#companies are doing mass layoffs right now

[villainanders]

You guys are like. aware the US and Canada are mostly likely about to hit a recession right

[felassan]

[source (Senior Reporter at Kotaku), linked Kotaku article, two, 'FC 24's performance link', three, four, @/N7SeveranceDay (source of the last two images, "Account supporting BioWare employees laid off in 2023."), five, six, Polygon tweet, Polygon article]

"BioWare Continues to Refuse to Pay Severance" statement transcript:

“BioWare Continues to Refuse to Pay Severance On August 23 of this year, BioWare eliminated “approximately 50 roles at BioWare”. Following the layoffs, seven ex-BioWare employees engaged the services of R. Alex Kennedy to represent their interests, stating that the amount of severance offered was insufficient under Alberta common law. Counsel for the employees has attempted to reach a compromise that would avoid requiring lengthy court proceedings, but BioWare’s lawyers refused any offers to negotiate and settle out of court. The basis of Kennedy’s claim is that according to Alberta precedents and under Canadian law, these employees should be receiving approximately 1.7 months of severance per year of service they gave to BioWare. BioWare has now filed a Statement of Defence, which argues that the seven terminated employees are only entitled to two weeks of severance per year spent in service to BioWare, because of a contract provision that Kennedy says is not enforceable. The filing means BioWare will be taking these former employees to court rather than working towards finding an out of court resolution. The developers involved in the suit have expressed their disappointment: - “We are disappointed that BioWare prefers stalling and intimidation tactics to fair dealing with people who have given years, and in some cases decades, of dedication and hard work to the company.” - “We believe they are using intimidation and stalling tactics to try and get us to drop out. A lot of the more junior employees and those with families, who had more monetary pressure on them, could not risk waiting on a court case that may take many months more to resolve, and have already had to drop out.” - “At the time of the layoffs, BioWare offered us professional assistance in finding new employment, and an additional payment, but ONLY on the condition that we signed an agreement saying we cannot talk about any details of the settlement, and that we would completely waive any right to legal action or even to complain in any way about anyone associated with BioWare now or ever in the future. Tactics like that sure make me think that BioWare knows it is in the wrong.” - “Despite what they publicly announced when they laid us off, this process has been anything but empathetic, respectful, and communicative.” The latest BioWare layoffs were the third round so far this year, and many of the developers affected even in earlier rounds are still searching for work, though some have started to find new positions. Regardless of employment status, the members of the current lawsuit state they remain determined to pursue BioWare in court, regardless of their employment status: - “We strongly believe that if Dragon Age: Dreadwolf does not do as well as BioWare or EA wants at launch, there will be more, even larger layoffs. Therefore, regardless of our own well-being, we believe it is important to hold BioWare responsible and get a clear decision on what settlement amount is legal. We’re no longer part of the development team, so the best way we can help our former teammates now is to hold BioWare accountable and ensure that the next group who is laid off are not treated as poorly as we were.” November 7th marks “N7 Day”, which is a fan celebration of BioWare’s Mass Effect games featuring Commander Shepard and the crew of the Normandy. The developers involved in the lawsuit are hoping N7 Day this year will be a reminder to BioWare of the importance of loyalty to your crew, and hope fans can have a little fun and help express their support with memes and images using an #N7SeveranceDay hashtag. The ex-employees involved in the suit are all based in Canada and have an average of 14 years at BioWare.”

[source]

You can express your support using the hashtag #N7SeveranceDay.

Edit: [Part 2/update] [more on the Keywords topic]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google is (still) losing the spam wars to zombie news-brands

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (May 3) in CALGARY, then TOMORROW (May 4) in VANCOUVER, then onto Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Even Google admits – grudgingly – that it is losing the spam wars. The explosive proliferation of botshit has supercharged the sleazy "search engine optimization" business, such that results to common queries are 50% Google ads to spam sites, and 50% links to spam sites that tricked Google into a high rank (without paying for an ad):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

It's nice that Google has finally stopped gaslighting the rest of us with claims that its search was still the same bedrock utility that so many of us relied upon as a key piece of internet infrastructure. This not only feels wildly wrong, it is empirically, provably false:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Not only that, but we know why Google search sucks. Memos released as part of the DOJ's antitrust case against Google reveal that the company deliberately chose to worsen search quality to increase the number of queries you'd have to make (and the number of ads you'd have to see) to find a decent result:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Google's antitrust case turns on the idea that the company bought its way to dominance, spending the some of the billions it extracted from advertisers and publishers to buy the default position on every platform, so that no one ever tried another search engine, which meant that no one would invest in another search engine, either.

Google's tacit defense is that its monopoly billions only incidentally fund these kind of anticompetitive deals. Mostly, Google says, it uses its billions to build the greatest search engine, ad platform, mobile OS, etc that the public could dream of. Only a company as big as Google (says Google) can afford to fund the R&D and security to keep its platform useful for the rest of us.

That's the "monopolistic bargain" – let the monopolist become a dictator, and they will be a benevolent dictator. Shriven of "wasteful competition," the monopolist can split their profits with the public by funding public goods and the public interest.

Google has clearly reneged on that bargain. A company experiencing the dramatic security failures and declining quality should be pouring everything it has to righting the ship. Instead, Google repeatedly blew tens of billions of dollars on stock buybacks while doing mass layoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Those layoffs have now reached the company's "core" teams, even as its core services continue to decay:

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

(Google's antitrust trial was shrouded in secrecy, thanks to the judge's deference to the company's insistence on confidentiality. The case is moving along though, and warrants your continued attention:)

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-2-trillion-secret-trial-against

Google wormed its way into so many corners of our lives that its enshittification keeps erupting in odd places, like ordering takeout food:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Back in February, Housefresh – a rigorous review site for home air purifiers – published a viral, damning account of how Google had allowed itself to be overrun by spammers who purport to provide reviews of air purifiers, but who do little to no testing and often employ AI chatbots to write automated garbage:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

In the months since, Housefresh's Gisele Navarro has continued to fight for the survival of her high-quality air purifier review site, and has received many tips from insiders at the spam-farms and Google, all of which she recounts in a followup essay:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

One of the worst offenders in spam wars is Dotdash Meredith, a content-farm that "publishes" multiple websites that recycle parts of each others' content in order to climb to the top search slots for lucrative product review spots, which can be monetized via affiliate links.

