#nine to five (1980)

[gaygnocchi]

it’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it

[deramin2]

Yeah, I'm doing good. I just watched Pride (2014), Game Changer, Nine to Five (1980), Milk (2008), Paris is Burning (1990), The Decline of Western Civilization: Part III (1998), and Age of Umbra in two days. Nothing to see here this June 2025.

[blondebrainpowered]

9 to 5, 1980

[yetihideout]

9 to 5, 1980

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Andrew Gold - Spooky, Scary Skeletons 1996

Andrew Maurice Gold was an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and record producer who influenced much of the Los Angeles-dominated pop/soft rock sound in the 1970s. Gold performed on scores of records by other artists, especially Linda Ronstadt, and had his own success with the US top 40 hits "Lonely Boy" (1977) and "Thank You for Being a Friend" (1978) (which was later used as the opening theme for The Golden Girls), as well as the UK top five hit "Never Let Her Slip Away" (1978). In the 1980s, he had further international chart success as one half of the new wave duo Wax. During the 1990s, Gold produced, composed, performed on and wrote tracks for films, commercials, and television soundtracks.

"Spooky, Scary Skeletons" is a Halloween song, first released on Gold's 1996 album Halloween Howls: Fun & Scary Music. It was one of nine original songs on the album, released to fill a void of availability of fun and scary Halloween original songs according to Gold on his 1996 liner notes. He produced, mixed, sang and played all the instruments on the track. It prominently features a xylophone to represent the sound of skeletal bones rattling.

In 1998, Disney included the song on their VHS tape Disney's Sing-Along Songs: Happy Haunting: Party at Disneyland! (which was released on DVD as Disney's Sing-Along Songs: Happy Haunting in 2006). They paired the song with the 1929 animated short film The Skeleton Dance by Ub Iwerks. The video has garnered over 31 million views since it was recreated and uploaded by a Youtube user. On October 31, 2013, the Youtube band The Living Tombstone created an electronic dance-like remix of the song with a faster tempo than the original. Their upload of the remix to YouTube has garnered over 102 million views. By 2022, there were over 5 million TikTok videos featuring the song. “Spooky, Scary Skeletons” was adapted into a children's picture book by Random House Children's Books featuring the lyrics to the song on August 27, 2024.

"Spooky, Scary Skeletons" received a total of 90% yes votes!

[saywhat-politics]

For over fifty years, NOAA has tracked extreme weather events, including tornadoes, hurricanes, and droughts. The database has provided the public, media institutions, and scientists a vital way of gauging the human and economic toll of our ever-shifting climate, with its unique pool of data that other institutions don't have access to.

But on Thursday, NOAA announced that it would stop updating the database beyond 2024, "in alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes. All of its existing data is set to be archived.

To scientists, it's a gut punch.

"The NOAA database is the gold standard we use to evaluate the costs of extreme weather," Jeff Masters, a meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections, told The Guardian. "And it's a major loss, since it comes at a time when we need to better understand how much climate change is increasing disaster losses."

Since records began in 1980, the database has registered 403 of these destructive weather and climate disasters, exceeding $2.915 trillion in costs.

Grimly, the frequency of these events has steadily escalated, the database showed. Between 1980 and 2024, there were nine billion-dollar disasters each year on average. But in the past five years, CNN notes, the annual average has spiked to 24.

[videogamepolls]

Video Games Polls 18-Month Report

I just passed the year and a half mark, so I wanted to post an updated report with the top 10 games for each of the four options included in my polls, plus a couple other categories.

📊 Stats

Games Polled: 4231

Average Sample Size: 726

Games with 40%+ "yes" votes: 176

🏆 Most Played

Games with the highest percentage of "Yes" votes:

The Dinosaur Game (2014, AKA Chrome Dino Game) - 93.9%

Pac-Man (1980) - 93.4%

Minesweeper (1990) - 88% 🆕

Wii Sports (2006) - 87.7%

Tetris (1985) - 86.9%

3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet (1995) - 85.5%

Pokemon Go (2016) - 82.9%

Fruit Ninja (2010) - 81.1% 🆕

Minecraft (2011) - 81.1%

Angry Birds (2009) - 80.1%

🏆 Most Known But Not Played

Games with the highest percentage of "No" votes:

Raid: Shadow Legends (2018) - 85.8%

Final Fantasy XI (2002) - 82.1%

Far Cry (2004) - 79.3%

Bayonetta 3 (2022) - 78.5% 🆕

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (2018) - 78.3%

Far Cry 2 (2008) - 78.2%

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (2024) - 77.9% 🆕

Halo Infinite (2021) - 77.6%

Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999) - 75.4%

Final Fantasy V (1992) - 76.4%

🏆 Most Watched

Games with the highest percentage of "I watched someone play it" votes:

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (2017) - 54.2%

I Am Bread (2015) - 51.3%

Octodad: Dadliest Catch (2014) - 47.0%

Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach (2021) - 45.6%

Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning (2018) - 43.5%

Amanda the Adventurer (2023) - 42.5%

Phasmophobia (2020, Early Access) - 41.3%

P.T. (2014) - 41.0%

PowerWash Simulator (2022) - 40.4%

The Mortuary Assistant (2022) - 38.7%

🏆 Most Obscure

Games with the highest percentage of "I've never heard of it" votes:

Jessica's Uncomfortable Hanukkah Adventure (2023, Early Access) - 97.8%

Batty Zabella (2022) - 97.6%

Mungyodance (2006) - 97.1% 🆕

Citampi Stories: Love & Life (2019) - 97.0%

Tears - 9, 10 (2002) - 97.0%

Just, Bearly (2018) - 96.9%

King of Math (2011) - 96.9% 🆕

Mean City: Learn English or Die! (1997) - 96.9% 🆕

Anito: Defend a Land Enraged (2003) - 96.6%

Hi-Res Adventure #5: Time Zone (1982) - 96.6% 🆕

🏆 Most Balanced

Games with the most even spread of votes:

Human Fall Flat (2016) - 19.3% Yes | 28.5% No | 26.1% Watched | 26.1% Never Heard

Kerbal Space Program (2015) - 21.9% | 31.1% | 24.5% | 22.5%

The Henry Stickmin Collection (2020) - 19.3% | 29.2% | 22% | 29.5%

Ib (2012) - 24.1% | 26.8% | 19.2% | 29.9%

Superhot (2016) - 24.9% | 25.1% | 30.5% | 19.5%

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (2010) - 25.8% | 31.1% | 20% | 23.2%

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (2023) - 29.6% | 31.1% | 20.2% | 19.1% 🆕

Limbo (2010) - 30.2% | 28.7% | 23.9% | 17.1%

Wobble Dogs (2022) - 18% | 25.4% | 25.2% | 31.3%

Slay the Princess (2023) - 30.2% | 27.4% | 26.1% | 16.4%

🏆 Most Votes

Games with the most number of votes:

3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet (1995) - 11,773

Robot Unicorn Attack (2010) - 7,600

Minesweeper (1990) - 4,545 🆕

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) - 4,329

Flight Rising (2013) - 4,132

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (2004) - 4,053

Final Fantasy XV (2016) - 3,056

Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2009) - 2,844

Dark Souls (2011) - 2,823

The Dinosaur Game (2014, AKA Chrome Dino Game) - 2,758

*I did not take most Pokémon games into consideration since I handle those polls a little differently.

Check out my results spreadsheet for an alphabetized list of all poll results plus some other stats, and in case anyone is interested in comparing, here is a link to my 1-year report.

[tomorrowusa]

The MAGA-DOGE régime decided that the middle of hepatitis outbreak was a great time to close the CDC's Division of Viral Hepatitis.

After people started testing positive for hepatitis C in a coastal Florida town in December, state officials collected blood from patients, wrapped their specimens in dry ice and mailed them straight to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Ga. The hepatitis C virus, which is spread through contact with infected blood and can lead to deadly liver cancer, is notoriously hard to identify. But if anyone could understand what was happening in Florida, it would be the Division of Viral Hepatitis in the CDC's headquarters. Using samples from the laboratory's collection of nearly 1 million frozen specimens, scientists helped make the initial discovery of the hepatitis C virus in the 1980s. In 2020, that research was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Unlike Trump, the scientists at the lab knew what they were doing.

The scientists at the lab knew what they were doing. Quickly, they analyzed the blood from Florida using their custom software and found that nine cases were genetically linked to the same pain clinic, where it was later discovered that a doctor was improperly reusing injection vials. By March, officials in Florida had restricted the doctor's medical license to limit the spread of the virus and packaged new patient samples to send to the CDC for testing, CDC employees told NPR. But on April 1, the outbreak investigation was brought to a halt. All 27 of the lab's scientists received an email from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services informing them that they were losing their jobs. Like thousands of other employees who received similar emails that day, the scientists were told they would be placed on administrative leave until June 2, after which they would no longer work for the CDC. The email said their duties were "identified as either unnecessary or virtually identical to duties being performed elsewhere in the agency." But the kind of genetic tracing that the CDC's lab performs is not conducted by any other lab in the United States or the world, experts interviewed by NPR said. While the lab remains shuttered, ongoing investigations of current hepatitis outbreaks have been stalled, not just in Florida, but also in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Georgia, according to CDC employees who work closely with the Division of Viral Hepatitis. The five CDC employees NPR spoke with requested that their names not be shared for fear of retaliation.

