BootmanLA

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employers pay a minimum wage of $7.25, but can pay certain workers a tipped wage of $2.13 as long as the employee, in his occupation, customarily receives at least $30 a month in tips. The key phrase is "in his occupation". In most restaurants, for instance, servers make tips. Employees who don't deal directly with customers usually do not. But sometimes there are tipped employees who also do work that non-tipped employees usually do. Are those non-tipped work duties part of the same occupation as the tipped work duties? If so, then all that employee's work may be paid at $2.13 as long as the wages plus total tips, divided by the total hours worked, is $7.25/hour. But if not, then the worker is due at least minimum wage for the "other" work, and the tips only supplement $2.13/hour for the time spent doing tip-producing work. Moreover, what about cases where the tipped server is called on to help (regularly or not, briefly or not) with a non-tipped task? Obviously it would be problematic to have the server constantly switching between a tipped and a non-tipped wage throughout a shift. So the Labor Department promulgated a rule, more than 3 decades ago, that basically drew an 80/20 line: if 80% or more of an employee's time was spent doing tipped work, then she could be paid as a tipped worker all the time. But if less than 80% of her time was spent doing tipped work, then the work had to be divided into tipped and non-tipped sections. In practice, this meant that a server who had to spend 30 minutes before each 5 hour shift rolling silverware into napkins could be paid as a tipped employee, because the tip work constituted more than 80% of her hours. But a person who worked as a non-tipped hostess for half the time in a shift and half the time as a server would be paid for half the hours at the non-tipped rate (which had to be $7.25 at a minimum, but might be much more depending on local laws and labor demand), and the tips would only count towards supplementing the $2.13 tipped wage for those hours. Sensible. But, said the 5th Circuit, we don't think that's the right way to look at "in his occupation". If the restaurant wants to include hostessing, cleaning tables, sweeping, rolling silverware, repairing the walk-in cooler, changing the light bulbs, or painting the building (along with waiting tables) as "the occupation", and "the occupation" generates at least $30 a month in tips - maybe because only one shift per month is spent actually waiting tables - then the entire "occupation" may be paid at $2.13/hour; if that plus tips don't equal $7.25/hour, then they just have to make up the difference, regardless of what the going rate for the other "parts" of "the occupation" might be. So the 80/20 rule is now vacated, unless the Supreme Court steps in to reinstate it. And that applies nationwide, because vacating a rule means it's no longer valid anywhere at all. Watch for a thousand such examples to pop up now that Chevron deference is gone.

As we've discussed here repeatedly, the Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority has, over the last few years, issued major opinion after major opinion overturning long-standing precedent in favor of obtaining a conservative outcome. The pre-eminent example, of course, is the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but I also mentioned, back in June, the case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overturned a key decision we know as Chevron v. NRDC. The Chevron case held that if a federal law passed by Congress was ambiguous - that is, it could be interpreted in more than one way - then if a federal agency wrote regulations interpreting that law, its interpretation was binding as long as the interpretation was reasonable. Importantly, that means in a lawsuit over the regulation, the regulation would be upheld even if the court felt it had a better interpretation of the ambiguous law. In other words, defer to the experts. Loper Bright threw that out and held that courts had to independently determine the best interpretation of the law in question. Given that you have judges across the ideological spectrum, that means who the judge is can largely determine what the law says. Couple that with the way certain federal judicial districts assign cases. Each state has one or more federal district courts. And in each district, there are one or more (usually more) judges. In turn, depending on the geographic size of the district, there will be one or more federal courthouses for those judges. Here in Louisiana, for instance, we have three districts (Eastern, Western, and Middle). There is only one courthouse in the Middle District (in Baton Rouge) where all the MD judges sit; but the sprawling Western District, which covers all of the state outside the Baton Rouge and New Orleans areas, has no less than five separate "divisions", each with its own courthouse and one or more judges assigned to hear cases in that division. In most cases, when a case is filed in a particular federal court (ie Western Louisiana), it is randomly assigned to one of the judges in that court, regardless of which physical courthouse/division the suit was filed in. But in a few federal judicial districts, most infamously in the Northern District of Texas, a case is assigned to a (or the) judge who sits in the specific division or courthouse where the case was filed. And in several of those divisions, a single judge sits, so you're guaranteed to get that judge. Not surprisingly, those single-judge divisions are held by some of the farthest-right of the right-wing judges appointed by then-President Trump. And since all federal cases in Texas get appealed to the ultra-conservative US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, on which hard-right conservatives dominate 12 to 5, you have a perfect vehicle for challenging any federal regulation you don't like: 1. Create an entity based, on paper if nothing else, in Amarillo, Texas. 2. File suit in the federal courthouse in Amarillo. Your case gets assigned to a Trump-appointed judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who never met a federal regulation he supported. 3. Get Kacsmaryk to issue a nationwide injunction against the regulation, which he's always ecstatic to do. 4. Get the Fifth Circuit to uphold the injunction while the case proceeds. 5. Ultimately, get Kacsmaryk to rule against the regulation, and the Fifth Circuit upholds him. 6. Only in the most egregious of cases will the Supreme Court step in to stop them. For an example of what this means in real life, read on.

