#Driver Variation

[identifying-wrestling-moves]

Can you explain the difference between a Falcon Arrow and a Michinoku Driver? I always get them mixed up

Sure thing, friend!

Okay so the difference between the two is the position that the opponent is lifted from. With a Falcon Arrow, a front face lock is applied and the opponents arm is then drapped over the neck of the attacker, similar to a Brainbuster or a Vertical Suplex.

With a Michinoku Driver II, the attacker reaches between the opponent legs with one arm and will grab the back of the head or the shoulder with the other arm. Then they will scoop up their opponent like one would with a traditional Scoop Body Slam.

Both moves have a similar ending, with the opponents back (or if they wanna get real spicy with it their upper back, shoulders and neck) driven into the mat.

(I assume you mean a Michinoku Driver II here, since that's what people usually are referring to when they say a Michinoku Driver and the original Michinoku Driver is quite different from both of these moves)

Hope this clears things up a bit! Thanks for the question!

[identifying-wrestling-moves]

Kudome Valentine (Also known as the Vertebreaker/Kudo Driver/Reverse Gory Special Piledriver)

(Innovator!)

[leqclerc]

Charles Leclerc in Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Season 7 (2025)

[jackslocket]

I GUESS THAT'S HOW ITS DONE!

[identifying-wrestling-moves]

Electric Chair Driver (Billie Starkz' Sugoi Driver)

[skitskatdacat63]

Favorite Martian pics atm

[irlnorthshaw]

this is how i imagine maya's "orientation" week to go down:

she knows all abt the super league and is very aware of what kind of team iu is. so yes she expected some hazing

but... there's nothing?? just boring practice and even more boring conversations

they were all packing up after practice until vince, in his level 99 mafia boss glory, walks in

"hey, vince–" he holds out a duffel bag in front of her

oh man was that really it? she barely had a week and this guy was telling her to pack up??

until he drops it and it makes a huge thud. she's thinking... man wtf is going on

"what's this?" nothing. no reply. everyone is suddenly super silent

she opens it. it's cash. straight up. she rummaged through it– there's probably a few thousands in there

she tries to look for help but everyone's just watching intently. a couple of impassive looks, dingaan looked worried for something but skarra.. was smirking like the bastard he is

she doesn't know what kind of sick prank or roleplay this was. but who doesn't want extra change??

"i mean... if you insist! my bank account hasn't seen a deposit in a while so..." she joked... half joked

then the room shook. some were cheering. some were... grumbling, head in hand (cough skarra)

"welcome to the team, shaw"

[identifying-wrestling-moves]

Tombstone Piledriver

[ckcomics]

Ink Test: Kill this guy

Based on this comic by @hausofdecline

[saintcarrionn]

went through a brief period two months back of watching every actors on actors roundtable there'd ever been back to back because i was revising for exams and nothing calms u down like listening to a bunch of the richest people on earth saying absolutely nothing of substance for an hour and a half while everyone else around them nods in deep personal agreement. really brings everything back into perspective

[identifying-wrestling-moves]

Air Raid Crash

(Innovator!)

[lordcoolington]

btw i have a twitter now, so if any of you guys have twitters then gimme ur handle and i’ll follow you. truth be told i doubt i’ll use it very much (the format seems like a worse tumblr [to me], for i cannot add tags and also i have gripes about the very small character limit [note that i am speaking here as someone who chronically gives long soliloquies]), however i will still support y’all by means of a ‘follow’. perhaps i will use my twitter strictly for webcomic updates and other brief professional affairs.

[identifying-wrestling-moves]

Sitout Scoop Piledriver/Michinoku Driver

(Honestly the way the land makes this move more reminiscent of Hiroyoshi Tenzan's Original TTD)

[wroetolando]

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚝 𝙷𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚝 𝚆𝚊𝚛 | 𝙻𝙽𝟺

𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴: lando norris x fem!reader

𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆: the one where lando finds a hornet mid-stream, panics, and calls you to save him—only to realize there are two

𝗺𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰: help! - the beatles

𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀: language

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・

The first sign that something was wrong came in the form of Lando’s sudden silence.

