#reduce recruitment costs

[trufynd01]

Explore how TruFynd’s Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) services empower businesses to optimize their hiring process, reduce costs, and secure top talent. Learn how our tailored RPO solutions improve time-to-hire, scalability, and talent acquisition metrics, ensuring your business stays ahead in today’s competitive market.

[robertreich]

Friends, Since I offered you 10 reasons for modest optimism last week, discontent with the Trump-Musk regime has surged even further. America appears to be waking up. Here’s the latest evidence — 10 more reasons for modest optimism. 1. Trump’s approval ratings continue to plummet. The chief reason Trump was elected was to reduce the high costs of living — especially food, housing, health care, and gas. A new Pew poll shows these costs remain uppermost in Americans’ minds. Sixty-three percent identify inflation as an overriding problem, and 67 percent say the same about the affordability of health care. That same poll shows the public turning on Trump. The percent of those disapproving of Trump’s handling of the economy has risen to 53 percent (versus 45 percent who approve). Disapproval of his actions as president has risen to the same 53 percent versus 45 percent approval, which shows how essential economic performance is to the public’s assessment of presidents these days. The Pew poll also shows 57 percent of the public believes that Trump “has exceeded his presidential authority.” By making the world’s richest person his hatchet man, Trump has made more vivid the role of money in politics. Hence, a record-high 72 percent now say a major problem is “the role of money in politics.” Other polls show similar results. In the Post-Ipsos poll, significantly more Americans strongly disapprove of Trump (39 percent) than strongly approve of him (27 percent). Reuters, Quinnipiac University, CNN, and Gallup polls show Trump’s approval ratings plummeting (ranging from 44 percent to 47 percent). In all of these polls, more Americans now disapprove of Trump than approve of him. 2. DOGE is running amusk. DOGE looks more and more like a giant hoax. This week, reporters found that nearly 40 percent of the contracts DOGE claims to have canceled aren’t expected to save the government any money, according to the administration’s own data. As a result, on Tuesday DOGE deleted all of the five biggest “savings” on its so-called “wall of receipts.” The scale of its errors — and the misunderstandings and poor quality control that appear to underlie them — has raised questions about the effort’s broader work, which has led to mass firings and cutbacks across the federal government. DOGE has also had to reverse its firings. On Tuesday, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Douglas A. Collins celebrated cuts to 875 contracts that he claimed would save nearly $2 billion. But when veterans learned that those contracts covered medical services, recruited doctors, and funded cancer programs as well as burial services for veterans, the outcry was so loud that on Wednesday the VA rescinded the ordered cuts. After hundreds of nuclear weapons workers were abruptly fired, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire them. After hundreds of scientists at the Food and Drug Administration were fired, they’re being asked to return. On Wednesday, Musk acknowledged that DOGE “accidentally canceled” efforts by the U.S. Agency for International Development to prevent the spread of Ebola. But Musk insisted the initiative was quickly restored. Wrong. Current and former USAID officials say Ebola prevention efforts have been largely halted since Musk and his DOGE allies moved last month to gut the global-assistance agency and freeze its outgoing payments. The teams and contractors that would be deployed to fight an Ebola outbreak have been dismantled, they added. DOGE staff are resigning. On Tuesday, 21 federal civil service tech workers resigned from DOGE, writing in a joint resignation letter that they were quitting rather than help Musk “dismantle critical public services.” The staffers all worked for what was known as the U.S. Digital Service before it was absorbed by DOGE. Their ranks include data scientists, product managers, and engineers. According to the Associated Press, “all previously held senior roles at such tech companies as Google and Amazon and wrote in their resignation letter that they joined the government out of a sense of duty to…

Read the full list here: https://robertreich.substack.com/p/more-reasons-for-moderate-optimism

[dmvybog]

Revolutionary ideas powered by data science and technology are evolving into an application-first paradigm. We focus on state-of-the-art development and build integrated products and solutions that enhance user experiences. We focus on augmenting human productivity and attaining high and expedited ROI that will elevate a society, which will have a cascading and prolific impact on the entire world. Our AI-engineered product solves the challenges of high-volume recruitment, aims to decrease the time to hire, augment process efficacy, and recruit better candidates while providing applicants with an engaging and enriched experience.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The moral injury of having your work enshittified

This Monday (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening – in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit – did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

The failure to enforce competition law allowed a few companies to buy out their rivals, or sell goods below cost until their rivals collapsed, or bribe key parts of their supply chain not to allow rivals to participate:

https://www.engadget.com/google-reportedly-pays-apple-36-percent-of-ad-search-revenues-from-safari-191730783.html

The resulting concentration of the tech sector meant that the surviving firms were stupendously wealthy, and cozy enough that they could agree on a common legislative agenda. That regulatory capture has allowed tech companies to violate labor, privacy and consumer protection laws by arguing that the law doesn't apply when you use an app to violate it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But the regulatory capture isn't just about preventing regulation: it's also about creating regulation – laws that make it illegal to reverse-engineer, scrape, and otherwise mod, hack or reconfigure existing services to claw back value that has been taken away from users and business customers. This gives rise to Jay Freeman's perfectly named doctrine of "felony contempt of business-model," in which it is illegal to use your own property in ways that anger the shareholders of the company that sold it to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Undisciplined by the threat of competition, regulation, or unilateral modification by users, companies are free to enshittify their products. But what does that actually look like? I say that enshittification is always precipitated by a lost argument.

It starts when someone around a board-room table proposes doing something that's bad for users but good for the company. If the company faces the discipline of competition, regulation or self-help measures, then the workers who are disgusted by this course of action can say, "I think doing this would be gross, and what's more, it's going to make the company poorer," and so they win the argument.

But when you take away that discipline, the argument gets reduced to, "Don't do this because it would make me ashamed to work here, even though it will make the company richer." Money talks, bullshit walks. Let the enshittification begin!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend

But why do workers care at all? That's where phrases like "don't be evil" come into the picture. Until very recently, tech workers participated in one of history's tightest labor markets, in which multiple companies with gigantic war-chests bid on their labor. Even low-level employees routinely fielded calls from recruiters who dangled offers of higher salaries and larger stock grants if they would jump ship for a company's rival.

Employers built "campuses" filled with lavish perks: massages, sports facilities, daycare, gourmet cafeterias. They offered workers generous benefit packages, including exotic health benefits like having your eggs frozen so you could delay fertility while offsetting the risks normally associated with conceiving at a later age.

But all of this was a transparent ruse: the business-case for free meals, gyms, dry-cleaning, catering and massages was to keep workers at their laptops for 10, 12, or even 16 hours per day. That egg-freezing perk wasn't about helping workers plan their families: it was about thumbing the scales in favor of working through your entire twenties and thirties without taking any parental leave.

In other words, tech employers valued their employees as a means to an end: they wanted to get the best geeks on the payroll and then work them like government mules. The perks and pay weren't the result of comradeship between management and labor: they were the result of the discipline of competition for labor.

This wasn't really a secret, of course. Big Tech workers are split into two camps: blue badges (salaried employees) and green badges (contractors). Whenever there is a slack labor market for a specific job or skill, it is converted from a blue badge job to a green badge job. Green badges don't get the food or the massages or the kombucha. They don't get stock or daycare. They don't get to freeze their eggs. They also work long hours, but they are incentivized by the fear of poverty.

Tech giants went to great lengths to shield blue badges from green badges – at some Google campuses, these workforces actually used different entrances and worked in different facilities or on different floors. Sometimes, green badge working hours would be staggered so that the armies of ragged clickworkers would not be lined up to badge in when their social betters swanned off the luxury bus and into their airy adult kindergartens.

But Big Tech worked hard to convince those blue badges that they were truly valued. Companies hosted regular town halls where employees could ask impertinent questions of their CEOs. They maintained freewheeling internal social media sites where techies could rail against corporate foolishness and make Dilbert references.

And they came up with mottoes.

Apple told its employees it was a sound environmental steward that cared about privacy. Apple also deliberately turned old devices into e-waste by shredding them to ensure that they wouldn't be repaired and compete with new devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

And even as they were blocking Facebook's surveillance tools, they quietly built their own nonconsensual mass surveillance program and lied to customers about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Facebook told employees they were on a "mission to connect every person in the world," but instead deliberately sowed discontent among its users and trapped them in silos that meant that anyone who left Facebook lost all their friends:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

And Google promised its employees that they would not "be evil" if they worked at Google. For many googlers, that mattered. They wanted to do something good with their lives, and they had a choice about who they would work for. What's more, they did make things that were good. At their high points, Google Maps, Google Mail, and of course, Google Search were incredible.

My own life was totally transformed by Maps: I have very poor spatial sense, need to actually stop and think to tell my right from my left, and I spent more of my life at least a little lost and often very lost. Google Maps is the cognitive prosthesis I needed to become someone who can go anywhere. I'm profoundly grateful to the people who built that service.

There's a name for phenomenon in which you care so much about your job that you endure poor conditions and abuse: it's called "vocational awe," as coined by Fobazi Ettarh:

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Ettarh uses the term to apply to traditionally low-waged workers like librarians, teachers and nurses. In our book Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and I talked about how it applies to artists and other creative workers, too:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

But vocational awe is also omnipresent in tech. The grandiose claims to be on a mission to make the world a better place are not just puffery – they're a vital means of motivating workers who can easily quit their jobs and find a new one to put in 16-hour days. The massages and kombucha and egg-freezing are not framed as perks, but as logistical supports, provided so that techies on an important mission can pursue a shared social goal without being distracted by their balky, inconvenient meatsuits.

Steve Jobs was a master of instilling vocational awe. He was full of aphorisms like "we're here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?" Or his infamous line to John Sculley, whom he lured away from Pepsi: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"

Vocational awe cuts both ways. If your workforce actually believes in all that high-minded stuff, if they actually sacrifice their health, family lives and self-care to further the mission, they will defend it. That brings me back to enshittification, and the argument: "If we do this bad thing to the product I work on, it will make me hate myself."

The decline in market discipline for large tech companies has been accompanied by a decline in labor discipline, as the market for technical work grew less and less competitive. Since the dotcom collapse, the ability of tech giants to starve new entrants of market oxygen has shrunk techies' dreams.

Tech workers once dreamed of working for a big, unwieldy firm for a few years before setting out on their own to topple it with a startup. Then, the dream shrank: work for that big, clumsy firm for a few years, then do a fake startup that makes a fake product that is acquihired by your old employer, as an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way to get a raise and a bonus.

Then the dream shrank again: work for a big, ugly firm for life, but get those perks, the massages and the kombucha and the stock options and the gourmet cafeteria and the egg-freezing. Then it shrank again: work for Google for a while, but then get laid off along with 12,000 co-workers, just months after the company does a stock buyback that would cover all those salaries for the next 27 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

Tech workers' power was fundamentally individual. In a tight labor market, tech workers could personally stand up to their bosses. They got "workplace democracy" by mouthing off at town hall meetings. They didn't have a union, and they thought they didn't need one. Of course, they did need one, because there were limits to individual power, even for the most in-demand workers, especially when it came to ghastly, long-running sexual abuse from high-ranking executives:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html

Today, atomized tech workers who are ordered to enshittify the products they take pride in are losing the argument. Workers who put in long hours, missed funerals and school plays and little league games and anniversaries and family vacations are being ordered to flush that sacrifice down the toilet to grind out a few basis points towards a KPI.

It's a form of moral injury, and it's palpable in the first-person accounts of former workers who've exited these large firms or the entire field. The viral "Reflecting on 18 years at Google," written by Ian Hixie, vibrates with it:

https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373

Hixie describes the sense of mission he brought to his job, the workplace democracy he experienced as employees' views were both solicited and heeded. He describes the positive contributions he was able to make to a commons of technical standards that rippled out beyond Google – and then, he says, "Google's culture eroded":

Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.

In other words, techies started losing the argument. Layoffs weakened worker power – not just to defend their own interest, but to defend the users interests. Worker power is always about more than workers – think of how the 2019 LA teachers' strike won greenspace for every school, a ban on immigration sweeps of students' parents at the school gates and other community benefits:

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

Hixie attributes the changes to a change in leadership, but I respectfully disagree. Hixie points to the original shareholder letter from the Google founders, in which they informed investors contemplating their IPO that they were retaining a controlling interest in the company's governance so that they could ignore their shareholders' priorities in favor of a vision of Google as a positive force in the world:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

Hixie says that the leadership that succeeded the founders lost sight of this vision – but the whole point of that letter is that the founders never fully ceded control to subsequent executive teams. Yes, those executive teams were accountable to the shareholders, but the largest block of voting shares were retained by the founders.

I don't think the enshittification of Google was due to a change in leadership – I think it was due to a change in discipline, the discipline imposed by competition, regulation and the threat of self-help measures. Take ads: when Google had to contend with one-click adblocker installation, it had to constantly balance the risk of making users so fed up that they googled "how do I block ads?" and then never saw another ad ever again.

But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.

And as Google acquired control over the browser market, it was likewise able to reduce the self-help measures available to browser users who found ads sufficiently obnoxious to trigger googling "how do I block ads?" The apotheosis of this is the yearslong campaign to block adblockers in Chrome, which the company has sworn it will finally do this coming June:

https://www.tumblr.com/tevruden/734352367416410112/you-have-until-june-to-dump-chrome

My contention here is not that Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in personnel via the promotion of managers who have shitty ideas. Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in discipline, as the negative consequences of heeding those shitty ideas were abolished thanks to monopoly.

This is bad news for people like me, who rely on services like Google Maps as cognitive prostheses. Elizabeth Laraki, one of the original Google Maps designers, has published a scorching critique of the latest GMaps design:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Laraki calls out numerous enshittificatory design-choices that have left Maps screens covered in "crud" – multiple revenue-maximizing elements that come at the expense of usability, shifting value from users to Google.

What Laraki doesn't say is that these UI elements are auctioned off to merchants, which means that the business that gives Google the most money gets the greatest prominence in Maps, even if it's not the best merchant. That's a recurring motif in enshittified tech platforms, most notoriously Amazon, which makes $31b/year auctioning off top search placement to companies whose products aren't relevant enough to your query to command that position on their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Enshittification begets enshittification. To succeed on Amazon, you must divert funds from product quality to auction placement, which means that the top results are the worst products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

The exception is searches for Apple products: Apple and Amazon have a cozy arrangement that means that searches for Apple products are a timewarp back to the pre-enshittification Amazon, when the company worried enough about losing your business to heed the employees who objected to sacrificing search quality as part of a merchant extortion racket:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11

Not every tech worker is a tech bro, in other words. Many workers care deeply about making your life better. But the microeconomics of the boardroom in a monopolized tech sector rewards the worst people and continuously promotes them. Forget the Peter Principle: tech is ruled by the Sam Principle.

As OpenAI went through four CEOs in a single week, lots of commentators remarked on Sam Altman's rise and fall and rise, but I only found one commentator who really had Altman's number. Writing in Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster nailed Altman to the wall:

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism

Altman's history goes like this: first, he founded a useless startup that raised $30m, only to be acquired and shuttered. Then Altman got a job running Y Combinator, where he somehow failed at taking huge tranches of equity from "every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do." After that, he founded OpenAI, a company that he claims to believe presents an existential risk to the entire human risk – which he structured so incompetently that he was then forced out of it.

His reward for this string of farcical, mounting failures? He was put back in charge of the company he mis-structured despite his claimed belief that it will destroy the human race if not properly managed.

Altman's been around for a long time. He founded his startup in 2005. There've always been Sams – of both the Bankman-Fried varietal and the Altman genus – in tech. But they didn't get to run amok. They were disciplined by their competitors, regulators, users and workers. The collapse of competition led to an across-the-board collapse in all of those forms of discipline, revealing the executives for the mediocre sociopaths they always were, and exposing tech workers' vocational awe for the shabby trick it was from the start.

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/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

[armoredisopod]

Arknights Thank You Celebration 2024 PVs

New Operators

Figurino, 5* Merchant Specialist

I have a lot to learn, and right now, i'd like to start by making a new suit.

Crownslayer, 6* Welfare Executor Specialist

"Crownslayer", that's the name we're familiar with, let's keep it.

Vulpisfoglia, 6* Pioneer Vanguard

I appreciate the acknowledgement. But you know this means in the future the people who are hunting me for bounty will come to Rhodes Island first. Will that be fine?

Lappland the Decadenza, 6* Limited Mech-Accord Caster

Is this your way of trying to get me to settle down, or do you also think this game needs more excitement...

I just can't guess you, no wonder i like your trust in me!

2 new operators to the voucher shop

Contrail, 4* 巡空者 (Air Patrol) Specialist

Philae, 5* 本源铁卫 (Primal Protector) Defender

Operator Outfits Update

Total of 6 new outfits, 2 new additions for the Cambrian brand, 1 new addition for the Epoque brand, 2 new additions for the Test Collection brand and 1 new addition for the 0011/Tempest brand

Cambrian

At the Warm Velvet Corner - Warmy

Travel Freely - Sussurro (Login Event)

Epoque

Il Segreto Della Notte - Texas the Omertosa (21 OP)

Test Collection

Allmind As One - Executor the Ex Foedere (24 OP)

The city lights up. I can sense everyone's presence, and everyone's absence. We are together——— as one "Laterano".

Diversity Oneness - Virtuosa (24 OP)

Please stay, Sankta. Please tell me, is the Laterano of now a place that is connected to the rest of the land?

0011/Tempest

Ignis Fatuus - Lessing

Lessing's outfit will be up for sale during Zwillingstürme im Herbst Retrospect

Announced outfit reruns

Young Branch - Muelsyse

Red Countess - Skadi the Corrupting Heart

Operator Modules Update

All the new operators (except the red cert shop ops) being part of branches with modules immediately get their modules

FUN-X module base effect increases the starting damage of Lappland the Decadenza's drones to 35% of her ATK

SOL-X module base effect gives Vulpisfoglia +8% ATK and DEF when blocking

EXE-X module base effect makes it so retreating Crownslayer refunds 80% of her current DP Cost

MER-X module base effect reduces the DP drained by Figurino's trait effect

Ritualist Supporter branch gets 1 module type

Lessing gets his second module

DRE-Y module base effect allows Lessing to survive a single fatal blow, healing back to full and gaining +30 ASPD at the cost of -60% Max HP, this effect only activates once per deployment

Angelina and Rosmontis get Integrated Strategies specialized modules

These modules' effects are unknown at the time of writing

Events and Stories

I Portatori Dei Velluti, a Siracusa side story event

Put on your masks and dresses, the show is about to begin in the streets.

Come on, don't be boring - you're probably the least "Carnival" of the bunch!

Stronghold Protocol, limited time autobattler gamemode, opens during the third week of I Portatori Dei Velluti

Zwillingstürme im Herbst Retrospect, scheduled after I Portatori Dei Velluti

Operator Archives update for Lessing, Jieyun, Schwarz, Sora, Totter and Vigil

Misc Stuff

New QoL changes

Added the ability to have preset base loadouts that you can easily swap between

Added the ability to instantly send every exhausted operator into dormitories with one button

Max Sanity cap increased by +45

Refilling sanity using Originite Prime will refill 135 sanity regardless of level/max cap

Added the ability to instantly move to required lower materials when crafting and a button to move back the higher tier material that required it

Mountain, Kafka and Pinecone added to recruitment

Bagpipe's [Queen, No.1] outfit will be available in the certs shop to players that don't have it

Livestream Stuff

Showcased Lappland the Decadenza, a hyper offensive 6* Mech-Accord Caster with potent self buffs and powerful debuffs

First talent makes her stronger the longer she stays on the field, getting the following buffs in order: increased drone damage cap, ability to inflict Silence, gains more drones

Second talent increases the initial SP of all [Siracusa] operators when she's in the squad

Skill 1 has a passive effect that immediately gives her an additional drone, when the skill activates she gains ATK, releases her drones to attack enemies and her drones will attack idling enemies anywhere on the field

Skill 2 expands her attack range, increases her ATK, gives her more drones and releases her drones to attack enemies randomly within range, her drones have a chance to inflict Panic

Skill 3 increases her ATK and gives her more drones, then releases special drones that actively seek out and hunt enemies, the special drones inflict Panic upon reaching a target and locks onto them; enemies near the drones will have decreased movement speed and take Arts damage every second

Showcased Vulpisfoglia, a 6* Pioneer Vanguard with a strong battlefield presence

First talent makes her attacks deal additional Arts damage for a few seconds after the first time hitting them

Second talent increases the natural DP regeneration by a small amount and lets her recover HP when she hasn't taken damage for a few seconds

Skill 1 is a power strike skill that makes her next attack deal Arts damage and generate some DP, this skill can store charges

Skill 2 lets her immediately deal Arts damage in an area in front of her, Slows the hit enemies and generates some DP. If the enemies were already under the effects of Slow they will be Stunned instead, this skill can store charges

Skill 3 immediately generates DP, expands her attack range, increases her ATK, gives a massive decaying ASPD boost, allows her to attack enemies equal to block count and each attack briefly Stuns the hit enemies. If she defeats any enemy during the skill she will gain Camouflage at the end of the skill that lasts until the next skill activation

Showcased Crownslayer, a 6* Executor Specialist with a unique disruptive kit

First talent sprays a smokescreen on the 8 surrounding tiles around her during skill duration, reducing the Physical and Arts Hit Rate of ground enemies in those tiles

Second talent lets her deal increased Physical damage to enemies that have not landed a hit on her

Skill 1 gives her increased ATK and some amount of Physical and Arts Dodge

Skill 2 stops her from attacking upon deployment, makes her less likely to be attacked and increases the amount of Physical and Arts Hit Rate the smokescreen decreases, when skill ends she will deal a certain % of ATK as Physical damage to all enemies within range

Skill 3 increases her first talent range, gives her Invisibility and sets her Block Count to 0, every few seconds she will appear to attack an enemy within the talent range dealing a certain % of ATK as Physical damage and Stunning them for a few seconds

Showcased the event mechanic, a fireworks machine that will apply effects on a number of tiles around it when activated

While the machine is active, operators on those tiles will take periodic damage and cannot be healed but will not have their HP go below 1, enemies on those tiles will take constant damage

Players can additionally customize which tiles will be affected by the fireworks machine and have it apply additional bonus effects in the event menu

Showcased Contrail, an experimental 4* of a neat new branch 巡空者 (Air Patrol), a Specialist branch that consists of operators that have 2 Block Count and utilizes the new status "Takeoff"

Takeoff: Does not block ground enemies and will not be attacked by ground enemies, can block aerial enemies

S1 makes her takeoff immediately upon deployment, expands her attack range, increases her ATK and gives her some Physical Dodge

S2 makes her takeoff when activated, expands her attack range, increases her ATK, lets her attack 2 targets at once and is able to attack an additional aerial enemy and her attacks inflict Slow to aerial enemies

Showed footage of the new base loadouts feature

Work rooms and Dormitories are now in separate tabs

You can set up to 3 loadouts for each individual room and press a button to immediately swap out exhausted operators, there is also a button to immediately do this in every room all at once

Showed the button that immediately sends all exhausted operators into the dorms

Teased even more base QoL features planned for the next Sui sibling event update

Expanded the Reception Room and added the ability to decorate it

Added activity rooms, operators assigned to this room can be manually controlled and move around the base

Announced the ability to register your birthday, players will receive gift furniture on their set birthday and operators have special birthday voicelines

Announced the ability to have a list of rotating assistant operators that change every day

Announced the ability to make loadouts for the main menu background/UI theme/assistant operators for quick switching

SSS will get a skip feature, uses the same PRTS Proxy Cards used for annihilation skip

The older SSS maps will become playable again

Stronghold Protocol, limited time autobattler gamemode

In the gamemode the player will have to prepare their squad and operators before each battle, the player can hire additional operators and have multiple copies of them deployed or combined into a higher tier of that operator

Players can hire reserve operators should they lack usable units and also hire up to 8 friend support operators

Teased the next event involving Thorns and the history of alchemy in Iberia

Announced some kind of mini game collection "Poly Vision Museum"

Announced the second expansion update for IS#5

A 5th ending exploring the story of an alternate universe Amiya

The ability to share seeds of runs you completed to other players, completing a seeded run will not unlock higher difficulty/new relics/etc

Max difficulty increased beyond 15

New starting squads

New collectibles and thoughts (IS5 gimmick items)

Teased Arknights anime season 3 [RISE FROM EMBER]

Announced U-Official mini series

Announced Ambience Synesthesia 2025: Best Song Award, the song lineup featured in the concert will be decided via community polling

INVESTIGATED TERRA lore video covering the history and development of Originium on Terra and the technology that sprouted from it narrated by Kal'tsit

[queer-scots-geordie-dyke]

I've posted about this before but in the current climate, especially, a signal boost can only be a good thing.

There is an excellent organisation here in the UK that I have an ongoing donation to, Campaign Against Antisemitism.

From their website:

"HOW WE FIGHT ANTISEMITISM

Campaign Against Antisemitism consists of eight directorates which collaborate closely to expose and counter antisemitism through education and zero-tolerance enforcement of the law:

1. Investigations and Enforcement

We work closely with police forces around the country, the Crown Prosecution Service, regulatory bodies and the government to ensure that antisemitism is detected, investigated and punished with the full force of the law. We focus on criminal antisemitism and antisemitic acts committed by professionals or institutions which are subject to special regulation, such as lawyers, teachers, sportspeople and charities. We also provide training and advice to the authorities, whilst also scrutinising their performance and holding them to account when they fall short.

2. Awareness and Communication

Working closely with senior journalists and advertising professionals, we run proactive campaigns to ensure that the public is aware of anti-Jewish racism and the immense societal danger that it poses. Through our advocacy work we seek to mobilise public support for the fight against antisemitism, whilst also generating pressure on the authorities to pursue a policy of zero tolerance for antisemitism. We also provide information and comment to the media through our media centre.

3. Outreach and Education

We strive to reduce anti-Jewish prejudice by providing education and training to all in society who wish to find out more about being Jewish, antisemitism, and fighting racism. We also reach out to other minority communities and anti-racist groups so that we can work to strengthen each other.

4. Public Affairs

We have forged links with the government, local authorities, regulators, police forces and the Crown Prosecution Service, as well as with companies such as the major social networks. We meet at the highest levels to tackle the roots of antisemitism and ensure that the law is upheld effectively, consistently and firmly.

5. Mobilisation

Antisemitism is a societal problem and we believe that individuals should be at the forefront of the fight against antisemitism. We recruit, train and mobilise volunteers, empowering them to leverage their talent and expertise against antisemitism.

6. Litigation

We have recruited some of Britain’s most formidable and acclaimed legal minds. Our lawyers give their time to provide guidance on specific cases and also takes action to hold the authorities and private companies to account when they fail to act against antisemitism effectively. Our legal experts include specialists in criminal law, charity law, regulatory law, administrative law, employment law, media law and litigation.

7. Organisation and Finance

Our volunteers need central support in every area from systems administration to finance. Working with senior professionals, we ensure that our volunteers receive the support they need, and that our charity complies strictly with regulatory and financial requirements.

8. Fundraising

We are proud to operate with extremely low overheads, relying almost entirely on volunteers, however our work costs money, whether it is to pay court fees when we litigate, or to commission important research. We fundraise throughout the year to raise the sums needed to enable our work to continue."

They also have a podcast that recently aired its 100th episode, that I highly recommend. They talk about the current work they're doing, media bias, representation, and over 5 seasons have included interviews with Jewish public figures, Holocaust survivors, and more recently, survivors of Oct. 7 and family members of hostages:

https://antisemitism.org/podcast/

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

No mention of covid or long covid, but lots of mention of "cost to taxpayers" and "learning losses." I wonder what *specific* actions should be taken besides forcing sick people to stay in the classroom? Hmmst...

By Poppy Wood

Concerns that absence crisis provoked by the pandemic continues to disrupt learning

About 14,000 teachers in England called in sick every day last year, analysis has found.

Department for Education (DfE) data show that about 2.5 million school days were lost in 2022-23 as more than 326,000 teachers missed class owing to sickness.

Each teacher who took sick leave reported an average of eight days off work last year. It equates to almost 13,700 teachers calling in sick on any given day during the 190-day school year.

About 66.2 per cent of England’s teaching workforce were off school because of illness last year, according to the DfE’s school workforce statistics.

It marks a slight decrease on the 67.5 per cent of teachers who called in sick in 2021-22, but is still far above the pre-pandemic rate of 54.1 per cent.

The figures will raise concerns that an absence crisis provoked by the pandemic continues to disrupt learning, with the number of pupils missing school also significantly higher post-Covid.

In total, 7.8 million school days have been lost to sickness since in-person teaching resumed following the pandemic, according to analysis of DfE data by the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Compared with the 2018-19 academic year – the year before the pandemic – an extra 461,500 teaching days were lost last year because of staff illness.

Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers will be shocked by the sheer number of sick days taken by teaching staff.

“Alongside their generous holiday entitlements, hundreds of thousands of teachers are frequently absent, leaving classrooms in disarray and forcing taxpayers to bear the significant costs of finding covers.

“Schools must tackle this issue if they want to deliver a consistent quality of education that is value for money for taxpayers.”

‘Deteriorating mental health’ While the Government does not collect statistics centrally on the reasons for teacher absence, experts have pointed to increased stress and deteriorating mental health.

In some secondary schools, as many as 166 teachers took sick leave at some point during the 2022-23 academic year, compounding financial pressures on already stretched school budgets.

Most teachers in England receive full sick pay for 25 working days off work in their first year in the profession, rising to 100 working days in their fourth and successive years of teaching.

The Telegraph revealed last week that teacher absences are forcing schools to spend billions on supply staff each year as headteachers scramble to plug gaps in the workforce.

In 2022-23, schools gave £1.2 billion of taxpayers’ cash towards expensive teacher supply agencies to fill vacancies and cover long-term sickness. It is almost double the £738 million spent on supply teachers in the year before the pandemic.

Labour has promised to allow teachers to complete more tasks from home in an attempt to make the profession more attractive. The Government is also exploring how to use artificial intelligence to reduce staff workloads, after almost one in 10 teachers quit the profession last year.

It is hoped the measures will help tackle the recruitment and retention crisis and stem the tide of staff calling in sick each day.

Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), called on the Government to improve teacher pay to prevent a growing exodus from the sector.

“We need to see a concerted effort by the Government to retain teachers in the profession. This will need changes to accountability so we have a collaborative and supportive system,” he said.

“This will also require action on closing the pay gap between teachers and other graduate professions, reducing workload and more flexible working in education”.

Mr Kebede blamed the rise in the teacher absence rate since the pandemic on “excessive teacher workload driven by a high-stakes assessment and accountability system”.

He warned this would continue to “leave many teachers burnt out, leading to stress, sickness and people leaving the profession” without urgent government action.

Labour has come under fire for bowing to pressure from education unions on above-inflation public sector pay deals and demands.

Last month, the NEU voted to accept the Government’s pay offer of a 5.5 per cent uplift for most teachers this year, but warned that it will push for a bigger hike next year.

It suggests the UK’s largest teaching union will continue to wield the threat of further strike action as it seeks long-term funding to address the retention crisis.

‘Severely absent’ pupils Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, has warned of a “dire” inheritance from the previous government as she faces calls for further funding from across the sector.

Schools are also struggling with dwindling pupil attendance levels since the pandemic, with Ms Phillipson warning recently that it was quickly becoming an “absence epidemic”.

More than one in 50 pupils in England are now missing at least half the school year, official figures show.

The proportion of children classed as “severely absent” – meaning they failed to show up for 50 per cent or more of classes – rose to 2.1 per cent in the autumn and spring terms of 2023-24.

It means that about 158,000 pupils were severely absent from school during those teaching periods, according to DfE data.

The DfE was approached for comment.

[lordadmiralfarsight]

Tarrifs, shmariffs, what do ?

Grrrrreeeting my dear Tumblr users, it is I, random economy oriented Tumblr User that was onces convinced his blog was gonna be about ships (and not those on water).

I come to you bringing explanations on tarriffs, what they do, what they bring and what their consequences are, since they are kind of a big topic right now, what with Trump and all. "But Mr. Rando, I already know!" you say, and I believe you, and I am proud of you, but much like in my irl class, not everyone has the same knowledge base, so even if it's a bit tedious for you, we have to cover the topic so everyone is on the same page. Alright ? Swell.

So, what is a tarriff ? A tarriff is a tax levied on importations. AKA, you buy something from out-of-country and get it into the country, you pay the tarriff. Many of you will have seen the memes and viral posts, and will triumphantly point at the part where I say the importer pay the tarriffs. And you are right to do that, it's kind of very important. It's the main point, even.

Why is it the main point ? Easy : if outside stuff cost more, inside stuff better choice. Or, in non-caveman speach : the increase in cost on foreign products and resources will either increase the competitivity of domestic products and resources, or level the playing field. At least that's the idea.

"So", I hear you ask, "are you going to be the Nth user here to tell us that tarriffs are going to fuck the average US citizen over? Because we already know that."

Well, yes, but also know. Also, I'm not sure you have the nuance on the topic, and I do love me some tasty, tasty nuance. And custard. But alas, custard is not the topic of today. Economic nuance is. Now, onto the topic :

The main question to ask here is "what is getting hit by the tarriffs ?" Because the impact will vary a lot depending on what gets hit. To give a simplified framework, there's 3 types of economic goods : raw resources, transformed goods and finished products.

Raw resources are ... raw. Iron ore, lumber, clay, wheat grain, lithium ore, water, dirt, raw oil, you get the idea. Those resources tend to have razor thin profitability margins, because so much is produced.

So, what would be the goal of tarriffs on raw resources ? Well, that would be protecting or developping in-country extraction/production facilities, whether those be mines, farms, fishing fleet or lumber mills.

And that's where a tiny little factor comes into play : economic viability, AKA whether a given activity in a specific region is economically interesting.

Like I said, raw resources tend to have razor thin profitability margins, this means that overwhelmingly, raw resources are extracted in regions that allow lower costs.

Some of those costs can be reduced in costlier economies, like environmental or safety costs, with some good ol' deregulation ... up to a point. Even the notoriously protest-averse USA would face some degree of protests if all safety regulations disappeared and industrial accidents jumped 5000%. Poorer countries tend to be more lax on those regulations, and/or not really enforce them, or both.

On the other hand, there are costs that can't be reduced all that much in a given economy, like the cost of manpower. Due to the cost of living, there's a limit to how low you can go with your offered wages. For instance, offering $12 a day in the USA will yield fuck all in terms of recruitment, but $6 a day in the poorer parts of Africa will cause a flash mob of eager-to-work candidates.

And these are the two big factors of the equation : can the reducible costs be lowered enough that the irreducible costs aren't that much of an issue anymore ? And when the answer is inevitably no, can the tarriffs bridge the gap ? Well, uh ... that's gonna depend a lot. But overall, I would lean more on "no". African iron will be cheaper than US iron every day for the foreseeable future, unless you impose a fucking ungodly amount of tarriffs.

Some resources that cost more will see better results from tarriffs, but far from all. Like, tarriffs on iron, copper, tin, etc ? Bad idea. Tarriffs on helium, lithium or other rarer and costlier resources ? Could protect or help the national production indutry.

In the cases where, even with tarriffs, outside product remain more competitive, there's just going to be an increase in cost down the line, and wealth is just going to exist the country more. In the cases where the inside product becomes more-or-as competitive, then perhaps wealth can remain in the country and help the economy. But, well, we'll get to it later.

Raw resources, done. Two more to go.

Transformed goods (henceforth TG for simplicity) ! They are everywhere and they make up the bulk of international trade. Phone parts ? TGs. Flour ? TG, mostly. Tires ? Eyup, TGs. Radars ? TG. Ink? Oh you bet it's a TG.

So, what would be the aim of tarriffs on TGs? Protecting national industry, giving it room to develop or maybe even forcing multinationals to relocate/create the industry inside the country.

So, TGs are where globalization starts clashing really, really bad with tarriffs. Because you see, with globalization, there's been a global dispatching of production facilities. So you'll have part A that's produced in Italy with resources from Greece, part B that's made in Australia with Indonesian resources, part C that's made in Brazil with stuff from Zambia, etc.

the funky stuff happens when you need to combine parts A and C in a US plant, but then have to send the result over to Mexico to weld part B on top. And then you have to get it back into the US. Double tarrifs, you say? Yepperino, my dear student, double tarrifs. On this incredibly simplified exemple. Imagine what that looks like when there's 3 or 4 more parts involved.

At that point the question is : is it cheaper to pay the tarriff conga line or to just send the US parts of the production line overseas ?

"That sounds like the opposite of the stated goal" you say, with the blazé impassivity of someone that saw it coming a hundred miles away. Yes, yes it does. That's why tarriffs have to be manipulated very, very carefully, especially on transformed goods and intermediate steps of the production process, because it can stack up real fast, real bad.

Sometimes though, paying the tarriff conga line IS the better option, especially for sensitive processes that require a well-trained workforce with in-depth theoretical knowledge of very specific fields and access to training for cutting-edge machines, which is only found in the United Staaaaa ... what do you mean, Europe ?

So yeah, very sensitive, tarriff with care. And in either case, expect cost increases, which WILL be recouped with increased sale prices, leading to a domino effect.

And now, the finished products. The end of the line. The consumer targeted stuff. What you buy online and in shops.

What's the aim of tarriffs here ? Same as before, protect native industry, give it room to develop and force multinationals to relocate the production plant into the country.

At this level, you'll see similar considerations as with the TGs, with one tiny added funky detail : the costs of the two previous steps pile up here. Indeed, the tarriffs on TGs and raw ressources are liable to eat up the profit margins of the finished products, and since profit margins are sacred and must be preserved at all costs, well the simple solution is to simply increase the price of the end product in proportion to the other cost increases. And that means shit costs more for people.

"Well, that's awful" you say, and you are right. But we're getting started. It's time for another trip through early 2000s deviantart, say it with me : INFLATION !!! Except instead of your favourite character being turned into a balloon, we're talking about the content of your wallet losing value. And it's going to hit every industry that has to suffer those tarriffs. At which point the entirety of society faces a dillemma : do we increase salaries accross the board (with the associated widespread price increases) or are we chill with a global reduction in the amount of shit people can buy ?

And that's where it starts getting funky (derogatory, fear inducing), because if enough industries are hit with tarriffs, either choice is bad.

Increase salaries ? You speed up inflation and reduce confidence in your money, making exports admitedly more interesting but imports far less so, and when you are a globalized economy where there are imports everywhere at various levels, it gets spiky really fast.

Going the "tough luck fucko" route ? Well first off, rude, second off : congratulations, you are reducing the overall economic activity in your country, creating unemployment and poverty, reducing confidence in your economy and, if things go really, really poorly, starting a recession (WHOOOOO!!! Who wants to sleep under a bridge ?).

Now, is this a doomer prophecy ? No. No it's not. We have to keep in mind that systems, including economic systems, can adjust their course after starting in a new direction. It's rather unlikely that everything will consistently go bad in the worst way possible. But.

A lot of that is dependant on precision political decision-making, and the person soon-to-be in charge of these decisions in the USA has made it clear that he does not intend to listen to outside opinions or do precision. And considering his last go at it, I believe him. So I'm not optimistic. I don't think the US economy will collapse, that would be absurd, but I don't see the US having a good time either.

It's going to be very, very complicated, and it will depend a LOT on what fields are actually affected, in what proportions, etc.

And keep in mind, I haven't even talked about retaliatory tarriffs (from the people whose products you put tarriffs on). Or political tensions inside the US, that's something I don't feel qualified to talk about. Or the non-economic effects on geopolitics. Or the effects on the global economy.

If I had to make a prediction, I would guess that quite a few production lines will be reorganized to either have long stretches inside the USA or to be entirely divorced from them for as long as possible. Some products may become economically non-viable when it comes to the USA. Some US companies may find themselves no longer economically viable due to reliance on tarriff-affected outside goods and resources. It's hard to guess how large the impact will be, but there WILL be an impact, and most of it will likely be felt by the USA. Because tarriffs aren't paid on expedition, they're paid on reception.

So, as a French, all I can say is : bonne chance.

[misfitwashere]

ROBERT REICH

FEB 28

Friends,

Since I offered you 10 reasons for modest optimism last week, discontent with the Trump-Musk regime has surged even further. America appears to be waking up. Here’s the latest evidence — 10 more reasons for modest optimism. 

1. Trump’s approval ratings continue to plummet. 

The chief reason Trump was elected was to reduce the high costs of living — especially food, housing, health care, and gas.

A new Pew poll shows these costs remain uppermost in Americans’ minds. Sixty-three percent identify inflation as an overriding problem, and 67 percent say the same about the affordability of health care.

That same poll shows the public turning on Trump. The percent of those disapproving of Trump’s handling of the economy has risen to 53 percent (versus 45 percent who approve). Disapproval of his actions as president has risen to the same 53 percent versus 45 percent approval, which shows how essential economic performance is to the public’s assessment of presidents these days.

The Pew poll also shows 57 percent of the public believes that Trump “has exceeded his presidential authority.” By making the world’s richest person his hatchet man, Trump has made more vivid the role of money in politics. Hence, a record-high 72 percent now say a major problem is “the role of money in politics.” 

Other polls show similar results. In the Post-Ipsos poll, significantly more Americans strongly disapprove of Trump (39 percent) than strongly approve of him (27 percent). Reuters, Quinnipiac University, CNN, and Gallup polls show Trump’s approval ratings plummeting (ranging from 44 percent to 47 percent). 

In all of these polls, more Americans now disapprove of Trump than approve of him.

2. DOGE is running amusk.

DOGE looks more and more like a giant hoax. This week, reporters foundthat nearly 40 percent of the contracts DOGE claims to have canceled aren’t expected to save the government any money, according to the administration’s own data.

As a result, on Tuesday DOGE deleted all of the five biggest “savings” on its so-called “wall of receipts.” The scale of its errors — and the misunderstandings and poor quality control that appear to underlie them — has raised questions about the effort’s broader work, which has led to mass firings and cutbacks across the federal government.

DOGE has also had to reverse its firings. On Tuesday, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Douglas A. Collins celebrated cuts to 875 contracts that he claimed would save nearly $2 billion. But when veterans learned that those contracts covered medical services, recruited doctors, and funded cancer programs as well as burial services for veterans, the outcry was so loud that on Wednesday the VA rescinded the ordered cuts. 

After hundreds of nuclear weapons workers were abruptly fired, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire them. 

After hundreds of scientists at the Food and Drug Administration were fired, they’re being asked to return. 

On Wednesday, Musk acknowledged that DOGE “accidentally canceled” efforts by the U.S. Agency for International Development to prevent the spread of Ebola. But Musk insisted the initiative was quickly restored. 

Wrong. Current and former USAID officials say Ebola prevention efforts have been largely halted since Musk and his DOGE allies moved last month to gut the global-assistance agency and freeze its outgoing payments. The teams and contractors that would be deployed to fight an Ebola outbreak have been dismantled, they added.

DOGE staff are resigning. On Tuesday, 21 federal civil service tech workers resigned from DOGE, writing in a joint resignation letter that they were quitting rather than help Musk “dismantle critical public services.”

The staffers all worked for what was known as the U.S. Digital Service before it was absorbed by DOGE. Their ranks include data scientists, product managers, and engineers. According to the Associated Press, “all previously held senior roles at such tech companies as Google and Amazon and wrote in their resignation letter that they joined the government out of a sense of duty to public service.”

Finally, Musk’s conflicts of interest are bursting into the open, and it isn’t a pretty sight. The FAA is close to canceling a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon to overhaul a communications system integral to its air traffic control system — and awarding the contract to Musk’s Starlink instead. 

Why? A team of employees from SpaceX, Starlink’s parent company, has been working inside the FAA in recent days. And Musk himself has been criticizing Verizon’s platform on his social media company, X. 

Senior FAA officials have refused to sign paperwork authorizing the switch to Starlink, so Musk’s team is now seeking help to secure the deal from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau. Could Musk’s financial motive be any clearer? 

3. Tesla is in deep sh*t.

Americans outraged by Musk’s outsized role in the Trump regime are targeting Musk’s Tesla. 

Many Tesla owners are feeling buyer’s remorse — their cars are vandalizedor they become publicly shamed by strangers upset with the car company’s CEO. Others are putting anti-Musk bumper stickers on their cars.

A video from musician Sheryl Crow that received over 20 million views on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook features the singer waving goodbye to her Tesla Model S, as Andrea Bocelli’s “Time to Say Goodbye” plays in the background. “There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with,” Crow wrote in the caption. “So long Tesla.”

Last weekend, thousands demonstrated outside of Tesla dealerships from Philadelphia to Seattle to register their outrage with Musk’s political power. 

The #TeslaTakedown campaign page on Action Network has listed 46 upcoming events at Tesla dealerships and charging stations around the country over the next week. Another organizing platform, Mobilize, includes another 32 events.

Union pension funds are getting involved. Randi Weingarten, president of the giant American Federation of Teachers, has called on the CEOs of the nation’s six largest asset management firms to review Tesla’s current valuation. “This is about safeguarding workers’ retirements,” she said in a statement. “Just this week we saw Tesla stock continue to sink faster than a Cybertruck in quicksand as European sales fell off a cliff. So, we knew we needed to act.”

4. The oligarchy has never been more exposed.

An important aspect of the era we’re in is that a record share of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of a small group of people who are now revealing themselves to be remarkably selfish, shameless, and insensitive to the needs of America. 

This is a further reason for modest optimism because as the oligarchy exposes itself for what it is, the dangers it poses to average people become more apparent — and the odds increase of a fierce public backlash to it. 

On Wednesday, at the same time Elon Musk (the world’s richest person) was lecturing Trump’s Cabinet about the importance of decimating the federal workforce, Jeff Bezos (America’s second-richest) was telling staffers at The Washington Post that henceforth the Post’s opinions would focus on defending “personal liberties and free markets” and opposing viewpoints would not be published. 

The Post’s opinion editor, David Shipley, promptly resigned, as he should.

When oligarchs talk of “personal liberties and free markets” they mean their own liberties to become even richer and more powerful, as the rest of America slides into worsening economic insecurity and fear. When the oligarchs speak of “freedom,” what they actually seek is freedom from accountability. 

All this is becoming more apparent than ever. 

5. People are rising against corporate power.

For all these reasons, a backlash is beginning. Popular rage that this country is now run by an oligarchy, a small group of billionaires and corporate elites, is surging. 

Today’s “economic blackout” has enlisted millions of Americans who have stopped buying and thereby demonstrated our power. 

Meanwhile, protests are breaking out against big predatory corporations. On the eastern shore of Maryland, a bright red Republican area, 20,000 have signed a petition demanding an investigation of Delmarva Power, a subsidiary of utility giant Exelon, for overcharging them. That’s almost 5 percent of Delmarva’s entire customer base. 

The same anger is mounting in New York City at Con Edison. And in St. Joseph, Missouri, at Evergy. 

When House Republicans were in their home districts last week, they were deluged with angry questions about corporate power, Elon Musk, and big money. 

A few Senate Republicans even explained to their constituents that they voted to confirm Robert Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services because he’s “hated” by Big Pharma. 

Meanwhile, Bernie is back. While not running for president again, 83-year-old Bernie Sanders this week launched his “National Tour to Fight Oligarchy” — to overflow crowds in deep-red Nebraska and Iowa. Bernie is showing that even in red America, opposition to oligarchy and Trump is becoming the dominant view of a large swath of the public. 

Record-breaking crowds are also appearing for other notable progressives. A record-sized group showed up to Representative Jim McGovern’s town hall. The same thing happened in Massachusetts with Senator Elizabeth Warren.

6. As Trump and Musk trade Social Security and Medicaid for big tax cuts for the rich, Americans will go ballistic. 

The budget plan passed by the House this week — at Trump’s urging — gives billionaire oligarchs and giant corporations the lion’s share of $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

To offset the $4.5 trillion, the plan includes severe spending cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and Social Security. 

Seventy-two million Americans rely on Medicaid, half of them children. Forty-two million Americans receive food stamps — many who aren’t paid enough to put food on the table. 

Federal workers at the Social Security Administration learned Wednesday that a plan was already underway to cut 50 percent of staff, as well as 1,200 field office locations.

The move is likely to affect tens of thousands of employees across the country and millions who rely on the agency for monthly checks that keep them afloat. Such deep cuts to SSA, already at historically low staffing, will cause significant degradation of services, very likely including checks missed and individuals dying before their claims can be processed.

Why do I include this outrage in my list of reasons for modest optimism? Because if nothing else awakens the slumbering giant of the American people, the Trump-Musk attacks on Medicaid and Social Security to pay for another giant tax cut for the rich will.

Polls show unequivocally that Americans across party lines reject tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich. In fact, more than two-thirds — 67 percent — of Americans support higher taxes on billionaires. 

7. Democracies are joining together, minus Trump’s America.

Since it’s become clear that America has begun allying itself with Russia, the movement of the world’s other major democracies to join forces has been gaining momentum. 

On February 17, eight European leaders and the heads of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union met. On Wednesday, France’s Emmanuel Macron spoke with the leaders of 19 countries, including Canada, either in person or over videoconferencing. Leaders from Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, and Sweden also joined the conversation.

Britain’s PM Keir Starmer is shifting the center of UK foreign policy from the United States to Europe. 

All of this bodes well for a united front of democracies against authoritarian dictatorships — even though, tragically, Trump’s America is on the wrong side. 

8. Negative economic consequences of the Trump-Musk blunderbuss are beginning to appear.

The economy is starting to show signs of strain as the Trump-Musk moves to shrink federal spending, lay off government workers, and impose tariffs on America’s largest trading partners shake businesses and ricochet across states and cities.

Trump’s moves to halt foreign aid and freeze some federal funding have already taken a toll on domestic farmers who export billions of dollars of products as part of American foreign aid programs. 

Billions of dollars of climate and infrastructure investments that were underway during the Biden administration are now in limbo.

Apollo Global Management, an investment firm, estimates that DOGE job cuts could rise to 300,000. When government contractors are included, total layoffs could be closer to 1 million. 

Economic indicators are showing signs of mounting stress, with much of the anxiety focused on Trump’s tariffs. On Thursday, he said tariffs on Canada and Mexico would go into effect on March 4 and he would impose an additional 10 percent tariff on China. 

A survey of consumer sentiment published by the Conference Board on Tuesday recorded its largest monthly decline in confidence since 2021 in February. The drop was attributed to growing pessimism about employment prospects and future business conditions, with concerns about trade and tariffs reaching levels last seen during the 2019 trade wars in Mr. Trump’s first term.

This week’s University of Michigan survey of American consumers shows that they expect prices will rise at a 3.5 percent yearly rate over the next decade — the highest rate of consumers’ inflation fears since 1995.

A measure of corporate activity from S&P Global published last week showed business expansion slowing in the United States in February as a result of “uncertainty and instability surrounding new government policies” such as federal spending cuts and tariff-related developments.

The National Association of Homebuilders said in its latest report that builder confidence had fallen to a five-month low because of concerns about tariffs, elevated mortgage rates, and high housing costs.

Morgan Stanley economists estimate that tariffs will raise inflation, as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, by as much as 0.6 percentage points and depress real consumer spending by as much as 2 percentage points. The overall hit to inflation-adjusted economic growth could be as high as 1.1 percentage points.

I include these gloomy economic statistics as a modest reason for optimism because they, too, signal the looming end of public support for Musk and Trump. 

9. Elections are looking brighter.

Add up all of this and elections are looking brighter — and we don’t have to wait until 2026. This is a major election year. If you count all the seats up for election this year at the local, state, and federal levels, there are 100,000seats open across 45 states.

Governors, mayors, city councils, state representatives, judges, school boards — these positions up and down the entire ballot in 2025 — are a vital line of defense against the Trump-Vance-Musk regime.

Wisconsin voters will fill the deciding seat on their state’s Supreme Court. This election will have huge implications for the labor rights and voting rights of everyday Wisconsinites. Musk is filling the coffers of the Republican candidate right now, but Wisconsinites won’t let Musk’s big money determine their future. 

If you live in New York City and don’t like the Trump administration meddling in the federal corruption charges against current Mayor Eric Adams, you have the power to choose a new mayor.

The great states of New Jersey and Virginia will elect their next governors — and control of their state houses.

On the federal level, Florida will hold two special elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, and New York will hold another later this year. These could affect the balance of power in the House.

The sea change is already beginning. 

On Wednesday, Democrat Eugene Vindman won his House race against the Republican and former army Green Beret Derrick Anderson in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District — a key victory for Democrats as they seek to regain a majority in the lower chamber.

In his first term, Trump fired Vindman and his brother, Alexander, who both held senior roles on Trump’s National Security Council, after they raised concerns about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

As a member of Congress, Vindman will now help fellow Democratic lawmakers serve as a check on the power of Trump.

10. Adding it all up. 

Connect the dots: Trump’s ratings continue to plummet. Musk’s DOGE is off the rails and becoming a late-night joke. Consumers are taking out their anger on Tesla. America’s oligarchs are openly defiant and behaving shamelessly. Bernie and other progressive voices are attracting record-breaking crowds. Trump and Musk are attacking Medicaid and Social Security to pay for a giant tax cut for the wealthy. The world’s leading democracies are joining together against dictatorial regimes, including Trump’s America. Economic indicators are trending downward. And elections look brighter. 

What does this add up to? America is waking up, and it doesn’t like what it’s seeing in Trump and Musk. 

I don’t want to sound overly optimistic. We have a huge amount of work to do. My purpose in giving you these additional reasons for modest optimism is for you to have a sense of possibility. 

All is not lost. We are not doomed. The Trump-Vance-Musk regime is filled with incompetence and riddled with treachery. 

If all of us maintain our courage and resolve, and do what’s necessary, we will prevail.

[mitigatedchaos]

Free Speech

Regarding the speech restrictions in Europe, I will summarize my overall position as follows.

An economics textbook can easily weigh in at nearly 500,000 words. (This could be a contemporary economics textbook, or the original economics textbook, The Wealth of Nations.) Yet an economic textbook cannot tell you everything there is to know about business. You cannot simply use one as a manual to fill the position of CEO.

The world is thick and filled with many possibilities, while a textbook is thin and unable to change in response to situations.

Ideology is a network of related beliefs, rules, and moral values, which influences how information is perceived and what behaviors are considered right. It is often communicated through books and printed materials, speeches, videos, and so on.

Like a textbook, it is not the world. And, like a textbook, it is much simpler than the world.

Ideology is used to synchronize the behavior of members of a political coalition. As such, it may be derived from a generalization of the various coalition members' interests. Putting ideology into action requires keeping coalition members on-side, and so it is often less coherent and more contradictory than scientific theories.

Because ideology is less complex than reality, there is a distance between what an ideology says and any real situation. This distance can be larger or smaller.

This gap between the ideology and reality can produce externalities. If the ideology says that enough solar power and energy storage will come online that you can shut down the nuclear power stations in your country without burning coal... and the energy storage does not come online, then you may end up burning the coal.

Because ideology is not a person, but a body of ideas, and because conditions in the real world are constantly shifting (such as new technologies being invented, or new political events occurring), a movement requires personnel to consistently update and adapt the ideology to account for new developments, to keep the distance between reality and the ideology low.

Because the ideology also represents the interests of the coalition members, and for other reasons, shifting it may result in a difficult political fight that could reduce support for the political coalition.

In this model, speech restrictions are generally a method to push the costs of the externalities off on to people outside of the ruling coalition, while avoiding doing the genuinely challenging work of updating the ideology, as well as having a costly intracoalitional political battle.

This is a short-termist approach that may cause the ideology to become more misaligned from reality in the long term as the underlying conditions continue to change.

As such, in this model, the default position should be to be highly skeptical of speech restrictions. Political coalitions shift unpredictably over time; there is always the possibility that you will be the one getting the short end of the stick in the future.

It is possible for politicians and government officials to obtain private information about the world merely by observing reality and remembering what they have observed. They may also speak directly to each other in private settings.

However, eventually, all politicians and public officials will either grow old or die. As such, the political parties and the state must continuously recruit new personnel from the young. The young have easy access to public channels of information, but private channels of information do not scale - when they become too large, they become public channels of information.

In a low-censorship environment, there are outside sources of information who can correct for the missing information even if young people don't admit to reading them or don't read them directly.

In a high censorship environment, public information can drift very far from reality. Those who trust the censorship anyway will make policy which is not well-aligned to reality, and which therefore can only succeed by accident. Those who do not trust the censorship will not have access to high-quality alternative information; they may not even know what is and is not being censored. Therefore, while they can account for alternate possibilities, they will also have difficulty in making successful policy.

[coraniaid]

In Season 2's Becoming, after being outed as the Slayer to her mother, Buffy delivers a monologue in which she insists she never wanted to be a Slayer ("do you think I choose to be like this? do you have any idea how lonely it is, how dangerous?") and that she wishes she could be doing almost anything else with her life ("God, even studying") but she doesn't have a choice ("I have to save the world, again"). Indeed by the end of the episode that obligation to put her own desires aside and do whatever's necessary to save the world will force her to send the man she loves to hell. Being a Slayer explicitly costs her everything she cares about ("I've got nothing left to lose", as she tells Whistler even before killing Angel).

So, obviously, large sections of the Buffy fandom on here have decided that this means Buffy loves being a Slayer and has fully accepted it as a part of who she is, that she has no rational reason to resent Giles at all, and that she only leaves town at the end of the episode (leaving a note behind for her mother and not telling anybody else) because her mother doesn't accept her and "kicks her out of the house" (an empty threat that Buffy takes so literally she's back in her bedroom packing for LA before the episode ends).

.... I mean, you do see how at odds with the text this reading is, right? However much you want Joyce to be the singular villain here, she's really not.

Buffy: "I never wanted to be a Slayer and in fact being a Slayer has made me miserable and I'm going to run away and change my name and hide from my Watcher so I don't have to be the Slayer anymore"

The fandom, incessantly: "hoho, Joyce blames Giles for Buffy running away, how ridiculous".

(Yes, there is a popular metaphorical reading of the show in which Buffy being "the Slayer" should be understood as Buffy being bi or trans or otherwise queer. And yes, in this reading Joyce's reaction to finding out the truth about her daughter-- already not great! -- becomes particularly terrible.

But that specific metaphorical reading is the not the One True Way of understanding the show. It's not something to which every single thing that happens on screen can be reduced. It's simply one interpretation among many and, in some episodes -- like this one! -- it works less well than it does at other times.

In the actual text of the show, Buffy has just told her mother that she's a reluctant child solider recruited into an impossibly dangerous conflict by a man who Joyce barely knows. A man who has insisted Buffy keep this all secret from her mother and lied to her face about it for months (Giles wouldn't even let Joyce know about vampires after a vampire trying to hurt Buffy attacked her in her own home! He didn't let her know about Angelus!)

Of course Joyce is upset about this! Of course she blames Giles! You know who else often blames Giles for Buffy having to be a Slayer? You know who started this season with a nightmare in which Giles tried to murder Buffy? Buffy herself.)

[beardedmrbean]

A restaurant partially owned by California Governor Gavin Newsom is recruiting for a $16-per-hour role, despite a new state law guaranteeing a minimum wage of $20 per hour for fast-food workers. The restaurant appears not to meet the threshold for the new minimum wage, a law that Newsom himself signed to much fanfare in September.

The Context

On April 1, the new law guaranteeing a minimum wage of $20 per hour for fast-food workers employed in large chains took effect across California, up from the previous minimum of $16.

The law was passed by Democrats in the state legislature last year but has come under fire from some Republicans who claim it will cost jobs. A wage of $20 per hour for a full-time worker results in an annual salary of $41,600.

The new law applies to those restaurants that are part of a chain of 60 or more venues nationwide and which offer limited or no table service.

What We Know

PlumpJack Café in Olympic Valley, California, is seeking a part-time busser to "assist the food server in the restaurant to ensure guest satisfaction during all aspects of the dining experience."

The advert, placed on job posting website ZipRecruiter, says that the employee will be paid $16 per hour and their duties will include clearing dishes from tables, the preparation of caffeinated drinks and decorating tables prior to customer arrival.

The café is owned by the PlumpJack Group, a company founded by Newsom which specializes in wine and high-end dining. Its website says that PlumpJack Group operates four bars or restaurants, placing it well below the threshold for the $20 per hour minimum wage to take effect.

Newsom placed his ownership interests in the PlumpJack Group into a blind trust in 2018, and has had no day-to-day involvement in the running of the company since assuming office in January 2019.

Newsweek has contacted Newsom and the PlumpJack Group for comment outside of normal working hours.

The official PlumpJack Group website states: "In 1992, Gavin Newsom opened his first business, PlumpJack Wines, combining his passion for wine and his driving entrepreneurial spirit.

"Over the next decade, the PlumpJack Group began to grow under his leadership to include many of the restaurants, wineries, and retail establishments in the current portfolio."

Views

Republican State Assembly member Joe Patterson shared screenshots of the PlumpJack Café, PlumpJack Group website referring to Newsom as its founder and the rental cost of two properties in the area on X, formerly Twitter.

He added: "I wonder why @CAgovernor @GavinNewson's food businesses don't pay $20/hour? Live job posting at $16/hr in Olympic Valley. It's very, very expensive to live there... but he doesn't do as he tells others and doesn't pay a living wage."

The increased minimum wage for fast-food workers more generally has been criticized by some Republicans who warn it will reduce the number of jobs.

Speaking to DailyMail.com, Rep. Doug LaMalfa from California said: "As if prices in California aren't high enough. Fast food prices are already rising, and employees are being replaced by self-checkout kiosks and soon robot cooks.

"Nearly everyone will be worse off: higher prices, fewer jobs, fewer eating options as places close, and fewer small businesses. Ultimately this new $20 minimum wage will affect nearly every job, with similar results."

In an earnings call at the end of October, McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski said that "there is going to be a wage impact for our California franchisees," which he added would have to be partially "worked through with higher pricing."

In February, Newsom denied a report by Bloomberg News that he pushed for a separate exception to the new minimum wage law that benefits a campaign donor. The law exempts restaurants that have on-site bakeries and sell bread as a standalone menu item.

As a result, Greg Flynn, a billionaire and Newsom donor, could save hundreds of thousands of dollars at his Panera Bread outlets in California, according to Bloomberg.

A spokesman denied any connection, saying: "This story is absurd."

In January, a baseline minimum wage of $16 came into effect across California.

[mariacallous]

This week sees the one thousandth day of the war launched by Vladimir Putin in February 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the largest European conflict since World War II, and one of the first major wars to be covered in real time on social media. Audiences around the world have watched in disbelief as the Russian army has advanced into Ukraine, reducing entire cities to rubble and displacing millions of people. For almost three years, this unfolding tragedy has been the world’s leading news story.

Few expected Ukraine to reach this week’s grim milestone. Indeed, on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the consensus was that any organized Ukrainian resistance would likely crumble within a matter days. In retrospect, it is now clear that both Vladimir Putin and the vast majority of international observers were equally guilty of underestimating Ukraine.

While their country has surpassed all expectations, Ukrainians have little to celebrate as the war passes the 1000-day mark. The Russian invasion has inflicted unparalleled suffering on Ukraine, with hundreds of thousands killed and more than fourteen million people forced to flee their homes. Huge numbers of Ukrainian service personnel and civilians have suffered life-changing injuries. For the men and women defending the country on the front lines, the physical and psychological toll from almost three years of relentless fighting has been immense.

Beyond the battlefield itself, the Russian invasion has plunged the entire Ukrainian population into a mental health crisis that will last for decades. Almost everyone has experienced some kind of personal loss or wartime trauma. In towns and cities across Ukraine, people have grown used to the daily routine of air raid alarms, bomb shelters, and electricity blackouts, all accompanied by gut-churning news of the latest Russian atrocities.

Despite the many horrors and hardships, Ukrainians have remained broadly united by a shared sense of purpose. While most people are understandably desperate for peace, there is also widespread recognition that Ukraine is fighting for national survival and faces destruction if Russia’s invasion succeeds. This has been made abundantly clear by the actions of the Russian army in areas of Ukraine under Kremlin control, with thousands of potential dissenters abducted and children sent for indoctrination to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage.

Most Ukrainians acknowledge the need to fight on, but there are growing concerns over continued international support. During the initial months of the invasion, the watching world was awed by Ukrainian courage and tenacity as the country fought back against the might of the Russian military. This helped convince Western leaders that arming Ukraine was both morally right and worthwhile. However, as the war has dragged on, grumbles over the cost of supplying the Ukrainian military have grown louder, as has the chorus of voices calling for some form of compromise with the Kremlin.

Every time Western leaders delay the delivery of military aid, the cost can be measured in Ukrainian lives. These delays enable Russia to bomb Ukrainian cities and advance further along the front lines of the war. Shortfalls in military support are also making it significantly harder for Ukraine to mobilize new troops for the army, with many potential recruits left alarmed by the prospect of being sent into battle without adequate weapons or armor.

While Kyiv struggles to convince wavering Western leaders, Moscow is creating an axis of autocrats to bolster the Russian war effort. Since the start of the full-scale invasion almost three years ago, Putin has strengthened ties with China, Iran, and North Korea, receiving a range of support including sanctioned high-tech weapons components, attack drones, ballistic missiles, and vast quantities of artillery shells. This alliance is playing an increasingly direct role in the invasion of Ukraine, with North Korean soldiers recently appearing on the battlefield.

Donald Trump’s election victory is now fueling anticipation that the war is about to enter a new phase, with the incoming US administration expected to push for a negotiated settlement. Nobody wants to end the war more than Ukrainians, of course. At the same time, there are mounting concerns that Western efforts to pursue peace from a position of weakness may lead to Kremlin-friendly terms that would end up emboldening Putin and setting the stage for further Russian aggression.

Ukrainians have particularly painful memories of the failed peace process that followed Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. For eight years, Russia refused to even acknowledge its direct involvement in hostilities, insisting instead on noncombatant status. This farcical situation made it virtually impossible to achieve any meaningful progress toward peace. It is now clear that while Moscow was pretending to engage in diplomatic efforts to end the war, Russia was busy preparing for the full-scale invasion of February 24, 2022.

Ahead of any peace talks, Ukrainians will be hoping their international allies have not lost sight of the huge costs they will face if they fail to stop Russia in Ukraine. The invasion launched by Putin one thousand days ago has already transformed the geopolitical landscape and led to the emergence of a formidable authoritarian alliance that shares a common commitment to ending the era of Western ascendancy. Russian success in Ukraine would dramatically strengthen this alliance, with alarming ramifications for the security situation everywhere from Central Europe to East Asia.

As the world reflects on one thousand days of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the Ukrainian nation is exhausted but remains determined to end the war on terms that will allow the next generation to live in peace. This will not be possible without continued international support. Putin was wrong to assume that Ukraine would collapse in the wake of his invasion. Western leaders must now convince him that he is equally wrong to believe he can outlast them in Ukraine.

[tzifron]

What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

by Maureen Tkacik

March 28, 2024

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

John Barnett had one of those bosses who seemed to spend most of his waking hours scheming to inflict humiliation upon him. He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like “using email to communicate” and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed.

“John is very knowledgeable almost to a fault, as it gets in the way at times when issues arise,” the boss wrote in one of his withering performance reviews, downgrading Barnett’s rating from a 40 all the way to a 15 in an assessment that cast the 26-year quality manager, who was known as “Swampy” for his easy Louisiana drawl, as an anal-retentive prick whose pedantry was antagonizing his colleagues. The truth, by contrast, was self-evident to anyone who spent five minutes in his presence: John Barnett, who raced cars in his spare time and seemed “high on life” according to one former colleague, was a “great, fun boss that loved Boeing and was willing to share his knowledge with everyone,” as one of his former quality technicians would later recall.

More from Maureen Tkacik

But Swampy was mired in an institution that was in a perpetual state of unlearning all the lessons it had absorbed over a 90-year ascent to the pinnacle of global manufacturing. Like most neoliberal institutions, Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of intellectual property, trade secrets, and data, discarding “thought” and “understanding” and “complex reasoning” possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs. CEO Jim McNerney, who joined Boeing in 2005, had last helmed 3M, where management as he saw it had “overvalued experience and undervalued leadership” before he purged the veterans into early retirement.

“Prince Jim”—as some long-timers used to call him—repeatedly invoked a slur for longtime engineers and skilled machinists in the obligatory vanity “leadership” book he co-wrote. Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were “phenomenally talented assholes,” and he encouraged his deputies to ostracize them into leaving the company. He initially refused to let nearly any of these talented assholes work on the 787 Dreamliner, instead outsourcing the vast majority of the development and engineering design of the brand-new, revolutionary wide-body jet to suppliers, many of which lacked engineering departments. The plan would save money while busting unions, a win-win, he promised investors. Instead, McNerney’s plan burned some $50 billion in excess of its budget and went three and a half years behind schedule.

Swampy belonged to one of the cleanup crews that Boeing detailed to McNerney’s disaster area. The supplier to which Boeing had outsourced part of the 787 fuselage had in turn outsourced the design to an Israeli firm that had botched the job, leaving the supplier strapped for cash in the midst of a global credit crunch. Boeing would have to bail out—and buy out—the private equity firm that controlled the supplier. In 2009, Boeing began recruiting managers from Washington state to move east to the supplier’s non-union plant in Charleston, South Carolina, to train the workforce to properly put together a plane.

[audriel]

behind the scenes: let's start thinkin' bout it

chapter 2 : lingering wounds

this chapter really writes itself. all i have clearly in mind is a conversation between Qiao Yifan and Wang Jiexi. i have thought of writing the remaining All Stars, but the conversation ends up much bigger than i expected. definitely more angst and hurt-comfort, which is me going back to my roots lol. it also makes it harder to find a proper ending. after scrapping some rough ideas, this is the end result that i am pretty satisfied with.

this chapter can be said an analysis of Tiny Herb. and I know how risky it is, and it's rather hard to avoid bias. but Tiny Herb is among the teams that we do have more knowledge of their inner workings from the novel. and i must admit, while i admire Wang Jiexi and his dedication to Tiny Herb (fangwang is also one of my fave pairings), for me current Tiny Herb is not impressive... and its future is worrisome.

my bad impression did indeed start with the way they handled Qiao Yifan. it can be summed up as a mere mismatch between Qiao Yifan and Tiny Herb. that our Yifan is unsuitable for Tiny Herb and vice versa. that ultimately Tiny Herb is an employer and workplace, that this kind of thing does a common occurrence. no one is at fault. we just happened to be spoiled with teams like Happy and Blue Rain who are in comparison very flexible and inclusive. (then there's God Ye, who stands tall above the rest, who notices things that the Magician doesn't)

but i cannot help but disagree.

in my experience as an employee (or capitalist slave lol) who ends up studying about business&management, human resource is the greatest investment a company or any business can have. it can make or break the business. so usually, HR recruitment and training get a lot of attention, if not a priority. so it's no wonder that all teams will have their own training camps, so they will have easier time to mold and pick their future team members. especially there's an obvious quota or limitation of how many people can be in the team. then there's also nature of the teams, which highly requires ability to adapt and to work with others. this should make being promoted to the team very difficult. the ones who did get to be a member of the team, even though only a sub, should be the cream of the crop.

Qiao Yifan is no exception.

this is clearly implied in the novel when it's mentioned that he has only played Glory for a year by the time we got to know him (Ch147). only further strengthened with how quick he adjusts to Ghostblade class and to rough diamond Happy in the new server.

However, Qiao Yifan has never played an official match, to the point that all pro players and the All Stars' audience have no idea of his existence in Tiny Herb. and by then half season have passed.

half season!

(forget how strange the timeline is, s8 is a mess)

that's such a waste of time and money. seriously. HR is an investment because the result will not show immediately. HR is also costly because they put a lot of money into developing the people into what the company need. recruiting a fully developed talent (transfer) is expensive, so it's usually more cost effective to acquire from universities (training camp) and develop them in the company (the team).

how can you develop your team member without giving them experience??? especially when it's highlighted throughout the novel, through many pro players, how important experience is. how it's the only way for a rookie turn into a veteran.

not only it doesn't make sense from business standpoint, it also doesn't make sense from team standpoint. by benching Qiao Yifan, Wang Jiexi has crippled his own team, reducing the potential strategies he can use. and by not giving him a chance to grow, thus reducing his chance to stay, requiring Tiny Herb to seek and acquire and train/introduce another new person, adding another new variable into the team that might end up the same.

then there's Wang Jiexi's thoughts of Qiao Yifan.

Wang Jiexi already couldn't see any value in keeping Qiao Yifan in the team. He also knew the kid was having a hard time meshing with the team. Perhaps if he wasn't in a Champion team and in some other no pressure mid-tier team, he might be able to make some progress? -Ch144

made worse with the rare time Qiao Yifan shows any negative feelings towards others.

"How lucky... to be instructed by a god-level player like captain so often..." Qiao Yifan silently thought. -Ch145

on my the first time reading it and on my reread, these words still rub me the wrong way. first, it's so cold and ruthless. he strips down Qiao Yifan to his value to the team. okay, we can accept that it's necessary in such highly competitive environment that is Glory. you cannot just add all good vegetables into the shopping cart, just like Ye Xiu said. second and my greatest source of vexation is that he knows that Qiao Yifan is not meshing with team, but his solution is to put Qiao Yifan in an environment with no pressure? really? true to his magician, title his reasoning doesn't make sense, which irks me so much. because it doesn't seem he bothers to know the reason why.

teamwork requires everyone to work together. it's a relationship of mutual trust and respect. it takes all sides to make it work. from his thoughts, it gives me the impression the fault lies in Qiao Yifan for being weak, for buckling under the pressure, thus not gaining trust and respect from his teammates for them to willing to work with him.

the least kind explanation for his way of thinking is that Tiny Herb's self-sacrificing values are taken to the extreme. considering he has changed his playstyle for the team and the championship, he really cannot fathom why the others can't. the less kind explanation is that being a genius make him unable to understand others who are not. the kindest explanation is that he's too busy to instruct the substitutes personally, which is reasonable considering Tiny Herb's overdependence on him, so he cannot really see the problem in Qiao Yifan. he might leave that job to his vice captain, which unfortunately for Qiao Yifan is Deng Fusheng, who might not even fully understand why Wang Jiexi assigns Qiao Yifan an Assassin account to properly instruct him.

it might also be all of them. if we think kindly of Wang Jiexi, he might be aware of his shortcoming, so he relies on his vice captain in developing and training the rookies. Fang Shiqian is particularly good at this, as seen from the main roster that used to have Fang Shiqian as the vice captain. case in point, his attempts in recruiting new member for his team after Fang Shiqian retired are by acquiring developed talents: Xu Bin, an exchange with Li Yihui, Tang Rou and Qiu Fei who have been personally instructed by Ye Xiu.

this kinda explains his cold rationality. and the way he handles Gao Yingjie. whose personality is not much different than Qiao Yifan. it really gives an impression he really doesn't know how to deal with such a different personality compared to his own. that's why he takes such an extreme approach, by losing publicly against Gao Yingjie, which i don't think it's well thought out.

it might be just me, but in my own experience in teaching people (and also from Ye Xiu/Happy and Wei Chen/Blue Rain's example), in order to build confidence it's not really that complicated. just let them gain experience, let them try and fail, but also make sure they know that failure is not the end of the world, that they have the team's support and understanding. that's it. others might scorn them, but the team will have their back. call it tough love. call it a balance of care and cruelty. everyone's a beginner at first, even geniuses. meanwhile, Gao Yingjie is too well-protected. he's kept from hardship too much. that's why i've got the feeling that Wang Jiexi's approach has a high chance of blowing up on his (and Tiny Herb's) face.

and also why future Tiny Herb is worrisome, because it's not only the team who is overly dependent on Wang Jiexi, the whole club, too. it can be minimized if Wang Jiexi stays after retirement... but i feel he will be as decisive as his predecessors. Gao Yingjie will have such big shoes to fill, if not too big.

then there's the team environment.

particularly among the reserve players, which eerily reminds me of Excellent Era's training camp, which might be what Ye Xiu's also thinking with his comment of role model and crutch to Wang Jiexi after the match.

Is he saying that I've been working too hard all this time? But when you were in Excellent Era, weren't you also giving your all to carry the team on your shoulders? Wang Jiexi watched Ye Xiu's retreating silhouette. -Ch1334

in the later match against Thunderclap, it seems that Wang Jiexi does stop trying too hard and let himself being isolated from the others in order to reduce the dependence and in the playoffs against Samsara, it suggests that the younger members manage to make a turnaround. that it bodes well for the future of Tiny Herb.

but here's the thing. it only shows hope for the current main roster of the team. the subs? they don't really have the proper mindset. it's shown in the way they barely worked together and then lost against Lord Grim and co., in the way they made excuses, made worse with Xiao Yun's behavior when he's being the most senior, the one considered as half-main roster and half-sub, but also always being sought to be replaced by Wang Jiexi. no wonder he acts out, bullies are often insecure. this paints a rather grim picture of the championship team environment that Wang Jiexi (and Tiny Herb) creates, and also the double standard he's shown in the different way he treats Gao Yingjie compared to other rookies.

there's a ticking time bomb right there.

the problem might even lay deeper, or start sooner in the training camp. this is a high possibility, considering how Qiao Yifan got promoted despite his unsuitability and how Wang Jiexi is always seen looking outside the team for potential talent.

that's why i come to the conclusion that Tiny Herb's future looking grim. being a rich championship team in the capital, they might manage to draw high-quality talents, but if they are unable to develop them... they might be left behind other teams with better team environment, championship team or not (Thunderclap, for example).

wow it ends up long, i actually want to add my thoughts about Qiao Yifan's characterisation. but i think the chapter speaks for itself. just because we see Qiao Yifan moving on, focusing on the good things, showing no resentment towards Tiny Herb. it doesn't mean he's not hurt. i am close to tears when i read Qiao Yifan's thoughts during his time in Tiny Herb. he's just a kid. it needs to be acknowledged, by themselves, and by the club. it might create a better environment for them all.

[armoredisopod]

I had to grind for this view 🦾🦾🦾

Spent the past 2-ish days playing the absolute shit out of IS5 because i am absolutely obsessed with this hunk of junk and NEEDED to have him maxed expeditiously

As for IS5 itself, because of the noticeable change of stage design philosophy from IS4, the general QoL changes like reduced 4 & 5★ recruit costs and no penalty for losing HP it's way easier to get a good run rolling and snowball hard which is great

And that's before you even unlock the Blueprint Squad because HOLY SHIT it is so broken i literally have to stop myself from playing with the squad too much because it literally alters how you approach runs

I also went and did the alt endings immediately instead of waiting a few months to do it and i have to say it's really funny where the ending 2 fight has a bunch of moving parts that demand your attention otherwise your run is immediately over (pick up something to deal with the Theresis clones/bring flagbearers because you need so much DP/have a way to separate the twins at phase 2 or bypass their damage reduction), when i looked up the ending 3 fight i immediately decided i wanted to have a Tachanka buff army run because it's literally just an over glorified statcheck and i did it and i won on the first try

Anyways yeah IS5 is fucking awesome and i can't wait for the future expansions