Hey

1. No sex ed

2. No discussion of *any* gender or sexuality

Ah yes, the school should not do it's job while making parent's life easier... Because the state (large-scale governing structure) shouldn't get any takes on sex (something crucial and dangerous-if-mismanaged that all humans interface with), what a wonderful take.

Making children not be taught knowledge about contraceptives, possible sex diseases and how they look like, different ways in which a penis/vulva might develop, what sort of symptoms you should go to a doctor for, and what help resources they've got access to, is a good way to:

- Leave teens needlessly uncomfortable in their own skin, dysphoric at a belief that "my body must be wrong".

- Leave girls and women who might have harsh periods suffering needlessly due to not knowing better.

- Leave adults who have symptoms fester for months and years without a medical consultation because "eh, this is just another weird thing the body does."

- Leave teens pregnant with each other because getting contraceptives before fucking was too awkward and weird, or because they got the contraceptives, but timed the pill wrong and/or opened the condom sachet in a way that ruptured it.

“It’s funny,” I told Flewin. “We have an old Nintendo Game Boy floating around the house, and Tetris is the only game we own. My wife will sometimes dig it out to play on airplanes and long car rides. She’s weirdly good at it. She can get 500 or 600 lines, no problem.”

What Flewin said next I will never forget.

“Oh, my!”

The husband was writing an article on classic video game records, was surprised to find out that holding the Tetris record is a bit of a big deal, and mentions how good his wife is at it.

The guy he’s talking to mentions that the record is 327, way lower than his wifes usual scores of 500-600.

They travel to a tournament, and she goes to do her attempt. Just after she beats 327, and is climbing higher, a judge brings up to the husband that the specific version she’s playing actually has a different record of 545.

The protagonist has just won the world famous sword fighting competition in the big, rich capital and is talking to his mentor, and says something about being the best swordsman in the world. The mentor frowns and tells him that no, he isn't. He is the best swordsman out of the people that could afford to show up to this tournament. There could be a mercenary way out in the mountains, patrolling a snow encrusted fort's walls that could kick his ass and there was no way to know until he was already losing to the guy.

Guinea Bissau has some of the highest rates of HepB on the continent, and infants are the group at the highest risk of contracting HepB, leading to chronic hepatitis & long term hepatic diseases like cirrhosis and liver failure as well as increased chance of liver cancer.

The study can’t be carried out in the US or Denmark because it fails almost every benchmark for medical ethics — surprising absolutely nobody, it is in fact heinously unethical to expose babies to preventable disease that causes liver failure and liver cancer, but the “study” has been green lit in Guinea.

Fuck the US imperial project in Africa, fuck RFK Jr and the US Department of Health, and fuck every single collaborative researcher in Denmark. This is some nightmare Tuskegee Study shit and every single individual involved deserves to be in The Hague.

[ID: @diffusedmuse “One question if you have a moment: do you confront airlines themselves or go straight to the DOT? For example, they often push me into signing a release of liability in case they wreck my wheelchair, which I’m fairly sure is illegal but I’m afraid to say anything and be denied my flight.”]

Under US law, it is definitely illegal for an airline to make you sign a release of liability for transporting your wheelchair. I would definitely advise you not sign any release of liability. The newest statistics show that airlines damage or lose 25 wheelchairs per day. (Source) You can’t afford for them to not fix or replace your wheelchair if they damage it.

“§382.35   May carriers require passengers with a disability to sign waivers or releases?

“(b) You must not require passengers with a disability to sign waivers of liability for damage to or loss of wheelchairs or other assistive devices.”

(Source)

I always insist on having my wheelchair in the cabin, but if the flight has less than 100 seats they’re not required to have space in-cabin, and if you have a power chair it’s not going to fit in the in-cabin wheelchair closet. So I realize some people have to put their chairs in cargo.

Personally I’d pocket whatever release form they gave me, scan it in when I got home and include it in my DOT complaint. I bet the DOT would be very interested to see what release they’re trying to get you to sign.

I have on several occasions had airline employees threaten to not let me fly, try to maneuver me into agreeing to take a different flight, or insinuate that if I continue to insist they follow the law they won’t let me fly. This is illegal, and I let them know that I know that it is illegal.

“§382.11   What is the general nondiscrimination requirement of this part?

“(4) You must not take any adverse action against an individual (e.g., refusing to provide transportation) because the individual asserts, on his or her own behalf or through or on behalf of others, rights protected by this part or the Air Carrier Access Act.” 

