the unstoppable local-biz-swallowing pseudo-monopoly that is AMAZON

just a li'l device that sits in your house, listens to everything you say at the behest of the world's richest man, and giggles to itself from time to time, nbd

picturing an Echo jammed in the toilet, burbling laughter endlessly, in an abandoned neighborhood

wot if etc etc

Amazon's latest workplace innovation

At the beating heart of Amazon’s unstoppable ecommerce expansion is a very basic promise: jobs.

When a Fulfillment Center opens, the expectation is that anywhere from 1,000 to 2,200 positions will become available overnight, each providing 40 hours of work week at a minimum. In reality, the labor hours Amazon needs to power its brutally efficient supply chain appear to be far fewer. To reduce overhead but continue to sop up performance-based incentives from the local governments it operates in, Amazon has become increasingly reliant on a work scheduling scheme that often coerces workers into leaving their shifts early or turns them away at the door without notice.

I spoke to 13 of the company’s current and former warehouse workers based in nearly as many states, all of whom were granted anonymity for fear of retaliation. According to their testimonies, the sign that Amazon’s expanding empire may not have the labor needs to support the employment numbers it dangles in front of local politicians is an innocuous sounding acronym: VTO.

https://gizmodo.com/on-amazon-s-time-1826570882

Hamilton Nolan has some thoughts on how to celebrate #PrimeDay:

Fill your WolfWarriorX Military Tactical Assault Backpack with Military Surplus MREs and Purified Drinking Water. Now you’re ready to march. These KARKEIN Military Tactical Boots Army Combat Jungle Boots are suitable for both men and women. Lace em up, gather all your union friends, and march your ass down to Washington, DC. Your destination is Jeff Bezos’ house, at 2320 and 2330 S Street NW. You can’t miss it—it’s the biggest fucking house in town.

Who would Amazon’s boss be more thrilled to see on #PrimeDay than a cadre of his own employees? Probably nobody. When you’re sure he’s home, use this Neiko 02845A Electric Demolition Jack Hammer to systematically tear the pavement around his house into large, jagged chunks. Pile the concrete chunks into a barrier encircling his entire block, interspersed with crude checkpoints made by wrapping Hitachi 115445 Folding Sawhorses with ample amounts of Fence America Razor Wire. Stud barrier with LEPOWER Solar Flood Lights and Kaya Bamboo Torches. Then put up your Coleman Instant Cabin tent and get some shut eye! While playing The Internationale on repeat through several dozen evenly spaced Pyle 1600W Heavy Duty Speakers.

https://splinternews.com/the-only-amazon-prime-day-guide-you-need-1827624247

had to laugh when I saw they were funding mike leigh's peterloo film

give this a watch later (note to self)

https://gizmodo.com/amazons-aggressive-anti-union-tactics-revealed-in-leake-1829305201

Can't watch it, just read the article. As they say: "Gizmodo has opted to not publish the video itself in order to maintain source anonymity."

fun

Despite an uprising of Amazon employees over the use of the company's AI facial recognition program ("Rekognition") in law enforcement, the company is actively courting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the hopes that it will use the wildly inaccurate technology.

Thanks to work by McKinsney, ICE and Amazon's sales team met over the summer to discuss how Amazon's facial recognition could help the agency, which has cemented its reputation for performative xenophobic cruelty with a program of stealing babies from immigrant parents, dooming thousands of babies and children to never see their parents again.

ICE could use facial recognition as part of its illegal surveillance of medical facilities and houses of worship.

https://boingboing.net/2018/10/23/oppenheimers-ai.html

oh good:

Democrats rank Amazon as the institution they have the most confidence in https://t.co/OVGAajPsWD

— Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) October 24, 2018

ah being discussed elsewhere I see

Colleges and Universities at 2 seriously

most likely people thought "well I usually get my packages on time so I guess I trust Amazon"

what does "having confidence in" mean for a company like amazon anyway? I mean, they are very reliable, doesn't mean they aren't shitty in ways that don't affect customers

on the other hand google and facebook can sometimes be deceitful in a way that actually does affect their end users, so I'm not surprised they are lower (though google at #4 is higher that I would have thought)

Amazon’s algorithmic pricing and self-serving search results are pretty untrustworthy from a user perspective

wtf, Amazon is now considered "an institution"?

as of 2016 they controlled 31% of the global market in cloud computing infrastructure, and when they have problems it immediately creates many problems for many people. https://gizmodo.com/how-one-little-amazon-error-can-destroy-the-internet-1792828399

so yeah, i guess they are, now. whoooops!

We gotta fuck this shit up. https://t.co/BUZzgbrCMj

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) November 6, 2018

man I would've bet a lot of money on Boston

glad I didn't!

DC area is so obvious in retrospect, I feel dumb for not realizing that earlier

pretty happy it isn't boston

Arlington is my hometown and already has been through cycles of gentrification/development/displacement in my lifetime but efforts for denser development and affordable housing have been playing out with some success in the last 10 years so maybe it won't be an immediate disaster for housing affordability and the latinx communities living there and in Alexandria and Falls Church

Silby, Arlington has been pretty good about affordable housing, diversity,
density, and transit. I wish those things weren't luxury goods, but we do what we can here.

Crystal City has loads of vacant space; it would be cool to see it used rather than watch it crumble.

this is weird: Booksellers Protest Amazon Site’s Move to Drop Stores From Certain Countries

On Saturday night, in response to a query from a reporter, AbeBooks issued a statement saying it was dropping the countries because “our third-party payment service provider is closing at the end of the year.” It added that, “We regret that we cannot continue to serve all sellers.”

