Author Topic: #latestagecapitalism (Read 360197 times)

Rman · « **Reply #1860 on:** October 20, 2019, 10:30:22 AM »

Quote from: Tripon on October 20, 2019, 12:55:56 AM

https://twitter.com/JaniceForBART/status/1185209025148751873

NIMBYism probably isn't late stage capitalism, admittedly.

In a sense yes, since the class struggle was something that Marx discussed thoroughly, which includes the breakdown of class solidarity. I highly doubt most NIMBYs are dominated by the traditional elites, as elites are way more secluded in their gated communities and cul de sacs. But the same strategy by the elites of creating clear divisions, knowing real change would only happen with stronger class solidarity.

The professional class is pacified with mortgages, retirement and college savings, leisure, and real estate valuations.

Check out this great article on a formerly diverse neighborhood in NYC. Diverse not just in race but also in class. It's also a great example of how the elites have affected the urban environments, which were long-time bedrocks of the working class.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/10/09/what-happened-to-the-west-village/

The rich don't participate in the community. They order their lives around convenience technology, Amazon, Uber, DoorDash. Everything is "their property". You can't sit on brownstone stoops. There's no social cohesion. A breakdown of social ties beyond the family. This is the end game of corporate capitalism, where everyone is a consumer.

Ironically, opponents of socialism believed that it would breakdown the family. And you saw that with Leninism. However, corporate capitalism has been way more ruthless in dismantling all social ties.

team filler · « **Reply #1861 on:** October 20, 2019, 11:04:19 AM »

https://twitter.com/Kantrowitz/status/1185930313182134272

Rman · « **Reply #1862 on:** October 20, 2019, 11:09:00 AM »

Amazon has some draconian stuff when it comes to monitoring their warehouse workers, but they can't tell when collapses? I call BS.

team filler · « **Reply #1863 on:** October 20, 2019, 04:30:40 PM »

https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1185570285212389376

team filler · « **Reply #1864 on:** October 20, 2019, 04:34:47 PM »

Quote from: filler on October 20, 2019, 11:04:19 AM

https://twitter.com/Kantrowitz/status/1185930313182134272

https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1179162066432606208

Tripon · « **Reply #1865 on:** October 20, 2019, 08:02:08 PM »

https://twitter.com/GarbageApe/status/1184198791018287105

Tripon · « **Reply #1866 on:** October 20, 2019, 10:53:36 PM »

https://twitter.com/CraigRowin/status/1184485114593472517

Coax · « **Reply #1867 on:** October 20, 2019, 11:00:03 PM »

Quote from: Rman on October 20, 2019, 10:30:22 AM

Check out this great article on a formerly diverse neighborhood in NYC. Diverse not just in race but also in class. It's also a great example of how the elites have affected the urban environments, which were long-time bedrocks of the working class.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/10/09/what-happened-to-the-west-village/

Enjoyed this piece. Readable, interesting and with well-shot accompanying photographs.

team filler · « **Reply #1868 on:** October 21, 2019, 03:13:11 PM »

https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/1186075946417344512

BisMarckie · « **Reply #1869 on:** October 21, 2019, 03:37:52 PM »

Who needs savings when you have two kids you can send to the coal mines?

team filler · « **Reply #1870 on:** October 22, 2019, 12:18:31 AM »

https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1186487339385872387

team filler · « **Reply #1871 on:** October 22, 2019, 01:04:56 AM »

https://twitter.com/ZakNguyen/status/1186505579587686400

team filler · « **Reply #1872 on:** October 22, 2019, 03:26:12 AM »

damn you! damn you all to hell!

OnlyRegret · « **Reply #1873 on:** October 22, 2019, 03:27:44 AM »

Wake the fuck up Samurai, we have a ~~city~~ country to burn

Joe Molotov · « **Reply #1874 on:** October 22, 2019, 08:50:30 AM »

10/19 never forget

team filler · « **Reply #1875 on:** October 22, 2019, 10:49:02 AM »

https://twitter.com/GillianTan/status/1186640209292746752

tiesto · « **Reply #1876 on:** October 22, 2019, 11:00:43 AM »

Quote from: filler on October 22, 2019, 12:18:31 AM

https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1186487339385872387

Sounds like an SMT plot waiting to happen...