You had been sitting on the couch, lazily scrolling through your phone while his stream played in the background. His usual stream banter filled the apartment—occasional bursts of laughter, the sound of his wheel clicking as he drove, and random mutterings under his breath.

But then, out of nowhere, dead silence.

You frowned, glancing up from your phone. “Lando?”

A beat. Then—

“It’s bigger than a hornet,” Lando’s voice came, his tone filled with absolute terror. “It’s like a bird, man!”

Your head snapped up in time to see him pushing his chair back so violently it nearly tipped over. He was standing now, his headset still on but slightly lopsided, his wide eyes locked on something off-screen.

“Lando, what—”

Then he bolted.

You blinked.

The chat exploded on his screen. Messages flew in at lightning speed, all variations of:

WHAT IS HAPPENING??

LANDO ARE YOU OKAY??

“LIKE A BIRD”??????

And then he screamed.

Lando Norris, the Formula 1 driver, a man who routinely threw himself into high-speed battles at over 200 mph, screamed at a pitch so high that you were sure dogs were perking up in confusion across the neighborhood.

“Oh my god,” you muttered, standing up to investigate.

By the time you entered his streaming room, you were met with the sight of pure chaos. Lando had somehow acquired the vacuum cleaner, wielding it like an ancient warrior preparing for battle. The nozzle was raised toward the ceiling, trembling slightly in his grip.

“Ooh, it’s moving! It resists!” he yelped, his voice cracking.

You followed his gaze and finally spotted the enemy—a single, admittedly large, hornet clinging to the ceiling.

You bit your lip, trying desperately not to laugh. “Lando, are you—”

“Oh, she’s too big!” Lando shrieked, his hand tightening around the vacuum like it was a lifeline. “What the fuck! It’s resisting the Hoover! It’s just—oh my god, it’s looking at me! IT’S LOOKING AT ME!”

That was it. You lost it.

Doubling over, you laughed so hard that tears pricked at your eyes.

Lando, however, did not find the situation nearly as funny.

He turned to glare at you, betrayal written all over his face. “THIS ISN’T FUNNY, Y/N!”

You struggled to catch your breath. “I—I’m sorry, I just—”

“NO, BECAUSE LOOK AT IT!”

You did. The hornet, completely unfazed, was just chilling on the ceiling, probably wondering what the hell was wrong with the screaming human below.

“I swear it’s planning an attack,” Lando muttered.

You wiped at your eyes, still chuckling. “You’re actually ridiculous.”

Before he could retort, the hornet suddenly twitched.

Lando screamed.

It was loud. It was dramatic. And it was followed immediately by the loud thud of the vacuum hitting the ground as he scrambled away.

“Fuck. Oh—oh my god, I’m SCARED!”

The chat was going insane. You could see messages popping up on his second monitor.

LANDO THIS IS THE FUNNIEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN

THE WAY HE THREW THE HOOVER LMAOOOO

SOMEONE PLEASE CLIP THIS

Lando, oblivious to the internet roasting him in real time, now had a shoe in his hand. He looked at you, wild-eyed.

“This is it,” he muttered. “I’m going in.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

“No. But I have no choice.”

And with that, he launched the shoe at the hornet with the kind of determination that should’ve guaranteed success.

It didn’t.

The shoe missed entirely.

And then—because the universe apparently had a sick sense of humor—another hornet appeared.

Lando froze.

His voice dropped into a whisper. “There’s two.”

You blinked. “What?”

His hands trembled.

“There’s TWO.”

A pause.

Then, absolute pandemonium.

“WHAT THE FUCK.”

Lando sprinted across the room, tripping over the fallen vacuum in his haste. You barely had time to register his sheer level of panic before—

“There’s TWOOOOOOOOOOO.”

His voice cracked violently, sending you into another uncontrollable fit of laughter. You had never seen him this distressed before.

“I TOLD YOU!” he wailed. “I TOLD YOU!”

At this point, he had climbed onto his gaming chair like it was a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean.

