If only all computer interfaces were as gloriously sci-fi as this excellent "DIY Overhead Control Panel" hand-built by a maker called Smashcuts. It features a slew of LEDs and 100 programmable buttons and switches that activate shortcuts on his PC, open apps, control volume and screen preferences, etc. Read the rest
Guess.
I imagine everyone must have read the NY Times article on the working conditions at Amazon — it’s interesting that the article actually tries to be objective and lay out the good and bad points of working for weird out-of-touch slavedriver Jeff Bezos, yet the reaction from Amazon has been flat denial. Unless they’re going to show that there isn’t high turnover, overstressed executives, and blue-collar workers treated as machines, which I don’t think they can do, the guy at the top declaring that he simply doesn’t recognize the sweatshop he runs is not particularly persuasive.
The Seattle newspaper is clearly in an awkward position: how do they criticize a major employer in the region? Answer: they avoid the issues. This was also Seattle’s curse when I was growing up, having a single dominant employer, in that case Boeing, with every one trembling in fear of criticizing them, while they wrecked lives with a boom-and-bust cycle of hiring surges followed by layoffs.
Geeks, of course, downplay the article. There’s a strong whiff of elitism and libertarianism in the excuses offered, and I’m also kind of dismayed that a news source would interview current employees and not discount their cheerful affirmations of the power of the Amazon way. Most cults don’t have the grip on their acolytes economic well-being that Amazon has.
More interesting, despite its clumsy digressions and clunky dismay, is this article on the effect Amazon has had on Seattle. It’s the angriest, but it resonated with me — I have steered completely clear of urban Seattle on this trip. The horrific traffic, a product of the tightly straitened geography of the region, is enough to scare me away. I was visiting family in the southern suburbs, and seeing the lines of locked-in-place traffic every evening convinced me to stay home, or run away to empty wilderness in the far corner of the state. And to imagine hordes of smug brogrammers taking over south Lake Union…no, thank you.
Capitalism really needs to figure out how to file off the rough excesses of successful businesses. And take those businesses out of the hands of sociopaths.
One of Segawa Atsuki’s ukiyo-e GIFs (all GIFs courtesy the artist)
Centuries-old Japanese ukiyo-e have received a delightful update, transformed into animated scenes that sometimes include surprising, modern imagery. Japanese video artist and animator Segawa Atsuki remixed a number of these popular woodblock prints and paintings, drawing mostly from Katsushika Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series and creating GIFs that turn the static images into mini narratives.
(click to enlarge)
Some of the GIFs imagine what traditional ukiyo-e scenes would look like if invaded by today’s technology: Atsuki’s version of Hokusai’s “Yoshida at Tokaido” has women in a tea house marveling at one of Japan’s high-speed bullet trains; at another tea house on a wintery morning, a woman shoots a laser beam at an airplane, causing it to explode and tumble into the ocean below — where a wave emerges to swallow it. The subject of Hokusai’s “Great Wave off Kanagawa,” arguably the most famous ukiyo-e of all, finally makes good on its threat, crashing back into the water while causing a long fishing boat to roll along the waves like a roller coaster car.
“Ukiyo-e woodcuts, especially those by Hokusai Katsushika, have a clear line, so it is easy to make them into animations,” Atsuki told Hyperallergic. “I tried to animate realistic Western paintings, but I failed because the lines of those realistic paintings aren’t clear.”
The project is just one of the many creative ways people have revisited these familiar works; others include designers who set video games in the traditional Japanese scenes. Atsuki’s ongoing intervention, though simpler, doesn’t fail to mesmerize. Watch the historic scenes loop over and over again, below.
Imani Gandy has a very useful run down of Margaret Sanger’s complicated racial, sexual, and medical politics, politics that the right are simplifying and lying about in order to attack Planned Parenthood as a scheme to eliminate black people through abortion. It’s long but allow me to just quote a couple of choice parts:
It is true that Sanger was a proponent of eugenics, and pro-choice advocates do themselves no favors by attempting to whitewash this fact and paint Sanger as some infallible feminist hero. Sanger was passionate about contraception—perhaps to a fault—and her fervor about promoting her birth control agenda led her to align herself with eugenicists, along with racists and an assortment of people of questionable character.
