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#universal union
internetskiff · 23 days
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Breen's unfortunately pretty underrated amongst the Valve antagonists, which I suppose is understandable compared to the likes of GLaDOS or The Administrator, but just like those two I feel like there's plenty of things to talk about when it comes to him. He seems like a very conflicted character, especially if you take into account the BreenGrub account and Laidlaw's Epistle 3. First of all is, of course, the leadup to the Black Mesa incident, with the G-Man seemingly making an offer to Breen which seemingly involved overloading the Anti-Mass Spectrometer while processing an extremely pure sample of Xen Crystal - and yes, while it's pretty obvious that the order to overload the systems was very intentional and motivated by whatever deal they struck, I believe that when it comes to the aftermath he may have been sold on a lie. Considering his actions as Administrator of Earth being entirely in the interests of keeping Humanity from feeling the full force of the Combine, I don't think "Becoming the de facto leader of all of Earth" was on his agenda. Perhaps G-Man promised that whatever their deal would entail would bring about a prosperous future for humanity, perhaps all he promised was the possibility of establishing contact with another sentient species (which is something he technically did provide), or perhaps it was something else - there's simply way too much room for speculation there, I think.
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A little detail from a HL:A newspaper implies that his position as Earth's administrator wasn't exactly handed to him on a silver platter, instead he had to go out of his way to reach out to the governments with information on how to communicate with the invaders, at which point, already beaten down by Combine forces, they simply gave him the all-clear to speak for all of mankind. This still begs the question of who, or what, gave him the knowledge of how to speak with them - however, it's safe to say if they didn't, Earth would've been left a smoldering pile of rocks and withered carcasses. Once again, he acts with Humanity's best interests in mind, having to choose between the lesser of two evils - it's either enslavement or extinction. He simply chose the option in which Humanity would survive, even if just for a little while longer.
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And ever since, we're watching the aftermath. He's trying to talk the last generation of Humanity down, so they may either pass of old age or be absorbed into the Combine - at least if that happens, something gets preserved. Once again, the alternative? They'll just wipe the slate once they get the local teleportation technology they desire. Breen sees no other way than to go along with their demands. He's eventually proven wrong, of course, but he refuses to see the Rebellion as anything but a suicidal march towards the extinction of the human race, and he sticks to that belief up until he is killed by Gordon at the tip of the Citadel. Of course, this doesn't make him a good person. Not at all. This belief has lead him to seek out and destroy anyone who tries to resist. He shows no sympathy to them. He paints them as fools. He himself believes it so. This intense hatred for anyone who resists is seen perfectly in how he treats the Vance family. He views them as fools. As narrow-minded rabble in the streets, senselessly struggling against a tide beyond their comprehension. He's willing to send off a father and his daughter into a world far beyond simply to use them as a bargaining chip. Listening to the two comfort eachother as they're almost raised up to a fate surely worse than death, the only expression on his face is that of pure contempt and annoyance. He's a very fascinating character that I wish Valve would explore again if they ever do another Half Life set during a time period in which he was still alive. He's a coward that easily bends to the oppressor, yet in the end he only does it to make sure something survives. He's cruel to those who resist because he's completely convinced they're going to get everyone killed. He is the Combine's perfect puppet.
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haha anyhoo so why was he straight up serving on the magazine covers in HL:A like what was up with all that
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cherylbomb1138 · 1 year
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I managed to make a shorter video this time around. 
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gay-jewish-bucky · 9 months
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Actual footage of the Universal Studios* CEO "trimming" all of the shade trees at one of the L.A. WGA/SAG-AFTRA picket locations, so strikers have no protection from the intense heat of the sun
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(*production company behind 2012's tumblr hit film The Lorax)
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Im planning on joining the Transhuman Arm if the Combine Overwatch, I’ve heard the perks are pretty good, and also I’d KILL for a decent ration bar.
