Flatulent tosspottery

Starbucks is increasing pay and benefits for most of its U.S. hourly workers after ending its fiscal year with record sales.

But the company said Monday that unionized workers won’t be eligible for some of those perks, a sign of the continuing tension between the Seattle coffee giant and the union trying to organize its U.S. stores.

The union is, of course, complaining.

Logically, if you’ve a union negotiating your contract, pay and benefits, then the company cannot change those things without theunion agreeing.

Starbucks’ actions go against a September ruling by an administrative law judge for the NLRB, who ruled that the company acted illegally last fall when it raised pay only for non-union workers.

Starbucks has appealed that ruling, saying NLRB’s standards don’t allow employers to make unilateral changes in the wages or benefits of unionized employees.

Quite.

In my local Highams park, a fantastic bit of green space on the edge of Epping Forest in north-east London, Humphry’s cafe is a community-supported venue in a former social hut for postwar prefab houses, where you can always have a big cup of builder’s tea for £1. As a result, it’s a fantastically welcoming space, always busy, with anyone from school kids bunking off to dog walkers, pram-pushers and senior citizens putting the world to rights. Yes, you can still buy avocado on sourdough toast if you have the readies, but the presence of that cheap brew makes the cafe what it is – accessible and open to all the community.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable that museums, galleries, major libraries, hospitals and so on could take a lead from churches or my humble local cafe and start offering tea (or instant coffee) for far less than the preposterously high prices they charge now. Politicians love to brandish mugs of tea in weird displays of authenticity, but it’s galling that they have their hot beverages heavily subsidised by the taxpayer in the House of Commons cafes, where a brew costs as little as 70p.

With that in mind, it’s about time we reclaimed institutional tea and campaigned for the simple comfort of our national drink at a reasonable price – #onequidtea for all. Perhaps then we’d even be able to push the boat out and buy a monster cookie to go with it.

Guarantee you this same ignorant tosser would be outraged if you suggested lowering the £10.40 minimum wage. Which is, I assure you, one of the reasons for expensive tea. Wages are about 30% of any catering operation.

Deconstructing Homonationalism And Pink Washing: How Israel Uses Queer People To Excuse Human Rights Violations
The pink washing tactics used by Israel in response to valid criticism show how their queer affirmative policies are inherently discriminatory towards Palestinians.

Because Israel is fine – legally – with LGBTQ and Palestine is not, therefore Israel pointing out that it’s fine with LGBTQ and Palestine is not is pinkwashing.

Summat to do with the Joos as far as I understand it.

The narrow debate around AI “guardrails” perpetuates a tug-of-war between the impulse of government to regulate and the power of business to profit. Instead, government and business must act together to show citizens that the full power of the AI age will redress the structural deficiencies of our current capitalist model and make our economy work for all, not just the few. The gathered dignitaries must use the summit to provide a global declaration that defines the shared responsibility of the public and private sectors for a root-and-branch reform of capitalism.

We need a clear and definitive joint declaration signed at the highest level. In order for it to receive public confidence, it cannot be a government “communiqué” or a “techno-optimist manifesto”. At its very core it must answer the vital question posed by the King in his recent speech at Mansion House, where he asked: “Have we succeeded in equal measure in schooling ourselves, and our communities, in the importance of our responsibilities toward one another?”

While there is a global trend to introduce AI guardrails through a swirl of policy frameworks centrally concerned with the safety risks of AI, this is not enough. In fact, perversely, if this were done without a clear commitment to the common good, fully embraced by public and private sectors, AI is likely to exacerbate the levers of inequality and social division that plague our world today.

A concrete declaration based on moral clarity could change everything. It will harness the potential promise of AI to establish a truly inclusive capitalism. We want a cohesive society where we no longer think of “us” and “them” but where we all believe that our economic system works equally for all.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild is founder and CEO of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism

Rich bird windypuff I suppose.

