#unit 11

[math-journal]

Review Unit 11 Toughies

Exponents -

0.1 <— left movement (-) exponent

10 —> right movement (+) exponent

[britanniabay]

I have to take a moment to pause and post this as it hits so close to home for me personally.

I am electing to "borrow" and repost something I saw posted last year as it is so poignant. I hope you take a few moments in the next few hours to reflect.

On this day, 22 years ago (9/10/2001):

🔹️246 people went to sleep in preparation for their morning flights

🔹️2,606 people went to sleep in preparation for work in the morning

🔹️343 firefighters went to sleep in preparation for their morning shift.

🔹️60 police officers went to sleep in preparation for morning patrol

🔹️8 paramedics went to sleep in preparation for the morning shift

None of them saw past 10:00am on Sept 11, 2001.

In one single moment, life may never be the same.

As you live and enjoy the breaths you take today and tonight, before you go to sleep in preparation for your life tomorrow, kiss the ones you love, snuggle a little tighter, and never take one second of your life for granted.

[mysharona1987]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

When the app tries to make you robo-scab

When we talk about the abusive nature of gig work, there’s some obvious targets, like algorithmic wage discrimination, where two workers are paid different rates for the same job, in order to trick occasional gig-workers to give up their other sources of income and become entirely dependent on the app:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Then there’s the opacity — imagine if your boss refused to tell you how much you’ll get paid for a job until after you’ve completed it, claimed that this was done in order to “protect privacy” — and then threatened anyone who helped you figure out the true wage on offer:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#boss-app

Opacity is wage theft’s handmaiden: every gig worker producing content for a social media algorithm is subject to having their reach — and hence their pay — cut based on the unaccountable, inscrutable decisions of a content moderation system:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Making content for an algorithm is like having a boss that docks every paycheck because you broke rules that you are not allowed to know, because if you knew the rules, you’d figure out how to cheat without your boss catching you. Content moderation is the last place where security through obscurity is considered good practice:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

When workers seize the means of computation, amazing things happen. In Indonesia, gig workers create and trade tuyul apps that let them unilaterally modify the way that their bosses’ systems see them — everything from GPS spoofing to accessibility mods:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

So the tech and labor story isn’t wholly grim: there are lots of ways that tech can enhance labor struggles, letting workers collaborate and coordinate. Without digital systems, we wouldn’t have the Hot Strike Summer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

As the historic writer/actor strike shows us, the resurgent labor movement and the senescent forces of crapulent capitalism are locked in a death-struggle over not just what digital tools do, but who they do it for and who they do it to:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

When it comes to the epic fight over who technology acts for and against, we need a diversity of tactics, backstopped by tech operated by and for its users — and by laws that protect workers and the public. That dynamic is in sharp focus in UNITE Here Local 11’s strike against Orange County’s Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa.

The UNITE Here strike turns on the usual issues like a living wage (hotel staff are paid so little they have to rent rooming-house beds by the shift, paying for the right to sleep in a room for a few hours at a time, without any permanent accommodation). They’re also seeking health-care and pensions, so they can be healthy at work and retire after long service. Finally, they’re seeking their employer’s support for LA’s Responsible Hotels Ordinance, which would levy a tax on hotel rooms to help pay for hotel workers’ housing costs (a hotel worker who can’t afford a bed is the equivalent of a fast food worker who has to apply for food stamps):

https://www.unitehere11.org/responsible-hotels-ordinance/

But the Marriott — which is owned by the University of California and managed by Aimbridge Hospitality — has refused to bargain, walking out negotiations.

But the employer didn’t walk out over wages, benefits or support for a housing subsidy. They walked out when workers demanded that the scabs that the company was trying to hire to break the strike be given full time, union jobs.

These aren’t just any scabs, either. They’re predominantly Black workers who rely on the $700m Instawork app for gigs. These workers are being dispatched to cross the picket line without any warning that they’re being contracted as strikebreakers. When workers refuse the cross the picket and join the strike, Instawork cancels all their shifts and permanently blocks them from new jobs.