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When the app tries to make you robo-scab
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When we talk about the abusive nature of gig work, there’s some obvious targets, like algorithmic wage discrimination, where two workers are paid different rates for the same job, in order to trick occasional gig-workers to give up their other sources of income and become entirely dependent on the app:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
Then there’s the opacity — imagine if your boss refused to tell you how much you’ll get paid for a job until after you’ve completed it, claimed that this was done in order to “protect privacy” — and then threatened anyone who helped you figure out the true wage on offer:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#boss-app
Opacity is wage theft’s handmaiden: every gig worker producing content for a social media algorithm is subject to having their reach — and hence their pay — cut based on the unaccountable, inscrutable decisions of a content moderation system:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen
Making content for an algorithm is like having a boss that docks every paycheck because you broke rules that you are not allowed to know, because if you knew the rules, you’d figure out how to cheat without your boss catching you. Content moderation is the last place where security through obscurity is considered good practice:
https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563
When workers seize the means of computation, amazing things happen. In Indonesia, gig workers create and trade tuyul apps that let them unilaterally modify the way that their bosses’ systems see them — everything from GPS spoofing to accessibility mods:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek
So the tech and labor story isn’t wholly grim: there are lots of ways that tech can enhance labor struggles, letting workers collaborate and coordinate. Without digital systems, we wouldn’t have the Hot Strike Summer:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to
As the historic writer/actor strike shows us, the resurgent labor movement and the senescent forces of crapulent capitalism are locked in a death-struggle over not just what digital tools do, but who they do it for and who they do it to:
https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/
When it comes to the epic fight over who technology acts for and against, we need a diversity of tactics, backstopped by tech operated by and for its users — and by laws that protect workers and the public. That dynamic is in sharp focus in UNITE Here Local 11’s strike against Orange County’s Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa.
The UNITE Here strike turns on the usual issues like a living wage (hotel staff are paid so little they have to rent rooming-house beds by the shift, paying for the right to sleep in a room for a few hours at a time, without any permanent accommodation). They’re also seeking health-care and pensions, so they can be healthy at work and retire after long service. Finally, they’re seeking their employer’s support for LA’s Responsible Hotels Ordinance, which would levy a tax on hotel rooms to help pay for hotel workers’ housing costs (a hotel worker who can’t afford a bed is the equivalent of a fast food worker who has to apply for food stamps):
https://www.unitehere11.org/responsible-hotels-ordinance/
But the Marriott — which is owned by the University of California and managed by Aimbridge Hospitality — has refused to bargain, walking out negotiations.
But the employer didn’t walk out over wages, benefits or support for a housing subsidy. They walked out when workers demanded that the scabs that the company was trying to hire to break the strike be given full time, union jobs.
These aren’t just any scabs, either. They’re predominantly Black workers who rely on the $700m Instawork app for gigs. These workers are being dispatched to cross the picket line without any warning that they’re being contracted as strikebreakers. When workers refuse the cross the picket and join the strike, Instawork cancels all their shifts and permanently blocks them from new jobs.
This is a new, technologically supercharged form of illegal strikebreaking. It’s one thing for a single boss to punish a worker who refuses to scab, but Instawork acts as a plausible-deniability filter for all the major employers in the region. Like the landlord apps that allow landlords to illegally fix rents by coordinating hikes, Instawork lets bosses illegally collude to rig wages by coordinating a blocklist of workers who refuse to scab:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/company-that-makes-rent-setting-software-for-landlords-sued-for-collusion/?comments=1
The racial dimension is really important here: the Marriott has a longstanding de facto policy of refusing to hire Black workers, and whenever they are confronted with this, they insist that there are no qualified Black workers in the labor pool. But as soon as the predominantly Latino workforce struck, Marriott discovered a vast Black workforce that it could coerce into scabbing, in collusion with Instawork.
Now, all of this isn’t just sleazy, it’s illegal, a violation of Section 7 of the NLRB Act. Historically, that wouldn’t have mattered, because a string of presidents, R and D, have appointed useless do-nothing ghouls to run the NLRB. But the Biden admin, pushed by the party’s left wing, made a string of historic, excellent appointments, including NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who has set her sights on punishing gig work companies for flouting labor law:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/10/see-you-in-the-funny-papers/#bidens-legacy
UNITE HERE 11 has brought a case to the NLRB, charging the Instawork, the UC system, Marriott, and Aimbridge with violating labor law by blackmailing gig workers into crossing the picket line. The union is also asking the NLRB to punish the companies for failing to protect workers from violent retaliation from the wealthy hotel guests who have punched them and screamed epithets at them. The hotel has refused to identify these thug guests so that the workers they assaulted can swear out complaints against them.
