This makes me wish that The Man in The High Tower were real
just a little bit
not in a problematic way, just in a Hot Take jokey way
The Leopard 2 battle tank was developed for the West German army in the 70s and has a fully stabilized main gun. What does that mean? It means that even if you're flying along at 30 mph on bumpy ground, your gun remains steadily pointed on-target (like an owl or chicken head). It also means you can balance a full mug of beer on the gun without spilling a drop, making the Leopard the world's best and most expensive waiter. (via @MachinePix)
Update: Here's a longer video featuring the same tank. The commentary is in German, but the visuals aren't that difficult to follow.
In addition to covering how the stabilizing gun works, they show how the tank stays level over uneven terrain and how the gun can stay locked on a target even when the tank is moving from side to side...the video of which is unnerving. (via @le_barte)
Charles Haggerty is a promising candidate for the best and most chill dad of all time. In the late 1950s, in a much less progressive era, he had a talk with his son, who would come to realize later in life that he (the son) was gay, about the responsibility you have to your true self.
Don't sneak. Because if you sneak like you did today, it means you think you doing the wrong thing. And if you run around spending your whole life thinking that you're doing the wrong thing, then you'll ruin your immortal soul.
Reader, I don't often say things like "that stopped me dead in my tracks" because life doesn't work like that most of the time, but that last bit, about ruining your soul, did just that. A fantastic reminder of to thine own self be true. (via cup of jo)
David Bowie dropped an intense, nearly 10-minute film for his new track “Blackstar”, which is the latest chapter in his Major Tom saga and has fans eagerly anticipating his new album.
The video begins on a distant planet, where a young woman discovers a decomposed astronaut while Bowie chants over the top in a haunting Middle Eastern scale.
“This completes the trilogy: Space Oddity (introduction of Major Tom), Ashes to Ashes (the resurrection of Major Tom), BLACKSTAR (the god status of Major Tom). Well done Dave!” wrote commenter Tony Martin.
Packed with religious imagery, artistic references and nods to the past, the disturbing tension of both the song and video is only briefly released with a section of pure pop midway through.
The album “Blackstar” will be launched on January 8, 2016 — the artist’s 69th birthday — and follows 2013’s “The Next Day”, one of more than 20 albums Bowie has released over a career spanning more than four decades.
The Data & Society Research Institute, with a researcher from NYU, conducted an extensive study of Uber’s labor issues though “sustained monitoring of online driver forums and interviewing Uber drivers.” It’s a surprisingly breezy document, given what it is, and bears out the types of things any frequent Uber passenger will eventually hear if she bothers to ask. It’s a survey, in a way, of a sort of on-demand labor version of a workplace culture developing among Uber drivers. And it isn’t an especially happy one.
Our findings coalesced around the dynamics of Uber’s system of surveillance and control over workers’ behavior. Our conclusions are two-fold: first, that the information asymmetries produced by Uber’s system are fundamental to its ability to structure indirect control over its workers; and second, that Uber relies heavily on the evolving rhetoric of the algorithm to justify these information asymmetries to drivers, riders, as well as regulators and outlets of public opinion.
Each section is fascinating. On Uber’s use of the language of entrepreneurship:
Drivers risk “deactivation” (being suspended or removed permanently from the system) for cancelling unprofitable fares. The Uber system requires drivers to maintain a low cancellation rate, such as 5% in San Francisco (as of July 2015), and a high acceptance rate, such as 80%
or 90%. Drivers absorb the risk of unknown fares, even though Uber promotes the idea that they are entrepreneurs who are knowingly investing in such risk. This discourse of entrepreneurship in the tech sector is the legacy of a Silicon Valley environment where highly skilled and mobile workers could take on risks and trade-offs to be part of the start-up world, but this rhetoric of risk has effectively been retooled to suit a contingent of lower-income workers who are recruited to perform service labor, not highly-skilled technical work.
