ancianita
ancianita's JournalBig Corps v Humans
Books reviewed in this article of The New York Review of Books:
Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber
by Mike Isaac
Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It)
by Elizabeth Anderson
Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire
by Brad Stone
Your Boss Is an Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence, Platform Work and Labour
by Antonio Aloisi and Valerio De Stefano
"The Boss Will See You Now," by Zephyr Teachout, reviews books that increase our knowledge of corporate surveillance, worker exploitation and other stealth anti-democratic operations. It complements our growing knowledge of corporate capture of our government, as shown by Sheldon follow-the-money Whitehouse.
If Republicans haven't sufficiently groomed Americans for fascist rule, their corporate bosses will. So far, what corporations have done in America have been legal, but not lawful, as Elizabeth Warren and Katie Porter have shown.
As Liz Cheney said today in the perhaps final Jan 6 Committee hearing, unlike Americans, most people of most countries have not been free. We are feeling the campaign onslaught of corporate dark money this year as corporations -- we like to keep it at the Republican bag man level -- go all out to end rule of law, by any means necessary, and move this nation into the global corporate network.
"Legal" is the language of the corporate world. "Lawful" is the language of the human world.
Activtrack inspects the programs used and tells bosses if an employee is unfocussed, spending time on social media. OccupEye records when and for how long someone is away from their workstation. TimeDoctor and Teramind keep track of every task conducted online. Similarly, Interguard compiles a minute-by-minute timeline that monitors all data such as web history and bandwidth utilisation and sends a notification to the managers if workers pick up anything suspicious. HubStaff and Sneek routinely take snapshots of employees through their webcams every five minutes or so to generate a timecard and circulate them to boost morale. Pragli synchronises professional calendars and music playlists to create a sense of community; it also features a facial recognition that could display a worker’s real-world emotion on their virtual avatar’s face.
Right now, there may be limited proof that these tools are used to vary pay in traditional workplaces. But the authors argue that these technical tools are not hard to combine with legal innovations in work contracts. Contracts that allow for adjusted wages can easily bring many of the conditions of gig work to traditional employment. Corporations may soon jettison the fixed-wage model that has been a feature of blue collar employment for decades.
It is no coincidence that routine work surveillance followed closely on the heels of the Reagan antitrust revolution and the collapse of private sector unionization. Nothing except unionization or new laws would stop an employer from taking all the data it is gathering from sensors and recordings and using them to more precisely adjust wages, until each worker gets the lowest wage at which they are willing to work, and all workers live in fear of retaliation. This is no more sci-fi than Facebook and Google serving users individualized content and ads designed to keep us on their services as long as possible, allowing them to sell as many ads as possible.
The bespoke clothing that my Park Avenue boss wore was a mark of privilege, a step above mass manufacture—suits made to fit her individual body, shoes tailored to the grooves and arches of her feet. The modern promise of tech personalization, building on a romanticized notion of individuality and authenticity, is that we can all live in similarly tailor-made worlds, with newsfeeds adjusted to our preferences and professional and leisure interests. You may be one of few listeners who loves both Kenny Rogers and the Cure, but Spotify knows you, and can bring you songs that speak to your singular soul.
But extending this tailor-made ethos is exquisitely unromantic: these eyes may have the intimacy and memory of a lover, but they lack all affection. Modern surveillance technology means that tailor-made wages are coming for all workplaces. The mass-produced, nonunionized depressed wages of the late twentieth century were already alarming, but the new, specially commissioned AI wages of the twenty-first century enable a new level of authoritarianism. To stop it, we’ll have to outlaw particular forms of spying, and use antimonopoly and labor laws to restructure power.
Tracking technology may be marketed as tools to protect people, but will end up being used to identify with precision how little each worker is willing to make. It will be used to depress wages and also kill the camaraderie that precedes unionization by making it harder to connect with other workers, poisoning the community that enables democratic debate. It will be used to disrupt solidarity by paying workers differently. And it will lead to anxiety and fear permeating more workplaces, as the fog of not knowing why you got a bonus or demotion shapes the day.
This matters because work is not an afterthought for democratic society; the relationships built at work are an essential building block. With wholly atomized workers, discouraged from connecting with one another but forced to offer a full, private portrait of themselves to their bosses, I cannot imagine a democracy.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/08/18/the-boss-will-see-you-now-zephyr-teachout/
Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing On Transparency and Accountability for 21st Century Courts
Sheldon Whitehouse convenes this meeting to address the issue of judicial integrity, including information from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on ’the amicus problem,’ ’the Justice recusal and conflict of interest problem,’ and ’the Justice willing exposure in resorts to lobbyist activities problem,’ and his legislative remedy in The Disclose Act.