The only issue I have with this is that my generation (which is close to/overlapping with yours) had more than our fair share of alcoholics and substance abusers in part because "the bars" were the only place to socialize. And a huge number of guys I knew took up smoking (creating another substance abuse problem) because it gave them something to do with their hands while they were standing around talking and drinking. Thankfully in a majority of states smoking indoors is now prohibited, which eliminates (in those places) that nasty reeking odor pervading your clothes whenever you'd go out to socialize. That said, "the bars" also limited those kinds of casual encounters to evenings and nights, and pretty much weekends or weekend-adjacent nights only, because most people couldn't go out drinking on a Tuesday and get up and be at work on Wednesday morning, especially if they got lucky; that meant either getting in very late and little sleep, or staying over and then having to rush to get home, cleaned up, and changed for work. And in a city with more than one bar you found appealing, there was always the FOMO factor of wondering if the pickings were better at the other place(s). For all the downsides, the apps have meant opening up other times during the week, have meant not having to tolerate obnoxious drunks or tweakers or unbreathable air, have meant letting you be in more than one place (ie app) at a time. Of course, you'd think this would improve one's odds, but as we're seeing, it doesn't.

To follow up, the serial fraudster is, in fact, a serial fraudster, pleading guilty this week to two felony counts and admitting, in the course of that plea bargain, that many of the other charges were true as well.

We certainly can agree to disagree. But the underlying principle is the same: whether or not one may legitimately judge a person for that person's transgressions that harm another. I'm not sure why you think "not judging a guy who's married to a woman who has no idea and would be hurt if she knew" is different, in principle, from "not judging a guy who will steal from his friends if left alone in their house". Except, of course, in the first instance, you're getting something out of it (sex with the guy). I just think it's valid to consider whether that benefit is coloring your judgment, or rather, the lack of benefiting from the second guy's thievery is.

And I'll note that a president Gore would have likely pushed to rein in the financial excesses that led to the great recession, which might have meant a smooth transition to Obama instead of the GOP collapse under Shrub that pummeled McCain so badly. So many problems of this current century stem from the shitty way Florida administered its elections with knockoff cheap-brand punch cards.

That's true, but I don't think "hookup apps" have ever been just about hooking up, just as personal ads weren't "just about" sex or "just about" finding a partner. In fact, the "hookup" apps apparently don't consider themselves just "hookup" apps either, as there are places in most where you can indicate you're looking for love, friends, hookups, or whatever. And that's fine. The problem is that many people don't read profiles so even if you put "ONLY LOOKING FOR NO-STRINGS HOOKUPS THAT INVOLVE YOU FUCKING MY ASS", someone whose profile indicates "Looking for love" will message you and be irritated you won't date them.

Here's how I see it. Yes, he might well have some other guy jump at the chance to be with him. But that other guy would be the problematic one, not you. So it's not that by refusing him, you'd be saving his wife the hurt she'd likely feel if she found out; it's that you're not being COMPLICIT in the deception and hurt. To me, being complicit in such, just for the sake of getting fucked occasionally, is selfish - I'm cashing in on a benefit while being an active part of what's going to hurt her (almost certainly) someday. Not saying you have to adopt my viewpoint - just explaining why *I* find it selfish. The fact that he's initiating it, and is the primary factor in causing the hurt, doesn't mean his partners aren't part of the problem too.

