Jante's Umarell

The arkenstone!

there was this small business owner in Shenzhen who once posted on X. It was something like: many of your electronics (and garments, and other products) are made by people who see their children once a year.

my favourite new year video genres on Chinese social media is the family reunion videos (this one is from 2023). so heartwarming, but also cruel.

Blizzard Quality Assurance Workers Ratify Video Game Union Contract With Microsoft A strong majority of quality assurance workers at Blizzard’s Albany and Austin locations overwhelmingly voted to ratify a union contract at Microsoft, ensuring lasting protections in the workplace.

Quality assurance testers at Blizzard Albany and Austin offices have reached a groundbreaking contract at Microsoft, marking the third union contract across the company's gaming studios.

Solidarity!

In solidarity with today's ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA blackout, MinnMax is donating $1 to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota for every share of this Bluesky post for the next hour.

Dialectics

Up next - another 80s period piece, so to speak:

I think quite good! Hana & Munekata are great characters. It was definitely clunky in places (the first half of the first chapter imo was quite jarring) and pulled its punches at the end. But definitely a fun and interesting read.

It’s pretty fucked up to sack Aaron Rodgers instead of debating his ideas

We shall fight and die under the banner of the Dual Mandate

Also, like. I don't wanna be this guy, but the prose was *so dry*. I really do want to be able to engage in ideas without an aesthetic mixer to help the sugar go down but you really do understand why people find Lenin so appealing in comparison to this.

Alright, time for some fiction from someone I follow on twitter

The project also has a whiff of 'small is beautiful' Naderism that I understand the romantic appeal of but have just grown to completely despise (partially as a reaction against what I used to/still buy into from it).

Alright, that's over.

Sort of equally balanced between 'eerily prescient' and 'hopelessly out of date' insofar as we are at a position where it's kind of relevant to consider the questions he was considering, but after 46 years of it getting so. much. worse.

Okay at least 30% of them are summed up here:

We are going to end the year grinding out Harrington. I have a lot of thoughts, but none of them esp interesting per se.

One thing this exercise has gotten me to think about is whether it is better to read fiction, which I do, or theory/history, which I think is 'better' for me but I do not do.

I have to try so, so hard to not be this in basically every conversation

Hes correct and he should say it (you can also pay your utility bills; pick up packages; buy movie, train and sports tix; buy 600ml beers; eat delicious onigiri; and like 1000 other things there)

(Also Family Mart, one of 7/11's competitors, has great monthly ice cream flavors)

Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷

Lmao

And like, even without a positive case for Platner there were Signs with fetterman - in politics before he had a discernable political ideology, was always entrepeneurial abt it, had a weird relationship w/ nat. left when bernie didn't endorse him in 18, and he and the pgh left hated each other.

Possibly an even worse site to say this on than twitter, but I think everyone forgets the simple value of waiting a couple weeks and seeing how things play out if you've got the option.

I do get the other dooming aspects tho.

I don't really think that tracks. Say what you want about the whole thing but I don't think Fetterman's reaction each time something new happened would be "oops!"

Likewise afaict relationship w/ bernie and labor different between the two of them.

SMC members, friends, and families came out today for No Kings!