The claim: Chick-fil-A 'just hired' a new vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/06/02/dei-vice-president-at-chick-fil-a-isnt-new-hire-fact-check/70268367007/

A May 31 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a screenshot of a tweet about fast food restaurant Chick-fil-A. "Chick Fil-A just hired a VP of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion," reads the tweet. "Is this just checking off a corporate box or do they believe in this Marxist nonsense?"

The tweet includes a link to Chick-fil-A's diversity, equity and inclusion page. A similar claim shared on Instagram garnered more than 2,000 likes before it was deleted. Other versions of the claim have been shared on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
https://twitter.com/JonnyRoot_/status/1663406410208788480
Our rating: False

Chick-fil-A did not "just hire" a vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion. The chain has had someone in that position for over a year and a half.

Vice president isn't new hire

The webpage linked in the original tweet features a photo of Erick McReynolds, the vice president in question, alongside a statement from him about respect in the workplace. McReynolds wasn't recently hired, however. Web archives show he's been featured on the restaurant's website since at least September 2022.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220922060653/https://www.chick-fil-a.com/dei

Label: Paisley Park – PRO-A-2387
Format: Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM, Single, Promo
Country: US
Released: 1985
Genre: Electronic, Funk / Soul
Style: Minneapolis Sound

The moon up above, it shines down upon our skin
Whispering words that scream of outrageous sin
We all want the stuff that's found in our wildest dreams
It gets kinda rough in the back of our limousine

That's what we are, we all want a love bizarre
That's what we are, we all want a love bizarre

A strawberry mind, a body that's built for two
A kiss on the spine, we do things we never do
Swallow the pride and joy of the ivory tower
We'll dance on the roof, make love on a bed of flowers

That's what we are, we all want a love bizarre
That's what we are, we all want a love bizarre

The moon up above, it shines down upon our skin
Whispering words that scream of outrageous sin
We all want the stuff that's found in our wildest dreams
It gets kinda rough in the back of our limousine

That's what we are, we all want a love bizarre
That's what we are, we all want a love bizarre

Label: Warp Records – warplp55, Skam – skalp1
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: UK
Released: 20 Apr 1998
Genre: Electronic
Style: IDM, Ambient, Trip Hop

Label: Parlophone – 7243 531138 1 0, Parlophone – 7243 5 31138 1 0
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: Europe
Released: 24 Mar 2001
Genre: Electronic, Hip Hop, Rock, Latin, Funk / Soul, Pop
Style: Leftfield, Trip Hop, Lo-Fi, Experimental, UK Garage, Punk, Dub

https://www.fxstreet.com/news/us-nonfarm-payrolls-report-analyzing-may-nfp-release-202306020600

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on Friday that Nonfarm Payrolls rose 339,000 in May. This reading surpassed the market expectation of 190,000 by a wide margin. April's reading of 253,000 also got revised higher to 294,000.

The Unemployment Rate climbed to 3.7% from 3.4% in the same period, while the Labor Force Participation rate remained unchanged at 62.6%. Finally, annual wage inflation, as measured by the changed in Average Hourly Earnings, edged lower to 4.3% from 4.4%.

"The number of persons employed part-time for economic reasons, at 3.7 million, changed little in May," the BLS further noted in the press release. "These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part-time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs."

Market reaction

With the immediate reaction, the US Dollar Index erased its daily losses and turned positive on the day above 103.50. The benchmark 10-year US Treasury bond yield turned north and rebounded to 3.65%. According to the CME Group FedWatch Tool, however, markets are still pricing in a nearly 70% probability of the US Federal Reserve leaving its policy rate unchanged in June.

snip

He positively pwned the Rethugs, and all parts of our big tent played their roles to damn near perfection.

Label: Reprise Records – 5439 15615-2
Format: CD, Single, Cardboard Sleeve
Country: Europe
Released: 11 Sept 2006
Genre: Rock
Style: Emo, Punk, Alternative Rock

This is like selling the parts for nuclear weapons to warlords in third-world countries and them telling them how to put a bomb together.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/ai-can-be-nuclear-power-or-a-nuclear

https://archive.is/ZeXdG



There are enormous benefits to nuclear power. From little to no carbon footprint, to no fracking and no drilling for oil in the Arctic, it is clean and overwhelmingly safe. At least until humans make it not safe. Nuclear power is the answer to all of humanity’s problems if you subtract human greed, incompetence and stupidity from the equation. But you can’t. That’s how you get Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and Russians lobbing explosives at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.

People will always find a way to weaponize, monetize, or do something really stupid with any and every technological advance imaginable. In the case of artificial intelligence (AI), we appear to be doing all three of these things in real time — and the damage is escalating rapidly. We are already in an AI Cold War and most of us have no idea it’s happening or how damaging it will be. It’s the Wild Wild West right now and if we do not get a handle on it, the fallout will be devastating.

Where are we, exactly?

I grew up hoping I would live to see the birth of AI. I assumed, correctly, that it would be immensely powerful and if used properly, AI would be the greatest tool mankind had ever designed. I also assumed, incorrectly, that AI would be developed by government scientists with a lot of oversight. Younger me was apparently very naive and optimistic. So where are we, exactly? AI development is moving so quickly it is hard to pin down its progress at any given moment. Bear that in mind as this part ages like milk on a Los Angeles rooftop in August.

