly. 

While I liked that car, I was more than happy to get rid of it.

Commuting to work on the Red Line, reading The Globe, which I picked up each morning from a vendor working the Charles Street T station, was easy-peasy. But, alas, the company decided to locate to the dreaded suburbs, so I was back to car ownership.

This was 1998. Volkswager had just introduced the New Beetle. How could I resist? 

I bought a manual - again, a five speed - and decked the car out with an artificial daisy in the bud vase on the dashboard. I loved that car. As did pretty much everyone.

Shortly after I got it, I was at a Sunday afternoon party attended by a few dozen folks. Half the guys at the party asked if they could take my cute-as-a-button, bright blue Beetle, out for a spin, so I handed them the keys and a bunch of them took turns driving around the block.

Because the thing about manuals is that they're fun to drive. 

Oh, driving a manual can be a PITA - especially if you live in a city or are ever in stop and go traffic. And I'm pretty sure I burned my clutch out once grinding away trying to parallel park in a tight spot. 

That said, there are advantages to driving a manual. They are (or used to be, before they started going extinct) cheaper to buy, and are more fuel efficient. If you wanted to rent a car in Europe, it used to be hard to find an automatic - and definitely more expensive. And, while they're not theft-proof, if fewer and fewer people know how to drive a stick, the automatic-only car thieves will give yours a pass. 

The best thing about driving a manual is that you actually feel like you're driving.

When manual transmissions were the norm, drivers had to touch and manipulate the shifter, in tandem with the clutch, constantly while operating a vehicle. Passengers saw this action taking place, and shifting gears became imbued with meaning. It represented the allure of the road, for all its good and ill, and stood in for the human control of a big, hot, dangerous machine screaming down the pavement. The manual transmission’s impending disappearance feels foreboding not (just) because shifting a car is fun and sensual, but also because the gearshift is—or was—a powerful cultural symbol of the human body working in unison with the engineered world. (Source: The Atlantic)

This may be overintellectualizing things, but yeah. 

And as fewer and fewer people drive manuals, the ability to drive a shift gives you a bit of a bragging right. You're a cool kid. (Kinda sorta.) And R-E-S-P-E-C-T, especially if you're a woman.

Although we all learned to drive on automatics, all of my siblings drove standards, as did many of my friends. But gradually, they all went over to what we would kiddingly call the dark side. Mostly not by choice, but by necessity. It was just getting harder and harder to find a standard. And now, except for some niches, it's almost impossible. 

It's easy to imagine in a world of EVs that don't have gears, in a world where autonomous vehicles are becoming normalized, that the manual will become totally extinct, except among absolute gearheads who will probably have to build there own.

There's about a six-nines chance (99.9999%) that I will never own another car. There's a similar chance that I'll ever drive a manual again. 

But, damn, I just plain miss the very idea of it. 

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Image Source: Reddit

ICE and violence seem to go hand in glove

I guess they've been around for a while now, but until ICE announced that they were putting in a big ol' order for electric shock gloves, I'd never heard of them. But they've been used by police officers, prison guards, and even school resource officers for years. 

The device that ICE is acquiring is something called a GLOVE. This is not a glove as you and I might think of a glove. Something to wear when it's cold; something to wear when gardening; something to wear when slicing raw chicken. No, it's GLOVE as in an acronym for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter. And don't let that "low output voltage" fool you. A GLOVE, especially in the wrong hands, can administer a shockingly painful shock.

GLOVE is produced by a Kentucky-based (surprise, surprise) outfit named Compliant Technologies

Our mission is to provide innovative, non-lethal solutions that empower law enforcement, corrections, security, and healthcare professionals to handle dangerous situations with confidence and control. (Source: Compliant Technologies)

Well, innovative can be a mixed bag - it doesn't always go hand-in-glove with wonderful/marvelous - but non-lethal sounds good. I'm a bit concerned about healthcare professionals as an audience. I know that people can flip out in a healthcare setting, and that patients can become violent, but aren't there de-escalation methods that don't involve shocking someone, which seems like a particularly awful choice in certain environments. Like a hospital. Like a school.

