Prog Gold – Page 15 – …bestriding the US, UK, Holland and Europe like a bad-tempered giant hedgehog

Call somebody a whore? Fine. Complain about it? Whoa now

Published on October 12, 2013Leave a comment

Science blogger DNLee has her blog at the Scientific American network of science blogs, is approached by another network to guest blog for them. She asks some questions, including what their pay rate is and ultimately declines. Then the editor calls her a whore for not wanting to write for free for them. Below she describes the whole incident in her own words:

Then Scientific American responded by pulling her blog because “the post wasn’t appropriate for this area“, which of course is grade a nonsense. More relevant may just be the fact that Biology Online, the ones who approached DNLee, are a partner of SciAm.

dramatic chipmunk

As you may have noticed from the video above, DNLee is a woman of colour and you can’t help but think that if it had been a white man in this situation, SciAm would never have responded this way. Oh what the fuck am I saying? A white man would never be called a whore this way in the first place.

fuck this thing cat

Friday Comedy Double: Understanding the Dutch

Published on October 11, 2013Leave a comment

Time to revive an old Prog Gold tradition and have ourselves a comedy double. This time it’s a special comedy introduction to understanding the Dutch.

American comedian Greg Shapiro, thesse days a proud Dutch citizen, starts us off with Planet Nederland, a look at the Dutch in their natural habitat:

Then it’s off to a double bill buy British comedian John Fealey, first explaining Queensday:

Then the Dutch version of Disneyland, Albert Heijn:

Finally, Philip Walkate has the Inburgeringscurse (part 2, 3), a sneak preview at the thorough education you’ll get if you decide to become a Dutch citizen. This may actually be completely incomprehensible if you’re not Dutch, but that shall me the sausage be, as we say here.

Radical feminists war on trans people

Published on October 6, 2013Leave a comment

Samantha Allen talks about the war on trans* people waged by a certain kind of radical feminist:

I’m an endangered species. Nearly half of people like me attempt suicide. Hundreds of us are murdered annually and, worldwide, that rate is only increasing. Those of us who have a job and a place to live often lose them both; too many of us can’t acquire either in the first place. What I am is a transgender woman, one of the lucky ones.

[…]

In some bizarre alternate reality, however, I’m seen as a villain who invades “real” women’s spaces and perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes. A small but vocal band of activists known as “Radfems” see transgender women like myself as a blight on the feminist movement, but — because their views are not representative of the feminist movement as a whole — many trans*-inclusive feminists refer to them as TERFs, or Trans*-Exclusionary Radical Feminists.

What a proper welfare state is also good for

Published on October 6, 2013Leave a comment

Repelling obnoxious pick up artist douchebags:

“A Danish person has no idea what it feels like to not have medical care or free access to university education,” an awed Roosh reports. “They have no fear of becoming homeless or permanently jobless. The government’s soothing hand will catch everyone as they fall. To an American like myself, brainwashed to believe that you need to earn things like basic health care or education by working your ass off, it was quite a shock.”

Shock turns into disbelief and then rage when Roosh is rejected by heaps of “the most unfeminine and androgynous robotic women” he’s ever met. “Not a feminine drop of blood courses through their veins,” Roosh rants. He concludes that the typical fetching Nordic lady doesn’t need a man “because the government will take care of her and her cats, whether she is successful at dating or not.”

Yep, turns out people are much more confident when they’re not in fear of starving in the streets if they lose their jobs, or of getting bankrupted by medical expenses, meaning they’re much less willing to give in to assholes when it comes to sex as well. One more reason why rightwingers hate Obamacare, making it that much more difficult for them to get laid…

You want unions with that burger?

Published on October 5, 2013Leave a comment

A new wave of labour militancy has begun in the least organised sectors of the American economy:

Back in June 2012, eight immigrant workers peeling crawfish under sweatshop conditions for C.J.’s Seafood (then a Walmart supplier) went on strike in Louisiana. They stayed out for weeks, demanding an end to forced labor, wage theft, and other unfair labor practices—and they won. Following up on the C.J.’s workers’ successful action, Walmart warehouse workers in California and Illinois walked out in September, calling for improved workplace safety and a fair wage. A month later, Walmart associates walked out at 28 stores in twelve cities. The strikes marked the first time in history that Walmart retail workers had ever gone on strike, and were quickly followed by more strikes and demonstrations on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year.

Why this, why now? Because increasingly, mcJobs are the future and if that’s the case, workers need to be paid a proper living wage:

Lousy jobs at fast-food joints and retail stores have been around for a long time. Sam Walton (of Walmart) and Ray Kroc (of McDonald’s) designed their business models around underpaying their employees. But experts have always brushed off calls to improve these jobs, arguing that they were stepping-stones—summer jobs for teenagers; flexible, part-time jobs for moms; or extra-cash jobs for retirees. It didn’t matter that the jobs paid low wages and offered little opportunity for advancement because they weren’t designed to support a family or be a career.

But, as good jobs have steadily disappeared over the past three decades, these rationalizations are starting to sound pretty tired. A recent report by Catherine Ruetschlin at the think-tank Demos shows that more than 90% of retail workers are over the age of 20 and that, for the vast majority, this is their full-time, long-term occupation. Labor researchers Stephanie Luce and Naoki Fujita paint a similar picture in a study of New York City-area retail workers. According to their survey, the median age of retail workers in New York is 24 years and the average retail worker has been working in the industry for five years.