August 15, 2022

Devastating.

The Boss Will See You Now
Zephyr Teachout
We are experiencing a major turning point in the surveillance of workers, driven by wearable tech, artificial intelligence, and Covid.

Several decades ago, when I first moved to New York City, I answered an ad to be a personal assistant to a writer. I imagined myself as amanuensis, translating inspired pronouncements into poems. Instead, I ordered and returned sweaters, scheduled haircuts, and made three-course-meal seating plans for members of the literati whom I never got to meet. My boss, her money-manager husband, and their children lived on Park Avenue, in a penthouse with Georgian drapes and triple-insulated soundproof windows. She collected bespoke services: personal trainers, personal shoppers, a personal poetry trainer, a personal opera coach. I was one of four full-time staff, along with two live-in Irish nannies and a French maid. During our thirty-minute lunchtime, the four of us would hurry into the kitchen to use the small gold-handled faucet that produced instant boiling water to make tea and soup. We slurped and laughed and complained about our boss.

During one of these meals, the chief nanny began a call on the phone in the corner, then quickly slammed down the receiver. Pointing to its golden handle, she mouthed that she thought our boss was listening in. As we huddled over our soup, I said that our boss was always asking me for reports of what we talked about, and the nanny whispered that she was pretty sure she had seen her lurking outside the kitchen door. This was funny for a moment, and then not—a thin skein of anxiety started winding its way across the room.

A few weeks later, the maid was fired. It wasn’t clear that her dismissal was related to anything that had been said. But once paranoia gets its claws in you, it doesn’t let go easily. Our wages and raises were all unpredictable. Two of the staff relied on green cards. These circumstances, which had been the subject of so many conversations, suddenly became the source of insecurity. We gradually, then all at once, stopped having lunch together.

I have lately been thinking of that small discouraging experience as we live through an explosion of corporate investments in workplace surveillance. The year 1995, when I had that job, seems almost embarrassingly quaint, an era of surveillance innocence. There was no Facebook or Google following people everywhere they went, no spooky personalized ads. Back then, Americans spent an average of thirty minutes a month online, and 24/7 intimate surveillance was reserved for targets of FBI investigations.

At the dozen-plus places I had worked by the age of twenty-four, I punched in and out, sped up my dishwashing when the supervisor came through, weighed the beans I picked, bargained to get off early in exchange for cleaning extra bathrooms, and wrote reports for the third-grade teacher I assisted in the classroom. Even the tips I received while waitressing were my business, not the restaurants’. My bosses knew me superficially—my clothes, my general productivity—not what I thought or felt outside the workplace, unless I chose to share it.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/08/18/the-boss-will-see-you-now-zephyr-teachout/


If you can access the article it’s well worth reading. We need legislation to protect people’s privacy and to insure workplace fairness.

August 12, 2022

It's been a long time comin'

Long Time Gone
Crosby, Stills & Nash

It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a long time gone
And it appears to be a long
Appears to be a long
Appears to be a long
Time, yes, a long, long, long, long time
Before the dawn

Turn, turn any corner
Hear, you must hear what the people say
You know there's something that's going on around here
It surely, surely, surely won't stand the light of day, no
And it appears to be a long (Yes, it does)
Appears to be a long (Mmm)
Appears to be a long
Time, such a long, long time
Before the dawn

Speak out, you got to speak out against the madness
You got to speak your mind if you dare
But don't, no don't, no, try to get yourself elected
If you do, you had better cut your hair, mmm
And it appears to be a long (Yes, it does)
Appears to be a long (Mmmhmm)
Appears to be a long
Time, such a long, long, long, long time
Before the dawn, yeah

It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a long time gone
But you know
The darkest hour
Is always, always just before the dawn

And it appears to be a long
Appears to be a long
Appears to be a long time, such a long, long, long, long time
Before the dawn

August 7, 2022

FORMIDABLE!!!

August 5, 2022

Now, what's this R. procedural maneuver that's supposed to obstruct

the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act?

July 16, 2022

Question: should professional sports teams refuse to play

play in states that do not accept the results of legitimate elections?

July 8, 2022

I Don't Want to See a High School Football Coach Praying at the 50-Yard Line

By Anne Lamott

Many of us who believe in a reality beyond the visible realms, who believe in a soul that survives death, and who are hoping for seats in heaven near the dessert table, also recoil from the image of a high school football coach praying at the 50-yard line.
It offends me to see sanctimonious public prayer in any circumstance — but a coach holding his players hostage while an audience watches his piety makes my skin crawl.
We are fighting furiously for women’s rights and the planet, and we mean business. We believers march, rally and agitate, putting feet to our prayers. And in our private lives, we pray.

Isn’t praying a bit Teletubbies as we face off with the urgent darkness?
Nah.
Prayer means talking to God, or to the great universal spirit, a.k.a. Gus, or to Not Me. Prayer connects us umbilically to a spirit both outside and within us, who hears and answers. Is it like the comedian Flip Wilson saying, “I’m gonna pray now; anyone want anything?”

Kind of.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/prayer-supreme-court-football.html?action=click&algo=bandit-all-surfaces-time-cutoff-30_impression_cut_3_filter_new_arm_5_1&alpha=0.05&block=more_in_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=218822129&impression_id=c7700f80-fed2-11ec-8fee-692bd5cc8696&index=0&pgtype=Article&pool=more_in_pools%2Fopinion®ion=footer&req_id=845140123&surface=eos-more-in&variant=0_bandit-all-surfaces-time-cutoff-30_impression_cut_3_filter_new_arm_5_1

July 2, 2022

10 ways to fix a broken Supreme Court

A long but worthwhile read.

“ Democrats don’t have the votes right now for major Supreme Court reform. But if they pick up seats, they could have many options.”
By Ian Millhiser Jul 2, 2022, 8:00am EDT

https://www.vox.com/23186373/supreme-court-packing-roe-wade-voting-rights-jurisdiction-stripping

July 2, 2022

Urgent (desperate) question.

If the next Supreme Court term begins in October could a decision in favor of the independent state legislature theory come soon enough to affect the 2022 midterm election outcomes?

June 29, 2022

Code Name Mogul?

Really?

June 28, 2022

Trump's Behavior on Jan. 6, Explained by Expert on Fascism

"But coups can take months or years to plan and this was a multi-pronged attempt to overthrow our democracy. It's worth reviewing that he tried so many things simultaneously. He had General Michael Flynn trying to have martial law or military intervention and he tried the trickery that happened with the Georgia Secretary of State. And when none of that worked, he went nuclear and did what autocrats have done in the past and used violence, summoned the people there to right this monstrous wrong on his behalf," she said.

Ben-Ghiat, a professor of Italian and history at New York University, is an expert on the "strongman", a figure that's central to her latest book "Strongmen—Mussolini to the present", which explores how illiberal leaders "use corruption, violence, propaganda, and machismo to stay in power." Donald Trump is in it, together with Russia's Vladimir Putin, Chile's Augusto Pinochet, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi.

"It's interesting, what came out recently, is Trump was trying to get to the Capitol on Jan. 6. He couldn't get there," Ben-Ghiat explained, talking to CNN's Jim Acosta.

"This is consistent, if you're having a coup and summoned everybody and you expect to be anointed as the head of a new illegitimate government, you have to be there. There's a phase in coups. They're violent, quick, and then you have the pronouncement of the new order. That's why he was trying to get there."

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-behavior-jan-6-explained-expert-fascism-1714990