(Source)

So yes, I confront the airline employees myself, although I realize not everyone is able to do so. I always have a copy of the law with me - I have a document where I put together the clauses that I know they’re going to violate, and I print out a couple copies before I fly. I also have the full ACAA on my phone. Only once has an airline employee ever looked at the law - they generally just flat out refuse to read it - but I have it with me so I can prove I know what the law says. That means that can’t say “that’s not in the law,” they can only say “I don’t care what the law says,” and that is not going to show in their favor when they have to justify their actions to the DOT.

I definitely also report the airline to the DOT after I get back from my trip. The DOT’s formal investigation process is to have the airline investigate themselves and report their findings back to the DOT. IME the airline always, every time, lies and claims they didn’t break any laws. They generally accidentally admit to breaking a couple laws, but for the majority it ends up being a he says/she says situation. 

Personally, I want the airline to get fined for every clause of the ACAA they break when I fly, not just the ones they accidentally admit to because they are that ridiculously unfamiliar with the law they’re required by law to know. (The record so far is fourteen clauses broken on one flight.) So as of my last flight I now record every interaction I have with an airline employee. On that flight, the minute I realized they had found a new and ridiculous way to violate the ACAA, I set my phone to video and put it in a shallow outside pocket in my personal bag with the camera facing out. When I got home, I extracted the audio file from the video, made a transcript, and forwarded both the audio file and the transcript to the DOT along with my complaint. When the airline investigated themselves and lied about what they did, I then forwarded the audio file and transcript to them as well and proved that their employees lied. It was interesting watching them scramble to explain themselves. 

The DOT takes a year to process complaints, so I haven’t heard back from the DOT on that one yet, but I’m particularly interested to see how this complaint turns out as it’s going to be impossible for them to squirrel out of any of their violations. I have proof.

After that last flight I bought myself an audio recorder (like the kind you use to record lectures in school) which I now have hanging from my personal bag. Some airlines prohibit photography and video in their contract of carriage, but I have yet to find one that prohibits audio recordings. Part of my prep for this trip has been testing that audio recorder to see what the range is and how well it records, so I know where on my bag to hang it to be sure it records everything that happens.

If you’re recording audio, keep that in mind when you’re dealing with airline employees. Ask for names or read out their name badge (”Jane Smith, right?”) and describe what’s happening if it’s not apparent from what they say. (”Wait, so you’re telling me I need to sign this release of liability form before you’ll transport my wheelchair? You do realize that’s illegal, right?”)

Monday, December 16, 2024

Newly released final rule is the biggest expansion of rights for passengers with disabilities in a generation 

Earlier this year, DOT issued a record-breaking penalty against American Airlines for unsafe and undignified treatment of passengers with disabilities 

WASHINGTON – U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg today announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has issued new protections for people with disabilities in commercial air travel that will ensure that they can fly safely and with dignity. 

The new final rule requires that airlines meet more rigorous standards for accommodating passengers with disabilities, especially for passengers who use wheelchairs. The rule sets new standards for assistance, mandates hands-on training for airline employees and contractors who physically assist passengers with disabilities and handle passengers’ wheelchairs, and specifies actions that airlines must take to protect passengers when a wheelchair is damaged or delayed during transport. 

“Every passenger deserves safe, dignified travel when they fly—and we’ve taken unprecedented actions to hold airlines accountable when they do not provide fair treatment to passengers with disabilities,” said Secretary Buttigieg. “With the new protections we’re announcing today, we’re establishing a new standard for air travel—with clear and thorough guidelines for airlines to ensure that passengers using wheelchairs can travel safely and with dignity.” 

An estimated 5.5 million Americans use a wheelchair, and many encounter barriers when it comes to air travel. DOT data shows that for every 100 wheelchairs or scooters transported on domestic flights at least one is damaged, delayed, or lost. 

When an individual’s wheelchair is delayed or damaged by an airline, their mobility, health, and freedom can be severely impacted until the wheelchair can be returned or replaced. During a roundtable discussion in July 2023, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary Buttigieg heard firsthand stories from people with disabilities whose lives were seriously affected by unsafe assistance and mishandling of their mobility device during air travel, including instances that resulted in serious injuries. One public survey found that one in ten people with a disability do not fly

due to fear of bodily harm, damage to their wheelchair, or aircraft inaccessibility. 

Secretary Buttigieg has made improving air travel for people with disabilities a priority throughout his time in office. 

In October 2024, DOT issued a landmark $50 million penalty against American Airlines for serious violations of the laws protecting airline passengers with disabilities, including cases of unsafe physical assistance that at times resulted in injuries and undignified treatment of wheelchair users. 

In July 2023, DOT finalized a rule to require airline lavatories to be accessible to people with disabilities. 

In July 2022, the Department established the first Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights to help educate passengers with disabilities about their rights when they travel.  

In addition, DOT has laid the groundwork

for a possible future rule that would address passengers staying in their own wheelchairs onboard airplanes. 

Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Airport Terminals Program, DOT has funded over 150 projects to make airport terminals more accessible for people with disabilities. 

The rule takes major actions in the following areas: 

Safe and Dignified Assistance Standard: The rule requires that airlines provide safe and dignified assistance to individuals with disabilities. It defines “safe” to mean assistance provided to individuals with disabilities that does not put them at heightened risk of bodily injury. The rule defines “dignified” to mean assistance provided in a manner that respects a passenger’s independence, autonomy, and privacy. 

Enhanced Training for Airline Personnel and Contractors: The rule requires annual training, including hands-on training, for airline employees and contractors who physically assist passengers with mobility disabilities or handle passengers’ wheelchairs or scooters. As part of the required training, airline employees and contractors must be able to successfully demonstrate their knowledge such as through competency assessments or certification exams. All airline employees and contractors who provide physical assistance to persons with mobility disabilities or handle the transport of wheelchairs or scooters must receive training as specified in the final rule by June 17, 2026.  

Prompt Enplaning, Deplaning, and Connecting Assistance: The rule requires prompt enplaning, deplaning, and connecting assistance from airlines to passengers with disabilities, including moving within the airport terminal. For a person who uses a boarding chair to disembark an aircraft, prompt means that airline personnel and a boarding wheelchair are available to deplane the passenger when the last passenger who did not request deplaning assistance departs the aircraft. The passenger’s personal wheelchair must be available as close as possible to the door of the aircraft to the maximum extent possible, if requested. 

Rebuttable Presumption of a Violation for Mishandlings: The rule clarifies that airlines must return all checked wheelchairs and other assistive devices to passengers in the condition in which they are received. It specifies that whenever a passenger’s checked wheelchair or other assistive device that was in the airline’s custody is not returned to the passenger in the same condition it was received, there is a rebuttable presumption that the airline mishandled the passenger’s wheelchair or other assistive device in violation of the Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA). The rule also specifies what an airline must demonstrate to overcome the presumption of a violation. 

Passenger Notifications: 

Required Information Prior to Departure: The rule requires airlines to notify passengers in writing when they are checking their wheelchairs or scooters that if their wheelchair or scooter is mishandled, they have a right to contact a Complaint Resolution Official (CRO) and to be provided information on how to contact the CRO and a right to file a claim with the airline. It also requires airlines to notify passengers whether their wheelchairs or scooters have been loaded onto their flights (including whether their device could not fit on the passenger’s scheduled flight because of its size or weight) before the aircraft cabin door closes. 

Required Information Upon Arrival: The rule requires airlines to notify passengers, before passengers deplane, when their wheelchairs or scooters have been unloaded from the cargo compartment of their flights. 

Required Information After Wheelchair or Scooter is Mishandled: The rule requires airlines to notify in writing passengers whose wheelchairs or scooters have been mishandled of their rights: (1) to file a claim with the airline, (2) to receive a loaner wheelchair from the airline with certain customizations, (3) to choose a preferred vendor, if desired, for device repairs or replacement, and (4) to have a CRO available and be provided information on how to contact the CRO. It also requires airlines to provide status update notifications to passengers on their delayed wheelchairs or scooters. 

Publication of Information Related to Aircraft Cargo Holds: The rule requires airlines to publish in a prominent and easily accessible place on their public websites, information describing the relevant dimensions and other characteristics of the cargo holds of all aircraft types operated by the airline, including the dimensions of the cargo hold entry.

Prompt Return of Delayed Wheelchairs or Scooters: The rule requires airlines to transport a delayed wheelchair or scooter to the passenger’s final destination within 24 hours of the passenger’s arrival for domestic flights and short international flights (12 hours or less in duration) and within 30 hours of the passenger’s arrival for long international flights (more than 12 hours in duration). Airlines must transport the device by whatever means are available to do so safely. The rule provides the passenger a choice between picking up the delayed wheelchair at their destination airport or having the wheelchair or scooter delivered to a reasonable location requested by the passenger, such as the passenger’s home or hotel. 

Reimbursement for Accessible Ground Transportation: The rule requires airlines to reimburse passengers for the costs of any transportation to or from the airport that the passenger incurred as a direct result of the passenger’s wheelchair or scooter being delayed by the airline.  

Prompt Repair or Replacement of Damaged Wheelchairs: Following a wheelchair mishandling, the rule requires airlines to provide the passenger a reasonable timeframe to inspect the wheelchair for damage and to file a claim with the airline for the mishandling and offer the passenger the options of: (a) the airline handling the prompt repair or replacement of the device and paying the associated costs, or (b) the passenger arranging for the repair or replacement of the device through their preferred vendor with the airline having the responsibility to transport the device to the passenger’s preferred vendor and to pay the vendor directly for the repairs or replacement. 

