BIG TECH: Meta employees say ‘zero work’ getting done as layoffs loom.

While Meta plans another layoff, employees familiar with the matter told the FT there hasn’t been a lot of clarity around team budgets or future headcount, leaving managers unable to plan their workloads. Staff says “zero work” is getting done, employees told the outlet.

Representatives for Meta declined to comment. Meta employees say ‘zero work’ getting done as layoffs loom.

“The year of efficiency is kicking off with a bunch of people getting paid to do nothing,” one employee said, adding that “it’s a mess.”

One of the best ways to avoid getting laid off is to make yourself indispensable, and this ain’t that.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Inside the GOP Plot to Stop Donald Trump… Or Will He Do the Job Himself?

Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

THIS HAPPENED TEN DAYS AGO, WHERE IS SECTRANS OR FEMA? Animals Are Dying Miles From Massive Ohio Railroad Chemical Spill.

HANG, DRAW, AND QUARTER THEM: Oregon alcohol regulators under investigation for diverting rare bourbon for personal use. “OLCC officials, including the agency’s recently-ousted executive director, allegedly sent rare bottles of bourbon to specific stores where they would place reservations to buy the sought-after libations and pick it up once off-duty without the public having a chance to beat them to it.”

HEH: Haley? No. Pence? No. Pompeo? No. Sununu? No. “Now that it’s less than two years before the 2024 Presidential election, a small crop of Republicans whose last names are not ‘DeSantis’ or ‘Trump’ seem to have convinced themselves that they’re viable Republican presidential candidates.”

SAD: ‘I’ll call an Uber or 911’: Why Gen Z doesn’t want to drive.

When Madison Corr was 18 years old and in her first year of college, she started the process of getting a driver’s license. Corr, who was living in New York at the time, got an adult learner’s permit, did drug and alcohol training, and put in 10 to 15 hours behind the wheel and attending driver’s ed classes. But when it came time to schedule a road test to get her license, she simply … didn’t. “I just felt like I didn’t need it,” she said.

Now 24, she lives in Philadelphia and still doesn’t have a license. “My parents put a lot of pressure on me to get one,” she said. “But I haven’t needed one to this point. If there’s an emergency, I’ll call an Uber or 911.”

Gabe Balog, 23, waited to get his license until he was 20 and didn’t get a car until two years later. “I didn’t want my parents teaching me,” he said. But he also felt ambivalence toward America’s car-centric culture, only getting a car because his job as a peer mental health worker required one. “It would be so much better for everyone if public transport were just more accessible.”

This must be an urban thing because kids here in the exurbs seem as eager as ever to get behind the wheel.

THOSE OF US HERE IN COLORADO FEEL THEIR PAIN: Utah Gov to Californians: Stay Home.

HMM: S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax.

Proposition M, “The Empty Homes Tax,” passed by 54.5% of voters in November, imposes a tax on property owners for each unit left vacant for more than 182 days in a given year, starting in 2024. It applies only to buildings with three or more units, not to single-family homes or duplexes.

The taxes start at $2,500 for units smaller than 1,000 square feet and go up to $5,000 for units over 2,000 square feet. They escalate over each subsequent year a unit is vacant, and later are adjusted according to the Consumer Price Index.

The measure’s goal was to help alleviate the city’s punishing housing crisis by motivating property owners to rent their units, according to proponents.

But the lawsuit said that was misguided. “The government cannot compel a property-owner to rent his or her property to third parties without violating” the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the lawsuit said.

Supervisor Dean Preston, who championed Prop. M, dismissed the case as a frivolous lawsuit filed by “real estate lobbyists” displaying “a great sense of entitlement when it comes to broadly-popular and essential reforms.”

“San Francisco voters delivered a clear mandate that it is completely unacceptable to have tens of thousands of vacant homes as more than 4,000 people are living on our streets,” Preston said in a statement.

Ah, so it’s actually about forcing property owners to rent to people who will probably destroy their property.