On drivers’ contempt for Uber’s “driver-partner” characterization of their non-employment employment:
Drivers in this study generally treated the language as either a formality, hypocrisy, as irrelevant, or as a lever to press negotiations for more autonomy. However, the terms “partner” or “sharing economy” both work to express engagement and commitment to similar goals – in this instance, to align the driver’s goals and motives with that of the company through the articulation of social bonds – even when they are distinctly out of alignment Uber has full power to control and change the base rates its drivers charge. Uber’s agreement with its “Partners” (drivers) permits drivers to negotiate a lower fare, but not a higher one (Uber Partner Agreement Section 4.1, 2014). Some drivers report strategically ending a trip early, and thus lowering the fare for
the passenger, in the hopes of getting a higher rating. Rates, as well as minimum fares, vary across cities3; while Uber implies that drivers have the “freedom” to charge less, Uber still asserts almost total control over their drivers’ remuneration. At their lowest, these rates are discussed in forums as a net-loss for drivers after factoring in overhead costs. Uber also perennially and unilaterally changes the commission it takes from each ride, ranging generally from 20-30% for uberX drivers.
On drivers’ points of contact with the company, Community Support Representatives, who are themselves independent contractors held to driver-like performance standards and subject to driver-like indirect management.
[Their] responses often lack a nuanced understanding of the context or challenges of their work, and drivers have to be persistent to get the answers they seek to questions without a template response. Some perceive that software is creating initial responses based on the keywords in their text, and they refer to CSRs as “Uber’s robots.” The responses drivers receive often resemble generic FAQs, and some drivers write “escalate to manager” in the body of their text in the hopes of flagging a human supervisor more quickly. The role of the CSR more closely resembles customer service than management.
(This bears repeating: Uber doesn’t just outsource driving—it outsources its communication and conflict with those outsourced drivers.)
On Uber’s requests for drivers to help them preempt the same surge-pricing conditions that might allow them to make more money:
For drivers, the most tangible evidence of Uber’s data collection and analysis emerges through predictive scheduling communications that Uber sends to its drivers regarding surge pricing and high demand. Some drivers view this attempt at predictive scheduling as undermining their ability to make more money, and describe how they resist Uber’s attempts to predict and plan for “supply and demand”, such as by refusing to submit information about their intended working hours to Uber when that information is solicited. For example, Uber sent drivers in Atlanta notices that demand would be “off the charts” on Labor Day weekend, and surveyed drivers to “help us [Uber] plan supply and demand.”
On Uber’s ability to act with all the authority of an employer—making specific demands about how all its contractors must conduct their work—while maintaining their status as contractors.
Uber also exerts significant control over driver behaviors through its driver rating system: in it, passengers are empowered to act as middle managers over drivers, whose ratings directly impact their employment eligibility. This redistribution of managerial oversight and power away from formalized middle management and towards consumers is part of a broader trend in flexible labor: companies or platforms can create expectations about their service that workers must fulfill through the mediating power of the rating system.
(By setting specific consumer expectations for driver behavior; by giving customers the ability to rate their rides according to deviations from those expectations; by assigning the blame for those ratings, the true importance of which is concealed from the riders, entirely to the driver.)
Consider this line on Uber’s website regarding lost items: “Visit riders.uber.com/lost to retrieve a phone number to contact your driver and arrange the return of your item.” Then consider, as included in the study, this response given to a driver asking about item returns:
But perhaps the most interesting part of this study, and one that should be interesting even to ideological opponents who might be tempted to dismiss this research outright, is the outline it draws of Uber contractors’ attempts to take back power, either through crude organization or individual data collection. It surveys driver experiences as gathered from interviews but also from the numerous Uber driver forums, which together have thousands of members and display, in general, an oppositional attitude toward the company. This is labor organization refracted through forum culture: there are calls for collective action next to flamewars; there are trolls and apparent astroturfers; there are political battles in which drivers mockingly tell other drivers “it’s a job, not a career.” There are memes! There is, in the absence of any sort of physical interaction or official means of driver communication, a work culture. Here is a post from a few weeks ago called “The Natural Stage Progressions of an Uber Driver.”
