AUSTIN, TX – Following comments on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where multi-millionaire podcaster Joe Rogan blamed Ukrainian defence for “causing World War III”, the podcast phenom clarified that he was not echoing Kremlin propaganda, but is in fact truly this fucking braindead. “I know it might seem suspicious, how I consistently and unquestioningly regurgitate Russian […]
OTTAWA – Pierre Poilievre couldn’t contain his glee today upon hearing the news that Donald Trump plans to enact a 25% tariff on Canadian goods as soon as he takes office. “Our largest trading partner increasing the price of all of our goods by a quarter? That… that has the potential to tank our entire […]
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
All this week to get us in the holiday spirit, I’m going to be featuring holiday work stories readers have shared here in the past … and then updates season will start next week!
To kick us off, here are 10 of my favorite stories you shared about potlucks and other food gatherings at work earlier this month.
1. The chili cook-off
I worked for a nonprofit, and every year there was a few months long period where every department would do some kind of fundraiser for the nonprofit. My department was famous for a lunchtime chili cook-off that included, of course, voting for a winner. It was my first year there, and my boss kept talking about how popular the chili cook-off was. We were advised we needed to quadruple our normal recipe to have enough for everyone.
One coworker launched in right away with BIG talk about her recipe. And the day of the cook-off, she kept going around and checking out the competition and making allusions to her to secret ingredients. When the judging was over, we learned that she won and she was ecstatic … but then it came out that she’d been buying votes all afternoon! When the accusations were revealed, she refused to give up the trophy.
Oh, and remember the quadruple recipes. Turns out that was bananas, and since everybody ate only a couple spoonfuls of each chili, there was an exorbitant amount left over. Another coworker carried her crockpot of leftovers back to her car and spilled that triple recipe of chili all over it.
2. The boat
Office christmas party: on a boat. Possibly the worst six words in the English language, because once you’re on and sailing you can’t get off. And worse, the catering was a weird hot buffet with some of the smallest portion sizes I’ve ever seen, like a half serving spoon of rice and a half serving spoon of chicken in sauce. No dessert. And there was just one serving station for 150 people who were therefore stood in an hour-long queue for the food in the close confines of the lower deck.
When it became clear that even with the small portions, the caterers were likely to run out of food and we were trapped on the boat until 11pm with no further food available, people became quite grumpy and started trying to bribe those earlier in the queue to swap spots in return for drinks tokens. People accused others of cutting in line, or of secretly getting in for seconds before others had had any. The party organizing team had to start policing the queue, meaning they were then being exposed to a lot of snark because they had organized the caterers (though I don’t see how it’s their fault that the caterers had massively under estimated what was needed). Ultimately it was a sad boat full of very hungry people who had gotten drunk too quickly, there were lots of cynical cannibalism jokes, and there has never been a boat party again.
3. The banana
At my old workplace we would have potlucks “just because.” People who wanted to participate could, but no pressure if you didn’t want to. It was generally understood that in order to participate, you needed to bring something. One coworker clearly wanted to eat, but didn’t actually want to contribute. So what did she bring to put on the potluck table?
A single banana.
4. The grill guy
My office has a grill that we drag out on the patio for office parties/potlucks/etc. I have a coworker who considers himself to be the “grill guy” of the office, and always mans the grill for all these parties because he’s “the only one good at it.” (Side note: his grill skills are perfectly adequate but not spectacular.) Once, we had an office potluck that accidentally got scheduled while he was going to be on vacation. This guy cut his vacation (at an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean) short so that he could be back in time to man the grill. Because he’s the grill guy!
5. The bites
During a potluck, someone (the office never discovered who!) went to the meeting room where the potluck had to be held and took a single bite out of every biteable thing. Scones, bread, fruits, pizza slices. Just one single bite.
6. The horse hair cake
We had a supervisor who owned horses. Lovely person, but one day she brought in a cake for her staff. When she cut it and took pieces out of the pan, they had horse hair dangling from them. “Horse hair cake” became a potluck warning for years for those in the know.
7. The noon tradition
At a previous job, I was in charge of a monthly staff catered lunch for about 20 people at noon. There was a rotation of favorite local restaurants I’d get take out from, for a modest budget. Most restaurants opened at 11am or 11:30, so it could be a little difficult getting food by noon but I made it work. Additionally, on the selected day, there was one team of four that had a regularly scheduled meeting with outside clients until 1. We always saved food for them, but it felt silly to have an all staff lunch that not everyone could attend.
I floated the idea of moving the staff lunch to 1, which staff responded positively to. In fact, it worked better with everyone’s schedule. I emailed all staff to announce the change. In response I got a bombastic response from the CEO (who, mind you, never showed up to these lunches, or to work in general) that it WAS A TRADITION that these VERY IMPORTANT TO STAFF COHESION lunches were at noon, and THEY HAD ALWAYS been at noon, and MUST CONTINUE to be at noon, and he could ONLY MAKE IT TO NOON lunches, and anything else was an insult to the concept of the noon lunch being at noon. Alas, we kept them at noon and he never made it to the noon lunch.
8. The cheesecake
I had a coworker who just hated me right off the bat. I never did anything to her but I seemed to be a special target for her.
We had a potluck and I brought in mini orange cheesecakes with a burnt sugar top and this absolutely enraged her for some reason. She went in during set up and moved my platter to another table out of the way away from all the other food. Then she went around and told everyone about her cheesecake that she would make and how it was always from scratch. She was very seriously about her homemade cheesecake and how “other people” didn’t make cheesecake from scratch. She never asked me, but mine were scratch made as well. The cherry on top was she hadn’t even brought in a cheesecake.
9. The gasoline
Catered outdoor event that was open to the general public. The venue officially does not allow bringing in alcohol, but unofficially it was another story. REALLY another story.
A coworker was trying to light a campfire in a fire pit and poured gasoline into a red Solo cup. A drunken guest somehow thought he was hiding moonshine in the gas can and tried to walk off with the cup of gasoline. He had to forcibly take it back before it could be swallowed.