His meeting convenes on the issue of judicial restructuring.
Kennedy says that this committee’s efforts to change SCOTUS destabilize SCOTUS, and he will not be a part of any effort to destabilize and challenge the integrity of justices of the SCOTUS. He bases his refusal to participate on what justices are supposed to do; and repeats his belief that he sees Americans as free to give their opinions, and that one side thinks it has a monopoly on the truth. Kennedy implies that one side is trying to tear down the courts while both sides are spending mightily to get rulings they profit from. Kennedy says, in effect, that things do look bad and I want to look into it, but I don’t intend to do anything about the court; instead, to find out what the Dept of Justice is made of in ferreting out the latest SCOTUS leaker.
Assuming that the witnesses give sufficient valued information re SCOTUS problems and solutions, the subcommittee should be able to move forward in the judicial reform path that Senator Whitehouse will try to move Congress.
Start: 11:10
FYI, 2022 Voter Registration numbers of the adult electorate (minus undocumenteds and minors)
are at 213,768,003 potential voters who are actually registered.
As of Nov 3 2020, there were 213,799,467 registered to vote. Can't explain the drop, but both figures are from the same site.
Total registered voters WHO VOTED BUT DID NOT VOTE TRUMP (D + 3rd party) = 84,174,344
Total registereds WHO DID NOT VOTE IN 2020 = 55,402,093
Total adult electorate WHO COULD HAVE REGISTERED, AND SO DID NOT VOTE IN 2020 = 87,605,395 = 35.6% of the 2020 adult population of the U.S.
Voter registration deadlines are any day now (Florida's is today).
Here is a good link for the 50 state counts of total registrations.
To use it, scroll down to the 3rd graphic of state-by-state numbers.
To get state party registration numbers, click the 4th graphic to get different states' source report of registrations by party.
Surprisingly, I've learned that Florida lets people register as "unaffiliated."
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/number-of-registered-voters-by-state
President Biden's Full Remarks On the Economy-- ""Because of you all we can own the 21st Century."
President Biden, supporter of the working class, a pro-labor economy, and not the pro-corporate Republican legislative agenda.
MEMO TO DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADERSHIP: 2022 IS IT.
My recent message to the DNC "Contact Us" headquarters.
"TO: Jaime Harrison, Democratic National Committee Chair
Chris Korge, DNC Finance chair
Jason Rae, DNC Secretary
430 South Capitol Street SE,
Washington, D.C., U.S. 20003-4024
(202) 863-8000
FROM: A lifelong Democratic voter of IL and now FL
RE: THIS 2022 MIDTERM IS IT. OUR WAR FOR DEMOCRACY.
30 DAYS OUT, party leadership let Dems of red states waste time arguing every day about where the DNC's candidate monetary support goes and won't go, and why and where it should.
Almost all Dems know the DNC does election financing. Many Democrats have decided that when they don't agree with where the DNC sends money, they will send money directly to the candidates they want (I became a direct full donor when I saw that the DNC was slow to support Barack Obama's candidacy in primaries).
BUT DEMOCRATS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO.
IF leadership is serious about this war for democracy, it MUST INVEST in red state Democrats, and early and often, tell Democratic donors where to donate.
AND not just donate through your website. You KNOW the state of broadband in red states. YOU DO.
Here in hard-to-love Florida, and in all other deep red states...
IS Democratic Party messaging lousy?
That's what I've read.
IS Democrats' messaging not enough?
That's what I've read.
ARE media doing their job to convey the Democratic Party message?
I've posted this media fault constantly on the Democratic Underground's site. Do I have lousy messaging?
In Florida, Democratic messaging is not for lack of trying.
Consider that Democrats AND LEADERSHIP ALSO have to DONATE to Florida's Democratic candidates the way they do candidates in other battleground states.
https://charliecrist.com
https://valdemings.com
https://www.rebekahjonescampaign.com
https://www.frostforcongress.com (Dist 1 -- vs Matt Gaetz)
But here?
Dist 2 Dem Al Lawson v Rep. Neal Dunn -- The fundraising email follows reports that the DCCC isn’t fighting for Lawson.
In the North Florida duel between U.S. Reps. Neal Dunn and Al Lawson, the underdog Democrat in FL's largest district is requesting individual contributions in the absence of national backup. WHY IS THAT? Or...
