Labor Day

Cooler temps prevail this morning as a strong cold front from the North hints at the coming autumn. I don’t know of anyone who is complaining. Days like this are comfortable, with plenty of opportunities to get out and enjoy the holiday. Both twins and Fat Guy, our eldest cat, are helping me write this morning. The dogs are still curled up, sleeping away, showing no signs of wanting to go out. Kat and the kids are still asleep even as the clock approaches the 8:00 hour. I think we’ll make the most of everyone having a day off.

G helped me get all the brush loaded onto Grandpa Bob’s trailer yesterday. The task didn’t take too long. We then took the time to spray pet-safe weed killers around the fence line. The spray we’re using is 20% vinegar, so for a while, the yard smelled like the inside of a pickle jar. I didn’t bother asking Tipper to join us. Trying to get her to do anything outdoors is frustrating. I assigned her to do the dishes instead, which is a chore she doesn’t mind doing. We got everything out of the way early so they could chill the rest of the day.

I did have a rather weird nightmare this morning. It involved me attending some kind of conference held on the campus of a Christian university somewhere in Southwest Texas. I’ve no idea what the conference was about, but there were several friends and acquaintances in attendance. The nightmare part involved going to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. The place was odd for several reasons, not the least of which was the massage room that sat between dining rooms. Without getting into details, matters did not go well and it was well after curfew before I made it back to the dorm in which we were staying. Oh, and I was wearing Tipper’s orange furry tail the entire time. It was just bizarre.

With it being Labor Day, there are a couple of strikes going on that are worth mentioning. One is a housekeeper’s strike at major hotels in eight large cities in the US. Workers in other cities and chains are scheduled to join the strike later this week. The problem is more than just wages, which are stupidly low. Since COVID, there has been a shortage of housekeepers. Hotel chains have attempted to make up for this by offering guests the option of not having daily cleaning. That has backfired, though, as uncleaned rooms often take considerably longer to clean once the guests leave. This has resulted in housekeepers being overworked, expected to complete an impossible cleaning schedule before the next round of guests arrives.

The second is a general strike in Israel as people there are furious with Prime Minister Netanyahu for not agreeing to a previous cease-fire that would have released hostages before they were killed. The general work stoppage across the country affects almost everything, including air travel in and out of the country. The group behind the strike is older than the country itself and carries a lot of influence within the government. It will be interesting to see if Netanyahu continues to dig in his heels as internal pressure grows.

DirectTV users might as well go outside and play today. They lost access to all Disney-owned channels as a contract dispute between the two companies struggled to find a reasonable agreement. The problem is that the majority of Americans are better served without the old cable providers. That’s been true for a number of years now. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of rural areas where satellite-based service is more cost-effective than high-speed Internet. Disney makes more money off their streaming services, so obviously they’d rather emphasize that revenue stream. Since the number of DirectTV users is a small fraction of total viewers, there’s not a lot of motivation for Disney to give in. Of course, as always, it’s the customers that lose.

The Associated Press is floating a story this morning that AI may not steal many jobs after all. It may just make workers more efficient. Having read the article a couple of times now, I think there’s some merit to the thesis, but to make a claim that workers don’t have to worry at all about being replaced by AI is short-sighted. There are some industries where workers will benefit, to be sure, but there are plenty of others where workers will be replaced. The employment market is too broad to be making such a global statement of this kind.

Germans are feeling a bit nervous this morning as the country’s far-right party won a state election yesterday. While there’s still some question as to whether the majority parties will allow the far-right to participate in actually governing, the mere fact that they won the election has some worried for the future and others fearful of repeating the past. The country has worked hard to put its fascist Nazi heritage behind them. There are even laws designed to prevent them from ever coming to power again. Still, the fear that there are people in Eastern Germany who voted for the party is disturbing.

There is an interesting guest essay in this morning’s Times. While the Felon has made the claim that Harris would “take away your hamburgers,” this writer makes the argument that the Felon’s immigration policies would be what removes hamburgers and other meats from the market. The meat packing industry relies heavily on immigrant labor, which the Felon wants to stop. If he wins and implements such plans, the price of meats would, at the very least, rise well beyond affordability for most families. If workers can’t be found, some meats could disappear from the market altogether. Given the amount of burgers being consumed by Americans on holidays such as this one, I’m not sure that losing meat is a risk anyone wants to take.

That’s enough reading for today. The weather is too beautiful for any of us to stay inside. Solaris just turned off my desk lamp (seriously, he did), so that seems like a pretty good indication that I should stop typing and get on about the fun stuff, like napping, since there’s still no one else awake.

Too bad there’s not a football game to watch.