In any case, it it isn’t unused rental properties keeping the homeless on the streets. It’s mental illness, drug addiction, and the city’s cash and legal incentives.

AND YET I HARDLY SEE ANY STORIES PUBLISHED BY THE MSM: Biden’s Classified Documents Scandal Keeps Getting Bigger.

FALLOUT: United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately.

MOSCOW, Feb 13 (Reuters) – The United States has told its citizens to leave Russia immediately due to the war in Ukraine and the risk of arbitrary arrest or harassment by Russian law enforcement agencies.

“U.S. citizens residing or travelling in Russia should depart immediately,” the U.S. embassy in Moscow said. “Exercise increased caution due to the risk of wrongful detentions.”

“Do not travel to Russia,” it added.

“Russian security services have arrested U.S. citizens on spurious charges, singled out U.S. citizens in Russia for detention and harassment, denied them fair and transparent treatment, and convicted them in secret trials or without presenting credible evidence,” the embassy said.

“Russian authorities arbitrarily enforce local laws against U.S. citizen religious workers and have opened questionable criminal investigations against U.S. citizens engaged in religious activity.”

Short version: Don’t make yourself a hostage.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: No, ‘Ageism’ Isn’t to Blame for People’s Issues with Madonna and Joe Biden. “I won’t try to deny that ageism exists. But holding up people like Presidentish Joe Biden and Madonna as victims of it is the kind of ridiculous mistake we’re supposed to make in our youth.”

RUTHLESSLY: How Apple & Big Tech gutted New York’s right to repair bill.

In December 2022, New York became the first US state to pass a Right to Repair bill, but one which AppleInsider described as “functionally toothless.” Now draft documents and emails between lobbyists, government and repair advocacy groups show much the Digital Fair Repair Act was directly changed by Big Tech.

According to Grist, a nonprofit media organization, many of those changes are identical to those proposed by TechNet. This trade organization represents Apple, Google, Samsung, HP and more.

“We had every environmental group walking supporting this bill,” Patricia Fahy, bill sponsor, told Grist as she confirmed the authenticity of the documents. “What hurt this bill is Big Tech was opposed to it.”

Plus: “‘These particular TechNet edits all have a common theme,’ FTC chief counsel Dan Salsburg wrote in an email to Fahy’s office, ‘ensuring that manufacturers retain control over the market for the repair of their products.'”

Mission: Accomplished.

PUBLIC EDUCATION. NEXT QUESTION? Why 65 Percent of Fourth Graders Can’t Really Read.

GLEICHSCHALTUNG: ‘Conservatives Need Not Apply’ Under Biden Administration’s Proposed Hiring Rules. “In a move that has gotten little notice in the press, the Biden administration is proposing federal hiring rules that easily could be abused to deny employment to anyone who questions liberal, woke policies, criticizes the government, or belongs to a politically incorrect organization.”

I LIKE THE CONTENT OF HIS CHARACTER: Actor Idris Elba Under Fire From Left for Rejecting ‘Black Actor’ Label. “I stopped describing myself as a Black actor when I realised it put me in a box. We’ve got to grow. We’ve got to. Our skin is no more than that: it’s just skin. Rant over.”

SOUNDS VERY TRUMP 2019: Schumer says national TikTok ban ‘should be looked at.’

Schumer in 2020: Schumer says ‘safe way’ must be found for TikTok to continue.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Biden’s WWIII Balloon Confusion Is Really Getting Weird. “At this point it feels like China is just punking us and taking advantage of the fact that our Commander in Chief has the mental capacity of rotting plywood. I don’t know how to type or say ‘LOL, send another one,’ in Mandarin, but I’m pretty sure that’s the evergreen email that’s making the rounds among ChiCom spies right now.”

UGH: Wagner owner says war in Ukraine could drag on for years. “Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video interview released late Friday that it could take 18 months to two years for Russia to fully secure control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland of Donbas. He added that the war could go on for three years if Moscow decides to capture broader territories east of the Dnieper River.”

