This guy used to write a Substack that I’d read as I had time, but usually always got to his Links writeup. You can see this week’s here; all the bits are choice, but I’m snipping one into this post. It’s a varied lot, but there’s at least something for everyone. When you need something to read, take a look!
Breakfast from the supermarket and bakery, for three people, costs a shade over 7 euros. Two fancy-pants coffees to-go costs a shade over 8 euros.
That seems like the right kind of gearing? Essentials are easily within reach; luxury items you have to think about.
Essentials are like: basic groceries, broadband/phone, roads, education, healthcare, energy, water, rent up to a certain amount etc. “Normal” coffee, house wine, that kind of thing.
It’s very hard to justify, in my head, why these should be the province of profit-seeking companies. Given we all have to have them, why should some people get to leach on that? Yes the profits are taxed but that’s an inefficient way to collect extra money from citizens.
We all form a government which is a kind of enlarged co-operative really. Why don’t we make a basket of essentials, democratically argued about and iterated over time, then nationalise not-for-profits to run supply chains and shops for them?
Just… take essentials out of the for-profit bit of the economy.
Our priorities have lost their way somewhere along the line.
And good for for-profit companies too, right? People without broadband can’t buy from Shein; can’t receive deliveries from Amazon. People without their health, without education can’t staff them. Remove the friction by making essentials work. (snip)
Come to Europe and get low-key radicalised haha
The EU may (or may not) be making technology policy missteps, but they are gently and patiently promoting a certain way of life which feels globally very, very special, and fundamentally counter to the hypercapitalism found elsewhere. (emph. mine-Ali)
Honestly I’d like to see serious economic papers that compare the two approaches. Why not do it this way? Why not go further and, as I suggested, choose radical nationalised businesses for essentials? Genuinely what is the problem with that? Why isn’t it simply obvious that we should live our lives in comfort, with room to participate and be kind to each other, and knock off early to go to the beach early on sunny days? And that’s not compatible with profit-extracting water suppliers etc, and shops run by people not just on minimum wage but without any kind of employment protection?
Why can’t politicians propose these kind of ideas, even as a generational directional plan rather than an election promise, without getting yelled at? (snip)
Happy Labor Day! Let’s Talk About Some Awesome Ladies Of The Labor Movement by Rebecca SchoenkopfRead on Substack
Because it was not actually just a bunch of flannel-wearing white dudes.
A version of this article was initially published on May 1, 2019. Happy Labor Day, we’re taking the day off!
When we talk about the history of feminism, we tend to think about the causes and struggles of middle class white women. When we talk about labor history, we tend to think about the causes and struggles of white working class men.
And that is some absolute bullshit.
Working class women, very often women of color and immigrant women, were, are and always have been the backbone of the labor movement. They were working and organizing well before Second Wave Feminism “made it possible” for women to enter the workforce. They’re the ones who first fought for equal pay, and they’re the ones who were doing the bulk of feminist work and activism during the years in between getting the right to vote and The Feminine Mystique. They are still fighting today.
So, since it’s Labor Day, let’s celebrate the hell out of them, starting with the woman who started it all.
Lucy Parsons
‘Governments never lead; they follow progress. When the prison, stake or scaffold can no longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress moves on a step, but not until then.’
“More dangerous than a thousand rioters,” anarchist Lucy Eldine Gonzalez Parsons was a writer, orator, one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World, and tireless campaigner for the rights of people of color, all women, and all workers. Her husband, Albert Parsons, was one of the Haymarket martyrs.
We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it … but we have our labor. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men. Wherever wages are to be reduced, the capitalist class uses women to reduce them, and if there is anything that you men should do in the future, it is to organize the women.
Though Parsons and Emma Goldman were widely regarded as the most prominent female anarchists of the day, they very notably did not get along so well. Parsons believed that oppression based on gender and race was a function of capitalism and would be eliminated when capitalism was eliminated, whereas Goldman believed such oppression was inherent in all things. Parsons was all class struggle all the time, and felt that the “intellectual anarchists” like Goldman spent too much time bothering with appealing to the middle class.
One of her most important contributions to the labor movement was the concept of factory takeovers.
“My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out and starve, but to strike and remain in, and take possession of the necessary property of production.”
Parsons is best known for being the woman who really started the celebration of May Day as a day for workers’ rights — leading a parade to commemorate the anniversary of the Haymarket Affair. Soon, nearly every other country in the world followed suit and proclaimed this day International Worker’s Day. Alas, here in America, we go with the less radical and more picnic-y Labor Day that we are celebrating today, because Grover Cleveland thought a federal holiday commemorating the Haymarket Affair would encourage people to become anarchists and socialists, and no thank you, he did not want that.
Anna LoPizzo
‘Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread but give us roses too’
Not much is known about Anna LoPizzo, other than that she was a 34-year-old mill worker who was murdered by police officer Oscar Benoit during the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike — also known as the Bread and Roses Strike. Initially, police tried to charge two IWW organizers who were miles away for her murder, even though literally everyone there had seen Benoit shoot her.
The reason for the strike in the first place was that the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, cut worker pay after the state cut the number of hours women could legally work from 56 down to 54. The Industrial Workers of the World, led by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (we’ll get to her in a minute), organized more than 20,000 workers of more than 40 different nationalities to demand they get their fair wages. One of the primary tactics used in the strike was sending the starving families of the mill workers on a tour to New York City so that people there could see for themselves what these low wages were doing to children. Between that and LoPizzo’s death, sympathy was on the side of the workers. Congressional hearings into the conditions of the mills were held, and the mills themselves ended up settling the strike by giving all workers across New England a 20 percent raise.
Lillian Wald
‘Human interest and passion for human progress break down barriers centuries old.’
Susan B. Anthony isn’t the only important feminist buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery in my hometown of Rochester, New York. There is another. Her name was Lillian Wald, and she was a total fucking bad ass. She wasn’t just a suffragist — she was also an early advocate for healthcare for all people regardless of economic class or citizenship, a founding member of the NAACP, lobbied against child labor, advocated for the rights of immigrants, helped to found the Women’s Trade Union League, and was an anti-war activist. Wald also founded the Henry Street Settlement House in New York City, which provides — to this day — social services, education, and health care to the impoverished. And she was active in the ACLU.
WHY THE HELL IS SHE NOT MORE FAMOUS? I am legitimately bothered by this and bring it up often.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
‘The IWW has been accused of pushing women to the front. This is not true. Rather, the women have not been kept in back, and so they have naturally moved to the front.’
Hey! You know who was super freaking awesome? Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. As previously mentioned, she was an organizer with Industrial Workers of the World who helped organize the Lawrence Textile Strike. She also organized a hell of a lot of other strikes across the country, helped found the ACLU, and was known for the creative tactics she used to elicit sympathy and support for the American worker.
Hattie Canty
’Coming from Alabama, this seemed like the civil rights struggle … the labor movement and the civil rights movement, you cannot separate the two of them.’
When Hattie Canty’s husband died in 1972, she found herself supporting eight children on her own. She found work as a maid at a Las Vegas hotel where she joined the Las Vegas Hotel and Culinary Workers Union Local 226. By 1990, she was president of that union, leading one of the longest strikes in American history — a six year strike of hospitality workers which, happily, ended in victory.
The Women of The Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike
We mean business this week or no washing!
Back in the 1880s, only two decades after the Civil War ended, the most common occupation for Black women was as laundresses — this was largely because if poor white families were going to hire anyone to do chores for them at all, they were going to hire someone to do their laundry. These women were independent workers, often working from their own homes and making their own soap, and they only made about $4 a month. (Average non-Black-woman laborers earned about $35 a month in 1880.)
One day in 1881, about 20 of them got together and decided that $4 a month was some bullshit for all the work they were doing and decided to go on strike and demand wages of $1 for every 12 pounds of washing. Three weeks later, 3,000 other women joined them. Unsurprisingly, the city freaked out. They fined any participants $25 — which was a lot of money when you only made $4 a month — and they offered tax breaks to any corporation that would come down there to start a commercial steam cleaning business. Still, the women did not back down.
