Anonymous asked:
Is shrinkflation a new phenomenon, or and old phenomenon given a new name?
More the latter.
Anonymous asked:
Was there any truth to Cesar Chavez's claims that undocumented migrants were being used to undercut the UFW? I doubt it was an organized plot, but there's been longstanding, unofficial US policy of doing little to effectively stop undocumented migrants from coming, and less to stop them from being employed when then come. Which creates a pool of people who can be employed in shit jobs for low pay and controlled through the threat of arrest and deportation.
No, I think it was a bunch of conspiratorial bullshit that led to violence between workers who would otherwise have been sympathetic to the UFW's cause. Huerta and the National Lawyers Guild and the Confederation of Mexican Workers and Bert Corona were in the right here, and Chavez was pretty clearly in the wrong.
Anonymous asked:
So: Is Abigail Pent the Septon Barth of the Nine Houses? As in, definitely right about absolutely everything, especially any part that's particularly heretical.
In the broad strokes, yes.
Anonymous asked:
So regarding the recent episode of X-Men 97... does the romance that started in it have a basis in the comics? Also, what did you think of the episode?
Which one: this one?
Or this one?
Because if it's the latter, not so much because the two characters in the comic books were from different generations - however, Roberto did have a thing going with Boom-Boom, who was the (poor white) Jubilee of the New Mutants/X-Factor/X-Force generation of mutants.
Overall, I liked the episode. I don't think it quite rose to the same level of excellence of the first three episodes, but both halves were quite enjoyable.
racefortheironthrone reblogged
another thing that interests me is that the houses talk about hell in the way christians generally think of it and the river seems to act as some sort of limbo but there seems to be No actual concept of heaven for them. no reward no ascension you either die and stay a ghost or whatever the fuck their hell consists of
theres the "beyond the river business" abigail pent brought up but that seems to be a fringe theory not widely recognized by their belief. not that automatically makes it incorrect its just that most people within that world think it is
I think it's a bit more complicated:
"Let the whole of everywhere entrust themselves to him. Let those across the river pledge beyond the tomb to the adept divine, the first among necromancers." “A spirit can be trapped,” said Abigail, “trapped as every spirit in the River is trapped … I know it must sound puzzling, Harrow, so I’ll elaborate. The River is full of the insane, who attempt to cross—” Magnus coughed in a genteel Fifth House way, and said, “Who wait for our Lord’s touch on the day of a second Resurrection.” “Who attempt to cross, my love,” said his wife patiently, “to get to what lies beyond; who throng in their great and endless multitude, mad, directionless; or worse, have been trapped at the bottom, about which I know very little but fear all I know. Jeannemary and Isaac, who already endured so much, and never did anything wrong, other than the time they tried to pierce each other’s tongues, should have travelled lightly through those waters. Harrowhark never should have been able to stop their progress—no, dear, don’t shush me. She knows something of heresy.” She held the even brown gaze of the woman before her, with her tidy hair and her squashy mittens, and she said, “It has been thousands of years since anybody bothered to believe in the River beyond.” “Yet I believe more than ever, now that I am dead,” said Abigail, smiling. “But God—” “I firmly believe that the Kindly Emperor knows nothing of that undiscovered country. He never claimed omnipotence. I longed my whole life to give him my findings,” she said meditatively. “I think there is a whole school of necromancy we cannot begin to touch until we acknowledge its existence—I think these centuries of pooh-poohing the idea that there is space beyond the River has stifled entire avenues of spirit magic, and I believe the Fifth House was waning entirely due to us reaching a stultified, complacent stage in our approach … Oh, I hope so desperately that my brother found my notes! Something has gone terribly wrong in the River, Harrow, and I wish you’d find out what.” PALAMEDES If you’re on the shore, then I’ll find you. DULCINEA Which shore? PALAMEDES Pardon? DULCINEA It’s a river. There are two shores. If this ends well, you’ll find that out."