New Driver:
“You mean tell me I can make $1500/wk just by driving people around?! That’s not hard at all. Sign me up! I’m going to be the best Uber driver ever!”
3 Month Driver:
Uhhh….why are my ratings still dropping? Am I doing something wrong? I gave out water, and snacks like Uber told me to. Guess I’ll just have to try harder next time.
6 Month Driver:
“WOW another rate cut?! Man f$%# Uber! How are we supposed to make money with all these new drivers on the road? And they’re raising SRF too? Man….these Pax are really starting to get on my last nerve. Oh look…another water bottle/candy wrapper left on the floor!”
Veteran Driver:
“F$#& this s$#*! My only job is to get the Pax from point A to point B. To hell with Uber and their stupid Pax! And why the hell do they keep calling my damn phone? Learn how to drop a freaking pin people! I’m going to start giving more priority to Lyft from now on.”
Ex Driver:
“Just found a job as a pizza delivery guy. Uber can suck it! I’m out!”
(Sample response: “Correct down to the Dominos job…..”)
The study also mentions ways in which drivers attempt to combat the information asymmetry that defines their relationship with Uber. Hidden cameras!
A fare is “guaranteed” through the credit card a customer has on file, but Uber sometimes retracts it from a driver’s earnings if the company decides that the driver has erred. For example, a passenger may complain about an “inefficient” route. However, there may be physical obstacles invisible to the navigation system; passengers also sometimes instruct drivers to deviate from the GPS-suggested route, or ask for multiple drop-off points for a group of passengers. Some drivers have begun to self-monitor by acquiring dash-cams that face the passenger, so they can use their own surveillant “data” to produce a counter-narrative to the one that Uber presents. Others track their rides manually or through another app in order to verify their pay records. In lieu of other forms of empowerment, dash-cams and alternative logs enable drivers to resist Uber’s power to interpret events unilaterally.
This seems, however, more like last-resort recourse. It’s hard to imagine a situation in which a company that will kick you out of its system for dropping below a 4.6 rating would be supportive, in the long term, of a driver that presented unofficial passenger surveillance footage to contradict a fare claim. But, then again, such a driver might be less inclined to enthusiastically carry out the emotional labor required to maintain such a high rating, or might become bitter over time, in which case the ratings system, with the help of passengers, will sort things out on Uber’s behalf.
Anyway, this is how attempts to regain leverage seem to be starting, with anonymous communication in public and private and with individual attempts at data collection outside of the Uber app. It’s network versus network. It’s app versus app! What will companies like Uber do if these things blossom? A sufficiently massive public forum of disgruntled drivers could become a real problem in Uber’s attempts to find and retain drivers. A larger shadow-network of Uber drivers talking to each other and comparing their experiences could make attempts to manage and contain driver complaints through an email tree less tenable—perhaps more effectively than some Uber drivers’ explicit attempts at labor action. Likewise, Uber might be motivated to discourage drivers from monitoring passengers or making any types of recordings, or from banding together to collect alternate data—about pay, rides, etc—using other apps, because such a thing could be legitimately empowering.
New forms of labor communications are needed to address the inconsistencies of work that is characterized by algorithmic dynamism and ambiguous information flows to improve labor-platform relations. In a bricks- and-mortar workplace, the physical infrastructure is relatively reliable and unchanging. In a semi-digital workplace, small technical changes to the app’s interface, or built-in features that support a dynamic workplace, such as surge pricing and heat maps, can create ambiguity and confusion about worker (and passenger) expectations.
When people in the startup world talk about “algorithmic labor unions,” or a “right to an API,” they might want to look at what people are already doing, and what they’re trying to achieve. (Also worth considering in this context: Airbnb’s effort to mobilize its own users for political gain).
What do they want?
The same data Uber has, at least!
When do they want it?
Before they’re replaced by machines and herded to the next app? Idk actually!!
The Acro-Cats stopped by to perform some of their amazing tricks and educate everyone on the importance of rescuing animals. Support the Acro-Cats by donatin...