Eventually, people got really sick of doing their own laundry, and the city decided to back down on the fines, and accede to their demands for fear that the unrest would spread to other industries.
Dolores Huerta
‘Every minute a chance to change the world.’
Dolores Huerta, along with Cesar Chavez, helped to organize the National Farmworkers Association, which later became United Farm Workers. She wasn’t a farmworker herself — rather, she was an elementary school teacher who was tired of seeing the children she taught living in poverty because their parents were not making enough money as farmworkers.
I couldn’t tolerate seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.
Together with Chavez, Huerta organized the successful Delano Grape Strike (or as your mom calls it, “that time we couldn’t eat grapes for five years” or as Rebecca’s mom calls it “serious people don’t care if a boycott ‘ends'”), which led to better wages and working conditions for farmworkers, and she has continued working as an activist and an organizer ever since.
Angela Bambace
‘We did it with fear.’
Though she’s not as well known as some of the other women on here, Angela Bambace, an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union who started unionizing her fellow shirtwaist factory workers at age 18, is a personal hero of mine, along with her sister Maria. Angela was known to punch strikebreakers in the nose, which was pretty freaking badass.
She also left her husband and a traditional marriage in which she was confined to “making tomato sauce and homemade gnocchi” — and lost her parental rights in doing so, because back then, women didn’t have any — to fight for workers’ rights on the front lines. She was the first woman woman elected Vice-President of the ILGWU, which previously only had male leadership, where she worked from 1936 until 1972.
May Chen
’The Chinatown community then had more and more small garment factories and the Chinese employers thought they could play on ethnic loyalties to get the workers to turn away from the union. They were very, very badly mistaken.’
May Chen, also of the International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union, led the New York Chinatown strike of 1982 — 20,000 workers strong and one of the largest strikes in American history. As a result of the strike, employers cut back on wage cuts, gave workers time off for holidays and hired bilingual interpreters in order to accommodate the needs of immigrant workers.
Lucy Randolph Mason
‘When I came South I had no idea of the frequency of attacks on people peacefully pursuing legitimate purposes, I am appalled at the disregard of the most common civil rights and the dangers of bodily harm to which organizers often are exposed”‘
Lucy Randolph Mason was an interesting one. She was a well-off Southern lady from Virginia, related to George Mason (author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights), Supreme Court Justice John Marshall, and, uh, Robert E. Lee. So, you know, you might have an idea in your head about what her deal might be. And you would be so wrong.
So, despite being from this very fancy family, Lucy goes and gets a job as a secretary for the YWCA at 20. In 1918, she gets into the whole suffragette thing. Women get the vote, but Lucy’s not done. She starts organizing for labor rights and integration and ending white supremacy in the South. She organizes interfaith, integrated unions in the South, which you can imagine was a pretty big deal at that time. She does it through the YWCA. She writes a pamphlet telling consumers to boycott companies that don’t treat their workers well. Eventually, she becomes the CIO’s ambassador to the South and spends the next 16 years of her life going to all these small towns where bad things would happen to anyone who tried to unionize, and explaining workers’ rights and why integration is good and racism is bad to pretty much anyone with any kind of power. Neat!
Emma Goldman
‘Ask for work, if they do not give you work, ask for bread, if they will not give you bread, steal bread.’
Though not a union organizer by trade, anarcha-feminist Emma Goldman’s advocacy for workers’ rights and human dignity and freedom empowered workers and organizers throughout the country, and motivated them to stand up for their own rights. She was considered the most dangerous woman in America for a reason.
She was a feminist, an anti-racist, an atheist, an advocate of free love, an opposer of the institution of marriage and — very unusually for the time (she pretty much started right after Haymarket, which was 1886, and continued until her death in 1940) — one of the first advocates of gay rights.
“It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life.”
