News Brief: As UPS Strike "Looms," Media Frames Working-Class Revolt as "Threat" to "The Economy" — Citations Needed Podcast
In this public News Brief, we break down media coverage of the potential UPS strike––and the trend more broadly in labor coverage––that paints a strike as something that harms "the consumer" or "the e
Industrialism Is Bad for Our Health: The Series Continues
New studies shed more unflattering light on the impact of modern diets on health.
"Should There Really Be a Supreme Court? Its Role Always Has Been Anti-Democratic"
How much is the Supreme Court to blame for the red shift in policies?
How close can you come to the center and still be Far Left?
In the UK, university staff are engaged in a grading and assessment boycott as part of a long-running dispute over pay, pensions, and precarity. But university administrations are refusing to listen, leaving many students unable to graduate as normal.
The poverty of industrial England was the backdrop of H. G Wells’s childhood. This experience instilled in him a clear-eyed realism with which he rejected both utopianism and progressive notions that socialism could be won without class struggle.
Riots like the ones France is seeing after the police killing of a teenager don't happen as a result of petty criminality. They only happen as a result of widespread anger at murderous policing, racial inequality, and social deprivation.
Numbers can be dehumanizing. However, when placed in their proper context, they help to illuminate wider issues and answer urgent questions, such as why
Planned Degrowth: Ecosocialism and Sustainable Human Development—An Introduction
In the introduction to this summer's special issue on "Planned Degrowth," John Bellamy Foster outlines the major themes of degrowth thought, including, above all, a recognition of the need to…
Why Don’t Americans Take More Vacations? Blame It on Independence Day
How corporate interests created Americanization Day, later Independence Day, to counter the rising labor movement.
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, July 2023
Wildfires, deadly heat, climate strategy, sensing the world, anti-science, mining resistance. Six important new books for reds and greens…
Almost 50 years ago, metalworker and economist Harry Braverman published Labor and Monopoly Capitalism. It showed how bosses use technology to disempower workers — but that by taking control of the labor process, workers can free themselves from drudgery.
To Fix the Housing Crisis, We Need Better Public Housing, Not More Homeowners
A government willing to confront the housing crisis head-on, rather than focusing on fostering owner occupation and the numbers game of maximizing private house-building, would do better to invest in quality public housing.
In 1997, the central slogan of the Teamsters’ UPS strike was “Part-Time America Won’t Work.” Today, as the Teamsters weigh another UPS strike, part-time workers at the company say their pay and working conditions are still unbearable.
Living on the ‘Planet of the Apes’
The 1968 classic has been endlessly parodied, but it has a haunting and timeless message.
Human Rights and Housing
“Shelter and housing can and should be a basic human right,” said Pastor Mark, invoking also John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ to move his audience to continue the
What’s Wrong With the Liberal Corporate Media
It was bad. Now it's gotten worse.
Shifting Focus: Organizing for an Ecosocialist Future
Akuno's advice on how to build social movements consistent with our ecosocialist values
Doctors sometimes describe their patients negatively. How does that affect their treatment down the line?
France’s left has often failed to speak up for marginalized minorities. But after the backlash over the police murder of 17-year-old Nahel, left-wing parties have taken a clear stance, refusing to condemn rioters and insisting their anger is justified.
Well, it is a new project, so it probably needs some optimization. As far as visual clutter goes though, I think Mastodon's quad column layout is much worse about that.
The good news is that they announced that they're changing the name soon; they have not said what it will be though.
Calckey has the superior feature set to Mastodon by far. When the project matures, it'll be a force to reckon with.
Yes, there's nothing stopping someone from creating bot accounts on Lemmy and pretty much every other Fediverse platform. Even if APIs are restricted, they can just parse HTML instead (though that's a bigger pain in the ass). This is an area where the decentralized nature of the Fediverse works in our favor, though, as it inherently limits reach and discoverability (thus minimizing the benefits of doing this). For example, Mastodon's flagship instance (mastodon.social) had a spambot problem not too long ago, so what happened is when other instances noticed this spam wave, they limited/defederated with mastodon.social and the problem was solved on their end. The host instance can temporarily close off sign-ups to prevent new accounts from being made. Every other instance can control federation to effectively quarantine the spam problem.
Who knows. Maybe 3rd time's the charm.
It would be interesting if Fediverse platforms made an external wiki for discoverability. A big shared community resource all in one place.
Last I checked, it's in the todo list, but it's going to take awhile before Lemmy implements such functionality.
Also yes, Tumblr has mentioned before that they're interested in implementing the ActivityPub protocol that all the Fediverse platforms use to interop with each other.
I think kbin has the better feature set currently, but the dev describes the platform as being in "early beta," so IDK if it's ready for serious usage yet. Mastodon is a Twitter-like site. I think Redditors would like Calckey better if they're going for a Twitter-like platform, as Calckey also has threaded comment replies (though theirs is different from Reddit's).
Oh yeah, Graeber did write a very accessible case for anarchism. I always forget about that.
Akkoma is a lightweight and efficient Twitter-like platform. Calckey (name change coming soon) is also a Twitter-like platform for people who like features; notably it has its own version of threaded comment trees and superior search options compared to Mastodon's.
Consider exploring other Fediverse platforms before heading back to Reddit.
Thanks.
I mean, Mastodon had over 2.1 million monthly active users last time I checked, so does that count as having taken off?
Yeah... climate news is really depressing these days.
Lemmy has yet to implement the functionality needed to follow non-Lemmy accounts, but it is in the todo list. You should check out kbin if you're interested in a similar UI that currently supports this functionality.
Yeah it's just noticeably harder to follow the conversation without them, especially when you're dealing with users that sparsely use quote blocks. Sometimes I click a link to a Twitter thread and I just wonder how the fuck anyone can tell what's going on there.