Following a brief tease yesterday on the UK’s 60 Minutes, Adele has released a full version of her track “When We Were Young”, recorded in a session at The Church Studios, London. The track was written with Canadian musician Tobias Jesso Jr.
“It’s impossible to question why she’s where she is once you sit down with her to write a song. She was the first introduction I had to somebody who could sing words on the spot that were actually great.”
Her favorite track is the Elton John-ish ballad “When We Were Young,” co-written with singer-songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr., which shares a tiny bit of DNA with “The Way We Were,” a song that brought her to tears when she saw Barbra Streisand perform it in person at the Oscars.
And it’s absolutely the lift that your Tuesday morning needs. Listen now!
Am I aware of a hierarchy? I'm aware that Radiohead have never had a fucking bad review. I reckon if Thom Yorke fucking shit into a light bulb and started blowing it like an empty beer bottle it'd probably get 9 out of 10 in fucking Mojo. I'm aware of that.
I used to put us at number seven. It went The Beatles, the Stones, the Sex Pistols, The Who, The Kinks... who came in at six? I don't know. We were at seven. The Smiths were in there, The Specials. Where would I put us now? I guess I'd probably put us in the top 10. We weren't as great as the greats but we were the best of the rest. We did more than The Stone Roses could fucking even fathom. We're better than The Verve: couldn't fucking keep it together for more than six months at a time. If all the greats are in the top four, we're in the bottom of the top four, we're kind of constantly fighting for fifth, just missing out. Just missing out on the top four, I'd say.
He just has opinions on everything and everyone and says them on the record:
I fucking hate whingeing rock stars. And I hate pop stars who are just... neh. Just nothing, you know? "Oh, yeah, my last selfie got 47-thousand-million likes on Instagram." Yeah, why don't you go fuck off and get a drug habit, you penis?
This one just made me laugh:
My fragrance? Oh it's coming, it's coming. Toe-Rag it's going to be called. And the bottle's going to be a massive toe.
Ahhhhhhh, I can't stop quoting:
I guaran-fucking-tee you this: The Stone Roses never mentioned "career" in any band meetings. Ever. Or Primal Scream, or The Verve. Oasis certainly never mentioned it. I bet it's mentioned a lot by managers and agents now: "Don't do that, it's bad for your career." "What? Fuck off!" Like when we went to the Brits and we'd won all those awards and we didn't play. The head of the Brits said, "This'll ruin your career." Fucking, wow. I say to the guy, "Do you know how high I am? You know who's going to ruin my career? Me, not you. Bell-end. More Champagne. Fuck off."
Did anyone see how AWFUL this episode was, across the board? Weekend update was actually great with Drunk Uncle and Leslie Jones, but even with Trump's screen time limited to 12 minutes, it felt like the whole cast and writing staff was sabotaging.
Maybe it’s because we’re still trying to process how Donald Trump could be a leading GOP Presidential candidate in the first place, but his appearance as host of Saturday Night Live this weekend was nothing short of baffling. In spite of hundreds of protesters gathering outside of 30 Rock a few hours before broadcast, the […]
Here’s a new clip from this week’s episode of Billy on the Street, where Billy Eichner leads guest Amy Sedaris through a very special, exclusively Shonda Rhimes-themed obstacle course. Sedaris must break glass ceilings, scale a wig mountain, and climb through the gays and the “NAACP Image Award Ball Pit” before she makes her way […]
“One can’t go on anymore, she said, electronics seem so clean and yet it dirties, dirties tremendously, and it obliges you to leave traces of yourself everywhere as if you were shitting and peeing on yourself continuously: I want to leave nothing, my favorite key is the one that deletes.”
Houston voters on Tuesday repealed a city law that protected LGBT people and others from discrimination. The decisive vote a was setback to progressive organizations that tried to uphold the ordinance and a victory for Christian conservatives who ran a campaign alleging the law would allow men to attack women in public bathrooms. With nearly all precincts reporting, results showed voters repealing the law by 61% to 39%, according to the Harris County Clerk’s Office. “We are celebrating tonight!” Jared Woodfill, the chief spokesman of the repeal effort, told BuzzFeed News in a phone call from an election night party. “We don’t believe that males... should be able to go into a female restroom, shower, or locker room under the protection of law,” he said.