“Alright, alright, I’ll handle it,” you said, still laughing.

“No—Y/N, don’t! You can’t just—”

You ignored him, grabbing a rolled-up magazine and stepping forward. Lando let out a strangled noise of protest, but he was too frozen in fear to physically stop you.

With one swift motion, you swatted at the first hornet. It immediately darted toward the open window and disappeared.

One down.

Lando let out a small, hopeful gasp.

You turned to the second one, waiting for it to settle. Then, just as it landed, you struck again.

It was over in seconds.

Silence filled the room.

Lando stared at you in awe. “…You’re actually insane.”

You rolled your eyes, tossing the magazine onto the desk. “You’re welcome.”

Without warning, Lando lunged at you, wrapping his arms around your waist and holding on for dear life.

“You saved me,” he mumbled dramatically into your shoulder. “You’re my hero.”

You laughed, patting his back. “I hope you know the internet is never going to let you live this down.”

He groaned. “I already know. I’m gonna be seeing this for the next five years.”

You pulled back slightly, tilting your head. “You do realize that if you’d just let me handle it earlier, you wouldn’t have just humiliated yourself in front of thousands of people?”

Lando frowned, his lips pursing in thought. Then, with all the wisdom in the world, he said, “Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”

You smacked his arm.

He grinned.

The chat was still exploding. Clips were already being shared. Memes were being made in real-time.

And you?

You couldn’t wait to watch them.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・

masterlist

[amirasainz]

Can you do reader is Landos sister and she’s his whole world but she’s away at school and she surprises lando at a race?

Of course!!! I hope you like this.

Send me some requests and enjoy reading

-XoXo

Little Norris

It was no secret within the paddock that Lando Norris’ favorite person in the entire world was his younger sister, YN. No matter the context—be it interviews, casual conversations, or even playful banter with other drivers—Lando always found a way to bring her up.

The paddock had grown accustomed to hearing him wistfully complain about how much he missed her, and how unfair it was that she was stuck at school, unable to attend the races.

Sadly, this wasn’t just an exaggerated tale; YN was enrolled in St. Paul’s Girls’ School, a prestigious all-girls school in London, where students could only visit their families during weekends and holidays.

However, YN’s academic commitments were so demanding that even those weekends were usually spent buried in books, only leaving the school for holiday visits. Lando’s ever-busy Formula 1 schedule certainly didn’t make things any easier.

So, it came as no surprise to Oscar when Lando began lamenting once again about how much he missed his baby sister.

“I just don’t get why she still has to go to school. It’s miles away, and she can’t even come home on the weekends,” Lando groaned, his expression a mix of frustration and longing. “The last time I saw her was in February, Oscar. FEBRUARY. Can you believe that?”

Oscar, who had heard variations of this complaint countless times before, only raised an eyebrow and responded with a calm, “Really?” knowing full well that Lando wasn’t done yet.

“And to top it off,” Lando continued, his voice rising in exasperation, “I tried calling her yesterday. And instead of picking up, she sent me to voicemail. Voicemail, Oscar! Why would she do that? Do you think she’s mad at me? Oh no, what if Mum finally told her I was the one who ate the last cupcake at Christmas? She’ll never forgive me!”

Oscar couldn’t help but chuckle at Lando’s melodramatic worry, but the constant whining had begun to wear on him. Finally, he placed both hands on Lando’s shoulders, spinning him around to face him directly.

“Lando, relax. I’m pretty sure your mum didn’t tell her about the cupcake incident,” Oscar said, trying to suppress a smile. “She’s probably just busy studying. You know how much school means to her.”

Before Lando could cut him off with another complaint, Oscar pressed on. “Look, we all know how much you adore YN, and you’d probably move mountains to keep her by your side. But you’ve got to understand—she enjoys school. She loves hanging out with her friends, and she’s passionate about her classes. She’s smart, Lando, and she adores you just as much as you adore her. So don’t go saying silly things like this. You know it would make her feel bad.”

