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In today’s newsletter: A stalemate between lecturers and universities has left thousands of exams and dissertations ungraded – what’s the dispute about, and how might it end?
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Good morning. Finishing the last exam of your degree course should be one of the happiest moments of a student’s career. The stress of finals is over, the hard work has paid off. Graduation beckons and, beyond that, the next exciting stage of life.
But for tens of thousands this summer, the reality is proving very different. A marking boycott by the union representing many UK university lecturers means that tests are being left ungraded and dissertations unassessed.
Net zero | The government’s plans to hit net zero have been criticised in a report by its own advisers that warns targets are being missed on nearly every front. Lord Deben, outgoing chair of the CCC, said the UK had “lost the leadership” on climate action shown at Cop26 in 2021 and done “a number of things” that were “utterly unacceptable”.
Julian Sands | A body that was discovered in the wilderness near Mount Baldy in California on Saturday has been confirmed to be that of the missing British actor Julian Sands. San Bernardino county sheriff’s department had been coordinating a search for the actor who was reported missing on 13 January.
Health | Senior doctors in England have voted to go on strike over pay for the first time in nearly 50 years. Hospital consultants will strike for two days on 20 July, which will bring major disruption to services that have already had to reschedule 651,000 appointments since a wave of NHS strikes began last December.
Covid | Matt Hancock has said he is “profoundly sorry” for his part in mistakes that meant the UK was not properly prepared for Covid. He told the Covid public inquiry that he had not properly challenged assurances that sufficient planning was in place.
UK economy | The UK’s largest mobile and broadband companies have been accused of fuelling “greedflation” after pushing through the biggest round of price hikes for more than 30 years. Six companies controlling most of the telecoms market all charged a 3.9% supplement on top of their annual inflation-linked increases this year, meaning millions of customers have faced mid-contract price increases of up to 17.3%.
Continue reading...University says about 20% of final-year students will face delays if industrial action continues
More than 1,000 final year students at Durham University could be left without a degree this summer because of the marking boycott disrupting universities across the UK.
Durham, one of 145 universities affected by the industrial action over pay and working conditions called by the University and College Union (UCU), said about 20% of its 5,300 final year students would “at the moment, face delays in receiving all their marks and final classifications”.
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A discussion featuring Yakov Feygin, Daniela Gabor, Ho-fung Hung, Thea Riofrancos, and Quinn Slobodian.
Small number could attend graduation but later be told they have failed as pay dispute affects assessments at 145 universities
Tens of thousands of university students are being left in limbo without their final degree results this summer, including some who could attend graduation ceremonies only to be told later that they have failed.
About a third of the UK’s 500,000 final-year undergraduates are thought to have been affected by the marking and assessment boycott at 145 universities, part of the pay dispute between the University and College Union (UCU) and employers that has strained relations between staff, students and management.
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Maggie Tokuda-Hall declined Scholastic’s offer to license her book, “Love in the Library,” on the condition that she edit her author’s note to remove a description of past and present instances of racism.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has campaigned against what he has described as “woke indoctrination” in the classroom.
Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)
After the Federal Trade Commission launched a probe into Twitter over privacy concerns, Twitter’s negotiations with the FTC do not seem to be going very well. Last week, it was revealed that Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s request last year for a meeting with FTC Chair Lina Khan was rebuffed. Now, a senior Twitter lawyer, Christian Dowell—who was closely involved in those FTC talks—has resigned, several people familiar with the matter told The New York Times.
Dowell joined Twitter in 2020 and rose in the ranks after several of Twitter’s top lawyers exited or were fired once Musk took over the platform in the fall of 2022, Bloomberg reported. Most recently, Dowell—who has not yet confirmed his resignation—oversaw Twitter’s product legal counsel. In that role, he was “intimately involved” in the FTC negotiations, sources told the Times, including coordinating Twitter’s responses to FTC inquiries.
The FTC has overseen Twitter’s privacy practices for more than a decade after it found that the platform failed to safeguard personal information and issued a consent order in 2011. The agency launched its current probe into Twitter’s operations after Musk began mass layoffs that seemed to introduce new security concerns, AP News reported. The Times reported that the FTC's investigation intensified after security executives quit Twitter over concerns that Musk might be violating the FTC's privacy decree.
