Leroy

@Halfasstroknot Dude you should if you got the certs they’re always hurting for skilled trades

@deadbeatregular I need to try to get on one of those diving jobs down there

When I was working at the South Pole, there was a former NASA engineer there who gave a presentation on his work with just the shoulder joints in a space suit.

That’s why you see astronauts sort of lumbering around like Teletubbies, it’s really difficult to bend down and pick things up, so for collecting samples they’ll use specialized tools like these during space walks.

To try to prevent this they use a lot of complicated engineering to create specialized joints and hinge points in the suit for the human body. But these usually involve having to rotate your arms in a specific pattern just to say, flex your shoulder upward.

@shadowfan198 @intl_weeds At least get my trade right

@intl_weeds AEU moment for sure

Can't tell if this guy is a. Criticising insta warriors or b. Is a union official

@heymate1848 Sure, but if you can’t actually help workers win and earn the credibility to shape how these struggled are understood, all the “interventionist” rhetoric in the world is just self-important posturing. Having the sharpest critique is not a magical spell that will rally workers

@deadbeatregular I mean true nobody likes a missionary, but if you aren’t actively building an interventionist party you’re abdicating the narrative and history making of all these struggles to its de facto leadership - the bureaucracy - which centres itself and negotiation rather than struggle.

Performative militancy is probably the most common left pathology.

@heymate1848 The membership hates the bureaucracy but still see it as more legitimate than the myriad of communist sects who criticize from the outside. They still keep members employed and their benefits in check. You still need to prove the competency to actually *lead*, not just criticize.

@heymate1848 The point I’m trying to make here is although this is “correct”, simply stating this fact to workers is not a magical spell that will rally them to your cause.

@heymate1848 Union officials can become a conservative bureaucratic layer, but they aren’t a separate class. Their role rests on a social relationship within working-class institutions. The answer is to build rank-and-file power to move them or replace them.

@deadbeatregular I mean union officials are a conservative drag entirely, like they’re literally a social class above the workers (unless you mean workplace reps/delegates)

Orient to durability rather than immediacy. The American labor movement will not be transformed by one convention, one social-media wave, one presidential cycle, or one dramatic general strike.

We are building workplace nuclei, not ideological franchises. Labor work should be assessed by organizing metrics, not by public visibility alone.