Category: <span>Pragmatism In Action</span>

There is one more part of this W-2 conversation that probably deserves its own article. And before going any further, I want to make something clear. This is not an argument that W-2 employment is bad. It is also not an argument that independent-contractor status is automatically better. That has never really been the point…

Why Student Loans Are Investment Loans — Part One There is something I’ve noticed whenever we start talking about accountability in higher education. It doesn’t take very long before somebody finds the emotional argument. You’re attacking women. You’re attacking teachers. You’re attacking artists. You’re attacking cosmetologists. You’re attacking people who want to go to college.…

Apparently one RideShare Pro video has officially turned into a trilogy. I didn’t set out to write three articles about one video. But that’s what happens when somebody takes a subject as complicated as converting independent rideshare drivers into W-2 employees and boils it down to something resembling: You’ll get some benefits. You’ll get paid…

I didn’t exactly plan on getting three articles out of one video. But every time I go back through the argument about making rideshare drivers W-2 employees, another question pops up that nobody seems to be answering. Part One was basically: What exactly is becoming W-2 supposed to fix? Now we’re onto Part Two: Okay.…

I watched RideShare Pro’s video making the argument that rideshare drivers should not be afraid of becoming W-2 employees, and the farther I got into it, the more one question kept coming back to me: What exactly do you think the W-2 is going to fix? Because there are real problems in rideshare. There are…

If you live around Western Massachusetts, you don’t need me to explain what the Eastern States Exposition is. It’s The Big E. It’s the big New England fair in West Springfield where all six New England states get together, everybody eats things they probably shouldn’t, and you can somehow spend an impressive amount of money…

Yesterday I wrote about how artificial intelligence has gradually become less like a chatbot and more like a collection of assistants I would otherwise have to hire, call, or wait for. There is another side to that which may be even more important. AI has changed how quickly I can learn something I was already…

When people talk about using artificial intelligence, the conversation frequently gets reduced to a few simple examples. Write an email. Summarize a document. Generate an image. Answer a question. Maybe write a little code. That isn’t remotely where I have ended up. Over time, I have started looking at what I actually ask AI to…