Industrial action going ahead despite hopes of breakthrough on pay, conditions and pensions last week
Universities in the UK have been hit by strike action once again, despite hopes of a breakthrough last week with an offer from employers on pay, working conditions and pensions.
Tens of thousands of staff at 150 universities pressed ahead with planned strikes on Monday in the first of three days of industrial action this week, with many branches claiming big turnouts on picket lines.
Continue reading...Unions and UCEA declare agreement ‘on terms of reference for detailed negotiations’ on pay and conditions
University staff have made a breakthrough in their months-long dispute with employers during which lecturers have gone on strike, worked to rule and refused to cover for absent colleagues across the UK.
A group of five higher education trade unions and the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) announced agreement “on terms of reference for detailed negotiations covering a review of the UK higher education pay spine, workload, contract types and equality pay gaps”.
Continue reading...The disdain shown to us by Queen Mary University of London inspired me to redouble my efforts on the picket lines. Staff and students have had enough
On 29 June 2022, all the staff at Queen Mary University of London, where I work, received an email from management. To our horror, they were threatening to withhold 100% of our pay for 21 days of both July and August, because we were participating in a marking boycott over pensions, pay, labour precarity, inequality and working conditions. Life in the higher education sector had been getting tougher ever since I started my career in 2017. But at that moment, I not only resolved to continue to strike, but redoubled my efforts to get as many colleagues as possible to join me on the picket lines. The condescension from my employers made me feel something stark and visceral.
I hadn’t always felt so jaded. I finished my PhD in law in 2016 and was ready to begin a life of service in education and research, working in the subject I cared passionately about. But several things quickly became clear. There was the increasing precarity of university labour: one-third of academics are on fixed-term contracts, 41% are on hourly paid contracts and there are still 29 institutions employing at least five academic staff on zero-hours contract. In 2021, it was reported that pay had been cut by 20% in real-terms over the past 12 years, while changes to the pension scheme mean that we’ve taken a 35% cut to our guaranteed retirement income despite contributing more. Meanwhile, university and college staff are doing the equivalent of two days’ unpaid work every week on average. It’s an environment that leaves me feeling, like many others, disillusioned and questioning my future.
Dr Tanzil Chowdhury is a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London.
Continue reading...Move follows agreement from employers on lowest-paid workers and review of salary grades
Strikes by university staff over the next two weeks have been called off after a breakthrough in negotiations over pay, pensions and working conditions, unions have announced.
Five unions – Unison, UCU, GMB, Unite and EIS – issued a joint statement with the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) confirming three days of strikes will be suspended following talks at the conciliation service Acas, though discussions will continue.
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It’s not just lecturers who are struggling with stress due to unrealistic workloads, says one reader
Re the University and College Union’s dispute (Work-life balance as important as pay, says university staff union, 10 February), there is always a focus on lecturers in articles about it. But the UCU is made up of more than lecturers. I am a burnt-out administrator, struggling to have my issues taken seriously by my university and by the country.
In the past year, I have been spread across three projects, all full-time roles in themselves, yet classified as only needing one or two days a week of work. All these were time-limited contracts. My contract is now permanent, but my job description is six pages long. It seems the universities now want blanket contracts so you’re on the hook for any work they want to dump on you. I have co-workers who are so snowed under with their workload that they’re afraid to strike lest they come back to an even larger mountain of work. I know many people in professional services jobs at the university who have been off sick with stress.
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Last week, a scandal errupted after a male Twitch streamer known as Atrioc (Brandon Ewing) was caught watching AI-generated deepfake porn of two female Twitch streamers. The two streamers were understandably upset, with one of the women, Pokimane, tweeting, “Stop sexualising people without their consent. That’s it, that’s the tweet.”
stop sexualizing people without their consent.
that’s it, that’s the tweet.