It’s not even precise enough to be able to critique it. Just “AI should be sugar and spice”.

Ghastly.

Then again the piece itself seems remarkably confused:

The United States considered that American Indians were savages, animals. Occupied their land with colonists. To protect them, she annihilated ancient villages. Those who survived were confined in what we call reservations. However, the soldiers who defended ‘El Álamo’ are considered national heroes.

The Alamo was a battle against the equally European and colonialist Mexicans…..

Artista y profesor de la Escuela de Arte Pancho Lasso de Lanzarote

Ministers should cap domestic sugar production to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis, according to a new report backed by health experts and environmental campaigners.

The UK grows and imports more than two and a half times the population’s maximum recommended intake of sugar, according to Sugar Pollution, a report by environmental campaigners Feedback Global and Action on Sugar, a group of specialists in medicine, nutrition and public health.

Insisting that everyone change the recipes so that they have less sugar in them didn;t work. Many of those low sugar versions are now redundant – not enough people bought them for their viability.

So, now, as the true fanatics, they demand another way to impose their desires upon the population.

What this will really mean – of course- is that much food production will move offshore. Limiting raw sugar supply will raise the price of raw sugar. So, people who use raw sugar in making things will do so elsewhere and then import the product. Mars bars will be made in Holland – to the extent that they’re not already. Just like Lifesavers are made in Canada.

They will then demand bans on hte import of things containing sugar. Of course they will. And so it will come that smuggling Mars Bars is a valid and profitable occupation. Bags of pure white available on street corners – Nah mate, the demerara, that’s specialist gear, innit? Be 10 minutes to get some.

Causality is always a problem:

Research indicates that political progressives have lower levels of mental well-being than political conservatives. However, while attention has been paid to why conservatives have higher levels of well-being relatively little attention has been used to examine why progressives may have comparatively low levels of well-being. Recent events connected to a “Great Awokening” suggest that identity politics may correlate to a decrease in well-being particularly among young progressives and offer an explanation tied to internal elements within political progressiveness. Regression analysis with data from the Baylor Religion Survey indicates that identity political variables, but not a desire for higher government spending, are consistently negatively related to lower well-being and mediate the ability of progressive political ideology to predict lower levels of well-being. By paying attention to political progressives, rather than political conservatives, a nuanced approach to understanding the relationship between political ideology and well-being begins to emerge. It is plausible that political progressives are not equally prone to lower levels of well-being as those committed to a class-based type of progressive activism seem to be better off than those tied to issues of identity politics.

One possible answer is that such concerns make you unhappy. Or, alternatively, that nutters believe such things.

My own belief – belief – is that so much of this identity politics is the sort of narcissistic fluff only indulged in by those already nervous and unhappy. You know, the sort of kids who would benefit from having the faces pushed in their pink school custard a few times.

Saw a couple of American pieces referring to firearms deaths in hte US. Of course, given hte meeja, they led to calls to abolish the 2 nd Amend etc. Gun control now! So, found the actual paper:

In 2021, firearms continued to be the leading cause of death among US children. From 2018 to 2021, there was a 41.6% increase in the firearm death rate. In 2021, among children who died by firearms, 84.8% were male, 49.9% were Black, 82.6% were aged 15 to 19 years, and 64.3% died by homicide. Black children accounted for 67.3% of firearm homicides, with a death rate increase of 1.8 from 2020 to 2021. White children accounted for 78.4% of firearm suicides. From 2020 to 2021, the suicide rate increased among Black and white children, yet decreased among American Indian or Alaskan Native children. Geographically, there were worsening clusters of firearm death rates in Southern states and increasing rates in Midwestern states from 2018 to 2021. Across the United States, higher poverty levels correlated with higher firearm death rates (R = 0.76, P < .001).

So, it’s poor, black, male, teens murdering each other. Presumably over drugs or ho’s if we are to believe the soundtrack. And yes, of course this will be prevented by disarming suburban Moms.