Interesting, the value proposition for the product is not primarily about non-lethality. In fact, they lead with the technology's ability to lower liability.  

How so, you might ask.

Let's hear from Assistant Police Chief Adam Glueck of the Cape Giradeau, Missouri PD. 

“In today’s society, you know, everybody’s filming everything, everybody has a cell phone,” Glueck said. If an officer punches someone on camera, that can go viral in an instant; even a standard taser leaves puncture wounds. But “the glove is low optic, and it looks better on camera, and it looks better to those witnesses. With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars.” (Source: Mother Jones)

Glueck joked that “If I try to take away the gloves from those officers at this point I think we may have a mutiny on our hands." Oh, hah hah hah.

But having a "low optic" torture device, unlike a taser shooting out those treacherous darts, let alone a billy club applied with full force? Who wouldn't want one of those? Look, Ma: no burn marks, no scars. Lawsuit, smawsuit? Bring it! That video some misguided civilian took of the GLOVE'd individual writhing around on the ground in pain? Crisis actor! Fake news!

Glueck isn't the only gushing proponent of the GLOVE. Or to point out the beauty of GLOVEs-on when it comes to liability.

It’s been successful “from the patrolmen to the jailers,” Lumpkin County Sheriff Stacy Jarrard said in a Compliant Technologies promotional video. “It’s been a great tool as far as mitigating liability,” according to Nelson County Jailer Justin Hall. Bob Couey of the Floyd County Sheriff’s Department sung the GLOVE’s praises, too: “I highly recommend these gloves to anybody that’s looking for a utility they can use that is conducive to not leading to lawsuits.”

Lumpkn County, Georgia. Nelson County, Kentucky. Floyd County, Florida. 

Just sayin'. 

(Despite GLOVEs being positioned as anti-liability devices, there are at least a few lawsuits out there with respect to their use.)

Anyway, after hearing from the Boss Hoggs of the world, let's hear from the bleeding hearts:

The technology is unregulated “despite the clear human rights risks associated with its use,” Amnesty International researchers wrote in a 2025 report detailing instances in which electric-shock devices have been used for torture. The report ends with a recommendation that countries “cease use of, decommission and destroy any stockpiles of such prohibited electric shock weapons.” 

Worrying about "clear human rights risks" doesn't exactly seem to be ICE's jam.

And needless to say, I'm Team Amnesty International. 

Meanwhile, over at Compliant Technologies - recipient of that $20M of our tax money ICE contract - founder Jeff Niklaus sounds like a bit of a nutter:

...who believes that President Donald Trump has been “anointed” by God. He is also a sometime conspiracy theorist: In a podcast interview in 2025, he blamed the fatal crash of a passenger plane and a military helicopter on “the vaccines,” and on the Biden administration’s inclusion of women and LGBTQ people in the military.

If Trump were indeed anointed by God, well, I'd have to eat my halo. 

Some law enforcement agencies warn against using GLOVEs "against pregnant women, the elderly, or people in shackles." A GLOVE user guide advises not using it against "those with obvious health conditions." But, gee whiz, in the heat of battle, you can't always tell if someone is pregnant. Sure, I'm old and grey, but would someone necessarily clock me as elderly? (Okay, don't answer.) And what about non-"obvious health conditions?" The only thing that's clear about the must-avoid list would be someone placed in shackles, which is clearly visible. And which ICE seems to do with alarming frequency.

Not to worry:

“Our officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use of force training,” an ICE spokesperson told Mother Jones.

Alex Pretti and Renee Good might have something to say about that, if they were alive to say it.

I have no problem whatsoever with ICE rounding up baddies and shipping them back to from whence they came. Murderers, rapists, gang members, drug lords. So long, all of yez. And I know that when you're dealing with bad guys, sometimes you need to use force. But most of those who are being rounded up aren't bad guys. (Someone coming in for a meeting to talk about the progress of their greencard application is probably not a violent criminal.) And, as we've seen from countless videos, many of them are being brutalized. 

I can't wait for this nightmare to be over. 

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Image Source: Mashable