In 1977, the perfectly named Johnny Paycheck sang the lyrics, Take this job and shove it, landing a number one hit, inspiring a movie, and creating a lasting anthem and adage. But another lyric might more aptly fit our current moment: Take these employees and shove them. When push comes to shove, today’s corporations are making more money while employing fewer people. “In 1985, IBM was America’s most valuable company, one of its most profitable, and among its largest employers, with a payroll of nearly 400,000. Today, Nvidia is nearly 20 times as valuable and five times as profitable as IBM was back then, adjusted for inflation. Yet it employs roughly a 10th as many people. That simple comparison says something profound about today’s economy: Its rewards are going disproportionately toward capital instead of labor. Profits have soared since the pandemic, and the market value attached to those profits even more. The result: Capital, which includes businesses, shareholders and superstar employees, is triumphant, while the average worker ekes out marginal gains. The divergence between capital and labor helps explain the disconnect between a buoyant economy and pessimistic households.” WSJ (Gift Article): The Big Money in Today’s Economy Is Going to Capital, Not Labor. (Alt link.) Capital gains are going up, the value placed on human capital is going down. And, of course, these trends are only being accelerated by technological shifts and political winds. Yale economist, Pascual Restrepo, explains: “There will be winners: workers whose jobs require social skills, proximity or manual labor, and consumers, who get cheaper products and services. The biggest winners of all? Shareholders.” 2Pet DetectiveOne of the better Super Bowl ads was for Amazon Ring’s Search Party feature that gives neighbors a way to combine their security cam feeds to quickly locate missing pets. Amazon’s CEO says the feature helped bring home 99 dogs in 90 days. But like many security stories, there is another side to this one. “Chris Gilliard, a privacy expert and author of the upcoming book Luxury Surveillance, told 404 Media these features and its Super Bowl ad are ‘a clumsy attempt by Ring to put a cuddly face on a rather dystopian reality: widespread networked surveillance by a company that has cozy relationships with law enforcement and other equally invasive surveillance companies.’” With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet. 3Rebooting Shoes“Amplify is designed for that everyday athlete to give them the energy they need to go further, to go faster, with greater levels of confidence. It’s like an e-bike for your feet.” NPR: How bionic sneakers could change human mobility. (I only hope they make the same sound as the Six Million Dollar Man’s bionics...) 4Five Ring Circus“Instantly, scoreboards showed Aicher had finished in 1 minutes, 36.14 seconds — four-hundredths of a second behind. Johnson sighed and rubbed a hand over her head in relief. Johnson ultimately won and Aicher took the silver, their careers forever altered by that tiny difference determined by the most important team at the Olympics you don’t know about — the Omega timekeepers.” The most important team at the Olympics isn’t a country. It’s the timekeepers. “Since the Swiss timing giant sent employees with 30 stopwatches to Los Angeles for the 1932 Olympics, Omega’s business of keeping results at the Olympics has grown so large and sophisticated that a delegation from the company is already in Los Angeles preparing for the Olympics’ return in 2028.” 5Extra, ExtraBet Threat: Legalized gambling in many states meant that millions of people were suddenly walking around with souped-up casinos in their pockets. Prediction markets mean that people in all 50 states can bet on anything, anytime. “Everything is gambling now”: How betting is taking over America. “These days, you can wager on everything from Sunday’s Super Bowl LX, November’s midterm elections, March’s Oscars, this winter’s weather, the words that commentators will use — even the second coming of Jesus Christ.” The stats are already insane. “Nearly 40 percent of men and 20 percent of women gamble online daily. Two percent of these bettors gamble more than ten hours a day ... Most bettors are men. They’ve gotten younger and younger as sports betting companies gamified gambling. Pokémon, the trading card and video game mega-franchise, co-opted slot machine and casino imagery in the 1990s, and technology companies latched on, eager to bring in young gamblers to replace the old heads. Public schools see problems with boys, and sports betting stokes some school officials’ fears of it becoming as ubiquitous as cellphones and as poisonous as social media.” Prospect: The Scourge of Online Sports Betting. 6Bottom of the News“Teratophiliacs were once a niche group that bonded over their sexual attraction to monsters in obscure forums. Now—as online communities proliferate and genres like romantasy grow—monster p-rn is going mainstream.” GQ: Inside the Booming Business of Monster P-rn. (This gives new meaning to doing the Monster Mash.)
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Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Shove it Up Your Class
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