Temp decides he never wants to work again; UPDATE!

Apparently, a temp is suing a law firm for racial discrimination, claiming that he was let go from a project attorney position when white project attorneys were kept on:

A former project attorney at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton has sued the firm for racial discrimination after it cut his job while his white colleagues avoided furloughs and layoffs.
Lyle Silva, a 41-year-old lawyer from Bowie, Md., who is black, took a job as an at-will lawyer with Cleary's Washington office in mid-2011 and worked there for about a year, according to the complaint filed Tuesday in Washington federal district court.
Silva’s legal projects involved a banking regulation matter and a federal investigation into a West Virginia coal mine explosion. Silva said he received positive feedback throughout his time at the firm—even written 'thank you' notes and praise from his supervisor and a $2,500 bonus at the end of 2011.
The coal mine-related work ended at the firm in July 2012, the complaint said, and Silva would need a new assignment. Instead, he and another project attorney, a Hispanic woman, were furloughed.
Within two weeks, the firm had cut Silva's and the female attorney's positions, the lawsuit said. The firm reassigned project attorneys who were white to new tasks within the firm, Silva said.

I couldn't address the merits of his case, as I have no knowledge of it, although I do know a project attorney at Cleary who is, as far as I know, still employed. Project attorneys are essentially staff attorneys -- they are full-time employees who do the document review work most firms farm out to temps. When there is no work, though, they get fired just the same as temps when a project ends. Job security is not a feature of that sort of employment any more than it is in Temp Town.

I actually kinda-sorta know the guy, having been on at least two projects with him (he was on this project for a while).  I really wouldn't comment on him based on my personal experience, as none of my observations relate to this time at Cleary and I have no desire to become involved in this litigation nor to become a target of litigation myself. However, it is public knowledge that he appeared on "Donald J. Trump Presents: The Ultimate Merger in which former Apprentice baddie Omarosa tries to find love." I was on a project with him right after he had filmed the show. He seemed quite proud of it. You can read all about it here.

The law firm issued a statement to the ABA Law Journal, which was quoted at Above the Law:

We are aware of the lawsuit and believe that the complaint is without merit. The plaintiff filed a complaint approximately two years ago with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which dismissed the matter last September.

The statement is understandably self-serving, and does not mean the suit has no merit, but racial discrimination suits in at-will employment generally haven't gone well for the employees, as the National Law Journal notes and Above the Law documents.  The plaintiff better have a pretty good statistical case to show discrimination if there is no other evidence of racial bias. Dismissals that come when a project is downsized to comport with the amount of work available tend to be kind of random in my experience. Maybe this one's different, but it will not be an easy case to prove. And it is worth remembering the old saying, a man who is his own lawyer, has a fool for a client.

I find it difficult to believe that Silva won't run into a lot of trouble getting work in Temp Town after this. Most agencies now have large corporate parents. Once they find out about at temp suing for racial discrimination, I would expect legal departments in those corporate parents to send legal memos to the agencies they own advising about avoiding hiring potentially litigious employees. Silva might end up needing to find another line of work.

UPDATE!: A little slow on this one, since I hadn't checked in quite a while, but this jackhole lost. Badly. It wasn't close:

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has dismissed a race-discrimination suit filed by a former project attorney for Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled against the lawyer, Lyle Silva, who appeared on a reality television show produced by Donald Trump in 2010, the National Law Journal (sub. req.) reports.
Cleary Gottlieb had maintained Silva was terminated in 2012 because he had concluded work on his assigned matter, and there was no other suitable work for him to do.

Silva lost on a summary judgment motion, which means there was no disputed issue of fact that could result in his case going forward. Sucks to be him:

Silva had argued he was better qualified than other project attorneys who were retained, but that claim falters in light of some concerns voiced by supervisors, Berman said. Among them were concerns that Silva made work errors that had to be corrected, lacked focus, and spent time on social media during work hours, according to Berman.
“The court does not doubt that plaintiff is experienced and qualified to work on certain projects when they are available, and nothing in this opinion should be read to suggest otherwise,” Berman said. “But the other attorneys were experienced as well.”

I know this guy. He's very personable and likable, but nothing here surprises me. I haven't been on a project with the guy since this happened, but it would not surprise me if no one will hire him anymore. Agencies and firms don't like temps who sue.