This argument the haters are making—the argument that carried the day in Houston—sounds familiar...
The haters insist trans women aren't women. They're men. Men who fake being women because they wanna enter women's restrooms to ogle women and girls. So they're saying trans women are actually straight men. Straight men who pretend to be women specifically to enter women's restrooms to ogle (or worse) women and girls because opportunities to ogle women and girls are so scarce in our porn-saturated culture—porn is so hard to come by, and it's not like there are millions women and girls posting pics of themselves to Instagram, so of course straight men will fake being trans women (and risk the violence, discrimination directed at trans women) to get an eyeful of women washing their hands after peeing.
Okay...
So the haters in Houston argued—successfully—that straight men are terrible. Right? They argued that trans women are actually straight dudes who are attracted to women. So the haters won yesterday by convincing a majority of voters in Houston that straight people suck.
Where have we heard this argument before? Oh, right...
The New York Court of Appeals had already recognized, in the adoption case, that same-sex couples were raising children. And in this case, the state had conceded that it would good for those kids for their parents to be married. So then we got to the what I like to call "the slutty heterosexuals" argument. This was the argument that straight couples needed to be allowed to marry because, unlike gay couples, there was the possibility that they could accidentally get pregnant and have children.
That's from an early chapter in Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA, Roberta Kaplan's terrific new book. In that passage Kaplan looks back at her first big marriage equality case, a case she argued before New York's highest court in 2006. Opponents of marriage equality were making what Kaplan calls the "slutty heterosexuals" argument and what I called the "straight people suck" argument. And it carried the day back then. The New York Court of Appeals upheld the state's ban on same-sex marriage by pointing to the fact that only heterosexuals can get pregnant by accident.
In other words, because straight people might accidentally get pregnant, we had better offer them marriage as a way to promote stability. Gay people cannot have children by accident, so they and their planned-for children, much-wanted children don't need the benefits and protections of marriage and are on their own. The whole argument was irrational and absurd. I was deeply disheartened that we had had our chance to make history and had lost, but I was especially disappointed [at the] reasoning behind our loss...
Later that same summer, the Washington State Supreme Court upheld our state's ban on same-sex marriage using the exact same justification: only straight people can have children by accident and the whole point of marriage is to entice accidentally pregnant straight people into staying together to take care of their children and straight people will be less likely to do that—they'll be less likely to take care of their own children—if we allow gay people to marry because gay people are icky and straight people will abandon their children of we let gay people get their gay ick all over marriage. In other words: straight people suck.
What the New York and Washington opinions share—besides a willful disregard for equal protection clauses in both state Constitutions—is a heartless lack of concern for the rights of the hundreds of thousands of children being raised by same-sex couples. Even if gay couples who adopt are more stable, as New York found, don’t their children need the security and protections that the court believes marriage affords children? And even if heterosexual sex is essential to the survival of the human race [as Washington state's Supreme Court helpfully pointed out], it’s hard to see how preventing gay couples from marrying increases heterosexual activity....
These defeats have demoralized supporters of gay marriage, but I see a silver lining. If heterosexual instability and the link between heterosexual sex and human reproduction are the best arguments opponents of same-sex marriage can muster, I can’t help but feel that our side must be winning. Insulting heterosexuals and discriminating against children with same-sex parents may score the other side a few runs, but these strategies won’t win the game. So I’m confident that one day my son will live in a country that allows his parents to marry.
"Straight people suck" was an argument—it was the argument—haters used against marriage equality, and it was a successful one... for a decade. But it eventually backfired on them. By 2015 the argument that persuaded a majority of justices in liberal states like Washington and New York was literally being laughed out of courts all over the country and Justice Anthony Kennedy would drive a stake through its heart in Obergefell.
