I promised I would be the most pro-union president in our history. That’s another promise I am keeping.

11:30 PM ∙ Jul 6, 2022

---

47,431Likes5,592Retweets

Whoops.

So. In the US there is no nationally mandated paid sick leave policy. There is no guaranteed number of days that a working person is able to take off from their job – to have surgery, to go to the doctor, to stay home sick (and not get their coworkers ill) – and still be paid. There are state mandated sick leave policies, but only in seventeen states (and some cities.) Thanks to a recent ruling those mandates don’t apply to … rail workers, whose employers were found to be subject to federal regulation only.

Currently rail workers in the US are not given any paid sick days. Not for surgery. Not for COVID. Not for emergency childcare. And to hear them discuss it, they are often disciplined or simply fired for being ill, or taking time to heal after being hurt. And so they’re attempting to negotiate a contract (which they haven’t had since 2019) that provides any paid leave. The high bar of their request was fifteen leave days; the low was four. The average guaranteed sick leave in New York State, for comparison, is between 40 and 60 hours, or roughly a week of work.

Their employers – operators like BNSF, Union Pacific, CSX and more – have made record profits of late, and don’t want to provide these benefits. They, confusingly, say that the cost of 15 days annual paid leave per worker would be too expensive, and also that they already provide ample time off. In past negotiations, they have offered “Supplemental Sickness Benefit Plans”, a system whereby (if I understand correctly) a worker can submit a claim to their insurer for payment after a missed work day, and they will later receive a paid benefit. The cost of that benefit is split between their employer and their insurer, a system I’m 100% sure is not plagued with bureaucratic horror, and reliably results in the claimant being paid the correct amount in a timely fashion lol lmao rofl etc etc

Either way this sidesteps the alleged problem: as trains get longer and longer, malfunctions become more frequent and time consuming to address for the average 2 man train crew (!!!!). Multiple factors – awful leave policies amongst them – have lead to declining headcount across the industry. So, though payment for sick days may be “available” through an arcane voucher program, those days often aren’t approved by management who claim reducing headcount even further will create safety hazards (in already unsafe conditions they’ve engineered to maximize profit). Thus the need for a guarantee of time off. To all this Operators say, “if the [Union] Organizations believe that discipline is being assessed improperly, they have the right to grieve and arbitrate those claims.” … Is that not precisely what’s happening?

The Carriers offered a contract in September with 1 paid sick day; workers rejected it. No better offer has come across the table, and so now: rail workers are threatening to strike. This is no mean feat. Rail workers aren’t covered by the National Labor Relations Act, but by another piece of legislation called the Railway Labor Act, which makes the process of organizing and authorizing a rail strike more onerous than other industries, ostensibly because of the importance of rail carriage to the national economy.

To avert this strike, trade groups have asked that the government intervene. Under the RLA, Congress can impose a deal upon rail workers, forcing them to take a contract. They also have the power to make a contract that meets worker demands but … Biden specifically recommended putting forward the rejected contract from September. Enter two recent votes: the first, would impose the September deal, and the second, would give rail workers seven paid sick days. Both passed the House, and moved on to the Senate where yesterday, the first passed – the terms of the rejected contract will be imposed upon rail workers – and the second failed. No additional leave days will be given (one Dem voted NO; Six Republicans YES; 60 votes were needed, rather than 50, because of the filibuster).

In theory, Biden can still “fix” this with an Executive Order mandating a federal paid leave requirement under the RLA, but will he? And if doesn’t, will the rail workers strike? Time will tell.

Herein lies some of the discourse: if Biden would “fix” this now, why didn’t he simply recommend an improved contract over the rejected September agreement? Perhaps a self professed “pro-union President” should simply support rail workers’ right to use one of the only levers they have, and withhold their labor in the face of poor labor conditions. Should the government be kowtowing to profit-drunk industry heads who have claimed that actually, they take 100% of the risk, and labor *pushes up glasses* contributes very little to the success of the rail industry (lol lmao rofl etc etc etc)? Should government be foisting rejected deals back on workers, even if doing so is allowed under federal law?

I think Adam Johnson frames it well:

This approach is bureaucratic, paternalistic, and deeply anti-labor; it does not exercise the muscle of labor rights, but binds it by federal edict before it could be properly stretched by striking out at a (literally) dangerously mismanaged industry. It emboldens industry to continue in its excesses and further erodes idea that labor can, and should, have power, which by federal law it does.