Joe Molotov · « **Reply #1877 on:** October 22, 2019, 11:11:53 AM »

Time to raid Heaven, boys. Let's see them angels.

team filler · « **Reply #1878 on:** October 22, 2019, 06:25:34 PM »

Akala · « **Reply #1879 on:** October 22, 2019, 06:27:25 PM »

filtration aint free

team filler · « **Reply #1880 on:** October 22, 2019, 07:50:30 PM »

https://twitter.com/krystalball/status/1186786508247883776

team filler · « **Reply #1881 on:** October 22, 2019, 07:54:34 PM »

https://twitter.com/KieranMahon1/status/1186681963735928833

bluemax · « **Reply #1882 on:** October 23, 2019, 12:07:31 AM »

https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1186813578784858112

1. Found company based on tenuous legal loopholes and established concepts.
2. Claim you're better because TECH.
3. Raise tons of VC.
4. Get ready to IPO
5. Tank your company because you're an egocentric shit head.
6.

7. Profit!

Edit: Derp beaten

headwalk · « **Reply #1883 on:** October 23, 2019, 04:02:24 AM »

https://twitter.com/tmorello/status/1185941049677508609

EchoRin · « **Reply #1884 on:** October 23, 2019, 04:04:26 AM »

Joe Molotov · « **Reply #1885 on:** October 23, 2019, 08:52:32 AM »

stolen valor?

benjipwns · « **Reply #1886 on:** October 23, 2019, 07:14:53 PM »

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/newsweek.php

Quote

No one working at Newsweek can tell me why it still exists

On March 20, Nancy Cooper, the editor in chief of Newsweek, sent an email to her editorial staff. The subject was “What is a Newsweek story?”—an odd question at an eighty-six-year-old newsmagazine once considered one of the “big three,” alongside Time and the US News & World Report. The email contained four requirements for any story published on Newsweek.com. One, it must contain original reporting. Two, it must provide a unique angle or new information. Three, the reader must care about it. And four, the news must be news.

These should have been reasonable requests, if not bare-minimum standards, for any journalist anywhere. But Cooper allowed her staff no time to meet these goals. A few months earlier she’d told reporters they’d have to write a minimum of four stories per day, and now they felt she was asking for more while giving less.

“We don’t want fewer stories or slower stories,” Cooper said in her email, “just to make every story we do better.”

Quote

Their first story is supposed to be filed by 9am, and before it can be written, the story must be pitched to an editor over Slack in the form of a headline. In theory, these headlines appeal both to a reader and to Google’s algorithms, but in practice the algorithm takes precedence. Editors sometimes suggest more viral headlines, or pitch headlines themselves using Google Trends or Chartbeat. (Lack of knowledge on a topic doesn’t stop them from assigning stories, which has led to Newsweek wrongly declaring that Japanese citizens want to go to war with North Korea and incorrectly reporting that the girlfriend of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock was a polygamist.)

Newsweek, of course, isn’t alone in crafting its headlines for a search engine; not even the New York Times is above writing “Who Is William Barr” or recapping talk show monologues. But at Newsweek, the headline can dictate the news, instead of the other way around.

“The approach we were taking to headlines was something a lot of writers objected to on an ongoing basis. They were a point of tension,” says Kastalia Medrano, who wrote for Newsweek’s science desk until February 2018.

Quote

Cooper’s push for original reporting is in part about writing for Google News, which promotes original reporting higher than aggregated pieces in search results. For the same reason, Newsweek reporters are instructed that a story must be a minimum of four hundred words; to hit this number, one reporter says, he would pad an article about a movie by listing the cast members or summarizing an actor’s previous film credits.

