askchapo bananon • 4d ago • 100%

What’s the best union for university faculty in Texas?

A local university has gone full austerity mode in the last two years, firing staff, forcing their work onto others, reducing department budgets, all the while hiring more executives and middle managers. This has pissed off pretty much all of its faculty, from adjuncts to department heads. Now Texas may be a right to work state, but these profs are in a unique position where a lot of them has tenure and the university will have a difficult time firing them, which is why they’ve opted to making conditions worse so that the profs will quit themselves. The remaining faculty wants to do something besides sending anonymous complaints that get ignored, but they’re floundering. Is there a union/adjacent org that they can turn to for guidance?

chapotraphouse bananon • 3mo ago • 100%

Holy shit buttons work on mobile again


games bananon • 1y ago • 100%

Baldur's Gate 3 is the best video game

   Dwarf bard Marx is the best thing to come out of this game. He's also a sage and a tome bard so he's got that +3 historical materialism skill on top of his persuasion. And of course his guardian had to be buff half-elf Engels  Also here's the existential comic that inspired this 

chapotraphouse bananon • 3y ago • 0%

SOMEONE PULLED OUT A GUN AT CHILI’S

I think this is the most American thing I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t even realize what was happening in the moment. I just saw everyone else duck for cover and followed without thinking. My friend thought it was for a surprise party. We waited there, huddled under tables for minutes that felt like hours, not knowing what was happening just beyond chairs in front of us. Luckily it was a fight at the bar, not a mass shooting, so no shots were fired. The aftermath was so surreal. Once we finally get out from under our table most of the people had already fled, including the guy with the gun. A family member of the gunman comes up and publicly apologizes to everyone. My friends and I just sit back down and start laughing, cracking jokes about what had happened, it was such a comical experience. Everyone else must have thought we were insane. The staff gave us our food for free, but we must have tipped like $40 because we overheard a waiter complain about not getting paid for the day. We take our food to go and have to weave around a dozen cop cars to make it back onto a highway where people were none the wiser about what had just happened. In a very twisted and macabre way, I feel as if what happened wasn’t *real* or *legitimate* precisely because no one died. Perhaps an incredibly harrowing experience for others has simply become a funny story for me to tell, because there are so many greater instances of violence that have already become completely normalized.

politics bananon • 3y ago • 100%

Interesting post from a Chinese gamer on the recent video game ban

Found this on r/LeftistGamersUnion. These are not my own words, just a cross post. “Some clarification for gaming ban in China also AMA TL;DR As a Chinese gamer, I truly support the ban because the ban ONLY applies on trash games like gatcha and WOW rip off games. It also only applied on Chinese EA, which is Tencent. Chinese gaming industry is plagued by Tencent monopoly. Except Tencent, most other companies only make WOW rip offs Since it was popular in 90s and there are tons of middle-aged dude pay to play it. Tencent gaming only have rip offs and 2 moba games, LOL and it's mobile vision. Its main income come from mobile lol, which unlike lol you guys know, is full of pay-to-win mechanics. Yet it provide most of profit for Tencent gaming. Tencent, killed all hope of Chinese gamers. Chinese companies made some cuttin edge games in 2000s but most of them die off because of piracy, which is no surprise Tencent was in it. Some times Tencent rip offs perform even better than the original. Why? Tencent monopolized social media as well. It's also the reason most Chinese hate the company. People who don't want to play arr forced to play due to peer pressure. It also create a huge problem on kids because Tencent targets kids as young as 10 start to play and pay. And that's the main reason behind the ban. Steam on the other hand, is in a gray zone. CPC allowed steam to operate with minimum oversee in China, but it technically not under Chinese administration, so the ban DOES NOT apply on steam games. I know gate keeping is bad, but the problem is beyond imagine for western gamers. Tencent, which is the main target of the ban, already destroyed gaming in China. I fully support CPC on this. CPC had lots of new policies support gaming industry in China recently, so the ban helps gamer get rid of Chinese EA.“