A new head-fake in the jobs world from BlueprintUSA

I am texted March 4 about a job and asked if I can do an initial interview the next day.

I say OK, trying to remember when and where I might have applied at Blueprint USA, and yes, you're getting named. Not LinkedIn; not in my recent applications. They're not on Indeed.

So, I never did actually apply to them. 

But they texted me again the next day about the Zoom. That's after saying in the March 4 text that they would email me information the next day.

Another red flag — I didn't get any such thing.

Then, the interview on March 5? Turns out to be a group marketing video to a dozen or whomever people have been roped in.

And, the job? "Event marketing."

OK, "danger Will Robinson" time. 

They then texted me about two hours after the interview, saying "we missed you" (I typed the Zoom link into my computer; I don't do smartphone apps in general and certainly not on an Android) and asked if I could do it on March 6. No way I'm being fooled.

To schadenfreud or not to schadenfreud — that is the question

"Schadenfreud" is obviously a verb, possibly one I have invented. Its meaning should be obvious.

What it addresses, if not already obvious, will be soon.

Back in Trump 1.0, this was also an issue. Occasionally, like with Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos, on the Kentucky coal ash floods, it was taken too far.

Already this administration, though, many individual librulz, and certainly centrists and Never Trumper Rethuglicans, are saying "don't schadenfreud."

Wrong!

Per Markos? About anything short of death is OK to schadenfreud.

After all, these are people who are actually rejoicing in their own family members being fired.

Schadenfreud away.

If the NOAA/NWS cuts stay in place and a major hurricane hits the Gulf Coast with less warning than before on intensification? One can feel sorrow for the other victims, yet schadenfreude for these. Ditto for western wildfires. Ditto for being scammed on bitcoins. Fill in other things you can think of.

==

That said, this isn't just about MAGAts, even if the people I am about to mention are ardent Trumpers.

Take the Mennonites in Gaines County, Texas. The Atlantic interviewed the family of the first measles death there. The father is apparently leader of its church.

I don't take pleasure in her death. I do understand Mennonites traditionally have a complicated relationship to governing agencies. But, I don't really extend sympathy to them either, at least not the parents.

That's especially since, per NBC, the family cooperated with Brainworm Bobby's Children's Health Defense and, AFTER the child's death, did an antivaxxer video.

Texas Progressives talk schools, national parks, more

Undisclosed bonuses paid to charter school superintendents — along with the state having no cap on such bonuses — hint at another subsea level part of an iceberg in the Lege's possible charter school bill.

Dems in the Lege want superintendents of regular public schools to get louder about their funding needs.

The state Senate wants to do an end run around portions of 2023's HB 900 and create parental councils for school libraries. Sadly, the Lege's website doesn't report on committee votes, so I don't know the Dems, all but one, as well as Rethugs, who passed this on a 10-1.

The Monthly looks at how the Musk firings in the National Park Service are affecting Big Bend.

Atlas Obscura reports on a new plant species found there.

Off the Kuff considers the special election possibilities in CD18 following the tragic and untimely death of Rep. Sylvester Turner. (Note: Re Kuffner's language, Sly Turner's death may have been untimely in one sense, but in the sense of being unexpected, it was not, and because of that, while his —like any death — may have been tragic in a personal sense, it was more ... stupid? in a political sense as he shouldn't have run for the position. In reality, though he wasn't Nancy Pelosi, it's another footnote on the gerontocracy of Congress.)

I am SHOCKED that Mercy Culture Prep is the private school bragging about a vaccination rate below 15 percent for MMR. (The Barbed Wire's homepage tease didn't mention names, just "Fort Worth pastor brags about low school vaccination rates." It linked to WFAA, the link above, with "North Texas pastor celebrates lowest vaccination rate in the state."

SocraticGadfly after perusing last week's must-read longform by Der Spiegel, took a deep dive on the image of Zelensky as Churchill and related issues.