Another strategy to satisfy editors who demand new stories in as little as an hour: if two reporters are covering different angles on the same topic, the two stories might comprise largely the same summary, with only the lede containing new information.

“You’re chancing it half the time,” says a current Newsweek writer. “You’re being asked to write a story in two hours, and your editors are being asked to edit it in twenty minutes, and we’re all supposed to be experts on whatever it is the story’s about, even if we’re covering the entire world. It’s just not possible.”

Newsweek has tended to hire young reporters, many of them fresh from college papers or internships. In the course of my reporting for this piece, at least ten senior staffers left or were let go, their salaries freed up while Newsweek continued to look for “News Fellows,” contract employees working forty-hour weeks for $15 per hour, the minimum wage in New York City. (Job postings for Fellows have since closed.) Three former Fellows confirmed that they were expected to do the same amount of work as salaried reporters—a minimum of four stories a day, with no overtime—with the promise of being hired full-time after four months.

Quote

Until recently, a reporter could earn an extra $2,000 per month for stories that attracted six hundred thousand unique page views. Numerous current and former reporters told me that when interviewing for a job at Newsweek, editors told them not to worry about salaries between $35,000 and $45,000—about $10,000 less than the average entry-level reporter position in New York City—because their bonuses would earn them an additional $24,000 per year.

But the reality is that if you aren’t writing clickbait, the bonuses can be hard to get. And failing to get a traffic bonus, some said, puts a target on your back.

“The way the bonus was presented during my job interview was as a goal. It’s called a ‘bonus,’ after all. But as soon as I started, it became very clear that it was a minimum,” says Pereira.

A truer objective, I’m told, is a million uniques per month. Current and former reporters said that they felt less secure in their jobs when monthly averages fell below this figure. This summer, Newsweek’s publisher, Dayan Candappa, told reporters that he and management were considering raising the starting point for the bonus from six hundred thousand uniques to a million, alongside a base salary raise, noting that management wouldn’t allow raises without a concurrent change in the bonus scheme. Candappa noted at the time that he didn’t think a raise was in reporters’ best interest, since the updated bonus would be detrimental to their total compensation.

Then, in late August, new bonus payouts were indeed introduced. While the starting point for the monthly bonus stayed the same, at six hundred thousand unique page views, the payout was lowered from $2,000 to $400. Additionally, where before a difference of thirty thousand page views was the equivalent of an extra $100 in a reporter’s pocket, it now takes an extra hundred and fifty thousand page views to make that amount. As Candappa promised, the scheme was changed alongside a yearly base salary raise of about $10,000. Reporters who bring in a large amount of traffic can opt out of the change entirely, though their work will be held to higher quality standards that have yet to be defined. Offending stories won’t be included in the traffic count.

In an all-staff email sent September 9 announcing the change, Cooper explained, “The quality of our journalism is the essential consideration—whether on a substantial investigative report, a straightforward service offering or an entertaining lifestyle brief.” That same week, Google announced that its search rater guidelines will increasingly promote “original, in-depth, and investigative reporting” that “provides information that would not otherwise have been known had the article not revealed it.”

Quote

Last year, in response to complaints from reporters, Newsweek added group bonuses, meaning a news desk’s traffic-per-reporter was averaged and everyone could receive a small payout if certain goals were reached. The intent was for less popular but important beats, like climate change, to be balanced out by more popular stories in the same section. When the individual bonus system changed, these group bonuses were eliminated entirely, though editors can now nominate writers for bonuses based on journalistic excellence, regardless of readership.

Reporters at Newsweek are also ranked against one another on a shared Google spreadsheet that’s updated daily. The combination of the traffic reports and bonuses, along with Cooper and Candappa telling the newsroom that the company is broke, creates an environment where reporters feel as though their work isn’t valued except as interchangeable parts of a content machine. Most of the reporters I spoke to said they try to ignore the reports, but many former and current staffers say that the rankings are treated like a competition by those at the top, and that this is by design. Leadership spends significant time during staff meetings discussing who and what stories sit atop the spreadsheet.