I don't use either service, but I do have profiles on a couple of other sites, all of which list my location, my "activity" preference (all say "bottom", not "vers bottom" or anything else), and my "what I'm looking for" (NSA or the equivalent for that site). Invariably I get messages from people asking "Where are you from?" and "What are you looking for", and an inordinate number of messages from other bottoms. I also mention that I ignore messages from people without public photos in their profiles, and I get these questions from people with no photo, too. It's clear to me that a lot of people simply see a photo, decide to contact the person, and do not read one word of the profile in question. They just don't bother. The first "already answered" question I'll sometimes answer, but more often than not I answer with "That's covered in my profile". If I get a second question like that - and it's never from anyone in a place I might travel to, much less nearby - I usually suggest adult literacy classes because reading comprehension doesn't seem to be in their skill set. Life is too short to deal with lazy asses like that.

I suspect you'd have to check with them; they may have an online formulary of drugs they cover, although they're likely listed by generic name rather than brand name (there may be cross references).

What this is saying is that tamsulosin combined with cobicistat has a major interaction. So when you combine tamulosin with ANYTHING that contains cobicistat (including Prezcobix), the interaction is still major. But the generic for Prezcobix is not "darunavir". Prezcobix is a two-drug combination of both cobicistat AND darunavir. And apparently the interaction between tamsulosin and darunavir is less problematic than the interaction between tamsulosin and cobicistat. Put another way, combining A and B is not recommended. So combining A and BC is not recommended, either. But combining A and C is not as big of a problem, because B is not involved.

So... I wouldn't fuck my underaged kids, if I had them. But it's fine if someone else does his own, and I "shouldn't try to live anybody's else life for them"? I wouldn't steal from my friends' houses if I go visit, but it's fine if someone else does, because I shouldn't judge? I could go on and on, but it boils down to: Do we give everyone a pass for behavior we ourselves wouldn't do, no matter how offensive or harmful it might be, in the name of "not trying to live anybody else's life for them"?

People have been doing all sorts of horrible things for a long time, too, but we judge on those issues. The rule of thumb I have is: can anyone else get hurt by this? Am I willing to be complicit by helping someone else hurt a third party? In the case of cheating spouses, absolutely someone can get hurt. So without clear understandings that it's okay, in this particular relationship, for the guy to do this (or even that his spouse has clearly indicated he/she doesn't want to know), I'm not going to be involved in perpetuating that hurt. Obviously some people just don't give a damn about hurting other people. I find that selfish and sad.

Here's the thing: I can see staying with a spouse for a long time without having sex for any number of reasons (having kids together to raise, general contentment despite lack of sexual compatibility/interest, financial interdependence, whatever). My own partner and I (together 20 years) are at that point, and a lot of gay relationships I know end up here as well. But I can't imagine being in this situation and lying/hiding the fact that I have sexual activity outside the relationship. He doesn't know details and don't want to know (not because it would hurt him to know, he just doesn't really care; it would be like detailing to him each time I clip my toenails). And I don't want to know about his, either, though if he told me, I wouldn't be bothered by it. But we at least made it clear that this outside the relationship activity was okay, and what sorts of ground rules we might have. I can't imagine deceiving him because to me, that negates the entire reason for staying in the relationship in the first place. If we have to hide things from each other like that, what's the point in staying together?

I've known such people too, and of course I agree that where such an understanding exists, there's no cheating, because the partners have agreed, even if only implicitly, that such behavior isn't against their rules. But I've known far more such couples where the wife has no such understanding at all, even though the husband operates as though he did. Sometimes that's a matter of the wife being deliberately blind to what he's up to; sometimes he's just good at covering his tracks. But here's the thing: the "exploring" partner is going to hurt his "abstaining" partner either way. Either he's honest with her, and hurts her by inferring sex with her isn't enough for him; or he cheats, and when he gets caught, or can't hide it any longer, he hurts her by revealing that he's been deceiving her all along. My view is that if hurt is inevitable, do it sooner, get it over with, and then let the other partner decide whether she wants to continue in the relationship "as is", or end it as amicably as possible and go on to live their lives with more honesty.

Oh, absolutely true that taking antibiotics before or after doesn't change the effect on gut health. But the point I was (perhaps clumsily) trying to make is that despite "on demand" dosing, PrEP still, for most people, involves taking medication daily even when you're not having sex, and if you do that with antibiotics, you run a much higher risk of messing up your gut fauna because you're taking it on a regular, ongoing basis. At least taking as PEP, after the fact, means you only take when you potentially need it.

