Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election

I'm in to TARTU, ESTONIA! Overcoming the Enshittocene (Monday, May 8, 6PM, Prima Vista Literary Festival keynote, University of Tartu Library, Struwe 1). AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Amazon is very good at everything it does, including being very bad at the things it doesn't want to do. Take signing up for Prime: nothing could be simpler. The company has built a greased slide from Prime-curiosity to Prime-confirmed that is the envy of every UX designer.

But unsubscribing from Prime? That's a fucking nightmare. Somehow the company that can easily figure out how to sign up for a service is totally baffled when it comes to making it just as easy to leave. Now, there's two possibilities here: either Amazon's UX competence is a kind of erratic freak tide that sweeps in at unpredictable intervals and hits these unbelievable high-water marks, or the company just doesn't want to let you leave.

To investigate this question, let's consider a parallel: Black Flag's Roach Motel. This is an icon of American design, a little brown cardboard box that is saturated in irresistibly delicious (to cockroaches, at least) pheromones. These powerful scents make it admirably easy for all the roaches in your home to locate your Roach Motel and enter it.

But the interior of the Roach Motel is also coated in a sticky glue. Once roaches enter the motel, their legs and bodies brush up against this glue and become hopeless mired in it. A roach can't leave – not without tearing off its own legs.

It's possible that Black Flag made a mistake here. Maybe they wanted to make it just as easy for a roach to leave as it is to enter. If that seems improbable to you, well, you're right. We don't even have to speculate, we can just refer to Black Flag's slogan for Roach Motel: "Roaches check in, but they don't check out."

It's intentional, and we know that because they told us so.

Back to Amazon and Prime. Was it some oversight that cause the company make it so marvelously painless to sign up for Prime, but such a titanic pain in the ass to leave? Again, no speculation is required, because Amazon's executives exchanged a mountain of internal memos in which this is identified as a deliberate strategy, by which they deliberately chose to trick people into signing up for Prime and then hid the means of leaving Prime. Prime is a Roach Motel: users check in, but they don't check out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

When it benefits Amazon, they are obsessive – "relentless" (Bezos's original for the company) – about user friendliness. They value ease of use so highly that they even patented "one click checkout" – the incredibly obvious idea that a company that stores your shipping address and credit card could let you buy something with a single click:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent

But when it benefits Amazon to place obstacles in our way, they are even more relentless in inventing new forms of fuckery, spiteful little landmines they strew in our path. Just look at how Amazon deals with unionization efforts in its warehouses.

Amazon's relentless union-busting spans a wide diversity of tactics. On the one hand, they cook up media narratives to smear organizers, invoking racist dog-whistles to discredit workers who want a better deal:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/amazon-chris-smalls-smart-articulate-leaked-memo

On the other hand, they collude with federal agencies to make workers afraid that their secret ballots will be visible to their bosses, exposing them to retaliation:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-labor-law-alabama-union-election-labor-official-finds-rcna1582

They hold Cultural Revolution-style forced indoctrination meetings where they illegally threaten workers with punishment for voting in favor of their union:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html

And they fire Amazon tech workers who express solidarity with warehouse workers:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-tech-employees-workers-criticism-warehouse-climate-policies/

But all this is high-touch, labor-intensive fuckery. Amazon, as we know, loves automation, and so it automates much of its union-busting: for example, it created an employee chat app that refused to deliver any message containing words like "fairness" or "grievance":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak

Time UK law was updated to make these illegal practices that Amazon is undertaking costly for them.

In the meantime I'm sponsoring foxglove to take them to court.

You look around the lecture hall and notice all the other students have fallen asleep. You look towards the lecturer, who has now stopped talking and is staring straight at you. “I don’t know how you’re still awake, but I guess we do this the hard way.” He says before pulling out a sword.

@sindar-princeling​ you can’t leave this gold in the tags

I gotta go look this up

Ok this is hilarious actually

I just want to remind everyone that it is your civic duty to jailbreak your Nintendo consoles and pirate every Nintendo property until the heat death of the universe.

PIRATE YOUR NINTENDO GAMES!!!! ♡♡♡♡ IT IS ALWAYS MORALLY CORRECT!!

^

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This but also, wait to buy nintendo games/consoles until they are no longer produced and supported so then nintendo gets no money! But alo yes make sure to jailbreak all your systems people

Most common guides are 2ds/3ds hacking guides and wii hacking guides soo

3ds.hacks.guide

wii.hacks.guide

REMEMBER. WHEN MODDING A CONSOLE, TRY AND STAY AWAY FROM OLD ASS VIDEO TUTORIALS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! THEY ARE OFTEN OUTDATED AND IF USED CAN GIVE YOU A WAY OLDER VERSION OF WHAT SOFTWARE YOU NEED AND/OR THAT WAY IS OUTDATED NOW AND MIGHT BRICK YOUR CONSOLE.

Also if you are modding a 2ds/3ds, i would recommend putting hshop on your handheld. Its the eshop except better:

hshop.erista.me

For wii, i would recommend using 'nintendont' to add onto your wii. It makes any wii/gamcub3 game (depending on what model wii you have) usable with most controllers other than wii+nunchuck or gamecube controller. Also an option to have a virtual memory card (instead of physical; only for gc games) instead of a physical one.