I argued in 2006, which was a dark time in the struggle for marriage equality (those judicial defeats in New York and Washington came hard on the heels of voters approving anti-gay marriage referendums in more than a dozen states), that if "straight people suck" was the best argument the haters had against marriage equality... we were winning. Now, in an effort to block anti-discrimination laws, the haters are once again arguing that straight people suck—and this time they're advancing a dangerous, demagogic argument, an argument that will stoke the already appalling rates of anti-trans violence.
Right-wing assholes keep hammering away about the threat posed by trans people using public toilets. In reality, trans men and women are at higher risk of violent attack, hate crimes, and murder than any other group; trans women of color are at highest risk. (Three trans women of color have been murdered already this year.) And while it's true that cis and trans women are sometimes attacked in public toilets, these attacks are perpetrated by cis men, not trans women. (Want to make the world safer for women? Make it illegal for men to use public toilets.) And this whole revolting idea that a significant percentage of trans women are "male sexual predators [interested in] prowling ladies' restrooms" amounts to an anti-trans blood libel. This belief—that some or all trans women are actually male rapists trying to worm their way into "safe" spaces where they can attack "actual" women (because a male rapist can't walk into a women's toilet dressed as a man?)—results in violent attacks on trans women like this one. Fomenting this belief leads to more attacks on trans women.
Says a trans friend via text this morning...
What concerns me is that the rhetoric used in these arguments (trans women are just predator men there to attack our daughters and wives) frames the existence of trans women as being an ongoing, imminent threat to the safety of others. How long before a trans women gets shot by some dude there to "protect" his wife/daughter/whatever? If they were actually concerned about violence against women, they'd address the fact that cis men go into women's restrooms all the time and assault women (and don't pretend to be trans/don't wear a dress or whatever).
We have to hammer away at this fact: the haters in Houston are not concerned with violence against women. They're no more concerned with violence against women than the anti-marriage-equality crowd was concerned with the safety of children. If the haters in Houston were concerned about violence against women they would be going after straight men, not trans women (not even if they actually believe trans women are really men—it's not "men in dresses" attacking women in public restrooms). And if the haters who opposed marriage equality had actually been concerned about the welfare of children they would've supported marriage equality—they would've been anxious for children being raised by same-sex couples to benefit from the stability and security of marriage.
The argument against equality haters advanced in Houston is equal parts "straight people suck" and "there's no such thing as a trans person." We've demonstrated that we can defeat the "straight people suck" argument in the fight for marriage equality—it was a long fight, and we lost a few battles along the way, but we beat that bullshit argument. And the haters used to argue that "there's no such thing as a gay person." And we beat that argument years ago by coming out and, you know, existing. As more trans people come out, as more cis people come to know trans people (as more cis come to know the trans people they already know), that argument will fall apart too.
I'm not arguing for complacency. We fought like hell to beat the "straight people suck" argument against marriage equality and we're going to have to fight like hell to defeat the "straight people suck" argument against trans-inclusive anti-discrimination laws. But we can defeat it. We did it before, we can do it again.
This is a fun/"fun" troll post slate pitch, enjoyable
If you pulled over one hundred people on the street, and asked them to state a religious belief they hold, I’m not sure you would get any answer more plausible than “the pyramids were built for the storage of grain.” Would you now?
Yet we mock Ben Carson for this, but we do not make fun of those who believe openly in the Trinity, Virgin Birth, ex cathedra, and many other beliefs which are to my mind slightly less plausible claims. It’s not so different from the old prejudice that Mormon beliefs are somehow “weirder” than those of traditional Christians, except now it is secularists picking and choosing their religious targets on the supposed basis of sophistication. The Seventh Day Adventists, Carson’s church, are of course weirder yet.
I doubt the storage claim is true as a dominant explanation, but should there not be some storage — of something — in a profit-maximizing or rent-maximizing model of pyramid supply and inventory management? Maybe Ben’s economic intuition confirmed what he had heard in church. And what about Coase’s durable goods monopoly model? In that treatment the monopolist stores grain, admittedly for the pyramids variable Coase was hermetic in his exposition, perhaps properly so given how much is at stake here. And “remains of storage pests have been found in grain recovered from pyramid tombs.” Further argumentation along these lines can be found in F. Zacher’s classic 1937 article “Vorratsschädlinge und Vorratsschutz, ihre Bedeutung für Volksernährung und Weltwirtschaft” (Cowen’s Second Law), which by now has been cited over nineteen times (twenty in fact).