10. Waffle Wednesdays
My office had waffle Wednesdays once a month for years. It had all the executive leadership manning the line cooking waffles, pancakes, with one table/griddle dedicated to gluten-free food as we had a few celiacs. They would also do all the prep, purchasing and clean-up (the actual execs not their admin staff), although many people would volunteer to help clean-up and often get a bit more chat time in with the execs. There were also fruit platters and whole fruit if you were vegetarian and wanted a bit more, as well as various kinds of muffins that were vegan. Anytime a food restriction was brought up, they would bring in food specific to that person that was always respected. People were welcome to bring in their own food as well, to accommodate their restrictions or even just come by and have a tea or coffee and not eat.
Zero pressure.
Every Wednesday the entire building smelled of eggs, waffles and bacon. It also allowed people face-time with the executives that they would never otherwise meet. the whole thing ran about 2-3 hours, and the front doors were scheduled around that so even the front-line staff could participate. It was lovely.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My coworker keeps snarking on the way I fold paper
I work in a public library. One of my duties is to fold paper, such as brochures, newsletters, pamphlets, etc. My coworker whose responsibility it is to create, edit, and print those documents will hand me a large stack and then be overwhelmed by the urge to criticize my technique. I use a small plastic tool (shaped like the old tongue depressors, like a large popsicle stick) to smooth the edge of the paper to create a sharp fold. I have tried to explain to her multiple times that using my finger creates microabrasions, hurts my skin, and eventually leads to callouses.
But she will say, “You NEED that?” when I go get the tool and, “Well, I think using your finger is fine” and when I explain why it isn’t, she gives a big exaggerated head tilt, squint, and an incredulous “REALLY?” as if I’ve told her porcupine meat is delicious. She cannot fathom that I don’t want to use my finger, so she gives a soap opera level head shake of disbelief like you would to someone wearing a bikini in Walmart.
I’m baffled as to why she cares how I get the job done and I am tired of receiving the stink eye over something so inane. How do I shut down her sneered lip and snark? I just want to fold paper without bruising my fingertips!
You can try saying, “You know, I’ve explained why but you comment every time. Do you have a concern about this that you haven’t articulated? And if not, can we put the topic to rest?”
If that doesn’t work, then all you can really do is say in a pointedly exhausted and/or bored tone, “Yep, this is what I prefer to use.” Put that on repeat and she’ll hopefully give up in time. If not, feel free to say at some point, “Good lord, we’ve covered this over and over. It’s weird that you can’t let it go.”
No one would blame you if you sharpened that tool into a pointy weapon.
2. “Non-religious” holiday attire
I just got an invitation to an office holiday celebration that says, “There will also be prizes for those who wear holiday attire (nothing religious or offensive).” Am I right to feel that (1) winter holiday attire that isn’t religious is a borderline oxymoron, and (2) it’s hypocritical to say that on an invitation that includes a Christmas tree and talks about playing a gift-giving game?
Yes. It’s the old “as long as it’s not overt religious imagery like a nativity scene, it’s secular!” game that some people like to play.
The things they’re envisioning as “not religious” likely include Santa, Christmas trees, and other markers of Christmas — which, as elements of a Christian holiday, don’t qualify as “not religious” to many of us. It assumes a cultural identification with Christmas that erases many people of other faiths (or of no faith). It’s a problem. A much longer discussion of this is here.
(Also, since this always comes up: the right question is not “Can I find people who celebrate Christmas who consider these things secular?” but rather, “Are there large numbers of people who do feel erased when symbols of Christmas are treated as secular?” The answer to that is yes.)
3. Why don’t companies believe you’ll do what you say until you actually do it?
Earlier this year, I changed jobs within my organization. I work 32 hours a week and this new job was only for 24 hours a week, so it was decided I would still do my old job for eight hours a week. I wasn’t thrilled with this, because the reason I wanted to change jobs was because of an ongoing conflict with my (old) manager. If I hadn’t been able to change jobs within the same company, I would left as soon as I found a new job elsewhere.
My new manager is aware of this situation. She promised me she would look into getting the higher-ups approval for increasing the hours of the new job to 32. I told her that if it didn’t look like this was going to happen anytime soon, I would rather change my contract to 24 hours and look into some freelancing to supplement my income.
After doing the new job for six months, I had my evaluation and in that I was told that higher-ups did not approve of changing my new job to 32 hours and wouldn’t for at least another six months. Upon hearing this, I told my boss I wanted to go to 24 hours, because I no longer wanted to deal with my old manager anymore. She asked if I was sure and I told her I was.
The next day, my manager called me to tell me that she had been back to the big boss to talk to him once more and now he had agreed to change the new job to 32 hours. I’m happy, of course. But why did I pretty much need to threaten to leave to make this happen? They knew I wasn’t happy, they knew I would stop working for my old manager one way or another. Why didn’t they take that seriously enough?
I hope you can give me some insight in why companies operate in this way, because I really believe this isn’t a unique situation.
A few reasons: first, sometimes employers assume that when push comes to shove, you won’t really follow through on the thing you’re saying you’ll do (because it’ll be harder than you think to leave or find freelancing work, or at least will take a while and things might change meanwhile, or because you can’t possibly really mean it). A lot of threats to do X feel vague/amorphous until the situation becomes “I am now doing X,” at which point they have to take it seriously. I’m not saying this is reasonable — it’s not — just that it’s common.
Second, companies have limited time/energy/attention and sometimes other things are just higher priorities to deal with (legitimately or otherwise), until the issue becomes more pressing because you are making a change right now.
Third, it’s possible that your boss didn’t tell her own higher-ups that you said you would decrease your hours if they couldn’t get you 32 in the new job. She might have thought it wasn’t necessary to include that, or that her boss would bristle at hearing it, or that it introduced a risk of them cutting your hours to less than 32, or who knows what — but she might have just called it wrong, even while thinking she was acting in your best interests.
4. Do employers have to provide cups for water?
I work in a large office job. We have water dispensers that employees can get water from, but a few years ago they eliminated paper cups as a means of “going green” and instead gave every employee a reusable metal water bottle. Over the years (especially during Covid when nobody was in the office for two years), some of the bottles have been misplaced, and some executive coordinators were pressured to give them to their officers who couldn’t be bothered to pick them up because they were too busy. The end result is that some employees have to either pay for plastic water bottles (hardly environmentally friendly) or buy their own reusable one. New employees are given reusable bottles upon onboarding, but existing ones can’t get a new one unless they pay for it.