— pokimane (@pokimanelol) January 31, 2023
The controversy lead people to the site selling the deepfakes, and AI-generated porn of other female Twitch streamers was also discovered. One woman, Sweet Anita, tweeted: “I literally choose to pass up millions by not going into sex work and some random cheeto encrusted porn addict solicits my body without my consent instead… Don’t know whether to cry, break stuff or laugh at this point.”
This story was how I found out that I'm on this website. I literally choose to pass up millions by not going into sex work and some random cheeto encrusted porn addict solicits my body without my consent instead. Don't know whether to cry, break stuff or laugh at this point. https://t.co/voNoxRyVBd
— Sweet Anita (@sweetanita) January 30, 2023
QTCinderella — another streamer who discovered deepfake porn of her was being sold on the site — appeared most distraught, streaming a reaction video where she says, through tears:
“Fuck the internet, fuck the constant exploitation and objectification of women — it’s exhausting… Fuck Atrioc for showing it to thousands of people. Fuck the people DMing me pictures of myself from that website. Fuck you all.
… This is what it looks like to feel violated. This is what it feels like to be taken advantage of, this is what it looks like to see yourself naked against your will being spread all over the internet.
… If you are not able to look at women who are not selling themselves, or benefitting off of being seen sexually — they’re not benefitting, they’re not selling it, they’re not platforming it themselves — if you are able to look at that, you are the problem. You see women as an object. You should not be ok doing that.”
Atrioc posted a tearful apology, explaining that this is not a “pattern of behaviour” and that “it was just one video.” It was at 2AM, he explained. His wife was out of town, and he was on Pornhub — “a regular-ass, normal website” — when he clicked on an ad that “was on every fucking video” for a “deepfake thing.” Atrioc was deeply upset with himself, as a man who “wants women on Twitch to feel safer,” insisting his behaviour was “disgusting,” adding, “I don’t support this stuff… I regret it, I would never do it again as long as I live.”
It’s clear why deepfake porn is disturbing — imagine discovering images of yourself engaged in degrading, humiliating, graphic acts, being viewed by thousands online, and you didn’t even do those things. You have no control over these images, you can’t take them down, and not only that, but some creep is making money off of this. It would be incredibly disorienting. Certainly it would feel like a violation. I get it. Probably most women get it.
Yet, the responses have been strange.
There are complaints about “objectification,” but tied only to lack of consent, and the fact that the women are not being compensated or “benefitting” from the porn.
In a podcast conversation including QTCinderella, Hasan Piker, one of Twitch’s most-watched streamers, Will Neff, and Mike Majlak, they discuss what happened, and hear QTCinderella explain how badly it impacted her, psychologically. The men engage in a 20 minute long discussion of porn and prostitution, which they view as innocuous, while condemning “objectification” and nonconsensual deepfakes as terrible.
Piker tells a story about having visited a megabrothel in Germany called Artemis, complaining that the internet has never let him forget that it was raided in 2016 on account of rampant exploitation and trafficking. He claims it was in fact raided on account of tax evasion, but this charge is connected to the exploitative structure of the brothel. Artemis designated the women working in the brothel as “self-employed,” though they were in fact “regular employees with set work hours, price rates and instructions to perform specific sexual acts.” Many lived in the brothel. Anywhere where there is prostitution there is trafficking and exploitation, and this is applicable to all of these German megabrothels. Indeed, a flat-rate brothel chain called “Pussy Club,” which saw 1,700 men lined up to get in on its opening day in 2009, was shut down a year later for human trafficking. Michael Beretin, manager of the famous Paradise brothel chain, was arrested in 2015 on suspicion of human trafficking, forced prostitution, and fraud.
Despite leftists claiming legalization will “keep women safe,” the truth is that this only creates more prostitution, which means more trafficking, more abuse, and more exploitation. Someone has to fill the brothels after all, and there simply are not enough women who volunteer. The women in the famous legal brothels of Germany are full of Roma women, trafficked from across Europe to fill demand. The Roma are among the poorest, most marginalized, most discriminated against, and most vulnerable women in all of Europe. They are, according to reports, “treated like animals.” In 2019, The Guardian reported that “the huge growth of the sex industry post-legalization has fuelled a rising demand for women.” Augsburg’s chief police inspector, Helmut Sporer, estimated that more than 90% of the women working in Germany’s sex trade come from south-east Europe and Africa, and that half are under 21. Any man who goes to one of these brothels is participating in exploitation and supporting the trafficking of women.