The Quran notes that the pyramids were made of baked clay, when instead according to many standard accounts much of the pyramids are made of quarried limestone (yet even that question is murky and I would not entirely count out the Quranic exposition). Presumably many Muslims, who ascribe a holy status to the Quran, would defend the baked clay proposition in some manner. How often is that thrown in their faces?
Might Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, possibly hold some views about Joseph which are not literally true? After all, those stories do come from the Torah.
What Ben Carson has done is to commit the unpardonable sin of talking about his religion as if he actually takes it seriously.
Loyal MR readers will know that I am myself a non-believer. But what I find strangest of all is not Ben Carson’s pyramids beliefs, but rather the notion that we should selectively pick on some religious claims rather than others. The notion that it is fine to believe something about a deity or deities, or a divine book, as long as you do not take that said belief very seriously and treat it only as a social affiliation or an ornamental badge of honor.
Bully for Ben Carson for reminding us that a religion actually consists of beliefs about the world. And if you’re trying to understand his continuing popularity, maybe that is the place to start.
From a 2005 post on Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cowen, an alternate take on the Star Wars movies positing that while the Jedi aren't the bad guys, they are also not to be trusted.
1. The Jedi and Jedi-in-training sell out like crazy. Even the evil Count Dooku was once a Jedi knight.
2. What do the Jedi Council want anyway? The Anakin critique of the Jedi Council rings somewhat true (this is from the new movie, alas I cannot say more, but the argument could be strengthened by citing the relevant detail). Aren't they a kind of out-of-control Supreme Court, not even requiring Senate approval (with or without filibuster), and heavily armed at that? As I understand it, they vote each other into the office, have license to kill, and seek to control galactic affairs. Talk about unaccountable power used toward secret and mysterious ends.
See also Darth Jar Jar and Luke Skywalker, Sith Lord. I also wanted to link to a video I saw within the past year that suggests that instead of a rebel leader, Princess Leia is a petulant child whose father, Vader, is attempting to bring to heel. Ring a bell? The internet is so choked with crackpot theories about Star Wars that it's impossible to search for one in particular. (And now this post is part of the problem.)
By now we’re used to seeing a second trailer for a hotly anticipated movie and being, well, disappointed. Too often there’s very little new tid-bits to actually warrant a watch. Not so with the new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
And that may have something to do with the fact that this latest trailer comes from Japan.
Feel the force grow stronger, below:
And in case you missed it, or wish to compare, check out the first trailer HERE.
Those of us who spend our days longing for a giant piece of space rock to wipe all human life from the face of the planet will find only disappointment in this list of the objects currently hurtling toward Earth. I understand your chagrin, and I’m frustrated too. But as an optimist I will remind you that Science is often wrong, that the unexpected occurs with some regularity, and that there are plenty of other things we as a species are doing right here, right now, that may result in our extinction without even needing to be eradicated by a massive impact from the skies. Cheer up, it could still happen. We will all die yet!
The Data & Society Research Institute, with a researcher from NYU, conducted an extensive study of Uber’s labor issues though “sustained monitoring of online driver forums and interviewing Uber drivers.” It’s a surprisingly breezy document, given what it is, and bears out the types of things any frequent Uber passenger will eventually hear if she bothers to ask. It’s a survey, in a way, of a sort of on-demand labor version of a workplace culture developing among Uber drivers. And it isn’t an especially happy one.
This is labor organization refracted through forum culture: there are calls for collective action next to flamewars; there are trolls and apparent astroturfers; there are political battles in which drivers mockingly tell other drivers “it’s a job, not a career.” There are memes! There is, in the absence of any sort of physical interaction or official means of driver communication, a work culture. Here is a post from a few weeks ago called “The Natural Stage Progressions of an Uber Driver.”
