Lurker > Antifar

The weather would be intolerable, but the politics would also be intolerable.

Golden Sun

Update:
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/usc-cancels-all-commencement-speakers-amid-valedictorian-speech-controversy/

The Saudis and Russia will try, but I don't think it'll get that high

https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3kql7occusn27

SpawnShadow posted...

Aren't the likes of Starbucks and Tesla currently trying to have Republican judges effectively destroy the NLRB? This victory may well be fleeting.

Getting rid of the NLRB wouldn't liquidate existing unions

Enclave posted...

This is good assuming VW doesn't close the plant in response.

VW being a German company, basically all their plants are unionized.

Bishop_Hastur posted...

I've been trying to read Hopscotch by Julio Cortzar for a while now but it's a real slog.

Are you reading it "linearly" or with the "supplemental" chapters?

Bump

Aloc posted...

There are less people that play certain sports. Hence they make less money.

That is not how the economy works.

The disparity between rugby and football salaries probably speaks, as much as anything, to the difference between the Australian market and the US one. There are a lot more people here!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/04/19/vw-uaw-tennessee-vote/

Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., passed a historic vote to join the United Auto Workers, the union said Friday, becoming the first Southern auto factory to approve a union with an election since the 1940s.

The unions unofficial vote count, which still must be confirmed by federal labor officials conducting the ballot, showed 73 percent of workers had voted yes by 10 pm E.T. on Friday night. It will take a simple majority for the vote to pass.

The vote marks a victory for the UAW and for organized labor, which has faced years of difficulty organizing factories in Southern states. The UAW has twice previously failed to unionize the VW plant, in 2014 and 2019. The plant will join a handful of other unionized auto factories in the South, where local laws and customs have made it hard for unions to make inroads.

The victory came after a concerted campaign by local VW workers, assisted by UAW staff, who rallied workers to their cause by pledging that the union would help them fight for better health care and retirement benefits and more paid time off.

The union campaign also delivers a political victory for President Biden, who won the UAWs endorsement earlier this year and has supported union expansion efforts.

The National Labor Relations Board is s expected to issue the formal results later Friday.

Oh yeah, I have to use Edge at work and that homepage is wild. Every day there's some article about "Electric Vehicles Can't Be Trusted" on there. Ditto the default news tab thing Windows has.

Is it good that Microsoft is megaphoning this stuff onto unsuspecting customers?

Transistor does something similar, iirc

Psych_RN posted...

IDK why I wouldnt want to stay, being a Republican voter, seeing as youre all so welcoming and all.

You aren't welcome. Hope this helps

The economy is doing good actually.

Sometimes conspiracy brain just doesn't have a clear partisan valence.

Tensions are high at Columbia University over the Israel-Hamas war and the school's response to ongoing protests on campus.

School administrators have restricted campus access to students and staff with university IDs.

Shouting and chanting resumed early Friday morning from the direction of the school's main lawn, where it appears pro-Palestinian demonstrators have reoccupied the area for a third straight day. Video from overhead showed protesters sprawling on sleeping bags and mats, with banners and Palestinian flags laid out around them. They are demanding a cease-fire in Gaza and for the university to divest from Israel.

The NYPD arrested more than 100 people Thursday at the encampment they set up on the main lawn, as demonstrations continued on and off the school's campus in Upper Manhattan.

"I didn't think there was a safety concern at all, because they were actually passing out food to everybody coming by, they were really interacting. It was really nice to see, actually, the community coming together on both sides," one student told CBS New York.

Police monitored activities near campus for most of the day Thursday and made some arrests before confronting students at the makeshift tent city. Officers in riot gear shut down the street at 114th Street and Broadway with seven correctional buses, and then removed students from the encampment.

"We were walking around different parts of campus to occupy that space and demand that our voices be heard," one Columbia student said. "And when I showed up, everybody had already been arrested."

"One by one, these cops got each of the encampment protesters sitting down and standing up and put them in zip ties and walked them," another student said. "It's a very difficult time for a lot of people. I think it's unfortunate that it's come down to this."

"Clearly, as you see, the school does not have any effort to help protect the students who are peacefully protesting," pro-Palestinian protester and student Jin Hookky said.

In a letter, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik asked the NYPD to move in, writing "I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University."

"With great regret, we request the NYPD's help to remove these individuals," she wrote.