But it is simply untrue that Margaret Sanger wanted to exterminate the Black race. This is a flat-out lie. Yet it is one that is repeated ad nauseum, both by anti-choice activists and the politicians who support them, most recently Ben Carson.
In propagating this lie, anti-choicers infantilize Black women and strip them of their agency: They portray Margaret Sanger’s birth control agenda as something that was done to Black women, rather than something in which Black women and much of the Black community as a whole enthusiastically participated.
W. E. B. Du Bois, who was one of the first Black leaders to publicly support birth control and who worked closely with Sanger to advocate for it, even serving on the board of a clinic that Sanger opened up in Harlem, criticized the wider birth control movement because of its failure to address Black people’s needs as well.
It was this failure that gave birth to the sinister-sounding Negro Project.
Due to segregation policies in the South, the birth control clinics that opened in the 1930s were for white women only. Sanger wanted to change that. She sought to open clinics in the South staffed by Black doctors and nurses, and to educate Black women about contraception. In 1939, after she had been named honorary chairman of the board of Birth Control Federation of America (the precursor to Planned Parenthood), Sanger launched the Negro Project. The Federation’s Division of Negro Services, a national advisory council, which included prominent Black leaders like Du Bois, Mary McLeod Bethune, E. Franklin Frazier, Walter White, and Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, worked to manage the Negro Project.
The Negro Project had nothing to do with some nefarious plot to exterminate Black people or to “sterilize unknowing Black women,” as claimed by BlackGenocide.org—which is a widely read website seemingly dedicated to spreading false information about Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. Rather, the Negro Project was a concerted effort by Sanger and Black community leaders to bring birth control to the South in a way that would assuage the deep-seated fears of Black birth control opponents like Marcus Garvey, who believed that the use of birth control in the Black community was tantamount to Black genocide.
….
Yes, she believed that the “reckless breeding” of the “feebleminded” was “the greatest biological menace to the future of civilization.” Yes, she believed that Americans were “paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.” Yes she believed that “morons” should be forcibly sterilized to ensure that they could not breed. She also believed that these “morons” could not be trusted to properly use birth control. Frankly, Sanger was far more ableist than she was racist.
But she was also a product of her time. The terms “moron,” “imbecile,” and “idiot” were all medical classifications back then. And eugenics—the theory that intelligence and other traits are genetically predetermined—was very popular at the turn of the century. The concern that “inferior stock” was reproducing at a faster rate than “superior stock,” was widespread. Inferior stock included anyone not viewed as a descendant of good breeding: Black people, immigrants, mentally and physically disabled people, the poor, criminals, and the “feebleminded.”
…
It may seem bizarre and Orwellian to us now, but that was the United States in which Sanger lived. And given the enthusiasm with which ordinary Americans embraced eugenics, it is no surprise that Sanger eventually joined up with them.
Sanger didn’t begin her campaign for birth control as a eugenicist, though. She started out as a relatively hardcore feminist. She believed that women had the right to sexual gratification and the right to choose when to become mothers.
“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” Those are Sanger’s own words.
But feminists at the time disapproved of Sanger’s insistence on women’s rights to sexual gratification. They largely believed that Sanger’s views were unchaste and immoral, and that a woman’s place was in the home, serving her husband and being virtuous. (Not unlike many anti-choicers today who believe that if you are unwilling to deal with an unplanned pregnancy, or as they like to call it “the consequences of sex,” then you should just abstain—forever, if necessary.)
In other words, all of this is extraordinarily complicated. Yes, there were black eugenicists. Yes, eugenics was widespread throughout basically all of American elite society during the early 20th century. Yes, that meant that scientific racism was popular and was shared by Sanger. No, it does not mean that Sanger was looking to exterminate the black race. No, it does not mean that Planned Parenthood is racist today. Yes, it means that history is really complex. No, it does not mean that conservatives will have any interest in telling the truth about this complexity.
Video from MIT Mediated Matter Group demonstrates a working method of 3D printing glass:
From the discovery of core-forming process for bead-making in ancient Egypt, through the invention of the metal blow pipe during Roman times, to the modern industrial Pilkington process for making large-scale flat glass; each new breakthrough in glass technology occurred as a result of prolonged experimentation and ingenuity, and has given rise to a new universe of possibilities for uses of the material. This show unveils a first of its kind optically transparent glass printing process called G3DP.