I could probably go on about Emma Goldman forever, but I have to get to other people and also this is not my sophomore year in college.
Rosina Tucker
‘I looked him right in the eye and banged on his desk and told him I was not employed by the Pullman company and that my husband had nothing to do with any activity I was engaged in … I said, ‘I want you to take care of this situation or I will be back.’ He must have been afraid … because a black woman didn’t speak to a white man in this manner. My husband was put back on his run.’
Rosina Tucker is best-known for helping to organize the first Black labor union, The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, started by A. Philip Randolph in 1925. A Brotherhood? But she was a woman, you say! Well, the Pullman porters wanted to organize, but they were afraid of losing their jobs — with good reason, because their bosses kept trying to fire them for trying to unionize. So Rosina and other wives of the porters got together and started the Ladies Auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in order to raise funds to start the union.
In 1963, along with A. Philip Randolph of the BSCP, she helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and continued to be active in civil rights and labor rights until she passed away in 1987, at the age of 105.
The women on this list, along with the many others who also fought for labor rights in this country and others, didn’t only fight a fight for workers. They fought a feminist fight, they fought for civil rights, they fought for human rights — they understood the interconnectedness of it all, they understood that without economic justice there is no social justice and without social justice there is no economic justice. They understood the way that the labor movement could be used as a catalyst for making social change possible at a time when they didn’t have any political support or power — and that’s a thing we could all do well to remember ourselves.
I have almost 200 YouTube channels I follow. One is the one I will share with you today. They have the weirdest and oddest subjects. And yes they are seemingly from the UK. I learn a lot from this channel as they host everything from hitmen, to politicians, to celebrity snack wars, to escort grandmothers. Below are two videos. One an elderly woman enjoying the time of her life as a senior escort who also provides sex and a porn director discussing the honest secrets of his job. I personally learned a lot more from the grannie and I loved her attitude, and I won’t spoil it, but you should hear who her youngest and oldest clients were. Hugs. Scottie
In this episode of Honesty Box we talked to a 70 year old escort Caroline, who told us about secrets of her profession, what was her weirdest sex request and if sex gets better with age.
In this revealing episode of Honesty Box, porn director Dick Bush answers your burning questions about what it’s really like to work on the set of a porn film. Dick explains how he makes the performers feel comfortable, discloses tricks and trades of the porn set and tells us what happens if he misses the all-important ‘money shot’. He also tackles the big questions around porn such as, can you be a feminist and work in the porn industry? Does penis size matter? And, how do you tell your family about your job?
Snippet (it’s not a long piece, and it’s full of info.)
Let’s be clear about what Kansas Republican legislative leaders are doing with their planned overhaul of budgeting: They are launching a personal and political power grab against Gov. Laura Kelly.
They have never accepted or respected her mandate. Despite Kelly winning a second term and having two years left to go, they have continually attempted to usurp the executive branch’s authority. They have tried a constitutional amendment and prohibiting her ability to negotiate Medicaid contracts. Now they’re going after her yearly state budget proposal.
Usually, the Legislature begins its yearly budget process with a proposal from the governor. Her office submits it when lawmakers arrive for the annual session, in January. Now an interim committee wants to start the process earlier, as soon as October of the previous year.
In this new process, the governor’s budget would be a suggestion, not a starting point.
And never mind that it’s a direct attack on Kelly. House Speaker Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, assured the audience that these changes had nothing to do with the governor.
“This process has nothing to do with the governor,” he said at the meeting earlier this month, according to Kansas Reflector reporter Tim Carpenter. “If you’re going to focus on the governor, probably not the wisest thing to do, because this process has happened over time with many, many different governors.”
He was contradicted by Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover, who let the proverbial cat out of the figurative bag.
“You’ll have a Republican governor, for example, or somebody you trust, and you trust the administration to build the budgets, and then you kind of rubber stamp stuff,” Masterson said. “And, then, you switch, and you have (the) opposition party and then there’s all that same power.”
Oh. So it’s like that, then.
