On the Thursday December 5, 2024 edition of The Armstrong & Getty One More Thing Podcast...
It's like the UAW, but the A doesn't stand for auto.
It's one more thing.
I'm strong and getty, one more thing.
Before we get to whatever that is. I've been meaning so naughty. I'd been marry naughty, warning you. I've been meaning to complain about Wait, geez, we've been talking about micro was it called superprocessed foods ultra processed foods? So I shouldn't be eating anything and that comes in a plastic sack anyway. But I've been meaning to complain about the plastic sacks. The modern plastic sacks are so sucky, the kind of material they are. They don't rip like they used to. Like, you can't open the plastic inside a cereal anymore and then have it be together in such a way that you can pour cereal out. It shreds into different pieces and you just got to mess on your hands.
And it's funny. There's an article in USA Today today about that the effort toward having a smaller carbon footprint has led to these kinds of plastics, for like chip bags. You know, if you ever open it, it just rips all the way down the side, and only your pretzels fall out on the floor. It's not like the old days where you can just open the top and it's cheaper and greener. I'm guessing it has more to do with cheaper than greener, but the main one is it's not your imagination. Beverage containers are harder to open than they used to be, which is good news. I'm not just getting weaker and losing my grip strength because of the caps on so many things getting smaller and not as deep. You can't get much of a grip on it anymore. And it's just it's just factually much more difficult to open things than it used to be. So if you've come across that, it's example of products like.
I had a hell at a time with one of those milk cartons that has the little screw top in the middle of it the other day.
Yeah, they use they used that as an example. Those are super shallow. Yeah, you're right, Yeah, you can't get a grip on it, and they they used that as an example.
All that reminds me I have not yet eggnogged.
About.
I got to put that off as long as possible. The fact that I'm doing okay, waight wise right.
Now, Katie, do you know Joe's eggnog game.
I don't.
Well, I used to say, back in my younger and wilder days when you should have known me.
That, back when you're hanging out with Pete Hegzeth.
Oh yeah, all the times we had.
Uh, if you can't read the newspaper through your eggnog, it's U two a.
Week, got it?
Okay, got in our Our old boss used to have a party at his house where he had make eggnog with a big block of Hoggin DAW's ice cream in the song.
Made from scratch egg nog.
It was so freaking good and you'd be knee walking drunk by the end too, which was really cool.
Yeah. Yeah, goes down like a well, like a milkshake.
Knee walking drunk. I haven't heard that one either. I like it. That's a Georgia bushism and he knew so drunk. The old style milk carton caps were twenty one millimeters tall, while the new ones are seventeen millimeters tall. That's a difference of nineteen percent. That seems to be enough to make it impossible to grip by most people. And see, you just can't get a grip on a top of the dang thing, and I've had that experience and thought of my just weaker, what is the problem here? Uh so people haven't And the other thing, I haven't had this experience yet. They've made the plastics so thin on a lot of bottles. When you twist the lid, the whole bottle twists so you can't get any resistance to open the bag thing up.
Yes, I had a really embarrassing moment the other day where I took the cap off of my water bottle and apparently I have a hulk grip because the hand I was holding it with the water just sprayed everywhere. And I was like, okay, wow, I don't know my own strength.
Yeah, squeezing too hard?
That is interesting. Well, they got to find the sweet spot, obviously, and make the lids a little taller.
Speaking of squeezing too hard and finding the sweet spot, here's good news. This is one of Michael's pet causes. He's marched, he's twitter hashtags, he's written letters to Congress, and that's the rights of prostitutes in Belgium and the good news. Belgian prostitutes have been given full employment rights as sex workers under a new law that entitles them to social security and pensions.
Finally, the law is creating a new category of employment.
I would try the French, but I haven't studied French in many years. Essentially sex workers, which requires an official employment contract. This will cover and regulate working hours and pay, including prostitutes working part time as gig workers or while studying in higher education.
I'm a part time prostitute.
I'm a student and I do sex work on the side cover my tuition.
I'd be racking up over time, yeah, exactly, time and a half. Yeah, and putting more toward your retirement exactly right.
I can't wait till I get off my back and can take a rest or something.
And I retire when you're like thirty, probably from that gig.
Says Don Bowens, director of the Belgian Union for Prostitutes.
What do we want? What do we want?
It?
Quote?
We could have never dreamt that we would be here now.