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/supporters-of-palestinians-israel-clash-outside-columbia-universitys-campus-gate/

Bump

https://bsky.app/profile/nytimes.com/post/3kqgncud2lq22
What does this look like in practice? Like a chatbot showing up in your replies claiming to be a parent
https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social/post/3kqgnnr45y622

Bump

WingsOfGood posted...

unemployment must be through the roof all these big companies have been laying off like every month since end of last year

Unemployment remains under 4 percent because tech is a small portion of the economy.

Also consider that athletes are privy to information the public is not, and using that info, even to bet on your own team's success, really calls into question the legitimacy and fairness the whole gambling pyramid is built on. It's like insider trading.

https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-gaza-blinken-leahy-sanctions-human-rights-violations

A special State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses.

But Blinken has failed to act on the proposal in the face of growing international criticism of the Israeli militarys conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials.

The incidents under review mostly took place in the West Bank and occurred before Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Israel. They include reports of extrajudicial killings by the Israeli Border Police; an incident in which a battalion gagged, handcuffed and left an elderly Palestinian American man for dead; and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.

Recommendations for action against Israeli units were sent to Blinken in December, according to one person familiar with the memo. Theyve been sitting in his briefcase since then, another official said.

A State Department spokesperson told ProPublica the agency takes its commitment to uphold U.S. human rights laws seriously. This process is one that demands a careful and full review, the spokesperson said, and the department undergoes a fact-specific investigation applying the same standards and procedures regardless of the country in question.

The revelations about Blinkens failure to act on the recommendations come at a delicate moment in U.S.-Israel relations. Six months into its war against Hamas, whose militants massacred 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240 more on Oct. 7, the Israeli military has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, according to local authorities. Recently, President Joe Biden has signaled increased frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the widespread civilian casualties.

Multiple State Department officials who have worked on Israeli relations said that Blinkens inaction has undermined Bidens public criticism, sending a message to the Israelis that the administration was not willing to take serious steps.

The recommendations came from a special committee of State Department officials known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum. The panel, made up of Middle East and human rights experts, is named for former Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chief author of 1997 laws that requires the U.S. to cut off assistance to any foreign military or law enforcement units from battalions of soldiers to police stations that are credibly accused of flagrant human rights violations.

The Guardian reported this year that the State Department was reviewing several of the incidents but had not imposed sanctions because the U.S. government treats Israel with unusual deference. Officials told ProPublica that the panel ultimately recommended that the secretary of state take action.

This story is drawn from interviews with present and former State Department officials as well as government documents and emails obtained by ProPublica. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.

Enclave posted...

Can you find any exploit in being allowed to bet that your team is going to win?

Are they going to bet the same amount every game?

Is that good

Those are allergies

Update:
https://bsky.app/profile/brainnotonyet.bsky.social/post/3kqchn6kkha2k

Kradek posted...

That's odd because I recall Zuck recently saying they wouldn't be monitoring misinformation as they did in 2020.

That may well be true, but de-amplifying politics content could still have the effect of keeping the spread of that stuff contained.

I visited for a long weekend with friends a couple years ago. Really nice time, we went to a bunch of sporting events and the weather (early September) was great.

The Museum of Pop Culture was fun, and I liked the aquarium as well.

https://bsky.app/profile/malraux.bsky.social/post/3kqbjexdcaf2z

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b081f0d1.jpg
Lol

What would you know about post quality?

Kradek posted...

FB's political discussion, in contrast, is known for being right-wing boomers shitting it up and Zuckerberg saying he no longer cares about curtailing it or promoting the truth.

So actually this is shifting, mostly because FB is downplaying political content
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/conservative-digital-media-traffic/678055/

For years, Facebooks mysterious algorithms served up links to news and commentary articles, sending droves of traffic to their publishers. But those days are gone. Amid criticism from elected officials and academics who said the social-media giant was spreading hate speech and harmful misinformation, including Russian propaganda, before the 2016 election, Facebook apparently came to question the value of featuring news on its platform. In early 2018, it began deemphasizing news content, giving greater priority to content posted by friends and family members. In 2021, it tightened the tap a little further. This past February, it announced that it would do the same on Instagram and Threads. All of this monkeying with the internets plumbing drastically reduced the referral traffic flowing to news and commentary sites. The changes have affected everyone involved in digital media, including some liberal-leaning sitessuch as Slate (which saw a 42 percent traffic drop), the Daily Beast (41 percent), and Vox (62 percent, after losing its two most prominent writers)but the impact appears to have been the worst, on average, for conservative media. (Referral traffic from Google has also declined over the past few years, but far less sharply.)

