>Image description: A cycle diagram with four arrows forming a circle around a disheveled, wild-haired Barbie doll with smudged makeup. The stages read: "you go to work" → "your job is under-staffed & underpaid" → "you're too exhausted from work to be active in your union" → "your working conditions get worse" → back to start. | Source
[ID: Smokey Bear statue in yellow ranger hat and blue jeans holds a shovel and points to a sign that says, “Remember, only you and your coworkers can determine how strong our union is.” /ID]
To be clear, the authors MK Lees and Marianne Garneau are not writing from an anti-leftist perspective here, but I think it's a common thing people trying to be active in their union or workplace organizing run into when they try to start doing something.
> There is often a temptation when starting out organizing to focus on people you think may be politically left – to reach out to these people first, or even to invite them onto your organizing committee.
>
> “He’s in DSA”
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> “She posts guillotine memes”“They wore one of those IWW ‘General Strike’ t-shirts to work one day!”
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> These people are already ideologically pro-union therefore they should be predisposed to engage in a class struggle, right?
>
> Not so fast. In almost every campaign either of us have ever been involved in, and in dozens of stories from fellow organizers, the overwhelming trend is for otherwise proud leftists to show themselves as flakes at best, or actively undermining organizing at worst. Here are just a few examples.
Sections:
I don’t think you need a ton of background to this, but Ludwig is a video game and general streamer who has also put on bigger events, and he was one of the instructors for Kai Cenat’s second Streamer University last week.
His vibe is much closer to an actual high school teacher (or maybe community college professor), and if you’re interested in streaming, you might enjoy his lessons at this event yourself.
The tone of these is serious, and very practical, but usually he does comedy, and after the Smosh crossover, going on Hank Green’s show, and Zac Oyama on the Yard podcast, the orbits do seem to be growing closer and more regular to make up that realistic.
He’s also been remarkably good at matching tone wherever he goes, so I’d be really interested in what he came up with for Dropout, specifically.
> Every "redpilled" man who comes of age seems to experience an identical fantasy: to leave his liberal, feminist country for somewhere much poorer and more traditional to find a wife who will replace his mother in her caretaking duties, with the bonus of providing all the sex they could want.
…
> Clavicular falls neatly in line with the rest of his redpilled kin; men who, often while facing accusations of one sex crime or another, fly to Russia, where an à la carte experience offers escape from accountability and an unlimited supply of attention from attractive women.
>
> The Kremlin has stopped pretending this pipeline is accidental. A 2024 presidential decree created a fast-track residency scheme for Westerners fleeing "destructive neoliberal ideology," with no need for a language test or history exam, just the right grievances. Expect, then, a less sophisticated Tucker Carlson gawking at a Moscow grocery store, marveling at prices only cheap to a foreigner — a useful idiot foreigner.
A lot of this article is not relevant to the sub, other than that there’s a lot of money going toward pushing men to the right via misogyny, but the opener in particular connects the way “influencers” act out the aspirational goals that so many men have with their wives, girlfriends, etc.
And when these men don’t get this aspiration or only get it in part (their job is not good enough to trap their partner in a single-income relationship, or she’s dated people enough to have basic standards), they’re angry.
There’s the material/physical benefit of this dynamic when men get it, straightforwardly but also the psychological wages of being able to believe you’re “superior” to someone who invisibly takes care of you since you can’t cook or clean or launder for yourself.
I don’t think Clavicular is an especially sympathetic or even interesting person. But he is useful as an exaggerated to the point of grotesque example of what many women notice from their own partners at all stages of life.
>Image description: Bart Simpson stands at a classroom chalkboard, chalk in hand, having written the same line across eight rows, trailing off mid-word on the last one. "YOU are the union" — repeated down the chalkboard.
>NEW: PCC workers launched a GoFundMe to cover expenses for workers who for past few weeks have been sent home for wearing their union branded watermelon pins, which PCC has deemed too “political”
www.gofundme.com/f/solidarity-fund-for-pcc-union-workers
Earlier this summer a few workers got sent home over watermelon pins and then UFCW 3000 made a union branded version as a workaround. That story is here:
https://www.theburnerseattle.com/post/pcc-sent-two-workers-home-over-palestine-pins-now-most-of-the-store-wears-watermelon-stickers-in-s
But that only held off PCC for so long, workers are now being sent home again
From that GoFundMe:
>I [Justice Wornum] am a courtesy clerk at PCC, a co-operative grocery store chain here in the greater Seattle area, where I've worked since April of 2025. I was recently sent home about 30 minutes into my shift for refusing to remove my UFCW 3000 Watermelon Pin. I wore this pin in solidarity with our union brother at the Greenlake Village PCC and all 8 other PCC workers who have been sent home, without pay, for refusing to remove their union pins. Together we're making this GoFundMe "strike fund" to help cover the basic living expenses of all PCC workers wrongfully targeted by this illegal and immoral attendance policy, some of them missing a full week's worth of wages at this point.
We believe PCC's implementation of this policy is discriminatory and when they assume they have control over which union pins we wear it's a blatant violation of multiple federal labor laws, namely the NLRA sections 7 and 8. At a time when workers everywhere are losing their rights and becoming targets of repression both from the state and from their employer, we believe the union rank and file has an obligation to stand up for one another and defend the rights we still have.
PCC store directors and assistant store directors have told us our union pin is "too political" for their appearance policy, and their threat is to withhold our pay for refusing to comply. They want the right to decide unilaterally what is and is not a "political" symbol, Black Lives Matter and Trans Pride Flags are allowed but a watermelon is too extreme. It's completely arbitrary and gives way too much power to the employer, which is why it's being deployed in this discriminatory way.
That's why we're asking all workers, but especially PCC members and shoppers, to contribute what you can and help us recover some of those lost wages. Do this and we promise to stay in this fight for our collective right to express solidarity. No matter what slogan or symbol we choose, all workers have a right to say openly and unashamed: "An Injury to One is and Injury to All!!"
Never forget, our working conditions are your co-op conditions. Management cannot run the co-op themselves, between the workers and the members together we are the co-op. Lastly, the lockdowns may be over but we are still essential workers, we work hard every shift and we deserve to live with the dignity of a free voice.
> ID: "What your boss tells you HR is:" [top, with elegant-looking secretary bird photos] / "What HR really is:" [bottom, with secretary bird actively eating a lizard]
So, for example, Captain Falcon’s Falcon Kick is replaced by turning him into Jigglypuff — but vice versa, so consider that she loses Rest.
What character combination would be best served by being connected this way?
Paywall-free link: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/h9IPm
> A new study from the school [Clark Atlanta University ] spotlights what life looks like behind the counter for Waffle House employees and other low-wage service workers across the South, finding unstable schedules, tight pay and widespread financial strain. Built from worker surveys and dozens of interviews, the project sketches out jobs that leave many servers and cooks juggling unpredictable hours, safety worries and housing or food insecurity. Local researchers say those conditions help explain why organizing and labor campaigns are gaining fresh momentum in the region.