IMPORTANT NOTE. FULLY COMPLETE THE MODDING/HOMEBREW PROCESS BEFORE ADDING ANY ADDITIONAL APPS/SOFTWARE. THANK YOU

(Just a list of consoles not being produced anymore for anybody wanting to buy em: Any gameboy variant, ie game boy, game boy color, game boy advance, game boy pocket/micro (??), any nintendo ds variant, ie nintendo ds nintendo dsi, nintendo ds lite, nintendo 2ds, nintendo 2ds xl, new nintendo 2ds xl, nintendo 3ds, nintendo 3ds xl, new nintendo 3ds xl (might have butchered that part), any wii variant, gamecube compatible or not, as well as wii mini and family edition wiis, the gamecube, the nintendo 64, the virtual boy, ect and all games made for them! (Not sure if game titles on any of these consoles that have been ported to the switch, will give nintendo money if bought from ebay or something, but im like 97% sure it wont.) Make sure to buy these things from third parties/resellers like ebay, yard sales, ect!

Please reblog for more votes!

"Katara raised in the Fire Nation" fics are reasonably common (usually for Zutara purposes), but I think you could apply the idea to other characters. Unfortunately, almost no one seems to do that.

#toph.#she's the most apolitical of these characters canonically (she joins the gaang not because of her politics but because of her personal life#and feelings)#and thus the most likely to actually align herself w the imperialist views of the fn#plus she'd have a very interesting dynamic with mai since they're foils

(tags from @evilprincesss )

Hate when websites are like "We see you have adblock. Will you turn it off..For Us? 🥺" Like stop being desperate I am married to ublock origin

I guess this is the paw patrol fan in me but don't think paw patrol is copaganda as a lot of people claim they are because they don't do any actual policing even chase; the one time he arrests someone was mayor humdinger and that's only because he legitimately put thousands of lives in danger.

If anything they're an alternate resource. Most of their time is spent rescuing people, they male their money selling merch and not taxpayer money. The only reason chase is a cop is so that each pup follow a particular motif and c0ps were unfortunately popular at the time. Even then he is the ONLY cop character and does no real police work. It's literally just to sell toys. Are they annoying? Yes. Am I ACAB? Hell yes. But we cannot be blaming a preschool show for a system that existed long before any of us were born. That's like accusing thomas the tank engine of fascism.

Maybe the reason Azula is often a jerk to Zuko isn't just because Ozai trying to divide the Fire Siblings. Maybe it's also because Zuko is often a jerk to her and never does anything kind for her.

Cuz that justifies telling him his father is going to kill him

anti zuko stans have suffered some specific ass trauma that resulted in them becoming media illiterate

Uh....his father was going to kill him??

Saying it in a taunting way bitch pls

She was literally seven years old bitch pls

WHAT SEVEN YEAR OLD JOKES ABOUT DEATH YALL ARE SO UNSERIOUS

Literally any seven year old who doesn't really understand what death really means? Or doesn't fully understand the implications and consequences? A human child?

bloody and sparkly ✨

https://twitter.com/delaneykingrox/status/1090402436995473408

a great thing about people transitioning is it presents us with scenarios where we have the perfect control variable to undeniably reveal sexism in the workplace. I read about a trans man neuroscientist who was told he was “so much smarter than his sister” (his sister being his pre-transition self)

and damn i knew the gaming industry was notoriously sexist (even more sexist than other stem fields, and that’s saying a lot) but seeing it laid out so clearly like this is so demoralizing.

Ben Barres was that neuroscientist

Barres has been discussed a lot by my peers, and is generally considered an icon for people like me. And his biting statements on sexism are a HUGE part of that. I don’t have much to say other than yes, it’s a big problem and still is.

When Twitter inevitably explodes I want this to be one of the few surviving tweets

This is it. The final endpoint. There's nowhere else to go from here. Calling random things gay has reached its end. A man who enjoys sex with women is gay. The literal, exact definition of heterosexuality is now gay. It's almost too pure in its unlogic. A true work of art.

Honestly this is giving ancient-world misogyny of the “giving into base animal desires is womanish, real men control their lusts and only seek to procreate” kind.

Quiet Quitting is when you're not doing anything wrong but the vibes are off

When was Azula a jerk for the sake of being a jerk(i.e. “malicious”)?

Here, I want to catalogue the moments I remember where Azula did something merely to be a jerk. I’m not counting moments where she was kind of a dick about something she would have done anyways. For instance, trying to defeat Aang wouldn’t count, even if Azula enjoyed doing it and taunted him while she fought him. Where does that leave us?

1. Making fun of Zuko, many times. Note that younger siblings making fun of older siblings is utterly normal.

2. The exact manner with which Azula recruited Ty Lee. Azula could have figured out something “nicer.”

3. Kicking over a kid’s sandcastle on Ember Island.

4. Insulting Ty Lee and calling her “a tease” at the party(Azula immediately apologized for this one).

5. Burning down Chan’s house(Mai, Zuko, Ty Lee were also 100% on board with this).

6. Being kind of smug, arrogant, and bossy to a servant in the series finale.

Overall, it’s not a great list, but it’s mostly that of a teenage delinquent, not a supervillain. 

If you're having trouble keeping up with what's going on in Palestine because of US news coverage of university protests, here are some articles you can read and a video you can watch:

While CNN & all the other mainstream media try to paint the university protests as "pro terrorism" (which they're not, they're literally anti-war protests.) Palestinians are being slaughtered by the minute.

Please don't stop speaking about Palestine.

”college kids are out of control” every college with a major protest is getting swarmed by riot police and every person they arrest gets pinned by six cops a person.

Conservatives love to tout the first amendment until people they don’t like use it.

Ty Lee is the sort of person who is a massive jerk, really enjoys hurting people, and has the time of her life when she gets to beat up and humiliate someone, but who doesn’t really have the motivation or heart to go out into the world  to find acceptable targets.

That’s Azula’s job.