Is this allowed? To be clear, we are working in a climate-controlled environment, not a outdoor job site, and on the rare occasion the A/C fails, we are allowed to work from home, but we are in the office for at least eight hours a day and need to drink water at some point.
The OSHA regulation on this isn’t 100% clear on whether you can be required to provide your own drinking vessel (which is functionally what’s happening for people who lose their original bottles). Employers have to provide water, but beyond that it’s hazier. OSHA does say, “The employer shall dispense drinking water from a fountain, a covered container with single-use drinking cups stored in a sanitary receptacle, or single-use bottles.” I suspect your situation would be covered by “drinking water from a fountain” (meaning they’re not violating the law by not providing cups), but you’d need to check with OSHA to be sure.
5. Will I get in trouble for not disclosing a disability in my job application?
I’m deep into my job search and, pretty consistently, I have to check a box regarding my disability status before submitting an application. The text usually reads, “No, I do not have a disability and I have not had one in the past.” I have an “invisible disability,” so the truthful answer would be to say “yes,” but I keep reading horror stories about discrimination against people who disclose their status to employers. I previously thought that the purpose of this question was to inform diverse hiring practices, but I’m not sure anymore.
Could I get in trouble for not disclosing my disability status prior to hiring? I have to work from home due to my need for accommodations, so I could hide my condition pretty well. I just don’t know what I’ll do when I have a flare-up that affects how I show up to work. I don’t like lying, but I need a job—now.
If you are in the U.S., you are not legally obligated to disclose a disability to an employer before they hire you (or afterwards, for that matter, if you’re not asking for accommodations) and you can’t be required to or be penalized for not doing it.
They’re most likely asking because companies with more than 100 employees or with government contracts over a certain dollar amount are required by law to report the demographic makeup of their applicants and employees to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (in aggregate, not individually). However, answering is voluntary, you can’t be penalized for not answering, and if you do answer the employer can’t allow your answer to negatively affect your application. In fact, the law requires that the information be stored separately from your application.
Who says ectopic pregnancy has to be a bad thing? Pending a medically necessary eviction, this luxurious short-term rental can fit a growing fertilized egg for about six to 10 weeks.
WASHINGTON—Participating in the annual tradition one last time before leaving office, President Joe Biden reportedly told a pardoned Thanksgiving turkey “You’re the Bonnie to my Clyde” on Monday before running off with it and disappearing over the horizon. “It’s us against the world now, turkey,” said the commander-in-chief, grabbing the bird by the wing and laughing wildly as the two of them fled the White House grounds in a convertible, the turkey’s handlers in hot pursuit. “They’re going to keep coming after us, you know, but I’ve got your back, and I know you’ve got mine. It’ll be just you, me, and the wide open road, together until the end. Don’t worry, I’ve got a cozy little place in Delaware we can hide out in until things die down.” At press time, Biden urged the turkey to take the wheel so that he could fend off the Secret Service agents on their tail.
Bossware is unfair (in the legal sense, too) (permalink)
You can get into a lot of trouble by assuming that rich people know what they're doing. For example, you might assume that ad-tech works – bypassing peoples' critical faculties, reaching inside their minds and brainwashing them with Big Data insights, because if that's not what's happening, then why would rich people pour billions into those ads?
You might assume that private equity looters make their investors rich, because otherwise, why would rich people hand over trillions for them to play with?
The truth is, rich people are suckers like the rest of us. If anything, succeeding once or twice makes you an even bigger mark, with a sense of your own infallibility that inflates to fill the bubble your yes-men seal you inside of.
Rich people fall for scams just like you and me. Anyone can be a mark. I was:
But though rich people can fall for scams the same way you and I do, the way those scams play out is very different when the marks are wealthy. As Keynes had it, "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." When the marks are rich (or worse, super-rich), they can be played for much longer before they go bust, creating the appearance of solidity.
Noted Keynesian John Kenneth Galbraith had his own thoughts on this. Galbraith coined the term "bezzle" to describe "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." In that magic interval, everyone feels better off: the mark thinks he's up, and the con artist knows he's up.
Rich marks have looong bezzles. Empirically incorrect ideas grounded in the most outrageous superstition and junk science can take over whole sections of your life, simply because a rich person – or rich people – are convinced that they're good for you.
Take "scientific management." In the early 20th century, the con artist Frederick Taylor convinced rich industrialists that he could increase their workers' productivity through a kind of caliper-and-stopwatch driven choreography:
Taylor and his army of labcoated sadists perched at the elbows of factory workers (whom Taylor referred to as "stupid," "mentally sluggish," and "an ox") and scripted their motions to a fare-the-well, transforming their work into a kind of kabuki of obedience. They weren't more efficient, but they looked smart, like obedient robots, and this made their bosses happy. The bosses shelled out fortunes for Taylor's services, even though the workers who followed his prescriptions were less efficient and generated fewer profits. Bosses were so dazzled by the spectacle of a factory floor of crisply moving people interfacing with crisply working machines that they failed to understand that they were losing money on the whole business.
To the extent they noticed that their revenues were declining after implementing Taylorism, they assumed that this was because they needed more scientific management. Taylor had a sweet con: the worse his advice performed, the more reasons there were to pay him for more advice.
Taylorism is a perfect con to run on the wealthy and powerful. It feeds into their prejudice and mistrust of their workers, and into their misplaced confidence in their own ability to understand their workers' jobs better than their workers do. There's always a long dollar to be made playing the "scientific management" con.
Today, there's an app for that. "Bossware" is a class of technology that monitors and disciplines workers, and it was supercharged by the pandemic and the rise of work-from-home. Combine bossware with work-from-home and your boss gets to control your life even when in your own place – "work from home" becomes "live at work":
Gig workers are at the white-hot center of bossware. Gig work promises "be your own boss," but bossware puts a Taylorist caliper wielder into your phone, monitoring and disciplining you as you drive your own car around delivering parcels or picking up passengers.