This is a new, technologically supercharged form of illegal strikebreaking. It’s one thing for a single boss to punish a worker who refuses to scab, but Instawork acts as a plausible-deniability filter for all the major employers in the region. Like the landlord apps that allow landlords to illegally fix rents by coordinating hikes, Instawork lets bosses illegally collude to rig wages by coordinating a blocklist of workers who refuse to scab:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/company-that-makes-rent-setting-software-for-landlords-sued-for-collusion/?comments=1

The racial dimension is really important here: the Marriott has a longstanding de facto policy of refusing to hire Black workers, and whenever they are confronted with this, they insist that there are no qualified Black workers in the labor pool. But as soon as the predominantly Latino workforce struck, Marriott discovered a vast Black workforce that it could coerce into scabbing, in collusion with Instawork.

Now, all of this isn’t just sleazy, it’s illegal, a violation of Section 7 of the NLRB Act. Historically, that wouldn’t have mattered, because a string of presidents, R and D, have appointed useless do-nothing ghouls to run the NLRB. But the Biden admin, pushed by the party’s left wing, made a string of historic, excellent appointments, including NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who has set her sights on punishing gig work companies for flouting labor law:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/10/see-you-in-the-funny-papers/#bidens-legacy

UNITE HERE 11 has brought a case to the NLRB, charging the Instawork, the UC system, Marriott, and Aimbridge with violating labor law by blackmailing gig workers into crossing the picket line. The union is also asking the NLRB to punish the companies for failing to protect workers from violent retaliation from the wealthy hotel guests who have punched them and screamed epithets at them. The hotel has refused to identify these thug guests so that the workers they assaulted can swear out complaints against them.

Writing about the strike for Jacobin, Alex N Press tells the story of Thomas Bradley, a Black worker who was struck off all Instawork shifts for refusing to cross the picket line and joining it instead:

https://jacobin.com/2023/07/southern-california-hotel-workers-strike-automated-management-unite-here

Bradley’s case is exhibit A in the UNITE HERE 11 case before the NLRB. He has a degree in culinary arts, but racial discrimination in the industry has kept him stuck in gig and temp jobs ever since he graduated, nearly a quarter century ago. Bradley lived out of his car, but that was repossessed while he slept in a hotel room that UNITE HERE 11 fundraised for him, leaving him homeless and bereft of all his worldly possessions.

With UNITE HERE 11’s help, Bradley’s secured a job at the downtown LA Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, a hotel that has bargained with the workers. Bradley is using his newfound secure position to campaign among other Instawork workers to convince them not to cross picket lines. In these group chats, Jacobin saw workers worrying “that joining the strike would jeopardize their standing on the app.”

Today (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

[Image ID: An old photo of strikers before a struck factory, with tear-gas plumes rising above them. The image has been modified to add a Marriott sign to the factory, and the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' to the sky over the factory. The workers have been colorized to a yellow-green shade and the factory has been colorized to a sepia tone.]

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

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

[spinjitzuladykaia]

Zane,the only AI who can be trusted to draw

[flimsy-spine]

Chim in every episode - There Goes the Groom 7x06

[ynglezzy22]

CAN WE JUST TAKE A MINUTE AND LIKE TAKE IN HOW FUCKING BEAUTIFUL ONA IS???

SHES TOO ADORABLE. SHES SO PRETTY ITS CRIMINAL.

[lonestarflight]

USS HORNET (CVS-12) entering Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, following the Apollo 11 recovery. On deck are various aircraft of Carrier Anti-Submarine Air Group 59 (CVSG-59) and the Apollo 11 Capsule (CM-107). Following decontamination procedures, the three astronauts were placed in quarantine for 18 days until August 10, 1969.

