December 23, 2023

MAGA Barbie Loses The Thread, Again and Again and A...

December 23, 2023

An augmented-reality filter reveals the hidden movements all around us

https://aeon.co/videos/an-augmented-reality-filter-reveals-the-hidden-movements-all-around-us

In this video essay, the Dutch filmmaker, photographer and artist Michiel de Boer introduces viewers to an innovative digital effect he’s created called ‘motion extraction’, which draws out the movement in scenes, sometimes making it the only thing visible. He showcases several crafty examples that, made with his own footage, highlight motion of various types and timescales. This simple technique produces dazzling results, causing tree branches to shimmer as they sway in the wind, dust particles to become bold beams of light, and camouflaged insects and animals to be instantly unveiled. De Boer’s montage serves not only as a free and easy tutorial on the possibilities of this creative tool, but also as eye candy for anyone keen to witness the hidden patterns of movement that surround us.

Motion Extraction

December 23, 2023

Trade unions in the European Union: Picking up the pieces of the neoliberal challenge (free 1,186 page e-book)

https://www.etui.org/publications/trade-unions-european-union



The full PDF is available via https://www.peterlang.com/document/1303070


In the context of a revival of union power in the US and the coming European elections, the ETUI is releasing Trade Unions in the European Union, analysing the first two decades of the 21st century when trade unions have been repeatedly challenged by neoliberal programmes.

Published by Peter Lang and edited by three ETUI experts (J Waddington, T Müller and K Vandaele) with the support of 45 contributors, Trade unions in the European Union: Picking up the pieces of the neoliberal challenge is the most comprehensive comparative overview of the development, structures and policies of national trade unions in the European Union since 2000.

This milestone publication maps the features of the neoliberal challenge: a reduced role for the state as regulator and employer, ‘flexibilisation’ of labour markets and distancing of the state and political parties from unions. It shows the measures implemented by unions to adapt to changed circumstances since 2000, addressing new and broader issues (the green transition, work-life balance, working time …) and deploying alternative narratives.

In response to the decline of their affiliates, the authors look at the initiatives taken by unions to become attractive and relevant to new categories of workers, such as young, migrant or platform workers. The 27 country chapters show also that union activity, independently or in conjunction with other civil-society actors, will be at the centre of revitalisation campaigns if the pieces that are left from the neoliberal challenge are to be picked up and wielded into a coherent response, especially in a world of work that is changing rapidly.

December 23, 2023

Sex Pistols - Submission (Alternate Mix) August 1977

Best version out of many, IMHO

December 23, 2023

The Damned - New Rose (Official HD video) 1976

Label: Stiff Records – BUY 6
Format: Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM
Country: UK
Released: 22 Oct 1976
Genre: Rock
Style: Punk

December 23, 2023

The Stranglers - Peaches (1977)

Label: United Artists Records – UP 36248
Format: Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, Blackmail Sleeve
Country: UK
Released: 1977
Genre: Rock
Style: New Wave, Punk

December 22, 2023

B 52s - Private Idaho (Extended Long Version) 1980

December 22, 2023

Happy Winter Solstice To All

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us—Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!


By Susan Cooper

December 21, 2023

The American Judiciary Is Failing Its Trump Test: No other American defendant would get this kind of kid-glove treatment

https://prospect.org/justice/2023-12-20-american-judiciary-failing-trump-test/



Donald Trump got yet another delay in the trial for some of his 91 felony charges recently when the Supreme Court, on the request of both his lawyers and special counsel Jack Smith, agreed to hear his argument that he should be totally immune from prosecution. The judge overseeing that case, Tanya Chutkan, duly paused proceedings in the case until the matter is resolved, which will likely be a few weeks at least. Given that every day where Trump is not moving toward conviction is a day he avoids that hit to his presidential candidacy, a pause is a win. Separately, Trump is also appealing the gag order placed on him by Chutkan. When the charges were filed and the judge selected, Trump flagrantly violated the integrity of the proceedings by posting vicious personal attacks against Smith, Chutkan, and several potential witnesses like Mark Meadows, directly causing a deluge of violent threats.

That led Chutkan to impose a gag order in mid-October forbidding him from targeting participants in the case personally. Trump appealed that order to the D.C. Circuit, a panel of which recently upheld the gag order but only in part, holding that Trump could still attack Smith, as well as the Biden administration and the Department of Justice. Now, Trump is appealing that decision again, asking for the whole D.C. Circuit to hear it. If that doesn’t work, he’ll appeal it to the Supreme Court. Thus does the glacial pace of the American legal system, and the helpless timidity shown by most liberal judges in the face of wealthy elites, enable Trump’s attack on democracy.