Unknown Region is the leading visitor for the day

I wish there were some way I could find out where "Unknown Region" is, but I can't. Folks from there are the leading visitors for the day, and are in the Top 10 for the month. Probably porn-seekers using VPN to mask their IP address.

I have to share this

Thanks to the folks at Hot Air for alerting me to this. If only real White House Press briefings were like this:


Also, is it just me or is that White House press corps a freak show? That was a rhetorical question, people. Of course they are.

Down on The Farm again

Put in some fall crops the other weekend. Went to Southern States and picked up some plants. I put in some romaine lettuce:

Also planted brussel sprouts:

And, of course, what fall crop lineup would be complete without broccoli:

As for summer crops, the peppers are doing well:

Like I said:

Harvested beans, okra, peppers and chard. Not a bad haul, considering the weather:

Another document review haiku

My project has long outlasted expectations. It has overtime and a good rate, so there is no reason to complain there. On the other hand, I have passed on countless projects that could have been my next landing place. How long can I do that?

Project keeps going
No reason to complain there
But when will it end?

Andrew Cuomo is even dumber than I thought

Having apparently forgotten about all kinds of U.S. history, New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who many people believe would like to be elected president in 2020, is busy talking smack about the United States. During a speech Wednesday, he had this to say:

"We're not going to make America great again. It was never that great," Cuomo, a Democrat, remarked at a bill signing event in New York City. The comment was met by an audible reaction from the crowd.

That doesn't strike me as a great thing to say if you would like to be the president of the United States, but it does strike me as typical of today's Democrats. I would say I don't know what the fuck is wrong with this guy, but I do. He hopes to be the presidential nominee of a party that really isn't that fond of America. Democrats love to play up the flaws in the country without ever acknowledging what is good about the U.S. and always, always, always declining to name someplace they would rather be.

Fuck them. I hope they choke on this as their campaign slogan in 2020:

They will claim this isn't what Cuomo and the party actually mean, but if the shoe fits, bitches . . .

Unknown Region? Update!

I have a visitor from "Unknown Region." Actually, I now have two. What the fuck does that even mean? I've had visitors from countries that aren't actually countries. But I've never had a visitor from someplace that can't even be identified. Not sure what to do with this.

Update! Unknown Region is up to half a dozen visits. Probably looking for porn. Which is weird, because I never say stuff like "hot naked babes" on the blog.

Cat yoga

I don't know the names of the yoga positions, with one notable exception, but I'm pretty sure this is one of them:

I truthfully did not know that cats did yoga. And isn't thins downward dog?

Of course it is. Namaste, bitches.

Just another document review haiku

Good news the other day, inspiring this haiku:

Project extended
Breathing new life into job
Life is good for now

Or two:

Hey, what can I say?
Always happy when we get
Unexpected good news

Of course, in Temp Town, all good news is unexpected. On Friday, the agency sent doughnuts. Doughnuts, like the Pizza of Doom, are generally considered to be a bad sign. Fortunately, this time it wasn't the case. We got the news of the extension before we got the doughnuts, so we knew that, sometimes, a doughnut is just a doughnut.

Germany is looking over its shoulder

Germany, with nearly 83 million residents, is number three on the list of most frequent visitors to Eff You, behind the U.S. and Russia. Naturally, virtually all of the Russian visitors are looking for porn or some way to steal other people's money. I have no money, but I throw in things like "hot naked Russian babes" every now and then to draw in the traffic that is looking for porn. Traffic is traffic, after all.

But Germany's hold on third place is getting a little shaky. Slowly but surely, Denmark, with less than 6 million residents, is closing in on the Teutonic juggernaut. Still a ways behind, but Denmark is closing the gap. If this blog goes on long enough, Denmark will take over the No. 3 spot.

Of course, my European correspondent lives in Denmark (haven't heard from him in a while -- hint, hint) but that can't explain the traffic we're seeing from Denmark. I guess the Danes know quality when they see it? Quality what? Damned if I know.

They do this all the time because they don't care about facts, only narrative

So, National Geographic sent a photography team to document evidence that "climate change" -- which we used to call "global warming" before the data stopped supporting that -- was harming the Arctic. The team came up with this picture:

Yeah, that bear looks to be in pretty bad shape. Why? Who knows? National Geographic didn't care about "why." They turned the emaciated bear into a video, which appeared in the magazine's online version about a year ago, the first line of which read, "This is what climate change looks like." Unfortunately for National Geographic, there was no evidence the bear's condition had anything to do with so-called "climate change," and the people who took the video and pictures recently admitted that the magazine "went too far."