For all anybody knows, the scientists may have been fired by Apartheid Elon's teen buddy Big Balls.

The Trump administration is making people sick and keeping them sick. And this is just the start.

[whosscruffylooking]

Open Arms Masterlist

steve harrington x fem!reader

In 1980s Hawkins, Indiana, you and Steve Harrington have been inseparable since childhood, sharing everything—except the truth about your feelings for each other. As the shadow of the Upside Down grows, Steve struggles to balance his relationship with Nancy Wheeler and his unspoken love for you, his best friend. Through dangerous encounters and memories that refuse to fade, the line between friendship and something more blurs. But in a world where nothing is certain, can you and Steve finally face the truth, or will timing and fear keep you apart forever? If you would like to be added to the taglist please comment below! ───⋆｡°✩🕰️✩°｡⋆───

character guide

~1983~ Heart of Glass

~1984~

chapter one chapter two chapter three chapter four chapter five chapter six

~1985~

chapter seven chapter eight chapter nine

[lovesthe1980s]

Nine to Five (1980). Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda.

[just-b-wilde]

The Handmaid’s Tale Timeline

Thanks everyone for your comments. I’m going to dig a little deeper into the data.

So what do we know or suspect?

• June was born in 1983. She mentions her age (34) in episode 2x02.

• Luke was born in 1980, mentioned in 1x06.

• According to fan wiki, Nick was born in 1990, but this was never confirmed in the show.

• Janine was born on September 30, 1992 — this is written on her file in 4x08.

• Hannah was born in 2009, according to June’s documentation. In 5x03, it’s mentioned that Hannah is 12 years old.

• Nichole/Holly was born in 2017, according to June’s records.

• Angela/Charlotte was born at the beginning of Season 1 and is still very little at the end of that season when June finds out she’s pregnant. We can assume Angela is about a year older than Holly, born in 2016.

• Caleb’s birth date is unknown, but in Season 3 it’s mentioned that he died four years ago, already as a child of Gilead. It’s also said it’s been five years since the women became Handmaids (3x10).

• When June gets to Canada, it’s mentioned that she had spent seven years in Gilead.

• June returns to Canada and Serena finds out she’s pregnant in Season 4.

• Noah is born at the end of Season 5 and still appears very young at the end of Season 6. Nick tells June in Season 5 that Rose is pregnant, and in Season 6 she still hasn’t given birth — so the time gap is less than nine months.

What does this suggest?

• Hannah was five years old when she was taken from her family. By the end of the series, she would be 13.

• Holly should be 5 years old by the end of the series, and Angela should be 6. However, Holly definitely doesn’t look like a five-year-old in Season 6.

• Gilead apparently came into existence around 2014, and June stayed there until 2021.

• At the beginning of the story, June had already spent two years in her first placement.

• Season 1 takes place in 2016. Season 2 in 2017.

• Season 3 would be in 2019, so she could have stayed with Lawrence for around two years.

• By Season 4, it should already be 2021, when June arrives in Canada. But that feels like too long a period for how much story space is actually covered.

• Seasons 5 and 6 appear to take place between 2021/2022.

• By the end of the story, June should be 39 years old, Nick 32, and Janine 30.

What definitely doesn't fit in the story?

• In 6x07, a date (26/11/2024) is visible in Nick’s car — but in the context of the story, it couldn’t possibly be 2024. It’s most likely just the actual filming date.

• In 4x08, June says she came to the Waterfords in 2017 — but that doesn’t make sense, as that’s also the year when Holly was supposed to be born.

• And as I mentioned, Holly doesn't match her supposed age in the story at all.

[cometomecosette]

The Different Eras of "Les Misérables," the Musical: Part 1

In honor of Barricade Day, I'm drawing inspiration from @theseerasures' posts about "The Periodization of Wicked."

By now, I think I've watched and listened to enough bootlegs and cast recordings of Les Mis that I can start to identify the different "eras" of the musical's history, and how they've differed from each other in both content and tone. So I've decided to trace those eras from 1985 to the present day, a little at a time

Of course the real first era of the musical – the real Les Mis 1.0 – was the original 1980 French version of the show, as first heard on the Original French Concept Album, then staged at the Palais de Sports arena in Paris the same year. But since that version of the musical was so very different from its later form, and since five years passed between that production and the premiere of the English version, my focus will just be on the familiar version of the show that premiered in London in 1985.

Les Mis 1.0: 1985-86.

