Toots 🐘 from 09/11 to 09/15

As discussed previously, on Fridays, I present my weekly social media roundups. Note that toots of articles generally include header images from the articles, which I don’t include here unless their creators happen to have released them for use under a free license, and I notice. Most have not, or I don’t notice. But I now add my commentary here, where I don’t feel restricted by message length.

Also, I don’t generally attach pictures to posts with quotations.

9:02 – Mon 11 September 2023

Content Warning: Sexual Assault, Facebook

Image Not Shown: A dark-skinned face (nostrils to chin), with masking tape in an X-shape over the mouth, branded with Facebook's F as if scribbled on in marker

‘Facebook’s contractor forced me to work alongside my rapist’ from openDemocracy

She was taken to a hospital chosen by Sama’s in-house counselor. Once there, the counselor handled all the paperwork. Mandi claims Sama was trying to control everything and keep a lid on the rape.

Hashtags: #Facebook #Moderation #Exploitation

Given how little Facebook does to protect vulnerable people, it does stand to reason that they’d contract out to companies that don’t protect their employees.

12:02 – Mon 11 September 2023

Quoted on Mastodon

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Hashtags: #Quotes

9:05 – Tue 12 September 2023

Content Warning: Segregation, Housing

Image Not Shown: Children that have high levels of lead in their blood stand next to a peeling lead paint wall in their apartment October 22, 2003, in New York City

Kids in segregated neighborhoods have higher blood lead levels from Futurity

By using a local, spatial measure of racial residential segregation rather than race itself, CEHI hopes to shift the conversation from using race, which is non-modifiable, as an explanatory variable—to using the experience of racial minorities as a root cause of health disparities.

Hashtags: #Health #Lead #Segregation #Racism

I hate the “let’s not make everything about race” angle, when racists already made everything about race by structuring systems to disadvantage people of certain races, but if this gets neighborhoods cleaned up…then fine.

12:03 – Tue 12 September 2023

Quoted on Mastodon

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.

Mark Twain

Hashtags: #Quotes

9:01 – Wed 13 September 2023

Content Warning: Belated Holiday Information

Image Not Shown: A child dressed up as Lord Krishna poses for a photo during the Krishna Janmashtami festival in Kolkata, India

Krishna Janmashtami: Celebrating the birthday of a beloved Hindu god, renowned for his compassion and his wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita from The Conversation

In northern India, Krishna Janmashtami is followed the next day by a raucous and spirited event called “Dahi Handi,” loosely translated as “curds in an earthen pot.”

Hashtags: #India #Hindu #Vishnu #HappyBelated

It amazes me that more than a billion people can celebrate a holiday with it only barely registering in media. Oh, well. Maybe I’ll remember for next year.

12:05 – Wed 13 September 2023

Quoted on Mastodon

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

G. K. Chesterton

Hashtags: #Quotes

9:04 – Thu 14 September 2023

Content Warning: US Politics

Image Not Shown: Janet Protasiewicz speaks after being sworn in as a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, Aug. 1, 2023

Complaints over campaign comments by Wisconsin Supreme Court justice are dismissed from Daily Kos

In recent weeks, Republican lawmakers have been floating the possibility of impeaching Protasiewicz over her comments calling the legislative maps they drew “unfair” and “rigged.”

Hashtags: #USPol #WIPol #VotingRights #WhinyGOP

Perhaps they would have found her comments less objectionable if she had also rioted in a government facility while attacking police officers and calling for the hanging of one of their colleagues…?

12:04 – Thu 14 September 2023

Quoted on Mastodon

I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.

Jane Austen

Hashtags: #Quotes

9:06 – Fri 15 September 2023

Image Not Shown: A series of pinball machines in front of the NRLB seal, one labeled Union Buster, another Class War featuring a drawing of Teddy Roosevelt, and one labeled Slicey Boi featuring a guillotine

NLRB rules that any union busting means automatic union recognition from Pluralistic

The NLRB’s toothless response to cheating presented an easily solved equation for corrupt, union-hating bosses: if the fine amounts to less than the total, lifetime costs of paying a fair wage and offering fair labor conditions, you should cheat.

Hashtags: #Labor #Unions #NRLB

I love this. I don’t have anything useful to say about it, but yes, if you fight an entity, then you have—by definition—accepted its existence.

12:07 – Fri 15 September 2023

Quoted on Mastodon

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Henry David Thoreau

Hashtags: #Quotes

Bonus

Because it accidentally became a tradition early on in the life of the blog, I drop any additional articles that didn’t fit into the one-article-per-day week, but too weird or important to not mention, here.

Image Not Shown: A worker in a warehouse, wearing a jacket and hard hat

Mandatory Overtime Is Inhumane and Dangerous from OtherWords

Workers are often forced to pull multiple 18-hour days a week, especially when winter cold and flu season exacerbates the company’s intentional under-staffing.

I can tell you from personal experience that work quality drops precipitously after about eight hours. I could never understand companies who think that this saves them money, even if that extra labor costs them nothing from payroll.

Image Not Shown: Woman relaxing floating above the grass

How dreams can affect your workday from Futurity

…connecting the dots between dreams and reality gives rise to awe—an emotion that sparks a tendency to think about ourselves and our experiences in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t know if I believe this, but it at least seems interesting.

Content Warning: Musk, X, and All That Entails

Image Not Shown: Elon Musk trying to look credible

How Elon Musk is using X to fuel right-wing hate in the US from openDemocracy

Musk’s interactions with toxic X users also do much to directly encourage, draw attention to and imply some degree of agreement with conspiracy theories, as well as anti-LGBTQ and antisemitic speech.

You’d almost think that, as a man who grew up affluent under Apartheid, we should believe what his actions have told us about his politics, rather than accepting his platitudes, and act accordingly.

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Credits: Header image is Circular diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week from a manuscript drafted during the Carolingian Dynasty.