Oh, I'm hopeful too, but I also recognize that there are elements in the Georgia electoral apparatus that are trying very hard to stymie that. Luckily our side has some of the best attorneys in electoral law, including Marc Elias.

They wouldn't have won that one (2004) either, except for having squeezed out an Electoral College win despite the popular vote in 2000. Without Shrub's win in 2000, the response to 9/11 would have almost certainly focused exclusively on Afghanistan, where Bin Laden was operating, We wouldn't have invaded Iraq, losing many thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. And by the time 2004 rolled around, we probably would have been reasonably satisfied with Gore, and re-elected him, as American voters are reluctant to change presidential parties in the middle of a "hot" war.

I'll do my standard reminder here: it's not DoxyPrEP. It's DoxyPEP. PrEP means PRE-exposure - something you take on an ongoing basis BEFORE you're exposed to an infectious agent. PEP means POST-exposure - something you take AFTER being exposed to an infectious agent, to prevent the infection from taking hold. The concern about gut health, as well as concerns about developing antibiotic resistance, are the reasons why Doxycycline is used for POST exposure medication - it's taken after the fact, to stop the infection from getting a foothold. The same terms apply for HIV, by the way. We're very familiar with PrEP for HIV - taken either daily, or in specially timed doses around the time you have sex. But there is also a PEP for HIV - basically, emergency treatment after potential exposure that prevents HIV from establishing a foothold in your system. Because PrEP for HIV doesn't involve antibiotics, the concerns about resistance isn't there, and it doesn't affect gut health (though it can, as we've discussed extensively elsewhere, affect other organs in some cases). So daily PrEP isn't a problem the way daily DoxyPrEP would be. Keeping the two (PEP vs PrEP) separate is important.

I agree that if such an understanding is in place, then there is (by definition) no cheating. Assuming, of course, that the "understanding" covers the particular circumstances. In my experience, such "understandings" are rare; the only "understanding" is that the guy "understands" he wants a different kind of sex than the one he signed up for, and is willing to risk hurting his wife by cheating. And part of that "least bad" option, to me, is a requirement that the guy at least TRY to come to that understanding, which means laying cards on the table. If he's hiding his sexual desires from her because he thinks she's going to freak out and want a divorce, then discreetly sleeping with men is NOT "least bad". "Least bad" would be recognizing he isn't the right guy for her, letting her go, and moving on with his life. But that's difficult, and men are frequently loath to give up something stable (even if he got it under pretense and has to lie constantly to keep it) in favor of cutting his losses and trying for a more honest situation for himself. Part of that is because men, historically, seldom paid any serious price for those kinds of indiscretions. If getting divorced after having an affair was as devastating to a man's social status as it generally was for a woman, there might not be quite so much an asymmetry between how men and women are treated in society.

Need to be? Of course not. But the fact remains that it IS a moral fact, or practice, or condition, for an awful lot of people. I'm all in favor of open relationships, open marriages, whatever. But be on the same page as your other half. Maybe, maybe not. You are (I perceive) an introspective man, and I don't doubt that this is how you view sex. But the term "navel gazing" exists for a reason; we can't project our biases onto everyone else and assume that if sex is never "just physical" for you, it can never be "just physical" for others. I know some guys for whom sex is never anything BUT "just physical." And I know others for whom it's "just physical" with some partners and "something more" with others. That's certainly an aspect worth exploring in some relationships. To me, though, it's simpler: cheating in a relationship is like cheating in a board or card game. It's breaking the rules that the participants have agreed to. Those rules don't have to be the same for every game, or for every grouping of players; games like Monopoly, for instance, have alternative sets of rules available right in the rule book to make games more or less challenging. There are so many variations of poker and solitaire that you could fill a small town public library with publications on different sets of rules. But the important thing is that they all DO have rules, and it's pretty crappy to be playing by one set of rules and find out that the other player(s) are using an entirely different rulebook. Especially when they KNOW which rules everyone agreed to, up front, but just don't give a damn if it means winning.

Except, of course, the wife who gets the STI or HIV from the cheating husband. Or just the emotional devastation from finding out her husband is cheating on her.