The first year and a half of the original London production, featuring the original London cast and their first few replacements. This was definitely a "work in progress" phase, with many different lyrics and some significant musical differences from the show as we know it today. The notable differences include Cosette's brief solo "I Saw Him Once" (later replaced by her solo verse in "In My Life"), Gavroche's full-length version of "Little People," a completely different version of "Valjean's Confession," and a different ending and different orchestration for "Stars," which was also placed before the nine-year time skip rather than after. Much material was either deleted or rewritten in the early months, until the opening of the Broadway production in 1987 finally settled the show into its "definitive" form. Yet this initial phase didn't fully end in 1987: some of the smaller music and lyric differences remained in the London production through the early '90s, even when no other productions used them. Some were also carried into foreign languages (e.g. the German, Hungarian, and Israeli productions), where translations of the 1985 lyrics are still heard when the show is performed in those countries to this day.

Les Mis 2.0: 1987-1996.

This was the version of the musical that premiered on Broadway and which went on to "sweep the world" in new productions throughout the late '80s and '90s. It was solidified by being preserved in full on the Complete Symphonic Recording in 1988. Its new features included (but weren't limited to) faster and more energetic orchestrations, the show's orchestral opening now consisting of the "Look Down" motif, the omission of "I Saw Him Once," the reduction of "Little People," revised versions of "Stars," "In My Life," "Drink with Me," "The Final Battle," and "Valjean's Confession," and assorted lyric changes. It wasn't an entirely uniform or stagnant phase, however. Small differences in the lyrics effectively became "regional differences" between British and Australian productions vs. American and Canadian productions. (For example, "And so it must be" vs. "And so it has been" in "Stars.") And as time went on, small yet significant new lyrics and staging details were introduced in certain productions. The first UK tour in the early '90s was an especially innovative production, and some of its changes were carried over to the last new production of this era, the 1996 German production in Duisburg.

Les Mis 3.0: 1997-2000.

In honor of the show's 10th anniversary on Broadway, and to breathe new life into the show, the NY production received an overhaul, with many small but significant changes in staging, costumes, lighting, and lyrics, and with the addition of the Well Scene between Valjean and Young Cosette. Soon afterward, these changes were implemented in productions everywhere: London, the US 3rd National Tour (the last of the original three US tours from the '80s still running), and new tours in the UK and Australia. Though, again, this new phase wasn't born suddenly: many of the changes had first been introduced in the early '90s UK Tour or in Duisburg in 1996. Nor was every aspect of it implemented everywhere: for example, the Duisburg production never added the Well Scene, and the 2000 Buenos Aires production was effectively a hybrid between the new staging and the old. At this point, IMHO, the show also became slightly more melodramatic in tone. In the name of adding more energy, the revised staging featured more wild running around, more violence, and more chaos among the ensemble than before.

To be continued...

[hungriestheidi]

endless series of women in motorsports:

Sarah Fisher (October 4th 1980) is an American race car driver. Born in Ohio, she began competing at five years old. She won three World Karting championships and moved up into sprint car racing. She made her Indy Racing League (now IndyCar) debut at the final race of the 1999 season. She took part in 81 IndyCar events achieving a career-best finish of 2nd at the 2001 Infiniti Grand Prix of Miami, the highest placing for a woman in the IRL until 2008. In 2002, Sarah became the first female driver to earn a pole position in a major American open-wheel series. She's competed in the Indy 500 race nine times, more than any other woman. During her 11-year professional career, a lack of sponsors limited her chances to compete. In 2008, Sarah founded and drove for Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing until her retirement at the end of 2010. In 2016 she was hired as the IndyCar Series' official safety car driver. She continued to drive the pace car at the Indy 500 the following years and in 2022 she was the honorary pace car driver.

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

ABBA - Waterloo 1974

"Waterloo" is a song by Swedish pop group ABBA, with music composed by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus and lyrics written by Stikkan Anderson. It is first single of the group's second studio album of the same name, and their first under the Atlantic label in the US. This was also the first single to be credited to the group performing under the name ABBA. The title and lyrics reference the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, and use it as a metaphor for a romantic relationship.

In 1974, "Waterloo" represented Sweden in the 19th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest held in Brighton, winning the contest and beginning ABBA's path to worldwide fame. The song differed from the standard "dramatic ballad" tradition at the contest by its flavour and rhythm, as well as by its performance. ABBA gave the audience something that had rarely been seen before in Eurovision: flashy costumes (including silver platform boots), a catchy uptempo song and simple choreography. It was the first winning entry in a language other than that of their home country; prior to 1973, all Eurovision singers had been required to sing in their country's native tongue, a restriction that was lifted briefly for the contests between 1973 and 1976 (thus allowing "Waterloo" to be sung in English), then reinstated before ultimately being removed again in 1999. Watch the performance in Swedish here. Sveriges Radio released a promo video for "Waterloo" that was directed by film director Lasse Hallström, whose first notable English-language film success was What's Eating Gilbert Grape in 1993. ABBA recorded the German and French versions of "Waterloo" in March and April 1974; the French version was adapted by Alain Boublil, who would later go on to co-write the 1980 musical Les Misérables.

