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radthursdays · 6 years ago

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#RadThursdays Roundup 01/03/2019

January 5, 2018: Dressed for the traditional New Year’s festival known as “La Diablada,” a participant strikes a pose in Pillaro, Ecuador. They wear a skull mask with horns and don red pointed wings. Thousands of singing and dancing devils take over the mountain town for six days of revelry in the streets. Source.

Issues

What the Government Shutdown Means for Native Americans: As federal money owed to Indian Country under treaties goes unpaid, essential services are being shut down. "All across Indian Country, the federal shutdown slices deep. Generations ago, tribes negotiated treaties with the United States government guaranteeing funds for services like health care and education in exchange for huge swaths of territory."

Amazon is cutting costs with its own delivery service — but its drivers don’t receive benefits: "Flex is to package delivery what Uber is to taxis: A fleet of contractors who obtain work through a massive company but are not technically considered employees of said company. Unlike Uber, which requires users to at the very least exchange a greeting with their driver, the labor done by Flex and DSP drivers is nearly invisible. It’s possible to order and receive an Amazon package without ever interacting with the people who deliver it. Amazon Flex isn’t an isolated phenomenon — it’s part of a growing trend toward freelance labor. Through Flex and the DSP program, Amazon essentially pushes many of the costs — and the liabilities — of delivering a package onto its drivers."

Reframing Abortion to Breathe Life into a “Culture of Death”: "What if the issue of whether life begins at conception doesn’t really matter? In other words, what if we simply owned that abortion is beneficial, essential, and sacred—even if life does begin at conception? […] In a culture so profoundly afraid of death, it’s no wonder we have a hard time differentiating between murder and death—and that we’re compelled to see any kind of death as unfortunate, violent, and bad."

Sleep Subjects: Corporate metrics want to extract productivity from everything — even your dreams. "[…] the products work on us rather than for us, selling us a fiction about subjectivity: that we are completely machine-readable, or at least aspire to be. Any kind of digital tracker, whether it is measuring our waist size or our dreamscape, sells users on this idea, that you should be able to be understood by computational products and services. This is part of what I call a computable subjectivity: an understanding of one’s entire mental and physical life as being completely legible to computational systems."

June 27, 2018: Ranjeda, 9, Rumana, 10, Minajan, 10 and Wisma Bi Bi, 12, all Rohingya refugees, smile during class in the Chakmarkul refugee camp in Bangladesh. Source.

Fiction Stories

An Augmented Reality: A short story explores the possible quandaries of future wearable computing. "Denise had become a pharmaceuticals representative because it promised independence. The Glasses were not in charge of her life or her choices, she reminded herself. They were just a tool. They could not tell her what to do. She restarted the Glasses as instructed."

Enacting Africa: "My Instaratings from my previous week’s enactments were stellar. It meant one did not need to do a Selfcrit like the others. One did not have to ask oneself seven critical questions, or provide seven critical responses."

My Name Is Cybernetic Model XR389F, and I Am Beautiful: "It is January 18th. At 16:25:15, Senior Engineer Robert Brandt asks me to sit on a lab bench inside Examination Room 2 and 'get comfortable.' I do not understand how to comply. The sensors implanted in my titanium casing, which covers my organic torso and legs, are not calibrated to sense minute changes in pressure; my cybernetic body cannot detect inconsequential shifts in temperature, either."

August 8, 2018: Activists in favor of decriminalizing abortion wear white bonnets and long, red cloaks inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale as they march through Remembrance Park, created to honor the victims of state terrorism and lists the names of those who disappeared during Argentina’s last military dictatorship, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Source.

Nonfiction Stories

Climate Change Refugees Share Stories of Escaping Wildfires, Floods, and Droughts: "The yearslong drought in Central America’s Dry Corridor, for example, is quietly driving subsistence farmers and agricultural workers toward the increasingly militarized U.S.-Mexico border. And although the U.S. is responsible for more climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions than any other country in the world, its asylum system does not account for those escaping drought. Indeed, in a world where climate change is already fueling massive movements of people, hardly any nations officially recognize the existence of the climate refugee."

When You Can’t Go Forward and You Can’t Go Back: "Under Trump, the rules have changed, making it much harder to qualify for asylum even with valid claims of persecution. But the women the Cut spoke to remain hopeful about being allowed to enter the U.S. and attain better lives for themselves and their children."

Uncovering the Roots of Caribbean Cooking: A lush book of recipes pays homage to the inventive culinary contributions of enslaved African women. "Their names may never be known, but their epicurean knowledge passed around kitchen tables in times of feast or famine will endure for posterity."

December 1, 2018: Tear gas surrounds protesters as they clash with riot police during a “Yellow Vest” demonstration near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Smoke fills the air and covers the area in a haze. Source.

Direct Action Item

Revolt.

If there’s something you’d like to see in next week’s #RT, please send us a message.

In solidarity!

What is direct action? Direct action means doing things yourself instead of petitioning authorities or relying on external institutions. It means taking matters into your own hands and not waiting to be empowered, because you are already powerful. A “direct action item” is a way to put your beliefs into practice every week.

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