Link Article - Bactroid.net

Can I Talk To A Manager?

“Speaking to the manager” is a sort of tyrannical helplessness; it is the haughty demand for intercession on one’s behalf by an array of greater forces you assume are servile. It is worded like a demand, but it is in fact a plea. It relies on a deeply held

Politics

Nothing to Syndicate

It should be clear what all these changes in the nature of work mean for syndicalism: It is difficult to organize the workplace if there is no workplace. It is even harder if there are no workers. Of course, there still are workplaces, and we are (mostly) still workers, and

Politics

On Disruption and Underpaid Labor

> MoviePass says its model can realize a healthy profit margin, provided it can monetize its user data and sign up enough casual moviegoers. This one sentence says so much about what's wrong with the tech industry from my perspective. Users aren't buyers in a marketplace;

Link Article

Apologies as Commodities

> A huge multi-national company like Starbucks is inextricably plugged into the system of global capitalism and, as such, is complicit in all the forms of oppression that this system engenders or heightens. But in the age of branding, corporations aren’t just business entities. Our view of ourselves as

Programming

Effectful Haskell: Reader, Transformers, Typeclasses

> Here we’ll be looking at Reader, starting with a common use case – accessing application configuration – and working our way to effectful bliss, starting from first principles. Once we’re there, we’ll examine how we can add other types to our context, like IO and other monads, using

Link Article

Managing Media

> I’m not going to wander into analyzing personality here, but I think it’s important to note that I’m aware of how I’m wired and it’s something that I accept responsibility for managing. I also think it means that I have to be extra careful

Politics

Anti-Fascism

> Also, many of their followers think that this is a game, that this a joke, that they can come off the Internet and into the streets without this having very serious implications. And a lot of what antifa is doing is making it perfectly clear to them that if

Politics

Download More Proles

> Contrary to public perception, the economy doesn’t actually need that many more programmers. As a result, teaching millions of kids to code won’t make them all middle-class. Rather, it will proletarianize the profession by flooding the market and forcing wages down – and that’s precisely the point.

Religion/Spirituality

Racism and Homophobia in the KC Pagan Community: The Asatru Folk Assembly

> For two months, however, I have been combating racism and homophobia being brought to my community. It has taken over my time I reserve for blogging and, in the past few weeks, sleep and self-care too. I've needed to step away from social media and the ugliness

Politics

In Charlottesville, the Local Jewish Community Presses On

> For half an hour, three men dressed in fatigues and armed with semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the temple. Had they tried to enter, I don’t know what I could have done to stop them, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them, either. Perhaps

Link Article

The Toxic Drama on YA Twitter

> Many members of YA Book Twitter have become culture cops, monitoring their peers across multiple platforms for violations. The result is a jumble of dogpiling and dragging, subtweeting and screenshotting, vote-brigading and flagging wars, with accusations of white supremacy on one side and charges of thought-policing moral authoritarianism on

Politics

What Socialism Means

The constant cries of “socialism” for every government program from the American right has really diluted the meaning. > Socialism refers to a system where sectors of the economy and basic aspects of human society are moved outside of a market system and into communal ownership. This process of the

Link Article

Socialism’s Future May Be Its Past

> Capitalism is an economic system: a way of organizing production for the market through private ownership and the profit motive. To the extent that it has permitted democracy, it has been with extreme reluctance. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Socialism’s Future May Be Its Past [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/

Politics

Why We Should Fear University, Inc.

> Rather than painting student activists as censors — trying to dictate who has the right to say what and when — we should instead see them as trapped in a corporate architecture of managing offense. Have you ever been to corporate sexual harassment training? If you have, you may have been

Politics

The Importance of Collective Action

While reading through the archives over at Treehugger [https://www.treehugger.com/], I came across this bit of wisdom that I think has broader applications than just environmentalism and global climate change: > Inevitably, if we look solely at 'impacts' and 'footprints'—be they personal, or

Politics

How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul

> The result today is a paradox. At the same time that the nation has achieved perhaps the most tolerant culture in U.S. history, the destruction of the anti-monopoly and anti-bank tradition in the Democratic Party has also cleared the way for the greatest concentration of economic power in

Link Article

Stories Are Important

> But it is important. All stories are important. YOUR story is important. Your photopgraphy, your sculpture, your dacing, your music, your writing, your anything...it's important. And taking the time to share your creativity, no matter what the format, will undeniably change the world. Maybe not a

Politics

Jesse Williams Spits Knowledge Like a Seasoned MC

This is one of the most powerful speeches on race in America I have ever had the privilege of watching. You owe it to yourself to watch this in its entirety. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, sit in that discomfort for a few minutes. After all, our black brothers

Religion/Spirituality

Ramadan Mubarak

Ramadan Mubarak to my Muslim friends! If you're fasting, I hope that your month of fasting and prayer helps you feel interconnected with your faith community and your understanding of the Divine. May your holy month bring you both joy and peace. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ramadan Etiquette Guide: How to

Feminism

How to Get Sexually Assaulted at a Gaming Convention

If you ever want to know what sexual assault is like, please read this article. And think about it the next time you defend a rapist by trying to discredit a victim. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to get sexually assaulted at a gaming convention [TW] [https://gomakemeasandwich.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/

Programming

How to Avoid the Biggest Mistake You Can Make as a New Software Engineer

> Small deltas in your learning rate make a huge difference in the long run because investments in yourself compound over time. The knowledge and lessons that you learn today create a foundation for the opportunities that you find and seize in the future. And the earlier that you invest

Gaming

Teenage Girls Are Playing Video Games. You Just Might Not Hear Them.

> About a quarter of the girls who play video games do play online at least once a month. Unlike boys who play video games online, however, teenage girls tend to turn off their mics. Only 28 percent of the girls who play video games online use voice chat to

Gaming

Bioware Trash

I have been playing Bioware games since Baldur's Gate, and Mass Effect is one of my top two favorite sci-fi universes. If "Bioware trash" is a thing, I most definitely belong in that particular garbage can. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why BioWare’s games inspire a unique kind of

Gaming

Parenting Done Right

Now this is parenting done right. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I spoke at our PTA about games [https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2015/04/08/i-spoke-at-our-pta-about-games]

Gaming

Banned and/or Restricted

The latest Magic: The Gathering bans for modern lead me to believe that Wizards of the Coast would like modern to have more variance. That's a valid design choice. Both Birthing Pod and Dig Through Time provided card selection for very low costs, rewarding skilled players disproportionately. As