The song shot to number 1 in the UK and stayed there for two weeks, becoming the first of the band's nine UK number 1's, and the 16th biggest selling single of the year in the UK. It also topped the charts in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, West Germany, Ireland, Norway, and Switzerland, while reaching the Top 3 in Austria, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden. Unlike other Eurovision-winning tunes, the song's appeal transcended Europe: "Waterloo" also topped the charts in South Africa, and reached the Top 10 in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Rhodesia, and the US (peaking at number 6, their third-highest-charting US hit after number 1 "Dancing Queen" and number 3 "Take a Chance on Me"). In 2005, at Eurovision fiftieth anniversary competition Congratulations: 50 Years of the Eurovision Song Contest, "Waterloo" was chosen as the best song in the contest's history.

"Waterloo" is featured in the encore of the musical Mamma Mia!. The song does not have a context or a meaning. It is just performed as a musical number in which members of the audience are encouraged to get up off their seats and sing, dance and clap along. The song is performed by the cast over the closing credits of the film Mamma Mia!, but is not featured on the official soundtrack. It is also performed as part of the story in the sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, by Hugh Skinner and Lily James.

The Australian film Muriel's Wedding (1994), features "Waterloo" in a pivotal scene in which lead Toni Collette bonds with the character played by Rachel Griffiths. The film's soundtrack, featuring five ABBA tracks, is widely regarded as having helped to fuel the revival of popular interest in ABBA's music in the mid-1990s. "Waterloo" features prominently in the 2015 science-fiction film The Martian. The song plays as the film's lead, played by Matt Damon, works to ready his launch vehicle for a last-chance escape from Mars. In "Mother Simpson", the eighth episode of the seventh season of The Simpsons, Mr. Burns plays "Ride of the Valkyries" from a tank about to storm the Simpson home, but the song is cut-off and "Waterloo" is played, to which Smithers apologizes, advising he "must have accidentally taped over that".

"Waterloo" received a total of 89% yes votes!

(the video is posted by ABBA's own account, not Eurovision's = safe to watch)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The new globalism is global labor

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

Depending on how you look at it, I either grew up in the periphery of the labor movement, or atop it, or surrounded by it. For a kid, labor issues don't really hold a lot of urgency – in places with mature labor movements, kids don't really have jobs, and the part-time jobs I had as a kid (paper route, cleaning a dance studio) were pretty benign.

Ironically, one of the reasons that labor issues barely registered for me as a kid was that my parents were in great, strong unions: Ontario teachers' unions, which protected teachers from exploitative working conditions and from retaliation when they advocated for their students, striking for better schools as well as better working conditions.

Ontario teachers' unions were strong enough that they could take the lead on workplace organization, to the benefit of teachers at every part of their careers, as well as students and the system as a whole. Back in the early 1980s, Ontario schools faced a demographic crisis. After years of declining enrollment, the number of students entering the system was rapidly increasing.

That meant that each level of the system – primary, junior, secondary – was about to go through a whipsaw, in which low numbers of students would be followed by large numbers. For a unionized education workforce, this presented a crisis: normally, a severe contraction in student numbers would trigger layoffs, on a last-in, first-out basis. That meant that layoffs loomed for junior teachers, who would almost certainly end up retraining for another career. When student numbers picked up again, those teachers wouldn't be in the workforce anymore, and worse, a lot of the senior teachers who got priority during layoffs would be retiring, magnifying the crisis.

The teachers' unions were strong, and they cared about students and teachers, both those at the start of their careers and those who'd given many years of service. They came up with an amazing solution: "self-funded sabbaticals." Teachers with a set number of years of seniority could choose to take four years at 80% salary, and get a fifth year off at 80% salary (actually, they could take their year off any time from the third year on).

This allowed Ontario to increase its workforce by about 20%, for free. Senior teachers got a year off to spend with their families, or on continuing education, or for travel. Junior teachers' jobs were protected. Students coming into the system had adequate classroom staff, in a mix of both senior and junior teachers.

This worked great for everyone, including my family. My parents both took their four-over-five year in 1983/84. They rented out our house for six months, charging enough to cover the mortgage. We flew to London, took a ferry to France, and leased a little sedan. For the next six months, we drove around Europe, visiting fourteen countries while my parents homeschooled us on the long highway stretches and in laundromats. We stayed in youth hostels and took a train to Leningrad to visit my family there. We saw Christmas Midnight Mass at the Vatican and walked around the Parthenon. We saw Guernica at the Prado. We visited a computer lab in Paris and I learned to program Logo in French. We hung out with my parents' teacher pals who were civilian educators at a Canadian Forces Base in Baden-Baden. I bought an amazing hand-carved chess set in Seville with medieval motifs that sung to my D&D playing heart. It was amazing.