G3DP is an additive manufacturing platform designed to print optically transparent glass. The tunability enabled by geometrical and optical variation driven by form, transparency and color variation can drive; limit or control light transmission, reflection and refraction, and therefore carries significant implications for all things glass.
“Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow…”
--Little Women
The CW Network recently announced the development of a 'hyper-stylized, gritty adaptation' of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women set in dystopian Philadelphia. Here are our suggestions for what that show could look like.
In the year 2266, Contentment has become the most coveted -- and expensive -- resource in the United Colonies of Amerasia. As the March family toils away, trying to survive in the harsh post-industrial city of Delphia, Father sells five years of his life to Amerasia's Supreme Family in exchange for food and medicine rations for Marmee and the girls. During his indentured servitude, Father spends his days digging wells outside the palace and his nights being 'Harvested' -- a scientific procedure through which his memories of happiness and contentment are transplanted to the ailing Supreme Leader.
Jo, the illimitable scribe of the March family, leads the resistance in her own way by anonymously publishing content on the dark net as well as discreetly laundering rationed minutes of online access in hopes of buying out Father's contract before all his happy memories can be Harvested. But Jo's means of saving Father and getting her message to the people is shattered when the youngest March sister, sociopathic social-climber Amy, discovers Jo hacking into the wi-fi grid and destroys her link in a fit of rage.
Read more Imagining the Gritty Dystopian ‘Little Women’ at The Toast.
Joshua Marsh, “Thus Gone” (2015), graphite on paper, 9.5 x 8.625 inches (all images courtesy the artist and Jeff Bailey Gallery)
HUDSON, N.Y. — One of the worst things an artist can have is too much skill. Burdened in such a way, their technical facility for art making outpaces the energy of their desire. In the artist’s formative years, this tension between formal attainment and the conviction of their artistic will is often unbalanced and needs to be resolved if the artist is to achieve creative independence. The gap can be closed, in the end, by the artistic will itself — either by pushing one’s capacity for style and artifice to the limit (John Singer Sargent, Gerhard Richter, Alex Katz) or by putting one’s deepest instincts first and working them out through the materials (Alberto Giacometti, Mark Rothko, Eva Hesse). Put in crude contrast, some artists work from the hand and others from the gut. The end result, for the best artists, is neither here nor there.
Joshua Marsh, “Dust” (2015), graphite on paper, 7.875 x 9.25 inches
Joshua Marsh is neither here nor there because he works from his dreams. That is to say, that when Marsh’s pencil contacts the paper, his natural talent — informed by an expansive range of mark-making vocabularies that mine everything from the illusive complexities of Edwin Dickinson to the goofy grotesquerie of Mad magazine — becomes a means to reveal what neither he nor anyone else could have conceived beforehand. His imagery is hard earned, with deliberately applied skill capturing the subjects of his wandering mind. This is why his present exhibition, Joshua Marsh: Drawings, at Jeff Bailey Gallery in Hudson, NY, consists of the best drawings I have seen in recent memory.
Joshua Marsh, “Busker’s Hat” (2015), graphite on paper, 6.625 x 7.625 inches
“Busker’s Hat” (2015), at less than 7 x 8 inches, is a downward view of a guitar-playing street entertainer, whose feet are behind, though strangely above, his upturned hat, on which coins rest or seemingly float around. The gap between the light and shadow below the hat suggests the hat is above, not on, the ground, which is puddled in places and perhaps being peed on, with dust swirling in the background around the base of the musician’s chair. His right foot lifted from the heel indicates tapping, yet the floor plane on which his foot rests is fused with the hat’s brim. In other words, the musician’s “stage” is fluid and multiplaned, and therefore unintelligible. To boot, the musician’s strumming hand, reflected below, is marked by a stigmata, drawn in a circular fashion that is repeated in space across the picture plane.
Joshua Marsh, “Gleam” (2015), graphite on paper, 5.875 x 5.9375 inches (click to enlarge)
“Gleam” (2015), roughly 6 x 6 inches, is, by my best guest, a square pond framed with brush and leaves, and penetrated by two black mounds, perhaps porous rocks — although, according to linear perspective, they emerge in contradicting trajectories. This is the least puzzling part. In the water’s reflection, or beneath its surface, are dispersed character symbols: #, !, %, ?, &. Here is a visually unified image, or set of images, that merges nature, albeit strangely depicted, with features of linguistic discourse — an infusion of human-formed abstractions within a transient scene.