A Dotdash Meredith insider told Navarro that the company uses a tactic called "keyword swarming" to push high-quality independent sites off the top of Google and replace them with its own garbage reviews. When Dotdash Meredith finds an independent site that occupies the top results for a lucrative Google result, they "swarm a smaller site’s foothold on one or two articles by essentially publishing 10 articles [on the topic] and beefing up [Dotdash Meredith sites’] authority."

Dotdash Meredith has keyword swarmed a large number of topics. from air purifiers to slow cookers to posture correctors for back-pain:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/keyword-swarming-dotdash.jpg

The company isn't shy about this. Its own shareholder communications boast about it. What's more, it has competition.

Take Forbes, an actual news-site, which has a whole shadow-empire of web-pages reviewing products for puppies, dogs, kittens and cats, all of which link to high affiliate-fee-generating pet insurance products. These reviews are not good, but they are treasured by Google's algorithm, which views them as a part of Forbes's legitimate news-publishing operation and lets them draft on Forbes's authority.

This side-hustle for Forbes comes at a cost for the rest of us, though. The reviewers who actually put in the hard work to figure out which pet products are worth your money (and which ones are bad, defective or dangerous) are crowded off the front page of Google and eventually disappear, leaving behind nothing but semi-automated SEO garbage from Forbes:

https://twitter.com/ichbinGisele/status/1642481590524583936

There's a name for this: "site reputation abuse." That's when a site perverts its current – or past – practice of publishing high-quality materials to trick Google into giving the site a high ranking. Think of how Deadspin's private equity grifter owners turned it into a site full of casino affiliate spam:

https://www.404media.co/who-owns-deadspin-now-lineup-publishing/

The same thing happened to the venerable Money magazine:

https://moneygroup.pr/

Money is one of the many sites whose air purifier reviews Google gives preference to, despite the fact that they do no testing. According to Google, Money is also a reliable source of information on reprogramming your garage-door opener, buying a paint-sprayer, etc:

https://money.com/best-paint-sprayer/

All of this is made ten million times worse by AI, which can spray out superficially plausible botshit in superhuman quantities, letting spammers produce thousands of variations on their shitty reviews, flooding the zone with bullshit in classic Steve Bannon style:

https://escapecollective.com/commerce-content-is-breaking-product-reviews/

As Gizmodo, Sports Illustrated and USA Today have learned the hard way, AI can't write factual news pieces. But it can pump out bullshit written for the express purpose of drafting on the good work human journalists have done and tricking Google – the search engine 90% of us rely on – into upranking bullshit at the expense of high-quality information.

A variety of AI service bureaux have popped up to provide AI botshit as a service to news brands. While Navarro doesn't say so, I'm willing to bet that for news bosses, outsourcing your botshit scams to a third party is considered an excellent way of avoiding your journalists' wrath. The biggest botshit-as-a-service company is ASR Group (which also uses the alias Advon Commerce).

Advon claims that its botshit is, in fact, written by humans. But Advon's employees' Linkedin profiles tell a different story, boasting of their mastery of AI tools in the industrial-scale production of botshit:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

Now, none of this is particularly sophisticated. It doesn't take much discernment to spot when a site is engaged in "site reputation abuse." Presumably, the 12,000 googlers the company fired last year could have been employed to check the top review keyword results manually every couple of days and permaban any site caught cheating this way.

Instead, Google is has announced a change in policy: starting May 5, the company will downrank any site caught engaged in site reputation abuse. However, the company takes a very narrow view of site reputation abuse, limiting punishments to sites that employ third parties to generate or uprank their botshit. Companies that produce their botshit in-house are seemingly not covered by this policy.

As Navarro writes, some sites – like Forbes – have prepared for May 5 by blocking their botshit sections from Google's crawler. This can't be their permanent strategy, though – either they'll have to kill the section or bring it in-house to comply with Google's rules. Bringing things in house isn't that hard: US News and World Report is advertising for an SEO editor who will publish 70-80 posts per month, doubtless each one a masterpiece of high-quality, carefully researched material of great value to Google's users:

https://twitter.com/dannyashton/status/1777408051357585425

As Navarro points out, Google is palpably reluctant to target the largest, best-funded spammers. Its March 2024 update kicked many garbage AI sites out of the index – but only small bottom-feeders, not large, once-respected publications that have been colonized by private equity spam-farmers.

All of this comes at a price, and it's only incidentally paid by legitimate sites like Housefresh. The real price is borne by all of us, who are funneled by the 90%-market-share search engine into "review" sites that push low quality, high-price products. Housefresh's top budget air purifier costs $79. That's hundreds of dollars cheaper than the "budget" pick at other sites, who largely perform no original research.

Google search has a problem. AI botshit is dominating Google's search results, and it's not just in product reviews. Searches for infrastructure code samples are dominated by botshit code generated by Pulumi AI, whose chatbot hallucinates nonexistence AWS features:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/01/pulumi_ai_pollution_of_search/

This is hugely consequential: when these "hallucinations" slip through into production code, they create huge vulnerabilities for widespread malicious exploitation:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

We've put all our eggs in Google's basket, and Google's dropped the basket – but it doesn't matter because they can spend $20b/year bribing Apple to make sure no one ever tries a rival search engine on Ios or Safari:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-payments-apple-reached-20-220947331.html

Google's response – laying off core developers, outsourcing to low-waged territories with weak labor protections and spending billions on stock buybacks – presents a picture of a company that is too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Google promised us a quid-pro-quo: let them be the single, authoritative portal ("organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful"), and they will earn that spot by being the best search there is:

https://www.ft.com/content/b9eb3180-2a6e-41eb-91fe-2ab5942d4150

But – like the spammers at the top of its search result pages – Google didn't earn its spot at the center of our digital lives.

It cheated.

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/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Image: freezelight (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spam_wall_-_Flickr_-_freezelight.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[devsgames]

I'm sorry but for people who cheer on mass game industry layoffs because they think it's some kind of upheaval that is going to "topple the AAA industry" or "teach them a lesson": I hate to break it to you but AAA studios have a metric shitload of money and despite what their press releases say, they really aren't hurting as much as they'd have you think right now. Thousands of jobs lost is a temporary setback to them; if it was actually a last resort move they wouldn't have all simultaneously put themselves in a position where they had to do it in the first place. These studios have been around for decades and will continue to be around, and they will continue to operate just as they have for the last thirty years because they have huge vaults and no morals. They aren't learning a lesson from this because most of them saw it coming but would never admit that.

Know who is being permanently impacted by games layoffs?