Zionists are getting ICE to do their dirty business with pro-Palestinian college protestors who are not American citizens. (ICE could do the same at UT and Kuff might still ignore it.)

Alice Rothchild, Jewish doctor, and retired Harvard prof, blocked from speaking at Harvard over claims she's antisemitic for supporting Palestinians. That's weaponized anti-Zionism in a nutshell. 

DOGE terminated the lease (later rescinded) for the building housing the New Mexico field office of the Department of Energy that overseas the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the repository for much of DoD's nuclear waste.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project posted about what each of us can do to fight Trump/Musk with a focus on Houston/Harris County.

The Dallas Observer highlights some North Texas musicians with disabilities forging a path for themselves.

Evil MoPac explains why taking a stand against private school vouchers matters.

The Current adds up the cost of the NIH cuts to San Antonio.

The Lone Star Project calls out Greg Abbott for his non-response to the measles outbreak.

Sara Cress gives us notice of the forthcoming mandate for the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

RIP Kevin Drum — a scatblogging roundup tribute

I heard earlier this evening of the passing of Drum, whose most recent journalism home had been Mother Jones, which posted his obit.

As I said when sharing it on Shitter (hold on to that word) and Substack, he was too much of a BlueAnon squish for me. But, he was more personable by far, at least through the online prism, than other big names of early 2000s liberal blogging. Like Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos. Atrios? I don't have a read on Duncan Black from way back then. Josh Marshall? As lucky as Kos, and more so than Black or Drum. Plus, Kos banned me for from the site there for being too Green and Josh? Way too Zionist, even if Oct. 7, 2023 has forced him to smell a tiny bit of coffee — or largely ignore Middle East affairs. (Markos seemed early on like a political operative at bottom line and Black like he would be a slightly less fastidious, but not much less, lawyer version of Niles Crane. Beyond the big political disagreement with Marshall, he also came off as too didactic.)

I did note one other thing.

It was about part of Kevin's non-political blogging.

Riffing on the "Friday catblogging" that Drum had already been doing, at least occasionally, at Calpundit and then brought to Washington Monthly, starting in 2008, for a period of roughly three years, into 2011, I did semi-regular Friday SCATblogging. Yes, scatblogging; that's the tag for it if you click that link.

It was often about animal scat, though not always.

The most popular, by eyeballs, was tracing coyote scat in Cook County, aka metro Chicago.

Second most popular? Scat you don't want to see, as in fresh grizzly scat while out hiking. 

Third was ecological, but also about a big critter — tracking expanding moose populations by scat.

The fourth most popular was also about a cat, for better riffing on Drum — a cougar wandering the Twin Cities that was also tracked into Wisconsin by its scat.

Fifth was back to big animals, with a San Diego Zoo subsidiary creatively dealing with elephant scat.

Other scatblogging about cats included Macho, er jaguar Macho B scatblogging, with a follow-up on a criminal case over his death.

I blogged about other things that fit "scat" as well, like riffing on a giveaway by Sarasota County Area Transit (since renamed).

The most popular there? Metaphorical scat — a San Francisco activist trying to get a new city sewer plant named after Shrub Bush.

Another? Scat-singing.

As noted, I was riffing on Drum. And on people who followed in his wake.

About a month after starting it, I explained why — I said it was in reaction to things like a catblogger writing about giving a cat antidepressants.

My opening post? I actually used the word "crapblogging," not "scatblogging," but it was about archaeologists using human coprolites in the Americas as one avenue of support for "before Clovis." Not long after, I wrote about a dinosaur coprolite selling for nearly $1,000.

I eventually got the reaction to catblogging out of my system. I think the "I can has cheezeburger" meme "triggered" me as much or more than Kevin. (I do read Bruce Schneier's Friday squidblogging semi-regularly today, I'll add.) 

Unlike the person wanting to put their cat on Elavil, though, Kevin never shoved cats in your face. Nor did he shove obnoxious cat memes in your face. This, too, he kept personable.