(snip-More; also a vid of the sausage becoming sausage)
How do we know we’re on the Road to Splitsville (and possibly headed to a political and legal separation of the red states and the blue), and not on some other thoroughfare, like the Highway to Hell or the Boulevard of Broken Dreams? We know, because such a Split would be absurd and grotesque. But the red states are Republican states, and the Republican Party is the Donald Trump Party, and the fans of Donald Trump love the absurd and eat the grotesque with a fucking spoon.
Speaking of which: what are you doing on September 5?
If you’ve got some time, and $2,500 (per individual) to spare, you could join Christ-knows-how-many dipshits, ghouls, imbeciles, and traitors at—we kid you not—the “J6 Awards Gala,” to be held at Donald Trump’s golf club-cum-Ex Sematary in Bedminster, N.J. Go alone, with your significant other, or rope together eleven of your chums and snag a table for 12. Yes, 12 x $2,500 = $30,000 but, because this a Donald Trump-related production, the actual cost of a table for 12 is a cool $50,000. But think of th—
What? You have a question? (snip-a bit more, well worth the click. You can read if you’re not a subscriber.)
I am an admirer of hers, and maybe when I finally grow up, I’ll be as like her as possible. I’ve named my phone after her, just as a reminder. She once said that no one can make us feel inferior without our consent. Many people say/said similar things, but when I first saw she said that, it clicked. I don’t always remember, but mostly I do. We all should. Now, here is Gavin Aung Than’s Zen Pencils for this week. I really appreciate this one, too!
Zen Pencils by Gavin Aung Than for August 26, 2024
Talk about needing to stop the steal! Republicans are so desperate to be rulers over the public, to tank democracy they are willing to do anything to win. They don’t want anyone but white male straight cis republican men to vote. Everyone else they see as inferior and needing to be treated like a servant, who have no rights but to do as they republican leaders tell them. They want to be the royalty below king tRump. Hugs. Scottie
This office has received Senator Nabilah Islam Parkes and other’s letters alleging ethics violations by members of the State Elections Board. Due to uncertainty regarding whether this office has authority to act under Code Section 45-10-4 in response to these complaints, we have sought the Attorney General’s advice regarding the application of the statute to the letters. We will respond following receipt of this advice and further evaluation of the letters.
An ex-Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter writes:
They are passing a series of last-minute, unnecessary, unrealistic and in some cases illegal rule changes in how elections are conducted. They have done so despite clear warnings from local election officials that they are “setting up 159 counties for failure.”
According to the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, those changes will “create unnecessary confusion among both the public and the dedicated poll workers and election officials who are critical to ensuring a smooth and efficient voting process.”
If those warnings prove valid, if county election officials have indeed been set up for failure through rules they cannot realistically honor, then Trump will have the excuse he needs to challenge the election outcome and delay or halt certification.
Two weeks ago Trump called out all three cultist election board members by name at a Georgia rally. Last week he posted praise of Kemp in an attempt to make peace.
Last month the board voted to allow private citizens to file challenges to voter registrations, resulting in an immediate challenge to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s registration. They also voted to allow county officials to refuse to certify election results.
Update: Kemp’s office is asking the AG for guidance on whether he has the authority to remove members of the State Election Board. Voting rights groups, Democrats and even some Republicans have raised alarms about the rightwing majority’s recent votes. #gapolhttps://t.co/XcMfdAzkbRpic.twitter.com/SSuacGTs0d
by Skylar Tallal Fri, August 23rd 2024 at 10:30 PM
DES MOINES, Iowa — Summit Carbon Solutions is facing a set back in its proposed CO2 pipeline project, as the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled in favor of landowners who sued to keep Summit from surveying their land.
It’s a reversal of a lower court decision, with the state’s high court now claiming it’s premature to categorize Summit as a ‘common carrier’ for public utility. It’s something Summit needs to be able to prove before it can use eminent domain.
“One of our main arguments is that Summit’s not a common carrier,” Jess Mazour the conservation program coordinator with the Sierra Club Iowa Chapter said. “So it really does change the game here in Iowa as well.”