Piker, who has, according to Neff, “fucked a lot of porn stars,” continues to insist his fanaticism for the sex trade equates to “defending sex workers,” chalking criticisms up to the fact “America is very puritanical and patriarchal.”
When asked if he had ever paid for sex, Piker said, “I’ve gone to a brothel, Artemis, in Berlin, and had sex with the workers there. I don’t hide it. I don’t give a shit. Why would I?”
Sex work is work, after all. No shame, no stigma.
Thanks to the progressive push to normalize and “destigmatize” prostitution and pornography (rebranded “sex work”), men not only need feel no shame about paying women for sex, they can feel proud. They are helping these women. They are fighting the patriarchy!
In truth, the left has simply decided that payment equates to consent. They don’t ask questions about what got that woman there to that brothel or onto that porn set, who the money is going to, how she feels about the things men do to her in exchange for payment, and how that might impact her down the road. A clean conscience is what they desire, not ethics. Reality is replaced by cult-like mantras like, “sex work is work” and critical thought-ending statements about “consent.” Modern leftist clownworld ideology has gifted men who use porn or buy sex with the ability to see themselves as feminist heros, uplifting and empowering women every time they cum.
The entire conversation among Piker, Neff, and Majlak conveniently lacks any deeper thought about their platitudes. “Consent” allowed for a self-congratulatory circle-jerk, with a few first year gender studies jabs at “patriachies” and “puritans” thrown in, in exchange for reflection and genuine analysis.
Neff seemed baffled at his realization that once he met porn stars in real life, and engaged with them as regular human beings, he could no longer “jerk off” to them.
The obvious conclusion to anyone willing and able to make such connections is that pornography is about objectification, regardless of “consent” — the entire point is to treat and view the women in porn not as full human beings who have complicated and unsexy things like families, feelings, interests, and desires of their own, but as living sex dolls. Were these women actual full human beings to the men watching (women who would, in reality, may be very unlikeable, annoying, troubled, or insane, or who actually have sexual preferences outside being choked with a dick), it would break the fantasy.
Objectification has nothing to do with consent, it has to do with how the viewer sees (and consequently treats) the object. And, to be clear, this is not about “finding women attractive.” Of course men find women attractive. Which is great. But there’s a reason you don’t want to see your girlfriend or your sister getting gangbanged in “Step-dad and uncle fuck teen babysitter.” The women you know and love are human to you, and, alas, you care about their feelings and wellbeing, and want them to be treated with respect.
Majlak, who dated Lana Rhoades, Pornhub’s most-searched-for porn star (even after having left the industry after just eight months, saying porn should be banned), complained to his co-hosts that “PTA mom-esque” types online were picking on him for promoting porn stars in his content.
Piker helpfully defends Majlak, telling him, “Anti-sex work sentiment has always existed, it’s just you’re humanizing adult workers.” as if anyone has a problem with “humanizing” these women aside from men who jack off to them in porn. The problem isn’t that Majlak is “humanizing” women in porn, it’s that he’s promoting an industry that abuses and exploits women, and selling an idea of the porn industry as a fun and cool place for women. (Notably, to an audience largely made up of teenagers.)
He of all people should know better.
Rhoades went into porn at 19, having no idea what she was getting into, thinking she was following in the footsteps of the “glamorous and beautiful” Playmates she watched on The Girls Next Door. She didn’t know she was going to have to engage in sex acts at all, never mind with a string of strange men, pushed into scenes that would leave her traumatized (but that the white knights of Twitch would surely call “consensual”).
Rhoades explains, as numerous others have, that the entire industry and career of a porn star is based on pressure and coercion. In a 2021 interview, she tells Playboy:
“You could get into the industry and say, I would never do a gang bang and I would never do this. You know that getting into it. But [agents] say things to you over time to sort of—what would the word be?—groom you into doing more… They’ll say things like, ‘Oh, all the good sluts do this. That’s how people are going to love you. If you do this, you have to do this and that.’ You don’t want to let anyone down, so you end up doing it over time.”