It's the indie studio making sick ass games you'll never get to play because they laid everyone off when a publisher tried to save money by pulling all their funding. The hundreds of workers who woke up one morning and found out they suddenly have no job to put food on the table for their children. The international workers who were let go from the job that supplies their visa that helps them stay in the country. The thousands of students who now have to compete over a pool of a dozen job openings, who will work in studios where all the senior staff and leadership who would normally be there to help mentor them into their roles were fired. The disabled workers who now no longer have health or insurance coverage for their survival. The workers who didn't get laid off but survived to see all their friends and coworkers lose their livelihoods for completely arbitrary reasons and whose morale has all but been completely obliterated. The workers in the Global South working for outsourcing companies who were relying on cancelled projects from AAA studios to put food on their tables.

So whenever you're inclined to assume that the suffering of workers is somehow teaching rich people a lesson, remember that no, it doesn't actually and almost never will. All it does is teach thousands of talented workers in the video game industry that games were never - and will never - be worth it.

[shc2c]

The Mysterious Case of Sonic Movie 3 Marketing

An Op-Ed by Malzilla

Let me say this right off the bat, I am not an expert in marketing. I took Marketing classes in college for my business minor but most of it was pretty entry level but it gave me a solid foundation to understand most companies' marketing plans. Or at least try to see the method or goal behind the madness to get a scope of what they’re trying to do. But Paramount’s treatment of Sonic 3 is bizarre. We got toys, plushies etc out in stores before the first trailer. 

Sonic Movie 3 has me utterly baffled. Because here we are exactly four months/120 days (122 days at the time of this writing) and do far zip zilch nada. 

The last OFFICIAL news we got for the movie was back on Feb 2nd when the twitter released a little teaser showing the logo as well as some of the additional human cast members. Sure Jon Campea on his Podcast YT show announced that Keanu would play Shadow and was pretty much confirmed by official Hollywood outlets in April but no official word from Paramount has been given. They’ve been radio silent for months know, save for a few weeks in April to promote the Knuckles TV show

So why the wait? Some folks I have talked to may think there may be some internal stuff going on, but I doubt it. Yes Paramount is getting ready to merge with Skydance and some layoffs have happened but I don’t think that would affect much of the Sonic movie day to day. 

So here we are at four months till release and we’re all wondering “It’s go time right? RIGHT?” 

I would think so. And so has the rest of the Sonic Fandom. But alas we’re still waiting for the green light to go. So when is that green light coming? 

Soon.

I hope.

Honestly, I don’t know. But looking at two other films marketing that run some parallels to S3 as well as some key dates in the next  four months. I'm going to throw some ideas out there. 

First off let's look at the marketing on Sonic 2. Movie was released April 8th 2022, and its first official trailer was released on Dec 9th at the 2021 VGAs (it also had a poster released the day prior on the 8th). So right at the four month mark. They followed up with some TV spots and a special Pre Super Bowl TV spot in February AND then the final Trailer March 14th. So a fairly dense four month marketing campaign. 

The other film to look at is Spider-man No Way Home, which like Sonic 3 had a December release date. NWH after months of rumors and lack of promotion (sound familiar) debuted its first teaser trailer on August 23rd 2021; roughly four months prior to its Dec 17th release date. It also had another final trailer on Nov 16th; roughly one month prior. 

So if we look at both of them we see a very similar four month marketing campaign. So what does that mean for Sonic 3? Let's work backward from the release date till now. The following are dates of significance, IMO to both Paramount, Pop/Nerd/Game culture etc: 

Dec 20th - Release Date 

The Long Wait will be over and we all bask in the Living and Learning of it all 

Nov 28th - Thanksgiving - Possible 2nd Trailer.

Given that Paramount has put Sonic TV spots before Football games before, I would not be surprised if we got the 2nd Trailer during Half Time of the CBS game that airs in the morning of Thanksgiving. This also aligns with the roughly 1 month prior benchmark as seen with both S2 and NWH. 

NYCC Oct 17th-20th - TV Spots/Behind the Scenes/Movie Clip

While this date kinda is little too soon for a second trailer, it would be a great time to bring out the whole cast and do some promotion with the masses and maybe some TV spots or a small clip. 

Transformers One Release Sep 20th - PONR for First Trailer 

I think I can safely say that the absolute LATEST we can expect a trailer for Sonic 3 would nex month with the release of Transformers One. Paramount would have to be utterly brainless NOT to have a trailer for Sonic playing in front of their other Family Nerd Oriented IP.

Gamescom 2024 Oct 20h - 25th - Trailer Release 

Kinda funny how the Opening Night Ceremony for Gamescom just so happens to fall on both the four month till release mark AND a Tuesday (Paramount usually releases trailers on Tues/Thurs)? We KNOW SEGA will be there with more SonicXShadow Generations, but really the movies are more Paramount’s game than SEGAs so there is no guarantee it will be released. BUT Paramount has passed on both Summer Game Fest AND San Diego Comic Con. Everything seems aligned for a reveal on Tuesday. I guess we’ll know if we get a poster revealed  tomorrow. 

Now personally I would have started ramping up the marketing with SDCC. Because right now the two biggest competitors that Sonic 3 is going to have in Dec are Kraven and Mufassa. And both of these movies have had TWO trailers released for it.  With Kraven it makes sense since it was originally supposed to be released back in 2023 but then got pushed back 3 times. So I guess Sony thinks it can rack up a solid week one before the family holiday push. Mufassa on the other hand is going to be the big one to beat as family’s will no doubt flock to the much anticipated origin of Mufasa! That last part was sarcasm but this part is not: they need to get the word out to the casuals. I’ve talked to a lot of Non Sonic who are genuinely excited to see Keanu play Shadow. And the time is right to get them hooked. 

So in the end, I will say that I’m like Jon Snow and I “know nothing” but I do know we're getting to the point where it’s time for paramount to lace up its sneakers and get going. Whether it's this week or the next or maybe till the opening of Transformers One. But I would recommend Paramount not dilly dally. Sonic Fans are easily frustrated and can turn rabid quickly. 

[hexhomos]

are u ever fully returning to the vkjc kingdom >_< your art and fics were so amazing (as is ur doomreed stuff!!).. everyone misses them sm.

ik u have said in the past that the (show) fandom kind of Sucks and is dead for the most part so making content/engaging with it is so blehhhh :/ & things are looking So So bleak because of the league retcons.

i just love your vkjc sm and hope u draw them again someday </3 even though that awful new writing team has gutted them

I really don't know at this point, sorry! I'm very busy with work/life stuff atm to the point I can't see fanart in my near future at all. I'll be working solely on comms for a while after that, and generally speaking I have not felt comfortable doing league stuff after the mass-layoffs inside the company and the aforementioned gutting of the lore. I'm glad you enjoyed my stuff! It's just not in the cards for me right now.

