three genders in a wenchcoat

Thanks to Quick reflexes, good tires, well-maintained brakes, and a collision detection alarm, I wasn't in an accident today when some dipshit pulled a typical columbus maneuver 3 vehicles up from me this afternoon...

...but I almost might as well have been, since the force of the deceleration still threw me forward, and I severely wrenched my right arm as I braced against the steering wheel. Everyone in central Ohio drives like they hand out driver's licenses in cereal boxes as it is, but this was one of the closer calls I've had in a minute, and it sucks that even though no collisions happened I still got injured. It hurts pretty bad even 5 hours later, and I'm going to try to sleep it off because we don't have anything other than ibuprofen in the house.

Most of the time when I type out the reasons I hate cars, I end up deleting them, because it's mostly me just being Petty and grumpy from having worked on them for 6 years now and it's not productive. This one I can't hold back on. Cars are extremely dangerous, even with all the safety measures, even in the hands of an excellent driver, just because every other person on the road is so unpredictable, and with the forces involved even if there isn't a collision there is still potential for serious injury. I'm in a lot of pain right now, but I still feel like I got off super fucking lucky.

Blrgh. I'm going to bed.

Lori Wallach: I learned about direct action and was radicalized by the notion that sometimes you just need to be fucking ungovernable. You must physically interrupt power. That methodology we learned from our Latin American partners. That was not where I came from. I came from a political culture of protesting to make people pay attention. That was also the Ralph Nader methodology—or you sue them. The Latin American methodology was that if you did any of those things, you may disappear. The first thing you do is fuck the place up! You start by smashing things, becoming ungovernable and scaring the living crap out of the elites so they realize they have to make settlements with you. You don't start by asking nicely. For many people around the world, there is still a very high cost to protest. Part of what led us to realize that Seattle had to be a moment was because it was, relatively speaking, safe to do it there. The likelihood that someone would be kidnapped or murdered to make examples of them, dropping someone from a helicopter, is not something we had to deal with. In so many other places, that was not the case. We felt an obligation because the U.S. had helped cause the problem of the WTO and we were in a safe place to take it down.

— from One Week to Change the World: An Oral History of the WTO Protests, by DW Gibson (emphasis mine)

made a new demon that likes to get up close and personal

World of Warcraft workers have voted to unionize the popular video-game franchise, expanding organized labor’s new foothold at Microsoft Corp. by around 500 employees.

An arbitrator overseeing an election at the company determined that a majority of the Warcraft team’s employees have supported the Communications Workers of America, the union said.

Their organizing effort, which brings the number of unionized US gaming employees at Microsoft to around 1,750, was buoyed by the company’s unusually union-friendly stance. The new bargaining unit, which includes artists, designers, engineers, producers and quality assurance testers, could help spur more organizing at the company.