It’s a feature of our dreams that objects, people, and places can hold dual identities or morph through time. The unique qualities of Marsh’s drawings, or their significance as achievements by an artist who’s earned his independence, are their shape-shifting subjects, their wide range of technical approaches to drawing, and the indistinguishability of the artist’s talents from his instincts to bring out whatever is within.
Joshua Marsh: Drawings continues at Jeff Bailey Gallery (127 Warren Street, Hudson, New York) through August 30.
Following up on yesterday’s post regarding a proposal that rich universities such as Yale should be required to spend more of their endowments, in part to make college more affordable, it’s worth noting that going to Yale College costs its students essentially nothing.
Average debt at graduation for 2013 Yale grads: $2,081
Eastern Connecticut State on the other hand . . .
Average debt at graduation for 2013 ECSU grads: $22,040
Which school is more “affordable?” Well Yale’s cost of attendance for 2012-13 was $59,320, of which $42,300 was tuition. ECSU, by contrast, had a total COA of $23,395, of which $8,911 represented in-state tuition (it’s safe to assume the vast majority of the school’s students are paying the in-state rate).
How can this be? The answer is twofold: a whole lot of kids from really rich families go to Yale, and those that come from middle class backgrounds (in HYP land, “middle class” means a household income in the low six figures), or the (very) occasional kid who somehow manages to get in despite growing up in abject poverty, i.e., a family income of less than $60,000, pay either massively discounted tuition, or — in the case of our $60,000 Jude the Obscure — no tuition or room and board.
As to how exactly Yale affords the beneficence it bestows upon the lower orders, the following graph is instructive:
The problem with proposals to force colleges to use endowment funds to make higher ed more affordable is that the vast majority of institutions of higher education in the US have no endowment to speak of. Even the 95th percentile institutional endowment on the graph above (Connecticut College — it’s like rain on your wedding day) is a mere $278,000,000, i.e., barely more than one percent of the Smaug-like hoard that has piled up in New Haven over the years.
Over the past few decades, a handful of schools have acquired wealth uncountable — at this moment there are probably ten American universities with endowments of at least ten billion dollars — while a few dozen others have gotten enough money in their endowments to fund a significant percentage of their operations. But the 90% to 95% to 98% of schools outside the magic circle have gotten close to bupkis. This pattern is reminiscent of something else in the American economy, which in turn may bear some causal relation to these various developments.
Will it take a plane crash that kills 200 people to lead to a crackdown against privately owned drones? Or are drones the new gun, with their use “personal freedom” no matter what the cost?
At 8:51 a.m., a white drone startled the pilot of a JetBlue flight, appearing off its left wing moments before it landed at Los Angeles International Airport. Five hours later, a quadcopter whizzed underneath an Allegiant Air flight as it approached the same runway. Elsewhere in California, pilots of light aircraft reported narrowly dodging drones in San Jose and La Verne.
In Washington, a Cessna pilot reported a drone cruising at 1,500 feet in highly restricted airspace over the nation’s capital, forcing the U.S. military to scramble fighter jets as a precaution. In Louisville, a silver-and-white drone almost collided with a training aircraft. In Chicago, United Airlines Flight 970 reported seeing a drone pass by at an altitude of 3,500 feet.
All told, 12 episodes were recorded Sunday of small drones interfering with airplanes or coming too close to airports, including other incidents in New Mexico, Texas, Illinois, Florida and North Carolina, according to previously undisclosed reports filed with the Federal Aviation Administration.
Before last year, close encounters with rogue drones were unheard of. But as a result of a sales boom, small, largely unregulated remote-control aircraft are clogging U.S. airspace, snarling air traffic and giving the FAA fits.
That was Sunday. It’s only a matter of time, and not a very long amount of time, before these private drones lead to a real tragedy. They are too big of a public safety hazard for people to own as toys, hazards that will only become more extreme as the technology improves. And while you could say that they should just be banned from areas around airports, remember that aircraft flies a lot of places and these drones could take a down a fire fighting plane or a news helicopter easily.
And in case anyone wants to hear a scary story, when I flew back to Austin after defending my dissertation, my plane struck a flock of geese. It was just like the Hudson except no river to land in. We made an emergency landing in Albuquerque. A couple of birds killed an engine and put a hole in the wing. It doesn’t take much at those speeds to kill people.
Sophianotloren"As the assumption that all sex work is rape does to older workers, the idea that all underage sex work is equally violating leaves underage workers in a world where they are treated as simultaneously unrapeable, and continuously raped. It strips them of their ability to provide meaningful consent, overrides their autonomy, and creates a system which works actively against them in every way possible."
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
WESTON-SUPER-MARE — Inside the walls of a derelict seaside swimming resort in Weston-super-Mare, UK, mysterious construction over the last month—including a dingy looking Disney-like castle and a gargantuan rainbow-colored pinwheel tangled in plastic—suggested something big was afoot. Suspicion and anticipation surrounding the unusual activity attributed to fabled artist and provocateur Banksy has reached a Willy Wonka-esque fervor. Well, if Banksy’s your bag, continue fervoring. If not, there’s more than a few reasons to continue reading.
The spectacle has since been revealed to be a pop-up art exhibition in the form of an apocalyptic theme park titled Dismaland (“The UK’s most disappointing new visitor attraction”) that will be open to the public for five weeks.
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal / CLICK FOR DETAIL
Dismaland legend
Dismaland brochure / Park aerial view courtesy Upfest / Photo of construction
The event has all the hallmark details of a traditional Banksy event from its initial shroud of secrecy to artistic themes of apocalypse, anti-consumerism, and pointed social critiques on celebrity culture, immigration, and law enforcement. However, there’s one major deviation: the bulk of the artwork packed into three main interior galleries was created by dozens of other artists.
So just what’s hidden inside the walls of this derelict seaside resort? A demented assortment of bizarre and beautiful artworks from no less than 58 global artists including Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, Jimmy Cauty, Bill Barminski, Caitlin Cherry, Polly Morgan, Josh Keyes, Mike Ross, David Shrigley, Bäst, and Espo. Banksy is also showing 10 artworks of his own.
Dismaland features a cavalcade of artists featured here on Colossal over the last few years including pieces by Escif, Maskull Lasserre, Kate McDowell, Paco Pomet, Dietrich Wegner, Michael Beitz, Brock Davis, Ronit Baranga, and others.
Here’s some text from the event’s official brochure:
Are you looking for an alternative to the soulless sugar-coated banality of the average family day out? Or just somewhere cheaper. Then this is the place for you—a chaotic new world where you can escape from mindless escapism. Instead of a burger stall, we have a museum. In place of a gift shop we have a library, well, we have a gift shop as well.
Bring the whole family to come and enjoy the latest addition to our chronic leisure surplus—a bemusement park. A theme park who’s big theme is: theme parks should have bigger themes…
This event contains adult themes, distressing imagery, extended use of strobe lighting, smoke effects and swearing. The following items are strictly prohibited: knives, spraycans, illegal drugs, and lawyers from the Walt Disney corporation.
In addition to art you’ll also find functional a terrifying carousel, a mini golf park, a ferris wheel, and some ludicrously impossible fair games (like ‘topple the anvil with a ping pong ball’ by David Shrigley), roving occupy protests, and a Star Wars stormtrooper who sulks around the exhibition in a state of complete misery. The park is staffed by morose Dismaland employees who are uninterested in being helpful or remotely informative. Entrance to the event requires an uncomfortably awkward NSA-esque security screening, and of course you get to exit through the gift shop.
Just a quick fun note, I had the honor of helping curate a small part of Dismaland: a program of 24 short films shown on a massive outdoor cinema that will play on a loop day and night. Films include shorts by Santiago Grasso & Patricio Plaza, Kirsten Lepore, The Mercadantes, Ze Frank, Adrien M. & Claire B., Black Sheep Films, and Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared.
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
Photo by Christopher Jobson for Colossal
Dismaland is open to the public from August 22 through September 27th, 2015 and information about pre-booked and at-the-gate tickets is available here. There’s also a series of events including a show by Pussy Riot and Massive Attack on September 25th.
I think it goes without saying, but if you have the means, get to the UK.
Update: This post has been updated to include additional imagery, clarification, and other small corrections.