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Iraqi YouTube Sensation Murdered by Father in ‘Honor Killing.’

MORE LIKE THIS PLEASE: Smeared By MSNBC For Refusing To Teach Kids To Hate Each Other, Colorado School District Hits Back.

After being targeted by a dishonest corporate media smear campaign on behalf of left-wing teachers unions, Colorado’s conservative Woodland Park School Board and parents are fighting back and correcting the record.

Home to Merit Academy, the school chartered by parents for education in valor and responsibility, the Woodland Park School District earned the ire of the propaganda press after it decided against using Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book “Between the World and Me” in its teaching. The book, district leaders said, violated state and local social study standards, which aim to teach kids “so they may become worthy of their ancestors by becoming full members of the American republic … self-reliant citizens who respect the dignity and the rights of their fellow Americans, who love their country, and who cherish our liberties and our laws.”

These standards, of course, cut against left-wing narratives, so MSNBC’s Chris Hayes aimed his fire at the conservative district last week. “Even in states that aren’t laying down edicts about teaching about race, local school boards are pursuing that agenda,” Hayes said, “like in Woodland Park, Colorado, where a school board member grilled a high school teacher about one of the texts taught in a history elective.”

Lefties become resentful when they’re informed that your kids’ minds aren’t their playground.

More:

“It wasn’t that the book was removed from classrooms or removed from the library or any sort of order went out … to discourage people from reading or anything like that,” Illingworth said. “It just wasn’t a good fit for the standards that were adopted.”

In accordance with the aforementioned American Birthright Social Studies (ABSS) standards — which Woodland Park adopted in addition to state requirements and which require social studies to cultivate love, not hate, for their country, and respect for their fellow Americans, not disdain for them based on the color of their skin — WPSD Superintendent Ken Witt deemed Coates’ book noncompliant.

Much more like this, please.

MEGAN FOX: Sydney Watson’s Lawsuit Against Blaze Media Exposes Misogyny on the Right. “Now comes a huge lawsuit against Blaze Media, brought by talk show host Sydney Watson, who says that her time on the podcast You Are Here with Elijah Schaffer was a nightmare. Her lawyer is Townhall’s own Kurt Schlichter, another conservative media insider. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s an internal war going on inside the conservative media space. And maybe it’s time to blow it up and start over.”

FILM LADD ASKS (AND ANSWERS) THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How could Darth Vader’s descent into evil been improved by George Lucas re-watching Lawrence of Arabia?

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Police Found His Personal Stash Stashed in a Most Personal Place. “This week we have the cop-killer wanna-be, the liquor theft that made me cry, and Colorado Man’s curious kissing booth.”

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VIDEO: American Business And Chinese Money. “Despite increasing sanctions and scrutiny on hostile Chinese business practices and intellectual property theft, private equity firms have previously managed to mostly evade scrutiny for taking Chinese money. That may finally be changing.”

If you don’t have the time or inclination to watch a video, Lawrence Person has done a great job of breaking out the bullet points.

POSTMODERN PARENTING:

Maine Mom Demands Investigation after School Counselor Secretly Gives Daughter a ‘Chest Binder.’It was early December when Amber Lavigne found her 13-year-old daughter’s chest binder.

The undergarment, used to flatten a female’s breasts to make her appear more like a male, looked like a tank top with a built-in bra, Lavigne said. And it smelled. Bad. In her efforts to hide it from her family, Lavigne’s daughter hadn’t put the binder in the laundry for weeks.

That night, when Lavigne picked her daughter up from a school dance, she asked if she was wearing a chest binder. She wasn’t, the girl said, but she admitted she had one. Where had she gotten it? From a friend, she claimed. Lavigne was skeptical.

“I want you to think long and hard if there’s anything else you want to share with me about this,” she said she told her daughter, “because I am going to reach out to your friend’s mom.”

Later that night, Lavigne’s daughter did have more to share. She hadn’t received the chest binder from a friend after all. “This came from my school,” she said, Lavigne recalled.

Read the whole thing.