Dist 3 Dem Danielle Hawk v. incumbent (R) Kat Cammack
Dist. 16 Dem. Jan Schneider v incumbent (R) Vernon Buchanan (10th richest Chamber of Commerce man in Congress, who panders to middle class and retiree racism and ignorance in Sarasota County)
Dist. 24, Miami — Dem Frederica Wilson v (R) Jesus G. Navarro, Hispanic MAGA candidate
And those are just a few example districts in Florida.
You need to be able to answer Democrats who should rightly ask WHY.
ARE YOU SERIOUS?
Where are you on chipping away at 'LEAN DEMOCRATIC in red trifecta states?
30 days out, why haven't Democratic voters heard from party leadership? Emails? Pffft
WHY hasn't party leadership been on television shows BEFORE ELECTIONS, NOT AFTERWARD, as post mortem explanations of WHY WE LOST HOUSE SEATS??
Do not blame media horse race messaging at the expense of Democrats in deep red states.
Take Charlie Crist or Val Demings of Florida. In Florida, Democratic messaging is not for lack of trying.
But where is party leadership? Floridians do not see Democratic Party leadership behind even major candidates.
Is party leadership actually getting its messaging into MSNBC?? The ad buy hardly reflects even a liberal leaning cable news channel, nevermind saturating it.
From MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan:
"Why is your state party so bad at pushing back against these authoritarian measures?"
TRY HARDER. DEVELOP RED STATE PARTIES MORE. NOT JUST IN JULY. JUST IN JULY??
HAVE YOU REWARDED KANSAS WOMEN WITH MORE GROUND GAME INVESTING IN KS?
Care to explain the Southern Texas border district loss? Or the continued Florida Cuban vote loss?
ARE YOU MAKING SPENDING AND GROUND GAME ADJUSTMENTS ACCORDINGLY?
If our party leadership won’t change its investment strategy to a 50 state strategy, then we must replace party leadership like we did with Wasserman-Schultz.
The 2022 MIDTERM IS WAR. 30 DAYS OUT, THIS PARTY MUST ACT LIKE IT.
PRESIDENT BIDEN CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH -- HE'S STILL GOT A NATION TO GOVERN.
BUT YOU HAVE AN ELECTION TO WIN.
THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU DO, LEADERSHIP. BUT DO MORE. "
Yes, I was yelling!
Because as Howard Dean says, politics is a form of war.
On politics and science, politicos and scientists.
Highly recommended, not because this short book is full of new information (though some might think so), but because it reminds average people of the top priority importance of science must be to humankind.
Because it is on time. At a time when we are living the consequences of our use or misuse or pure ignorance of science, and so we need scientists more than ever. We need science translators more than ever, from Rachel Carson to Jennifer Doudna to Neil deGrasse Tyson.
IMHO, deGrasse Tyson preaches to the choir.
But the choir's power isn't just in the song.
The choir's power is in how many times and in what variations it's sung.
1.
America's two political parties differ broadly and deeply. They reflect different views on humanity and who should benefit from the pursuit of science's research.
Democrats: science should be paid to research and learn.
Republicans: science should be paid to support ideology and business.
When American oligarchs and their corporations see science, they pick science that
a) promotes their "insider" interests
-- because most humans should be treated like animals
-- "improve the stock," "thin the herd," "lab subjects," or
b) promotes their profit while hiding
-- scientific research on effects of tobacco on humans;
-- effects of oil production on climate;
-- effects of injecting syphilis in black people to study it;
-- the effects of opioid addiction, etc.
-- health care billing markups that are many times higher than Medicare costs for the exact same treatments, and on and on.
2.
History shows the political uses of pseudo-science.
From Teddy Roosevelt, who believed the ills of modernity could be corrected in 3 ways:
a) return to the wilderness -- to toughen up for "the fight"
b) war -- raw fight for survival
c) breeding and eugenics-- boot camp for women, life-or-death struggle that strengthened the entire race; women who "shirked," or exhibited free will that would not submit to men, were worse than deserters
To Social/political "experts" on the pseudo-science of eugenics:
-- Charles Davenport, biologist and member of the Eugenics Section of the American Breeders Assoc.