Update 2: We understand that there is difficulty with ticketing at the moment, but unfortunately this publication is not associated with the event directly. Please keep an eye on the official Dismaland website for updates.
Update 3: Added a video by Alex Jefferis.
Elon Green writes about the complicated history of autism research for the Atlantic:
But the damage done by Kanner, intentionally or otherwise, is inescapable. For far too long he perpetuated ideas about autistic children that were simply not true. And for too long no one was the wiser. “By burying Asperger in history, Kanner obscured the breadth and diversity of the spectrum,” said Silberman. This, in turn, meant “many children who would have been eligible for a diagnosis under Asperger’s more expansive model of autism were left to struggle along on their own in a world not made for them.”
Carbon's the perfect material to build strong yet lightweight materials, but it's also the reason we're running head-first into an ecological apocalypse. Wouldn't it be great if we could snatch the excess CO2 from the air and use it to cheaply buil...
Well, that was the election result I have been expecting since 2015: even worse electoral wipeout than five years ago, under Ed Miliband. They haven’t even managed to control the constituency of the recently-terraformed Moon, where the Predictamatic 3000 was certain in the exit Readings that they’d win by a landslide!
And so the circle of blame that I expected to happen, happened. I think this tweet–note for new readers: Twitter was a primitive social network in 2015. They communicated by typing what they wanted to say. It kind of worked like Gl0bal except without the neural interface and… oh, it’s hard to explain–anyway, this tweet kind of summed up the mindset of the party back in 2015.
See, Labour in 2015 was already a cesspit of blame. They blamed left-wing people for losing them the 2015 election by not voting for a party that had endorsed austerity politics. During their leadership contest later that year, a left-wing candidate gained prominence. The left-wing candidate appeared as though he might do the unthinkable, and win back left-wing voters to the party. People joined in droves–people who had been profoundly critical of the Labour Party under its contemporary direction, and saw an opening for it to become something different. They were ejected from the party and denied a vote in the leadership race. They were called “registered supporters”.
That’s right. The Labour Party literally kicked a bunch of people off of their register of supporters for being critical of certain policies, and for feeling unrepresented. The Labour Party literally told supporters “we don’t want your support”.
They told a bunch of people who said, “I’d vote for you if…” to get stuffed.
And now we see the same voices complaining about the wipeout being the fault of left-wing people who didn’t vote for them. Again.
The thing is, of course nobody voted for them. What did they provide people to vote for? Anyone who wanted austerity voted for the Tories, because the Tories present themselves far more credibly as the party of austerity. And those who didn’t voted for smaller parties–or didn’t vote at all, because what’s the fucking point? Labour didn’t create a niche for themselves. They had the opportunity to, and the blew it by telling those who suggested that the niche they could occupy could be opposing the party of government.
Labour lost the 2015 election because of this, and then they lost this year’s election because they were too damn pointless to try to create any kind of reason to vote for them at all.
I’m fucking delighted tbh. I never voted Labour in my life and couldn’t wait to dance on their grave.
I turned 18 in 2003, which was the same year Labour decided to invade Iraq (dubiously legally). I was fucking livid. So I didn’t vote for them in my first general election.
I voted Lib Dem in 2010. That was a terrible idea as it happened, but at that point I’d kind of swallowed the kool-aid on the “austerity is necessary” line, and I’d have rather voted for the party that hadn’t had a horrible track record on civil liberties, invaded another country, and didn’t have a leader who looked like what back then we thought badly-glitching androids would look like every time he smiled. I then discovered a lot more about what austerity really meant, and the absolute scale of the destruction and my politics took a quick turn for the better.
In 2015, the then-Labour leader carved the words “TOUGH ON IMMIGRATION” into stone, and for some reason they thought they lost the election because they weren’t right-wing enough. They went on to help the Tory government to whom they’d handed a majority by legitimising their rhetoric to scale up welfare cuts, rather than making it difficult for them. And the last five years has just been more and more of legitimising the kind of rhetoric which kills, in their position which is less of an opposition and more of outright complicity.
I was relieved when the left-wing candidate didn’t win, because I was concerned he might slow down the party’s inevitable demise, when my whole adult life I’ve felt nothing but a sense of betrayal from them. I am as happy about their death as I was when Thatcher died (I’m so glad she snuffed it before cryogenics became a thing, imagine if they’d resurrected her!). At the end of the day, they would not have made a lick of difference, except they’d wear red ties rather than blue.
