Corduroy Academy

( Mostly) radical thoughts, ideas, and links from late stage colonial capitalism.

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    Aidan
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    Google layoffs continue with ‘hundreds’ from sales team

    After laying off about 1,000 employees last week, Google is now cutting jobs on its advertising sales team. In a statement to The Verge, Google spokesperson Chris Pappas confirmed that “a few hundred roles globally are being eliminated” as part of the change.

    The news of Google’s latest layoffs was first reported by Business Insider, which obtained a memo from Google senior vice president Philipp Schindler. Schindler reportedly hinted the layoffs will primarily affect its Large Customer Sales (LCS) unit, a team that sells ads to large businesses, while the Google Customer Solutions team (GCS), which sells ads to smaller clients, will become the “core” ad sales team instead. Google laid off some employees on its LCS team last October, according to a separate report from Business Insider.

    It’d be interesting to know if this is because in general ad revenue on the busted internet is down. Tech bros gonna capitalism, I guess.

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    U.S. carries out additional strikes against Houthi positions in Yemen

    The Tuesday attacks were on a much smaller scale and “dynamic” in nature, meaning they were not pre-planned and rather taken in self-defense against missiles that presented an imminent threat to international shipping, one of the officials said. All of the officials were granted anonymity to speak about a sensitive operation before an official announcement.

    U.S. forces on Tuesday observed the Houthis preparing to launch the four ballistic missiles, presumably against ships in the Red Sea. The head of U.S. Central Command then ordered U.S. forces to take out the threat, according to one of the officials. Reuters first reported the new round of strikes.

    Say escalation with me folks. Oh but of course we must protect the all holy capitalism. 🙄

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    Iran says it has launched attacks on what it calls militant bases in Pakistan

    Iran launched attacks Tuesday in Pakistan targeting what it described as bases for the militant group Jaish al-Adl, state media reported, potentially further raising tensions in a Middle East already roiled by Israel’s war on Hamas genocide in the Gaza Strip.

    Confusion followed the announcements as some of the reports soon disappeared. However, any attack inside of nuclear-armed Pakistan by Iran would threaten the relations between the two countries, which long have eyed each other with suspicion while maintaining diplomatic relations. 

    The reported attack follows Iranian strikes on Iraq and Syria less than a day earlier, as Tehran lashes out following a dual suicide bombing this month claimed by the Sunni militant group Islamic State that killed over 90 people. 

    The state-run IRNA news agency and state television had said that missiles and drones were used in the strikes in Pakistan, which were not immediately acknowledged by the Pakistani government.

    I seriously can’t shake the WWIII feeling.

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    More CEOs fear their companies won’t survive 10 years as AI and climate challenges grow, survey says

    More executives are feeling better about the global economy, but a growing number don’t think their companies will survive the coming decade without a major overhaul because of pressure from climate change and technology like artificial intelligence, according to a new survey of CEOs by one of the world’s largest consulting firms, PwC.

    The survey of more than 4,700 CEOs worldwide was released Monday as business elites, political leaders and activists descended on the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, and it showed a mixed picture of the coming years.

    Do you think that maybe your extractive, militantly individualist, corrupt and soul destroying system of leadership might be the problem? Of course not, it is the youth (or some other minority) who are wrong.

    Actually let’s blame the AI – that we rushed into corporate work. That makes sense, make people scared of AI all the while you privatise and capitalise on it as a tool singularly for businesses.

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    Colombia extends cease-fire with FARC splinter group in bid to reduce rural violence

    Colombia’s government has extended a cease-fire with the FARC-EMC rebel group that was set to expire this week, as both sides hold peace talks in Bogota in an effort to reduce violence in rural parts of the country.

    The cease-fire will now last until July 15, according to a decree signed Sunday by President Gustavo Petro, and it requires that the rebels cease attacks on civilians in areas under their control – a crucial measure according to some analysts.

    “The cease-fires we have seen (during the Petro administration) so far, have really only limited the clashes between the government and the rebel groups, but haven’t had a real impact on the lives of communities” said Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia analyst at the International Crisis Group. “What we get to see now is whether this ceasefire can change that paradigm.”

    Colombia’s government in October announced peace talks with the FARC-EMC splinter group after both sides agreed to a three-month long cease-fire.

    I hesitate to say “why can’t we all just get along” but… God damn if humans focussed their attention on liberation rather than in-fighting we could overthrow capitalist oligarchs in moments.

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    First Trillionaire Predicted Within 10 Years As Richest Double Their Fortunes In 3

    The world could have its first trillionaire within a decade, anti-poverty organization Oxfam International said Monday in its annual assessment of global inequalities timed to the gathering of political and business elites at the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

    Oxfam, which for years has been trying to highlight the growing disparities between the super-rich and the bulk of the global population during the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, reckons the gap has been “supercharged” since the coronavirus pandemic.

    The group said the fortunes of the five richest men — Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault and his family of luxury company LVMH, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and investment guru Warren Buffett — have spiked by 114% in real terms since 2020, when the world was reeling from the pandemic.

    I truly barely have the words for how utterly destructive, immoral and unethical billionaires oligarchs already are. These people profit from the crises and human and environmental catastrophes they sponsor. They are pure evil and have no place in a globalised society in as much turmoil as ours. Yet we continue to allow them to accumulate wealth and destroy our lives. Cool.

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    Tesla pauses German production after Red Sea shipping attacks

    The electric car manufacturer Tesla is to halt most production at its factory near Berlin for two weeks because of delays in deliveries of parts because of attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

    Shipping delays in the Red Sea, caused by attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi militants, has caused Tesla to suspend most production at its German factory from 29 January to 11 February.

    The carmaker, whose chief executive is Elon Musk, has said the pause could lead to about 5,000 to 7,000 cars not being built.

    Disruption through the important shipping route to the Mediterranean, which has forced companies to use the alternative and much longer route around the southern tip of Africa, is starting to affect global trade, which dropped 1.3% in December.

    What ever will the bourgeois whites do without their (faulty) status symbols?! Maybe some of them could get behind land back movements.

    Honestly the way this is all being depicted as “some rebels disrupting the global economy” … can I join the rebels? The global economy is a fucked, exploitative, and doomed to failure (for the ecology of the planet).

    What did Star Wars teach us about the empire?

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    Scientist cited in push to oust Harvard’s Claudine Gay has links to eugenicists

    A data scientist promoted by the rightwing activist Christopher Rufo, the Manhattan Institute thinktank, and other conservatives as an expert critic of the former Harvard president Claudine Gay has co-authored several papers in collaboration with a network of scholars who have been broadly criticized as eugenicists, or scientific racists.

    Rufo described Jonatan Pallesen as “a Danish data scientist who has raised new questions about Claudine Gay’s use – and potential misuse – of data in her PhD thesis” in an interview published in his newsletter and on the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal website last Friday.

    He did not tell readers that a paper featuring Pallesen’s own statistical work in collaboration with the eugenicist researchers has been subject to scathing expert criticism for its faulty methods, and characterized as white nationalism by another academic critic.

    Wheeling out literal nazis to discredit a black woman who supported truthful statements. Academia is truly in a fucked way.