In automation terms, a worker hitched to an app this way is a "reverse centaur." Automation theorists call a human augmented by a machine a "centaur" – a human head supported by a machine's tireless and strong body. A "reverse centaur" is a machine augmented by a human – like the Amazon delivery driver whose app goads them to make inhuman delivery quotas while punishing them for looking in the "wrong" direction or even singing along with the radio:
Bossware pre-dates the current AI bubble, but AI mania has supercharged it. AI pumpers insist that AI can do things it positively cannot do – rolling out an "autonomous robot" that turns out to be a guy in a robot suit, say – and rich people are groomed to buy the services of "AI-powered" bossware:
For an AI scammer like Elon Musk or Sam Altman, the fact that an AI can't do your job is irrelevant. From a business perspective, the only thing that matters is whether a salesperson can convince your boss that an AI can do your job – whether or not that's true:
The fact that AI can't do your job, but that your boss can be convinced to fire you and replace you with the AI that can't do your job, is the central fact of the 21st century labor market. AI has created a world of "algorithmic management" where humans are demoted to reverse centaurs, monitored and bossed about by an app.
The techbro's overwhelming conceit is that nothing is a crime, so long as you do it with an app. Just as fintech is designed to be a bank that's exempt from banking regulations, the gig economy is meant to be a workplace that's exempt from labor law. But this wheeze is transparent, and easily pierced by enforcers, so long as those enforcers want to do their jobs. One such enforcer is Alvaro Bedoya, an FTC commissioner with a keen interest in antitrust's relationship to labor protection.
Bedoya understands that antitrust has a checkered history when it comes to labor. As he's written, the history of antitrust is a series of incidents in which Congress revised the law to make it clear that forming a union was not the same thing as forming a cartel, only to be ignored by boss-friendly judges:
Bedoya is no mere historian. He's an FTC Commissioner, one of the most powerful regulators in the world, and he's profoundly interested in using that power to help workers, especially gig workers, whose misery starts with systemic, wide-scale misclassification as contractors:
In a new speech to NYU's Wagner School of Public Service, Bedoya argues that the FTC's existing authority allows it to crack down on algorithmic management – that is, algorithmic management is illegal, even if you break the law with an app:
Bedoya starts with a delightful analogy to The Hawtch-Hawtch, a mythical town from a Dr Seuss poem. The Hawtch-Hawtch economy is based on beekeeping, and the Hawtchers develop an overwhelming obsession with their bee's laziness, and determine to wring more work (and more honey) out of him. So they appoint a "bee-watcher." But the bee doesn't produce any more honey, which leads the Hawtchers to suspect their bee-watcher might be sleeping on the job, so they hire a bee-watcher-watcher. When that doesn't work, they hire a bee-watcher-watcher-watcher, and so on and on.
For gig workers, it's bee-watchers all the way down. Call center workers are subjected to "AI" video monitoring, and "AI" voice monitoring that purports to measure their empathy. Another AI times their calls. Two more AIs analyze the "sentiment" of the calls and the success of workers in meeting arbitrary metrics. On average, a call-center worker is subjected to five forms of bossware, which stand at their shoulders, marking them down and brooking no debate.
For example, when an experienced call center operator fielded a call from a customer with a flooded house who wanted to know why no one from her boss's repair plan system had come out to address the flooding, the operator was punished by the AI for failing to try to sell the customer a repair plan. There was no way for the operator to protest that the customer had a repair plan already, and had called to complain about it.
Workers report being sickened by this kind of surveillance, literally – stressed to the point of nausea and insomnia. Ironically, one of the most pervasive sources of automation-driven sickness are the "AI wellness" apps that bosses are sold by AI hucksters:
The FTC has broad authority to block "unfair trade practices," and Bedoya builds the case that this is an unfair trade practice. Proving an unfair trade practice is a three-part test: a practice is unfair if it causes "substantial injury," can't be "reasonably avoided," and isn't outweighed by a "countervailing benefit." In his speech, Bedoya makes the case that algorithmic management satisfies all three steps and is thus illegal.
On the question of "substantial injury," Bedoya describes the workday of warehouse workers working for ecommerce sites. He describes one worker who is monitored by an AI that requires him to pick and drop an object off a moving belt every 10 seconds, for ten hours per day. The worker's performance is tracked by a leaderboard, and supervisors punish and scold workers who don't make quota, and the algorithm auto-fires if you fail to meet it.
Under those conditions, it was only a matter of time until the worker experienced injuries to two of his discs and was permanently disabled, with the company being found 100% responsible for this injury. OSHA found a "direct connection" between the algorithm and the injury. No wonder warehouses sport vending machines that sell painkillers rather than sodas. It's clear that algorithmic management leads to "substantial injury."
What about "reasonably avoidable?" Can workers avoid the harms of algorithmic management? Bedoya describes the experience of NYC rideshare drivers who attended a round-table with him. The drivers describe logging tens of thousands of successful rides for the apps they work for, on promise of "being their own boss." But then the apps start randomly suspending them, telling them they aren't eligible to book a ride for hours at a time, sending them across town to serve an underserved area and still suspending them. Drivers who stop for coffee or a pee are locked out of the apps for hours as punishment, and so drive 12-hour shifts without a single break, in hopes of pleasing the inscrutable, high-handed app.
All this, as drivers' pay is falling and their credit card debts are mounting. No one will explain to drivers how their pay is determined, though the legal scholar Veena Dubal's work on "algorithmic wage discrimination" reveals that rideshare apps temporarily increase the pay of drivers who refuse rides, only to lower it again once they're back behind the wheel:
This is like the pit boss who gives a losing gambler some freebies to lure them back to the table, over and over, until they're broke. No wonder they call this a "casino mechanic." There's only two major rideshare apps, and they both use the same high-handed tactics. For Bedoya, this satisfies the second test for an "unfair practice" – it can't be reasonably avoided. If you drive rideshare, you're trapped by the harmful conduct.
The final prong of the "unfair practice" test is whether the conduct has "countervailing value" that makes up for this harm.
To address this, Bedoya goes back to the call center, where operators' performance is assessed by "Speech Emotion Recognition" algorithms, a psuedoscientific hoax that purports to be able to determine your emotions from your voice. These SERs don't work – for example, they might interpret a customer's laughter as anger. But they fail differently for different kinds of workers: workers with accents – from the American south, or the Philippines – attract more disapprobation from the AI. Half of all call center workers are monitored by SERs, and a quarter of workers have SERs scoring them "constantly."
Bossware AIs also produce transcripts of these workers' calls, but workers with accents find them "riddled with errors." These are consequential errors, since their bosses assess their performance based on the transcripts, and yet another AI produces automated work scores based on them.
