Stronger Than You

no, spotify, i don't want to use ai to "turn my ideas into playlists". i already fucking do that with my brain and hands and i do it for fun. what, should i get ai to pet my cat for me? to play my silly games for me? to spend time with my beautiful wife for me? how about i rend you asunder

will the ai listen to the music for me too? will it listen to the lyrics and think about the song for me? shit man, ai can do anything. why even bother paying for your service if your ai can just replace the human impulse to listen to, analyze, and find patterns in music and collect favourites for fun to share with friends. like should i leave? if you're just gonna jack yourself off? like i can go, seeing as you don't need me to engage with what you're doing at all.

like what are we fucking doing here. yknow?

I used this post for practicing constructing an argument (I teach English and I'm prepping this person for essay writing) and was in utter shock when my student just said 'yeah some people are so scared of new things, they need to get with the program'. I stg keeping a straight face then and there ranks in the top 10 biggest challenges I've faced in my career as an English teacher.

i'm literally so flattered by this. i wish i'd come up with a more thought-out argument so i could properly fight your student. i can do the counterargument now if you'd like.

i'm not scared of generative ai. i'm genuinely concerned for the impact it'll have on the neurological development of young people if they become overexposed to the instant gratification of "bringing their ideas to life" and never practice or develop the skills and labour actually associated with creating something from nothing. it means that if the ai gives you dogshit (and it will), you don't have the ability to fix it, because you're so alienated from the process of creating (writing an essay, drawing a picture, organizing a playlist, composing a song, listening to and analyzing and summarizing the art you're examining) that you don't know what isn't working or how to make it work correctly. if you don't learn how to analyze, if you don't train your brain to do these things, they don't stop needing to be done. you will be dependant on ai, or on others to do these things for you. others, you can sometimes trust, but it really helps to be able to really grok the difference between a grifter, an ignorant person, and a person who knows what they're talking about -- and again, the more you alienate yourself from the construction of their arguments, the less you are able to take them apart and see what isn't adding up. and ai is dogshit, frequently incorrect and incapable of doing the small calculus the human brain can do (if you train it to) to tell the difference between quality of sources and reliability of data, so it should never be trusted, period.

the only part of this "new technology" that i'm scared of is based on a history of ideas that i have actually studied. historically, the more we alienate ourselves from the process of labour, the less we are able to grasp it as a reality, and the more people are able to use that fact to exploit us. if you look at, say, the paper coffee cup on your desk, really look at it. where did that come from? it didn't spring fully formed from someone's imagination. someone had to design the shape of that cup, engineer it so it could contain a hot beverage and keep it hot, come up with the sleeve to make sure the drinker could actually hold it, but there's even more to it than that. someone had to make the cup. someone had to source the paper (or the compound) for the body, the material for the lid, the glue that holds it together. someone had to harvest those materials, in whichever country they were sourced, and someone had to package them and transport them to the company responsible for assembling the cup. someone designed the logo and the pattern on the outside, and someone is monitoring the machine that prints those images on the cup. someone will be responsible for picking up the waste and transporting it to a recycling plant, or to the landfill where it'll end up. let's not even start on the drink inside it. farming, harvesting, shipping, receiving, assembling, serving. it takes time to manifest something, and you are in a position of immense privilege to not have to think about where it all comes from on a regular basis. but what happens when the supply lines get shut down? what happens when there's a failure of irrigation or something in the paper mill and the glue holding the paper together doesn't work? do you know? i don't, personally. but there is someone along the line whose job it is to know, and i appreciate the work they (probably aren't paid enough to) do so that i can grab a coffee on my way into my own work. i have to appreciate it because i know that if the process goes wrong somewhere, i have no fucking idea what to do about the problem.

but i'm not pretending to know. i'm not applying for a job at the papermill to work for pennies instead of someone who does know the perfect chemical makeup of coffee cup cardboard because i can order a ton of coffee cups online from amazon in bulk. that's why generative ai offends me. the work that goes into creating art and writing still has to be done, because all generative ai knows how to do is steal, and it doesn't steal like an artist. artists look at the works of others and think, oh, i see how they did that, i want to try doing that, and then they can, because they learned how to appreciate the process. they've actually worked, and practiced, and spent time engaging with the process step by step to create something they find pleasing. generative ai looks at art and spits out a copy by comparing one image to another and assuming based on Uncredited Data that sometimes, pictures have hands in them, and hands sort of look like this. and the computer doesn't have a goddamn clue how many fingers the hand has, or how to translate that data into a visual. you know what does? the human brain. you know what you can do instead of bemoaning that you, a high school junior, can't produce a rembrandt on your first try? you can actually try drawing something.

