u/ADavidJohnson

>Members of SEIU 925 voted 83.3% to reject the University of Washington’s “last, best and final” contract offer for classified employees, and the university now said it will file for mediation.

The vote, which leaves almost 7,000 classified staff without a new contract, puts the union and the university at odds over wages, paid time off and AI protections. The union says the offer included no wage increases, no wage reopeners over the two-year term, no additional paid time off and no AI protections.

The university says state law could delay any raises until 2028.

"UW needs to get back to the bargaining table ASAP with real solutions," Dale Siewert, a medical laboratory scientist and SEIU 925 chapter president, said.

“Frankly, people are tired of being undervalued and underappreciated,” Siewert said. “UW is clearly making a conscious decision not to invest in its workers." 

> It's not about individuals, it's an ecosystem. And it's got its problems. Learn about what I'm calling
"The Leftist Manosphere", their misreadings of identity politics, and what's missing from this very limited space.

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” 
> > “She posts guillotine memes”“They wore one of those IWW ‘General Strike’ t-shirts to work one day!” 
> > 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:

• Flakes, turncoats and rogues
• Refusing to talk to coworkers
• Militancy where you’d least expect it
• Why is it this way?

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.

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.

https://youtu.be/pH81_aFy4S4