In other words, algorithmic management is a procession of bee-watchers, bee-watcher-watchers, and bee-watcher-watcher-watchers, stretching to infinity. It's junk science. It's not producing better call center workers. It's producing arbitrary punishments, often against the best workers in the call center.
There is no "countervailing benefit" to offset the unavoidable substantial injury of life under algorithmic management. In other words, algorithmic management fails all three prongs of the "unfair practice" test, and it's illegal.
What should we do about it? Bedoya builds the case for the FTC acting on workers' behalf under its "unfair practice" authority, but he also points out that the lack of worker privacy is at the root of this hellscape of algorithmic management.
He's right. The last major update Congress made to US privacy law was in 1988, when they banned video-store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you rented. The US is long overdue for a new privacy regime, and workers under algorithmic management are part of a broad coalition that's closer than ever to making that happen:
Workers should have the right to know which of their data is being collected, who it's being shared by, and how it's being used. We all should have that right. That's what the actors' strike was partly motivated by: actors who were being ordered to wear mocap suits to produce data that could be used to produce a digital double of them, "training their replacement," but the replacement was a deepfake.
With a Trump administration on the horizon, the future of the FTC is in doubt. But the coalition for a new privacy law includes many of Trumpland's most powerful blocs – like Jan 6 rioters whose location was swept up by Google and handed over to the FBI. A strong privacy law would protect their Fourth Amendment rights – but also the rights of BLM protesters who experienced this far more often, and with far worse consequences, than the insurrectionists.
The "we do it with an app, so it's not illegal" ruse is wearing thinner by the day. When you have a boss for an app, your real boss gets an accountability sink, a convenient scapegoat that can be blamed for your misery.
The fact that this makes you worse at your job, that it loses your boss money, is no guarantee that you will be spared. Rich people make great marks, and they can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Markets won't solve this one – but worker power can.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
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Reyes began his nonprofit, Pancho Clause, 44 years ago. Donning a bright red suit and in a sleigh of lowriders, the Houstonian delivers thousands of toys to underserved children across Houston and the Rio Grande Valley.
My family and I visited the Houston Botanic Garden on a recent Sunday evening for a lovely stroll through Radiant Nature, presented by Reliant. The lights inside the garden were some of the most brilliant displays I have ever seen, and the displays and interactive elements were unique. Without hesitation, I can say it was a wonderful spectacle.
Lily, me, and Analei among the lights. (Amanda Berger)
Upon entering the garden you follow a self-guided circuitous route, winding along brilliantly lit paths. The lights highlight nature, both plants as well as animals. It’s a fun and whimsical experience, with always something new to dazzle the eye as one goes along. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to take it all in, depending on how often you stop to take pictures. There are many opportunities for this.
What this exhibit is not is a traditional holiday lighting experience. You won’t find Santa Claus or Christmas trees or holiday presents. The theme this year is the Lunar New Year, with Chinese lanterns, temples, bamboo, pandas, and more. One of our family’s favorite activities was a silly panda game that was a digital version of whack-a-mole. It all flows together nicely.
False advertising: I’m no angel. (Amanda Berger)
There’s not much more to say as the experience is something to see rather than to read about. Suffice it to say our family—my kids are now 17 and 21 years old, so they’re not the easiest to please—had a wonderful evening together, immersed in a beautifully lit natural environment.
The details
Radiant Nature, presented by Reliant is open most evenings until 10 p.m. CT, and you can purchase timed entry tickets before coming to the garden. On-site parking can only be purchased online in advance, otherwise you use their shuttle from a nearby park and ride. The exhibit lasts from now through February 23, and a full schedule can be found here. The Botanic Garden is located in southeast Houston, east of I-45 South on Park Place Blvd.
Our longtime partner, Reliant, is known for lighting up the holidays and worked with their friends at Houston Botanic Garden to offer Space City Weather readers a discount code on Radiant Nature tickets. For $2 off up to two tickets, use code “RNSCW.”
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I have been the direct supervisor of Bob since 2022, but I was also previously his supervisor in another position, I have worked with him in some capacity for almost 10 years. In many ways, he has been my closest friend at work: we work together on many projects and I often talk to him about things going on outside of work and in other relationships.
Recently, my best friend, Lori, a psychiatrist, decided to unload a list of grievances on me and in a heated moment said, “Bob told me that you weren’t supportive of me!” The thing is, as far as I knew, Lori and Bob had never met. I was shocked and asked how she knew him. Turns out she was his psychiatrist for years, including after he decided to come work with me in 2022. Apparently she encouraged him to find a new doctor at that time but he didn’t want to, so she kept him on. I feel that was a conflict of interest.
I feel so betrayed in this situation. There are so many instances where I have said something to either of them about the other, and neither of them ever told me. I feel like they were voyeurs in each other’s lives through me. Also, Lori telling me is a clear HIPAA violation, so now I’m stuck keeping her secret because as angry as I am (I’m considering ending the friendship), I don’t want to destroy her career.
I’m stuck working with Bob. He is realizing that I’m pulling back, but I haven’t said why. My plan is that if it comes up, I’ll say that I’ve “decided to have very strong boundaries at work,” but the whole thing feels horrible, weird, and isolating.
Should I tell my boss or HR? I’m worried that this will spill out somewhere in the future, not through me but maybe through Bob or Lori (neither has demonstrated great decision-making skills), and it will come back to haunt me. Any advice you can give is helpful. I feel stuck and alone in this secret.
Whoa, Lori really messed up here. Bob too to some degree, but Lori had both a professional obligation and a personal one to tell Bob she couldn’t treat him anymore and refer him to someone else.
Bob erred too, but far, far less so. When Lori first told him it would be a conflict of interest to continue to treat him, he should have respected that and realized that talking candidly about his boss (a completely normal thing to want to do in therapy) wouldn’t be appropriate to do with said boss’s best friend and that — as Lori said — he needed to seek a new therapist.
But Lori! Lori violated the very clear ethics of her profession, and the very clear boundaries of best-friendship. Bob doesn’t have nearly the same obligations toward you as his manager as Lori has toward you as her close friend and toward Bob as his therapist. 90% of this, maybe more, is on Lori.