Writing about the strike for Jacobin, Alex N Press tells the story of Thomas Bradley, a Black worker who was struck off all Instawork shifts for refusing to cross the picket line and joining it instead:
https://jacobin.com/2023/07/southern-california-hotel-workers-strike-automated-management-unite-here
Bradley’s case is exhibit A in the UNITE HERE 11 case before the NLRB. He has a degree in culinary arts, but racial discrimination in the industry has kept him stuck in gig and temp jobs ever since he graduated, nearly a quarter century ago. Bradley lived out of his car, but that was repossessed while he slept in a hotel room that UNITE HERE 11 fundraised for him, leaving him homeless and bereft of all his worldly possessions.
With UNITE HERE 11’s help, Bradley’s secured a job at the downtown LA Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, a hotel that has bargained with the workers. Bradley is using his newfound secure position to campaign among other Instawork workers to convince them not to cross picket lines. In these group chats, Jacobin saw workers worrying “that joining the strike would jeopardize their standing on the app.”
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Today (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork
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[Image ID: An old photo of strikers before a struck factory, with tear-gas plumes rising above them. The image has been modified to add a Marriott sign to the factory, and the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' to the sky over the factory. The workers have been colorized to a yellow-green shade and the factory has been colorized to a sepia tone.]
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Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
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phoenixyfriend · 9 months
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We knew it was coming but goddamn, we had hope.
LA, YOU NEED BETTER TREE LAW. I know it's probably a matter of the law being built more to protect private property than that which belongs to the public, but it's still disappointing to see such a NOTHING slap on the wrist.
(Source, I went for the most recent news posting)
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poorly-drawn-mdzs · 11 months
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The most terrifying creature of all
[First] Prev <--> Next
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The University of British Columbia has argued against allowing graduate research assistants to unionize, claiming they are students and not employees.
CUPE 2278, which also represents teaching assistants at UBC, filed to expand its bargaining unit by including graduate research assistants. UBC graduate assistants are set to cast ballots in a union representation vote on Monday.
Both the union and university attended a certification hearing before the B.C. Labour Relations Board this week, where the university argued against graduate research assistants' right to unionize.
"The monies they receive are scholarship awards and are treated as such and do not constitute wages received for work performed," said Matthew Ramsey, director of university affairs, in a statement. [...]
Continue Reading.
Tagging: @politicsofcanada
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internetskiff · 7 months
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I'm such a sucker for the Citadel and how it changes over the course of Half Life 2 and it's episodes. I'd argue it's almost like a character going through it's own arc, in a way. The Citadel is (quite literally) a massive organism, a parasite planted into the soil by an unseen force from the skies, spreading it's cords to consolidate it's power over City 17. It's the Combine embodied in a single towering, shrieking and hateful monolith. It's cold and clinical voice decides the fate of entire city blocks. This is the thing that ordered the slaughter of an entire apartment block simply because Freeman happened to go through it. In it's eyes, Freeman is a cancer that must be eradicated as soon as possible.
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And it fails. Time and time again Freeman slips away from the Combine Soldiers - the Citadel's Killer T Cells. And all it can do is ramp up the intensity with which it tries to destroy him, ravaging City 17 first, before eventually resorting to tearing itself apart in the hopes it's final dying shriek will bring the full might of the Combine down onto earth.
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The Combine love to incorporate biology into technology. The massive translucent veins strung about the Citadel's entire structure have already been brought up a lot, but I've never seen anyone bring up the Reactor. It's like the nucleus of a cell. Or a heart, one beating out of control as the body housing it rapidly deteriorates. This isn't something Freeman caused - this is the Combine's attempt at retaliation. This is the Citadel destroying itself in hopes it can bring Freeman down with it. The Citadel is gradually leaking radiation into it's own body as it's reactor slowly breaks down it's own containment - all culminating in one final blast that would hopefully cleanse City 17 and the surrounding environment of all life.
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And even when it's dead, it's carcass charred and splintered open, it still poses a threat to the resistance. The Superportal looms over humanity's head as one final echo of the power the Citadel once held over them. At this point, humanity was as good as dead in the Combine's eyes. The moment the Superportal blossomed open and the first Dropship came through, everyone's fate would be sealed. And even though it's body is dead, it's voice somehow survived, continuing to command the stranded remnants of the Combine's skeleton crew in order to ensure the Superportal could reach maturity. It kept raising the stakes until it completely destroyed itself. It's sort of sad the Citadel basically takes it's leave from the story in Episode 2. Even if a third installment were to happen, the Citadel simply can't play a role anymore - it's arc is finished, leaving behind nothing but a ruined city and chunks of red hot radioactive metal. It really shows how the Combine truly operates - it doesn't give, it only takes, and what it can't take it burns to the ground.
