Four Day Work Week When?
The four day workweek still looks mighty fine. Florida's surgeon general is playing real world Pandemic. Robert F Kennedy's AI is already offline. A short ceasefire is somewhat on the table.
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Digging Deeper to the Four Day Workweek
The UK conducted a study in 2022 testing if the four day workweek is beneficial to BUSINESS STUFF. The study found that the four day workweek is indeed the way to go, showing gains across the board as far as BUSINESS STUFF goes.
A follow-up study dovetailing off of the original one reached out to companies and staffers to check in, finding that virtually all of them are still using the policy and still seeing immense benefit from it.
Of 61 companies testing a four-day workweek, about 90% of them are going to keep doing the policy, with company leaders citing gains in productivity, employee retention, happiness, and hiring.
Employees reported similar notes, citing increased health due to better work-life balance.
Just to really drive this point home, here is a quote from the study summary:
100% of managers and CEOs who were consulted said that the four-day week had a ‘positive’ or ‘very positive’ impact on their organization.
So, idk, maybe we should, idk, do that.
Of note: the follow-up study was conducted by a consulting agency that helps to roll out four-day work week policies. They've certainly got an agenda, but that doesn't mean they don't have a point.
Florida Surgeon General Thinks COVID Vaccines Are The Devil's Work
If you're not familiar with Joseph Ladapo, congrats. Your life is better than mine. Allow me to worsen it.
Joseph Ladapo is the surgeon general of Florida. He's also a grown adult man who went on Steve Bannon's podcast and stated that the COVID vaccines are the Antichrist severing our connection to god.
Anyway, this man is a public health director for a state where people live. The state with the people in it is called Florida, and it is currently having a measles outbreak; an incredibly preventable thing. But instead of doing that prevention, he's saying that unvaccinated children can continue going to schools despite the growing outbreak.
Anyway the dude has made a bunch of easily disprovable and bogus claims. He's been repeatedly proven wrong by—well—reality, and yet he remains the head of public health for a state, which once again I feel compelled to inform you that people live in.
Robert F Kennedy's AI… Oh No
Robert F. Kennedy is still running for president because reasons. Recently, his campaign decided to launch an AI chatbot, which we've established in a previous SKH is always a good idea.
Anyway, it's offline now. For a lot of reasons.
For one, it was using ChatGPT. As a reminder: they're all ChatGPT. Actually, that's a lie. They were using Microsoft's LiveChatAI product, which in turn is just using ChatGPT.
The chatbot was trained on RFK's own website and material, then turned around and insisted that RFK felt there was abundant evidence linking vaccines to autism. It also told people to register for his political party.
OpenAI does not (technically) allow ChatGPT to be used for political purposes, so them doing this in the first place shouldn't have happened. But, weird! A terms of service document doesn't actually prevent people from exploiting things. And boy did they find the easiest possible loophole: just use Microsoft's ChatGPT backdoor instead of ChatGPT directly, then you can finally have the anti-vax chatbot of your dreams.
An Update on Gaza
Content warning: discussion mass murder
US Vice President spoke some words about a possible six week ceasefire in the "ongoing conflict" (read: genocide) of Israel and Palestine. Much to the chagrin of Netanyahu, the far-right prime minister of Israel.
A member of Israel's "wartime leadership" is in the US working with the Biden administration on possible temporary ceasefire terms. The Biden admin (via Harris) was quick to claim that Israel has "essentially" agreed to the ceasefire, and that it is up to Hamas to accept the terms.
I love when the person relentlessly beating me essentially agrees to stop for a brief period, so long as I accept their terms.
Somehow I don't feel that we're going to see a sudden shift in the outlook of Israel here. An AP photographer recently captured a photo of a group of women soldiers from the IDF taking a selfie in front of the rubble that was once Gaza. And that is absolutely nothing compared to the recent "flour massacre", in which Israeli soldiers opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians who were trying to get flour from humanitarian aid, killing at least 112 human beings and causing a stampede which injured hundreds more.
Here's the Weather
More Stuff
- New York's Attorney General is probing that huge AT&T network outage that happened
- The University of Maryland is politely asking frats and sororities to stop hazing people, again, again
- Meanwhile, the University of Florida has been forced to end all DEI initiatives due to recent laws banning diversity initiatives.
- Biden mixed up Ukraine and Gaza—twice—in a recent statement about aid
- Golden Corral was hit with a data breach??