So it seems to me that the conventional narrative on the Fifth is that there will be a second Resurrection whereby the souls in the River will be returned to life by the Undying King, and then there is a dissident view about the River Beyond that hasn't been widely believed in thousands of years.
racefortheironthrone reblogged
been reading this comic series Giant Days since I thought it looked cute when I saw it at a library book sale a while ago. have now finished the 3 volumes I picked up there so I'm reading the rest online, which will make it easier to blog about if I feel so inclined
really digging the look of Daisy in a suit from the movie making chapter
One of my favorite comics series of all times - one of my first additions to the digital pull list from the beginning. Every single issue was a banger, every single page had something great that took me out.
Anonymous asked:
As someone with your history of labor activism and knowledge of labor history in the U.S., do you have an opinion on the modern IWW? Quite a lot of calls for unionization I see on line include links to the IWW website. However, as a dues paying member, it's always seemed to me like the IWW could stand to do (much) more than it does currently. Do you think that they are a good part of the drive to improve labor conditions, or a distraction?
Oh man, you're just determined to get me in trouble with a very vocal group of terminally online folks, aren't you?
To be honest, I think it's a bad sign that a lot of the high profile strikes and organizing drives of the past couple years - including in areas where the IWW used to have a presence like the Starbucks campaign - have happened outside the IWW's auspices, often showing that traditional unions like SAG-AFTRA or the WGA or the UAW or UFCW (in the case of the REI organizing drive) can combine the same spirit of grassroots militancy with an actual commitment to running their unions like unions.
That's not to say that the modern IWW is a bad organization per se, but in looking through their website for recent campaigns, it all seems a bit small ball. I think they may have gotten lapped in recent years.
racefortheironthrone reblogged
OK, I'll bite - what's the deal with the United Farm Workers? What were their strengths and weaknesses compared to other labor unions?
It is not an easy thing to talk about the UFW, in part because it wasn't just a union. At the height of its influence in the 1960s and 1970s, it was also a civil rights movement that was directly inspired by the SCLC campaigns of Martin Luther King and owed its success as much to mass marches, hunger strikes, media attention, and the mass mobilization of the public in support of boycotts that stretched across the United States and as far as Europe as it did to traditional strikes and picket lines.
It was also a social movement that blended powerful strains of Catholic faith traditions with Chicano/Latino nationalism inspired by the black power movement, that reshaped the identity of millions away from asimilation into white society and towards a fierce identification with indigeneity, and challenged the racist social hierarchy of rural California.
It was also a political movement that transformed Latino voting behavior, established political coalitions with the Kennedys, Jerry Brown, and the state legislature, that pushed through legislation and ran statewide initiative campaigns, and that would eventually launch the careers of generations of Latino politicians who would rise to the very top of California politics.
However, it was also a movement that ultimately failed in its mission to remake the brutal lives of California farmworkers, which currently has only 7,000 members when it once had more than 80,000, and which today often merely trades on the memory of its celebrated founders Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez rather than doing any organizing work.
To explain the strengths and weaknesses of the UFW, we have to start with some organizational history, because the UFW was the result of the merger of several organizations each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
The Origins of the UFW:
Well, this one took months to finish up, but I think it's worth it for people who want to learn more about a complex and pivotal aspect of modern U.S labor and chicano history.
OK, I'll bite - what's the deal with the United Farm Workers? What were their strengths and weaknesses compared to other labor unions?
It is not an easy thing to talk about the UFW, in part because it wasn't just a union. At the height of its influence in the 1960s and 1970s, it was also a civil rights movement that was directly inspired by the SCLC campaigns of Martin Luther King and owed its success as much to mass marches, hunger strikes, media attention, and the mass mobilization of the public in support of boycotts that stretched across the United States and as far as Europe as it did to traditional strikes and picket lines.
It was also a social movement that blended powerful strains of Catholic faith traditions with Chicano/Latino nationalism inspired by the black power movement, that reshaped the identity of millions away from asimilation into white society and towards a fierce identification with indigeneity, and challenged the racist social hierarchy of rural California.