California set to give green light to Dutch-style cannabis cafés
Campaigners hope that the new law will help businesses in the struggling marijuana industry to fight back against the black market

You cannot, of course, smoke a cigarette in a bar…..

The academic and writer Kehinde Andrews will join us for a livestreamed event to introduce his new book, The Psychosis of Whiteness.
Through regular appearances on TV debates, Andrews has become increasingly frustrated by the irrational tone of conversations about race and racism. In The Psychosis of Whiteness, he invites us into a strange and alarming world – one in which Piers Morgan is an authority on race, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are seen by the majority as the ‘right (white) man for the job’, and white people are queuing up to buy books to help them cope with their whiteness.

Andrews is the first professor of Black Studies in the UK, and the author of bestselling books Resisting Racism, Back to Black and the New Age of Empire. Join him as he discusses this witty yet vital new perspective on race and white privilege. You will also have the opportunity to put forward your own questions at this livestreamed event.

I’m washing my mustache that day….

In my defence, it was never my intent to write about it. I did not have time. No one asked me to. And several people strongly cautioned against it. Not now – not with the literal and figurative fires roiling our planet. And certainly not about this.

Other Naomi – that is how I refer to her now. This person with whom I have been chronically confused for over a decade. My big-haired doppelganger. A person whom so many others appear to find indistinguishable from me. A person who does many extreme things that cause strangers to chastise me or thank me or express their pity for me.

I am referring, of course, to Naomi Wolf. In the 1990s, she was a standard-bearer for “third wave” feminism, then a leading adviser to US vice-president Al Gore. Today, she is a full-time, industrial-scale disseminator of unproven conspiracy theories on everything from Islamic State beheadings to vaccines.

Me Naomi being the one who writes about everytihng being a capitalist comspiracy…..

Take the very different attitudes towards drag queens and “blackface” entertainers. It is OK, even laudable, for men to dress up as a grotesque parody of the opposite sex, but very much not OK for white performers, in a similar travesty, to sing My Mammy with boot polish on their faces.

Just this week, the New York Times was bashed for publishing an article ranking the five best clitoral vibrators, but never mentioning the word “woman” unless it were part of a vibrator’s name. Instead, the piece said the vibrators were for and tested on “people with vulvas.”

Children target corner shops to buy vapes because of lax ID checks, academic says
Study finds children are twice as likely to go to small shops to buy vapes than they were in 2019

Err, the modern world has become so detatched from reality that it requires an academic to tell us this? Or academia has become so that an academic thinks we need to be told this?

In his talk, which was well received by activists around the world, Chávez never mentioned the new project of building socialism with the commune as “its basic cell” that he had kickstarted that summer, but the fact is that the project of communal socialism that was emerging in Venezuela at that time is precisely the kind of system change that could save the climate and the Earth System more generally.

Yes, yes, Chris Gilbert is.

Gimp in the crowd is much ado about nothing, says Globe theatre
A man in a latex outfit was allowed to roam the venue while children were present

That gimp suits are used sexually is one thing. But they also cover all the bits of a body that needs to be covered in public and with kiddies around. So, why wouldn’t we allow someone to wear a gimp suit in public?

In and of themselves they’re no more sexual that a wetsuit. And while the idea of being able to prosecute surfers for being indecent in public has it’s attractions it would be going that bit too far.

On Thursday, at a conference for the Black sorority Delta Sigma Theta, Harris condemned the updated education standards as “revisionist history”.

“Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” the vice-president said. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us and we will not stand for it.”

Advocacy groups have denounced the Florida curriculum changes for providing a sanitized version of history.

No, that’s not what the new Florida Black History guidelines actually say. There is not a repetition of the old claim that Blacks, by being now Chrsitians in the US, were better off than unchristians in benighted Africa. Sure, it’s possible to claim at the extreme that some were – being a slave on a cotton plantation (less so a sugar one) might well be a better life outcome than being ceremonially eviscerated outside the court of the King of Dahomey.