Lando let out a deep sigh, the usual playful glint in his eyes dulled by a hint of sadness. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he mumbled, his pout still intact as he was called away by one of the McLaren mechanics.

He gave Oscar a grateful, albeit slightly sheepish, smile before walking off towards the garage.

Oscar watched his teammate disappear into the distance, and once Lando was far enough away, he exhaled deeply, the weight of the secret he’d been holding onto starting to lift. No one had ever told him that lying—even for a good cause—could be so exhausting.

Because, of course, Oscar hadn’t been entirely honest. He was well aware of just how much Lando missed his sister. In fact, he’d spent weeks meticulously planning a surprise that would, if all went smoothly, bring YN right to Lando’s side.

After countless emails, flight arrangements, and some help from McLaren’s logistics team, Oscar had managed to fly 17-year-old YN out to Azerbaijan for the next Grand Prix.

The plan was to keep her arrival under wraps until after qualifying, ensuring Lando could focus on the race without the overwhelming distraction of knowing his favorite person was already there. The last thing anyone wanted was for him to lose focus during such a crucial part of the weekend.

While Lando busied himself with free practice sessions, YN was out exploring the local markets with some of the McLaren team’s family members. She was set to return to the paddock just as Q1 began, hidden away in the garage until the perfect moment.

Oscar had envisioned Lando’s face lighting up with pure joy, his usual calm demeanor shattered by the surprise.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

But things didn’t go quite as planned.

Qualifying that day turned out to be a disaster for Lando. From the very first lap, nothing seemed to go right. He struggled with the car’s balance, fought the understeer in nearly every corner, and couldn’t extract the pace he needed. Sector after sector, frustration built. The radio was filled with agitated comments, and by the end of Q1, he had been knocked out of qualifying altogether, missing the cutoff for Q2 by mere fractions of a second.

When he climbed out of the car, his body language said it all. Lando was livid—frustrated with the car, with himself, and with the result.

His helmet visor remained down longer than usual, as if he wanted to hide his disappointment from the world.

His walk back to the garage was slow, shoulders slumped, as mechanics and engineers exchanged worried glances but kept their distance. No one dared say a word.

Once inside the team’s motorhome, Lando stormed off to his driver’s room, eager for a moment alone. The air in the narrow hallway was thick with tension, and Oscar watched him go as his teammate finally ripped of his helmet, his heart sinking.

He knew Lando was hard on himself, but he also knew what awaited him on the other side of that door.

Lando opened the door to his driver’s room with a frustrated push, expecting to collapse onto the couch and stew in his disappointment. But as soon as he stepped inside, his breath caught in his throat. Standing in the middle of the room, a small, warm smile on her face, was YN.

“Surprise,” she said softly, her eyes twinkling as she took in her brother’s shocked expression.

For a split second, Lando didn’t move. He just stood there, staring at her, as if his brain needed a moment to catch up with what his eyes were seeing. Then, suddenly, it all hit him at once—the weeks of missing her, the frustration of the race weekend, the love he felt for his little sister—and his eyes immediately filled with tears.

“YN...” His voice cracked as he whispered her name.

Without another word, Lando rushed forward and pulled YN into a tight hug, burying his face into her shoulder as if he were afraid she might vanish if he let go.

His arms wrapped around her protectively, squeezing her like a lifeline. YN, used to Lando’s emotional side, simply hugged him back, gently running a hand through his hair.

“I missed you so much,” Lando mumbled into her shoulder, his voice muffled but thick with emotion. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I missed you too, Lan,” YN whispered, a soft laugh escaping her. “Oscar helped organize it. He said you’ve been whining about me non-stop.”

Lando laughed, a watery chuckle escaping him as he finally pulled back to look at her, his hands still resting on her shoulders. His eyes were red and glassy, but his smile was the brightest it had been in weeks.

“You have no idea how much better this makes everything,” he said, his voice still shaky with emotion. “I had the worst qualifying. But... you're here now.”

YN smiled at him, brushing a tear from his cheek. “I’m sorry I missed qualifying, but I’m here for the race tomorrow. We’ll celebrate then, okay?”

