From acquaintances I know, the combination of long periods of sitting, stimulant abuse, lack of healthy food options, inconsistent sleep, air quality from being around other trucks, stress from the job, and mental isolation from being away from friends and family all are really hard, even for a year. Now imagine a 30+ Year career.
Sitting for 8-12 hours a day in a cramped position is bad for your back, neck, shoulders, hips. Name a joint and it's gonna get messed up eventually. There's also a risk of blood clots and generally anything that can be caused by poor circulation, especially in your legs. Add to that poor sleep from sleeping in your cab or possibly a crappy motel if you're lucky, not getting enough sleep, rarely being able to exercise or eat well, and obesity and muscle degeneration start to become pretty serious risks, too.
You can compensate for all those things, and some drivers do. Taking walks on their breaks, doing calesthenics, bringing good food from home, etc. Many of them don't, just as many other people don't take care of themselves and are fat and sedentary.
The amount of sitting a software dev does is comparable if not more to most truck drivers, I'd guess.
I can get out of my office chair, stretch, and then return back to my seat in a minute as much as I'd like. An 18 wheeler has to exit the highway, find a place to park that accommodates large trucks, put on the brakes, Climb out, walk around, and then go back to the highway. All while not being paid a salary but being paid by the mile.
This picture sprang to my mind when thinking of the consequences of trucking. Essentially, the sunlight from his driver side mirror aged the right side of his face. This is why I wear sunscreen almost constantly when going outside and to keep exposure to a minimum.
What an weird nonsequitor, of course not? It would make you eligible for all of the benefits that Uber gives to it's W2 employees though. Which is obviously the point.
Is there a big list of things a human can do, to reduce/minimize their risk of getting cancer? "dont smoke" is obvious but a lot of chemicals/behaviors are less well understood in terms of cancer risk.
Perhaps because of the AABBA rhyme scheme and the shorter third and fourth line.
But in a limerick the first line traditionally introduces a person and a place, which doesn’t happen here.
That would result in the filing of a Suspicious Activity Report because the breakdown looks like it was done precisely to avoid the reporting threshold.
1) The fundamental problem is that countries, especially the US, have basically made companies exempt from criminal proceedings. Any criminal activity conducted as part of the company rarely leads to prosecution of the people in the company, and companies themselves aren’t really ever prosecuted for criminal acts. So any penalty to HSBC wouldn’t be criminal but civil and financial.
2) The articles say that HSBC laundered billions. This likely means it was $3-4Bn at most, but let’s assume it was $19Bn (because if it was $20Bn they would have said tens of billions). These transactions were probably earning HSBC a few basis points. I can’t say for sure since I’m not aware of the market price of criminal transactions, but I suspect the premium was not much higher than a regular transaction for the simple reason that it would make the transaction appear obviously criminal. But let’s say it was 200bp (so 2%, and that’s likely an order of magnitude higher, but for arguments sake). Then HSBC probably made about $400mm - costs (remember, assuming a very high $19bn in transactions). So a $1.9Bn fine is extremely high, being 5x HSBC’s revenue from the transactions assuming very favorable numbers, and not considering the non monetary penalties, such as probation, etc.
3) Finally, if Apple is found guilty of illegally promoting a monopoly through their App Store policies, would a fine of $7Bn be considered laughable, considering it’s about 5 weeks of Apple’s income? And in Apple’s case, the company operates fairly cohesively, and the App Store almost exists for the sole purpose of encouraging hardware sales, so there’s actually an argument to be made to base the penalty on Apple’s total income as a company. OTOH, banks tend to have fairly independent divisions, because they are highly regulated, unlike the likes of Apple, and there are all sorts of restrictions preventing the divisions that are making the kind of transactions from even interacting with most of the rest of the company. Apple collaborated more with its competitors to illegally suppress employee pay than this division of HSBC likely collaborated with any other division in HSBC (and they likely had to actively evade scrutiny from the middle office).
I’m not trying to argue that the punishment was appropriate. However, what I am arguing is that if a non banking company was found to have done something similar, they would have faced punishments that were a much tinier fraction of what HSBC faced. And that’s even before we factor in the fact that banks are orders of magnitude more regulated than nearly any other industry, with them being required to set up entire departments that account for over 10-20% of their workforce purely to ensure they can meet government regulations. Something pretty much no other industry, especially the tech industry, has to do.
Any shortcomings in the punishment imposed on HSBC was a result of leeway’s given to companies in general.
The fundamental problem, as you've described in 1) and reiterated in your conclusion lays bare a, mostly unspoken, fundamental societal injustice that's common to many countries.
It really feels like protectionism for the status quo. Which is totally understandable and predictable in the context of basic human behaviour and motivations; the king of the hill will not make it easy for anyone to displace them.
What I find interesting, as opposed to surprising as such, is the myriad ways in which politicians explain these situations away in simultaneously calling the slap-on-the-wrist a big deterrent to such behaviour in future, and playing this slap-on-the-wrist as if it's somehow in the interests of the voting population.
It's hard to prove that something does not exist. Significant amount of money has been recovered, although it's easy to argue that effects are not enough for the effort and inconvenience of normal customers.
Honestly I can't fathom her solo career, the zero seven era was so brilliant. I'm happy she gets some wide recognition, wealth and comfort, but musically she is off now. Her gamut is trimmed it's all loud and no subtlety.
I used this to convince my gf to replace her hideous fake tree decoration with a nice bowl for holding stuff instead. This might be the most useful HN post for me ever.