Loaner Wheelchair or Scooter Accommodations: The rule requires airlines to provide and pay for loaner wheelchairs or scooters while individuals with disabilities are waiting on returns, repairs, or replacements for their mishandled devices. It also requires airlines to consult with the individual receiving the loaner wheelchair or scooter to ensure that the loaner wheelchair or scooter fits the passenger’s functional needs, as much as possible, and safety-related needs. If the loaner offered by the airline does not meet the passenger’s needs, the airline must allow the passenger to find and secure an alternative loaner wheelchair that is better than the one offered. In this case, the airline is required to reimburse the passenger for the cost of that loaner. 

Reimbursement of Fare Difference: The rule requires airlines to reimburse the difference between the fare on a flight a passenger who uses a wheelchair took and the fare on a flight that the passenger would have taken if their wheelchair had been able to fit in the cabin or cargo compartment of the aircraft. The fare difference requirement is limited to flights that occur on the same day, on the same airline, and between the same origin and destination. 

Rebooking Requirements: The rule requires airlines to offer to disembark passengers and rebook them on the next available flight of the same carrier or a partner carrier at no additional cost when passengers’ wheelchairs or scooters are not loaded on their scheduled flights, for whatever reason. It also requires airlines to also offer free rebooking on the next available flight of the same carrier or a partner carrier when the airline becomes aware that a passenger’s personal wheelchair or scooter does not fit on the passenger’s scheduled flight.  

Seating Accommodations at the Airport: The rule requires airlines to establish and provide, after consultation with disability rights organizations, safe and adequate seating accommodations to be used by a person with a disability when waiting at the airport for a delayed personal wheelchair or scooter or a loaner wheelchair or scooter after a passenger’s wheelchair or scooter is mishandled by the carrier and cannot be promptly returned. 

New Improved Standards for On-Board Wheelchairs (OBW): The rule requires new improved performance standards for OBWs on twin-aisle aircraft and purchases of OBWs for use on aircraft with more than 60 seats after October 2, 2026, consistent with standards for OBWs on single-aisle aircraft with 125 or more seats. The rule requires all OBWs for use on aircraft with more than 60 seats to meet the Department’s new improved standards by October 2, 2031. 

Individual requirements in the final rule have varying implementation timelines, ranging from January 16, 2025 to June 17, 2026 for training requirements. The final rule will be effective on January 16, 2025 and can be found at https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/latest-news.    

Fellow white people: if you’re able, put your bodies/vehicles/voices in between these kidnappers and their targets, ESPECIALLY if you look “respectable” (eg soccer mom/dad, business attire etc). They’re much, much less likely to engage violently with individuals and crowds who look like ppl they respect/view as human (white/white passing) so use their prejudice to your advantage.

- Straight up refuse them entry. Not all workplaces will allow you to do this (e.g. I work in a public library and can't do that) but if you are on private property you can straight up tell them to GTFO or get trespassed by the cops.

- Announce their presence over the PA system. Say "Will the ICE agents who just entered the building please come to [your department] immediately?" and anyone else in the building is going to be made aware that ICE is here and that they're likely to be headed towards wherever you asked them to go, giving them time to escape if necessary.

- Be strict about weapons policies. If your workplace only allows LEOs to carry weapons, ask to see their badges, and ask to copy down their badge numbers and names, too. Take your time doing this, waste their time with as much bullshit red tape as you can muster.

- Be VERY strict about harassment policies, and make it clear to the agents that you will not tolerate them harassing or detaining patrons of your establishment unless they show you a warrant signed by a judge. If they have one, ask to photocopy it "for your records," again making sure to waste as much of their time as possible. Let them know that you will call the cops if they attempt to apprehend anyone without a warrant, and follow through on that if they try it. Tell them it's "policy" if they object. (It doesn't matter if it's actually policy, you can just lie to these assholes.)

If a Death Note owner accidentally misspells a person's name four times, that person will be free from being killed by the Death Note. -> patch to fix exploit where users would attempt to brute force killing someone by writing every possible name in the Death Note

However, if the Death Note owner intentionally misspells the name four times, the owner will die. -> Patch fix to stop exploit where users would try to grant themselves immunity

The person whose name was misspelled four times on purpose will not be free of death by a Death Note. -> Necessary clarification because users thought they could grant someone else immunity

If the same name is written in two or more Death Notes within 0.06 seconds, the entry is regarded as simultaneous; the Death Notes will not take effect and the individual will not die. -> Rare bug related to When the same name is written in two or more Death Notes, the Note which was used first will take effect, regardless of the time of death. Root cause is server requests first check if the same existing request was already made. Simultaneous requests assume the other request is valid and delete themselves. Will Not Fix. Bug is rare and fixing it could result in new exploits related to repeatedly writing a person's name in the Death Note.