Lando nodded, pulling her back into another tight hug, resting his chin on top of her head. “I don’t care about the race right now,” he muttered, his voice soft. “I’m just happy you’re here.”

For the next few minutes, they simply stayed like that, wrapped up in each other, the world outside forgotten.

Lando’s earlier frustrations seemed to evaporate, replaced by a warmth that only YN could bring him. He felt calmer, more grounded, like a weight had been lifted from his chest.

Eventually, there was a knock on the door, and Oscar poked his head in with a cheeky grin. “You okay in here? Thought I’d check in before I’m accused of kidnapping your sister.”

Lando turned around, still holding YN close, and flashed Oscar a grateful smile. “Mate, I don’t even know what to say. You’ve made my year.”

Oscar laughed, stepping into the room. “I figured you could use a pick-me-up. I was getting tired of the constant whining.”

Lando rolled his eyes but couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips. “Okay, okay, I get it.”

Suddenly, Lando’s mood shifted entirely, the disappointment from qualifying now a distant memory.

His eyes sparkled with excitement. “Right, we need to introduce you to everyone!” He glanced down at YN, who chuckled in response.

“I’ve already met some of them,” she teased, “but I’m sure they’ll appreciate your grand tour.”

“Trust me, it’s different when I introduce you,” Lando said proudly, his arm slung around her shoulders. He led her out of the room, a new energy in his step as if the earlier qualifying session had never even

With his little sister by his side, the world already looked a lot brighter than it did that morning.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The future of Amazon coders is the present of Amazon warehouse workers

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in BURBANK with WIL WHEATON TONIGHT (Mar 13), and in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY on Mar 24. More tour dates here.

My theory of the "shitty technology adoption curve" holds that you can predict the future impact of abusive technologies on you by observing the way these are deployed against people who have less social power than you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/11/the-shitty-tech-adoption-curve-has-a-business-model/

When you have a new, abusive technology, you can't just aim it at rich, powerful people, because when they complain, they get results. To successfully deploy that abusive tech, you need to work your way up the privilege gradient, starting with people with no power, like prisoners, refugees, and mental patients. This starts the process of normalization, even as it sands down some of the technology's rough edges against their tender bodies. Once that's done, you can move on to people with more social power – immigrants, blue collar workers, school children. Step by step, you normalize and smooth out the abusive tech, until you can apply it to everyone – even rich and powerful people. Think of the deployment of CCTV, facial recognition, location tracking, and web surveillance.

All this means that blue collar workers are the pioneering early adopters of the bossware that will shortly be tormenting their white-collar colleagues elsewhere in the business. It's as William Gibson prophesied: "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed" (it's pooled up thick and noxious around the ankles of blue-collar workers, refugees, mental patients, etc).

Nowhere is this rule more salient than in Big Tech firms. Tech companies have thoroughly segregated workforces. Delivery drivers, customer service reps, data-labelers, warehouse workers and other "green badge," low-status workers are the testing ground for their employer's own disciplinary technology, which monitors them down to the keystroke, the eye-movement, and the pee break. Meanwhile, the "blue badge" white-collar coders get stock options, gourmet cafeterias, free massages, day care and complimentary egg-freezing so they can delay fertility. Companies like Google not only use separate entrance for their different classes of workers – they stagger their shifts so that the elite workers don't even see their lower-status counterparts.

Importantly, almost none of these workers – whether low-status or high – are unionized. Tech union density is so thin, it's almost nonexistent. It's easy to see why elite tech workers wouldn't bother with unionizing: with such fantastic wages and so many perks, why endure the tedium of meetings and memos? But then there's the rest of the workers, who are subjected to endless "electronic whipping" by bossware and who take home wages that look like pocket change when compared to the tech division's compensation. These workers have every reason to unionize, living as they do in the dystopian future of labor.

At Amazon warehouses, workers are injured at three times the rate of warehouse workers at competing firms. They are penalized for "time off task" (like taking a piss break). They are made to stand in long, humiliating body-search lines when they go on- and off-shift, hours every week, without compensation. Variations on this theme play out in other blue-collar sectors of the Amazon empire, like Amazon delivery drivers and Whole Food shelf-stockers.