One of the members of the team wrote an article that appears in the August 2018 edition of National Geographic lamenting that the picture was misunderstood:

Photographer Paul Nicklen and I are on a mission to capture images that communicate the urgency of climate change. Documenting its effects on wildlife hasn’t been easy,” she wrote in the article. “With this image, we thought we had found a way to help people imagine what the future of climate change might look like. We were, perhaps, naive. The picture went viral — and people took it literally.

Let's take this a step at a time. Global warming/climate change/climate disruption/everything else those assholes have called it remains a theory, not a fact. The theory is poorly supported by evidence, so the proponents keep changing what it is that proves the theory. Science doesn't work that way, but, hey, whatever. Nonetheless, these people were "on a mission" to demonstrate "the urgency of climate change," which is not even proven yet. The reason "documenting its effects on wildlife" hasn't been easy is because it is not at all clear that climate change, of the man-made variety, is occurring and because animals adapt in any event. Polar bears, for instance, have been around in their current form for 100,000 years, passing through a whole bunch of natural climate change without dying out. The catastrophe isn't there, which makes it hard to document.

That didn't stop National Geographic from posting the teams footage and pictures of a starving polar bear can calling it "what climate change looks like." No wonder people took it "literally." More than 2.5 billion people saw the video, the most ever for a National Geographic video, and the team that provided the footage admits that they have no idea whether that bear's condition has anything to do with "climate change." In fact, there are a number of more likely factors affecting the bear's condition:

Some experts suggested a number of reason besides climate change that could’ve led to the animal’s condition, including age, illness or even injury.
Mittermeier admits that she couldn’t “say that this bear was starving because of climate change.”
“Perhaps we made a mistake in not telling the full story — that we were looking for a picture that foretold the future and that we didn’t know what had happened to this particular polar bear.”

So, National Geographic publishes a story and video claiming polar bears are starving because of climate change, yet has not a shred of evidence that this is true. Sounds about par for the course. Facts matter far less than the narrative.

Things are happening down on The Farm

I'll be going to The Farm tomorrow, so I figured I better put this post up before it becomes obsolete. I went to The Farm last Sunday, and things were kind of a mixed bag. We have had a metric shit ton of rain lately. We had no rain -- zero, zip, nada -- for the first two weeks of July, then had 11 inches in the last two weeks, making it the rainiest July on record. And the rain has continued into August. We're supposed to have some sun tomorrow, Sunday and Monday, but then rain the rest of the week. And, of course, it is raining as I write this.

This is good/bad for crops. Plants need water, but they need sun, too, and too much water will kill them just as dead as too little. As it is, the plants are mostly okay, but the production is off. Here, the second crop of beans is growing nicely, but not much in flowers yet. Still a couple weeks away from any major production:

The carrots are going gangbusters. We thinned properly this year:

The first bean crop is done, except for the pole beans that snuck in there:

The third bean crop is coming along, should flower in a week or two:

I am so tired of chard, but it keeps producing:

The kale (two kinds) is almost done -- burning up. We are pretty much past kale season:

The okra is coming along. A little early for production, but only a couple weeks away, I think:

The peppers are not digging the rain, but they are starting to produce:

Shitty picture, but look at all those serranos. A little sun, and some will turn red:

Some harvesting took place. First off, we got some early carrots. The effect of the proper thinning shows, as these are bigger than most of the carrots we have harvested in the past:

This is the last of the first bean crop. Not bad for a final harvest:

Of course, lots of chard:

A few peppers. Lots more to come, I suspect:

Kale, as well. Probably close to the last:

The tomatoes, squash and zucchini don't look so hot. Could rally late, I suppose, but March and April rains kept me from building beds, so the gourds went in late, no onions or potatoes at all, and the tomatoes are suffering from the rain, as well. We'll see how things turn out.

Stupid traffic post

After a year of lackluster traffic, July stepped up to the plate. Not a great month, but pretty good -- the best since July 2017, which was one of the best months ever for Eff You. Obviously, we have established that no posting equals no visitors. Over the last year, my posting has been erratic and sparse. Trying to correct that. We'll see how I do.