I would only note that I know any number of cheating guys whose wife/husband/girlfriend/partner is willing to "take care" of their guy, but the guy is just a cheating slime who, as you note, gets off on the cheating. There's no amount of "taking better care" of a sleazeball who actually enjoys the cheating, as opposed to simply not "doing what you don't want to". And I would also note that while you're not trying to steal him and there are no pregnancy scares, you ARE putting him (and by extension, her) at risk for sexually transmitted infections. So I wouldn't pretend to be noble if I were you.

I'll add this: two nights into the DNC, the energy there is palpable, and based solely on vibes, I'm feeling hopeful that Harris has a good chance of winning. And I'm not the only one: Larry Sabato, who runs one of the larger election forecasting sites, has moved North Carolina from "leaning Republican" to "Toss up". The biggest drag on Trump in NC seems to be the guy he endorsed for the governor's race (Robinson); the man can't seem to break 40% in the polls, with his Democratic opponent (Stein), running anywhere from 4 to 8 points ahead of him (for now). We tend to think of North Carolina as a Republican stronghold, but that's largely due to an excessively gerrymandered legislature (and Congressional delegation). Seven of the last eight governors races have been won by Democrats, in fact. Robinson is the current Lt. Governor, which means he's got some name recognition built in. But he's adding to that by calling abortion "child sacrifice", declaring that birth control's early leaders were "witches, all of them", and called gay people "filth" and "maggots". With respect to trans people, he's said that transwomen should never be allowed in women's restrooms but should "find a corner outside somewhere to go" instead. And these are just a few of his more notable comments, which have been extensive. The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce is so concerned about the GOP ticket that it called the primary results “a startling warning of the looming threats to North Carolina’s business climate.” And some of us recall that NC was one of the first states to pass a "bathroom bill" regarding trans people, and it immediately lost the NBA All-Star game from Charlotte, as well as a large amount of other tourism and convention-related business. And fallout from that law probably cost the then-Republican governor re-election. If North Carolina (which last voted for a Democrat for president in 2008, and before that, in 1976) is back in play, with its 16 electoral votes, anything is possible. Winning NC would exactly compensate if Georgia went back for the Republicans. It would more than compensate for losing Arizona, Wisconsin, or Nevada; in fact, it would exactly compensate for losing Wisconsin AND Nevada. All of a sudden, there are more paths to a Harris victory than there were just a few weeks ago.

Part of the shift, I suspect, is that for ages, gay people couldn't get married. We had long-term relationships (sometimes) but there was generally no "vows", certainly not ones recognized by society as a whole, and even when there was some sort of commitment ceremony, I don't recall many same-sex couples pledging to "forsake all others". In other words, LGBTQ+ couples, when we got to eat, only ate on paper plates or at best Corelle, while opposite-sex couples got to use the fine china. And while we aspired to being allowed to use the fine china, we weren't particularly respectful of it at the time, since we didn't have access to it. Now, we can get married, and for some of us, at least, we recognize that there's a level of commitment that we kind of ought to honor. We've come to recognize, some of us, that when we're in a committed relationship, it hurts to be cheated on, and those same some of us kind of look askance at someone else doing to their spouse what we'd hate to have done to us. At the same time, though, we've also come to understand the nuances that come with those commitments. Sometimes the married straight couple (MSC) has an understanding where one or both partners can seek outside sex. Some MSCs are polyamorous, and can seek not only outside sex, but additional relationships. Some MSCs have one partner who is no longer interested in sex and doesn't want to know whether, or when, or if, the other partner has sex with someone else, as long as it doesn't interfere with the relationship at home. And sometimes MSCs have one partner who refuses to have sex and refuses to give even tacit permission to the partner to have outside sex, and those people are left with the choice of going completely without or cheating. Those are the ones for whom, as the saying goes, cheating is the least bad option. Then there are those men who just want more sex, or more variety in sex (ie with other men), than with their partner, and are determined to get it, lying about it to their spouse. Those are the ones where I'd say it's wrong. The thing about LGBTQ+ relationships is that in theory, we should be able to handle more variations on the traditional "one man one woman forever" model beyond just swapping out the woman for a man or the man for a woman. And many of us do, in my experience. Unfortunately, not nearly as many MSCs do.