NOTE: I have no doubt you'll hit a lot of broken links. The blog posts show a lot of broken picture links.

Anyway, condolences to Kevin's family, A kudo to Mother Jones for linking to Kevin's piece about death with dignity, which is what it is. Briefly a one-time adjunct professor, I taught a course on issues in death and dying — at the time of Jack Kevorkian's first trial, and in Michigan no less.

THIS is the end of an era at Southwest Airlines

Not the end of cattle-car seating.

NOT the related offering premium seating with extra $$$.

NOT EVEN its first-ever layoffs.

Southwest instead announced yesterday that your bags, and mine, will no longer fly free, effective May 28. 

That story repeats what was said last year, when Southworst was trying to fend off Elliott Investment Management:

As recently as Southwest’s investor day in late September, airline executives described the bags-fly-free as the most important feature in setting Southwest apart from rivals. All other leading U.S. airlines charge for checked luggage, and Wall Street has long argued that Southwest was leaving money behind.

The airline estimated in September that charging bag fees would bring in about $1.5 billion a year but cost the airline $1.8 billion in lost business from customers who chose to fly Southwest because of its generous baggage allowance.

Still true. Especially because, as I said yesterday on Shitter and Hucksterman? I'll immediately look at American flights out of DFW. Southworst may still be cheaper, but, it won't be where I start my searches. And, I suspect this is another shoe dropping, and maybe not the last, in last fall's cave-in to Elliott. Per that piece, we know now what Southworst chairman Gary Kelly's "significant new operational initiatives" that his PR flunkies mentioned at that time actually are.

Speaking of, beyond the "will no longer fly free" news story link, Southworst's news release on this looks like they've really been taken over by Elliott. If you're a high flyer, you do still get one or two bags flying free. Related? The Rapid Rewards system has been tilted toward higher-dollar business travelers. And, it admits that.

The one plus side, and only? Since they'll now be listing on Expedia, I can compare their prices at Love to American and anybody else at DFW without having to run two browser windows at once. (I checked, and per the release, they're already up. But, it's pre-May 28, so I don't know what their bag fees are yet.)

That said, from Southworst's corporate point of view, I think that's a minus. Let's say that its bag check fee is half of American and one-third of the real nutters, like Spirit, ValuJet and other crapper airlines that drive the Elliott philosophy. If you're still selling flights only on your own site, most buyers will soon enough recognize that these fees are relatively low, and won't be tempted to look elsewhere. But, instead? They, like me, will nose around on Expedia.

A possible plus? This lower-rate "Basic" fare, if it is indeed lower than the "Wanna Get Away" that's currently the bottom dollar. We'll find out on May 28. We'll also find out what sort of restrictions it has. They'll likely be plenty. Especially on more popular Southwest routes, weekends and holidays are likely to be blacked out, for example. It also, in addition to not being refundable, like Wanna Get Away, may not even have a credit for cancellation. In other words, when you book, you're stuck.

As for that cutoff date? I suspect that summer vacation flights will be booked heavily, for whenever they fly, before May 28. From the way I read the presser, it's the booking date that's the cutoff date, so if you have an August vacation? As long as you book before May 28, your bags still fly free on that trip.

The one other item that would have made this somewhat more palatable — flights to Canada — is still nowhere to be seen, either. 

And, these changes would explain why Southwest has been hammering my email inbox recently.

Per the old metaphor, I suspect Herb Kelleher is rolling over in his grave. If he were alive, I think he would have taken Elliott's head vulture capitalist, David Singer, out in a back alley, given him a joking noogie first, then kicked his ass.

Update: Southwest has had other, lesser, issues in recent years that have not totally floated my boat. One is flying to Southern California. They used to run more flights through Ontario (San Bernardino). If I wanted to go either east to Joshua Tree, or north to Death Valley, this was much more convenient than any other airport. Theoretically, Burbank would have been better for going northwest to Sequoia and Yosemite, the coast, etc., but that's a tiny airport.

Today? Southwest barely flies to Ontario.