I would take this site's reporting with a big grain of salt given that I best know them for making shit up about the murder of George Floyd
https://bsky.app/profile/radleybalko.bsky.social/post/3kpzkst2ufi2i
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retconning-of-george-floyd

SpawnShadow posted...

I'm pretty sure Twitter has never been the most used social media platform, even before the Muskrat bought it and turned it into a steaming pile of Xitter. Pretty sure Facebook still has that dubious honor.

Yeah, it's way behind FB, YouTube, even Snapchat IIRC in terms of usage. But, it has historically catered to a news and politics heavy user base, a lot of journalists are on there, so it's had an outsized role in the Discourse.

Zikten posted...

What are the odds that the US government ever tries to ban Twitter, based on this information?

Zero

The people who can typically be counted on to decry the "anti-free speech" "cancel culture" of college campuses will mostly be silent on this, because it was never really about free speech, but about who you have to listen to.

I think attributing current divisions to foreign propaganda when we have perfectly good American propaganda is misguided.

Crimsoness posted...

That's why he bought it

That's correct.

OJ died like 5 days ago, the story was already over

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-musk-nazi-extremist-white-nationalist-accounts-rcna145020

Elon Musks X is a thriving hub for Nazi support and propaganda, with paid subscribers sharing speeches by Adolf Hitler or content praising his genocidal regime.

NBC News found that at least 150 paid Premium subscriber X accounts and thousands of unpaid accounts have posted or amplified pro-Nazi content on X in recent months, often in apparent violation of Xs rules. The paid accounts posting the content all consistently posted antisemitic or pro-Nazi material. Examples included praise of Nazi soldiers, sharing of Nazi symbols and denials of the Holocaust.

The pro-Nazi content is not confined to the fringes of the platform. During one seven-day period in March, seven of the most widely shared pro-Nazi posts on X accrued 4.5 million views in total. One post with 1.9 million views promoted a false and long-debunked conspiracy theory that 6 million Jews did not die in the Holocaust. More than 5,300 verified and unverified accounts reshared that post, and other popular posts were reshared hundreds of times apiece.

Xs policies ban glorifying violence a broad prohibition that X has sometimes used to take down pro-Nazi content and accounts. The rules also ban praising violent entities and say the platform will apply labels to hate imagery like swastikas. But NBC News found that X does not appear to be enforcing those policies consistently.

The findings are the latest evidence of a flourishing Nazi network on X under Musks ownership. Previous investigations by news organizations and anti-hate watchdogs have documented many examples of antisemitism, white supremacy and support for Nazism on X.

NBC News found the Nazi propaganda posts by browsing the platform: scrolling through replies, clicking on user profiles and looking through the engagements on viral posts. NBC News conducted its review during one week in late March. The number of verified subscribers posting pro-Nazi material may be significantly more than 150. When NBC News conducted its review, Premium subscribers had the option to hide their verification check marks from the public.

The verified users sharing the pro-Nazi content have entered into a mutually beneficial relationship with Musks X, paying $8 a month or more for premium services that are available to all premium subscribers. In exchange, they get prioritization when they reply to posts and the opportunity to monetize their content through ads, according to the subscription terms.

The result is that X is bringing Nazi sympathizers in from the dark corners of the internet to a massive platform where they can pay to amplify their content. X had 174 million daily active users worldwide on its mobile app in February, according to the research firm Sensor Tower. X claims to have many more than that.

NBC News conducted its research in March, before X implemented a change to provide free premium subscriptions to accounts with more than 2,500 verified followers. That move has made it more difficult to determine who is a paid subscriber.

A welcoming social media environment can make Nazi sympathizers feel validated in their views and recruit others to their cause, said Patrick Riccards, executive director of Life After Hate, a Milwaukee-based organization that helps people disengage from violent extremist groups.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/04/16/amazon-hq2-jobs-arlington-virginia/

Amazon has fallen so far behind schedule in creating new jobs at its Northern Virginia headquarters that its workforce at those offices shrank last year, the company confirmed, underscoring how a project that it had initially pitched as an economic jolt is instead hitting a slowdown.

Following a much-hyped sweepstakes across North America several years ago, the tech giant made a deal with state and local officials to locate half of its HQ2 in Arlington, just outside D.C.: In exchange for as much as $750 million in taxpayer subsidies from Virginia, it agreed to build a massive new campus near the Pentagon and fill it with tens of thousands of new employees.

