Divestment from Israel can take many forms, depending on the institution. Some colleges may be directly involved with Israeli companies, or receive funding from them, while others may simply have a broad investment portfolio that includes Israeli companies, or just Western companies that also do business with Israel.
So it's not like all colleges and universities in the US are all supporting Israel in the same way, and therefore divesting from Israel can vary in terms of how complicated the process would be.
Many universities have money that they are allowed to use to invest, as long as the principal is used for explicit educational purposes. The investments are supposed to be public/reported, though there have always been complaints that they aren't.
Students are protesting at college campus that have reported investments in Israel related companies (some, notably, directly related to war efforts) to demand the universities divest from those investments. Some universities have conceded and done so. Others have just called the cops.
Oh boy…so this is how I understand it (as someone who has spent many years in the tech industry - I got out of it thank god - as well as have worked closely with university engineering research departments while employed in tech), but could certainly be missing some critical components here, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
So, the tech industry in the US is heavily subsidized with taxpayer money (like many other industries in the US…yes folks, even the US “Free Market Capitalism “ isn’t really a “Free Market”, as that short experiment has shown it wouldn’t last 2 seconds…but that’s a whole other topic).
As you may know, the tech industry is critical for US “defense” operations. Like helping Israel defend themselves from those ravenous and dangerous Palestinians.
So how does this work in the US? Taxpayer dollars go to funding certain “defense” projects thru the Pentagon mostly. That money then ends up making its way to defense contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, etc. The government basically gives these contractors money and says “Go make new tech that can help us build better bombs and weapons and stuff. And if there is any tech developed that can be used for other private industries (think consumer tech), then great. But that is sort of secondary. All we care about is the weapons”. Of course, the language in these contracts are much more nuanced as to avoid any moral hazards with knowing what exactly it is you’re working on; something that took me a while to finally figure out. But, that’s essentially what it boils down to. “We’ll give you taxpayer money and your company will be very profitable. All we want is for you to use your resources to develop weapons, and if you do that we will keep giving you money”
So these contractors get their money, and hire smart engineers to help with these projects. Well a major component of this is that these contractors are heavily invested in academia and universities, because that’s where they get their smart engineers from. These contractors may also fund departments at Universities for research and development. How much specific universities are tied in with these contractors is of course university dependent, but most are tied in some way or another.
The goal of most of these protests is to stop the universities from collaborating with these defense contractors that help to support these horrific wars and injustices we’re seeing today, which if you think about it is a very ambitious goal. These students are directly challenging a major component of the military industrial complex.
THIS is why we see such a strong response from those in power trying to quell the protests and demonstrations.
I mean just take a look at the response from law enforcement. It is much, much stronger than the response from, for example, the January 6th insurrection.
Whenever you see a strong response from LE, that should immediately make a blip on your radar. It means that whoever LE is going after is directly challenging power, or some component of power/the status quo. Seeing such a strong response, you should immediately be asking yourself “Damn what are these people (students) challenging/demanding that is such a threat to those in power?” And once you begin looking into it, it all sort of starts to make sense.
Either way, I wish these students and protesters all the best of luck. Major changes in policy often start in universities, so I am crossing my fingers that this evolves into a greater challenge on the military industrial complex apparatus.
Well, if the students are protesting that, the media is doing a really bad work on covering it.
I can understand protesting against ties with the defense industry, as well as I can understand wanting to maintain those. And I imagine this one is not unanimous between the students. And you are right, that this explains the police reaction much better than what is being reported.
the media is doing a really bad work on covering it.
Yep, that's pretty much by design. Most large media companies rely on these same companies (or parents/subsidiaries) for the bulk of their advertising revenue.
Oh that is by design my friend. The media will often obfuscate the protesters’ true aims, instead focusing on a very, very small number of “agitators” (either real or imagined) to try and delegitimize them to the public. They want people to think “Oh those crazy, privileged, liberal college students don’t know what they’re doing”.
Well, if the students are protesting that, the media is doing a really bad work on covering it.
Now keep that at the top of your mind every time you see a major story and I do mean every time. The media, ALL of it, absolutely positively 100% does this day in and day out on a very wide variety of issues.
It is much, much stronger than the response from, for example, the January 6th insurrection.
Jan6 was a very short duration one-off event while the Campus Protests have been ongoing, and escalating, for months now. The difference in response is easily explained by those two facts alone. As an example The LE response on Inauguration Day clearly shows the difference between "One Time" and "Ongoing".
...on the military industrial complex apparatus.
AKA the largest Federally Funded jobs program in the United States.
What do you mean that F1 guy? Is K-Mag known for wanting to sleep with people? I thought he was a family man, but you never know with these hot shot racing drivers.
I'm so out of the loop that I don't even know if Drake, you know the one who wears that red puffy jacket in that meme with the yellow background... is the same as Drake from Nickelodeon early 2000s kids shows. Are they two different Drakes? cuz they sure look different from each other.
So the one wearing a red puffy jacket with the yellow background.
I had to Google that because I'm really out of the loop, the only Degrassi I know was the one on PBS In the mid '90s And I didn't even watch that, I just remember a few clips and a friend telling me about it.
and the Nickelodeon Drake I'm talking about was from the Amanda Show probably late 1990s
Ya I don't think Degrassi was ever on Nickelodeon. If you're thinking of Drake Bell, then no, they are definitely two different people lol. Both got into music, though, although in different genres (one did rap, the other rock or something). And like the other replier mentioned, I think both got into trouble for sliding into the DM's of minors.
It appears to me that most of the layoffs are from publishers of AAA games. Perhaps it is too hard for AAA game development to be sustainable. Too high costs and not always good return on investments.
