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As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread in the United States and people become even more dependent on delivery services, Amazon has managed to find new ways to treat its employees terribly—something it was already excelling at.

In recent weeks, multiple Amazon fulfillment centers across the country have seen outbreaks of COVID-19 and from a lack of hazard pay to substandard sanitization, workers say the company isn’t doing enough to protect them. Even worse, when employees protested, Amazon responded by firing organizers and whistleblowers and a leaked memo obtained by Vice shows higher-ups’ plans to smear and discredit at least one of them.

In an open letter posted to his website, Tim Bray, a now-former vice president at Amazon, writes, “At that point I snapped.” After lodging formal complaints and having the proper discussions, he knew that “remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned.”

The victims weren’t abstract entities but real people; here are some of their names: Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, and Chris Smalls.

I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?

Since its original posting, Bray has deleted a “list of adjectives” describing the company’s treatment of those fired workers. He says that “voices I respect told me it was mean-spirited and I decided it didn’t add anything so I took it out.” (“Chickenshit” was one of those adjectives and I get Bray’s decision but also he wasn’t wrong.)

Bray also notes that the company’s actions during the coronavirus pandemic aren’t a divergence from its past behavior.

“Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison,” he writes.

At the end of the day, it’s all about power balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker, what with mass unemployment and (in the US) job-linked health insurance. So they’re gonna get treated like crap, because capitalism. Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their collective strength.

You can read Bray’s full letter here.

(via Vice, image: VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)

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—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—

Steve Carell and writer/producer Greg Daniels are back together, and fans of The Office can rejoice! The comedy duo are now taking on something bigger than paper supplies for companies. They’re taking on space itself and making sure America gets there first! Or … you know, Trump’s dumb Space Force idea. When POTUS wants complete space dominance, there is only one man for the job—and that man is Mark R. Naird (Carell). A man who actively laughs at the idea so you know, a mood.

From the trailer though, I can’t tell if Mark wants to blow this entire operation or if he’s taking it seriously but, either way, I’m excited about it because a new Steve Carell show to help me cope with the world at large? Sign me up!

With a cast filled with exciting faces (John Malkovich, Jane Lynch, Tawny Newsome, and Lisa Kudrow just to name a few), Space Force is my only hope for not being mad about that really cool name. Why couldn’t Donald Trump have named it something stupid like Space Committee? Actually … even that sounds kind of cool because it’s space. Dammit.

“Space should be a zone of wonder. Not of conflict and death,” John Malkovich says, and we concur. That’s exactly why I get so angry just thinking about Donald Trump trying to tell anyone to do space things. He doesn’t deserve space.

But watching Steve Carell being out of his depth is a favorite pastime of mine. so I’ll take this Michael Scott 2.0 and watch Space Force when it comes out on Netflix on May 29th. To reiterate, I will watch everything that Greg Daniels does—especially when it includes Steve Carell. Happy Space Force to us all!

Also did I mention that Ben Schwartz is in it? BB-8/Sonic/Jean-Ralphio himself? Truly, a gift!

(image: Netflix)

Here are some other things we saw out there today:

• Josh Gad is bringing together the cast of Back to the Future and continues to live an ’80s kids’ dream. (via Nerdist)
• So you know all those Data parts in Star Trek: Picard? The prop team really had to hunt them down. (via ComicBook.com)

• Me trying to pronounce X Æ A-12 pic.twitter.com/KVOTtAHPbu

  — BD (@BrandonDavisBD) May 5, 2020

• Want to read all about Venom? Now you can with the free comic line-up! (via CBR)

Anything we missed out there today? Let us know what you saw in the comments below!

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 —The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—

Theaters are closed, movies delayed, and access to press screenings are limited to streaming. There’s no better time to highlight smaller films — amazing movies without the big-studio marketing budget that makes it harder for you to find. Discover a new film festival darling and support new, emerging, and independent filmmakers. Sheltering in place doesn’t need to stop you from your weekend evening escape to the movies. Follow the flurry of upcoming reviews on Twitter, or find all my reviews for movies you can stream from right at home.

For years, Netflix has been cornering a temporarily forgotten market: the teen romance movie. Their catalogue has been filled with them in recent years, from the middling successes of Tall and Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, to the big success of instant classic To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and its sequel PS I Still Love You. The Half of It is Netflix’s newest teen romcom movie in the same tradition; one that continues its legacy of capturing the charm and emotional pull of the teen romance while subverting its more antiquated clichés and heteronormativity.