[emahriel]

You might have already mentioned this and if so, I'm sorry to ask you to repeat yourself. But how do you feel about Larian's announcement that they will never do another D&D related game, including any additional Baldur's Gate things? On the one hand, I really respect that and I'll be happy to experience brand new rpgs from them. I am already hyped for the new rpg they're teasing! But on the other hand, it does make me sad because they brought so much life to the BG universe and I just have a terrible feeling someone else will snatch up the IP and ruin the series by trying to milk Larian's success.

Again, I'm sorry to randomly slide into your dms, just was curious to hear your opinion on it.

Hello hello, no worries - I have not actually spoken about this here nor on twitter. But, I have discussed this with friends!

Considering Larian teased in the past the possibility of BG3 getting DLCs and knowing the fact that DOS2 got two of them, I was pretty confident they'd make at least one for BG3. Swen confirming that they won't make any did surprise me, but I'm not mad about it! Nor am I disappointed that they won't make another D&D related game. If anything, it kinda sucks that WotC is probs gonna milk the hell out of BG3 like you said and who knows, maybe they're even considering making another Baldur's Gate game… but ultimately I'm super excited about Larian Studios' next project. It's just ironic because Larian was denied by WotC the rights to Baldur's Gate after DOS, then they approached them again when they were working on DOS2 and Larian had to provide the necessary documents to showcase, for an opportunity to purchase the license for BG3 while nearing bankruptcy at the time (hence the investment from Tencent iirc).

Anyway, WotC sucks for so many reasons and I know Swen keeps saying that they are not the reason why they didn't renew their license or decide to make another D&D related game, and while I'm sure that's partly true, the mass layoffs from WotC disappointed lots of Larian people (nearly everyone at WotC who worked alongside Larian for BG3 left) and I mean... I would understand not wanting to work alongside that company tbh.

With that being said, I feel like now that they got their name out there, they can focus on more personal projects and ideas and still have a solid chance at making a successful game. I'm excited for whatever they're gonna cook up next, that company's full of passionate people who don't seem money driven so I'm really hopeful. I think ultimately, it's all for the best!

[exeggcute]

My gf works in tech and it's good money and great bennies, work from home, a hip workplace, her coworkers are getting loaded... and then between your posts and this Tumblr drama it seems so messy and then my girlfriend's company makes the national paper BC the CEO "resigns" after sex pest allegations and the company wants to IPO with a new (American) CFO and well. looking from the outside I have to wonder if the money and casualness is worth the often quite public messiness.

oh man, "company wants to IPO" is already a doozy in itself but "company wants to IPO immediately after ousting sex pest CEO" is a real one-two punch lol. at least they got rid of the shitty CEO, but I'd definitely watch out with the new CFO because shitty CFOs who ascribe to the "save a penny to spend a pound" philosophy love to come in and slash random costs only to find out six to nine months later that the costs they cut were... not things you really want to cut. so fingers crossed this isn't a sign of layoffs on the horizon :/

honestly though. it can be turbulent out here in softwareland but I would be lying if I said I didn't still enjoy it, despite the messiness. it's certainly never boring (and the money doesn't hurt). but I do think a lot of companies have this sort of ebb-and-flow lifecycle where you can come in at a stable time and solve interesting problems with cool people, until the company either gets too big for its britches and turns into a bureaucratic nightmare or doesn't bring in enough money and starts circling the drain. jumping ship a lot (either by choice or by force) becomes the norm, which has its own pros and cons, and then you have the holdouts who stick around at the same company for so long that their butt and their office chair start to meld into one indistinguishable mass.

the company I got laid off from a few months ago is definitely in the "circling the drain" phase right now—right after the wave of layoffs I got caught in, the guy who'd been the CEO since the company's inception "stepped down" (i.e., the board wanted him out) and I'm not confident that the new guy is gonna fare any better trying to steer a company that lost some pivotal clients to bankruptcy and that's still catching its breath in the wake of an ill-fated merger. the fact that they're hiring back my exact role for more than they ever paid me is not a good sign 🤷

and sometimes it's fun because of its messiness, not just in spite of it lol. tomorrow I have an "interview" with that place even though I already accepted a job offer somewhere else for a better title and a 25% raise... but I can't wait to gather intel and maybe, god willing, get some fucking closure on the whole thing

[sierrasheep]

I know I don't have much of a reach here but I'm pretty desperate. I've been unemployed since May from a company mass layoff and haven't been receiving unemployment benefits. My savings is completely out and I cannot afford rent at the end of the month. I've scrimped and cut everything I have, I've been selling plasma, and sent in well over 100 applications but it's not enough. I live alone with no partner or family help, I'm disabled and cannot return to restaurant work due to a back injury. I know it's very difficult for a lot of people right now but if you can do anything please consider sharing this post for me, if you're financially stable it would mean the world to me if you could send me anything that could help.

[xpc-web-dev]

Trusting my persistence is my only solution

(12/02/2023)

Hi everyone, I'm back.

How are you? I hope well.

During these days that I stopped posting I continued studying, in this case I went to php but now I'm starting ruby.

Python is still the language I most want to learn (still obsessed with being able to play my snake game by myself) but in addition to not having many openings in my country and the market is unstable both here and abroad, I decided to go for ruby.

I already wanted to learn ruby ​​because I saw that AO3 uses it and I wanted to contribute to the project, but I always left it to 7 flat.

(Yes, I'm a fanfiquere and I love the writers I met and know there, better than a lot of streaming and for free)

Now talking more about the title of the post and why I was missing.

This mass of layoffs shook my emotions a lot, here in Brazil we are also having it, not in the same number/companies but it is still so bad since there are a lot of people looking for a job and little offer.

I even thought about giving up and going to another area (I saw that some people here in Brazil are already doing that).

But now a little better mentally I decided not to give up, I'm going to do my best and see what works.

The reality is what the layoffs showed me is that there will never be stability in private companies and that it will always be a sea of ​​uncertainty.

And it's okay, there's nothing like me and if you're going through this, you can also do it but make an effort and always have strategies and financial education for when the worst happens.

And due to anxiety and sometimes depression, I've paralyzed a lot thinking about the uncertainties, but it hurts me more than it helps.

So now my dilemma is "I'm going to try it with fear and we'll see what happens" Literally trusting that my persistence will bring me results will be the only thing I will think about.