Rhoades came from a traumatic background, and was further traumatized in porn, used, abused, and spat out, left with money, sure, but also panic attacks, anxiety, and zero sexual desire. After leaving the industry, she famously told the truth women in the industry are meant to hide, saying, “I don’t think it’s good for anybody. They should make it illegal.” She described feeling like she was performing “circus acts” and that the industry was “infested with drugs and alcohol abuse.”
Consent is a joke for the young women being coerced and bullied into doing evermore extreme stuff, moving out of their comfort zones before they even have a chance to process what’s happening, pressured to continue with scenes that are painful, violent, and/or traumatic, under threat of not getting paid, losing future jobs, and causing everyone on set to lose a day’s work if she can’t or won’t complete the scene. “Consent” truly flies out the window afterwards, as those videos and images remain online for eternity, regardless of whether she wants them there or not.
Rhoades called pornography “a life sentence,” saying, “I can’t hide from it and everywhere I go there’s someone who’s seen my films.”
While the woke men and women of Twitch offer condemnations and tearful apologies over AI deepfake porn, the real bodies of women whose lives have been destroyed by the sex industry are ignored on account of an analysis that ends with “consent.”
It has been interesting (and frustrating) watching the emotional and dramatic reactions to this scandal, as my view is that, while AI deepfake porn is indeed morally repungnant and signals a disturbing new frontier in porn culture, “regular porn” is worse. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of women and girls who are being abused, exploited, and traumatized, for profit, across the world, for the temporary pleasure of men who don’t give one single shit what happens to those women and girls after they cum.
There is nothing redeeming about this industry. It doesn’t matter who “chooses” or “consents” to what, because this isn’t just about either the individual watching or even the individual being watched. This is about a multi-billion industry that exists because women and girls are pushed past their limits, manipulated, taken advantage of, exploited, abused, and forced. It impacts all girls and women everywhere, as well as men, and their relationships with the women and girls around them.
QtCinderella herself seems to know this, having complained about “hot tub streams” that began appearing on Twitch back in 2021, explaining that when women on the platform are sharing sexualized, porny videos of themselves, it puts pressure on other female streamers to do the same:
“I’m sick of being harassed and being told to get naked in a hot tub because it’s late at night [and] when I’m just chatting, I’m surrounded by other girls in hot tubs so it’s expected of me to be in a hot tub. It’s exhausting. I just want to wear a hoodie and watch a YouTube video.”
This isn’t about just you, or even about just her. Porn is such a massive industry, and so massively normalized, consumed by countless people around the world, so deeply incorporated with everything we see and do — online, in ads, in pop culture, all over Instagram and Twitter — it’s wholly unavoidable. Kids today start looking at porn as early as 11, shaping their sexualities before they even know what sexuality is. Men expect their female partners to participate in the fantasies and acts they’ve seen played out on screen. Young women perform for men based on what they think those men want — based on what they’ve seen in porn, ignoring their own desires, pleasure, and emotional/psychological wellbeing. Men like Piker and his fellow pontificators like to claim only those who grew up in “puritanical and patriarchal” households objectify women, while they promote an industry that exists to profit from the objectification of women, growing their followings and profits in doing so.
Piker summarizes the entire analysis offered by the woke, telling QT Cinderella, “It’s because there’s no consent — you didn’t consent, it’s completely outside of your control, and that’s what the problem is, right?” But that’s not the whole problem. The problem is porn, and that men have been groomed by porn to believe any woman is up for grabs — we can and should all be pornifiable, hence the deepfakes. And none of this will be addressed so long “consent” is allowed to end the conversation.
The post ‘It’s because there’s no consent — that’s what the problem is’ appeared first on Feminist Current.