As for what to do … even aside from this situation, it’s a good idea to have better boundaries with Bob. Someone who works for you can’t be a close friend, because the power dynamics in the relationship prevent the relationship from being an equal one (among other reasons, all described here). So yes to establishing more distant boundaries (still friendly, just not friends) — but that’s not because of who Bob’s therapist is, it’s because of who Bob’s boss is.
You should probably let your own boss or HR know about the situation. It’s not an absolute imperative unless you’re concerned that you can’t manage Bob fairly or objectively anymore (in which case you would have a duty to disclose that and ask for a change in the reporting set-up) but if there’s any risk that it will be perceived that way at some point, it’s in everyone’s interest for you to disclose the situation and get ahead of it.
I’m sorry this happened. It’s a major betrayal by a friend and, on her side, of a patient.
Texas builders warn mass deportations of undocumented migrants could devastate the construction industry, threatening housing and infrastructure work in one of the nation's fastest-growing states.
Major Thanksgiving Day/Friday storm possible in the Eastern U.S., with snow possible in the interior or Ontario.
Cold air mass follows into the weekend.
Surge of mid-winter cold follows next Sunday into the first week of December, primarily for the Midwest, Great Lakes, and Northeast.
With hurricane season now behind us, it’s time to talk about winter. And if you live in the eastern two-thirds of the country, you’re going to see a pretty impressive dose of it incoming after Thanksgiving.
Active weather to kick off the week
The weather map today shows a continued pattern allowing for moisture in the West with several feet of snow coming to the Sierra Nevada. A major warm up is going to occur in the South-Central U.S., while colder air exits the Northeast.
An active weather pattern will deliver heavy snow to California and a major warm up in Texas (Tropical Tidbits)
In fact, Monday will see record highs possible across southeastern Texas, including for Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, as well into Shreveport. Most of these records were set back in 1967, which would have been late in that year’s Thanksgiving weekend.
Record or near-record highs are forecast on Monday in Texas. (NOAA)
The snow forecast in California will be in feet, and “extreme” winter weather conditions are expected in the Sierra. As much as 7 feet of snow may fall at the highest elevations, giving California a big jump start on their water year snowpack.
Extreme impacts from snow are expected in the high Sierra. (Pivotal Weather)
First wave of cold
One cold front will sweep across the country Wednesday and Thursday, ushering in cooler temperatures on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.
Friday’s forecast temperature departures from normal, shows widespread colder than normal conditions everywhere except the Desert Southwest, Maine, and South Florida. (Tropical Tidbits)
The first wave of cold is likely to come with a winter storm in the Eastern US, followed by lake effect snow as well. There is a great deal of uncertainty as to where heavier snow may fall on Thanksgiving Day and Friday, but portions of Ontario, interior northern New England, and Upstate New York would be firmly in the potential.
Extremely uncertain and wide-ranging forecast spread in possible positions of low pressure center on Thanksgiving Day and Friday leads to high uncertainty on snow placement. (Tomer Burg)
But for a 5-day out forecast, this is a really significant spread in possibilities. A track toward the Mid-Atlantic would keep the heavier snow firmly in place for portions of New York and perhaps Pennsylvania too. A track over Upstate New York would probably push the heavier snow back into Ontario. Either way, Thanksgiving Day travel in the Northeast and eastern Great Lakes will likely be impeded by this system. Start planning now.
Second wave of cold; the real deal
For those looking for winter air, you will get your wish after Friday or Saturday. A second surge of cold air, almost direct from Siberia is going to plunge into the Great Lakes and Midwest. This will usher in the coldest air since last winter, along with all the stuff that comes with it: Biting wind chills, potential for major lake effect snow, and at least a chance of additional snows here or there. For folks in Texas, it will turn colder but not nearly to the levels we’ve seen at times the last few winters. This cold is primarily directed into the Midwest and Northeast.
Coldest air since last winter plunges into the Midwest, Great Lakes, and Northeast late in the holiday weekend and during the week after. (Tropical Tidbits)
What does this translate to? We’re likely talking about highs in the 20s in Chicago and lows in the single digits or low teens. Similar temperatures would occur elsewhere in the Great Lakes and Midwest, so places like Cleveland, Detroit, Indy, and Minneapolis would all experience mid-winter type cold. Bottom line? Winter is coming.
Beyond that, December will probably see a bit of a warm-up after the first week, but it may take some time to dislodge the cold. Either way, November is going to go out with a bang across the Eastern U.S.
In brief: High temperatures on Monday and Wednesday will flirt with record highs before a front on Thanksgiving—likely during the morning hours—surges into Houston. This will bring us seasonal weather for the holiday, and likely keep us in a cool pattern well into December.
Late November heat
Sunday’s high temperature officially reached 83 degrees at Bush Intercontinental Airport, 1 degree below the all-time record of 84 degrees set back in 1910. Today should be slightly warmer across the metro area, with highs generally in the mid- to upper-80s. So the all-time record for today, 86 degrees (set in 1967) is definitely in play.
We could have one more chance to set a record high on Wednesday, when the daily record high is 84 degrees (set in 1989). The normal high temperature for this time of year, in case you were wondering, is 70 degrees. This November has a chance to be the warmest November on record, but a cold snap later this week could pull us back from the abyss. We’ll see.
Monday’s high temperatures will be sizzling in South Texas, with a front keeping North Texas cooler. (Weather Bell)
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Monday
With a persistent onshore flow today, we’ll see warm and humid conditions, with highs in the mid-80s for much of the area, and a few locations likely reaching the upper 80s. Skies will be mostly sunny, with a southerly wind at about 10 mph. As noted above, this is abnormally warm for this time of year, but a front is coming to bring some short-lived relief. I cannot entirely rule out a very isolated shower with the front this evening, but for the most part we’ll just see drier air moving into the region by around sunset, and during the evening and overnight hours. Low temperatures will fall into the 50s tonight.
Tuesday
Our weather will be seasonal on Tuesday, with mostly sunny skies, drier air, and highs of around 70 degrees. Winds will be from the north, and perhaps a bit gusty. As winds turn easterly and then southeasterly overnight, lows will fall to around 60 degrees as humidity starts to return.