For the last several years, companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI (the people behind ChatGPT) have been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into developing AI. Microsoft’s search engine AI (based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT) has generated a huge amount of buzz despite some…interesting personality quirks. So much so that Bing, Microsoft’s previously unloved and mostly unseen search engine, is now being touted as a legitimate threat to Google. To understand how insane that sentence even is, you need to understand just how lopsided the field has been for almost the entirety of the 21st Century. Google’s domination has been absolute and total for two decades:




snip

in future negotiations with McCarthy, and would have voted 'Yes' in enough numbers to pass it IF needed.

That parts starts at 4:20, but the whole video from the beginning to the end is very good.



transcript

https://app.podscribe.ai/episode/86421899

snip

The Democratic leader of the House representatives. Hakeem Jeffries is one of the serious people who knows how to govern some of his democratic members of the House who voted against the bill. And some democratic senators who will probably vote against the bill are playing an important part in the ongoing legislative drama in the House representatives and in the Senate. Throughout his negotiations with Kevin McCarthy, president Biden had to repeatedly say things like, I won't be able to get enough Democrats to support that item. And Kevin McCarthy had to repeatedly say, I won't be able to get enough Republicans to support that item.

And so tonight, Democrats voting against the bill were actually strengthening Joe Biden's credibility in future negotiations with Kevin McCarthy and Republicans voting against the bill were strengthening Kevin McCarthy's credibility in future negotiations. So everyone involved, people voting? Yes. People voting. No. Everyone involved is actually playing their part in solving this debt ceiling crisis in Congress very much including the Democrats who are voting against the bill, each of whom really would vote for it if passing the bill actually required their individual vote because the Democrats are the responsibility party in governing.

Democrats act responsibly and Republicans act irresponsibly. The pattern has been set for years now. It was true before Donald Trump when Republican President George W. Bush came into office and he had a 1 trillion surplus handed to him after the Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton. George W. Bush immediately wiped out the budget surplus with a gigantic tax cut, which fed the deficit and increased the national debt and of course eventually required an increase in the debt ceiling, which Democrats did not try to block.

Serious high stakes negotiations often include inconsistent statements. In some situations they might be called lies. Many striking labor unions have at times accepted provisions in their new labor contract that they eventually agreed to, that they insisted they would never accept. That is the way negotiations work. You use the strongest possible language for as long as you can and then you adjust. Joe Biden's Most vivid apparent inconsistency, which was actually always just a negotiating position, was Joe Biden insisting for months that he would not negotiate.

That turned out to be an extremely important negotiating tactic because the very first big victory Kevin McCarthy reported to his members and was still insisting last week was a major victory. When he unveiled disagreement was the very fact that Joe Biden agreed to negotiate after saying that he wouldn't. The Republicans scored Joe Biden negotiating as a win. They escort it as a win simply getting in the room to negotiate with the president of the United States. The only negotiators who think being allowed to negotiate is a victory are the losers.

When you listen to Republicans who are opposed to the bill, what you will not hear from any of them is how they would've forced Joe Biden to compromise more with Republicans. Same thing with Democrats who will vote against this bill. The most they will say is something general like I think Democrats could have gotten a better deal in the negotiations. None of those people have ever been in such a negotiation and none of them will ever give you an example of how they could obtain a better agreement with Kevin McCarthy and they will never be pressed by interviewers on that point.

snip

It was a team effort to force Kevin McCarthy right now to accept this agreement. Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries secretly started a parliamentary process called a discharge petition in the House, representatives in January that shocked Republicans when they discovered how well developed procedurally the Democrats discharge petition was in May when Hakeem Jeffries revealed the strategy of using the discharge petition to in effect seize control of the house floor from Republicans and get a vote on a clean debt ceiling bill. All 213 Democrats in the house signed their names to that discharge petition and it apparently scared Republicans into thinking that it just might work.

Democrats signed a discharge petition that they can release a clean debt ceiling bill and they only need a handful of Republicans. The Democrats needed five Republicans to sign that discharge petition and they could pass it. The Democrats were trying to find those five Republicans and the Republicans were very afraid that they would find those five Republicans and that put all the more pressure on Kevin McCarthy to reach a deal with Joe Biden. The kind of deal Kevin McCarthy said he would never make. Joe Biden is the most experienced president who has ever had to negotiate a debt ceiling Bill. Negotiating on the debt ceiling is a 21st century phenomenon that only two presidents have really had to do. President Obama and President Biden at the president's side throughout this negotiation was his highly respected director of the Office of Management and Budget, Shalanda Young, who previously worked on the appropriations committee and the house representatives where she earned respect and credibility with Republicans, including Kevin McCarthy.

Also on the president's side in these negotiations was Gene Sperling, who first worked on economic policy in the White House under President Bill Clinton 30 years ago. He also served in the Obama White House, same with Steve Rachetti, who began his White House service 30 years ago in the Clinton White House where he was involved in every legislative action on the Clinton agenda. Steve Rachetti also served in the Obama Biden administration and is now Deputy White House chief of staff in the Biden Harris administration. The president and his negotiating team are serious people and Hakeem Jeffries is right. They did an incredibly good job.