When you write multiple names in the Death Note and then write down one cause of death within 40 seconds of writing the first victim's name, the cause will take effect for all the written names. Also, after writing the cause of death, even if the conditions of death are written within six minutes and 40 seconds in the human world, the conditions will apply only to the victims for whom they are possible. Those for whom the conditions are not possible will simply die from the specified cause. -> Code bug caused by undefined and ambiguous input syntax. Will Not Fix.

Once the victim's name, cause of death, and conditions of death have been written down in the Death Note, the death will take place even if that Death Note, or the part of the note used, is destroyed before the stated time of death. -> Clarification to stop users from pointlessly destroying the Death Note

The Death Note will not affect those less than 780 days old. -> A patch added to get around various cultural arguments related to when something is considered "Human"

You cannot kill humans who are more than 124 years of age with the Death Note. -> Added in reference to a Shinigami meme

Like. I remember back in my grocery store cashier days I did so much crazy shit.

When WIC (Women, infants, and children voucher program to help low income mothers/families with children) people were in my line I would pretty much know who they were. Before the cards they had to tell us upfront they were WIC and show us their vouchers for what they were allowed to get (it was awful some times. Like. 2 gallons of milk. $4 worth of vegetables etc etc). They’d always have items hanging back, waiting to see what the total was and if they would have to take it off the belt.

I began to place the fruits/vegetables a certain way on the register scale so that like 1/2lbs of grapes read as like .28lbs or something. Then act shocked when I said that they still had X amount of lbs left. They got all their fruit and vegetables.

I think it started to kinda? Catch on to the women? Because I would have the same moms in my line month after month. And even after they switched to the cards (they worked like food stamp cards?) I’d still do the same thing. They were able to get more produce for whatever shitty max amount Indiana gave them.

Everyone seems to be talking about the setting of this show like it's a big mystery we're waiting on answers for, and I keep having to remind myself that this is the Unemployed Website because every single aspect of the severed floor is a direct parody of corporate office work. Some of it is pretty obvious to anyone (being a totally different person at work than you are at home, excessive surveillance, etc), but unless you've worked in one of these places there's a ton you're probably missing.

So, for those of you who (luckily) lack corporate office experience, here is a non-exhaustive list of real phenomenon Severence is referencing:

- Having absolutely no clue where anything is other than your department. A large corporate office truly feels like working in a brightly-lit, featureless labyrinth. You get lost so easily, and the number of turns and hallways in the opening scene is not that much more extreme than how I had to get to my department (which was over a 5-minute walk from the main entrance). It's common to draw new employees a map.

- Cult-like worship and constant quoting of the company's founder/founding family and core operating principles. Long-time employees will genuinely treat it like religious doctrine. It's scary.

- The relationship between departments. The different cultures, outrageous rumors, distrust, compete lack of understanding of who they are, how many of them there are, where they work, what they do, and generally treating them like a foreign country is barely even a parody. It's just really like that. Going to another department and seeing their equipment and work area (and being stared at by a bunch of people who don't expect a stranger to be there) might as well be walking into a room that's a hill with intimidating goat farmers.

- Other people's jobs being utterly incomprehensible. The department that had a room behind a wall next to mine apparently used it for filling backpacks with weights until the straps broke. Another department had someone whose job was to shine different lights onto pieces of fabric and record the color difference. One of my positions was measuring various pants 20 different ways and then taking notes while a specific person tried them on. Apparently a guy somewhere occasionally got paid to make watercolors of birds. Some people did finance. You get the idea.

- Only ever hearing from upper management (who are treated like a group of fickle, wrathful gods) through a nervous secretary and never hearing their voices/seeing their faces. You might know their names.

- Weird, uncomfortable, often ritualesque events that are treated like a big deal. The company I worked for, for example, would announce the employees of the year by having a committee of people with noisemakers and silly hats parade around the buildings until they got to the person's desk, and then take their photo to hang on the wall. People were not warned beforehand, it was a ~surprise~. This happened daily at random times for over a week each year, and long-standing employees got really into it.

- People genuinely fighting over all those meaningless, patronizing rewards like pizza parties, fancy pens, etc. Having an "employee of the month" mug, for example, is treated as an enviable status symbol. Presumably this is why corporations think this stuff will also work in the service industry (it doesn't because service workers are normal).

- Ridiculous conspiracy theories about the building, management, coworkers, or company history, peddled like gossip.