I hope that in December 2023 my version of the future will be more fulfilled/happy and I hope to read this in the future with the feeling that I have overcome a barrier.

About coding, I will post my routine daily and I plan to share some sites and maybe do some challenges right?

I hope you who are reading this are doing well and if you are not, may you get well soon.

Have a great Sunday and week, drink water and if you're anxious, don't freak out about the future, breathe and live in the present.

[mariacallous]

It’s so nice that everything’s back to normal at the office now, isn’t it? If “normal” means mass layoffs, empty office buildings, confusing return-to-office policies, AI panic, and the whiplash-y feeling that just when employees were starting to redraw some boundaries between work and home, an economic downturn has forced society to fret even more about work. Managers are channeling this too by emphasizing “efficiency”—at least if they’re not among the many managers Mark Zuckerberg has laid off in his quest for, well, efficiency.

In this sense, Simone Stolzoff’s new book couldn’t be better-timed. The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work posits that we—and Americans, especially—have fetishized work to the point that we’ve lost our identities to it. “For white-collar professionals, jobs have become akin to a religious identity: In addition to a paycheck, they provide meaning, community, and a sense of purpose,” says Stolzoff, a designer who has worked at IDEO and written for The Atlantic, Quartz, and WIRED.

The book kicks off with a parable about an MBA type urging a fisherman to scale his business into a global operation. The fisherman replies that he already has what the MBA is promising he could achieve in the long term: enough success to feed himself and his family, as well as plenty of time for leisure. The MBA is, of course, befuddled. It’s a tiny but meaningful story that goes down as easy as an oyster; the book makes a tasty meal of snackable tales and anecdotes. 

The Good Enough Job, which I’ve been reading this week, also includes reporting on the decline of organized religion, the rise of always-online work culture, and our willingness to use work as a means of self-actualization. It all adds up to a stark portrait of a society truly obsessed with work. That’s risky, Stolzoff says, especially in light of the recent layoffs in the tech sector. I talked with him about our relationship to work and whether it’s possible to achieve any kind of work-life equilibrium in the modern era. The book comes out in the US on May 23. 

WIRED: Why is office work so weird right now? Assuming you agree that it is, in fact, weird. 

Simone Stolzoff: Yeah. I’m reminded of when I worked as a summer camp counselor growing up and during our training the camp’s director always said, “Kids’ biggest fear is that no one is in control.” And I think that is happening for office workers right now, without a clear mandate or a clear vision of what the future of the workplace looks like. It feels like everything is in flux. Managers are dealing with their own uncertainty around the reevaluation of the role of work in their lives while they’re also trying to be leaders and speak with confidence about a future that no one can really predict.

Just yesterday someone told me, “I am a manager and my employees are coming to me and being forthright about the fact that they’re updating their LinkedIn profiles and their resumes.” She has been telling them that she’s doing the same. Increased uncertainty has led to much more open communication about the fact that even jobs that felt stable, are not necessarily such. But this also speaks to the fact that no one really knows what the future of work holds and people are making it up as they go along.

It sounds like a continuation of the pandemic, in the sense that this has all led to some people being their most vulnerable and transparent at the workplace. 

It’s a combination of both the pandemic and the economic climate. An employee at YouTube was telling me about how Alphabet is making workers come into the office three days a week. And she said that on the one hand she thinks it’s bullshit and that the company is just trying to justify the capital expenditures that they’ve made on offices. But she also admitted it makes sense because morale is low and employee workplace culture is nonexistent and coming back to the office is really one of the better ways managers have found to facilitate a more collectivist identity.

You write about “workism,” a phrase coined by Derek Thompson from The Atlantic. How does it play into the current workplace dynamic? 

The basic idea that Derek laid out is that workism is treating work akin to a religious identity. It’s looking to work not just for a paycheck but also for a community, a sense of identity and purpose and meaning in your life. 

There are a few risks to that. One is that it’s just not a burden our jobs are designed to bear. When we look to work for transcendence, it creates these massive expectations, and jobs can’t always deliver on those expectations. A second risk is that over-investing in just one aspect of who we are is risky because those other aspects of our life might be underinvested in. We’re not just workers, we’re also friends, siblings, parents, neighbors, and citizens. As so many people found out during the pandemic, if your job is your sole source of identity and you lose it—what’s left?

You argue that workism is generationally distinctive and write about your own Italian family and how your grandparents worked to live—and the emphasis was really on live. They had structure to their days, but there was that long break in the middle of the day where they went home and ate orecchiette with the family. Work-as-a-religion seems relatively new, or at least industrial age new.

There are many possible explanations of how we got here—economic explanations, historical explanations, political and cultural explanations. The one I focus on in the book is this huge objective value that Americans give to the workplace. You know, we’re an incredibly individualistic country, where we treat CEOs as celebrities and we plaster “Always do what you love” on the walls of our coworking spaces. There’s this push toward wanting work to be our means of self-actualization.

You can pair that with some historical trends, for example the decline of organized religion over the course of the past 40 years, which has left a spiritual void in many American lives. You look at policy decisions in this country, the way that we tie health care to full-time employment for so many people. You look at the historical factors, how our country was founded and the way capitalism and the Protestant work ethic were the two strands entwined to form our country’s DNA. 

And what we’ve found is that, unlike our peer nations, like France and Germany, where at-work time has steadily decreased since the beginning of the 20th century, certain subsets of Americans are working more than ever. And this is a historical anomaly. In the past, the richer a person or a country was, the less they worked, because they could afford not to.

Of course, the majority of people not just in the US but in the world do not work to self-actualize, they work to survive. Wages have been stagnant for the past 40 years, so they’ve had to work harder to buy the same loaf of bread. But the argument of my book is that regardless of what type of job you’re in, we now all live in this culture of productivity and thinking our self-worth is somehow tied to our output at work.

The danger of that, you write, is that we end up taking work events quite personally if they don’t go right. 

Totally, yeah. There is research around the value of what researchers call self-complexity, or just kind of cultivating different aspects of who we are. This also makes sense intuitively, right? If you’re rising and falling with the professional successes in your life, then one piece of negative feedback, one comment from a coworker can throw your life into a funk. But if you’ve cultivated other aspects of who you are, then maybe you’re having a bad day at the office but you feel like you have a very supportive partner or you’re having a good day with that recreational softball team you play on, then there are other aspects of your life that make you feel whole and aren’t predicated on market forces or what your manager or boss says.

