Cat Pictures, Please

Here's my OTHER cat, Junti:

Which One is the Puppet?

Oh my god. Watch this. #MuellerDay #mueller pic.twitter.com/AOzilLU3Uo

— Danny Deraney (@DannyDeraney) July 24, 2019

(It's a trick question! They're all puppets, including Trump. Now figure out who is pulling their strings.)

Crabs in a Bucket

Apropos my previous post, here's a (retired) academic who thinks we should turn professors into Amazon pickers.

His post is filled with lies, exaggerations, and bullshit. But I've seen too many people who believe just what he does to dismiss this article out of hand.

Book Review: On the Clock

Emily Guendelsberger, On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How it Drives America Insane

Ironically, Amazon* recommended this book to me. Ironic, because one of the jobs Guendelsberger works, and deconstructs, in this book is a job at an Amazon warehouse. I am now amused by the idea that Amazon warehouse workers are shipping her book out to people.

(I seldom buy books from Amazon. What I do is go over there and read their New Books page. Then I see if our library has whatever books look good, which it often does. But apparently I have bought enough books that Amazon now knows what sort of thing I like.)

Guendelsberger, who was laid off from her position as a journalist after her newspaper went out of business, spent what looks like a year or so working minimum or low-wage jobs around the country. The three jobs she examines in this book are

• picker at Amazon
• phone bank in a call center
• counter at McDonalds

I worked several minimum wage jobs in high school and while I was getting my BA; but as Guendelsberger notes, that was then. Low-wage work in the 1980s and low-wage work in the second decade of the 21st century are two different propositions.

What changed low-wage work -- which was never pleasant, but is now destructive? A few things:

(1) The use of computers to analyze and set work schedules. This leads to people's work schedules being shifted constantly -- you never know when you're going to work, and you lose all ability to schedule your life outside of work.

(2) The idea of running a "lean" business. This -- the "lean" model -- means that managers will deliberately under-staff their places of business, so that everyone must work full-out every minute that they are on the job.

(3) "Taylorism," which is the efficiency model created by Frederick Taylor. Taylor is why so many jobs are so miserable today -- his model assumes that workers are morons, and also lazy thieves. So every workplace starts from that assumption, and managers end up treating workers as if they were lazy, stupid, and dishonest. 

(4) No benefits, including no sick days. Not just no paid sick days -- no sick days at all. If a worker calls in sick, they can count on being punished for it. (Because they're lying, right? Remember Taylorism.) There are some horrific examples of what this lack of benefits does to both workers and to the workplace. I won't give spoilers, but one word: MRSA.

This is an excellent book, both for the close look it takes at these three jobs, and for Guendelsberger's analysis of just why these jobs are so bad for people and for the country. 

For instance, she connects the crisis of opioid addiction to the fact that life as a low-wage worker (and something like half the country works low-wage jobs now) is so awful and so badly paid. When you are this stressed and this miserable, you will self-medicate. Some people do that by eating carbs; some do it by smoking; some do it with narcotics.

There's also a nice section on the economic benefits of this system -- the cui bono section.

Every few years, I teach a section on Working Class Literature at our university. Next time I do, this book is going on my list.

Highly recommended.

The Cat is in the Box

So Cheer up!

Some people complain that this is the hottest summer in the last 125 years, but I like to think of it as the coolest summer of the next 125 years! Glass half full!

— Carter Bays (@CarterBays) July 20, 2019

Weather

Y'all, it is so hot here.

I know, I know it's hot everywhere. And it's Arkansas in July, of course it's hot.

But wow. I have to water my sad little garden (three tomato plants, some basil, and some oregano) twice a day, and I can't take the dog out for his walk until after sunset.

Eight more weeks until fall. And that's if fall comes on time.

Atrocity Propaganda

I've been talking about how people use atrocity propaganda to push their agenda -- to get people to believe hateful things and act on those things.

Here's an example.

Whenever you hear someone telling stories like this -- designed to horrify, designed to arouse hatred, so appalling you believe only a monster would do such a thing -- yeah, that's a sign that you're probably dealing with atrocity propaganda.

Do monstrous things never happen then? Of course they do. But when we get told stories like this, we should verify, verify, verify.

Unsurprising how many other idiots are ranting about how evil trans women are as a result of this fiction. Reminds me of the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion': where people are prejudiced, they are ready to believe any old crap that matches their hatred.

— Stephanie Anne Calvert (@StephAcalvert) July 20, 2019

From TYKKIWDBI

This conversation would end differently if it was in the Oval Office

What I'm Reading Now

Ted Chiang, Exhalation

I'd never heard of Ted Chiang before his short story, "The Story of Your Life," was made into that movie, Arrival. I liked the movie, and so I got the story collection that story was in, and liked it very much. This is his new story collection, and I like it even better.

His story are out-of-the-box in the best way, the best sort of science fiction. My favorite in this collection is probably "The Life Cycle of Software Objects," which is about raising AI babies, sort of, and also the ethical implications of owned intelligences. "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," which is (kind of) about time travel, is also excellent.

Highly recommended.


Mary Beth Keane, Ask Again, Yes

Not science fiction! This is the story of two families. The fathers are NYPD officers, who move their families out to the suburbs in the late 70s, and live next door to each other. The women have jobs, but also raise their kids, who go to Catholic school. That makes it sound like it's a nostalgic novel about life in the suburbs in the 80s and 90s, and honestly I probably would have liked it better if it had been that book.

Instead, one of the women has some sort of untreated mental illness -- it sounds like it's supposed to be schizophrenia -- and acts out violently, causing great harm to both families. Given these are police officers with guns in the house, you probably can guess what sort of harm.