Summit can’t start building its pipelines in Iowa until it gets approval in North and South Dakota.
The Sierra Club Iowa Chapter calls the decision a victory for landowners. Even though the Iowa Utilities Commission isn’t taking up the club’s reconsideration request, the club is moving forward with its plan to take the fight to court.
“We now have precedent on our side and we’re going to have a strong base for when we file our appeal in district court,” Mazour said.
A similar court case is already on the books in Iowa, with Iowa’s highest court set to hear oral arguments October 8 at the state capitol.
“A landowner in Hardin County, Kent, he was sued for denying Summit access to his land and we are fighting that and also challenging Iowa’s survey law,” Mazour said.
Eminent Domain has been a major issue in Iowa over the last few years. Some Iowa lawmakers joined the pipeline opposition but haven’t been successful in their efforts to change state laws.
The topic is also coming up on the campaign trail, specifically in Iowa’s congressional races.
Congressional Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) Iowa said carbon capture pipelines make sense for Iowa.
“So the carbon capture pipeline is only meant to lower the carbon intensity score of ethanol which makes it competitive globally,” Rep. Miller-Meeks said.
She said while eminent domain is a state issue, she hopes there will only be a limited number of landowners who don’t sign on voluntarily.
“Farmers and property owners need to look at the why the rationale and then determine if it’s in their best interest,” Rep. Miller-Meeks said. “Companies that are acquiring easements are looking at how do you make the land whole. How do you ensure farmers that you can grow crops in the near future?”
Iowa’s News Now did reach out to Summit for comment didn’t hear back.
A hydrogel has learned to play the 1970s video game “Pong” and improved its ability to hit the ball by 10% with some practice.
Dr Hayashi, a biomedical engineer at the University of Reading in the UK, says: “Our research shows that even very simple materials can exhibit complex, adaptive behaviours typically associated with living systems or sophisticated AI.
“This opens up exciting possibilities for developing new types of ‘smart’ materials that can learn and adapt to their environment.”
The research is described in a paper published in Cell Reports Physical Science.
Video link, an example run of a hydrogel playing Pong.
Credit: Cell Reports Physical Science/Strong et al.
What is a hydrogel?
A hydrogel, like gelatine or agar, is made of a 3D network of polymers that become jelly-like when water is added.
The hydrogel in this study is an “ionic electro-active polymer”, where the media surrounding the polymer matrix contains charged particles, in this case hydrogen ions.
As a result, it can deform when an electric current is applied to it.
Stimulation by an electric field causes the hydrogen ions migrate and, as they move, drag water molecules with them, causing areas to swell.
“The rate at which the hydrogel de-swells takes much longer than the time it takes for it to swell in the first place, meaning that the ions’ next motion is influenced by its previous motion, which is sort of like memory occurring,” says first author and University of Reading robotics engineer, Dr Vincent Strong.
“The continued rearrangement of ions within the hydrogel is based on previous rearrangements within the hydrogel, continuing back to when it was first made and had a homogeneous distribution of ions.”
It’s this property the researchers exploited to teach the hydrogel to play Pong.
How does a hydrogel play Pong? (snip-More on the page)
NASA is about to launch a helium balloon carrying a telescope, to test its ability to see exoplanet atmospheres.
The Exoplanet Climate Infrared Telescope (EXCITE) is eventually destined to fly around the poles, collecting data above much of the Earth’s atmosphere, but its first test flight is due to happen from the USA in the next few months.
It will be launched for the first time from the Columbia Scientific Ballooning Facility in New Mexico.
EXCITE (EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope) hangs from a ceiling at the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility’s location in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The mission team practiced taking observations ahead of flight by looking out the hanger doors at night. Credit: NASA/Jeanette Kazmierczak
“EXCITE can give us a three-dimensional picture of a planet’s atmosphere and temperature by collecting data the whole time the world orbits its star,” says principal investigator Peter Nagler, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. (snip-More on the page)
Scottie's Playtime 