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transmutationisms · 5 months
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(If you're alrght with another poorly articulated question from an obnoxious high schooler) Do you have thoughts on academics and their position in a labor framework? I know some grad students and have never been quite sure where they fit because they don't always work with "capital" in a traditional sense. Professors are odd to me because they are under university contract, but rather than get paid by the university they often get their own funding from the government. Or graduate sudents, who are often unionized, but I know a paleontology student who studies shark fossils who says he doesnt really consider what he does "making surplus value."
ok well that last person is simply confused lol. graduate students exist because the university profits from having us; it is a capitalist institution. most directly we usually work as teaching assistants or research assistants (or else pay tuition) and more indirectly, graduate programs get funding and university support because their existence contributes to a university's rankings, prestige factor, &c, which is to say its (perceived) profitability. plenty of us study things that don't produce much directly lucrative research, but this does not mean the university keeps us around for shits and giggles or some kind of laudatory interest in knowledge for its own sake. it is a capitalist institution and acts in the financial interest of its owners / beneficiaries.
anyway wrt faculty members, they are also employed by the university because it profits from them (or hopes to, anyway). i think many people get confused by tenureship; tenure is indeed fairly cushy as far as employment contracts go, but it is is still an employment contract, and most faculty are not actually tenured anyway. academics are a classic example of the 'professional-managerial class', which is not a marxian term but is a useful one for identifying those 'upper-middle class' members differentiated by their professional qualifications and status; the prestige and perceived utility of academic knowledge production is partially what makes academics an attractive target for a lot of government and NGO funding. state funding of academic research ofc has numerous functions but, and not to put too fine a point on it, a capitalist state also invests money in things because it is hoping for some kind of return on investment, eg in the form of directly profitable inventions, soft power, &c.
there are distinctions here between different academic employment statuses. an adjunct or contingent hire is paid by the university solely to teach, making their labourer status fairly straightforward. with tenured or tenure-track positions, yes there may also be money coming from outside; however, this doesn't negate the fact that the university is trying to profit from its faculty (else it wouldn't hire them). the professional-managerial class has certain characteristics of both proletariat and bourgeoisie, and there is some variation between academics as a very select few do attain the kind of household name status that can turn them into basically a personal brand. again though: the university wants to extract value from the work (both teaching and research) of academics it hires, and so do outside sources of funding for research projects. knowledge production should not be mystified or abstracted in ways that obfuscate the financial interests of involved parties; though it attains a prestige that few other commodities do, this is still a process that is embedded within the overall operating logics of capitalism.
an additional consideration wrt internal academic class politics is that many faculty use graduate students, postdocs, and even undergrads to perform or assist with their research. these arrangements vary in structure (and between disciplines) but in general, this does mean that many academics produce papers, books, &c that depend upon the labour of many people and rarely compensate these people equally to themselves. this can take the form of a more overtly employer-employee relationship between a professor and their underlings (for example, some labs are run this way) or it can be the case that it's another party (a publisher, say) who is reaping most of the surplus value squeezed from grad / undergrad / postdoc labour. in any case it is important to keep in mind that professors can and often do take on employer (ie, small capitalist) roles in relation to other employees of the university, even though the professors themselves are there because the university and other institutions pay them and profit from their labour.
i hope this is a useful start; obviously there is lots else to be said about the economics of the university and knowledge production as a capitalist process. in general when you are trying to think through this my advice would be not to let the presentation of the university as some kind of cerebral place of enlightenment confuse a materialist analysis of the flows of capital. plenty of workers and capitalists deal with commodities that are immaterial in the sense that 'knowledge' is, or are imbued with similar social meaning and value; the university deals with knowledge production but this does not make it any less an employer (ie, a capitalist institution) than any other institution operating in a capitalist context.
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historyforfuture · 1 day
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The country of freedom and ridiculous democracy.
The moment of the violent arrest of the economics professor of Emory University Caroline Fohlinin in the state of Georgia
After these scenes, there must be a position for all universities around the world to stand with the people of Palestine in Gaza. All hypocritical authorities and rulers who support the Nazi terrorist Israelis must be confronted.
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cherylbomb1138 · 1 year
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New Realism Video is out now!