“But it had to be done!” some might say. “The railways are the lifeblood of this country!” Arguable, but if so … why didn’t we treat rail workers like such was the case before this moment?

Anyway. On to some stuff I liked.

👂 - It’s Bandcamp Friday!

Maybe you know Aron from one of his other projects, Buke and Gase. DN RES is not like Buke and Gase. Not folk-adjacent jams on homemade instruments and amps, but rather: a beat tape. And a great one! Highly recommended. Just released.

Maybe you know Mike Patton from one of his other projects, [insert long list of Mike Patton Projects here]. Dead Cross is, well, it’s a lot like [long list of Mike Patton Projects here]. Dead Cross’ was the first record I’d ever seen referred to as “Desk Metal,” which I imagine references the conditions of its creation, and which – as a computer music nerd through-and-through – is a genre which I find equal parts hilarious and thrilling. This is the second Dead Cross record (thus: “II”) and it’s great.

*confused dancing* OR “acid on acid” OR quote-“Sounds like Yo Gabba Gabba but scarier.” If you say so, mate.

The label Balmat has released basically exclusively deep, and/or lo-fi, and/or ambient bangers and this is no exception. Check out this nueen release, and if you like it… everything else they’ve put out. Music for Six Rooms is spectacular.

📖

We all use phones on the toilet. Just don’t sit more than 10 minutes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/11/29/sitting-toilet-10-minutes-phone-nintendo-switch/

Incredibly, a few surveys have been conducted on the subject. In one conducted by NordVPN earlier this year, 65% of respondents (of 9,800 adults surveyed) said they used their phones in the bathroom. But it also just feels anecdotally true. The habit isn’t a new one; people have kept books and magazines by the porcelain throne for decades. With ever-smaller and more portable devices in our pockets, it seems intuitive that we would turn to those devices in a quiet moment.

Live Coding: A User's Manual

https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5495/Live-CodingA-User-s-Manual

The first comprehensive introduction to the origins, aspirations, and evolution of live coding.

Performative, improvised, on the fly: live coding is about how people interact with the world and each other via code. In the last few decades, live coding has emerged as a dynamic creative practice, gaining attention across cultural and technical fields—from music and the visual arts to computer science. Live Coding: A User's Manual is the first comprehensive introduction to the practice and a broader cultural commentary on the potential for live coding to open up deeper questions about contemporary cultural production and computational culture. This multiauthored book—by artists and musicians, software designers, and researchers—provides a practice-focused account of the origins, aspirations, and evolution of live coding, including expositions from a wide range of live coding practitioners. In a more conceptual register, the authors consider liveness, temporality, and knowledge in relation to live coding, alongside speculating on the practice's future forms.

Amazon Alexa is a “colossal failure,” on pace to lose $10 billion this year

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/

The Alexa division is part of the "Worldwide Digital" group along with Amazon Prime video, and Business Insider says that division lost $3 billion in just the first quarter of 2022, with "the vast majority" of the losses blamed on Alexa. That is apparently double the losses of any other division, and the report says the hardware team is on pace to lose $10 billion this year.

Inside the Hip-Hop Record Store Run by Undercover Cops

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy74jk/fake-record-store-operation-peyzac

The staff’s knowledge of music was real, but their identities were not. They were undercover cops, and their names were pseudonyms given to the officers to protect their identities. Deployed by the Metropolitan Police, they were the lead actors in Operation Peyzac, a half-a-million-pound mission to control gun crime and escalating violence in the area.

What Does the Sea Sound Like?

https://hazlitt.net/longreads/what-does-sea-sound

The sea, of course, is far from silent. In fact, the fathoms are full of sound: the clicks and whines of dolphins and whales, the low rumble of distant earthquakes, the scrape of tsunamis on the seafloor. There’s the belch of volcanic vents, the breath of glaciers through freeze and thaw, or the mechanical salsa of passing ships. But just because the sounds are there doesn’t mean they’re easy to hear; you can’t stroll the seafloor like you would a forest, and what’s audible from shore isn’t a proxy for life below. The problem has always been accessibility. So, for decades, it’s often fallen to musicians to bring the soundscape of the sea—both real and imagined—to life.

Go to bed! A systematic review and meta-analysis of bedtime procrastination correlates and sleep outcomes

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1087079222001101

Co-authored by my pal Vanessa Hill!