Those workers have every reason to unionize, and they have done their damndest, but Amazon has defeated worker union drives, again and again. How does Amazon win these battles? Simple: they cheat. They illegally fire union organizers:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/31/reality-endorses-sanders/#instacart-wholefoods-amazon

And then they smear unions to the press and to their own workers with lies (that subsequently leak):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/03/socially-useless-parasite/#christian-smalls

They spend millions on anti-union tech, spying on workers and creating "heatmaps" that let them direct their anti-union efforts to specific stores and facilities:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#guard-labor-v-redistribution

They make workers use an official chat app, and then block any messages containing forbidden words, like "fairness," "grievance" and "diversity":

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

That's just the tip of the iceberg. A new investigation by Northwestern University's Teke Wiggin draws on worker interviews and FOIA requests to the NLRB to assemble a first-of-its-kind catalog of Amazon's labor-disciplining, union-busting tactics:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231251318389

Disciplining labor and busting unions go hand in hand. It's a simple equation: the harder it is for your workers to form a union, the worse you can treat them without facing labor reprisals, because individual workers' options are limited to a) quitting or b) sucking it up, while unionized workers can grieve, sue, and strike.

At the core of Amazon's labor discipline technology is "algorithmic management," which is exactly what it sounds like: replacing middle managers with software that counts your keystrokes, watches your eyeballs, or applies a virtual caliper to some other metric to decide whether you're a good worker or a rotten apple:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/26/hawtch-hawtch/#you-treasure-what-you-measure

Automation theory describes two poles of workplace automation: centaurs (in which workers are assisted by technology) and "reverse-centaurs" (in which workers provide assistance to technology):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex

Amazon is a reverse-centaurism pioneer. Take the delivery drivers whose every maneuver, eyeball movement, and turn signal is analyzed and inevitably, found wanting, as workers seek to satisfy impossible quotas that can't even be met if you pee in a bottle instead of taking toilet breaks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

Then there's the warehouse workers who are also tormented with impossible, pisscall-annihilating quotas. Some of these workers are fitted with haptic wristbands that buzz to tell them they're being too slow at picking up an item and dropping it into a box, pushing them to faster, joint-destroying paces that account for Amazon's enduring position as the most worker-maiming warehouse employer in the nation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/05/la-bookseller-royalty/#megacycle

In his paper, Wiggin does important work connecting these "electronic whips" to Amazon's arsenal of traditional union-busting weapons, like "captive audience" meetings where workers are forced to sit through hours of anti-union indoctrination. For Wiggin, bossware tools aren't just a stick to beat workers with – they're also a carrot that can be used to diffuse a worker's outrage ahead of a key union vote.

Algorithmic management isn't just software that wrings more work out of workers – it's software that replaces managers. By surveilling workers – both on the job and in social media spaces (like subreddits) where workers gather to talk, Amazon can tune the "electronic whip," reducing quotas and easing the pace of work so that workers view their jobs more favorably and are more receptive to anti-union propaganda.

This is "twiddling" – exploiting the digital flexibility of a system to "twiddle the knobs" governing its business logic, changing everything from prices to wages, search rankings to recommendations, in realtime, for every customer and worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Twiddling combines surveillance data with flexible business logic to create an unbeatable house advantage. If you're an Amazon shopper, you get twiddled all the time, as Amazon replaces the best matches for your searches with paid results. If you buy that first product result, you'll pay an average of 29% more than the best match for your search:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Worker-side twiddling is even more dystopian. When a nurse is assigned a shift by an "Uber for nurses" app, the app checks whether the worker has overdue credit card bills, which trigger lower wages (on the theory that an indebted worker is a desperate worker):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

When it comes to union-busting, Amazon's found a new use for twiddling: lessening the pace of work, which Wiggin calls "algorithmic slack-cutting." The important thing about algorithmic slack-cutting is that it's only temporary. The algorithm that reduces your work-load in the runup to a union vote can then dial the pace of work up afterward, by small, random increments that are below the threshold at which they register on the human sensory apparatus. They're not so much boiling the frog as poaching it.