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damnesdelamer · 1 year
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On the picket line the other day, I saw a former lecturer of mine, and we got talking. Part of the whole dispute we in UCU are involved in is around the fact that Higher Education as a sector has over £40 billion in reserves nationwide, and many universities have chosen to dump that into vanity projects like shiny new buildings (many of which are both exorbitantly expensive and also not fit-for-purpose), rather than invest in staff during the biggest cost of living crisis in living memory.
My former lecturer, a staunch liberal, intimated that £40 billion seems like a lot, so who knows if that money even exists. So I told him, here’s what I do know: three years ago, my managers, who were responsible for allocating a £5 million bid of government funding, ignored the advice of me and another expert on practical teaching equipment, and chose instead to spend more on products from existing contracts. This could be seen as corruption, but technically I think it’s just laziness. But it also amounts to a mutual agreement among university management and external contractors and suppliers to continue to profit off government funds, rather than invest in staff.
Over the last ten years, workers across Higher Education are being paid 25% less in real terms, due to stagnating wages, due to inflation, due to increased cost of living. This is to say nothing of the fallout from covid, or the arguably substantial decline in education standards new students receive (in spite of all the money dumped into new buildings and equipment).
Meanwhile, my institution’s student intake has nearly doubled in the past five years, which both means greater workload and, in theory, greater revenue. But who sees that money? Not me, nor even the lecturers who make twice as much as me, but you can bet that money is going somewhere.
Initially we had no offer of increased pay, then we went on strike and got an offer of 3% (again, in the face of a loss of 25% over the last decade in real terms), and then 5%. These ‘offers’ have been overwhelmingly rejected by UCU members, in part because they prove that that money does exist, and is available for our employers to give us our due. But more importantly, this is not just about pay, and the problems of workloads, pensions, mismanagement, and discrimination, which sparked the current strikes, won’t be solved by throwing money at them.
Nevertheless, slowly but surely, we are making advances. Industrial action works. Support the Unions and support the strikes!
Solidarity forever.
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millionmovieproject · 3 months
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Actually, the President of the United States is powerful
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US Presidents have lots of things they can do beyond signing or vetoing legislation. Their administrative agencies have broad powers that allow them to act without dragging Congress behind them.
For example, Jennifer Abruzzo, the ass-kicking superhero that Biden appointed as National Labor Relations Board General Counsel, has used her powers to establish a rule that companies that break labor law during union drives automatically lose, with the affected union gaining instant recognition.
For a followup, Abruzzo is using a case called Thrive Pet Care to impose a “duty to bargain” on companies. If a company won’t bargain in good faith for a union contract, Abruzzo’s NLRB will simply force them to adhere to the contractual terms established by rival companies that did bargain with their unions, until such time as a contract is signed.
But wait, what about the dastardly Supreme Court? What if those six dotards in robes use their stolen seats on the country’s highest court to block Biden’s administrators?
Well, Biden could do what his predecessors have done. Like Lincoln, Biden could simply ignore the court, embracing popular policies he was elected to enact, revealing the Supremes to be toothless, out-of-touch, undemocratic and illegitimate.
(Andrew Jackson was a monster, but when he ignored his own Supreme Court, he proved that the Supremes’ only leverage came from their legitimacy; recall the (likely apocryphal) quote, “[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”)
Like FDR, Biden could threaten to pack the court, creating a national debate about the court’s illegitimacy, which would add fuel to the court’s plummeting reputation amidst a string of bribery scandals.
-Joe Biden is headed to a UAW picket-line in Detroit: “I want to do it, now make me do it.”
Image: Fabio Basagni https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/:Sahara_desert_sunrise.jpg
CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
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smoking-witch · 20 days
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Reframing common employer phrases into plainspeak
Laziness = poor ppl resting/playing, ever
Working vacation = rich ppl getting paid to rest/play
Rage applying = looking for a better job
Rage quitting = leaving toxic job/boss
Quiet quitting = refusing to do free labor
Blackmail = employees leveraging anything
Insubordination = talking about pay at work
Company culture = guilt trips & pizza as pay
Morality clause = make us look bad, get fired
"We're like family" = "we ask for favors, then never pay you back"
"We expect everyone to pitch in" = "we expect you to do free labor"
"HR is here to help you" = "HR is here to stop you from suing us"
Thx for coming to my TedTalk
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