Who knows where next. We need to up our own game–as with the last ten years, we need to organise to stop people being killed by the vicious government who want them dead. We need to escalate our efforts in destroying these institutions that allow the message to be broadcast to all that some people deserve to starve. We need to resist, to make it hard for them. And we know this cannot come from within parliament, that the power they have is the power over life and death. So we need to build towards their destruction too. It’s a tough fucking road, and we’re all exhausted, but our survival alone is an act of defiance and spite against them.
Incidentally, the Moon said no to austerity, so maybe we can take a leaf out of a particular Ursula Le Guin book and all go and live there in communal anarchy?
Moon aside, we have options. We always have options, and we need to make the most of them. I suggest we-
Under what powers?
No, that section only applies to-
No, I do not consent to come with you.
[scream, end transmission]
By Allen Kim and Karen Pyke
In South Korea, a movement has emerged that helps men to answer the fundamental question: What does it mean to be a man and father today? The Father School movement mobilizes fathers to become actively involved in their families. The movement enjoyed rapid growth following the 1997 Asian economic crisis, when many South Korean men lost their jobs overnight. With their breadwinning roles threatened, many fathers began questioning their identities and family roles, leading them to seek answers through participation in the Father School movement. Combining ethnographic observation with content analysis of organization and participant documents, we illustrate how movement leaders and participants glorify American manhood in attempting to forge a new Korean masculinity.
The goal of Father School, according to a brochure is to “help men recover their identities, return the father to the family, and reunify the family through the father role.” The movement draws upon various cultural influences and relies heavily on images and ideals of Western masculinity, which serve as the standard the movement advocates. Father School takes issue with what it constructs as a distinct Korean masculinity marked by workaholic fathers who are too gender rigid, uncommunicative and distant, and thus disconnected from their families.
The solution is a masculinity transformation into a nurturing “new father” closely modeled on an ideal type attributed to American men. In five week long training sessions that we refer to as “gender boot camps,” leaders attempt to transform participants from “distant Korean patriarchs” into loving family men. The training focuses on weekly seminars with small group activities, testimonials, lectures, and interactive homework assignments designed to help improve men’s emotional and behavioral performance in their families. The core of Father School conference activities involve the public sharing and discussion around men’s personal letters written to family members that disclose apology, regret and promises to be more loving, responsible, and involved husbands, fathers, and sons.
On the surface, the Father School masculinity makeover seems a positive process for Korean men and their families. However, it relies heavily on stereotyping and denigrating a distinct “Korean” masculinity alongside the glorification of masculinity associated with white American men. Certainly Korean men could reconstitute their masculinity within an indigenous cultural and historical context without rejecting all of “Korean” masculinity. Instead, however, the Father School movement appears to have inculcated Western gendered racism, which casts Asians as in need of Western liberation from an antiquated gender order and the authoritarian “Tiger” dad. The perpetuation of Western superiority is a negative underside to the otherwise largely positive Father School movement.
By Allen Kim, International Christian University, Japan and Karen Pyke, University of California Riverside. Their article “Taming Tiger Dads: Hegemonic American Masculinity and South Korea’s Father School,” is published in the August 2015 issue of Gender & Society. To view the article, click here.
No, we were not hacked. 'Deez Nuts' is the legal name of the candidate and he is polling at 9 percent in NC:http://t.co/HnGP0y6oOO
— ABC11 EyewitnessNews (@ABC11_WTVD) August 19, 2015
It turns out Deez Nuts, who says his real name is Brady Olson, is about to enter his sophomore year in high school, and has a full two decades to prepare for a legal run for president of the United States.A Mark C. Olson, who is listed at the Wallingford address on Deez Nuts's FEC filing, said via Twitter that Deez Nuts is "my 15 year old son."
On August 20, 1866, the National Labor Union, the first labor union federation in U.S. history, demanded Congress implement a national 8-hour day. It led to a partial and fleeting success, but the NLU story is an important moment in American labor history as it represents an early response to the onslaught of capitalism upon workers who suddenly found a class-based system developing in what was promised to be a white man’s democracy.
