Cygnus

For those unaware, Medieval Times is a dinner-theater that specializes in a medieval ambient experience. Beginning in 2022, two of its locations unionized under the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA); and since then, Medieval Times has been waging one of the most vicious anti-union campaigns in recent memory. I am saddened to report that this campaign successfully concluded this week, preventing the union from ever negotiating a contract.

The full details can be found in this Huffington Post article on the scale of the effort. But to summarize how devastating this campaign has been from Medieval Times: last February, 27 workers went on strike against the company. Today, only 7 of those 27 strikers have jobs with it. So many members have been purged or replaced that a looming effort by the the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation to decertify the union has finally gotten it to stand down at both locations. This is ultimately an important and cautionary tale in how winning a union is only the first, not last, stage of the fight:

In Part 1, I tried to get Software Heritage (SWH) to stop crediting my software called ftfy to my deadname. After I brought it up on Twitter, one of their developers DMed me to tell me that was impossible, because changing names would ruin the “integrity” of their data structures.

I give zero shits about the integrity of their data structures. I had already sent them a second email invoking the Right to Rectification, which it seemed like they ignored again, so it was time to get more formal.

SWH is run by Inria, a French government-supported research organization. I was convinced that the reason their Data Protection Officer felt they could ignore my e-mails was that I was writing them in English.

My level of being able to put together a French sentence is somewhere around « Je vais au supermarché en tren train », but I can kinda read it when there's enough cognates. With a combination of Microsoft Word with grammar checking, Wiktionary, machine translation to suggest sentences, a guide to writing formal GDPR requests in French, and a French acquaintance who was busy but could proofread the result, I got to it.

In the replies to part 1, @IkomaTanomori described “getting legally angry in French” as Western civilization's equivalent of going super saiyan, and that sounds pretty much right.

specifically trans people in Europe (anywhere in Europe is probably fine, based on our own knowledge, but we defer to @arborelia on that point. Frances is probably most convenient)

who are being deadnamed by SWH in the fashion described in this thread

comments to original, not to our reply, we're just boosting this in case it helps with visibility. we have nothing to do with this but it infuriates us.

He is eepy, surely you understand