Just before the last week of of this year, in which we will start our very first S&O game jam, here’s some more stuff to read.
Let’s start with the weekly facebook-hate: Apparently, there are more black live matter posters than black employees, as written in this (oh, the irony) facebook-note by a former employee.

There is this amazing piece by Thomas B. Edsall, who draws connections between the industrialization and the de-industrialization in England and the automation-age in the rust belt, with its up- and down-sides. So when you are still in doubt, how the change towards a robot-based economy will and did affect society, read this article, relying on a lot of very recents studies and articles.

While there are parallels between conditions of workers during industrialization in England and during the deindustrialization of regions of this country now, one big difference stands out from a political vantage point: In England, workers turned sharply to the left while here they have moved sharply to the right.

The process of devaluating certain skills and handcrafts is also part of what is discussed by the yellow vests in France. And just about a week ago, Chantal Mouffe and David Graeber gave their opinion on how these protest are a new form of social movement. Graeber also draws connections to digitization:

One paradoxical effect of digitization is that while it has made industrial production infinitely more efficient, it has rendered health, education, and other caring sector work less so, this combined with diversion of resources to the administrative classes under neoliberalism (and attendant cuts to the welfare state) has meant that, practically everywhere, it has been teachers, nurses, nursing-home workers, paramedics, and other members of the caring classes that have been at the forefront of labor militancy. Clashes between ambulance workers and police in Paris last week might be taken as a vivid symbol of the new array of forces. Again, public discourse has not caught up with the new realities, but over time, we will start having to ask ourselves entirely new questions: not what forms of work can be automated, for instance, but which we would actually want to be, and which we would not.

Those inequalities can also be seen in Germany, as Oliver Nachtwey describes. Speaking of inequalities: Wikipedia. For women. Not good. Bad place. Needs to change. Carolina Schwarz describes this in the new issue of the amazing ROM magazine (yes, this is an advertisement: Buy it, get it, even steal it from your closest friends and enemies.).

Um sich selbst vor solchen sexistischen Beleidigungen zu schützen, geben viele Frauen nicht ihr weibliches Geschlecht an. Dreizehn der Frauen, mit denen wir gesprochen haben, haben in ihrem Nutzerinnenprofil ein männliches oder gar kein Geschlecht angegeben, ebenso wählten sie einen männlich oder geschlechtslosen Namen. Eine der Befragten gibt an, sie versuche ihre Sprache besonders männlich klingen zu lassen, um in der Wikipedia-Community ernst genommen zu werden. Andere überlegen sich weitere Strategien, wie sie Sexismus in der Wikipedia umgehen können.

So far, so fun! Have a nice weekend with your gayby!