The tricky question is where to draw the line. We need money to survive in this world. But as you write, work can be incredibly paternalistic and often exploits people who are most dutiful and hard-working. Is there a formula for finding the right amount to invest in work?

If there was one main question driving the book, it’s how to balance the pursuit of meaningful work without letting work take over your life. I’m not anti-work. We work more hours than we spend doing just about anything else in our lives, so how we spend that time matters. But I also think that the more we can be clear-headed about work’s role in our lives and understand that fundamentally it’s an economic relationship, the better.

We’ve been told that jobs are meant to be callings and vocations, and thinking of it as an exchange of your time and your labor for money is not the most sexy thing in the world. But I actually think that a more transactional approach to work can liberate both employers and employees. It frees employers to focus on setting clear expectations about what good work looks like, and it frees employees to, for example, advocate for fair compensation. More broadly, it frees employees to treat work as a living and not the entirety of their lives.

This is something that so many tech workers in particular have discovered recently, especially at companies like Meta and Twitter and Microsoft and other places that have had layoffs. I’ve spoken to so many employees that say, basically, “I used to think this was my life’s work, my dream job, and the past year has shown me that this is just a job.”

I’m trying to introduce the framework of the “good enough” job. For one person that could mean working in a particular industry or having a certain job title, and for another it’s getting off work at a certain hour so you can pick your kids up from elementary school. Rather than thinking about work as this endless pursuit of perfection, it’s more about having an approach that allows you to understand that what you do for work is not the entirety of who you are as a person.

[felassan]

Article: 'Laid-Off Dragon Age Testers Will Picket BioWare'

Unionized ex-Keywords devs won the right to protest, against EA's wishes

Excerpt:

"Former quality assurance testers who worked on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf are preparing to picket outside Bioware’s Edmonton offices after being laid off earlier this year. Electronic Arts tried to block the protest but the developers prevailed in a ruling by the Alberta Labour Relations Board in Canada. BioWare laid off 50 employees in August, including some longtime developers whose tenure goes back to the beginning of the Dragon Age series. It also cut its contract with Keywords Studios, which was supplying quality assurance testers on in-development sequel Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. Those same testers had unionized just a year earlier. Last month, they were laid off from Keywords as well, with the outsourcing company blaming it on the loss of the BioWare contract. Now, as first reported by Game Developer, those former Dragon Age testers say they’re planning to picket outside BioWare’s office on November 7 around noon. They are demanding that Keywords reinstate them and continuing bargaining their first contract, calling the layoffs earlier this year a “union busting tactic.” But Keywords doesn’t have any offices in Alberta so they are going to BioWare instead. EA was apparently far from happy about the decision. The publisher tried to force the laid-off developers to take their protest elsewhere, noting that, as fully remote staff, they never technically worked inside BioWare’s Edmonton office. Instead, EA tried to convince the Alberta Labour Relations Board to make them picket outside their homes. The regulators were unmoved, ultimately siding with the workers. “We view this Labor Board ruling as a huge win for not just us, but remote workers everywhere in Canada,” former Keywords tester James Russwurm told Game Developer. “Workers can now go ‘oh, I can picket my employer’s offices downtown even though I didn’t work in the office.’” The ex-testers had been contracted to work at BioWare beginning during the pandemic, first on Mass Effect Legendary Edition and later on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. When BioWare moved to force staff back into the office, the group successfully unionized to try and keep their remote status and improve pay. The Keywords developers were laid off before they could finish bargaining their first contract. EA said at the time that it had previously renewed its contract with Keywords and not doing so in September had nothing to do with the group unionizing. But the publisher has never made clear why it cut staff on a highly anticipated game like Dreadwolf that is still deep in development following several reported internal delays. EA and BioWare did not immediately respond to a request for comment."

[source] [the referenced Game Developer article] [more on the Keywords topic]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI is a WMD

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (TOMORROW, May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (TOMORROW, May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Get that? If control over a key resource is diffused among the people who rely on it, then (Garrett claims) those people will all behave like selfish assholes, overusing and undermaintaining the commons. It's only when we let someone own that commons and charge rent for its use that (Hardin says) we will get sound management.

By that logic, Google should be the internet's most competent and reliable manager. After all, the company used its access to the capital markets to buy control over the internet, spending billions every year to make sure that you never try a search-engine other than its own, thus guaranteeing it a 90% market share:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Google seems to think it's got the problem of deciding what we see on the internet licked. Otherwise, why would the company flush $80b down the toilet with a giant stock-buyback, and then do multiple waves of mass layoffs, from last year's 12,000 person bloodbath to this year's deep cuts to the company's "core teams"?

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

And yet, Google is overrun with scams and spam, which find their way to the very top of the first page of its search results:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The entire internet is shaped by Google's decisions about what shows up on that first page of listings. When Google decided to prioritize shopping site results over informative discussions and other possible matches, the entire internet shifted its focus to producing affiliate-link-strewn "reviews" that would show up on Google's front door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

This was catnip to the kind of sociopath who a) owns a hedge-fund and b) hates journalists for being pain-in-the-ass, stick-in-the-mud sticklers for "truth" and "facts" and other impediments to the care and maintenance of a functional reality-distortion field. These dickheads started buying up beloved news sites and converting them to spam-farms, filled with garbage "reviews" and other Google-pleasing, affiliate-fee-generating nonsense.

(These news-sites were vulnerable to acquisition in large part thanks to Google, whose dominance of ad-tech lets it cream 51 cents off every ad dollar and whose mobile OS monopoly lets it steal 30 cents off every in-app subscriber dollar):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now, the spam on these sites didn't write itself. Much to the chagrin of the tech/finance bros who bought up Sports Illustrated and other venerable news sites, they still needed to pay actual human writers to produce plausible word-salads. This was a waste of money that could be better spent on reverse-engineering Google's ranking algorithm and getting pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

That's where AI comes in. Spicy autocomplete absolutely can't replace journalists. The planet-destroying, next-word-guessing programs from Openai and its competitors are incorrigible liars that require so much "supervision" that they cost more than they save in a newsroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

But while a chatbot can't produce truthful and informative articles, it can produce bullshit – at unimaginable scale. Chatbots are the workers that hedge-fund wreckers dream of: tireless, uncomplaining, compliant and obedient producers of nonsense on demand.