Yeah I feel like it's similar to movies in a way. You can only push so much money and development into something before you start seeing diminishing returns.
It isn't just AAA by a longshot. Indie devs are also going through hell.
Part of it is that a lot of companies overstaffed over the pandemic, finished up those projects they were behind on (there is a reason Winter 23/24 has been INSANE), and are now laying people off.
But mostly it is because of economic uncertainty and inflation. Investors are a lot less willing to throw dump trucks of cash at people. That leads to wary investors/shareholders for the large companies and a "need" to punish labor for management's mistakes. And for indie devs that means an inability to get funding.
Danny O'Dwyer and NoClip have been making a game for the past few years to better understand what development is. And they put up a REALLY good video where Danny talks about what goes into a pitch for a publisher and just how incredibly bleak it is. Lots of "Well, at least this one person told me they weren't interested rather than just ghosting us" vibes.
I really like smaller, focused games. I don't need a game to be every genre, and I don't need to sink over 100 hours into it. I'd rather play something like Celeste than yet another open world collectathon with observation towers to climb, crafting, shitty combat, boring story, bad minigames, and running back and forth again and again on mindless escort treks that exist solely to pad the game runtime. I'd rather spend $5-20 on a 4-10 hour game than $70 on a game that overstays its welcome in order to justify the pricetag.
Simple. Large game studios have become more about releasing IP content and less about actually creating art. If you look at all those yearly carbon copies EA releases, 2K has to follow suit. Any title that is not aggressively marketed will die a silent death because every genre is oversaturated.
The game industry now consists of just a couple of very big names and thousands of small games that aren't profitable. It's becoming more and more like the music industry.
According to this article from Feb 11, https://theconversation.com/the-video-game-industry-is-booming-why-are-there-so-many-layoffs-222685, the videogame industry is booming, and thus it seems like it's more an issue with companies wanting to show profitability for shareholders by reducing labor. I assume it's being justified with AI being hyped up and/or forcing out older/more expensive workers and bringing in younger/cheaper talent.
It does kind of make me wonder if the videogame market is oversaturated, as I look over my ridiculous Steam Library and see over a thousand games, many of which are unplayed. And there's another Humble Bundle that just launched with even more games I've never heard of that I can buy cheap as shit. And Epic will give me another free game or two on Thursday. And I just purchased two itch.io bundles with hundreds of titles in each of those. And I have shelves full of tabletop boardgames to go through. I have access to more videogames/boardgames than I probably have hours left in my life to play them, even if I were to be able to retire today and just play games non-stop. I rarely if ever buy new games anymore, there's just too fucking much out there now. Obviously, the industry as a whole is making billions of dollars, so people are still buying them, but it feels like there's just so much out there and too little time to play any of them.
I think your library is a good example of what's going on and the key is probably what you're buying. You have lots of games but I bet many of those are smaller games from indie studios; even if you're not playing those games the studios are benefiting from you low price impulse purchases.
I'm guessing you're not impulse buying £60 and £75 games from big studios and leaving them unplayed. And I doubt you'd even buy those games if they're not scoring well; certainly not at full price anyway.
That is the story of the games industry right now - smaller studios are doing well, some very well when they produce very good games, while the big Publishing houses are producing overpriced games, which are poorly quality controlled or even just fundamentally bad.
Can you saturate a market when a £5 impulse buy on a discounted indie game or a discounted AAA game with good review scores from 3+ years ago is about the same as a coffee? Whose going to buy a £70 poorly reviewed new release when you could have bought 100 good games on discount. Even if you don't play them all, it's just too good a proposition.
It's less about profit and more about sustained growth. During the COVID lockdowns publishers saw a big bump in cash flow due to increased sales and subsidies. That caused them to hire new employees en masse among other investments because in the corporate world there is no such thing as leaving money unspent. Money needs to earn more money because capitalism and shareholders.
After the lockdowns, that extra cash flow receded quickly. The response from publishers to keep their growth rate from also falling is to lay off employees and reduce risks.
I would say its an economy thing. Google and those other large companies are letting people go mainly because interests rates are so high at the moment. With high interests rates that means lending is more expensive which also means expansions are harder to make financially work. This also applies to AAA game companies.
The lay offs will continue until there's an equilibrium of revenue and expenses (because right now, expenses are too high), or until interests rates decrease again. Since the inflation rate is still above the (Fed)Federal Reserve's desired 2% (it was at 3.5 for March, up from 3.2% in February), its very unlikely that the Fed will lower interests rates soon.
We're basically waiting on companies to reach equilibrium, cut back their spending, for inflation to go down and hoping a full on recession doesn't come about before then.
You're right they're not high historically speaking, but they high compared to the last almost 15ish years. And this is after coming out of a time of low interest rates, and increased demand from Covid. The shock from covid wore off, and now the shock from increased interest rates is hitting hard as well.
It would also be an issue if they assumed that with their current staff, they could burrow money cheaply in the hopes that it will pay off in the future.
Now that that isn't an option, cut down staff. Which or course sucks.
Are expenses exceeding revenues? I feel like a lot of the big companies that have laid people off are nowhere even remotely close to going into the red in absolute terms, and if they were, there would have been a five alarm panic. I mean, I can't even imagine the kind of epic shit storm that would sweep wall St if Microsoft or Google only made, say, a million dollars in profit (not revenue, mind) in the last quarter.
I don't mean that expenses are higher than revenue, just that expenses are higher relative to revenue than these companies would like. This is a bear market, they need to prepare to withstand the bear market until things look better.
The videogame industry has been lurching from crisis to crisis for as long as I've been paying attention. I'm starting to think that's their business model.
Out of the loop
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