Bedtime procrastination is defined as the volitional delay of going to bed, without any external circumstances causing the delay, and is associated with inadequate sleep. Alleviating bedtime procrastination is an important target for interventions promoting adequate sleep, yet the correlates of bedtime procrastination are poorly understood. This study examined (1) correlates of bedtime procrastination, and (2) strength and direction of the association between bedtime procrastination and sleep outcomes. Six databases (CINAHL, EMBASE, PsychINFO, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science) were searched from inception to September 2021 against pre-determined eligibility criteria. Forty-three studies were included (GRADE = low). Meta-analysis revealed that bedtime procrastination had a moderate negative association with self-control (z = −0.39; CI: −0.45, −0.29) and a moderate positive association with evening chronotype (z = 0.43; CI: 0.32, 0.48). Furthermore, bedtime procrastination was moderately negatively associated with sleep duration (z = −0.31; CI: −0.37, −0.24), sleep quality (z = −0.35; CI: −0.42, −0.27) and moderately positively associated with daytime fatigue (z = 0.32; CI: 0.25, 0.38). Further high-quality studies are needed to identify causal relationships between bedtime procrastination and correlates, as well as bedtime procrastination and sleep. Future work will guide the development of interventions targeting bedtime procrastination for improved sleep outcomes.

Heightened scrutiny: The unequal impact of online hygiene scores on restaurant reviews

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14614448221127674

The success of the public display of restaurant hygiene scores has encouraged online review sites to display these scores digitally on their platforms. By investigating 225,252 Yelp reviews toward 1,937 restaurants in Charlotte, North Carolina, we find that while displaying hygiene scores digitally can inform consumers in a way that reduces bias in reviews, it paradoxically can also promote the creation of more reviews that are biased, something we call the cognitive–discursive dilemma. Specifically, after the digital display on Yelp, reviews mentioning hygiene were more in line with scores, indicating an improvement in “accuracy” across reviews in general. Yet, the digital display also led to greater attention to hygiene, leading to lower scores for restaurants of lower social status as measured by price and cuisine type. Our findings thus call for more attention to a broader theoretical implication about the provision of “accurate information” on review sites.

News is “toxic”: Exploring the non-sharing of news online

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14614448221127212

Sharing is a central activity on social media platforms and a key component in crafting one’s self-presentation online. In the context of news, user-driven sharing is seen as vital to the success of digital journalism. While research has examined why people choose to share news online, much less is known about non-sharing—that is, why people may be reluctant to share, and what that determination suggests about the nature of news and self-presentation. We examine qualitative interview responses from a cross-section of US news consumers to investigate this question. We find that non-sharers tend to believe that news is “toxic” and potentially damaging to their reputations as well as their relationships. Not sharing news is a protective mechanism for identity maintenance, even as it brings worries about one’s voice being silenced in the process.

📹

🤓

Think Twice: I Think I Will Rewrite This

https://www.patreon.com/posts/75028587 - for Patrons only

For the last little bit, I’ve been writing a script for a video about Elden Ring. I finished it, and decided I didn’t like it. So I’m going to write another. It seemed silly, though, to keep what is effectively a finished script locked away forever, so I shared it with patrons. From the post:

This script started out as one thing: I wanted to share a number of unconnected thoughts I had about Elden Ring in a kind of loose collection (thus the titled subheads). But as I worked, it turned out I didn't have a loose collection of thoughts. Everything tied back to one aspect of Elden Ring: how it made me feel similar to interfacing with bureaucracy (of all things). And so a number of rewrites wrangled the script into a more focused thrust.

But what I've realized now, having struggled monumentally with the last few rounds of rewrites ... is that I'm not trying to write a video about Elden Ring with gestures toward bureaucracy, but vice versa: a video about bureaucracy, with gestures towards Elden Ring (and other pieces of media with a take on bureaucracy). So I'm going to start again, and write that video.

We've Remastered the First 5 Episodes of Fun City!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/75213053 - Public post

The title says it all but click through for details. A while ago I remastered the first two episodes of Float City, and the response was really great. So I thought it might be fun to do the first bunch of Fun City episodes while we’re on a little bit of a break. And it was!

🖋

That’s all I got! Tell me what you liked; tell me what you didn’t. See you in a couple weeks. ✌️

Share 📡 by Mike Rugnetta