Wednesday
I’m going to make a bold prediction, and if I’m wrong I’m sure there will be plenty of people to point it out. However, I think Wednesday will be our last 80-degree day of the year. And it’s going to be a warm one, with highs in the mid-80s (and as noted above, with a record high in play). Mostly sunny skies will aid in the warming, and it will be plenty humid as well. Lows will drop into the 60s.
Thanksgiving
We can all give thanks that a stronger front will arrive in Houston on Thursday. The timing is still a little bit up in the air, but most of our modeling guidance suggests the front should reach Houston by around sunrise or shortly after. There is unlikely to be any rainfall with the front, but it will usher some stronger northerly winds into the area. We’ll likely see northerly gusts up to 20 or 25 mph. Skies start out mostly cloudy in the morning, but I expect some clearing during the daytime. Expect highs in the upper 60s for most locations, with overnight lows dropping into the 40s in Houston, with upper 30s possible for some outlying areas.
Friday morning will be rather cold. (Weather Bell)
Friday
Friday, or for some dedicated shoppers Black Friday, will be clear and cool. Expect a breezy and chilly morning. Skies will be mostly sunny, likely with highs in the low 60s. Temperatures on Friday night should fall to around 50 degrees in Houston, with colder conditions in outlying areas.
Saturday, Sunday, and beyond
We’ll start to see a bit of a warming trend on Saturday, with highs probably in the upper 60s. However a reinforcing front (with a very slight chance of rain) is likely to keep a lid on temperatures. Highs on Sunday should be in the low 60s or thereabouts. Nights stay chilly.
Most of next week will remain on the cooler side, with highs in the 60s, and lows in the 40s to lower 50s. Beginning Sunday night or Monday we’ll also see an increased chance of rain and cloudier skies. Alas it will be December by then, so I won’t be able to describe it as a cold November rain …
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has faced scrutiny over his claims on vaccines, fluoride, nutrition, and more. The Onion fact-checks Kennedy on health.
Claim: Fluoride is a “toxic pollutant” and “industrial waste” that should be taken out of public drinking water.
False: Water fluoridation is a completely safe way to turn the population gay.
Claim: Raw milk is good for you.
False: We’re pretty sure he’s thinking of yogurt.
Claim: Direct-to-consumer advertising for pharmaceuticals is harmful.
False: For many Americans, these ads are the only opportunity they have to watch a woman sea kayak with her husband.
Claim: RFK Jr.’s health claims have proven to increase lifespans.
True: However, it is easy to beat the average Kennedy lifespan.
Claim: Lobbyists need to be removed from the healthcare process.
True: But good luck with that, big guy.
Claim: Antidepressants cause mass shootings.
Unverified: No one will ever know what causes mass shootings, so there’s no point in even thinking about them.
Claim: Chinese citizens are far less susceptible to Covid-19 than Americans.
Partially true: With RFK Jr. in charge, pretty much everyone will be healthier than Americans.
The Houston Airport System has unveiled a site-specific large-scale glass installation by Dale Chihuly at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH).
The commissioned piece, Coastal Prairie Fiori, is the newest addition to the Houston Airport System’s Public Art Program and is Mr. Chihuly’s largest airport installation to date. The 80-foot-long, 20-foot-wide, and 20-foot-deep work is inspired by native flora from the Gulf Coast region and is composed of 537 unique hand-blown glass pieces ranging from 14 to 28 inches in diameter. The pieces are arranged on five armatures, which are suspended over a TSA screening area within the new International Central Processor, a central hub designed to provide better passenger flow and international processing.
In a press release, Jim Szczesniak, the Houston Airports Director of Aviation, remarked, “The installation of Coastal Prairie Fiori represents our commitment to enhancing the international passenger experience through art that captures Houston’s natural beauty and cultural vibrancy. As a key part of our larger IAH Terminal Redevelopment Program, the new International Central Processor provides an ideal space to showcase this impressive installation, which we hope will inspire and captivate travelers from around the world.”
Mr. Chihuly stated, “The way an installation interacts with a space — its light, dimensions, energy — is important to me as an artist. The relationship between art and its environment is key. Coastal Prairie Fiori embodies that relationship; its hundreds of elements, which combined with the natural light that pours in through Bush Airport’s atrium, transform the space. The way this shifting light interacts with the glass is incredibly dynamic.”
Learn more about the Houston Airport System’s Public Art Program via its website.
THE HEAVENS—The color noticeably returning to His white beard as His cheeks began to flush with a youthful glow, celestial sources reported Monday that God has looked 400 millennia younger since He began undergoing a controversial procedure in which He is infused with His son’s blood. “I had my doubts at first, but as soon as He started receiving those blood of Christ transfusions, it was like He had a whole new lease on eternal life,” said Regis Anderson, a longtime resident of heaven who observed that God’s soft tissues, which had begun to sag with age, appeared rejuvenated and tighter now that He had committed to a regimen that makes use of the Most Precious Blood of His only begotten son. “Sure, the whole thing seems pretty woo-woo, but you can’t argue with those results. His eyes are brighter, His confidence has skyrocketed—I wouldn’t be surprised if He finally starts creating again.” Reached for comment, heaven’s medical officials stated that God had been warned of the severe health risk He faces if His son’s blood transubstantiates back into wine after entering His bloodstream.
BETHESDA, MD—Brightening the day of those least important to her, local man Amanda Langston told reporters Monday that she wasted her good mood on her coworkers. “I cannot believe I squandered this rush of happy feelings on my stupid colleagues,” said Langston, explaining that the period of unusually high spirits from 9 a.m. until noon spent interacting with her fellow employees would have been better utilized on a first date, at a family gathering, or with literally any other people on the planet. “This sort of joie de vivre doesn’t come around often. So when it does, I have to make it count, not fritter it away smiling and collaborating with the people I’m paid to be around. Ugh, I’m never getting those water cooler jokes or perfectly timed compliments back.” At press time, Langston was upset that all she had to show for her jovial state was an increase in workplace productivity.
The far right grows through "disaster fantasies" (permalink)
The core of the prepper fantasy: "What if the world ended in the precise way that made me the most important person?" The ultra-rich fantasize about emerging from luxury bunkers with an army of mercs and thumbdrives full of bitcoin to a world in ruins that they restructure using their "leadership skills."