No, really, it was amazing. Unions and the social contract they bargained for transformed my family's life chances. My dad came to Canada as a refugee, the son of a teen mother who'd been deeply traumatized by her civil defense service as a child during the Siege of Leningrad. My mother was the eldest child of a man who, at thirteen, had dropped out of school to support his nine brothers and sisters after the death of his father. My parents grew up to not only own a home, but to be able to take their sons on a latter-day version of the Grand Tour that was once the exclusive province of weak-chinned toffs from the uppermost of crusts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour

My parents were active in labor causes and in their unions, of course, but that was just part of their activist lives. My mother was a leader in the fight for legal abortion rights in Canada:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/8882641733

My dad was active in party politics with the New Democratic Party, and both he and my mother were deeply involved with the fight against nuclear arms proliferation, a major issue in Canada, given our role in supplying radioisotopes to the US, building key components for ICBMs, testing cruise missiles over Labrador, and our participation in NORAD.

Abortion rights and nuclear arms proliferation were my own entry into political activism. When I was 13, I organized a large contingent from my school to march on Queen's Park, the seat of the Provincial Parliament, to demand an end to Ontario's active and critical participation in the hastening of global nuclear conflagration:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53616011737/

When I got a little older, I started helping with clinic defense and counterprotests at the Morgentaler Clinic and other sites in Toronto that provided safe access to women's health, including abortions:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/morgentaler-honoured-by-order-of-canada-federal-government-not-involved-1.716775

My teens were a period of deepening involvement in politics. It was hard work, but rewarding and fundamentally hopeful. There, in the shadow of imminent nuclear armageddon, there was a role for me to play, a way to be more than a passive passenger on a runaway train, to participate in the effort to pull the brake lever before we ran over the cliff.

In hindsight, though, I can see that even as my activism intensified, it also got harder. We struggled more to find places to meet, to find phones and computers to use, to find people who could explain how to get a permit for a demonstration or to get legal assistance for comrades in jail after a civil disobedience action.

What I couldn't see at the time was that all of this was provided by organized labor. The labor movement had the halls, the photocopiers, the lawyers, the experience – the infrastructure. Even for campaigns that were directly about labor rights – campaigns for abortion rights, or against nuclear annihilation – the labor movement was the material, tangible base for our activities.

Look, riding a bicycle around all night wheatpasting posters to telephone poles to turn out people for an upcoming demonstration is hard work, but it's much harder if you have to pay for xeroxing at Kinko's rather than getting it for free at the union hall. Worse, the demonstration turnout suffers more because the union phone-trees and newsletters stop bringing out the numbers they once brought out.

This was why the neoliberal project took such savage aim at labor: they understood that a strong labor movement was foundation of antiimperialist, antiracist, antisexist struggles for justice. By dismantling labor, the ruling class kicked the legs out from under all the other fights that mattered.

Every year, it got harder to fight for any kind of better world. We activist kids grew to our twenties and foundered, spending precious hours searching for a room to hold a meeting, leaving us with fewer hours to spend organizing the thing we were meeting for. But gradually, we rebuilt. We started to stand up our own fragile, brittle, nascent structures that stood in for the mature and solid labor foundation that we'd grown up with.

The first time I got an inkling of what was going on came in 1999, with the Battle of Seattle: the mass protests over the WTO. Yes, labor turned out in force for those mass demonstrations, but they weren't its leaders. The militancy, the leadership, and the organization came out of groups that could loosely be called "post-labor" – not in the sense that they no longer believed in labor causes, but in the sense that they were being organized outside of traditional labor.

Labor was in retreat. Five years earlier, organized labor had responded to NAFTA by organizing against Mexican workers, rather than the bosses who wanted to ship jobs to Mexico. It wasn't unusual to see cars in Ontario with CAW bumper stickers alongside xenophobic stickers taking aim at Mexicans, not bosses. Those were the only workers that organized labor saw as competitors for labor rights: this was also the heyday of "two-tier" contracts, which protected benefits for senior workers while leaving their junior comrades exposed to bosses' most sadistic practices, while still expecting junior workers to pay dues to a union that wouldn't protect them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/25/strikesgiving/#shed-a-tier

Two-tier contracts were the opposite of the solidarity that my parents' teachers' union exhibited in the early 1980s; blaming Mexican workers for automakers' offshoring was the opposite of the solidarity that built transracial and international labor power in the early days of the union movement:

https://unionhall.aflcio.org/bloomington-normal-trades-and-labor-assembly/labor-culture/edge-anarchy-first-class-pullman-strike

As labor withered under a sustained, multi-decades-long assault on workers' rights, other movements started to recapitulate the evolution of early labor, shoring up fragile movements that lacked legal protections, weathering setbacks, and building a "progressive" coalition that encompassed numerous issues. And then that movement started to support a new wave of labor organizing, situating labor issues on a continuum of justice questions, from race to gender to predatory college lending.