Quote

This July, Candappa said during a staff meeting that story output can’t dip when reporters go on vacation, meaning that those in the office would have to write five or more pieces per day to cover for their absent colleagues. When New York bureau chief Jason Le Miere, who’d been at IBT, then Newsweek, for more than seven years, and Jen Glennon, deputy editor of entertainment and gaming, tried to defend their reporters, Candappa called them lazy. Le Miere and Glennon both resigned the following Monday.

Quote

Newsweek’s ownership has a history of finding unethical ways to avoid paying salaries. These allegedly include: illegally using foreign students for full-time work, subcontracting reporting for IBT’s Australian edition to writers in the Philippines, and paying its reporters once a month instead of biweekly, which is against the law. Last year, BuzzFeed News uncovered that IBT was running an ad fraud scheme. Fellows are tacitly made to work overtime, though their contracts say they won’t be paid for it, which is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

These financial troubles are acutely felt in New York. Reporters have told me that they’ve come to work to find the phones disconnected, the Getty Images subscription suspended, and been told that Gmail would be locked. Computers run on Windows 8 and Newsweek uses a free version of Slack.

All of this is happening alongside an ongoing money-laundering case against Etienne Uzac, IBT’s founder and Newsweek’s former CEO, and seven alleged co-conspirators including Olivet University, an American college tied to The Community, a church once accused of being a cult. Uzac and other IBT Media leaders, who are members of the church, invented an accountant named Karen Smith to overvalue Newsweek in order to obtain $35 million in business loans. The money was supposed to be used to purchase computer servers, but was instead allegedly laundered through a fake equipment dealer and sent to Olivet. In order to pay off the original loans, more loans were taken out and the scheme was repeated in reverse, with money moving from Olivet to Newsweek and IBT Media.

Through all this, Newsweek has been publishing its print magazine.

Quote

The space freelancers once occupied has been partially taken up by new, inflammatory opinion writers like Ben Shapiro, Nigel Farage, and Newt Gingrich, who wrote the magazine’s May 10 cover story about China. These writers, I’m told, do get paid. Other recent Newsweek writers have included Charlie Kirk, discredited provocateur Andy Ngo, and former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge, who wrote a thinly veiled advertisement for his new TV show about UFOs.

benjipwns · « **Reply #1887 on:** October 23, 2019, 07:52:15 PM »

What's unfortunate about that VICE piece is that it focuses entirely on FACEBOOK. And treats it as some kind of special thing, when that's incredibly common. One of our favorite companies, Disney has been admonished multiple times by state officials for not making clear that their security forces do not have police powers despite being listed as employees of Reedy Creek which is wholly owned by Disney.

Almost any company with a footprint the size of Facebook has this kind of agreement. Although generally not the full control that Facebook seems to be using.

Hell, any university does. University police are often not granted complete police powers yet operate as if they have them. Even off-campus.

Sorry, not to defend it, just that was a long article so I kept scrolling hoping they'd mention it. But instead it was just more Facebook garbage.

team filler · « **Reply #1888 on:** October 23, 2019, 09:44:07 PM »

Rman · « **Reply #1889 on:** October 23, 2019, 10:06:17 PM »

Is Branson Jewish?

team filler · « **Reply #1890 on:** October 24, 2019, 05:37:32 PM »

https://twitter.com/leslieguttman/status/1187450626072088576

bluemax · « **Reply #1891 on:** October 25, 2019, 01:13:13 AM »

Quote from: filler on October 19, 2019, 07:15:40 PM

half the facebook ads that show up in my feed seem like farce:

(Image removed from quote.)

I didn't cap it, but I had one today for a company with the following description: "Check out our new client Zin, a Craigslist casual encounter and Kik combined replacement app."

Like what.

I mean yes I know where I failed in life to get that as an ad, but still!

Quote from: benjipwns on October 23, 2019, 07:52:15 PM

What's unfortunate about that VICE piece is that it focuses entirely on FACEBOOK. And treats it as some kind of special thing, when that's incredibly common. One of our favorite companies, Disney has been admonished multiple times by state officials for not making clear that their security forces do not have police powers despite being listed as employees of Reedy Creek which is wholly owned by Disney.