The ethnographer Rich Miller spent his career embedding with preppers, eventually writing the canonical book of the fantasies that power their obsessions, Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times:
Miller recounts how the disasters that preppers prepare for are the disasters that will call upon their skills, like the water chemist who's devoted his life to preparing to help his community recover from a terrorist attack on its water supply; and who, when pressed, has no theory as to why any terrorist would stage such an attack:
Prepping is what happens when you are consumed by the fantasy of a terrible omnicrisis that you can solve, personally. It's an individualistic fantasy, and that makes it inherently neoliberal. Neoliberalism's mind-zap is to convince us all that our only role in society is as an individual ("There is no such thing as society" – M. Thatcher). If we have a workplace problem, we must bargain with our bosses, and if we lose, our choices are to quit or eat shit. Under no circumstances should we solve labor disputes through a union, especially not one that wins strong legal protections for workers and then holds the government's feet to the fire.
Same with bad corporate conduct: getting ripped off? Caveat emptor! Vote with your wallet and take your business elsewhere. Elections are slow and politics are boring. But "vote with your wallet" turns retail therapy into a form of civics.
This individualistic approach to problem solving does useful work for powerful people, because it keeps the rest of us thoroughly powerless. Voting with your wallet is casting a ballot in a rigged election that's always won by the people with the thickest wallets, and statistically, that's never you. That's why the right is so obsessed with removing barriers to election spending: the wealthy can't win a one-person/one-vote election (to be in the 1% is to be outnumbered 99:1), but unlimited campaign spending lets the wealthy vote in real elections using their wallets, not just just ballots.
You can't recycle your way out of the climate emergency. Practically speaking, you can't even recycle. All those plastics you lovingly washed and sorted ended up in a landfill or floating in the ocean. Plastics recycling is a hoax perpetrated by the petrochemical industry, who knew all along that their products would never be recycled. These despoilers convinced us to view the systemic rot of corporate ecocide as an individual matter, chiding us about "littering" and exhorting us to sort our garbage:
We are bombarded by real problems that require urgent solutions that can only be resolved through collective action, which we are told is impossible. This is an objectively frightening state of affairs, and it makes people go nuts.
At the start of this century, in the weeks before 9/11, a message-board poster calling himself Gecko45 went Web 1.0 viral by earnestly bullshitting about his job as a mall security guard, doing battle with heavily armed gangs, human traffickers, and ravening monsters. Gecko45's posts were unhinged: he started out seeking advice for doubling up on body-armor to protect him while he deployed his smoke bombs and his partner assembled a high-powered rifle. Though Gecko45 was apparently sincere, he drew tongue-in-cheek replies from the other posters on GlockTalk, who soon dubbed him the "Mall Ninja":
The Mall Ninja professed to patrolling a suburban shopping mall while armed with 15 firearms as he carried out his duties as "Sergeant of a three-man Rapid Tactical Force at one of America’s largest indoor retail shopping areas." His qualifications? Mastery "of three martial arts including ninjitsu, which means I can wear the special boots to climb walls."
The Mall Ninja's fantasy of a single brave individual, defending the sleepy populace from violent, armed mobs is instantly recognizable as an ancestor to today's right wing fantasy of America's cities as "no-go zones" filled with "open air drug markets," patrolled by MS-13 and antifa super-soldiers. And while the Mall Ninja drew derision – even from the kinds of people who hang out on a message board called "GlockTalk" – today, his brand of fantasy wins elections.
On Jacobin, Olly Haynes interviews the political writer Richard Seymour about this phenomenon:
Seymour's latest book is Disaster Nationalism:The Downfall of Liberal Civilization, an exploration of the strange obsessions of the right with imaginary disasters in the midst of real ones:
You know these imaginary disasters: "FEMA death camps, 'great replacement theory,' the 'Great Reset,' fifteen-minute cities, 5G towers being beacons of mind control, and microchips installed in people through vaccines." As Seymour writes, these conspiracy fantasies are proliferated by authoritarian regimes and their supporters, especially as real disasters rage around them.
For example, during the Oregon wildfires, people who were threatened by blazing forests that hit 800'C refused to evacuate because they'd been convinced that the fires were set by antifa arsonists in a bid to "wipe out white conservative Christians." They barricaded themselves in their fire-threatened homes, brandishing guns and prepping for the antifa mob.
Seymour says that this "disaster nationalism" "processes disaster in a way that is actually quite enlivening." Confronted with the helplessness of a real disaster that can only be solved through the collective action you've been told is both impossible and a Communist plot, you retreat to an individualistic disaster fantasy that you can play an outsized role in. Every crisis – the climate emergency, poverty, a toxic environment – is replaced by "bad people" and you can go get them.
For authoritarian politicians, a world of bad people at the gates who can only be stopped by "the good guys" makes for great politics. It impels proto-fascist movements to electoral victories, all over the world: in the US, of course, but Seymour also analyzes this as the phenomenon behind the electoral victories of authoritarian ethno-nationalists in India, Israel, Brazil, and all over the world.
I find Seymour's analysis bracing and clarifying. It explains the right's tendency to obsess over the imaginary at the expense of the real. Think of conservatives' obsession with imaginary and hypothetical children, from Qanon's child trafficking conspiracies to the forced birth movement's fixation on "the unborn."
It's not just that these kids don't exist – it's that the right is either indifferent or actively hostile to real children. Qanon peaked at the same time as Trump's "kids in cages" family separation policy, which saw thousands of kids separated from their parents, many forever, as a deliberate policy.
The forced birth movement spent decades fighting to overturn Roe in the name of saving "the unborn" – even as its leaders were also overturning the Child Tax Credit, the most successful child poverty alleviation measure in American history. Actual children were left to sink into food insecurity and precarity, to be enlisted to work overnight shifts in meat-packing plants, to fall into homelessness – even as the movement celebrated the "culture of life" that would rescue hypothetical children.
Lifting kids out of poverty and building a world where parents can afford to raise as many children as they care to have is a collective endeavor. Firebombing abortion clinics or storming into a pizza parlor with an assault rifle is an individual rescue fantasy that escapes into the world.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
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Brandon, Manitoba – Robert Jones is praying for a miracle as the Canada Post strike enters its second week – the miracle of postal workers putting down their picket signs, shutting the fuck up, and getting back to work. “Postal workers across the country have it too good,” says Jones, who believes that the workers’ […]
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