No other American defendant would get this kind of kid-glove treatment. Ordinary schlubs get railroaded into plea bargains with outrageous charge-stacking, routine pretrial detention, and the most brutal sentences in the rich world. In the rare case that they can appeal a conviction, the Supreme Court almost never hears their case, and even when they do, the appeal is almost always a failure. Donald Trump, by contrast, gets to threaten the lives of actual judges, prosecutors, and their staff, with the only punishment being that some, but not all, of his unsubtle incitements to violence are a no-no. Or rather, maybe they are, pending appeal. In this context, a theoretically laudable fixation on conducting Trump’s prosecution “by the book” becomes another manifestation of the egregious injustice built into every level of the legal system.

There is a particular political obscenity here, over and above the unbelievable deference the judiciary grants to rich people as a matter of course. The most important charges against Trump are for attempting to overthrow the government and install himself as dictator. If he had succeeded in doing so, the judiciary would have become his personal plaything—an instrument of his will to dominate and punish anyone who crosses him. Now, after having attempted to destroy the very idea of law itself, and facing quite mild potential penalties relative to what traditionally happens to failed would-be dictators, Trump furiously whines and complains at every point in the proceeding, demanding privileges so outrageous that no one else would even think to ask for them, as part of a comically blatant strategy to string the process along until hopefully winning the election and declaring himself innocent. It could not be more obvious that, once again, Trump is trying to undermine the legal process by procedural abuses.

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December 21, 2023

Fake Generational Warfare

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-12-20-fake-generational-warfare-social-security/

The effort to promote generational warfare against Social Security is on one of its periodic upswings. The granddaddy of this campaign was the late Peter G. Peterson. He spent decades and at least a billion dollars of his own fortune trying to persuade younger Americans that Social Security would not be there when they needed it, and that they’d be better off with personal accounts run by Wall Street. (Peterson had headed Lehman Brothers and later co-founded the Blackstone Group.) The latest entries in this never-ending propaganda campaign are an op-ed piece by former Sen. Phil Gramm and Mike Solon. Their title is a cheeky “Social Security Was Doomed From the Start.” For a doomed program, Social Security has done pretty well over its nearly 90 years, keeping hundreds of millions of elderly Americans out of poverty in old age. Gramm’s story is that FDR’s mistake was setting up Social Security as pay-as-you-go, in which one generation’s payroll taxes pay for the previous generation’s retirement. He’s right that the program would be even stronger if it banked a large surplus, the income on which could partly pay the cost of Social Security checks. But the right way to fund that is by raising taxes on the rich. How about it, Phil?

Another recent contribution to this crusade is a December 18 piece in Newsweek, headlined “Young Americans Turn Against Boomers Over Social Security.” Newsweek cites a poll that it commissioned. But the actual poll shows nothing of the sort. I quote: “According to the poll, 56 percent of Gen Zers, 76 percent of millennials and 69 percent of Gen Xers believed the system should be reformed, against 50 percent of boomers.” But “the system should be reformed” could mean almost anything, from the kind of privatization long advocated by Peterson, Wall Street, and ideological opponents, to the kind of shoring up advocated by the likes of me. What gives the issue new resonance is that the trust funds will not be able to pay all of the benefits owed within a decade or two. We need to act soon, either by increasing the revenues to Social Security or reducing benefits. That’s the real debate we should be having. Donald Trump, who is a psychopath but no fool, has avoided weighing in.

What is true is that Americans of my generation got a much better economic deal than generations who came after. We had affordable homeownership, whose increase in equity over a lifetime gave us nest eggs for retirement. Half of us had real pension plans, as opposed to inadequate 401(k)s and the like. We were able to get college degrees without the burden of debt. Those of us without college had good unionized blue-collar jobs that provided a middle-class lifestyle, often on one income.

Younger generations have every right to feel cheated. But contrary to the generational warfare fable, that rip-off was not the fault of boomers. It was the work of conservatives of all ages who denied younger Americans the secure social contract that my generation enjoyed. And contrary to the attacks on social insurance, Social Security is a relatively small part of that larger story. If we want to keep it strong for future generations, the path is to strengthen its finances, not to weaken its coverage. Social Security is more essential than ever, given the collapse of decent pension plans engineered by corporations and Wall Street, to transfer all the risk to workers and retirees. The real generational warfare is class warfare.

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