That's why the capital class is so insatiably horny for chatbots. Chatbots aren't going to write Hollywood movies, but studio bosses hyperventilated at the prospect of a "writer" that would accept your brilliant idea and diligently turned it into a movie. You prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a studio exec gives writers notes. The difference is that the LLM won't roll its eyes and make sarcastic remarks about your brainwaves like "ET, but starring a dog, with a love plot in the second act and a big car-chase at the end":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Similarly, chatbots are a dream come true for a hedge fundie who ends up running a beloved news site, only to have to fight with their own writers to get the profitable nonsense produced at a scale and velocity that will guarantee a high Google ranking and millions in "passive income" from affiliate links.

One of the premier profitable nonsense companies is Advon, which helped usher in an era in which sites from Forbes to Money to USA Today create semi-secret "review" sites that are stuffed full of badly researched top-ten lists for products from air purifiers to cat beds:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

Advon swears that it only uses living humans to produce nonsense, and not AI. This isn't just wildly implausible, it's also belied by easily uncovered evidence, like its own employees' Linkedin profiles, which boast of using AI to create "content":

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

It's not true. Advon uses AI to produce its nonsense, at scale. In an excellent, deeply reported piece for Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré brings proof that Advon replaced its miserable human nonsense-writers with tireless chatbots:

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

Dupré describes how Advon's ability to create botshit at scale contributed to the enshittification of clients from Yoga Journal to the LA Times, "Us Weekly" to the Miami Herald.

All of this is very timely, because this is the week that Google finally bestirred itself to commence downranking publishers who engage in "site reputation abuse" – creating these SEO-stuffed fake reviews with the help of third parties like Advon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

(Google's policy only forbids site reputation abuse with the help of third parties; if these publishers take their nonsense production in-house, Google may allow them to continue to dominate its search listings):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

There's a reason so many people believed Hardin's racist "Tragedy of the Commons" hoax. We have an intuitive understanding that commons are fragile. All it takes is one monster to start shitting in the well where the rest of us get our drinking water and we're all poisoned.

The financial markets love these monsters. Mark Zuckerberg's key insight was that he could make billions by assembling vast dossiers of compromising, sensitive personal information on half the world's population without their consent, but only if he kept his costs down by failing to safeguard that data and the systems for exploiting it. He's like a guy who figures out that if he accumulates enough oily rags, he can extract so much low-grade oil from them that he can grow rich, but only if he doesn't waste money on fire-suppression:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Now Zuckerberg and the wealthy, powerful monsters who seized control over our commons are getting a comeuppance. The weak countermeasures they created to maintain the minimum levels of quality to keep their platforms as viable, going concerns are being overwhelmed by AI. This was a totally foreseeable outcome: the history of the internet is a story of bad actors who upended the assumptions built into our security systems by automating their attacks, transforming an assault that wouldn't be economically viable into a global, high-speed crime wave:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/automation-is-magic/

But it is possible for a community to maintain a commons. This is something Hardin could have discovered by studying actual commons, instead of inventing imaginary histories in which commons turned tragic. As it happens, someone else did exactly that: Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/

Ostrom described how commons can be wisely managed, over very long timescales, by communities that self-governed. Part of her work concerns how users of a commons must have the ability to exclude bad actors from their shared resources.

When that breaks down, commons can fail – because there's always someone who thinks it's fine to shit in the well rather than walk 100 yards to the outhouse.

Enshittification is the process by which control over the internet moved from self-governance by members of the commons to acts of wanton destruction committed by despicable, greedy assholes who shit in the well over and over again.

It's not just the spammers who take advantage of Google's lazy incompetence, either. Take "copyleft trolls," who post images using outdated Creative Commons licenses that allow them to terminate the CC license if a user makes minor errors in attributing the images they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

The first copyleft trolls were individuals, but these days, the racket is dominated by a company called Pixsy, which pretends to be a "rights protection" agency that helps photographers track down copyright infringers. In reality, the company is committed to helping copyleft trolls entrap innocent Creative Commons users into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use images that are licensed for free use. Just as Advon upends the economics of spam and deception through automation, Pixsy has figured out how to send legal threats at scale, robolawyering demand letters that aren't signed by lawyers; the company refuses to say whether any lawyer ever reviews these threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

This is shitting in the well, at scale. It's an online WMD, designed to wipe out the commons. Creative Commons has allowed millions of creators to produce a commons with billions of works in it, and Pixsy exploits a minor error in the early versions of CC licenses to indiscriminately manufacture legal land-mines, wantonly blowing off innocent commons-users' legs and laughing all the way to the bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

We can have an online commons, but only if it's run by and for its users. Google has shown us that any "benevolent dictator" who amasses power in the name of defending the open internet will eventually grow too big to care, and will allow our commons to be demolished by well-shitters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

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/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon

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

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Catherine Poh Huay Tan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/49729911222/

Laia Balagueró (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbalaguero/6551235503/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[geemosses]

Stressed

I'm so stressed. And it's like, all the time. I don't know what to do about it anymore. I used to be better at managing it. But right now it just feels overwhelming. Maybe I just need to vent, so I guess I'll write about it. That's something haven't tried before.

A lot of it has to do with my job. I work as a Software Engineer at Amazon. They recently announced a "Return to Office" (RTO) mandate, along with multiple rounds of layoffs. Everyone has to go back to the office 3 days per week. The justifications they provided are weak, and everyone knows it. Some nonsense about absorbing company culture and easier collaboration. Never mind the fact that we've all been "collaborating" just fine, doing our jobs well enough for the last 3 years while the vast majority of Amazon's corporate employees work from home. And never mind the fact that Amazon is still in a very strong position financially.

The empty words are what really piss me off. As if we're all too dumb to understand what's really happening here. Amazon, like many tech companies, hire lots of people during the pandemic, expecting endlessly cheap money to fund endless growth. Now that all of that has fallen apart, Amazon wants to cut down the work force, aka balance the bottom-line. But they can't ruin their carefully crafted image in the public by laying off massive numbers of employees.

So instead, they make working at Amazon intolerable, in the hopes that people will leave voluntarily. It's short-sighted if you ask me. The ones that will be the first to jump off this sinking ship will be the ones with the most options. I, for example, have worked at Amazon for 7 years and have been promoted to Senior Engineer in that time. I'm by no means the most talented engineer Amazon has to offer, but I'm still certain that if I leave, it will hurt.

Through it all, one word keeps coming to my mind: Unionize. How much better would life be at Amazon if I were part of a union? Individually, I have no power to change anything about Amazon. But collectively, Amazon employees would wield immense power. We could demand the flexibility to continue to work from home. We could demand more transparency into compensation packages and work towards greater pay equity for women and people of color. We could demand better treatment and working conditions of our workers in fulfillment centers. We could negotiate for better benefits. We could demand a voice at the table - on the board or on the 'S-Team'. We could demand better justification and transparency for pushing through mass layoffs even while the company remains profitable, and push back when their words turn out to be as empty as they have been this past year.