you can actually try to turn your ideas into a drawing. you can do research into how to make it look the way you want it to. who knows? you might actually have fun doing it. because the creative process can be fun! it isn't for everyone, but unless you actually sit down and try, you won't find out, and if it's not for you, you'll never grasp on that physical experiential level that the creative process is actually a lot of fucking work, and we should respect artists for being able to sit down and do it so we don't have to, same as we respect the farmers who grow our food or the plant workers who mix the slurry that becomes our coffee cup cardboard.

i'm not scared of spotify for pushing ai bullshit down my throat. more than anything, i'm kind of offended, because i do put a lot of work into my playlists, and i have a lot of fun doing it, because i like listening to music and analyzing lyrics and relating the themes of songs to my little characters. i took it so personally because i Want to be involved in the process. i'm paying spotify a lot of my real adult money to have access to music and the tools i can use to entertain this pastime of mine, and it's kind of fucked up that they're raising their monthly fee to fund a tool that makes me, the user of their product, motivated to use their product less. insulting, even. why should i pay more for a computer to do a worse job than me at Having Fun? making a playlist isn't even that fucking hard.

i'm just tired. stuff takes work to make. it takes care and time and effort to create something from nothing, and a lot of the time, the process is necessary to make the thing good, because it forces you to take the time you need to spot and fix mistakes. i hope by now that it's self-explanatory why i don't want an entire society run by a dipshit program that doesn't know how to do what it's doing and doesn't know how to solve the problems it creates faster than human hands could ever manage, and i hope the dipshit machine and the grifters who push it are inextricable from each other in the minds of anyone who's read this whole post. i don't want them to run society either, because they Know that generative ai sucks and can't do anything right, and they're still trying to tack it on to everything to devalue the labour of artists and make a quick buck for themselves.

the best quote i've ever seen about generative ai is "why should i bother reading something nobody bothered to write".

we are a social species. alienation from labour alienates us from each other, from our communities, and makes us feel alone. when we're alone, we're vulnerable down to our core psychology, and there are a lot of people out there who know better who want to take advantage of vulnerable people to manipulate society at large. they want to make money off of your suffering. they want to reduce you to a number for their own convenience so they can use the One Life You Have On Earth to play their own personal tycoon game and get a slightly higher score. they want you to spend less time having fun, creating art, spending time with your family, thinking about what they're Doing to you, so you don't ruin their good time. i'm not scared because it's new, i'm pissed because it's the same old late capitalist shit i've already been dealing with, and i'm sick of seeing it everywhere because it stands a very real chance of turning everyone's brains to even more detached-from-reality mush than late-stage capitalism already has already.

And, on top of all of that, spotify's algorithm sucks shit already, so why on earth would i want it to make my playlists for me. the other day i saw it put zombie by the cranberries on a halloween playlist. she doesn't know dickety shit about my ideas or vibes or anything. so

I know a company that does both these things and no surprise, when you shop there, the employees are always miserable and agitated.You should kill your managers in such situations imo. The only reason I receive treatment slightly above this is i'm lucky enough to have managers who are also bothered by these business practices. The water one is especially bad if you have heat intolerance, I was so sick regularly before I switched to a department with more leniency regarding water.

Depending on where you live these things may violate labor laws though so if you're in the same situation look into it. However in my experience any labor law violations happen without consequence regardless

"a department with more leniency regarding water" is an insane string of words

If you live in the US, the water thing absolutely violates labor laws.

The lack of chairs is an OSHA violation too.

Yes, violations often happen without consequences. But remember, not keeping the poster with all your rights as a worker visible? Is a violation too.

Document it. Photos, screenshots, save your emails, record conversations if you're in a one-party consent state. Then?

Report their asses.

If nothing happens, report them again. And again and again, until someone pays attention.

Here's the link with info and how to file a complaint:

You can also call them: 1-800-321-OSHA

Keep in mind: complaints signed and submitted to local OSHA offices are more likely to result in OSHA inspections. Therefore, sending your complaints to OSHA's national headquarters may not be the fastest or most efficient method.

If you file online, it's automatically routed to the appropriate local office.