I think the most important thing is that we now make access to social security possible.
We did a full panel with sex workers once years ago. Do you remember that, Yeah, I do in studio.
Interesting.
Yeah, it was very very interesting, and I know I've gone back and forth on this and whether it should be legalized, so that then have you'd have some rights and police protection and stuff that you don't now. But then the experience with legalized marijuana in California is that you have as active an illegal market as you ever did in just a different way. Because I have a feeling that, you know, the cartels or Chinese massage slaves are still going to exist even if you legalize prostitution exactly.
This is one of my favorite, not that it's good, but it's it's it is clear one of my favorite illustrations of secondary consequences. And on down the line, you legalize prostitution, there is absolutely still going to be exploit exploitations, sexual slavery, underaged girls being raped for money because they can't give consent, they're underage, it's rape. The most horrifying parts of sex trafficking will continue to exist, and the cops will no longer have the ability to investigated and intercede in it in the same way right because it all exists barely behind the scenes of the not as horrifying stuff.
Interesting.
It's like the young junkies in you know, all the cities of Blue America who got saved over and over again by getting arrested and having some compassionate cop saying hey, you don't have to do this, here's this program whatever. It just it makes all of it too easy, including the really really unpleasant stuff.
And you got that.
And then there's this I can't remember. There's probably a clever name for it. It's the principle the speed limit is sixty, they don't expect you to go sixty, but you're sure as hell aren't gonna go ninety. And that I don't know if there's a Latin phrase for that legal philosophy, but to keep the really ugly stuff going from happening, we're gonna have a law that's not super strictly enforced, just so when we see the super ugly stuff we can jump in and do something about it. And I realize that's kind of wishy washing, and I wish the world didn't work like that, but it does. Getting back to the hose of Belgium.
I assume the Johns would dig this because it's legal, and oh yeah, you don't have to worry about.
Unless you're a real Sickoh yeah, yeah. One important important employment right is that sex workers are able to refuse a client or sexual act without fear of being sacked by their brothel. Say the Belgian sex workers.
Sacked by a brothel is a good price?
That's a phrase. Yeah, yeah, isn't it.
The exercise of the right refusal opens a protection period of six months, during which the sex worker is protecting. Oh okay, that's just the legal ease. It gets a little troubling here, Okay. Employers will have to meet workplace safety requirements such as an emergency panic button, and hygiene rules require that rooms must be a certain size, equipped with clean betting and bath linen, as well as condomes and access to shower and toilet trees.
Yeah, betting requirements, you like, how often are you changing those? Ah?
Cress so often is possible?
Ew?
Yeah, where's the put? Did I skip over that? Somehow?
Some of the gals talking about how, uh, since they don't get time off and uh, where is that?
I sort of got I read that in this article. That's funny. I'm probably skimming over it.
But this one gal's talking about because we have no vacation or anything like that. I had to work till I was eight months pregnant.
Oh my god. Okay, see that's awful. That's a cake of somebody to be doing that. Oh my god. Ah ew yeah, I know.
I mean, look, there are many examples of a couple continuing their amorous activities well into pregnancy.
That's fine, healthy and fine and fun. On the other hand, okay, that's not what we're talking about.
No, right exactly, but paying for it, and she's got to show up to work and do it just because she's got to put food on the table.
It's just and she's about whole shop.
No.
Hey, so Brandon, funny story. Now that you're twelve, I feel like you're old enough to tell you right before you were born, you're getting poked in the eye. Yeah, dang it.
Yeah, I know. It's just it's so demeaning. Yeah, don't demean yourself, folks. It's there's a cost to your soul. It's difficult to quantify. I mean, is this job a little demeaning, Yes, yes.
It is as demeaning is being eight months pregnant and taking the high hard one for somebody for cash. No, not that demeaning. Yeah, god, that's rough.
It's a rough line of work.
Yeah, true.
I don't know.
We should try well, I guess we have it kind of in uh Nevada at the Brothels. It's kind of legal, true, yesh, yeah, I ain't ben so, I don't know what it's like.
Belgium was the second country in the world, dude, to criminalize prostitution, after New Zealand in two thousand and three.
There you go.
It's a little hygiene requirements, you say, I'm all for that.
Oh please?
Yeah, as many as you, as many as you, all of them, in favor of all of all exactly.
Well, which tupe ofware lives do you find hard to open this email? Les? Second? Well, I guess that's it.