Date: July 26, 1969

U.S. Navy photo: 428-KN-18090

[phoenixyfriend]

(There's an extra answer at the bottom that should have been 2nd instead of 12th, but I can't edit it in)

*NYC metro area is NYC, Long Island, about half of NJ, and several counties in CT and the absolute bottom of "upstate" NY. You can look up a map if you're unsure.

**That is to say, you were a journalist, worked in international relations, were in an airline as a pilot or flight attendant, and so on. Basically, you were told with urgency because everyone knew you were going to be involved in the ramifications for the foreseeable future, regardless of WHERE you lived.

EDIT: Someone pointed out that this doesn't include the Pentagon, so those of you in that zone can hop in on metro area.

"Nearby" means Canada, and MAYBE Mexico or the Bahamas. I'll leave it up to you to decide for the Caribbean, but Europe does NOT count.

I was just under six years old and it's one of my earliest clear memories because I was living in Queens at time, so it impacted almost everyone I knew very directly. I had been really excited that morning because it was my friend's birthday, and all that excitement got quashed as inappropriate because of the Events.

[transingthoseformers]

I once saw you repost something and you mentioned about your recent interest being Look Outside. As a Transformers fan lemme introduce you:

Transformers x Look Outside, where even the Cybertronian on Earth can get infected as it is cause by a cosmic eldritch beyond comprehension!

The idea even gigantic sentient robots can also get infected really tickles me. I mean, wow, not even the robot are immune? Shit, we are in danger! This definitely forced the larger mechanical and the small organic to work together in some way.

It even raised questions when you mixed in these robots: Can they kill eldritch beings? Can the mechanicals even ascend to be one? Are they superior enough to comprehend such beings, or they too, are mortals in some way when compared to the cosmic beings?

I just love horror!! And I think a horror crossover with literal Transformers would be nice!

EXACTLY

This is 100% the premise of my new self indulgent United We Fall au (focusing on Elita One, I've decided)

So. In my mind. Yeah. Cybertronians and humans are affected, just the same as seemingly every other living being on Earth. The Visitor is on a much, much larger and different scale than even Primus and Unicron usually are, after all. Plus, in every continuity, we see time and time again that (most*) cybertronians are ultimately mortal.

(*notable exceptions do exist)

There are definitely cybertronians who become some of the larger / more complex Cursed, but at a certain level the especially lovecraftian human Cursed and lovecraftian cybertronian Cursed aren't necessarily all that different. Though, the Cursed combiners (such as the mentioned Devastator and Predaking) are naturally going to be bigger threats. Iicr I noted in one post that Predaking is a little more with it psychologically than Devastator is.

I very very much want to put emphasis on humanity and various cybertronians (both unaffected and Cursed) working together through this, and how at a certain level, with so many changed, the line blurs. A big ass eldritch horror is a big ass eldritch horror, no matter who or what it started out as.

They're in this together. They're really in this, and there's no going back, but they're in this together.

[syppys-den]

How would an interaction between them go?

I honestly wanna believe they exist in the same universe, but most of the evidence with the latter kind of goes against that theory

[math-journal]

Degrees of Polynomial

[melancholytimes]

Victoria Pelova played for the u21 team against United and scored! Great step in her recovery

Her teammates were there to cheer her on

It also seems like Amanda Ilestedt was playing in this game as well

Look at her little face

[lonestarbattleship]

Views of USS WISCONSIN (BB-64) in the reserve basin at. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. USS INTREPID (CVS-11) to the left and at right is USS IOWA (BB-61). These ships are part of the Mothballed Fleet here.

Photographs recorded on April 1980.

NARA: 404793436, 404793430, 404793433, 404793439

[yougyattabekidding]

Art requests open…plz….i need to get out of art block…for fuck sakes I have an mk oc/self instert….JUST ASK ME TO DRAW PLWASE

[spinjitzuladykaia]

all of these ladies were part of ''oh this male character is actually a badass female'' plot at some point lol