Even if there is not a specific guideline for the thing you want to report, all employers must adhere to the "general duty" clause... and you'd be surprised about all the things that fall under that.

For example, refusal to provide chairs anywhere in the building (in addition to being illegal and discriminatory anyway) also comes under the "fall protection" hazard. The CDC recommends that standing any longer than 15-30 minutes per hour can become a serious health hazard.

Yes- companies will always try to get away with breaking the law and fucking you over. That's how they've made their money.

But having a defeatist attitude and believing there is nothing you can do, and they'll never experience a consequence, so why bother reporting, is exactly how a lot of them keep getting away with it.

There are more of us workers than there are bosses. Solidarity- stand together, know your rights, and fight for them like hell. That is how we affect change.

Also always worth investigating whether it’s actually corporate policy or your store manager is on a power trip. When I worked at Cracker Barrel my manager told us cashiers weren’t allowed to keep water behind the register anymore and that we would have to call a manager to be relieved any time we needed water. Bear in mind this was highly discouraged and the managers would complain about how busy they were every time we interrupted them. Of course our managers told us this was a nonnegotiable, top-down rule—out of their hands etc.

I called corporate to anonymously follow up, and lo and behold this was not a top-down policy at all. The next day, a notice went out in our store that cashiers could once again keep our own water behind the register.

I love how "you get what you pay for" goes right out the window when it comes to purchasing labor.

I don't see people talking about this so today is the 110th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in where the factory owners locked working women and girls inside to "eliminate the risk of theft" (in reality it was too keep them from taking breaks), which resulted in the gruesome deaths of 123 mostly immigrant women and girls and 23 men, many of whom jumped to their deaths from the ninth floor either in a panicked attempt to escape or in order to die quickly. There were reports that some of the workers were on fire already as they jumped.

The eighth floor of the building was able to telephone the tenth floor to warn them about the fire, but the factory on the ninth floor where these women and girls labored had no such communication and such warning.

The factory owners were criminally charged with manslaughter for actions that contributed to the mass deaths but acquitted. However, this tragedy led to mass sympathy to the labor movement, and unions spurred on safety regulations that passed in New York state and eventually the entire country, and activists were able to reduce child labor in the process.

This tragedy is a reminder that has been forgotten in the 110 years since: every safety regulation-- every scrap of paperwork contributing to the hundreds of pages of red tape people like to complain about--every word of it was written in the blood of a laborer.

111th anniversary

@pluckyredhead:

#also please note that the owners got off with a slap on the wrist and opened new factories #WHERE THEY LOCKED THE DOORS AGAIN #anyway fuck capitalism

112th

113rd

I think it's important to also mention that this stuff hasn't stopped globally, it's just stopped in America. Think of the collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013, or the Dhaka garment factory fire a year before in 2012; women and girls are still being forced to work for obscenely small wages to make the clothes we wear everyday in incredibly dangerous conditions, it's just been outsourced to the global south.

Well said.

One hundred and thirteen years as of yesterday

So, I've gone back to working at Home Depot while I'm going back to college right? Well, shit is about to hit the fan at Home Depot's across the country. A new policy has been put in place about warnings for not following your schedule to the T, which originally everyone thought only applied to punch in and punch out times. Which would be fine! A lot of people do come in late too often, or leave late, or whatever.

BUT. Home Depot also, technically, schedules what time you're supposed to take your lunch. But NO ONE follows this part of the schedule because you literally CAN'T. The lunch times are so random and rarely work with people's coverage and they frequently break the rule of getting a 30 minute break every 5 hours because of where they sit in a shift. Plus, sometimes they'll be super early in a shift when you just aren't hungry yet.

And the new policy? If you are even a few minutes off on taking your scheduled lunch you'll get an attendance occurrence. (Or half of one, depending on how off you are in your timing.) Once you reach 10 occurrences, which would only take about 2-3 weeks at most of being off on your lunches, you get fired.

Talking to a customer? Too bad, you must drop everything and go to lunch. In the middle of cutting a lumber order for a customer? Too bad. In the middle of a huge rush at the paint desk with no backup that actually knows how to work the paint machines in the store? Too bad. Driving a forklift? Too bad.

The policy goes into effect in a week. People are already crossing out "customer service" and "employee support" (or whatever that one is) on the little values wheel on their aprons. There's talk of a work to rule strike.