But that isn’t the claim made. Rather, from the source:

Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural
work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing,
transportation).
Benchmark Clarifications:
Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be
applied for their personal benefit.

Some slaves with such skills were indeed allowed to sell their labour for their own benefit. As under Roman slave codes of course.

Personally I think they were a bit silly putting this in there because it would so obviosuly be picked up on to try to discredit the entire syllabus. But there we are.

I also think that they would have found something to use to try to discredit that syllabus. Because it actually tries to get slavery right, which is against that current insistence that chattel slavery was uniquely American, a founding institution, or even a defining feature. Slavery lasted longer in the South than in many other places, true. But other than that it was pretty much business as usual. Which the syllabus trie to point out:

6-8 African American History Strand
SS.68.AA.1 Understand the causes, courses and consequences of the slave trade in
the colonies.
SS.68.AA.1.1
Identify Afro-Eurasian trade routes and methods prior to the development of
the Atlantic slave trade.
Benchmark Clarifications:
Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slavery was utilized in Asian, European and African cultures.
Clarification 2: Instruction includes the similarities and differences between serfdom and slavery.
Clarification 3: Instruction includes the use of maps to identify trade routes.
SS.68.AA.1.2
Describe the contact of European explorers with systematic slave trading in
Africa.
SS.68.AA.1.3
Examine the evolution of the labor force in the use of indentured servitude
contracts.
6
Benchmark Clarifications:
Clarification 1: Instruction includes the comparative treatment of indentured servants of European and
African extraction.
Clarification 2: Instruction includes the transition from an indentured to a slave-based economy.
SS.68.AA.1.4 Describe the history and evolution of slave codes.
Benchmark Clarifications:
Clarification 1: Instruction includes judicial and legislative actions concerning slavery.
SS.68.AA.1.5
Analyze slave revolts that happened in early colonial America and how
political leaders reacted (e.g., 1712 revolt in New York City, Stono Rebellion
[1739]).
SS.68.AA.1.6
Examine the service and sacrifice of African patriots during the Revolutionary
Era (e.g., Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, James Armistead Lafayette, 1st
Rhode Island Regiment).

That’s all pretty good (as is much of the rest of it in fact) but it’s against eh disctates of 1619 and so on. Therefore the whole thing must be attacked on whatever pretext.

Now, myself, I’d insist on telling the story of Anthony Johnson. A slave bought in Angola, freed into a indenture contract on arrival in 1621 (? date is not wholly known) and by late 1630s free, with own land and own indentured labourers. One of whom, a black from Afcia, he sued in order to keep for life. That’s the conversion from indenture to chattel lavery, right there in that case.

So, chattel slavery of blacks (he did not try that one with any white indentured) was invented by, first imposed by, an African ex-slave upon Africans. That is, an African practice imposed by an African upon Africans.

Now wouldn’t telling everybody that – true story – really put the cat amongst the pigeons?

But no. The new Florida history guide does not say that slaves benefitted from slavery. Read it for yourself.

BBC ‘only wants to feature working-class people if they’re miserable’
Former South Bank Show host claims that people from his background are under-represented in the media

That Lord Bragg describes himself as working class is cute. But don’t we want the BBC to reflect the real and objective reality? That under late stage capitalism the working class are immiserated?

“I’m not sure who gets to decide what ‘normal’ is in terms of a fantasy,” says Ericka Hart, MEd, sex educator and black queer femme activist. “But I will say white supremacy has put so many parameters on our imaginations that not feeling wrong when we think beyond vanilla hetero sex takes some unlearning. As long as the fantasy is consensual—freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, and specific—it can be carried out.”

The reason we don’t all dream of the really tufty squirrel suit is white supremacy?

Disney’s Little Mermaid flops in China amid racist backlash over casting

Because theory says only white folks are racist. Therefore it must be true that only white folk are racist.