America’s Shadow Workforce Rises Up Against Prison Labor

Jason Tate

Carimah Townes, writing for Think Progress, on prison labor in America:

People behind bars are forced to do grueling, back-breaking, and dangerous work for nickles and dimes, while corporations rack up billions of dollars in profit off the cheap labor. They are put to work under the guise of rehabilitation, but the reality is that few people leave prison with the skills, knowledge, or resources to succeed professionally. They are an enticing alternative for large companies that don’t want to pay minimum wage to workers on the outside. And they have had enough.

On Friday, prisoners all over the country launched a national labor strike that’s been months in the making. Their demand is difficult but simple: ending prison slavery for good.

Early Reviews for AirPods Seem Pretty Impressive

Jason Tate

Early reviews for the new Apple AirPods seem to be pretty good. Here’s Susie Ochs, from Macworld:

Not only did I dance, I headbanged. I shook my head side to side, I tossed my hair, I jogged in place, and I looked silly doing all of it. The AirPods stayed put, and they stayed loud. The music (more Sia, naturally) sounded full and lush and I couldn’t hear a single word anyone around me was saying, as if I was completely sealed off in a bubble of rock and roll. Pretty impressive.

My dream has always been to walk around and talk to my computer like Ender, so I’m probably going to give these a shot.1 For those interested in being able to charge your phone and listen to audio with a cord at the same time, it looks like Belkin has released a $40 “audio + charge” dongle, and Apple’s own dock comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack on it. I charge my iPhone in an Elevation dock so I’ve never really charged my phone and listened via headphones with a cord anyway, but, it does look like there’s a couple solutions here.

  1. I’ll write something up about what I think, in October, on how they work for music and podcast listening.↩

Albums in Stores – September 9th, 2016

Jason Tate

Today has quite a few albums worth checking out. That This Wild Life album is probably the first one I’ll listen to that I haven’t heard yet. I also plan on giving Norma Jean a spin, and I am always impressed by The Dear Hunter. If you hit read more you can see all the releases we have in our calendar for the week. Hit the quote bubble to access our forums and talk about what came out today, what albums you picked up, and to make mention of anything we may have missed.

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