Asked how many booksellers and countries were affected, Richard Davies, an AbeBooks spokesman, said, “I am not adding anything else to that statement.”

Mr. Brown, one of the dealers organizing the protests, said that for many of the booksellers, AbeBooks’ actions underlined both Amazon’s power and its refusal to be accountable for it.

“The biggest e-commerce giant in the world apparently finds it too complicated to do business in Prague,” he said. “You have to wonder who’s next. We’re all vulnerable to Amazon’s capricious actions.”

The complete lack of information makes it hard to understand what’s going on here. It’s not clear whether they are withdrawing from specific markets or cannot service specific sellers. I don’t really understand how a change in payment provider or system would affect specific countries. I guess it’s possible that some seller systems may not report in a way compatible with the new software or platform. But they also seem to be citing unspecified complexities and expenses associated with named markets.

The complete lack of notice and public comms from Abebooks are both very poor.

r.i.p. jokes pic.twitter.com/aYgsPE5xN1

— Miriam Bale (@mimbale) November 13, 2018

idk what that was but: i hate amazon

amazon more like amazin(g)

Oh she deleted it for some reason, anyway someone listed a variety of "joke" demands for Amazon (e.g. keep worker fatalities under 40/year), then in a followup about an hour later it was announced that NY was paying out some ungodly sum to Amazon for the privilege (unclear if it was a literal payout or just tax incentives)

Might actually make sense to incentivize the Crystal City site, that office space has been emptying iirc

*this* is the thing they come together to do. https://t.co/1uNWiaMcIk

— Vinson Cunningham (@vcunningham) November 13, 2018

Can't they just build a barge for them in the Hudson River. All of this makes no sense. Amazon needs NYC more than NYC needs them. But sure give them shitloads of money to fuck up the infrastructure.

The inflatable rat industry is going to be popping.

the most humiliating thing i read recently was how Andrew Cuomo said "i'll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if they come to NY."

As a New Yorker, I am black. As a New Yorker, I am Jewish. As a New Yorker, I am an e-commerce monopolist.

Yeah, the councilpeople for Queens are already utilizing that stupid ass name because they didn't bother to go through the proper community review process.

Stupid ass Willie Wonka stunt.

The Atlantic weighs in.

looks like VA's deal is much better. 1/4 of the nominal dollar value is infrastructure spending, including on Metro. The per-job incentive is also half of what NY is offering. Obviously this is all very stupid though.

New York taxpayers will be forced to literally subsidize a HELIPAD for Jeff Bezos https://t.co/WuOBIHHU7M pic.twitter.com/UiYdq5gdjf

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) November 13, 2018

Bezos basically went from Kevin from The Office to Lex Luthor.

One last kicker

.@NYGovCuomo confirms that Amazon project will be approved through Empire State Development, which he controls, removing the need for a City Council vote to approve the zoning.

— Erin Durkin (@erinmdurkin) November 13, 2018

Christ, what an asshole

I voted for Nixon. Fuck Cuomo.

i voted for Nixon, and Howie Hawkins last week

de blasio just now: "One of the biggest companies on earth next to the biggest public housing development in the United States — the synergy is going to be extraordinary."

— Eliza Relman (@eliza_relman) November 13, 2018

and so say all of us: tap into america

I look fwd to BdB and his frenemy the Prince never being elected to anything ever again

Cuomo can’t respond to the genuine left critique: That cities should not offer incentives like this at all. In fact, he dismisses this as unrealistic:

Nothing in the Amazon transaction is new. The tax incentives we provide for single business transactions are usual and typical and have been operational for decades. They are long standing programs supported by both Democrats and Republicans in both the city and the state. Nor are tax incentive programs unique to New York. Every state offers incentives to attract businesses and we are in a constant competition with other states and nations to attract and keep good businesses. One could argue that in a perfect world no city or state would be legally allowed to offer incentives and there would be no competition for individuals or businesses. True. But this is not a perfect world. Our state is in an intense daily competition with other states and, indeed, other countries. Wisconsin lured Foxconn Technology with 13,000 jobs for a $3 billion incentive package. A locality in Texas lured Exxon Mobil with 400 jobs for a $1.2 billion subsidy. Louisiana attracted DXCTechnology and 2,000 jobs with a $115 million incentive. The list goes on.

Buddy, the fact that nothing in this “transaction” is new is the socialist critique. The fact that this is business as usual is the problem. The fact that both Democrats and Republicans support this is very fucking bad, not evidence that it’s good and fine. Also, a weird flex to bring up Wisconsin’s appalling Foxconn giveaway, which may cost the state as much as a million fucking dollars per job. But OK!

https://splinternews.com/everything-about-andrew-cuomos-big-defense-of-the-amazo-1830539740

the robot uprising has begun

Twenty-four employees at an Amazon warehouse in New Jersey were taken to hospital after a robot accidentally punctured a can of bear repellent.

The 255g can containing concentrated capsaicin, a compound in chilli peppers, was punctured by an automated machine after it fell off a shelf, according to local media.

The incident happened on Wednesday at a warehouse in Robbinsville, New Jersey, on the outskirts of Trenton.

Amazon said: “All of the impacted employees have been or are expected to be released from hospital within the next 24 hours. The safety of our employees is always our top priority and a full investigation is already under way.”

The employees were taken to hospital “as a precaution”, Amazon said earlier.

https://hyperallergic.com/482429/divisive-amazon-hq2-meeting-draws-hundreds-to-city-hall/