- New employees having a rough adjustment period where it feels like you're adapting to an alternate universe. Office culture is nothing like real life though it's closer if you live in white suburbia and have an HOA, so during most people's first time working in one they bump up against a lot of unspoken rules, weird taboos, and general culture shock. Most of this involves navigating strictly-enforced social hierarchies, verbal adherence to company ideals, and using only specific types of communication, and being chastised when you mess up. It 100% feels like being indoctrinated into a cult.

- Not understanding the purpose of the work you're doing, and only receiving vague answers, that it's "important", and that there's a big exciting deadline. No single department has access to the big picture for how everyone's jobs fit together to accomplish something, you'd have to work in all of them or in upper management to figure it out. The inner machinations and goals of the company are generally treated like a mysterious secret.

- Never seeing the sky. Window offices are a prized commodity since the buildings are so big, so unless you're a high-up manager or the company has gone to great lengths to add access to widows (most don't because it's really expensive) you likely won't see daylight until you leave, even if you travel around the building during the day.

And for the Lifetime Unemployment crowd, some more general job phenomenon:

- So. Many. Acronyms. And being expected to say them all with a straight face, even if they sound really silly.

- Coworkers effectively ceasing to exist the moment they leave the company, with zero explanation given for why they're suddenly gone unless there's a retirement party.

- Management giving ridiculously nit-picky feedback as a form of hazing/power play, especially to marginalized people.

- Upper management making sudden, drastic changes to your job expectations, physical workplace, or management structure with zero notice and penalizing you if you can't adapt immediately.

- The entire vibe of your job being dictated by who your manager is.

- Your coworkers acting like what happens at work is their entire life, and treating their home lives as something extra they do on the side.

- Having no clue who your coworkers are outside of work, and that information being largely treated as taboo.

- Being effectively locked in a sealed space with zero access to the outside world for the entirety of your workday, and being told that that's not weird or a problem– it's a benefit that helps you focus on your job.

- Your Big Boss randomly having an assistant who's way too young to be working there. A lot of corporate offices have an intern program for high school or college students where they shadow an executive and help out for a few weeks. The older you are, the more this will look like they are training a literal child to be your manager.

- Being randomly taken away from your office to participate in nonsense "team building" activities that take up hours out of your day or more. You will be told it will improve your work relationships and increase your bond with the company. You will be asked to build popsicle stick structures and throw a ball with a 60 y/o man you just met. My whole department was literally taken outdoors to make s'mores with the company logo on them once. The person making you do this stuff will have the most uncomfortably cheerful, unmoving smile you have ever seen. They will be taking notes to give to your boss.

- Dark hallways with seemingly abandoned rooms full of weird shit. You can take a wrong turn and find yourself in what feels like the middle of nowhere. Things I encountered while wandering where I wasn't supposed to include: an area full of huge couches, 50 mannequins plastic wrapped together like some sort of horrible cocoon, and a room set up like an entire campsite.

- Huge portraits of the CEOs and founder(s) that are regularly cycled through. You are intended to look at them as role models and inspiration. Some people actually do.

- People treating the founding family members like celebrities. I had coworkers who would leave their workstations to excitedly ogle the executive chairman when he walked by. He was just a guy.

- Random performers. Sometimes a department will hire people for an internal event they are having. You will find this out because suddenly you'll hear an entire choir or pass a guy with a trombone.

- Tons of "The Company Cares About You" propaganda that may directly contradict reality, sometimes delivered via mandatory cheesy videos/presentations featuring real employee faces pasted onto stock photos.

- You really can just leave your desk and wander around with zero consequences if you aren't gone for too long, and the show perfectly captures the giddy/nervous "why is nobody stopping me" feeling this invokes. People have to go on cross-department errands all the time so employees from other areas will just assume you have a Task and ignore you, and anyone seeing your empty desk (which likely won't be your boss, who's really busy and probably doesn't work nearby) will assume you're on an errand, in a meeting, or in the bathroom/break room.

- People spending extended periods of time chatting or doing stuff like decorating their cubicles, sometimes to the point of barely working all day. Almost all office workers are salaried so as long as their work gets done on time the number of hours they spend actually doing it doesn't really matter to the company. If you finish early you generally can't leave (they'll just give you more stuff to do that wasn't originally your responsibility) so dragging things out is actually strategic. In the US salary pay is usually used to make employees work overtime for free during crunch periods so people take the "leisure" time when they can get it.

- Being sent to an in-house counseling service if you are having such a hard time with personal stuff that it's noticeably affecting your work. They will monitor you to make sure it helped (it probably didn't).

- No privacy anywhere except the bathroom. The proximity and separation paneling of the desk layout in the show is exactly like a real office but much smaller. Imagine that but going on nearly as far as you can see in every direction.