The trade union movement had roots early in American history but had never really taken off, in part because the system of American employment was still in the pre-Civil War years by and large artisan and farmer based. Where you did see large concentrations of industry, unions formed such as in the Lowell mills. But the nation was changing rapidly in 1866. The capitalist revolution of the Civil War was beginning to be felt by workers. Factories were growing and money was increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few. Long hours, low pay, and dangerous working conditions in factories, railroad yards, and mines were becoming part of the everyday experience for workers.
Unions began to develop in these industries, but there was no national federation to organize and guide them. That’s what the National Labor Union intended to do. Founded at a Baltimore conference in 1866, it was a precursor to the Knights of Labor and American Federation of Labor. It wanted to bring together all of the current unions in its umbrella and take a political and bargaining approach to solving problems, as opposed to striking which was quite controversial even among workers at this time. It favored arbitration as its preferred labor action. It also wanted a Labor Party to challenge both the Republicans and the Democrats.
The NLU’s leader William Sylvis was an interesting individual. In 1846, at the age of 18, Sylvis became an iron molder, which was someone who poured hot slag into wooden patterns to shape the final product. This was hard, tough, dangerous work. He soon became active in Philadelphia’s union movement and was elected secretary of his local in 1857. In 1859, Sylvis called for a convention of all the iron moulders locals around the nation. He was elected president of what became the National Union of Iron Molders. He spent the Civil War building the union where he instituted a number of innovations, including creating the first ever national strike fund, through mandatory dues payments by members. Sylvis was also a major supporter of unions of female workers, particularly Kate Mullaney’s Collar Laundry Union. Sylvis would later invite Mullaney into a leadership role within the NLU, making her the nation’s first female union executive.
William Sylvis
The NLU did invite all workers, including farmers into the organization. But as would be the case with the AFL, its core membership was the skilled building trades. Also like the rest of the labor movement of the time, the NLU held white supremacy as a central guiding point. It was segregated and while there was a black chapter, it was ineffective and small. Sylvis actually opposed this segregation; although he supported Stephen Douglas in the 1860 election, he believed that all workers had the same issues and would have preferred one integrated organization. It took years of fighting recalcitrant unionists to even allowed the Colored National Labor Union to exist alongside the NLU. The federation also called for the exclusion of Chinese workers from the United States, which would eventually be the first legislative victory for the American labor movement in history.
The major legislative aim for the NLU was the passage of the 8-hour day. As capitalism developed, the 8-hour day would become the ultimate goal for much of the American labor movement. It was the call to arms for the Knights of Labor in the 1880s, so much so that the Knights basically lost control of its exploding membership by 1886. Union after union would call for this over the next decades and it was not achieved nationally until the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, and even then only partially.
Amazingly the NLU actually achieved an early victory on the 8-hour day when in 1868, the government created the 8-hour day for federal employees. But this was a very limited win as most of the government agencies then reduced wages to go along with it, which was very much not what the NLU wanted. When President Grant ordered departments to stop reducing wages, most just ignored him and he did not press the issue. Ultimately, little concrete benefit came of the 8-hour day announcement.
Frustrations with the federal employee 8-hour day and loopholes in laws in New York and California that made similar statues unworkable combined with the growing concern in the post-Civil War period about monetary policy to turn the NLU in a starkly political direction. It focused its energy on electoral politics and monetary reform, specifically the issuance of greenbacks, as well as providing public land for settlers as opposed to the huge land grants given to railroads as an incentive to build transcontinental lines. This did not exactly excite workers. Many locals believed in “pure and simple unionism” that kept workers out of politics. Thus the NLU became increasingly divided as it prioritized politics over workers’ concerns. While Sylvis claimed the NLU had 600,000 members, he was exaggerating significantly. At its peak, it might have had 300,000. That number declined as the 1860s became the 1870s. Sylvis dying in 1869 at the age of 41 helped speed the decline as the federation lost its guiding light. The NLU dissolved in 1874 after its membership plummeted in the Panic of 1873.
So ultimately, we should see Sylvis and the NLU as an important ancestor of both the Knights of Labor and the AFL. The NLU was an early attempt for workers to collectively find ways out of the inequality arising during and after the Civil War and for all its limitations, was probably more successful than any other organization before the AFL.
This is the 155th post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.