-- Alexander Graham Bell, member of the same eugenics org,
-- Harry Laughlin, eugenics expert for the House Committee On immigration and Naturalization, who played a crucial role in shaping the 1924 Immigration Act, one of the most sweeping & restrictive laws in American history;
-- Mary Harriman, wife of Averell Harriman, railroad magnate, biggest donor to the Eugenics Record Office
-- wealthy horse breeder William Stokes, who contended that Americans could be bred to class, who wanted to segregate quarantine the unfit, castrate criminals, sterilize diseased and degenerate classes
-- 27 states with sterilization laws that put people into 34 categories fit for sterilization
-- William Taussig, Harvard professor who promoted sterilization
-- Henry Godard who invented the eugenic term "moron"
-- US Army who rounded up 30,000 prostitutes in WWI and put them in detention centers and jails to keep them and their "moronic" sexuality out of the reach of soldiers
-- Stanford's Lewis Terman who promoted the use of the I.Q. Test
To the US Supreme Court:
-- Albert Priddy, superintendent of the State Colony for epileptics and Feebleminded, won the SCOTUS test case decision for sterilization in Buck v Bell, that gave the state the power to regulate the breeding of its citizens ; Priddy helped make Virginia the national test case for weeding out "bad blood," "mongrel Virginians"
-- SCOTUS Justice Taney in the Dred Scott decision, wrote that he believed pedigree could be used to distinguish worthy citizens from waste people
-- SCOTUS Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, argued that sterilization was a civic duty... the humane option, as being sent to the colonies had been centuries before.
(Source: "White Trash -- The 400-Year Untold History of Class In America (2016) by Nancy Isenberg)
3.
Science -- run by men -- has historically been cherry picked by the wealthy -- men -- to promote their race, sex and therefore, their class preservation and power, placing whole regions of humans, impoverished by design and policy, into intellectual classes of "eugenic backwardness."
4.
No wonder science feels the blowback today. But scientists -- from the 3 Nobel winners in quantum physics to chemistry (atomically mapping RNA) to physiology & medicine -- do science. If we've lost ways of finding common ground, let science be the new arena of common ground effort. Even the US valued Nazi science and engineering after WWII.
Science has to sell itself -- Just like the Democratic Party does -- in the 3rd biggest country on a planet that has killed 99.9% of all species that ever lived, and couldn't care less what humans do to save themselves.
Many scientists, from Rachel Carson to Jennifer Doudna to Neil deGrasse Tyson, have tried to to just that. One way is that they've explained to laypersons how they and other scientists do their work.
Neil deGrasse Tyson says, "Science distinguishes itself from all other branches of human pursuit by its power to probe and understand the behavior of nature on a level that allows us to predict with accuracy, if not control, the outcomes of events in the natural world.
He lays out a kind of bottom line for the scientific method by quoting Arabic scholar Ahazen: "Do whatever it takes to avoid fooling yourself into believing something is true when it is fale, or that something is false when it is true."
He says, "Scientific discovery often carries the power to broaden and deepen perspectives on all things. Science especially enhances our health, wealth, and security, which are greater today than at any other time in human history."
When "selling" science is done well, transparently, and in the people's interests, not corporate interests, or the interests of the 36 million millionaires over 7 billion other humans. After scientists come patent holders, inventions, engineers, project prototypes, tests, and the greatest scientific good for the greatest number.
5.
If the wealthy own science, why should other humans trust their "commodification of research" when consumers have to ferret out the politics of their funders. If the wealthy lie to cover up any business predations of both science and human health, science suffers the public's lowered confidence. But deep down we know that doesn't make science any less good, beautiful and true. Which is why we jump up and down with every new space rocket or telescope photo.
It seems, more often than not, that as the public depend on the wealthy to support science for humanity, the sick and injured too often enter the wealthy's own self-named hospitals, research, academic endowment facilities -- places that are the wealthy's "gifts" to humanity to redeem their past sins toward humanity. Which reflects a privatization of the best things in life for the wealthiest.
6.
Such class wealth disparity does infect politics, and shows a kind of class war that's waged in a lane adjacent to they-don't-give-a-fuck-about-you politics.
Yes, Democrats and Republicans are different about science. Both want the benefits. One wants affordable benefits for the greatest number. The other wants maximum benefits at maximum profits for the number who can pay. They are different in how they fund science and sell science.
The wealthy who want to "capture" government for themselves had better develop a moral compass about both government AND science. Or else one of the political parties -- we Democrats -- will fight the wealthy behind corporate controlled science. But the Democratic Party will not attack scientists.
I'm back! Ian didn't get me!
Left Dothan, AL, early Friday morning because I heard I had electricity. Came back to an intact house, yay!
My tree was all over the yard, now looks like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, but it's standing, yay!
I just got the Internet and cable on ten minutes ago, yay! I can rejoin the human network!!
I feel fortunate, and asked about by my friends, loved by my adult kids while I was in AL, and my DU family's support was a big help while I was coping. THANK YOU! 