Meanwhile, Amazon gets to flood the zone with anti-union messages, including mandatory messages on the app that assigns your shifts – a captive audience meeting in every pocket.

Between social media surveillance and on-the-job surveillance, Amazon has built a powerful training set for algorithms designed to crush workplace democracy. That's how things go for Amazon's warehouse workers and delivery drivers, and the shelf-stockers at Whole Foods.

But of course, the picture is very different for Amazon's techies, who enjoy the industry standard of high wages and lavish perks.

For now.

The tech industry is in the midst of three years' worth of mass layoffs: 260K in 2023, 150k in 2024, tens of thousands this year. None of this is due to a shortfall in profits, mind: Google laid off 12,000 workers just weeks after staging a stock buyback that would have funded their salaries for 27 years. Meta just announced a 5% across-the-board headcount cut and that it was doubling its executive bonuses.

In other words, tech is firing workers not because it must, but because it can. When workers depend on scarcity – instead of unions – as a source of power, they dig their own graves. For well-paid, scarcity-based coders, every new computer science graduate is the enemy, eroding the scarcity that your wages depend on.

Amazon coders get to come to work with pink mohawks, facial piercings, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don't understand. They get to pee whenever they want to. That's not because Jeff Bezos is sentimentally attached to techies and bears personal animus toward warehouse workers. Jeff Bezos wants to pay his workforce as little as he can. He treats his tech workers with respect because he's afraid of them, because if they quit, he can't replace them, and without their work, he can't make money.

Once there's an army of unemployed coders who'll take your job, Jeff Bezos doesn't have to fear you anymore. He can fire you and replace you the next day.

Bezos is obviously incredibly horny for this. Like most tech bosses, he dreams of a world in which entitled hackers can't call their bosses dumbshits and decline to frog when they shout "jump!" That's why Amazon PR puts so much energy into trumpeting the business's use of AI to replace coders:

https://www.hrgrapevine.com/us/content/article/2024-08-22-amazon-cloud-ceo-warns-software-engineers-ai-could-replace-your-coding-work-within-2-years

It's not just that they're excited about firing coders and saving money – they're even more excited about transforming the job of "Amazon coder," from someone who solves complex technical problems to someone who performs tedious code review on automatically generated code barfed up by a chatbot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

"Code reviewer" is a much less fulfilling job than "programmer." Code reviewers are also easier to replace than programmers. A code reviewer is a reverse-centaur, a servant to the machine. Every time you hear "AI-assisted programmer," you should substitute "programmer-assisted AI."

Programming is even more bossware-ready than working in a warehouse. The machines coders use are much easier to fit with surveillance technology that monitors their performance – and spies on their communications, looking for dissenting chatter – than a warehouse floor. The only thing that stopped Jeff Bezos from treating his programmers like his warehouse workers is their scarcity. That scarcity is now going away.

That's bad news for Amazon customers, too. Tech workers often feel a sense of duty to their users, a "vocational awe" that drives them to put in long hours to make things their users will enjoy. The labor power of tech workers has long served as a check on the impulse to enshittify those products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

As tech workers' power wanes, they don't just lose the ability to protect themselves from their bosses' greediest, most sadistic urges – they also lose the power to defend all of us. Smart tech workers know this. That's why Amazon tech workers walked out in support of Amazon warehouse workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/19/deastroturfing/#real-power

Which led to their prompt dismissal:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/14/abolish-silicon-valley/#hang-together-hang-separately

Tech worker/gig worker solidarity is the only way workers can win against tech bosses and defeat the shitty technology adoption curve:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

Wiggin's report isn't just a snapshot of Amazon warehouse workers' dystopian present – it's a promise of Amazon tech workers' future. The future is here, in Amazon warehouses, and every day, it's getting closer to Amazon's technical offices.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/13/electronic-whipping/#youre-next

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

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