Almost any company with a footprint the size of Facebook has this kind of agreement. Although generally not the full control that Facebook seems to be using.

Hell, any university does. University police are often not granted complete police powers yet operate as if they have them. Even off-campus.

Sorry, not to defend it, just that was a long article so I kept scrolling hoping they'd mention it. But instead it was just more Facebook garbage.

I feel like I read a piece about how Snapchat did this when they came to Venice 5+ years ago! Probably also on Vice. Or Motherjones.

team filler · « **Reply #1892 on:** October 25, 2019, 02:36:38 AM »

team filler · « **Reply #1893 on:** October 25, 2019, 12:19:06 PM »

https://twitter.com/CPDAction/status/1187762255787679745

https://twitter.com/rafaelshimunov/status/1187763443996266496

team filler · « **Reply #1894 on:** October 25, 2019, 04:16:00 PM »

https://twitter.com/KateAronoff/status/1187822807700389889

shosta · « **Reply #1895 on:** October 26, 2019, 06:19:17 PM »

Joe Molotov · « **Reply #1896 on:** October 26, 2019, 06:20:45 PM »

20 years? I look like that now.

team filler · « **Reply #1897 on:** October 26, 2019, 06:35:21 PM »

https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1188079883664154625

EchoRin · « **Reply #1898 on:** October 26, 2019, 06:41:54 PM »

Speaking of varicose veins. Why do they seem to always be on women? Sure I've seen them on men, but seems much more commen on women. Something to do with sitting in a ladylike fashion or something that causes it?

team filler · « **Reply #1899 on:** October 27, 2019, 01:14:58 AM »

https://twitter.com/OmanReagan/status/1188322333846425602

team filler · « **Reply #1900 on:** October 27, 2019, 07:43:50 AM »

https://twitter.com/zillow/status/1172296182854385664

kingv · « **Reply #1901 on:** October 27, 2019, 05:39:48 PM »

Quote from: filler on October 26, 2019, 06:35:21 PM

https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1188079883664154625

“Go ahead. Keep taxing me. It only makes my opinions worse”

hampster · « **Reply #1902 on:** October 27, 2019, 09:30:14 PM »

https://www.twitter.com/ChrisCaesar/status/1188020244364890113

I’ll need to take a big one Monday morning for Cody

Joe Molotov · « **Reply #1903 on:** October 27, 2019, 10:23:13 PM »

Workers rise up and seize the memes of production.

team filler · « **Reply #1904 on:** October 28, 2019, 02:55:42 AM »

https://twitter.com/miaaleale/status/1188693502420406273

team filler · « **Reply #1905 on:** October 28, 2019, 03:39:50 AM »

https://twitter.com/ChrisCaesar/status/1188020244364890113

team filler · « **Reply #1906 on:** October 28, 2019, 12:24:02 PM »

https://twitter.com/DrRJKavanagh/status/1188298823619301376

nachobro · « **Reply #1907 on:** October 28, 2019, 12:41:09 PM »

Quote from: filler on October 28, 2019, 03:39:50 AM

https://twitter.com/ChrisCaesar/status/1188020244364890113

team filler · « **Reply #1908 on:** October 28, 2019, 05:45:23 PM »

https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1188933829387534338

team filler · « **Reply #1909 on:** October 29, 2019, 12:50:20 AM »

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1188900263551258626

team filler · « **Reply #1910 on:** October 29, 2019, 02:06:58 AM »

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-28/getty-fire-housekeepers-arrive-to-work

benjipwns · « **Reply #1911 on:** October 29, 2019, 02:16:46 AM »

Quote

The sheriff's office said members of the Kreimeyer family were experimenting with different types of explosive material Friday and Saturday in an attempt to record a gender reveal that could be posted on social media.

You're not allowed to post gender reveals on social media without explosive materials involved? Transphobic as fuck.