The company was supposed to gradually add 25,000 new jobs at HQ2 by the end of the decade, according to its agreement with the commonwealth, including more than 2,500 new jobs last year. Instead, it lost more than 200 existing positions in Arlington in 2023 a drop-off that will likely affect how much money it receives from the state. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Last year we made the tough decision to eliminate a small percentage of corporate roles and to slow hiring around the globe, which impacted our forecast growth in HQ2, Holly Sullivan, the companys vice president of worldwide economic development, said in a statement Monday evening.

Sullivan said the company has not abandoned its target of 25,000 jobs. She called the project a long-term investment and noted that there are 1,000 open positions at HQ2, where two soaring office towers part of a total $2 billion investment opened last year.

But amid a shift in work habits prompted by the coronavirus pandemic and a squeeze in the tech industry, the downturn in hiring marks another setback in the boost Amazon had initially promised to the area. Even as its contractor began installing utilities last month on an empty plot of land at HQ2, construction on another three office buildings and futuristic Helix supposed to go there has been on pause for more than a year.

https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3kq7tpl6ffn2e

Remember: The NYT published an op-ed he wrote in 2020 calling for a military response to BLM protests

You're looking for Devil May Cry

Search your heart, you know there's a right answer

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-15/volkswagen-vw-union-vote-uaw-is-winning-over-workers

The United Auto Workers is on the cusp of a significant milestone in its audacious effort to grow by 150,000 people across 13 automakers, including Tesla Inc., BMW AG and Nissan Motor Co.

This week, a Volkswagen AG factory will vote on whether to become the only foreign commercial carmaker unionized in the US. It would also be the first vehicle plant to join the UAW since last falls strike led to record-breaking wage gains, giving the union a key foothold in the South.

Were going to be the first domino to fall and encourage these other plants to get out there with us, said Isaac Meadows, a member of the organizing committee at the Tennessee factory.

The UAW has been banking on one victory to spawn others, like how the Starbucks union used a win at a New York State cafe in 2021 to helporganize hundreds more. Other UAW efforts are underway in various stages at dozens of plants across the US, including Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Toyota, Rivian and Tesla sites.

If the union movement is going to make a legitimate comeback, its going to be through these types of Volkswagen, Mercedes elections, said Roger King, senior labor and employment counsel for the HR Policy Association. Success at those plants could also show that UAW President Shawn Fain is the real thing, and hes going to deliver on his promise to totally unionize auto production in this country, King said.

A defeat at VW, however, could do as much to derail momentum as a victory would fuel it.

While several companies raised wages at non-union plants after the UAWs historic contract victories, generous concessions to unionized workers may ultimately force other cost-cutting moves like layoffs, business advocates say. Automakers have said steep labor costs could endanger their competitiveness, particularly while spending billions on the rocky transition to electric vehicles.

Active UAW membership has plummeted from a peak of 1.5 million in the 1970s to around 370,000 today due in large part to a failure to organize foreign automakers US factories. At the VW plant in Chattanooga, the union narrowlylost two elections one in 2014 and another in 2019.

During the most recent attempt, the UAW was facing a federal investigation into corruption among union officials. Yolanda Peoples, a 13-year employee at the factory, said workers were afraid to vocally support the union out of fear for losing their jobs. Ahead of the vote, VW brought in Tennessees governor and deployed the plants then-chief executive officer to urge workers to vote no, according to employees who worked there at the time.

This time around, the UAW has recruited hundreds of people to the plants organizing committee, boosting their odds of success. Collectively, they have relationships with over 90% of the 4,300 person staff, according to employees. That helped the union sign up what it says is a supermajority of the plants employees before petitioning for a vote.

When we started this campaign, you didnt talk very openly in the plant about a union, said Meadows. Now its all we talk about.

UAWs recent contract wins for around 150,000 workers at Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Sellantis NV have been a major selling point. I want my life to be more like their life, said VW employee Chris Brown.

I wouldn't say that this has always been the most productive use of my time. It was pointed out to me once, via the badges tracking, that I am one of the two or three most prolific topic creators on GameFAQs. But I have found a community here, for better and for worse, and it's a damn shame what capital is doing to this community.

Glad I got out of purg two weeks ago

From the NYT's live coverage
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/d94f1618.jpg