I just helped my next door neighbor to get her electricity back on yesterday, got her into my house for AC, a hot shower and some dinner. Today I got her groceries, so she's better today, and her very nice institutional caretakers are relieved (they didn't know that her power was out when they dropped her off) and that they have one less emergency to handle.
So I'm feeling grateful and fortunate that I could help more than just myself. Over a million more down here in Florida are still suffering, unable to access communications, and as many are trying to help them, thank you Big Government and Biden. Disaster reminds us that help for humanity is more important than politics.
President Biden Speaks About Florida and Hurricane Ian
Our President of Everyone.
Three examples of adding corporate insult to climate injury.
Yesterday, my corporate board run mobile home park in Florida turned off residents' water. Because mindless corporations default to preserving their assets over humans. Another reason I didn't trust the "management" of my mobile home park and left.
Just found out that after my neighbors there complained and threatened loss, harm or injury suits, the corporate tools turned the water back on.
Today in Alabama, where my hotel uses Comcast, its internet signal is weak, site loading is slow. So I reverted to using a personal hotspot.
Immediately, Google and Facebook imposed a prolonged identification verification on me. It included codes and identifying four of my previous posts in the last 3 months.
Why? Because I wasn't where I was supposed to be. I'd changed locations and their AI knew it. What they had now wasn't enough, so they demanded I provide more data to prove I'm me.
Facebook now limits my posting comments.
Minor denials of service, in my case. Yet during a time when millions are on the move due to a weather event.
Multiply that by the millions across evacuating populations, and these verification "standards" and Internet access difficulties not only intensify humans' problems of evacuation, like accessing food, shelter and energy -- but also intensify the threat of humans' survival.
Why? Why, in the richest country on the planet, does evacuation mean previous Internet services get choked?
Because these corporations are watching their own backs due to data leaks they can't control. Google has admitted it has had massive data leaks. So they control end users. These three examples are not the only ones; they're just teh obvious ones right now.
This is the future of monopolistic corporate assholery that will unnecessarily add service insult to climate injury.
Corporations will not care about humans' lives.
Corporations will only care about getting money.
Stay vigilant, as more corporate mindlessness and profitable exploitations ensue.
Please keep the human costs of disaster capitalism in mind if & when we find ourselves threatened and displaced by climate emergencies.
Winter and elections are coming.Vote accordingly. Vote by mail.
But remember that in spite of federal law re the mails, Postmaster DeJoy is still a corporate lackey.
A Poignant Essay On The Hurricane Donna I Have Known
Kathleen Parker's story triggered my own memory of Donna, one of the four I've lived through.
As a native Floridian, I’m well-seasoned and knowledgeable about tropical storms and the places that get walloped by them...
...Donna, considered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to be “one of the all-time great hurricanes.”
... came straight across the peninsula and hovered over our little town, a “city of 100 lakes” and home to Cypress Gardens, water ski capital of the world. Memorable is the word for it: What started as a tropical wave off the African coast on Aug. 29, 1960, Donna is the only hurricane on record to produce hurricane-force winds all the way from Florida, through the mid-Atlantic states and into New England. Fifty people died in the United States alone.
Donna was quite an initiation for our family, which had settled in Florida 10 years earlier and assumed, living so far inland, that we could ride it out. The uninitiated always think it would be cool to “batten down the hatches,” (a popular phrase among some people in Charleston, S.C., right up until the moment Hurricane Hugo devastated their city in 1989). But it is certainly not cool, and most swear off such boasts thereafter.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/hurricane-ian-florida-donna/
I saw life in Florida in the 60's the same way, same Donna, just different towns and parents.
While Donna's eye's passed over, I got a quick ride to Hallandale Beach, three beaches south of Fort Lauderdale Beach.
The coastal highway A1A was a sand dune we climbed over. The hot dog stand was barely visible as we scrambled onto, then jumped off, its roof. Several cars left on A1A were front-to-back sand blasted to the metal. Everywhere fish flopped, sea life lay dead, turtles and crabs creeped toward the crashing waves. We marveled at the still sky and sun, then hustled back home before the winds and rain slammed our house from the opposite direction. Our unboarded three bedroom house with its leaking jalousie windows, wet terrazzo floors and wind drafts that blew on our candles. We survived.
Which is why I'll never again be in the same state as a hurricane.
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHometown: New England, The South, Midwest
Home country: USA
Current location: Sarasota
Member since: Sat Mar 5, 2011, 12:32 PM
Number of posts: 36,132