- Being treated to weirdly exorbitant (and sometimes company-themed) foods when your department hits a big milestone. There was an extensive sundae bar set up in one of our "we did a good job" meetings, for example. Half of it will go uneaten because people are worried about taking too much and Making A Bad Impression in front of their boss.

- Surprisingly good food for those special events even if all the regularly available stuff sucks. This is because executives hold meetings for Important people from outside the company and have a quality catering service on call to make a good impression. My department head's assistant would email all of us when those ended so if you reacted fast you could nab one of the (usually very many) untouched sandwiches lmao

- People having illicit office romances they think they're hiding really well but aren't. Supply closets are a common meetup space.

- Not being able to talk in detail about your job with anyone other than your coworkers. Basically all corporate office employees are required to sign an NDA prohibiting them from sharing any specific information about their job with anyone outside the company, because it could be used by competitors to get an edge on the market or even steal a product idea (or because the company deals with sensitive data). You are also usually prohibited from posting anything about your work experiences online or speaking to news sources about the company unless it's vague and positive. The work/life split is not just cultural, you can literally lose your job if you violate it.

- You will be introduced to a bound book countaining quotes from the founder, company history, and detailed lists of core ideals and operating principles. You are strongly encouraged to read this book in your spare time. There is at least one copy per department, and people frequently quote it like a religious text in meetings, formal presentations, and casual conversation. There are probably quotes from it in enormous text on the walls.

- All new employees receive a packet with the most important points from The Book to keep at their desk. You are expected to memorize those during your first week as part of your training. Knowing the contents of the book becomes more important the higher you are on the corporate ladder, and publicly failing to remember any of it can get you denied a promotion (or at minimum playfully mocked by fellow employees).

Absolutely nothing about this design is convenient to execute in wood. Every piece is curved, most have compound curves. This is artisan craftsmanship: it's inherently slow, manual, and skilled. Notice, also, that most features of this chair must be thicker and heavier than on the plastic chairs being imitated. Injection-molded chairs can be produced in this shape in a matter of minutes with far less material at very low cost.

The standard one-piece injection molded plastic chair is referred to as a "Monobloc", literally just describing it as a single piece. The history of this chair is fascinating, and it all starts back in 1946, with the D.C. Simpson Monobloc.

Douglas Colborne Simpson was an architect mostly active in the 40's and 50's, designing a lot of classic mid-century style buildings in Vancouver, Canada(1). In 1946, as part of a government project to find new uses for materials developed for WWII, he and engineer James Donahue developed the design you see above, simply called the Monobloc(2). Unfortunately, we don't know a lot about this chair as it was only ever a prototype, and no modern examples have survived, nor have most of the records surrounding it(3). To my knowledge, we don't actually know if this was technically injection molded, or crafted some other way. We can't even be sure if it was technically the inspiration for the designs that followed, but no matter the case it has lent its name to the entire genre.

Plastics technology was simply not what it is today back in the 1940's. Most people would have had very little plastic in their homes, most likely just a few pieces of Bakelite (the first commercially viable plastic, made from a formaldehyde based resin in a Bakelizer, the best name for any industrial manufacturing equipment ever). Over the following few decades, however, as a wider variety of plastics were both developed and came down in price to the point of commercial viability, the concept of the plastic chair was revisited, and the first folks to revisit it were Helmut Batzner, in 1964, and Joe Colombo, in 1965.

This, is the Bofinger chair, Batzner's design:

The elements of D.C.Simpson's Monobloc were pretty alien compared to todays mass-manufactured plastic chairs, but here we start to see some more modern elements come into play. The first thing you probably notice is the front legs, which have that characteristic visible 90 degree bend in them for added rigidity, plus a much more comfortably leaned back and slightly scoop-shaped seat. We also see much more support in the back rest, with broad triangles allowing for a more efficient use of materials without losing back support.

Similar to Simpson, Batzner was not an industrial designer, but an architect, and this chair had a very specific purpose. Batzner and his team designed it as part of a project to build a new theater in Karlsruhe, Germany, which required a large amount of additional seating which could be easily packed away into storage or distributed around the theaters rooms by the staff (4). As such, it was designed to be both lightweight and stackable, so several of them could be moved by one person, and they could be stored compactly. This piece of furniture was a huge hit a the theater, and was so popular that 120,000 units would ultimately be manufactured and sold around the world, with each one taking just 5 minutes to produce (4).

Around the same time, Joe Colombo enters the scene with this:

Colombo was an artist in several mediums who, after taking over his families appliance company in the 50's, made the shift towards architecture and interior design, and started designing a wide array of trend-setting furniture(5). The chair shown above is known as the Universale (sometimes referred to as the Chair Universal 4867), designed in 1965. This chair differs pretty greatly from the ones that came after it, it many ways it represents a different path that could have been taken, but it's also very widely referenced as an inspiration for what is broadly considered the origin of the white plastic chair the world over.