It was also a political movement that transformed Latino voting behavior, established political coalitions with the Kennedys, Jerry Brown, and the state legislature, that pushed through legislation and ran statewide initiative campaigns, and that would eventually launch the careers of generations of Latino politicians who would rise to the very top of California politics.
However, it was also a movement that ultimately failed in its mission to remake the brutal lives of California farmworkers, which currently has only 7,000 members when it once had more than 80,000, and which today often merely trades on the memory of its celebrated founders Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez rather than doing any organizing work.
To explain the strengths and weaknesses of the UFW, we have to start with some organizational history, because the UFW was the result of the merger of several organizations each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Question about AGOT. In addition to the arguments you laid out for Ned in Eddard VIII, why is everyone in the Small Council so concerned about Daenerys being pregnant when Viserys is still alive (and won't die for 13 more chapters)? You think there would be more concern about Viserys's potential progeny than Dany's. Any of her children should be on the same political threat level as Shireen or even less since they have Dothraki parentage instead of Florent.
Because Dany's pregnancy offers the threat of Dothraki intervention in the short-term.
racefortheironthrone reblogged
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
I mean, it's older than the Jeff Bezos business model: it's the classic strategy by which robber barons of the 19th century turned themselves into vertically- and horizontally-integrated monopolies: run at a loss to drive your competitors out of business and steal their market share, then yank up the prices to recoup your losses once you're the only game in town.
This is the Vanderbilt model, the Carnegie model, the Rockefeller model.
It's always worth noting, I think, that there's a few crucial differences here that affect things like AirBnD, Uber, Lyft, etc. that don't have a lot of currency when it comes to things like Amazon or the legacy industries.
And that's ease of entry.
Building railroads and steel plants and oil refineries is a shockingly capital intensive process that favors first movers and established incumbents. It takes years to build them, they occupy valuable land and can't just exist anywhere (fights over railroad rights-of-way could literally escalate into corporate murder) and once they exist, anyone looking to enter that market space and compete must have incredibly deep pockets and an iron will.
Amazon works the same way; it worked for years to build up its infrastructure and business relationships and suchly to the point that entering the same space is incredibly hard. There ARE competitors, but they're sort of anemic in the US.
Social media networks have very low (comparatively) barriers to entry, but the nature of social media is that network effects are paramount, which, again, privileges first-movers and established incumbents.
The "sharing economy" doesn't work like that. It is not hard to build an app, and once you have that app built, it is not hard to find people willing to use it.
This means that the old strategy of "take losses to build market share and brand loyalty (I don't understand why the tweets at the top of this post have "loss" in scare quotes, that's literally what was happening, a service was being sold for less than the cost to provide it) and when you have monopoly power jack it all up" doesn't quite work, because the instant you do that you can be undercut by a new entrant.
However.
Because of this, paradoxically, the ease of entry can function as its own barrier to entry.
What can happen is that intelligent people will look at this dynamic and go "sure, we COULD enter this market. But let's say we do that. And let's say we undercut everyone and achieve dominance, and let's say we then raise prices. Someone will just do the same thing to us, right? Leaving us with fuck-all?" And so the established firms continue to exist.
(There are of course a lot of unintelligent people out there with money to burn.)
Basically, the eventual equilibrium for something like ride-hailing should eventually end up being "two or three firms, after figuring out the bare minimum they can pay their drivers and the bare minimum level of service that people will accept, manage to squeeze yearly profits on the order of 3-5% out of their market share."
If they're taking in more profit than that, a competitor can enter the market, pay drivers more and accept a lower profit, and out-compete them. If their service gets TOO shitty, someone can enter the market and out-compete them on service at the same profit margin. And if your profit margin sinks much below three percent, that's VERY risky; one bad year can wipe you out.
This is, logically speaking, what should happen eventually. We can see the shape of this starting to come; Uber and Lyft are slowly inching their way to sustainability.
That's a fair point; at the moment, "tech" is a brush that paints way too widely.
Anonymous asked:
Could existing anti-trust laws be used to curtail Amazon and other vertically integrated tech giants? If the political will were there?