Earlier this month, when Twitter CEO Elon Musk locked his Twitter account to personally test whether locked tweets generated more views than public tweets, many wondered why he didn’t just ask a Twitter engineer how the platform worked. A new report says Musk did meet with engineers—after his test—and that meeting led him to impulsively fire an engineer who attempted to provide an alternative explanation for why Musk’s tweet views might be declining.
The meeting took place on Tuesday, according to the tech newsletter Platformer. Bringing together engineers and advisers, Musk asked his team why his account, which has “more than 100 million followers,” would only be getting “tens of thousands of impressions.”
“This is ridiculous,” Musk said, according to multiple sources.
Six days into strike action, Jo Grady, UCU general secretary, demands end to ‘draining’ campus conditions
Striking university staff are determined to secure a deal that tackles burnout and makes their working lives more liveable, Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and Colleges Union (UCU) has insisted, ahead of talks at the independent Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas).
Speaking on the sixth day of coordinated strike action across the higher education sector, Grady told the Guardian that for the UCU and fellow higher education unions, the dispute has never been just about pay.
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Last week, we headed to Las Vegas to check out the 10th edition of the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show (KBIS) and we are still reeling from everything we saw! Did you catch our live coverage on Instagram? From fixtures to surfaces, ovens to wash basins, showers to closets, we got to see the latest products and collections from legacy and emerging brands coming out this year and beyond. If you missed out on attending, registration for the 2024 show is not yet opened but you can sign up here to be notified first thing. Until then, here is the best of KBIS 2023 to get you excited for next year’s festivities:
We’re not sure about you but we are still into the sage green trend, so this bathtub from Marmite made us stop mid-track. Look how thin the edges are!
Tech was a major component of the show and this smart garden by Natufia showed us how easy it is to cultivate and grow your green thumb, even if the season outdoors are less than ideal. If you don’t have any balcony or garden space, this would be a great alternative.
Another option for growing your own garden indoors is with LG’s “tiiun mini,” which allows you to grow just enough to enhance the dishes you whip up using fresh herbs. We love that this takes up very minimal space on a counter top.
Colors, colors, colors! There was no shortage of color options at this year’s show and that included wash basins. The rainbow of hues we saw (like these from Ruvati) made us question why we would ever choose white or stainless steel again!
We love a matte black fixture and this one at the Brizo booth called out to us for its clean, architectural lines. We also checked out the Jason Wu for Brizo Kitchen Collection (below) and it reminded us of our Friday Five with Wu here.
Kohler announced that it was bringing back two of their six most popular heritage colors for a production and we got to see all six up close. The colors were put to a vote and the winning hues were Spring Green and Peachblow! We love both and could see them in a colorfully bold, statement-making bath space.
Speaking of heritage collections, Bertazonni’s ranges made us wish for one in our own homes. Between the Professional line (above) and Heritage line (below), which would you choose?
We’ve written about Samsung’s Bespoke collection before (see here, here, and here) but seeing it in real life solidified our love for the series. The fridge color blocking is especially pretty in person and such a refreshing alternative to stainless steel.
Konkretus is a new-to-us brand but we love what this under-the-radar brand is doing and making. The booth showcased a monolithic concrete tub in beautiful bubble gum pink hue but it was the natural textures of the tub that really stood out to us. The brand offers a curated selection of colors to choose from if pink isn’t your thing.
This is what happens when fashion inspires the kitchen space! Cafe Appliances displayed various mood boards that these kitchen vignettes were created from and we love how unapologetically bold and colorful the results were. We especially love this eclectic pink/purple kitchen and the tropical beach vibes of this second kitchen.
Bath fixtures are something you should really see in person because photos don’t do them justice. The Central Park West series was a collaboration between Kallista and Robert A.M. Stern Architects and instantly elevates a bath space. Be sure not to drop that handheld shower head on your foot – it’s heavy but that makes it feel so much more substantial and luxurious!
With Smeg, we love how you can go bold with color or minimalist with classic stainless steel.
Finally, all the hardware at Emtek makes us want to change out every door and cabinet in our own home. Above, it looks like we’re looking inside a jewelry box with the various materials! Below is Emtek’s predictions for 2023’s colors and finish trends – which one is your favorite?
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