Enter: the Fauteuil 300

This is, arguably, the first iteration of the white plastic chair we all know today. Designed by Henry Massonnet in 1972, the Fauteuil 300 and it's imitators are, collectively, the single most widely used piece of furniture in the entire world(6). Before that, however, it was something else entirely: works of art.

What might be hard to recognize in hindsight is that all of these chairs described so far were not everyday objects. They were on the forefront of modern design, they made use of brand new materials and manufacturing processes, and at the time they were each made, they were slick, stylish, and fairly expensive. Despite the speed at which they could be manufactured, these innovative, high-end chairs rose sharply in cost up through the early 1980's due to the sheer demand for them. They weren't cheap spare seating you stuck in the garage, they were placed at dining tables and on fine patios, and they were a wildly popular talking point. That's not to say their expense justified their artistic value, but rather that their expense and popularity was a product of their status as highly contemporary and boundary-pushing designs.

With the price of plastics declining after the 70's, the increasing accessibility of injection molding to manufacturers, and the widespread popularity of these designs, copycats proliferated rapidly, and eventually drove the price down. This era, in the 80's and 90's, is when these chairs became cheap an ubiquitous, and where they became manufactured the world over.

And here is where we reach this piece, "Plastic chair in wood", by Maarten Baas, and a piece of the history I've left out so far. The Monobloc was designed to be made out of wood. Like the the other chairs designed by Joe Colombo, like the chairs that predated the Simpson, the Monobloc was designed with the intention of using laminated plywood, but as the artists and designers behind them began to experiment with new materials they fell in love with the idea of making them from plastic, and so they did. They redesigned and redesigned until they made something that would be impossible to make in wood at a price most people could afford, but which could be made from plastic in mere minutes. The organic curves and thin profiles would take so much time, so much waste material, so much skill and effort to create if made of wood that they could never be furniture, they could only be art. Baas' chair is a perfect, beautiful reflection of that.

That, in brief, is the history of the design of the white plastic Monobloc chair, but it's not all there is to know. In fact, it's kind of just the start. I've linked my sources below, but I would strongly recommend checking out the German documentary Monobloc, by Hauke Wendler. It goes over the history, but it's far more interested with what the Monobloc means, and what it's place is in our world today. The impact it's made, the better and the worse, and what it says about us. It's fascinating, and well worth your time.

sources below.

Think of GenAI as a mechanical dishwasher.

A mechanical dishwasher uses water, heat, and pressure to clean the dishes that have been placed inside it. Since its invention by Josephine Cochrane in 1886, various upgrades have been added to it, such as electric motors, heaters, and microprocessors to control them, but the basic system boils down to water, heat, and pressure.

But no matter how much you upgrade that technology, it's never going to be a human dishwasher. To replace the human dishwasher, you need several different types of technology. Just the act of correctly picking up a single dish from a pile of dishes involves (and this is a simplified breakdown):

mechanical engineering for the arm(s) or equivalent, which would have to be able to exert pressure ranging from "hold a glass flute" to "hold a cast iron dutch oven" as well as be able to measure weight and resistance to pressure.

Some method of sensing the dishes themselves. Most likely a digital camera of some sort, but regardless of the type of sensor, you'd also need the ability to interpret the data so that it could tell the difference between a cast iron skillet, a loose piece of lettuce, a champagne flute, somebody's retainer, a plate, a wallet, a saucepan, a frying pan, a frying basket, a cellphone, etc.

programming to determine how to use the arm(s) to safely pick up the dish in such a way that it can be properly manipulated, examined, and processed.

That's not "an upgrade to the technology of a mechanical dishwasher", that's "an entirely new technology that happens to be applied to the act of washing dishes."

GenAI is, in this metaphor, the mechanical dishwasher. In this case, it uses applied statistics instead of water, heat, and pressure. And there are things that are simply beyond the scope of applied statistics.

The fun part of this particular metaphor is that "washing a sink full of dishes" is one of the examples often used for a task that is relatively simple for a human, but currently beyond the scope of what we can do with robots.

Of course, everyone understands that a mechanical dishwasher is not a replacement for a human dishwasher. Oh, sure, one mechanical dishwasher and one human dishwasher can do the job better and faster than two human dishwashers, but if you want to speed up the dish pit, you add another human, not another dishwasher.

But the problem is that people are expecting GenAI to metaphorically replace the human dishwasher. And they're betting big on it. But you can refine your statistical analysis all you want, it's never going to be able to, for example, count, just as your mechanical dishwasher is going to be able to clear the sink.