The Beast

Leila Rahimi, Jenn Sterger and Cody Decker were must listens on the topic on 670 the Score today, especially Sterger, who had career setbacks as fallout from Favre dick pics.

Yeah I’m good with not pursuing that kind of deal. 4 years is one thing, 6 years is another.

Here were some highlights from some of the gems I saw on a Facebook post today. Person 1: “Make sure you have water and food. Talk to your kids in case we lose cell phone usage. Now who is going to have electricity to heat a house. Talked to Com Ed today who is on high alert for power outages and blackouts.” Person 2: “Bought a massive generator this past weekend.” Am I missing something? Is China taking over the utilities and is civil war coming that will cause a food shortage and phone lines to be down? I’ve got to see what Parler is feeding folks this information, I’m almost hesitant to ask them where they got this information to reach these conclusions... Cant wait for tomorrow, I hope Biden and Harris stay safe and healthy. There’s so much to be done with divided government over the next four years and lots to be optimistic about even in times of turmoil.

It should be about that, but some kids take classes to get by or pick an easy major. The career centers don’t necessarily help guiding in a way where they can help students with figuring out how to be off valuable to an employer. Liberal arts have a role in general education but as college degree programs, they can be nixed, just like Illinois Wesleyan did recently with some of their programs, recognizing enrollment was declining and they needed to shore up their more technical programs to gain more students and really provide them with more value. Yes, there has to be a better way. I’ll use myself as an example even if some of you are tired of it: I was an average student in high school, who despite being in a DuPage County school district was misplaced in science and math courses, forcing me into a two year algebra course where I also was on a lower level track for science too. As a result I was achieving well in my math courses and took classes in both science and math with kids who either failed the year before, didn’t give a shit about their academics or just had learning disabilities and couldn’t focus. This misplacement mattered because it led me to an average ACT score. My strength was writing in high school, so I focused on mostly English courses. I didn’t care much for reading literature but I loved (and still love) the newspaper so I was drawn to journalism and thought I would pursue it. I worked on the school paper and school radio station and continued that into college. When I got on campus I had a few things going on - a long distance relationship, not being sure if I wanted to be an English major (secondary education), in marketing or in journalism. Everyone I heard from said that journalism wasn’t a good career financially and in terms of job prospects. Eventually I lost passion for sports reporting and saw how competitive broadcasting was and found out I didn’t want to teach literature so I transferred schools and majored in business while I got a scholarship to work in the sports information department. Since graduating, I interned at a professional sports organization, a startup and PR firm, worked for a startup, FMLA administrator and an insurer for the last six years. During the last six years I got a data science degree to be more marketable and have focused more on getting a sales analytics job even though it’s been a challenge getting projects to get experience on the technical nature of that work. However, I have also thought about job satisfaction and pay for different jobs. I see how jobs like nursing and PT help people and provide a great income and how data analysis and web development could have great incomes and could work in a team setting doing potentially interesting work. I guess my overall point is, yes, you learn over time about what your likes and dislikes are, but damn, if you don’t know what you want after high school, there should really be a way in high school to focus on strengthening a weakness (taking an additional math or science class) instead of wasting time in a foreign language class you’ll forget over time or there needs to be more real talk about careers throughout high school. Or, colleges need to focus more on their students in advising them better. If that’s just no possible and it’s on the student, then fuck, just stay home, work and go to a community college and hope you eventually find what you want and finish your undergraduate degree and go to work or go into a graduate program so you can begin another career. Otherwise, the same issue is there where people work for just a living while thinking of other careers, hating or feeling indifferent about what they do and feel stuck with their careers or trying to change them. There has to be a better way. Would be curious to see what you think about what I wrote above. I am not the only one who has this kind of experience, there are Reddit threads all about career changers and people who feel lost throughout their college education and careers. It’s not so much about me (at least in this thread) as much as it is about this all to common scenario not being fixed or considered.

Sox N Roll...

Schools definitely should put less weight on standardized tests and put more weight on real life skills. One thing I would propose is giving kids an option to do a BA or BS track in high school, where they could choose to take foreign language if they are on the BA track or an additional math and science course if they are on the BS track. Make the courses they take applicable to real life scenarios in fields like you describe or help kids with deficiencies who want to get better at subjects get more experience in subjects. There is no question that in high school and college I was more concerned about my next meal or getting laid than courses. But it was naive of me to think that because I am decent at writing that I should focus mostly on writing and journalism courses since I will probably end up in media. Fast forward to today and I have a business degree and a data science degree (thanks for the grad degree Mr Employer), but now I see that I would much rather work in health care in some capacity. I would think that taking some sort of unrelated pre-reqs to go along with the degree I got would have helped a decent amount, especially if I wanted to go into nursing or PT, which I still could do if being a data analyst doesn’t work out on the health care or insurance side of things, it’s just more tough when you’re in your 30s with the same questions you posed in your earlier post. Challenging kids and young adults in different ways would be beneficial to help them for the decisions they face in the future and the ways you describe would be helpful for students to better see the application.

So this was a rumor ginned up about Nelson Cruz and now we are talking about pitching? Or is there a rumor about pitching too?

