Mammon category archive
Mythreading History 0
In The Roanoke Times, Jeff Thomas takes a scathing look at the myths that white Southerners, particularly Virginians, have created to shield themselves from their history. Here’s a bit:
How did this happen?
Virginia’s ruling class invented a state religion about the myths of Saint Jefferson and General Lee to control the population. The myth and reality are symbiotic. If everything is great, then why change?
Everybody Must Get Fracked 0
The Environmental Pollution Agency decides (again) against regulating fracking waste. A nugget:
If equally contaminated waste came from other industries, it would usually be designated hazardous waste and subject to strict tracking and disposal rules designed to keep the public safe from industrial pollution. But in July 1988, after burying clear warnings from its own scientists about the hazards of oilfield waste, the EPA offered the oil and gas industry a broad exemption from hazardous waste handling laws.
The EPA‘s decision this week echoes that.
Much more at the link.
The New Overseers 0
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on the spread of an Amazonian tyranny of quotas in the workplace. A snippet:
- At the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, housekeepers can’t go home until they clean a predetermined number of rooms, even though, housekeepers say, rooms vary in cleanliness depending on factors like length of stay and whether guests declined service during their stay.
- At retail chains, workers say they have to convince a certain number of customers to share their email addresses or open store-brand credit cards, or else face a cut in their work hours.
- UPS uses sensors to track its drivers’ stop times, backup speeds, and seat belt use. The company is not allowed to fire workers based on these numbers but only because the Teamsters, the union that represents UPS drivers, fought for that language in their contract.
Facebook Frolics 0
Facebook, connecting the world to you.
Chip Joint 0
Potato skins or pricey Pringles?
The Rich Are Different from You and Me 0
They get to have their own special brand of “socialism,” only don’t you dare call it that.
Robert Reich explains:
If this isn’t socialism, what is it?
Yet it’s a particular form of socialism.
Follow the link to learn more about this “particular form of socialism.”
It’s All about the Algorithm, Reprise 0
At the San Francisco Chronicle, John Diaz argues that, as persons increasing turn to the internet for news, the dominance of Google and Facebook and their use of algorithms designed to keep you “engaged,”* rather than informed, is warping and distorting persons’ perception of what is and what isn’t news. He also suggests that, as persons are more and more relying on “aggregators,” the revenue for outfits that do actual reporting, as opposed the “aggregation,” is suffering. These factors, in his eyes, and distorting and diluting the discourse and, ultimately, weakening the polity.
A snippet:
The playing field is anything but level. And the result is devastating for publishers who are becoming increasingly dependent on a digital audience as print circulation continues its decline.
__________________
Listen to the Bad Voltage podcast which I mentioned yesterday for more about “engagement” and “inform-ment.”
Now You Know How He Got Rich 0
’nuff said.
Andrew Lippi, 59, was busted Saturday on a felony grand theft rap for allegedly swiping coffeemakers, linen, and light bulbs from a Kmart in Key West.
The most surprising item in this story, as far as I am concerned, is that this took place at a Kmart.
There are still Kmarts?
Chartering a Course of Disaster 0
The charter school movement originated out of good will as an attempt to fix struggling public schools on the cheap by allowing charter school operators to try new things.
That was the rationale, at least. Of course, it hasn’t fixed anything. Fixes cost money and “on the cheap” is never a good strategy; you do get what you pay for.
Instead, this “movement” has mutated from a hopeful fix into a con and a scam. In the course of a longer article about legal obstacles facing Pennsylvania school districts who want to fix failing charters (in a fix over fixing the fix), Lisa Haver tells the story of such charter gone bad:
Several Philadelphia Daily News stories reported that Aspira had filed phony receipts for contractors and diverted funds from the Renaissance schools to their other charters, a clear misuse of taxpayer funds.
To ice the cake, Pennsylvania’s charter school law makes shutting down the charter cons almost impossible.
Do please read the rest.
Facebook Frolics 0
HUD has filed a lawsuit accusing Facebook of facilitating housing discrimination through the tools it gives to advertisers. Here’s a bit from the report:
HUD also alleges Facebook allowed advertisers certain tools on their advertising platform that could exclude people who were classified as “non-American-born,” “non-Christian” or “interested in Hispanic culture,” among other things. It also said advertisers could exclude people based on ZIP code, essentially “drawing a red line around those neighborhoods on a map.”
The story goes on to report that Facebook is claiming that it has been working in good faith with HUD to deal with these issues.