The Resistance 2.0 wants to relitigate Russiagate 1.0

Michael Sellers doesn't seem as nutbar on the surface as Jon Chait. But here he is, "ex"-spook and all, reviving the claim that Trump was "recruited," and not necessarily in the Gorbachev years, but with the Czechs leaning on Ivana's dad back in late Brezhnev times.

I said in a quote-tweet that, per Wikipedia with links (and Wiki usually has links, so you can trace its claims; in places where it doesn't, be more skeptical, that Yuri Shvets isn't that reliable. At a minimum, he's a blowhard who's made unsubstantiated claims about several things.

And, per Snopes, Alnur Mussayev is even less reliable with his "Krasnov" claims.

Sellers, who is presenting a whole set of Substack pieces with the — head fake, IMO — of "let us proceed cautiously with this," quoted my quote and doubled down on claims both have the straight skinny.

I have no doubt that there's plenty of other Michael Sellers people out there, and many others quoting him approvingly.

We've got 3 years, 10 months of tribalism left.

Top blogging of February

A few days late, but better than never. As normal, not all posts were written in February but these were the most read of last month. Older posts, as always, will be indicated.

No. 10? Actually March 1, but we'll count it. I called out John Mearsheimer for hitting a foul ball on Russia-Ukraine peace talks. (He continues to do so.)

No. 9? From last December, will Texas Rethuglicans really censure anybody? Unless we have a special election for a Texas Lege or Congressional seat, we won't find out until May 2026. (Strangeabbott gets to appoint somebody to fill the remaining portion of Glenn Hegar's term.)

No. 8? Going beyond David Schenck, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, I called for real judicial election reform, starting with replacing partisan elections with retention elections.

No. 7? I looked at Southwest Airlines first-ever layoffs.

No. 6? A mid-January Texas Progressives looked at Dustin Burrows' Texas House Speaker election, among other things.

No. 5? From the end of January, "Another ban at another Nazi subreddit" called out r/Texas and its mods for refusing to accept that leftists exist, and for remaining in its cocooned belief that anybody not a librul BlueAnon Democrap most be a Trump Train rider.

No. 4? Also from late January, about updating my blogroll. It's not done, and the original is still in place, too. Patience!

No. 3? My take on a semi-pissed Harvey Kronberg of Quorum Report.

No. 2? My skeptical take on Seymour Hersh claiming he's got the goods on a former CIA agent the US had inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

No. 1 with a bullet? My in-depth thoughts on Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod President Matthew Harrison mixing church and state and peddling lies and bullshit while so doing.

The Barbed Wire drives itself into the ditch

I had hopes when it the online news-y magazine was announced, then launched, late last year. I knew the Texas Monthly needed competition, and thought there was room for that.

Then, as postings faded after election day, and into this year, the hope faded a bit.

Then, we get this last week.

The Barbed Wire officially drove into the ditch the first time for letting some Billy Begala (don't think he's related to Paul) make the evidence-free claim that "the woke left" as well as rightists oppose legal gambling in Texas, along with the asshattery of using that phrase. Worse? This Begala is a managing director there, per the "about."

The Barbed Wire then drove into the ditch a second time, when, in a piece about Black cowboys, it had this:

“They didn’t have white cowboys,” Larry Callies, founder of The Black Cowboy Museum in Rosenberg told The Barbed Wire. “Black (men) was called a cowboy because of his skin,” said Callies, who is a fourth-generation cowboy and a country singer. “They called Black people ‘boys’ in the 1800s. The white man was called the cowhand. (Back then) you better not call a white man a cowboy. He’d say, ‘I’m not your boy. I’m a cowhand. Cowperson. Cowdriver.’ Not a cowboy… until Hollywood.”

The actual etymology of "cowboy" calls bullshit.

H. Drew Blackburn is promising 254 pieces, every other week, of Texana in film, books, etc. I'll read any further ones at least as critically, or else skip.

And, that will apply to the site as a whole.