Young workers from every sector joined ossified unions with corrupt, sellout leaders and helped engineer their ouster, turning these dying old unions into engines of successful labor militancy:

https://theintercept.com/2023/04/07/deconstructed-union-dhl-teamsters-uaw/

In other words, we're in the midst of a reversal of the historic role of labor and other social justice movements. Whereas once labor anchored a large collection of smaller, less unified social movements; today those social movements are helping bring back a weakened and fragmented labor movement.

One of the key organizing questions for today is whether these two movements can continue to co-evolve and, eventually, merge. For example: there can be no successful climate action without climate justice. The least paid workers in America are also the most racially disfavored. The gender pay-gap exists in all labor markets. For labor, integrating social justice questions isn't just morally sound, it's also tactically necessary.

One thing such a fusion can produce is a truly international labor movement. Today, social justice movements are transnational: the successful Irish campaign for abortion rights was closely linked to key abortion rights struggles in Argentina and Poland, and today, abortion rights organizers from all over the world are involved in mailing medication abortion pills to America.

A global labor movement is necessary, and not just to defeat the divide-and-rule tactics of the NAFTA fight. The WTO's legacy is a firmly global capitalism: workers all over the world are fighting the same corporations. The strong unions of one country are threatened by weak labor in other countries where their key corporations seek to shift manufacturing or service delivery. But those same strong unions are able to use their power to help their comrades abroad protect their labor rights, depriving their common adversary of an easily exploited workforce.

A key recent example is Mercedes, part of the Daimler global octopus. Mercedes' home turf is Germany, which boasts some of the strongest autoworker unions in the world. In the USA, Mercedes – like other German auto giants – preferentially manufactures its cars in the South, America's "onshore-offshore" crime havens, where labor laws are both virtually nonexistent and largely unenforced. This allows Mercedes to exploit and endanger a largely Black workforce in a "right to work" territory where unions are nearly impossible to form and sustain.

Mercedes just defeated a hard-fought union drive in Vance, Alabama. In part, this was due to admitted tactical blunders from the UAW, who have recently racked up unprecedented victories in Tennessee and North Carolina:

https://paydayreport.com/uaw-admits-digital-heavy-organizing-committee-light-approach-failed-them-in-alabama-at-mercedes/

But mostly, this was because Mercedes cheated. They flagrantly violated labor law to sabotage the union vote. That's where it gets interesting. German workers have successfully lobbied the German parliament for the Supply Chain Act, an anticorruption law that punishes German companies that violate labor law abroad. That means that even though the UAW just lost their election, they might inflict some serious pain on Mercedes, who face a fine of 2% of their global annual revenue, and a ban on selling cars to the German government:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

This is another way reversal of the post-neoliberal era. Whereas once the US exported its most rapacious corporate practices all over the world, today, global labor stands a chance of exporting workers' rights from weak territories to strong ones.

Here's an American analogy: the US's two most populous states are California and Texas. The policies of these states ripple out over the whole country, and even beyond. When Texas requires textbooks that ban evolution, every pupil in the country is at risk of getting a textbook that embraces Young Earth Creationism. When California enacts strict emission standards, every car in the country gets cleaner tailpipes. The WTO was a Texas-style export: a race to the bottom, all around the world. The moment we're living through now, as global social movements fuse with global labor, are a California-style export, a race to the top.

This is a weird upside to global monopoly capitalism. It's how antitrust regulators all over the world are taking on corporations whose power rivals global superpowers like the USA and China: because they're all fighting the same corporations, they can share tactics and even recycle evidence from one-another's antitrust cases:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/05/big-tech-eu-drop-dead

Look, the UAW messed up in Alabama. A successful union vote is won before the first ballot is cast. If your ground game isn't strong enough to know the outcome of the vote before the ballot box opens, you need more organizing, not a vote:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

But thanks to global labor – and its enemy, global capitalism – the UAW gets another chance. Global capitalism is rich and powerful, but it has key weaknesses. Its drive to "efficiency" makes it terribly vulnerable, and a disruption anywhere in its supply chain can bring the whole global empire to its knees:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/#strike-to-rule

American workers – especially swing-state workers who swung for Trump and are leaning his way again – overwhelmingly support a pro-labor agenda. They are furious over "price gouging and outrageous corporate profits…wealthy corporate CEOs and billionaires [not] paying what they should in taxes and the top 1% gaming the system":

https://www.americanfamilyvoices.org/_files/ugd/d4d64f_6c3dff0c3da74098b07ed3f086705af2.pdf

They support universal healthcare, and value Medicare and Social Security, and trust the Democrats to manage both better than Republicans will. They support "abortion rights, affordable child care, and even forgiving student loans":

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-20-bidens-working-class-slump/

The problem is that these blue-collar voters are atomized. They no longer meet in union halls – they belong to gun clubs affiliated with the NRA. There are enough people who are a) undecided and b) union members in these swing states to defeat Trump. This is why labor power matters, and why a fusion of American labor and social justice movements matters – and why an international fusion of a labor-social justice coalition is our best hope for a habitable planet and a decent lives for our families.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/20/a-common-foe/#the-multinational-playbook

[videogamepolls]

Video Games Polls 1-Year Report

I've been running this blog for a full year and I've polled nearly 3,000 games, so I wanted to post an updated report with the top 10 games for each of the four options included in my polls, plus a couple other categories.

📊 General Stats

Games Polled: 2,864

Average Sample Size: 728

Games with 40%+ "yes" votes: 149 (5.2%)

🏆 Most Played

Games with the highest percentage of "Yes" votes:

The Dinosaur Game (2014, AKA Chrome Dino Game) - 93.9%

Pac-Man (1980) - 93.4%

Wii Sports (2006) - 87.7%

Tetris (1985) - 86.9%

3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet (1995) - 85.5%

Pokemon Go (2016) - 82.9%

Minecraft (2011) - 81.1%

Angry Birds (2009) - 80.1%

Stardew Valley (2016) - 79.3%

Space Invaders (1978) - 78.5%

🏆 Most Known But Not Played

Games with the highest percentage of "No" votes:

Raid: Shadow Legends (2018) - 85.8%

Final Fantasy XI (2002) - 82.1%

Far Cry (2004) - 79.3%

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (2018) - 78.3%

Far Cry 2 (2008) - 78.2%

Halo Infinite (2021) - 77.6%

Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999) - 75.4%

Final Fantasy V (1992) - 76.4%

Baldur's Gate (1998) - 76.1%

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000) - 75.8%

🏆 Most Watched

Games with the highest percentage of "I watched someone play it" votes:

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (2017) - 54.2%

I Am Bread (2015) - 51.3%

Octodad: Dadliest Catch (2014) - 47.0%

Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach (2021) - 45.6%

Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning (2018) - 43.5%

Amanda the Adventurer (2023) - 42.5%

Phasmophobia (2020, Early Access) - 41.3%

P.T. (2014) - 41.0%

PowerWash Simulator (2022) - 40.4%

The Mortuary Assistant (2022) - 38.7%

🏆 Most Obscure

Games with the highest percentage of "I've never heard of it" votes:

Jessica's Uncomfortable Hanukkah Adventure (2023, Early Access) - 97.8%

Batty Zabella (2022) - 97.6%

Citampi Stories: Love & Life (2019) - 97.0%

Tears - 9, 10 (2002) - 97.0%

Just, Bearly (2018) - 96.9%

Anito: Defend a Land Enraged (2003) - 96.6%

That Damn Goat (2023) - 96.5%

Star Seeker in: The Secret of the Sorcerous Standoff (2020) - 96.4%

Cisini Stories: Girl Life RPG (2024) - 96.4%

Dear Substance of Kin (2019) - 96.3%

🏆 Most Balanced

Games with the most even spread of votes:

Human Fall Flat (2016) - 19.3% Yes | 28.5% No | 26.1% Watched | 26.1% Never Heard

Kerbal Space Program (2015) - 21.9% | 31.1% | 24.5% | 22.5%

The Henry Stickmin Collection (2020) - 19.3% | 29.2% | 22% | 29.5%

Ib (2012) - 24.1% | 26.8% | 19.2% | 29.9%

Superhot (2016) - 24.9% | 25.1% | 30.5% | 19.5%

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (2010) - 25.8% | 31.1% | 20% | 23.2%

Limbo (2010) - 30.2% | 28.7% | 23.9% | 17.1%

Wobble Dogs (2022) - 18% | 25.4% | 25.2% | 31.3%

Slay the Princess (2023) - 30.2% | 27.4% | 26.1% | 16.4%

Golf with Your Friends (2020) - 13.9% | 16.9% | 23.6% | 30.8%

🏆 Most Votes

Games with the most number of votes:

3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet (1995) - 11,773

Robot Unicorn Attack (2010) - 7,600

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) - 4,329

Flight Rising (2013) - 4,132

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (2004) - 4,053

Final Fantasy XV (2016) - 3,056

Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2009) - 2,844

Dark Souls (2011) - 2,823

The Dinosaur Game (2014, AKA Chrome Dino Game) - 2,758

QWOP (2008) - 2,636

*I did not take most Pokémon games into consideration since I handle those polls a little differently.

Check out my results spreadsheet for an alphabetized list of all poll results plus some other stats, and in case anyone is interested in comparing results to past reports here are the links to my 6-month and 9-month posts.