This is a well-written book, which I read straight through. But I can't say I exactly like it.

Katherine Howe, The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs

I love stories about academics, so I liked this one. Apparently it's a kind of sequel to another book Howe wrote? Anyway, we have an historian writing a book about a text she found, one owned by one of her ancestors who was executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. The big twist is that both the professor and her mom are actually witches. Also there is a curse on the men they love.

This one is also well written. I liked it better than Keane's book. The witchcraft stuff is pretty well handled, also, and the academic details are legit.



Conrad Richter, The Awakening Land

I found this one on the shelves of our local library. It's a trilogy, and apparently Richter won the Pulitzer for the last volume. The three volumes are The Trees, The Fields, and The Town, and it follows a woman, Sayward Luckett (later Wheeler) from the age of 15 until her death. Her father traipses the family out to Ohio, in the days when the state was solid with old-growth forest. Her mother dies almost at once, her little sister is captured by the Indians, her father runs off and leaves them. That's just the first half of the first book.

This is a Brave-Little-Tailor story, a kind of a soap opera. Richter does a really good job of creating characters and a community. It was written in the 1940s, and there's some depressing racism, involving the Indians, mostly. Richter got his material from listening to family stories, apparently, and he was probably just a little too gullible about believing those stories, not to mention a little too willing to forgive bigotry.

The white characters are pretty good. The Indians, not so much. It's a nice big fat book, though, so if you're always desperate for something to read, as I am, this will keep you happy for a day or two.


Nancy E. Turner, These is My Words

Another American-settlers soap opera. I think I like this one better than Richter's, though the two main characters are a lot alike, and the narrative is basically the same. Young woman moves to the frontier, starts from poverty, ends up (through hard work and gumption) very wealthy. Again, the community here is well done, and the story rockets along.

The main character, Sarah Prine, has a nicely done romance with a captain in the Army. There's a minor sexual-assault-as-hotness, and of course Captain Elliot fought in the Civil War on the Confederate side, because of course he did. But other than that, this was a lot of fun, if a little unbelievable in spots.

Also much less racism and much less erasure of American Indians / Latino people.

Republican Leaders Decline...

...to criticize Trump.

Why would they? Trump and his regime are doing exactly what the GOP wants done: they are looting the country to fill the pockets of the hyper-wealthy.

Meanwhile, Trump's demagoguery works to keep the gullible and the ignorant convinced that the real problem is immigrants and "socialism."

None of this is new. This sort of vile racism in pursuit of wealth is as old as the Roman Empire*, and probably older. An old trick, but an effective one, as we see here.




*The Romans wanted to colonize Carthage. So they went around saying that people in Carthage burned babies alive. Likewise, the British empire claimed their enemies raped nuns. And reading American literature is awash with just this sort of atrocity claims -- usually aimed at American Indians, but also at Jews, Asians, and Africans.

How to Destroy the Academy

This is from a Dutch source, but much of the same shit is happening here:

Who benefits when we turn universities into diploma mills? Not the country. Not the working class. And certainly not the Academy.

The 1% benefit. Not only do they no longer have to support the liberal arts -- the education that makes free people out of serfs -- they get a whole country filled with people far too ignorant and gullible to fight back.

That's the game plan.

Just Repeat the Lies Long Enough

This seems to be the tactic on the Right these days: deny the truth, ignore evidence, repeat whatever lie justifies your bigotry and hate, and when people point out that what you are saying is not actually true, repeat the lies louder.

"The president didn't join in," Kevin McCarthy said when asked if Trump should have stopped the "send her back" chants targeting Ilhan Omar last night.

"You want to try to hold him accountable for something in a big audience?" he continued. "I think that's an unfair position" pic.twitter.com/yfUHPIfzVU

— POLITICO (@politico) July 18, 2019

Obviously, this isn't a new problem. I remember the same tactics being used when the Bill Clinton was governor here. I remember when Rush Limbaugh and Fox News were brand-new. I remember the birth of Breitbart.

The difference is, in those days, only truly ignorant people repeated such vile nonsense. Now it's mainstream.

And now it's pointless to try to reason with such people. They will just lie louder and more viciously. Facts don't matter.

So it's hard to know what to do.

Not a Brain Drain...

But a brain rot.

I was listening to NPR after driving Dr. Skull back to the governor's school this morning, and some MAGA American was pushing back against calling Trump racist.

"What about what he said about immigrants being rapists and murderers?" the host asked*.

"Well, 2 out of 3 refugee women get raped** on their way to the border," the MAGA American said, "so...."

"That's not actually true," the host said. "Amnesty International has investigated, and found that claim is untrue."

"Amnesty International," the MAGA American said, "Pff!"

This is why we can't hold civil discussions with Trump supporters. The only "evidence" they accept is the vile lies put forth by Fox News and other propaganda outlets. Any reliable source they dismiss as "liberal bias."

How do you discuss anything with people who deny reality?

*I can't find the transcript of this, so I'm working from memory.

** "Those evil barbarians are raping*** children and killing babies!!" is typical propaganda, used whenever one group wants to whip up hatred against another group

***And, of course this sudden concern for people being raped is touching, coming as it does from conservatives, who only care about rape when they can use it for propaganda purposes.

Direct Action

...is the best action

at least a minyan's worth of Jews have been arrested today, and we are STILL blocking every entrance to ICE headquarters #NeverAgainIsNow #ShutDownICE ✊✊✊ pic.twitter.com/vJ5CPfh2EV

— meaning machine (@EricThurm) July 16, 2019

See also this: