[HN Gopher] I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Delive...
___________________________________________________________________
I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for
Amazon (2018)
Author : wallflower
Score : 154 points
Date : 2021-05-02 12:53 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| gkoberger wrote:
| For anyone curious, it seems he now has a full-time job as a
| journalist at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Happy he's being
| paid for his words again.
|
| https://twitter.com/ausmurph88/status/1096838031804227584
| capableweb wrote:
| Article linked from the submission was from December 25, 2018,
| and the tweet from Feb 16, 2019. Seems likely that writing this
| article (and first having the experience of delivering for
| Amazon) got him hired. Good for him!
| dkarras wrote:
| Exactly, good for him. Some people just know how to write. I
| rarely read more than a couple paragraphs in pieces like
| this, but he grabbed me until the end.
| seibelj wrote:
| > _Lurching west in stop-and-go traffic on I-80 that morning,
| bound for Berkeley and a day of delivering in the rain, I had a
| low moment, dwelling on how far I'd come down in the world. Then
| I snapped out of it. I haven't come down in the world. What's
| come down in the world is the business model that sustained Time
| Inc. for decades. I'm pretty much the same writer, the same guy.
| I haven't gone anywhere. My feet are the same._
|
| _When I'm in a rhythm, and my system's working, and I slide open
| the side door and the parcel I'm looking for practically jumps
| into my hand, and the delivery takes 35 seconds and I'm on to the
| next one, I enjoy this gig. I like that it's challenging,
| mentally and physically. As with the athletic contests I covered
| for my old employer, there's a resolution, every day. I get to
| the end of my route, or I don't. I deliver all the packages, or I
| don't._
|
| Delivering packages is a fine job doing honest labor. Amazon pays
| well. He has a good attitude. He is doing something the modern
| world needs. No shame in that.
|
| If I was down on my luck I would have no problem doing whatever
| job exists. I have washed dishes, and I enjoyed that job. I think
| a lot of people think some types of work are beneath them but I
| respect all people who are productive members of society - and
| the flip-side is that I despise people who say these jobs are so
| "terrible" they need to be outlawed or whatever.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - I liked that part of his essay too, I also just
| generally liked his writing.
|
| There's something satisfying in this kind of work with clear
| explicit goals and getting through the list everyday.
|
| I think a lot of society issues seem to stem from how he
| briefly felt, that this kind of thing was a sign of failure or
| that he was embarrassed to tell friends at the holiday party.
|
| The irony to me is that this kind of work is probably more
| valuable to society than sports illustrated and day to day
| almost certainly so.
|
| If there was more cultural respect for these kinds of jobs,
| people would feel better about themselves while doing them. I
| think there should be. I was glad he felt good about it at the
| end.
| conductr wrote:
| > There's something satisfying in this kind of work with
| clear explicit goals and getting through the list everyday.
|
| This sums up my mid career crisis. I miss the jobs of my
| youth where I was just scheduled, showed up, did tasks, and
| left when scheduled. Of course, a flaw of memories like this
| is I mainly remember the good parts. When I really try, I
| remember things like lack of flexibility (working from home,
| leaving early to meet the plumber/doctor, etc) and honestly
| how difficult living on a low wage actually was and that was
| before all the responsibilities I've accumulated (family,
| homes, etc).
|
| Also, I always found these jobs truly fun. The carefreeness
| of other employees and they types of characters you came
| across was eclectic and interesting. Corporate America does
| not allow of much of that and is fairly homogeneous even when
| diversified.
| pydry wrote:
| There would probably be more respect even if nothing else
| changed except they paid more.
| sldksk wrote:
| This can't be overstated. Dignity means having the
| financial stability required to comfortably live in a
| decent neighborhood, get married, and raise a family.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| What if I don't want to get married and/or raise a
| family?
| detaro wrote:
| Then don't? Having the stability that you could is good
| either way.
| nitrogen wrote:
| I knew a UPS long-haul driver who was making over $100k in
| 2003.
| sldksk wrote:
| That was 2003 and a different career with different
| qualifications, not to mention work schedule.
| nitrogen wrote:
| My point is the potential is there for driving and
| delivering to rise in status and pay again.
| fossuser wrote:
| I doubt it.
|
| Both because Amazon pay is decent, but more so because it's
| more about class expectations than it is about pay.
|
| Lots of jobs make a lot of money, but are still not
| considered high status.
| pydry wrote:
| Jobs like what?
|
| The only ones I can think of are ones which suddenly
| started paying a lot due to some market quirk (e.g.
| miners in Australia in the 2010s).
|
| Class expectations just take a while to catch up (or
| never do if the market quirk doesn't persist).
| tracedddd wrote:
| Oil industry workers don't seem to carry much clout, kind
| of a dirty job with a lot of physical labor, but pays
| quite well and has for a while.
|
| Truckers can still make an upper middle class salary,
| especially if they own their truck or focus on a niche
| (refrigerated, military deliveries, cross border, etc.)
| pydry wrote:
| I was actually thinking of underwater welders when I
| wrote that. Not all oil industry jobs pay well but that
| one _really_ can, and it carries the cachet to boot. It
| 's definitely manual labor royalty - dangerous, highly
| skilled and pays up to $300k.
|
| Truckers are not doing so well these days, and where they
| do make a lot it's typically because of backbreaking
| labor and/or taking on financial risks. This still only
| gets you into lower/mid tier software dev wages.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" I was actually thinking of underwater welders when I
| wrote that. Not all oil industry jobs pay well but that
| one really can, and it carries the cachet to boot. It's
| definitely manual labor royalty - dangerous, highly
| skilled and pays up to $300k."_
|
| A lot of the "well paying", low-status jobs mentioned in
| this thread are dangrous... long-haul truckers,
| construction workers, underwater welders, even
| electricians are jobs where you have to risk your life to
| do them, and many of them are statistically dangerous as
| well.
|
| So whether the people who have such jobs are "well
| compensated" for risking their lives like that is
| debatable.
|
| Certainly an IT manager job that paid the same as a
| trucker would be far more preferable in terms of safety,
| and would therefore be far better compensated when the
| danger of being a trucker is taken in to account.
|
| Of course, low-paid delivery jobs are even worse when you
| consider that those low-paid delivery drivers have to
| risk their lives on the road to deliver your packages.
| fossuser wrote:
| > " and would therefore be far better compensated when
| the danger of being a trucker is taken in to account."
|
| This strikes me as just making up reasons why examples
| that disprove the status/pay point aren't _really_
| disproving it.
|
| If you can just make up reasons why your position is
| right anyway even in cases where it's not, then it's
| basically unfalsifiable.
| jdhn wrote:
| >Truckers are not doing so well these days
|
| I thought there was a trucker shortage happening?
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| Software jobs are low status.
|
| We live in a bubble and respect good hackers but normies
| don't like nerds.
|
| Hollywood portrays us between weirdo and pervert, while
| glorifying lawyers and doctors.
| FineTralfazz wrote:
| That has a lot more to do with personality than career.
| If you're an irritating know-it-all weirdo, people aren't
| going to like you regardless of your job. I've known
| engineers like that that, but most people I know and work
| with are normal people and are respected.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| In Canada at least, any contractor/constructing job.
|
| Plumbers, electricians are educated specialists making
| very very good hourly wage but won't get same status as
| say IT manager.
|
| Bonded cleaner with great references can easily be 50
| bucks an hour.
|
| Truck drivers, forklift operators have steadily been well
| compensated and need certified skillset but again don't
| get same perceived class status.
|
| Note I'm not saying I don't / these jobs shouldn't have
| respect :). Question was which well paid jobs are seen as
| different conferring class status despite good pay and
| this is the general perception I've observed.
| fossuser wrote:
| Plumbing and electrician are the first two that come to
| mind.
|
| Construction would probably be another.
|
| Basically "blue collar" jobs that require a lot of
| expertise.
|
| I'd guess some variation and small business risk, but I
| think many do well.
| roninhacker wrote:
| The reason those don't command respect is because they
| _don 't_ pay well in the main.
| xupybd wrote:
| An experienced industrial electrician gets more than your
| average software developer, here in NZ.
| pydry wrote:
| Software devs in NZ are _really_ badly paid.
| sneak wrote:
| Every argument against Amazon-the-employer I have read recently
| seems to pretend that the people who work there have no choice
| but to work for Amazon, as if they didn't pick the job for
| themselves out of the array of possible options available to
| them.
|
| I have a lot of issues with the way Amazon operates, but
| precisely nobody is forced to work there. This article does a
| good job of pointing that out.
| skystarman wrote:
| And for all the shrieking about Amazon destroying "mom and
| pop" shops these people never admit that Amazon pays their
| employees much more, often 2x what the mom and pop's did.
|
| Or did you really think mom and pop were paying the teens
| running their bookstore $17/hr? You think they had great
| health insurance and other benefits?
| Larrikin wrote:
| I personally think it's ridiculous that people find it
| amazing that 15 an hour is considered amazing pay for
| anyone that isn't a teenager working their first job, but
| Amazon gets high praise for doing it. Most people on here
| would laugh at a job that pays 600 a week, 2400 a month or
| 28800 a year before taxes.
| chmod600 wrote:
| How much is 28800 a year after taxes?
| woobar wrote:
| Depends on state. ~$24K-$25K
| skystarman wrote:
| No one is here saying it's "amazing"
|
| I am here saying that, yes that paltry $15 an hour you
| scold Amazon for paying? Well mom and pop they drove out
| of business was paying about HALF of that.
| tootie wrote:
| 15 is there minimum though. Meaning any teenager with a
| driver's license is getting 15. This guy (a grownup with
| no delivery experience) was getting 17 plus overtime.
| jozzy-james wrote:
| forced, no - but in some areas it is the only viable place to
| work for many (speaking of warehouse)
| ipaddr wrote:
| People get forced to work in jobs they don't want to all of
| the time.
|
| The array of possible jobs could be one or none.
|
| If a basic income existed your point could be true. That's
| not reality today.
| sneak wrote:
| The array of possible unskilled jobs in almost every
| populated place is almost _always_ >1.
|
| It turns out that Amazon actually competes for labor in a
| vast market for same. So many people work there because
| they have to be a better option than most unskilled labor
| jobs because they have so many packages to deliver.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I'd you don't have a lot of financial resources, and work
| a low paid job, you also tend not to have the time
| resources to explore the option. It comes at a high
| transaction cost.
| splitstud wrote:
| My experience with wage workers that are struggling to
| make ends meet is different. They spend a lot of time
| looking for better jobs and side gigs. Like, it is their
| primary focus.
| seibelj wrote:
| I believe that in the USA you would have a much harder time
| finding an able-bodied person who cannot find an available
| job vs. someone with multiple options. My news this week is
| full of stories of employers who cannot find enough labor.
| We are very far away from a jobs crisis.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Do they mention that pay will be rising to attract more
| able-bodied people?
|
| Let us know if it's still an issue after the pay
| increases and work condition perks increased?
|
| What they are not raising wages? Was the article looking
| at justifying some political point of view?
| cbozeman wrote:
| > My news this week is full of stories of employers who
| cannot find enough labor.
|
| Yeah, they can't find enough labor because they want to
| pay people $15 an hour in an area where the _median home
| price_ is $572,000. I work in logistics. I occasionally
| overhear some of executive staff down the hall from my
| office complain about being unable to keep workers in a
| non-climate controlled warehouse, lifting enormously
| heavy things, for 8 hours a day, in one of the richest
| areas of Texas that isn 't Houston or Dallas.
|
| Gee, I can't imagine why people wouldn't want to work in
| a warehouse in 100 degree F weather, lifting 30-80 lbs.
| boxes for 8 hours.
|
| So I pulled data on that warehouse and it's location. In-
| N-Out is hiring just 10 miles away for $16 an hour. Yeah,
| it's not a great job either, but it's air conditioned.
| And you won't be lifting anything heavier than a box of
| fries. Furthermore, the cheapest rent within a 10 mile
| radius of that warehouse is $1700. Good luck paying that
| on $15 an hour.
|
| So yeah, I can understand why employers can't find
| workers...
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Surely it makes no sense to compare the _median_ home
| price to the _lowest_ paying jobs? We don't really expect
| people who earn the least to be buying the median house.
| (And it's silly to think that 100% home ownership is some
| kind of ideal, it has a lot of negative consequences so
| we're better off with many people renting).
|
| This claim would be stronger if you compared to the
| bottom 10% of housing, say.
| justinator wrote:
| Not sure what the housing market is where you live, but
| you can't get a house here, unless you make an offer 35%
| over asking and have cash on hand. Could you get a house
| for < million? Perhaps but it'll be "a fixer upper" to
| put it humorously. You're more likely looking at a
| trailer, and those have 5 year waiting period.
| dominotw wrote:
| > where the median home price is $572,000
|
| Where did all the money come from in last 1 year to
| inflate the prices to this insanity.
|
| So asset inflation is eventually going to make impact on
| labor prices and cause inflation. Then is why FED so
| cocksure that inflation is no big deal.
|
| >So yeah, I can understand why employers can't find
| workers...
|
| I don't understand why employers cant simply pay more and
| pass on the costs to their consumers. What's stoping
| them.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > > where the median home price is $572,000
|
| > Where did all the money come from in last 1 year to
| inflate the prices to this insanity.
|
| This area of Texas is not well-known to most people. It's
| a bit of a well-kept secret. While Austin is new money
| and trendy, and Dallas is cosmopolitan, this area of
| Texas is old... _old_ money.
|
| > I don't understand why employers cant simply pay more
| and pass on the costs to their consumers. What's stoping
| them.
|
| Our company not only has two nationwide competitors, we
| have significant regional competitors across America, and
| on top of that, we're having to fight Amazon as well.
|
| I get CC'ed and BCC'ed on most shifts in company policies
| because it can directly affect logistics and I need to be
| able to actively work around or with these policies, and
| things are getting so crazy that Directors of Operations
| at each warehouse are being tasked with asking low-level
| warehouse employees to clock out 15 minutes early each
| day just to avoid any possibility of overtime.
|
| Obviously this creates logistics problems because when a
| warehouse fills up, you can't send any more stock from
| suppliers there. So I've had to fold COVID-19 absentee
| reports into our data analysis, because the loss of
| productivity from workers can directly affect storage
| space. For instance, one warehouse currently has three
| people out with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, but we
| contact traced another seven people between those three,
| so that's 10 workers out, 3 of which for at least a few
| weeks, possibly months. The other 7 until they're cleared
| by medical doctors. That could mean roughly a 30%
| reduction in ability to process merchandise at that
| location for up to a week or two, and around an 8%
| decline for several weeks or months.
|
| So we can't pass the cost on to consumers because why
| would you buy a headlamp assembly for your Audi A6 from
| us for $479 when you can get it from Amazon for $382?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I think the question "why employers cant simply pay more
| and pass on the costs to their consumers" was rhetorical.
| Of course most employers cannot do this because their
| competitors will undercut them. They can only do it for
| costs that are imposed on all players, like government
| mandated minimum wage.
| SmellTheGlove wrote:
| > Where did all the money come from in last 1 year to
| inflate the prices to this insanity.
|
| We've been printing trillions over the past 15 years or
| so. And we've disproportionately accumulated it at the
| top (including the audience here, although the top 1% and
| 0.1% are doing even better than that). That money has to
| go somewhere. Traditional conservative investments have
| low rates of return right now - think low interest rates
| - and housing has historically been seen as "safe". And
| it's providing fantastic returns.
|
| Take COVID - nobody wants to move, so housing supply is
| low. Tight supply is just exacerbating an existing issue,
| especially sharply over the past year.
|
| Totally anecdotal: I just moved from SF to Seattle,
| somewhat related to my job. We were outbid half a dozen
| times, often by cash offers. I remember one of them in
| particular, because we got beat way over asking by a cash
| buyer, and it was rented on Zillow the week after
| closing. Housing is an asset class, not a place we live.
|
| > I don't understand why employers cant simply pay more
| and pass on the costs to their consumers. What's stoping
| them.
|
| Passing costs onto consumers is a bit of a lie used to
| scare consumers into opposing wage increases. You can
| only pass on so much cost, and it depends in part on the
| elasticity of demand for your product.
|
| Anyhow, employers generally can pay more, but they are
| optimizing for their shareholders and return on equity.
| That's going pretty well if you look at the market. But
| that's why the market isn't reflective of the economy as
| a whole.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| 100% this. Quantitative easing basically caused epic
| asset inflation- great for the capital owning class, but
| royally fucking over the poors and young workers.
|
| In Seattle back in the day a teacher could own a house in
| the city and pay it off without a sweat. Nowadays, unless
| you are a doctor or software engineer or patent lawyer
| it's kind of ludicrous idea.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Take COVID - nobody wants to move, so housing supply
| is low."_
|
| I was under the impression that lots of people wanted to
| move out of the cities both because the high population
| of cities made living in them much riskier than living in
| more rural/suburban areas in terms of infection risk for
| COVID, and because with the economy hurting from COVID-
| related lockdowns living in cities (especially expensive
| ones like SF) was much less affordable.
| skystarman wrote:
| And I would bet you a week's pay the "job creators" who
| are complaining they can't find people willing to work
| for peanuts doing backbreaking miserable labor are the
| first to claim "we're full, no more immigrants!" to the
| US when there are plenty of folks in neighboring
| countries willing to work these jobs and pay taxes...
| dominotw wrote:
| > are the first to claim "we're full, no more
| immigrants!"
|
| You are wrong. businesses are primary drivers of illegal
| immigration into the country they want more immigrants
| not less.
| skystarman wrote:
| They want more immigrants, and yet they support
| Republicans which massively slashed legal immigration the
| last time they controlled the government?
| splitstud wrote:
| You are confused by the fact that both parties SAY one
| thing about immigration and DO another.
| dominotw wrote:
| The type of jobs GP is referring to are dependent on
| illegal immigrants which was not reduced under last
| admin.
| skystarman wrote:
| I'm not sure how that refutes my point that there are
| millions of people south of the border willing to work
| these backbreaking jobs for low pay if only our
| government could come up with some sensible immigration
| bill.
|
| That these same people also exploit undocumented people
| is a separate issue. Give them papers and you'll have no
| problem finding jobs!
| dominotw wrote:
| > I'm not sure how that refutes my point
|
| I am refuting your point that people complaining about
| labor shortages shouldn't be voting republican. Which
| doesn't make sense because these ppl want
|
| 1. low regulation, taxes and lax labor laws.
|
| 2. availability of immigrants.
|
| GOP provides both of these. Why would they care if ppl
| working for them are illegal or on h2 visa.
|
| > Give them papers and you'll have no problem finding
| jobs!
|
| Trump admin increased h2 visas despite what you are
| claiming. We had the highest number of h2 visas allocated
| under Trump and Bush and lowest under Obama admin. Obama
| slashed these visas by half from bush era. Most of the
| resistance to seasonal visas comes from democrat voting
| unions who lobby against these visas. They lobbied obama
| govt to slash those visas under the guise of protecting
| their local union memebers.
|
| https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/biden-
| agenc...
|
| Check these numbers for yourself here
|
| https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/FY0
| 8-A...
|
| https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Ann
| ual...
|
| https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Ann
| ual...
| skystarman wrote:
| Trump increased h2 and then banned them after Covid so he
| could demagogue about brown people spreading disease.
|
| Seems an important fact that's left out here!
|
| https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/president-trump-
| extends-ba...
|
| But yes your larger point that Republicans are fine with
| migrants they can exploit for a few years as long as they
| can make sure they "go back to their country" is well
| taken!
| dominotw wrote:
| > But yes your larger point that Republicans are fine
| with migrants they can exploit for a few years as long as
| they can make sure they "go back to their country" is
| well taken!
|
| Stupid comment by you, I did not make any such "larger
| point". My comment is merely contradicting your claim
| that business ppl are voting against their self interest
| by voting GOP.
|
| I don't think you are a good faith actor here. So I won't
| bother responding to you again.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Relatively few people object to sensible immigration
| policies. What they object to is undocumented hoards of
| people flooding across the borders.
| skystarman wrote:
| Literally no Democrat in leadership has ever proposed
| "undocumented hordes of people flooding across the
| borders". And like maybe 3-4 of hundreds of elected
| democrats have ever proposed anything close to "open
| borders"
|
| This is what people whose brains have been melted by MAGA
| twitter and Fox News believe the "other side" wants.
| sneak wrote:
| The market is always a negotiation between buyers and
| sellers, naturally.
|
| I have for years always gotten emails from recruiters
| trying to hire me as an FTE for SWE jobs in nothing towns
| in flyover states at 6x less than what I charge, too.
| Those positions are similarly unfilled.
|
| People pick their best options available, usually.
|
| If they can't find/keep labor for $15/hour, that means
| the price for labor in their market is _greater_ than $15
| /hour. That's a good thing, as that's not true most
| places on this planet.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You can take a job that pays a penny an hour, but you
| can't live on a job that pays a penny an hour.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| No you can't. That would be illegal.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You can. I will glady pay you 0.01 an hour. I won't hire
| you as an employee but we'll sign a contract for a fix
| amount.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > My news this week is full of stories of employers who
| cannot find enough labor.
|
| If someone said this about employment in software dev
| there'd be a thousand comments about how there isn't a
| shortage of labor, just of labor at the price point
| businesses want to pay.
| justinator wrote:
| There's a difference though. The news stories you're
| reading are about employees that are offering pay that's
| at a similar rate as unemployment benefits.
|
| Workers are not OK working on slave wages that these
| employees want to pay them.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This is true for almost all labor "shortages" when there
| is anything less than full employment. If you struggle to
| find workers at a given wage, you're not paying enough.
| It's not like the world is out of people.
| [deleted]
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I felt bad for him in the moment when he talked about being
| judged for being a senior and doing a "menial" job. Being a
| delivery driver is certainly not a high status job but I think
| it's a reminder not to allow ourselves to look down on any
| particular role in society. We need all these types of work for
| the gears to keep turning.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" We need all these types of work for the gears to keep
| turning."_
|
| Ok, we can all agree that until a high level of automation is
| achieved, such jobs are necessary.
|
| But how many of the people defending the need for such jobs
| would actually want to do them?
|
| Usually they're happy to let other people do them, but would
| balk at doing them themselves.
|
| This is especially true for "dirty" or "unsavory" jobs such
| as garbageperson, exterminator, food processing /
| slaughterhouse worker, etc.
|
| People are usually happy to hire such people or consume their
| products, and talk about how essential they are, but would
| never want to be one themselves.
|
| On top of that, they'd usually look down on people with these
| jobs and never dream of associating with them or inviting
| them to their parties.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| It's not an issue of "looking down" though. We absolutely
| need these jobs (some of them anyway, we don't really _need_
| restaurants for example). That 's all the more reason to
| ensure that they are _sustainable_. We need rules so that
| people are paid well, working in safe conditions, not being
| overworked, etc. As a society we need to ensure that people
| doing vital stuff like delivery are protected and taken care
| of, for our sake as well as theirs. Post-Covid, Amazon has
| essentially become a core part of US infrastructure, as much
| or moreso than the USPS.
|
| And of course, all of this is even more important for the
| reason the article highlights: These are the jobs people end
| up in now. In a country with a vanishing middle class and
| terrible social safety nets for seniors, increasingly large
| numbers of people end up here. Not just criminals, those who
| aren't especially bright or those who are a bit unlucky, but
| good, capable ordinary people have nowhere else to go now. If
| we're all going to be living here now, we need to start
| cleaning the place up.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| When I worked at a grocery store I reflected on how the
| cleaner who came every night was one of the more important
| workers we had.
|
| After all, who'd want to shop groceries at a dirty place when
| there's a nice, clean place just a bit down the road?
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| Amazon treats their workers like shit. Nearly all low-wage (and
| yes, Amazon is still "low-wage" given the work involved)
| employers do. In Amazon's case they then hire armies of
| corporate apologists to swarm social media and astroturf any
| time anyone tries to talk about the shitty way workers are
| treated. All of this is well established fact at this point.
|
| I'm glad the author is doing well. But these are not good jobs.
| They are not stable, sustainable, safe or high paid enough. A
| person could have, presumably, led a pretty good life as a
| writer for a national magazine like SI. It would not destroy
| them physically. It would probably not destroy them mentally.
| They would not be forced to carefully regiment their bathroom
| breaks, or pee in bottles. They would not be forced to work in
| stifling hot warehouses. They would not be forced to compete
| with robots and automated processes and suffer when they
| inevitably failed to be as fast. Writing for SI is (was) a
| _job_. Working for Amazon is exploitation. If you can 't see
| the difference, you either haven't taken the time to read about
| what Amazon jobs are like, or you're arguing in bad faith,
| possibly because Amazon is paying you to do so.
| jozzy-james wrote:
| I worked at a UPS hub before Amazon was much of a thing, and
| I can say that what you're describing is nothing new or
| specific to Amazon. Logistics companies, especially in the
| warehouse/sorting areas, are abjectly horrid to work for.
|
| edit: and that was a union gig.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| There's a good book on such jobs called _" Nickel and
| Dimed"_[1] by Barbara Ehrenreich, who went "undercover" and
| worked a bunch of such low-paid jobs.
|
| A quote from the book:
|
| _" When someone works for less pay than she can live on ...
| she has made a great sacrifice for you ... The "working poor"
| ... are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.
| They neglect their own children so that the children of
| others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so
| that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure
| privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices
| high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an
| anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone."_
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed
| petey283 wrote:
| This section resonated with me too. I can learn a lot about how
| to have an honest yet positive appraisal of my circumstances
| from Austin.
| edgarvaldes wrote:
| I feel some Snow Crash vibe in there.
| chris_wot wrote:
| I did customer service for an energy company. At the time they
| paid well! It wasn't IT, but it taught me a few things. When I
| was able to do a stint in the hardship division for a few
| months, it showed me a side of society I hadn't seen before.
| ghaff wrote:
| Journalism has become such a tough field. I know a number of
| people who do OK in it. But I know a whole lot more who do
| writing-related stuff for companies that sell products.
| tracer4201 wrote:
| How can we fix that? Many of my family members and friends have
| little to no interest in reading or learning, although they do
| have strong opinions on just about every topic.
|
| In my mind, demand for journalism and quality journalism is
| going to be difficult when folks don't want or don't care to
| read. They have enough things trying to grab their attention
| that provide an instant gratification -- whereas journalism or
| reading some well researched or written article requires mental
| effort and investment and almost an appreciation. I personally
| didn't appreciate good journalism or writers until I tried
| writing (mostly technical documents).
|
| I learned two things quickly. Not only did I need to know the
| subject matter but I needed to convey it in some form that made
| sense, didn't just lead to unrelated questions that derail what
| I'm trying to achieve, and didn't put the reader to sleep. This
| is a hard problem, in my opinion.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I think the point of maximum leverage is making it easier to
| support good journalism via tools that don't have a
| corruptible middleman. It's impossible to support truly
| independent journalists via platforms like Patreon when those
| platforms are in bed with institutions like Vice, anyone who
| is truly independent and covering dangerous stories is
| subject to being memory-holed. But the desire to directly
| support real journalism is there, I think it just needs a
| robust payment system which is also robust to corruption in
| its own organization.
| ghaff wrote:
| >How can we fix that?
|
| There are a great many people who would like to know the
| answer to that question but, for the most part, almost no one
| has. (Almost because there are a few global brands,
| especially those that provide financial reporting, that are
| doing OK but most aren't.
|
| There are a lot of reasons, not least of all that the
| Internet broke the newspaper bundle that forced people
| advertising in the classifieds for roommates or the local car
| dealership advertising a sale to effectively subsidize the
| paper's prestige foreign bureaus and investigative journalism
| because where else were they going to advertise?
|
| Plus, you don't need a subscription to SI any longer to keep
| up with whatever is going on in the world of sports.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" How can we fix that? ... demand for journalism and quality
| journalism is going to be difficult when folks don't want or
| don't care to read."_
|
| The education system needs to be radically reformed to teach
| kids to value reading, knowledge, and learning for its own
| sake and not just to pass tests and get in to schools that
| will get them high paying jobs. Critical reading and thinking
| skills also need to be taught more effectively.
|
| Unfortunately, such reform is difficult to undertake in a
| society which mostly doesn't value any of that, and when
| politicians consider critical thinking among their voters to
| be detrimental to their own interests.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| I agree. Its not in decision makers interest to fix
| education. It's a lot of work and elections won't wait for
| you to finish. A crap education might even be politically
| expedient - and I'm sure politicians have been campaigning
| to fix it for over 5 decades at this point.
| tryonenow wrote:
| The presumption that the average person is interested in
| learning, or can be taught to be interested in learning,
| especially regarding difficult subjects like science and
| math, is completely false. The average person is
| fundamentally incompetent and lazy, and that's the danger
| of excessively optimistic and unrealistically empowering
| western culture - you end up with an army of ignoramuses
| who drastically overestimate their knowledge and abilities,
| and simultaneously as a consequence become less able to
| recognize competence or it's value in, for example,
| politicians or authority figures. I think this is one of
| the major accelerants in the decay of western society, at
| least in the US.
| eplanit wrote:
| Meh -- they've done themselves such harm in recent years by
| embracing activism and deliberate bias that it's hard for me to
| feel too bad for the industry.
|
| That said, I'll applaud whichever journalists are brave enough
| to start pushing their industry/art back towards objectivity
| and diversity of perspective.
| usbline wrote:
| Faux-objective journalism is such a soulless drag. Everyone
| has biases, attempting to hide them is just gutless.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Faux-objective journalism is such a soulless drag.
| Everyone has biases, attempting to hide them is just
| gutless._
|
| If doctors just prescribed whatever gave the bigger
| commission from drug companies, would you ever trust a
| doctor?
| usbline wrote:
| I wasn't aware that journalists prescribed medicine.
| Don't be disingenuous!
| goatinaboat wrote:
| It's called an analogy, it's illustrating a situation
| where a professional's interests are misaligned with the
| users of their services.
| usbline wrote:
| It's not a very good analogy!
| moate wrote:
| I mean...many of them do? At least in America, that's a
| thing. Now it might not be the ONLY factor (I don't
| believe most MDs are out here prescribing things that
| patients wouldn't find beneficial) but it plays into
| their equation. And occasionally we do hear stories about
| pill farms...
| totalZero wrote:
| Telling the truth for a living may be a drag, but playing
| on the readers' emotions and biases for ad traffic revenue
| seems far more soulless by comparison.
| chmod600 wrote:
| The presence of bias in an individual jounalist as a human
| is expected. But being a professional means having some
| standards that boost trust in the profession overall.
|
| Clearly you wouldn't say that judges and police and
| prosecutors should just follow their biases and go after
| whoever they want or protect whoever they want.
|
| Journalists don't have any legal obligation to follow
| standards, but they do have a professional obligation.
| usbline wrote:
| Do you know where I can find these agreed upon standards
| for journalists?
| jsrcout wrote:
| Start here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethi
| cs_and_standard...
| usbline wrote:
| Ah, good. These don't appear to be legally binding at
| all. That's good news honestly!
| anchpop wrote:
| > Journalists don't have any legal obligation to follow
| standards
| usbline wrote:
| who are you quoting?
| tryonenow wrote:
| So the fact that all information is biased is an excuse to
| force your own ideological bias into every communication?
|
| This is as much of a fallacy as the common "everything is
| political" refrain. It's nothing but a dangerous
| rationalization of tribalism which breeds distrust of
| institutions and disenfranchises political minorities when
| the entire establishment leans in a particular direction
| and simultaneously determines the set of "acceptable" or
| "authoritative" sources. News media, "fact checkers",
| Wikipedia editors, etc. are implicitly colluding and the
| results are already manifesting with long term disastrous
| cultural and political consequences that we are yet to
| fully witness. There is no excuse for the hyper
| polarization of modern media, it is a disservice to
| everyone, and we need to un-normalize the kind of insidious
| activist journalism that has infested all of our major
| publications, though the system is self reinforcing at this
| point.
| nmz wrote:
| Weird thing to say for a dying industry that's basically
| whoring itself for the highest bidder. You want objectivity
| and unbias? Those are not cheap, and until the whole
| journalism industry is fixed, you're going to keep getting
| what we have.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Meh -- they've done themselves such harm in recent years by
| embracing activism and deliberate bias that it's hard for me
| to feel too bad for the industry.
|
| Journalism's financial problems predate "recent years," and
| perhaps those problems have actually lead to or exacerbated
| the problems you're complaining about. E.g. investigative
| journalism is hard, time-consuming, and expensive; an
| underfunded, short-staffed newspaper may turn to other,
| cheaper things to fill its pages and attract readers.
| jzb wrote:
| This is a particularly naive viewpoint on journalism / the
| publishing industry. Journalists may be the face of the
| industry, but they're not the primary deciders. They don't
| control the business decisions, or indeed many of the
| individual editorial decisions.
|
| Just like one little nugget of anecdata. I used to work at a
| radio station in a small market that was 1/3 stations run out
| of the same building by the same owner, an older conservative
| woman who inherited the business. One station was all-talk
| (AM) one was country (FM) and the other was classic rock
| (FM).
|
| All. Three. Stations. Had to carry Rush Limbaugh over the
| objections of FM program managers. Why? Because Alvina liked
| Rush. She wanted to blanket the airwaves with his show. And
| she didn't have to deal with any competition in the little
| corner of the world where the stations aired. People don't
| see those decisions, though.
|
| Granted this is a particular egregious example, but by and
| large TV/radio/cable/etc. programming is at a macro level
| dictated by upper echelons of the business, not by the front-
| line reporters or editors.
|
| Print publishing has been gutted over the past 20+ years by a
| lot of factors. (Radio even longer, see Clear Channel, et
| al.)
|
| Consolidation. A move from print publishing to web publishing
| that has required more and more intrusive tracking and
| obsession with clicks -- not quality, just "how many page
| views?" and then "how many uniques?" or whatever the metric
| du jour happens to be. I've been on the publishing side and
| corporate side, and I've never once heard a company factor
| quality of content into its advertising decisions. Which
| means it's a race to the bottom -- not in terms of bias, but
| in terms of "what gets eyeballs?"
|
| People love to bitch about the quality of journalism, etc.
| but yet... they keep consuming it. They certainly don't want
| to _pay_ for good journalism. Not as individuals, not with
| corporate marketing dollars. If an ad buyer can get 10x the
| clicks and leads with crap than they can get with well-
| reasoned and well-researched content? They 'll buy crap every
| time. And blame the journalists/press/publications for the
| quality and then do it all over again.
|
| Not to mention the effects of Google and Facebook, which are
| hard to understate.
|
| Google has done a huge number on publications that initially
| managed to navigate the print -> online model. Its dominance
| on online ads has done a lot to harm publications, and not
| only monetarily. Facebook has trained people to expect their
| information funneled through their feeds and has inserted
| itself between the audience and publications. Traffic that
| used to come directly to the publication now funnels through
| Facebook -- or never actually arrives at the publication at
| all. Hard to make a buck that way.
|
| This isn't even getting into consolidation of local
| newspapers by conglomerates and private equity[1].
|
| If front-line journalists are biased one way, I assure you
| the upper management through ownership are biased in the
| other direction by and large, excepting (perhaps) some social
| issues where bean-counters have seen that the winds have
| changed and it's more profitable to be visibly progressive
| vs. visibly conservative.
|
| I went corporate a number of years ago because the writing
| was on the wall. If I'd stayed in publishing as a freelancer
| / writer / editor it would be years of paddling faster to
| make the same money. Companies didn't give two shits about
| quality, just shove something out the door that would play on
| social and/or SEO. If you think the people doing the work are
| deciding to embrace that, you're sorely mistaken.
|
| [1] https://prospect.org/health/saving-free-press-private-
| equity...
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Embracing activism isn't necessarily a shooting oneself in
| the foot, it can be a way of trying to ensure greater
| profitability. A case in point is _The Guardian_ which took a
| huge turn in the last decade ago from traditional British
| working-class themes to trans issues and the specific kind of
| race debates originating from the US. By doing so, the
| newspaper could, firstly, win the allegiance of self-
| identified "woke" readers (who are often affluent and thus a
| target for advertisers). But even for other readers, culture-
| war-related reporting can get people all fired up and thus
| generate views and ad impressions.
| fossuser wrote:
| Sure and that's why they do it, but it's feels like cutting
| off your nose to spite your face.
|
| I think the future will mostly be the best writers being
| directly supported by people interested in their beat.
|
| I'm not sure how generic media orgs will continue on, but
| I'd expect the quality to continue to degrade.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I pay for the Guardian mostly because it's the only paper I
| know that covers global stories and gives climate breakdown
| anything resembling the degree of coverage it deserves. For
| a while I subscribed to The Times, but felt dirty
| supporting a Murdoch-owned paper.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I know that many of us here don't like what labor unions have
| become in the 21st century. But they do need some labor
| representation that can ensure the trucks used by drivers have
| working lights, mirrors, and safe tires, and that the company
| negotiates use of restrooms around the city. Maybe just a "safety
| only" union that only deals with safety issues?
| agumonkey wrote:
| My foray into 'blue collar' society (in large urban areas at
| least) taught me this clear and wide: most of it is run by
| vultures. The simplest equipment is optional, safety equipment
| is optional, hygiene is optional. Inhumane production rates are
| mandatory. Companies will scam you as much as the first
| stranger on an undeclared gig.
|
| It's adversarial relationships from top to bottom. People are
| clueless, and don't want to make things better. Things rot as
| long as people involved are accepting, or forced to accept, the
| situation. Actually one gig I did was newspaper delivery and
| it's clear that the web took a lot of the money from them and
| they're barely surviving at the cost of employees.
|
| Another factor, systems struggle accelerate when out of the
| mean, the lower the company is the lower the work life is, the
| worse the employees they can get is .. less means, less
| profits, more work.
| ganafagol wrote:
| A forum mostly frequented by us overpaid workers doing little-
| more-than-if-any work that society actually needs is not the
| right place to discuss unions. Of course people in our
| industry, no matter devs or ops or founders or "founders",
| despise unions as they get in their way with demands of some
| basic workers rights. But there are industries where unions are
| desperately needed to keep workers sane, safe and overall
| dignified. With little first hand experience it's just too easy
| to dismiss that.
| [deleted]
| elite_hackers3 wrote:
| Speak for yourself. I write java scripts for Facebook. I'm
| EXTREMELY valuable to society and deserve every penny I get.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Union shops like UPS have the exact same issues as Amazon or
| FedEx (including urine bottles).
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Not that I dislike your idea or unions at large, but mission
| creep will be inevitable: limiting hours and mandating benefits
| to ensure physical and mental health of the drivers will be
| linked to safety, and the whole host of benefits for worker
| wellness in the name of safety will follow. What you are asking
| for is what OSHA is for.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Labor unions work when a firm is earning economic rents, and
| there is a political struggle over who gets those rents. For
| example the auto-industry prior to the invasion by Japanese
| imports.
|
| The issue is that when there are no economic rents, then labor
| unions no longer work and indeed become an added cost. A lot of
| people don't seem to understand that, neither do they
| understand that economic rents are something that dissipates
| over time as new entrants come in with cheaper products.
| Especially in the world of free trade where you are competing
| with China and other low cost countries (in China labor unions
| are controlled by the state and starting your own is illegal).
|
| But the trouble with journalism is not that fat cat firms are
| swimming in loads of cash and only if workers could orgnanize
| and demand a bigger slice of the pot they could get that. So
| the job security that a union job can provide an individual in
| one industry is not generalizable to a dying industry where
| companies are going bankrupt and need to cut costs as their
| revenues shrink.
|
| But, you object, what about places like Germany where basically
| every firm is unionized? Well, unions in Germany are very
| different. Germany didn't even have a minimum wage until
| recently. None. And pay in Germany is lower. So you can't look
| at, say, what an UAW worker or Teamster in the US makes and
| then think that's what a typical worker in Germany is making
| because they are all unionized. So again we have this
| generalizability problem, where the _real_ sources of high
| income for workers are not unions but increasing return to
| scale, high productivity _jobs_. That is why tech workers make
| more than journalists. And that is why nations like Germany or
| China that want a society of high wage jobs fight to keep their
| manufacturing sector and high value add sectors, while nations
| like the US that are focused on short-term GDP growth have no
| issue selling off their high productivity jobs and shipping
| them overseas, at which point no amount of unionizing is going
| to help bring those high wage jobs back. Similarly when your
| industry is going bankrupt and shrinking, no amount of
| unionizing is going to give you the job security and good wages
| the prevoius generation of workers had in the same industry.
| This is not a problem of labor policy but industrial policy,
| and no amount of labor policy intervention is going to solve
| the industrial policy problem.
| mertd wrote:
| All of those should be a law of some form.
| missedthecue wrote:
| UPS is union and their employees urinate in bottles.
|
| I don't think unions are the magic wand that a lot of people
| assume they are
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| But it's a union-approved bottle though.
|
| It seems to me that a lot of the problem is (and will be) the
| instrumenting of jobs. The ability surveil a workforce is
| only going to go up. Everyone, medical techs, cashiers,
| plumbers, non-rockstar software developers, are going to end
| up with that bottle.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Source: https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-
| bottles-in...
|
| Apparently, drivers are given plenty of break times and are
| allowed bathroom breaks, but this behavior continues. I
| wonder what the economic impact of putting a portable toilet
| closet in the truck is? Each truck would have 30% less
| capacity? Would employees get less breaks then?
| mindslight wrote:
| While "urinating in bottles" sounds like some sort of
| standard by which to indict, if you tried it you would find
| it's quite convenient. I'd guess that it's far down on the
| list of drivers' actual concerns.
|
| What are you proposing should replace this? Trips back to the
| depot would be terribly inefficient. Portapotties in trucks
| would be just fancier bottles. And time to visit public
| restrooms would be better spent taking an actual break and
| then still using the bottle.
| yibg wrote:
| I assume this is more true for men than women.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Yeah, that's what I was wondering : is this why I haven't
| seen a single delivery gal in my life ? ( Unlike trucker
| women.)
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > It's been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a
| Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III)
|
| This is what assimilation looks like. Someone with an Irish name
| calling themselves Anglo-Saxon. It's like a Hispanic person
| calling themselves Latinx, proof that they have lost all organic
| connection to the culture of their ancestors.
| randompwd wrote:
| 1 man => 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents. He
| could just be 1/16 Irish and 15/16 English.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I'm majority Anglo (like, actually from England), but I have a
| Spanish last name from one of my grandparents, who in turn is a
| patrilineal native American whose family adopted Spanish naming
| some time in the distant unremembered past. The author's
| terminology could easily be correct in reference to himself,
| irrespective of his name.
|
| That said, I question the relevancy of this comment to the
| story.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| Someone trying to well-actually a writer's self-proclaimed
| ethnic identity is hackernews af though you have to admit.
| deadite wrote:
| Even the tech stuff posted on HN has a political or some
| sort of a ranty slant to it that it's gotten so damn
| tiresome. I wish we had a proper HN without any of the
| political, fiscal, housing, nutrition/dietary, etc
| bullshit. Just post solid articles on tech and startups.
| Preferably actionable ones so it's not just a comment
| minefield of circlejerking from people who have an opinion
| but have zero idea what they are talking about. Take that
| shit elsewhere.
| fortran77 wrote:
| That's why there's /r/LOLHackerNews on reddit!
| [deleted]
| edoceo wrote:
| and the top on that sub is pointing to this thread -
| they're mad at Murph cause the name is Irish but he's an
| Anglo-Saxon? what even is that?
| jcranmer wrote:
| > native American whose family adopted Spanish naming some
| time in the distant unremembered past
|
| I'm curious: what kind of Native Americans were they that
| would willingly adopt Spanish names as indigenous, and not
| mestizo, peoples, especially given that Spanish contact was
| pretty violent across most of North America?
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the details, sorry. Just repeating
| what I've been told by my dad. Granddad never really
| volunteered much demographic info about his family and, for
| better or worse, it is not something I interrogated too
| deeply. It doesn't impact me directly all that much as I am
| for all intents and purposes white -- that's what I answer
| on e.g. college applications or government forms, and it's
| what anyone would think looking at me. The only exception
| is my name.
| xwdv wrote:
| The damning thing about Latinx though is how forcefully it was
| hoisted onto Hispanics by whites who knew little to nothing
| about their cultures. They simply saw an opportunity to make
| latinos conform to their world views and now identifying
| yourself as latinx signals that you are one of those fully
| assimilated hispanics that has bought into white culture, and
| who can be expected to be agreeable on certain topics without
| embarrassing yourself or other whites. So pervasive this has
| become, that merely identifying yourself as Latino or Latina
| instead of Latinx can be seen as a sort of _statement_ that can
| send out the "wrong vibes".
| lazyant wrote:
| Seems convoluted and unfair to condemn all people using a
| term for what you think are their reasons. Simpler
| explanation is that "Latinx" doesn't carry a gender so it's
| more inclusive than "Latinos" and shorter than "Latinas and
| Latinos". I'm not saying it was a good idea but I don't get
| all the negativity towards it; at worst seems a misguided
| attempt by well-intentioned people, big deal, just let people
| call themselves whatever they want and let words and people
| evolve (see "African-Americans" and "Blacks").
| xwdv wrote:
| The negativity is because Latinos did not call themselves
| Latinx, white people called them that because they didn't
| understand and were intimidated by gendered languages,
| seeing them as a threat to "inclusivity" rather than just a
| different way of speaking. So then any "progressive
| thinking" Latino was forced to adopt the term for
| themselves as a result of peer pressure to fit in.
|
| I know I'm being hit with downvotes to my name the more I
| try to explain this but I'd rather speak the truth and be
| punished than stay quiet and take it to the grave.
| sunshineforever wrote:
| I am transgender and I feel similarly about the language
| that has been adopted by our community in recent years.
| The difference is that the terminology seems to have
| originated from the trans community itself. But there are
| many modern correct terms that I don't feel comfortable
| using for myself but if I don't use them I am instantly
| seen as regressive. It's even so bad that one of the
| terms I used to enjoy casually calling myself among
| friends is now regarded as an outright slur and saying it
| is akin to cursing in a problematic manner. And yet it's
| something that I used to enjoy saying with no ill intent
| or bad feelings whatsoever. It's a sad situation. When I
| use the socially correct terms I feel as though I'm being
| forced to speak a certain way and it doesn't feel
| empowering, in fact it makes me feel vulnerable in a way
| that I don't necessarily want to be with every stranger
| that I come across.
| bob33212 wrote:
| I don't blame them. If you are offered an executive role at a
| successful company because you can help with PR, it may be
| good for your career. I don't see how that is any different
| than someone with an climate science degree joining a company
| to help them "go green". Obviously the role exists partially
| for PR, but there may still be positive things you can do.
| xwdv wrote:
| Nothing good comes from a culture that perpetuates
| whitewashing other cultures just to please whites and their
| visions of an ideal minority.
| cbozeman wrote:
| You're being downvoted, but I completely agree.
|
| The whole "woke" / "political correctness" movement is
| mostly bored white people.
|
| This is the result of a group of people with no real
| major battles left to fight. You make up an enemy to give
| your life purpose.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Or to make money, when you don't have anything real to
| offer. And in some cases it has clearly reached level of
| blackmail.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Dr. King explains
| this far better that I can.
| https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/10/21/arc-
| mor....
| geofft wrote:
| Well... the culture of your ancestors can't do anything for (or
| against) you in the present day. The so-called Anglo-Saxons
| were sometimes Anglo, sometimes Saxons, and in many cases
| neither - e.g., the Normans were a separate culture and a
| separate people until they invaded and essentially reverse-
| assimilated. That whole process is very much organic;
| preserving an identity to specific ancestors long dead, when
| the culture that defines you has changed, would not be.
| tootie wrote:
| Who cares though. I was raised Jewish but don't practice
| anymore. Theoretically there's a line if ancestors going back
| 3000 years to pass down beliefs and practices to me. But they
| aren't actually valuable so I don't want them. Sunk cost.
|
| My wife's ancestors are likely genetically pure going back many
| centuries from the other side of the world. Her mother's family
| were nobility before they came to America. Our kids are a thing
| that probably didn't exist at all prior to the 20th century and
| they're fantastic. And they know their culture to be New
| Yorkers.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| How do you "lose all organic connection to the culture of your
| ancestors" simply by calling yourself Latinx? You're surely not
| suggesting they abandon the traditions, holidays, food, music,
| clothing, dancing, and all of the rest of their cultural
| connection, simply because of one label?
|
| I am an Irish-American who plays the music, hates the food, but
| if I wanted to call myself of "European" ancestry, that
| wouldn't abandon all of my musical culture, it may just be a
| trendy label in the zeitgeist.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > How do you "lose all organic connection to the culture of
| your ancestors" simply by
|
| I don't think there is such a thing as losing the culture but
| a development into a different direction after the fork
| (migration).
|
| A classic identity problem of the Indian diaspora or the
| Turkish immigrants in Germany or the Irish in Boston, or the
| Italian in NY is that they have retained many of the
| traditional values that were popular at the time in their
| countries before they left. But their old countries have
| moved on in every sense. These tribes then become more
| conservative because they feel like they have to defend their
| values from outside groups and from lack of new values that
| they can tie to their old labels. But what they "defend" no
| longer reflects the reality back in the old country.
|
| This leads to some strange (but IMO understandable behaviors)
| where the old is much more idealized than what their peers do
| back in the old country. E.g.:
|
| - Turkish AKP voters in Germany who only remember all the
| prosperity Erdogan has brought to an economically failing
| Turkey. - The 3rd or 4th gen Italians in the US are hardly
| Italians in todays sense of Italy (even their food is laughed
| at back in their own country. - Eventually the culture
| changes so much that it has no parallel to what it used to
| be.
|
| That is neither good nor bad IMO it just is a natural
| progression and adaption to their new environment. Shedding
| the old values and stories people tell themselves takes not
| years but generations. The odd thing about the US is that
| despite its many influences from all around the world it is
| still a country where many groups hold on to what they think
| are their roots while actually it's a constant state of
| change and no longer exists.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| He didn't call himself European, or white, utterly anodyne
| words. He called his name Anglo-Saxon. That you didn't
| immediately understand the difference shows that you _don't
| get it_. Which is fine. If you're not Irish and don't claim
| to be that's cool. You do you. Americans do their American
| thing, Irish people do their Irish thing and we all happily
| exchange cultures and products and talk shit about each other
| as humans are wont to do.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| Knowingly or not it's not hard to take the point which is
| that "Anglo-Saxon" has lost any meaning beyond fair skinned
| at this point for the vast majority of people. Anyone
| reading the source knew what the author meant even those
| who were knew and were annoyed by the incorrectness.
|
| The comparison to "latinx" is apt though - I should see it
| as a flag but instead it's like nails on a chalkboard
| because it's everything I don't like about language
| policing.
| username90 wrote:
| > "Anglo-Saxon" has lost any meaning beyond fair skinned
| at this point for the vast majority of people.
|
| Maybe in USA, I don't know anyone who uses it like that.
| isomorph wrote:
| Please can you explain more? I'm interested
| deviantfero wrote:
| On the hispanic comment, Spanish is a naturally gendered
| language, you cannot form a sentence without giving gender to
| at least the subject, for example "la doctora toma el cafe
| por la manana" would translate to "the (female) doctor drinks
| (male) coffee by the (female) morning" because English is a
| mostly gender neutral language you would loose all gender
| information by literally translating that sentence.
|
| Now if we take the gender out of every word in that sentence
| it would look something like "lx doctorx toma (we loose el,
| here) cafe por lx manana", el wasn't necessary in the
| sentence to beging with, so that's fine, but the rest of the
| sentence becomes pretty hard to read to anyone that speaks
| Spanish, there's no practical way of pronouncing that unless
| you use the English pronunciation of the letter x.
|
| To add more depth to this, in spanish to give a gender
| neutral statement, you default to the male version of the
| noun, for example, for a group that has boys and girls, you
| would just refer to them as "los ninos", people feel this
| could be dismissive of girls, if there is at least one boy in
| a group of girls you'd say "los ninos" and depending of the
| context it is implied that the group has both girls and boys,
| so in some latin american governments they are required by
| etiquette to form sentences like "las ninas y los ninos"
| instead of just "los ninos" this is called around here
| "inclusive language" but even then most Spanish speaking
| people think that is impractical and unnecessary.
|
| That said, the latinx movement is kind of relevant in
| Argentina IIRC, but in most other latin american countries
| the idea will be met with a lot of resistance and rejection.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > That said, the latinx movement is kind of relevant in
| Argentina IIRC, but in most other latin american countries
| the idea will be met with a lot of resistance and
| rejection.
|
| I would go even further than that. The US-centric idea of
| _Latino_ as a unified identity (let alone with the _x_ ),
| often based on North-American stereotypes of Mexican and
| Caribbean cultures, can be off-putting in Latin American
| countries. As an example, here's the comedy-rock song _<<No
| Somos Latinos>>_ (<<We are not Latinos>>) from Uruguayan
| band _El Cuarteto de Nos_ :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onQU3sp8_Jk
| deviantfero wrote:
| I would argue about that, I'm salvadoran, never been to
| the states and I would gladly say I'm latino, we even
| have an expression when we go abroad, "I miss the latino
| heat" which means that we miss the warm weather and
| friendly disposition of people in latin american
| countries, it's a weird phenomenon that you can't
| experience if you're not from a Spanish speaking country
| and have not gone abroad.
|
| Generally speaking when you're in your country you'll
| sometimes have strong opinions about your neighbouring
| countries, Hondurans are this, Guatemalans are that, but
| when you're outside your country and you run into other
| latin american people, in my experience it was something
| really special we would greet each other as if we were
| long time friends, I think there's something more to it
| than language, I think most latin american people can
| relate to a certain kind of burden that comes with living
| in a latin american country, those burdens and the
| problems our societies have are pretty similar all around
| and I think when we meet in foreign countries we
| immediately relate in the way we perceive our societies
| and the things we've lived through.
|
| Just as an anecdote, I went to Paris for a vacation and I
| went into a Five guys restaurant, usually you have to pay
| for a soda refill, but there was a dominican guy who was
| a waiter and he heard me and my SO speaking Spanish and
| he immediately smiled and came over and we had a nice
| conversation about our countries, and he let me refill
| our sodas for free, it's really nice and I don't know if
| other regions have something like this
| mLuby wrote:
| Anyone know how the unusual consonant x was chosen to
| replace a and o rather than another vowel (like e)?
|
| To my untrained ear, les neen-yes sounds more in line with
| los neen-yos and las neen-yes than lecks neen-yecks (if
| that's how you'd pronounce it).
| bnjms wrote:
| It likely came about in written form then was moved to
| speech.
|
| I'm in agreement with you that e is the natural neutral
| replacement letter. But I don't think this is a serious
| attempt to change the language so much as a serious
| attempt to signal group membership.
| deviantfero wrote:
| Because Spanish speaking people did not come up with the
| concept and people that came up with the concept were
| maybe not that familiar with spanish pronunciation or
| weren't concerned about it at all, I've heard that this
| originated strangely enough in Portugal but was made
| popular by some people in the US, I might be wrong on
| that one though.
| lodi wrote:
| It's just 'x' as in the mathematical variable 'x' for
| something unknown, e.g. suppose a train is traveling at
| 'x' km/h... They use "latinx" to abstract over
| "latino/latina". Of course this makes zero actual sense
| in Spanish.
| mc32 wrote:
| The term Latinx is a political construct and for the most
| part irrelevant to most people from Latin America or of
| Latin American ancestry.
|
| It's mostly used for political purposes in the US by non
| Latin American people as well as a few Latin Americans in
| the political sphere because it's a useful political tool
| for the time being.
| analyte123 wrote:
| "Latinx" is basically an "embrace, extend, extinguish"
| attempt of Latin American ethnicity in my view. It offers
| what appears to be acceptance, but only within a
| progressive Anglo-American framework with a bunch of extra
| signifiers on top. At the end you have English language
| thinkpieces about taco authenticity, and assimilation into
| establishment politics and culture.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Even in English, he/his was considered gender-neutral in
| context. It's only in the last few years that a plural
| "they" has confusingly taken its place. I still get tripped
| up when I see singular "they." I have to stop and re-read
| the sentence because I think I missed something.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Lol singular they is literally older than singular you
| but go off.
| umanwizard wrote:
| This is all true but I don't think it was the main point GP
| was making.
|
| Most "Latino" people are of at least part Native American
| or African ancestry; whereas "Latin" refers originally to
| speakers of Romance languages. Thus most (of course not
| all) "Latinos" who call themselves that are identifying
| with the subset of their ancestors who enslaved and
| conquered the others.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| The Native Americans were also well-known enslavers. Look
| up who the Cherokee took with them on their trail of
| tears.
|
| Please don't deny their agency.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Yes there were many Native American enslavers and
| conquerers. Doing evil isn't exclusive to white people
| and it would be absurd to suggest that it is. But I don't
| see how that's related to my comment.
| bluedino wrote:
| As a Mexican-American I have had to explain the term
| 'Latinx' to native Mexicans as well as other Hispanics and
| they all just kind of shake their heads.
| type0 wrote:
| I heard that some people consider this to be an insult,
| that's the main reason not to use this word.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Murphy is the Anglicized form of an Irish name, O Murchu. One
| of the author's paternal line ancestors came from Ireland, a
| land conquered and colonized by the English, i.e. the Anglo-
| Saxons. It would be one thing to say he had a honky ass white
| name, a cracker name, that would be in the American says
| American thing, who cares category. But to identify as Anglo-
| Saxon, an ethnic category!?! Not terribly surprising given
| the use of that most American of making customs, the
| numeral[1], but still. In much the same way as someone with
| Irish ancestry calling themselves Anglo fucking Saxon tells
| you something about their attachment to any Irish ancestry
| you learn something about anyone with ancestors who spoke
| Spanish if they self-identify as Latinx. You learn that they
| don't care about the Spanish language, at all. And you learn
| that they use an ephitet invented by Anglos, for use by
| people who speak English
|
| > only 23% of U.S. adults who self-identify as Hispanic or
| Latino have heard of the term Latinx, and just 3% say they
| use it to describe themselves, according to a nationally
| representative, bilingual survey of U.S. Hispanic adults
| conducted in December 2019 by Pew Research Center.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-
| in...
|
| [1] If you are not a monarch giving yourself a numeral is
| pretentious.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| I feel you shouldn't punish people for the name they were
| given by their parents. Changing your name is a big
| existential act, which I don't think it's reasonable to
| expect. If you've had it drummed into you from birth that
| you are III then it's hard to escape. That person's views
| about what their name represents are their own though and
| can be challenged.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Americans do their American thing. That's cool. I do my
| Irish thing and point out that a Murphy calling himself
| an Anglo-Saxon is utterly assimilated. Also cool.
| Americans pointing out that Irish and British people
| drink way more than Americans, and imbibe other narcotics
| at rates not normally seen outside Cuban-American
| locales. That's cool. We can all notice that other people
| are different and get along, or not.
| clairity wrote:
| > "Changing your name is a big existential act..."
|
| that's mostly cultural. in some cultures (e.g., asian
| ones), it's normal to have multiple names for different
| levels of familiarity, and to adopt new names as
| circumstances dictate.
|
| with that said, criticizing (someone else's) naming
| choices is a wholly aesthetic opinion and should be
| disregarded (perhaps politely).
| cafard wrote:
| An Irishman of the hundred years centered on 1900 would have
| responded with amusement or indignation at being called
| "Anglo-Saxon", a term referring originally to the peoples of
| Great Britain east of Wales and south of Scotland. The Irish
| regarded themselves rather as Celts, and ones that I had
| received bad treatment at Anglo-Saxon hands.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| And as we all know, ethnic identity is fully static and
| never changes over time, you are morally obligated to
| identity in a way that would be accepted by your ancestors.
| lmao.
| ghaff wrote:
| Assuming they are relatively pure-blooded Irish, they'd more
| accurately describe themselves as Celtic. In theory, Anglo-
| Saxon has a somewhat specific meaning (descended from the
| Angle and Saxon tribes). In practice, the term is often
| generically used for descended from northern European white
| people (as in WASP).
| [deleted]
| Grimm1 wrote:
| Generally speaking, Irish people would be of Celtic or Norman
| (Which I'll still probably get some pushback for saying.)
| ancestry. Anglo-Saxons settled the rest of the area and ever
| since there's been some type of issue between the groups. An
| Irish person describing themselves as Anglo-Saxon is entirely
| divorced from the roots of where many Irish people are
| descended, there has always been a lot of trying to erase and
| assimilate that history and culture.
|
| This is a somewhat tenuous topic too because there's a whole
| lot of history and bad blood after the times I'm speaking of
| and there's a different but similar issue currently brewing
| over there as well.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Note that no one callled them Normans before the 1800s.
| They called themselves English when they conquered Ireland.
| The Irish (Gaels) called them Saxons (Sassenach) or
| foreigners (Gall). After the conversion of the English to
| Protestantism there was a yawning chasm between the Old
| English (Catholic) and the New, but no one ever used Norman
| contemporaneously.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Note that no one callled them Normans before the 1800s
| ... no one ever used Norman contemporaneously
|
| Are you claiming that the Duchy of Normandy is a post
| 1800 ret-conned invention? You think it never actually
| existed?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| The people who invaded Ireland from England and Wales
| called themselves English.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| But the Normans are a real people going back over a
| thousand years.
| rm445 wrote:
| That can't be right. The Normans as a people played a
| major part in European history from at least the year 911
| through the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). I've never
| seen the faintest indication that they weren't still
| called Normans after leaving Normandy, by themselves and
| others, e.g when invading England and Italy.
|
| I guess you meant more that the term fell out of use in
| England at some point, and Norman-descended people in
| England called themselves English. But even so, Norman is
| still a recognisable ethnicity - norse people who settled
| in France, spread by conquest into England, Malta etc. It
| could be a useful contemporary or historical label even
| if those people at a given time called themselves
| something else.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| The people who invaded England and Italy were called
| Normans. The people who invaded Ireland called themselves
| English, and were called English by the Irish.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| A different group of Norse invaded Ireland before they
| did England IIRC (hence why Norse-Gaels is a thing).
|
| But the Normans who invaded Ireland came via Wales
| largely and were not called English until the 16th
| century
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubgaill_and_Finngaill
| barry-cotter wrote:
| The article you link to is talking about the Vikings, not
| the Normans. If you can find a primary or secondary
| source saying they called themselves anything other than
| English of be delighted to see it.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| The wiki on Normans in Ireland cites Brenden Bradshaw on
| what the Irish called them but that applied only to
| Donegal apparently.
| [deleted]
| Symbiote wrote:
| The Anglo-Saxons inhabited England, not the rest of the
| British isles. The term more-or-less corresponds to racially
| English, or culturally English.
|
| The people in Wales, Scotland and Ireland were the Celts,
| with some subdivisions (Picts etc).
|
| But it looks like both terms are more loaded in the USA [1],
| so I don't want to speculate on the intent of the comment.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons#Legacy
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > The Anglo-Saxons inhabited England, not the rest of the
| British isles. The term more-or-less corresponds to
| racially English, or culturally English.
|
| This isn't true. The Lowland Scots are no less culturally
| Anglo-Saxon than the English. They were slightly less
| successful than the English at extirpating all traces of
| Celtic culture from their homeland but it wasn't for want
| of trying.
| nborwankar wrote:
| This is so on-brand for HN - the article is about a writer now
| working as a delivery driver which is a juicy topic in itself,
| but most of the discussion is down the rabbit hole on an
| entirely tangential matter.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| If it is so tangential, why did the author of the piece
| insist to mention it, and the editor decided to keep it?
| Looks to me like they wanted to start a conversation, and you
| are making the environment here not inclusive by shutting
| down unrepresented voices.
| [deleted]
| staticman2 wrote:
| You know people typically only inheret names from male
| ancestors, right, and 50% of ancestors are female?
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Are not all white people Anglo Saxon? I don't bother to call
| myself anything other than white, Anglo Saxon, European,
| Caucasian. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. I have Irish,
| English, Italian, and post world war 2 immigrated Polish direct
| ancestors. I don't know what else to call myself nor do I
| particularly care. I don't have a strong personal sense of
| identity tied up with any of those things. They are just words
| I assume apply to me when people use them.
| klodolph wrote:
| Anglo-Saxon is a somewhat outdated term that refers to the
| Germanic people that inhabit England and Wales. Easy way to
| remember is if you take "Anglo" + "Land" you get "Anglo-
| land", which morphs into the term "England".
|
| Modern historians don't use the term Anglo-Saxon much these
| days, so it's not especially important.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > Modern historians don't use the term Anglo-Saxon much
| these days, so it's not especially important.
|
| To you. And to a bunch of people who have to live in fear
| of being canceled - a.k.a., fired for - in the case of
| historians - reminding the world of uncomfortable truths.
| klodolph wrote:
| Historians don't use the term because it's a bit
| imprecise and outdated. If you were talking about the
| "Anglo-Saxon language", you would probably say "Old
| English" instead. If you were talking about the people,
| you would probably want to make it clear whether you were
| talking about the Germanic tribes who migrated to England
| starting in the 5th century, or whether you were talking
| about the English people in the 5th-11th century, which
| also included the indigenous British population.
|
| Just as an illustration of why the term "Anglo-Saxon"
| muddles things, we have the person in the article who
| seems to think that Murphy is an Anglo-Saxon surname,
| when it is clearly Celtic in origin. I'm not doubting
| that the author is Anglo-Saxon... just pointing out that
| his suname, itself, is not.
|
| I'm not a historian, so I'm just relating the parts of
| the issue that I understand. There are articles online by
| historians that go into greater depth explaining why
| historians tend to avoid the term "Anglo-Saxon" these
| days, and why the term became so popular in the 18th and
| 19th century.
|
| Not sure what "uncomfortable truth" you are referring to.
| If you have something to say, spit it out. I also don't
| understand why someone would "fear being canceled" just
| because they used a somewhat obsolete term.
| Swizec wrote:
| Those are fighting words in Europe. We are very serious about
| our ethnicism.
|
| Akin to saying that someone from Philly might as well be from
| LA, it's all just a city. Or that the Warriors might as well
| be the New York Yankees, it's just sports.
|
| PS; this is why Italians, Irish, Polish etc weren't
| considered white until pretty late into the 1900's in USA -
| not anglo-saxon
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > this is why Italians, Irish, Polish etc weren't
| considered white until pretty late into the 1900's in USA
|
| This is not true. They were the worst sort of white, the
| worst sort of people, Catholics, but the US legal system
| went to great lengths to categorize people by racial
| category and all of the ethnic groups you named were always
| considered white.
| lazyant wrote:
| Depends on the place and time? they were going to lynch a
| black man for marrying a white woman but they got off
| since she was from Sicily and thus considered "not
| white", somewhere in the 1800s [citation needed]
| cthalupa wrote:
| Half true. Historians have written on this quite a bit,
| but this article gives a solid overview:
|
| https://theundefeated.com/features/white-immigrants-
| werent-a...
|
| At points in time, some states have had laws on the books
| that 100% differentiated between "white" people and other
| European immigrants.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| I guess that explains the downvotes. Over hear in America
| it's not fighting words, it's just my family tree.
| ipaddr wrote:
| That is nationalism. Northern French genes look like anglo-
| saxon or viking while southern France genes looks Ibarian
| or Italian. The generic pool in europe doesn't map to one
| country one set of genes usually. Some do better than
| others. At what point does someone become French
| considering it has been a melting pot for a long time?
| Swizec wrote:
| In my experience the typical perception is that you're X
| when your parents and grandparents are all X, hopefully
| also great grandparents.
|
| There is a lot more melting recently. Europe historically
| has been pretty big on cultural identity because everyone
| had/has a grudge with their neighbors for trying to
| assimilate them at the edges.
|
| Slavs for example (I'm from Slovenia) can trace or Slavic
| lineage all the way back to the 600's and the fact we
| haven't been assimilated into German or Italian despite
| being part of their countries for centuries is a point of
| pride.
|
| There is still a recognized small German minority in
| Slovenia from back in the 1300's when they tried to deal
| with the slavic problem by encouraging people to go
| settle in our area, which was part of the Holy Roman
| Empire but we of course wanted to keep it Slavic.
|
| To be fair, as late as the 1940's the germans were trying
| to germanize the slavs.
|
| Some of these grudges are very fresh and ongoing. Look at
| how the Catalonians are fighting against being called
| Spanish
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > There is a lot more melting recently.
|
| No, there really isn't. It may look like there is because
| of the post WW2 ethnic cleansing leading to more or less
| monoethnic monolinguistic nation states but the Austro-
| Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman Empires, and the Polish-
| Lithuanian Commonwealth were always indifferent to what
| the peasants "were", like the peasants themselves,
| mostly. People cared a lot more about religion than
| ethnicity almost everywhere in Europe until after the
| French Revolution. The tiny urban, bourgeois or well
| traveled population were the exception. Everybody else
| mostly just rolled with it. Most French people didn't
| speak a Romance dialect modeled after the Parisian one
| until well after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.
| Swizec wrote:
| I meant more like since schengen and easy travel within
| the EU. If we keep this up, in a few centuries we might
| get to a point similar as USA where your identity doesn't
| depend on which country your grandma comes from.
|
| The bigger question is whether we want to.
| type0 wrote:
| > If we keep this up, in a few centuries we might get to
| a point similar as USA where your identity doesn't depend
| on which country your grandma comes from.
|
| As a fellow European I don't think it's going to happen.
| Not in a hundred years. We speak different languages that
| alone prevents it from happening. We might get to the
| point where people will define themselves with dual
| nationalities, like Polish-German, but this we see even
| today.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >We speak different languages that alone prevents it from
| happening.//
|
| I recall some people from Netherlands getting upset that
| English was becoming quite prolific to the point that
| University courses are sometimes held in English.
|
| I think this happens to some extent in other countries in
| EU too?
|
| Germany, Spain, and France seem highly unlikely to adopt
| English without a fight - not sure about other countries.
| But I wouldn't rule out some movement towards greater
| dominance of major languages.
| type0 wrote:
| Yes University courses are held in Englilsh, mainly
| because of Bologna Process. Some companies in non English
| speaking countries do conduct their business in English,
| but to the jump from that to some sort of dissolution of
| national borders and melting of national identities is no
| where to be seen. EU will never be a United States of
| Europe of any kind, no matter how much French and German
| politicians are wishing that.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I worked in company with culture which could be
| considered international and working language was
| English. But still when locals were alone they switched
| to local language... Ofc, when non-natives were present
| it was English. I don't see European nation states going
| anywhere.
| sendbitcoins wrote:
| >Italians, Irish, Polish etc weren't considered white
|
| methinks, the Protestant elite wanted to keep out the
| Catholics
| jhgb wrote:
| > Are not all white people Anglo Saxon?
|
| Are not all black people Yoruba? (Well, of course they
| aren't...)
| ipaddr wrote:
| No you probably come from a slav tribe. Saxons were a tribe
| in Germany. Anglos a different tribe.
|
| Take an ancestry / 23andme/ myheritage test and see what
| comes up. You would be surprised.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Slavs were not a tribe in Germany. Slavs speak an entirely
| different language family from the Germanic one, as
| different as the Romance one. The Slavic language family
| stretches from Russian through Ukrainian and Belarusian,
| Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Serb and Slovene, among others.
| type0 wrote:
| Slavic languages are as broad or more broad as Germanic
| ones. Ethnicity and the mother tongue does not always go
| together, see for example Wallonia
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallonia
| Retric wrote:
| Just realize those generic tests are designed more for
| entertainment than scientific rigor. They are looking at
| associations between genetic traits and groups, but it's
| not like those groups where clones of each other or even
| genetically isolated.
| umanwizard wrote:
| They're not 100% rigorous but mine at least was pretty
| accurate, matching what I knew to be true from family
| oral history.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Angles and saxons were 2 tribes from modern day Germany who
| migrated to England for better farming and conditions.
| They're a very small part of "white". A very small part even
| of "British" descent. Even in England, not everyone is Anglo
| Saxon, the ruling classes are Norman, there are Celts still,
| Cornish people count themselves out, Londoners date back to
| pre-Roman times, vikings settled some areas...
| jcranmer wrote:
| Actually, the term Anglo-Saxon refers to the traditionally
| _three_ tribes (and probably at least _four_ tribes) who
| emigrated from the Frisian coast region (North Sea coasts
| of Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands): the Jutes
| (traditionally originating from Jutland, the main Danish
| peninsula), the Angles (traditionally from the neck that is
| part Danish and part German), and the Saxons (which would
| have been from what is now northern Germany). The fourth
| group of the Frisian coast is of course the Frisians,
| (originating from what is now northern Netherlands), and
| while they are not traditionally held to have been part of
| the emigration, it 's thought that they also made the
| journey. Frisian today is one of the closest languages to
| English.
|
| It also doesn't help that our literary sources for this
| period are very few, non-contemporary (i.e., talking about
| what happened a few centuries ago), and reliant on state
| societies talking about non-state societies. Naturally,
| they use inconsistent terminology for talking about the
| ethnicity of who is where, and the term "Saxon" appears to
| be pretty interchangeable for much of northern Germany. The
| modern term "Anglo-Saxon" thus effectively means "English
| German," arising largely to distinguish the Saxons who
| lived in England from those who lived in Germany.
|
| Functionally speaking, you can divide the ethnicities of
| Britain into 5: the original Celtic speakers, the Romanized
| Celtics who were part of the province of Britannia, the
| first wave of Germanic immigrants (Anglo-Saxons), the
| second wave of Germanic immigrants (the Norse), and the
| third wave of Germanic immigrants (the Normans), this one
| largely limited to a very small ruling class.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Thanks, that's a great comment!
|
| One question, do the Normans count as Germanic? I thought
| they were from Scandinavia originally and then spent
| enough time in France to pick up the language?
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| The world has more than enough journalists and exceptionally few
| reporters.
| syshum wrote:
| The world has more than enough activists, opinion writers, and
| propagandists that call themselves "journalists" but
| exceptionally few actual journalists.
|
| Lets not degrade the word Journalists like Apple has degraded
| the word Genius....
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Can't upvote this enough.
| bane wrote:
| I listen to a lot of retrogaming and retrocomputing podcasts,
| ANTIC and Retronauts are my favorites.
|
| It turns out ANTIC interviews quite a few people from the old
| computer magazine and book industry, and retronauts is mostly
| made up of struggling video game journalists who cycle between
| the same magazines and being jobless or freelance. A few of them,
| especially the more senior folks basically have thrown in the
| towel and now work for other companies entirely within the video
| games industry.
|
| What's _really_ interesting about the ANTIC interviews is how
| close those folks were to the thing that basically displaced them
| (computers and ubiquitous networking), and yet none of them seems
| to have predicted it happening. To them the publishing and
| periodical industries had always been there and always will be.
| Their own employer going out of business was more due to local
| market forces affecting them or mergers between companies.
|
| For the record, it didn't occur to me either. In the mid 90s I
| was sitting next to an incoming T-1 line at a startup ISP sending
| off physical envelopes with job applications to gaming and
| computer magazines I enjoyed hoping to become a journalist
| myself. One of the magazines that did reply (by mail btw) went
| out of business itself about 6 years later.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| This is a great parody of the WASPy romanticization of a hard
| days work. Plainly stating the classic implication that shitty
| jobs are actually humbling learning experiences when white. Even
| more comical because I don't think it's satire.
| msrenee wrote:
| It sounds like this person is in California making $17/hr. How
| do you make ends meet like that?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| you have a spouse who earns more.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Plainly stating the classic implication that shitty jobs are
| actually humbling learning experiences when white
|
| I'm familiar with the implication that hard work can be a
| humbling and rewarding experience, but I'm not aware of any
| such "when white" qualifiers.
|
| FWIW, I grew up on a farm and did a bit of construction before
| embarking on a career as a software engineer, and I can
| absolutely affirm that hard, physical work is rewarding. Though
| white, I didn't find it especially "humbling" because my family
| was solidly working class and frankly it never occurred to me
| to feel ashamed of hard work as though it makes me lesser than
| those from more delicate stations in life.
|
| That said, I don't know that working as a delivery person for
| Amazon is comparable to farm work or construction with respect
| to satisfaction.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| Fair point - switch white for upper middle class, my bad. I
| wasn't making a point against them being humbling and
| learning experiences, but rather against the idea you can dip
| your toes in for a minute and be washed of your pretension
| (while writing an Atlantic article).
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| No worries, that makes sense; thanks for clarifying. I
| particularly like this:
|
| > rather against the idea you can dip your toes in for a
| minute and be washed of your pretension
| kovacs wrote:
| Exceptionally well written with more than one Big Lebowski
| reference but one minor correction...
|
| "Since then, as Jeff Lebowski explains to Maude between hits on a
| postcoital roach, "my career has slowed down a little bit.""
|
| s/Jeff Lebowski/The Dude
|
| I believe The Dude made that distinction very clear in the movie
| :)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be7Og9Gc_KY
|
| Joking aside I truly admire this man's outlook and ability to
| take a pretty big setback and make a positive out of it.
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