Here’s another problem. What do you do with young adults who don’t know what to do and just pick something, only to find out later they want to do something else or they hate or are indifferent the work they are in? What do we do as a society to stop people from majoring in a subject, like sociology and instead help guide them to major in a position? And...if it is too crazy for someone to decide what they should do for the next 30 years, do we have them major in something of interest but have them take classes in something that involves prerequisites for a job? I know this has been discussed before but there are too many real life situations where people chose the wrong field, didn’t think and just chose a major or thought they had passion and didn’t like the job. That’s a problem.

Fair enough, I forgot about those. He definitely has had a hell of a career.

Really? Seems a bit snarky for someone who is one of the better human beings in the league. I’d rather be snarky towards those smug and smarmy assholes in Rodgers and Brady. I hope they get trounced by either the Bills or Chiefs.

The state charges will catch up to him, he can’t pardon himself for those.

I like the plan, I just don’t know how much it would cost. A lot of these things would be great in our cities, but if local governments have ignored or neglected poverty in their cities for this long, what would start it now? Have any people in public service talked about this in a serious way before?

I am hoping to see actual bipartisanship in Washington DC given the congress that we have. That is not likely but it is what I want to see. I would like to see the ACA get a public option and for infrastructure to be a priority. I also want immigration reform to get done since there’s room to compromise there. @southsider2k5 and @Texsox I want to see what ideas each party has about how to address a skills gap that is generational and how each party would address jobs lost from automation. Is it retraining programs for careers in demand like nursing or a trade as opposed to UBI? I’m not sure but the only person who has had much of an idea is Andrew Yang. What would be a poverty proposal that could help?

Bummer. They might as well convert McCormick Place to be a hospital rather than a convention center then.

Illinois better be using McCormick Place for vaccinations given the investment it put into the place for COVID.

Yes, take it. Use your job to protect yourself at work and do everything you can to stay safe afterwards given your medical condition. What I didn’t tell you all last week is that we had to take my two month old son to get tested for COVID because her dad tested positive. He was negative, but it was scary. My parents are 65 and 64 and are in Florida, but only my dad could get the vaccine in Florida because my mom is technically an Illinois resident. Neither is an essential worker. My wife is on leave for the rest of the school year but is a teacher, my brother and sister work in health care and in dentistry, my other siblings are teachers and I work in insurance (even though I have been on paid family leave for the first two weeks of January) so they will get it, but I won’t yet. I work at home and have no medical conditions, but I want the vaccine and get a little pissed off when people who should be getting it since they are eligible to do so and work with people aren’t getting it for whatever reason, especially when I want to get it to protect my family. I would also add that I hope that those of you who have medical conditions continue to stay safe and that your providers allow you to get the vaccines when it is safe for you to do so.

Biden could easily do it remotely in Delaware and Harris could be in California. Then protect the Capitol. I don’t see anywhere in the rules they have to do this in Washington other than to follow tradition.

There has to be at least consideration at the ownership level to bring in a team president. New coaches and roster changes can’t be the only changes.

And yet people in the general public might gladly take it but can’t because they aren’t essential workers.

You can make that happen without socialism, you can do so with compromise and progress.

And this is why they could consider holding the inauguration remotely.

Hugh Hewitt mentioned packing the Supreme Court and making PR and DC states repeatedly when discussing Georgia’s U.S. Senate Elections and my guess is that kind of rhetoric would continue to fire up the GOP base and impact the midterms in 2022. We’ll see... I’d be open for debate and voting on making PR and DC states but would rather not rush through the debate so that it is clear to voters why it is necessary. I don’t think a lot of people fully understand issues like these and need more education on the why before voting to actually do it. The option of spending half of the time on impeachment is better than full time on it. I like Clyborn’s idea but only because I am concerned about getting things done for voters and doing so before the midterms. I fear that spending too much time on impeachment might not sit well with people from moderate or purple districts who want to see things get done in Washington. From what I have read about impeachment and Trump not holding office again you are right about 2/3 and a majority.

Cool. What kind of student loan forgiveness could they get done that is reasonable and helps those who really need it? When you say ACA overhaul do you mean adding a public option and negotiating for prescription drug costs? I am not expecting Medicare For All or the Green New Deal to become laws since I think it would take a supermajority to get these passed but I think the ACA overhaul and climate change policy could help both economically and with climate change itself. I’ll have to research the Sherman Antitrust Act since I haven’t heard about that before. Infrastructure would be high on the list for me after COVID relief and health care. What about the questions that I had about impeachment and the separate vote to strip him of holding federal office again? Cool, who did you want in the primary to take on Trump? I didn’t know that about the Byrd Rule so I’ll have to look that and some of the other wonky procedural rules up. I agree with the margins in congress being slim, that’s why I thought trying COVID relief before healthcare and infrastructure would be good ideas. What do you think of Clyborn’s suggestion that the articles of impeachment not get transmitted until after Biden’s first 100 days? With the democrats in the majority of the senate by one vote (Kamala as VP), aren’t they able to call for a vote for stripping him of running for federal office?

Hi Chris!?

What about Danks?