Anywho. Prepare for some chaos at your local Home Depot and be patient with the workers going forward. We're not happy about it either.

workplaces should have to legally provide unlimited paid sick leave available immediately upon hire. the limits that companies that even provide paid sick leave put on it is so fucked up. no one can control when they get sick, how often they get sick, or how long they are sick for, and they shouldn't have to suffer for the transgression of being ill.

"oh, but some people might take advantage of that and just stay home all the time and get paid for it!" if there is really a statistically relevant amount of people you have hired staying home on paid sick leave for months or years on end, perhaps your workplace sucks to be at, and you need to change.

give them reasons to come in to work. make it safer and easier to do their jobs. give them work that they can get invested in and talk to them about what that looks like. make sure you aren't overloading them with too much work or making unreasonable demands. pay them an amount that makes the work worth doing to them. actually form a working relationship with your employees instead of treating them like infinitely exploitable wage slaves.

only allowing your workers to accrew "2 hours a week of sick time starting after 6 weeks of employment" or some shit just doesn't match the reality of how sickness or human health works

Revolutionary French Unions on a strike now???? Revolutionary French unions???? Where are my navel gazing western leftists at?????

I don’t think you’re ready to have an adult conversation about politics until you’re able to admit that there are things you love and enjoy that would not and should not exist in a just world. $8 billion dollar budget movies every other month don’t exist in a just world. New 900 GB AAA video games every year don’t exist in a just world. Next day delivery doesn’t exist in a just world. 80 different soda brands don’t exist in a just world. 

All of those things come from exploitation on some level, and if you wouldn’t trade those for a world where everyone can eat and have a home no matter who they are or what they do, I don’t know what to tell you. 

Man, this post makes me feel conflicted, because on the one hand, of the things listed, next-day delivery is the only one that DOES actually exist in the world today. The others are exaggerations, and while I understand the point being made, they do detract from it.

I understand—and agree with—that sentiment of, “I want slower deliveries by drivers who are paid better,” as one recent tumblr post put it. I absolutely agree with the idea that we need to produce and consume less as a culture, and that an actual substantive conversation about politics should involve willingness to relinquish the many modern luxuries that are built on exploitation.

I don’t think these are good examples of those luxuries, though.

Large budget movies are possible because consumers (and investors) are willing to pay for them. A large budget is actually a necessary component in making sure workers are being adequately compensated; the fact that they currently are often exploited by studios is a result of deliberate misallocation of resources, not anything intrinsic to the size of the production. Same thing goes with high-quality video games. As for releasing a new film/game every month/year, that’s only unsustainable because there’s only a handful of monopolistic studios doing it. In a well-regulated industry that encourages growth and competition, we could see tens, if not hundreds of studios producing big-budget films and games. And, with a well-compensated and socially-supported citizenry, consumers would have enough disposable income to support it.

Similarly, the problem with soda isn’t that we have 80 brands; it’s that we have two. And those two brands each own 800 different labels. In a healthy economy, these monopolies would be dissolved, and we could support well over 80 moderately-sized independent beverage companies producing their own sodas.

Same-day delivery, again, could be easily supported with proper allocation of resources. Currently, we have huge centralized distributors like Amazon exploiting gig-workers with slave-wages to ferry cheap mass-produced crap to people, and that’s what makes it bad, not the speed at which they do it. If instead, we had something like a super-robust USPS, with well-compensated deliverypeople working reasonable hours within a decentralized network of independent-but-cooperative suppliers, there would be absolutely no reason why you couldn’t get something delivered to you from the distro ten miles down the road within a day.

When we critique capitalism, and they respond, “Yeah, well capitalism made the cell phone you’re using!” our response shouldn’t be, “Oh shit u right,” it should be, “No, capitalism made the cell phone I’m using break after a year so I’ll buy a new one, and they use slave labor to do it while they pocket the rest.”

There are luxuries, and there are artificially-valued, mass-produced, built-to-break trash that are marketed as luxuries. But we don’t solve the problems of fast-fashion by saying, “Welp I guess I shouldn’t wear clothes.”

I mean, there are things that I think people are going to have to give up to get the world they want, as much as I get the point made in the last two paragraphs I do think that’s ultimately unavoidable. You can’t be a socialist and be as attached to consumerism as a lot of people on this website are. But yeah the first post doesn’t pick the greatest examples, I appreciate that you made the same point that was going through my head about how movies are only that expensive because of the abundance of unions in the movie industry that ensure that their workers are fairly compensated – a good thing that more industries (especially in entertainment and most especially the video game industry) should have!