Yes. We've already seen that with the Apple suit, but to be honest it would also help if anti-trust jurisprudence would change too.
racefortheironthrone reblogged
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
I mean, it's older than the Jeff Bezos business model: it's the classic strategy by which robber barons of the 19th century turned themselves into vertically- and horizontally-integrated monopolies: run at a loss to drive your competitors out of business and steal their market share, then yank up the prices to recoup your losses once you're the only game in town.
This is the Vanderbilt model, the Carnegie model, the Rockefeller model.
Anonymous asked:
So in the early days of the X-Men, was Jean both telekinetic and telepathic? Or just the former and the latter was locked away, I think is what I've heard. And has Xavier ever showed any telekinetic abilities, or is he just a super strong telepath?
(credit to Kirby Without Words)
So this is an area in which there have been a LOT of retcons, some I like better than others. When Jean Grey first appears in Uncanny X-Men #1, she's a telekinetic pure and simple. During the Silver Age, at one point Jean's telepathic abilities additionally manifested as part of a complicated plot involving her being the one student aware that Professor X had faked his death once again, and she became one of the first mutants to have two powers.
Then in 1981's Bizarre Adventures #27, there was a major retcon that Jean Grey's telepathic abilities were actually the first to awaken long before her telekinesis. Her childhood friend Annie Richardson was fatally struck by a car while playing with Jean at their suburban street in Annandale-on-Hudson nearby Bard College. This event caused Jean's telepathic powers to activate as she experienced her friend's death from the inside, which caused massive crippling depression and an inability to control her psychic powers that eventually motivated her (horrible) parents to bring in Charles Xavier to help - and he ultimately decided on a strategy of installing psychic blocks to suppress her telepathy until she became older and better able to handle it.
I have very mixed feelings about this retcon. On the one hand, the Annie Richardson event is a classic traumatic backstory and one that advances a lot of interesting themes for Jean Grey in terms of her otherworldiness and her unique perspective on mortality. On the other hand, I feel like the whole business around Professor X installing psychic blocks leads to a pattern of midreading of the Dark Phoenix Saga as one of flawed and corrupt patriarchs unable to handle the cosmic feminine - when the whole point was that Jean established the psychic blocks as a way to control the Phoenix Force while remaining human, and it was the elimination of those blocks at the hand of greedy, self-interested, gaslighting, manipulative, sexual predators that ultimately brought the Dark Phoenix into being.
Professor X has occasionally demonstrated telekinetic abilities, mostly in the Krakoan Era.
Anonymous asked:
[1/2] Thematically, what do you think it means that Jon is one of the few major viewpoint characters NOT to experience so kind of prolonged, traumatic captivity? In a series in which slavery, both physical and supernatural, is a key element, so many of the main characters – Tyrion, Arya, Sansa, Dany, even Jaime and Cersei – undergo some kind of
[2/2] moment when they are stripped of agency and are subjected the will of others. It stands out to me that Jon is, comparatively, always the master of his own fate. Do you think that such a moment is waiting for him in the future, or is there a reason why he has been spared?
I would argue his time as an undercover agent among the wildlings counts.
Anonymous asked:
Does the comics industry treat its creators worse than other entertainment industries? I ask because someone mentioned Alan Moore has given up writing comics because of his disillusionment with the comics industry, and that it was the equivalent of Martin Scorsese giving up films.
I discuss this in some detail here:
Historically, the comics industry has been surprisingly hostile to most forms of revenue sharing - residuals, profit shares, and the like - and unusually wedded to so-called "work for hire." This has led to a lot of famous creators getting screwed when it came to their financial rights or creative inputs over their creations.
However, there's nothing intrinsic to the comics industry that made it so - the problems that comics creators have complained about for decades were the same problems that creators in film and television complained with all the time before the advent of unionism in those industries. So yeah, comics would be quite different if it was unionized.
Anonymous asked:
Are there any real life examples where the King or Duke's legitimate heir died and a bastard son was legitimized to be the heir?
Yes.