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`Rise of the Robots' and `Shadow Work'

Barbara Ehrenreich The New York Times
Even the most expensively educated - Lawyers, radiologists and software designers, among others - have seen their work evaporate to India or China. Tasks that would seem to require a distinctively human capacity for nuance are increasingly assigned to algorithms, like the ones currently being introduced to grade essays on college exams.

On Domestic Workers Day, Millions of Indian Women Continue to Work in the Shadows

Sindhu Menon Equal Times
Domestic work is one of the few areas of work available for unskilled women workers in India -- the overwhelming majority of whom are illiterate or educated only up to the primary level. They frequently work seven days a week, enduring poverty wages [despite often working in multiple households], no paid leave, zero maternity or social protection, violence and unhygienic living and working conditions.

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past

Charles S. Weinblatt New York Journal of Books
In these days of heightened discussion about "race" and racism, it is useful to keep reminding ourselves about the contingency of racial categories. Jennifer Teege is a German author who is the daughter of a Nigerian father and German mother. In her search for origins, she found that her grandfather was an officer in the SS who ran a World War II concentration camp. Charles S. Weinblatt reviews this harrowing tale of cross-racial family discovery.

Bernie, GE & Uber

Bernie Sanders wins backing of South Carolina AFL-CIO EBoard; Negotiations with General Electric continues with GE demanding concessions from workers; A judge rules that an Uber driver is an Uber employee, not a freelancer!

Youth Unemployment and Dr. King's Dream

Bernie Sanders Medium.com
We are not making the progress that Dr. King called us to achieve in the 1960s. It is time to declare once and for all: Black lives matter: on the streets, and on the job too.

Gender and Identity in the Wachowskis' "Sense8" on Netflix

Sara Stewart Women and Hollywood
Eight strangers around the globe are psychically linked after experiencing violent visions involving a woman (Daryl Hannah) unknown to any of them. The eight characters are about as diverse as you can get in terms of location, culture, race, economic situation, sexual orientation and occupation. As Lana Wachowski put it in an interview with io9 earlier this year, the show is "trying to get at the human question of how are we the same, and how are we different.

Fugitives

Philip C. Kolin The New Verse News
Mississippi poet Philip C. Kolin sees analogies between the recent wave of police shootings and the old Fugitive Slave Act.

Obama-Backed Trade Bill Fails in the House

David Nakamura and Paul Kane The Washington Post
The vote on "Trade Adjustment Act" portion of legislation to allow President Obama to "fast track" the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), failed because Republicans were opposed to giving workers who lose their jobs due to the TPP any additional aid. "Liberal Democrats" voted to kill the TAA bill in order to stop the passage of the TPP, in a Republican controlled House of Representatives.