For the last decade, high demand gave tech workers so much power., but if the last year has made one thing abundantly clear, it's that all of us are vulnerable. It doesn't matter what nice words they write to try and make it sound less painful, to try and make you think they had no choice. The truth is, you don't really matter to them. You can be reduced to nothing more than a line item on a spreadsheet, just waiting to be crossed out when investors come calling for bigger pay days. Through all of that, only one entity has the power to fight back and protect employees: a Union.

Even as I write this though, I fear retaliation. I fear that Amazon will be able to link this post back to me and find a way to cut me like they have so many others in the past, for daring to even think the word union. Funny how a company can wield fear so effectively, barely even saying a word.

[monsterkong]

📡 Right About Now with Ryan Alford: Breaking Down Business, Politics, and Everything in Between 📊

Hey Tumblr fam! Welcome to the latest episode of Right About Now with Ryan Alford, the number one business show on the planet! We’ve been cutting through the BS in business for over six years, bringing you the most relevant news, insights, and unfiltered opinions on everything from economic shifts to political strategies.

Episode Date: August 24th, 2024

In this episode, Ryan Alford is joined by co-hosts Brian Hall and Chris Hansen to tackle some of the biggest topics of the week. From the emotional rollercoaster of political conventions to the harsh realities of mass layoffs, this episode is packed with discussions that matter.

Ryan’s Resilience: The Show Must Go On! 💪

Even though Ryan was feeling under the weather, he didn’t let that stop him from bringing you this week’s episode. After a bout with a stomach bug and a head cold, Ryan is back in action, reminding us all that sometimes you just have to push through the tough times.

While recovering, Ryan binge-watched Out of Range, only to discover that it got canceled after two seasons. It’s a reminder that sometimes the things we invest in don’t always pan out, whether it’s a TV show or a business venture.

Big Moves in the South: Brianna’s New Home in Greenville 🏠

Exciting news—Brianna has officially moved to Greenville, South Carolina! After leaving the hectic pace of California, she’s now a proud homeowner in a place known for its Southern charm and growing business scene. Greenville, or "G-Vegas" as it’s affectionately called, is quickly becoming a hotspot for professionals looking for a better quality of life.

Brianna’s move is part of a larger trend we’re seeing across the country: more and more people are leaving high-cost states in search of more affordable living and better business opportunities. Greenville, with its low cost of living and booming economy, is one of the top destinations for these new transplants.

The Emotional Appeal of Politics: A Double-Edged Sword 🎭

One of the most fascinating discussions in this episode revolves around the differences between the Democratic and Republican conventions. Ryan and the team explore how the Democrats have mastered the art of emotional appeal, while the Republicans focus more on facts and data.

Ryan shares an interesting insight from Ryan Stuman, who pointed out that while the Democrats might be winning the emotional game, they often lack substance when it comes to policy. It’s a powerful reminder that in both politics and business, it’s easy to be swayed by emotions, but it’s the hard data that ultimately drives decisions.

Mass Layoffs: What Do They Mean for the Economy? ⚠️

The economic landscape is shifting, and not always in a good way. Major companies like GM, Cisco, Intel, and MasterCard are laying off thousands of employees, raising concerns about the future of the workforce. Ryan and the team dive into the data, discussing how these layoffs might be tied to overregulation, the impact of AI, and the broader economic challenges we’re all facing.

Chris Hansen brings up a crucial point: AI is playing an increasing role in these layoffs. As companies automate more tasks, they need fewer employees, leading to a shrinking workforce. This trend raises important questions about the future of work and how we can ensure that innovation doesn’t come at the cost of human livelihoods.

The Cost of Living Crisis: A Small Business Perspective 💼

Ryan shares his experience running a marketing agency in today’s challenging economic climate. With costs rising across the board—labor, materials, and everything in between—business owners are struggling to maintain their margins. The reality is that while expenses are skyrocketing, clients aren’t necessarily willing to pay more, leaving businesses caught in a difficult position.

This discussion is a stark reminder that inflation isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a daily reality for small business owners. As costs continue to rise, the pressure on businesses to adapt and innovate becomes even more intense.

Legal Loopholes: The Dark Side of Disney Plus ⚖️

A particularly chilling segment of the show discusses a legal battle involving Disney Plus. A couple who tragically lost a loved one due to an allergic reaction at a Disney restaurant found themselves caught in a legal loophole because of the arbitration agreement they signed with Disney Plus. It’s a stark reminder to always read the fine print, as these agreements can sometimes cover more than we realize.

Policies Over Popularity: A Call for Rational Decision-Making 🧠

As the episode draws to a close, Ryan emphasizes the importance of prioritizing policies over popularity. In a world where emotions and sensationalism often dominate the conversation, the need for rational, data-driven decision-making has never been greater.

Thanks for tuning in! Be sure to visit RyanisRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show, and don’t forget to support our official merchandise sponsor, Brandon Bills. Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and keep striving for success!

[novumtimes]

Musk Trump Hit With Federal Labor Charges Over Livestream

The livestream on X with former President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk has more issues, and this time it isn’t just technical. The United Auto Workers union filed federal labor charges against Trump and Musk that allege two men attempted to “threaten and intimidate” workers on the X Spaces livestream who wished to participate in “protected concerted activity, such as strikes.” Related: Elon Musk Praises Tesla EVs to Donald Trump in X Livestream During the conversation, which the UAW called “rambling, disorganized” and “illegal,” Trump advocated for the firing of workers who went on strike. “I look at what you do, you walk in, you say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike,” Trump told Musk via livestream. “I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, That’s OK, you’re all gone.” The UAW noted in its lawsuit that under federal law in the U.S., employees cannot be fired solely for going on strike and that an employer threatening to let them go for that reason is violating workers’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act. Related: Elon Musk Blames Cyberattack for Trump’s X Livestream Delays “Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a release for the organization. “It’s disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns.” In 2022, after Musk took over Twitter (now X), he initiated mass layoffs, letting go of thousands of employees and senior leadership following his acquisition of the company. In May, Musk fired Tesla’s entire Supercharger team after one executive tried to push back against more layoffs. The UAW, which is based in Michigan, currently represents over 40,000 autoworkers and formally endorsed Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris earlier this month. Trump and Musk have not yet commented on the charges. Source link via The Novum Times