A love story centered around academic star and witty outcast Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis), The Half of It offers both a common protagonist trope with a twist: sure, Ellie is a nerdy outcast, but she’s also confident in her own way, less interested in the popularity game of high school and more invested in taking other students’ money by writing their English papers. Her personal struggle is primarily paying the bills with her father, a Chinese immigrant whose PhD is undermined by his inability to speak perfect English. When Ellie meets Paul, a charming-dumb type with a heart of gold, he asks Ellie to write a love letter for the girl he’s fallen for. Ellie never expected to fall for that same girl through her letters, launching an often hilarious, often touching love triangle in small-town Squahamish between the poetic nerd, charming-dumb jock, and the perfect girl.

Part of The Half of It is a familiar catfishing plot reminiscent of Sierra Burgess and countless others, but less cringy in its deception. You feel more comfortable rooting for Ellie’s deception given the likelihood of the perfect girl, Aster, having the same struggles with her sexuality and secretly wanting to be with Ellie as well. While their feelings stay hidden, the second act of the film makes for a spy thriller-comedy of a love story, with Ellie speaking through Paul, a character who reliably blunders Ellie’s wit and sensitivity. When Ellie and Aster communicate through letters and texts though, sparks fly, along with an undeniably beautiful emotional connection.

Despite being a romance that isn’t meant to have a happy ending — Ellie’s narration offers you that warning when the movie begins. There’s an unbridled hope that threads through every scene and character. Not necessarily based on the question of will-they-or-won’t-they-be-together, but hope for Ellie and Aster to come to terms with their feelings, that Paul will become a star chef and his friendship with Ellie will develop, that Ellie’s father will be alright. Where Paul seems impossibly uncharismatic in the first act, and Aster too conceited to fully appreciate, both will grow on you as a testament to writer and director Alice Wu’s work. You may scoff at the undercurrent of pretentious commentary on love and philosophy (at least I did) until I realized how effective it was in putting me in the heart space of teenage love — the same heart space that’s so ineffable to Paul that he needs Ellie to describe.

An underdeveloped character or two weakens the movie, like Trig, Aster’s boyfriend who plays an additional dumb jock and pride of the town. His relationship with Aster is meant to complicate her feelings as to whether she wants to submit to the manicured life offered to her, or boldly pursue the riskier life she truly wants. Their relationship feels more a distraction than an asset, not worth the handful of laughs offered by Trig’s cute doofiness. Eventually he leads to the least effective part of the film when a climactic scene in a church goes off the rails and crashes.

Still, there’s more than enough depth and plot progression to make it easy to sweep the unnecessary parts aside and focus on what matters. By its end you may find yourself cheering for friendships more that lovers, not needing a happily-ever-after to feel that love won the day. For me, there’s few more heartwarming scenes than Ellie and her dad eating something called a “taco sausage,” with Paul standing between them, smiling. I could have settled simply for that.

The Half of It is available for streaming on Netflix May 1st.

Find all of Jordan Calhoun’s Rotten Tomatoes-approved movie reviews at Jordan Calhoun at the Movies.

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The post Here for “The Half of It” appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

Your kids have always dreamed about going off to Hogwarts. And it’s probably not a stretch to say that you might be dreaming of sending them there right now just so they’d have something to do. A Youth Services Librarian and Harry Potter fan is making both of your wishes come true… sort of. Created by Sydney Krawiec, Youth Services Librarian at Peters Township Public Library in Pennsylvania, the Hogwarts Digital Escape Room gives you and your kids a chance to, well, escape from real life and into the world of Harry Potter.

(Don’t tell the kids, but they’ll be learning real world lessons along the way.)

Warner Bros.

The adventure begins on the first night at Hogwarts after the great feast to celebrate the start of a new school year. As sorted students shuffle off to their House common rooms for the evening, the prefects announce a game inspired by one of the Muggles’ newest fads: escape rooms. Can the students escape to make their way out and get back to the safety of the common room?

Clues are given and students must answer questions and riddles to proceed. There’s no Harry Potter book or movie trivia to be found here. Instead, we have questions about the Dewey Decimal System (be still our beating nerd hearts), math to convert galleons to knuts, and more puzzles that must be solved correctly before the next part of the escape room opens.

Warner Bros.

The digital escape room is all presented brilliantly through a Google Form, offering multiple choices to give your answers. While the experience is clearly written with the love for children’s education that a Youth Librarian has, this digital escape room is an excellent way to get happily lost in the halls of Hogwarts for just a little while.

Featured Image: Warner Bros.

Kelly Knox is a freelance writer in Seattle, WA who writes for Star Wars, DC Comics, and more. Follow her on Twitter.

The post Head to Hogwarts with HARRY POTTER Digital Escape Room appeared first on Nerdist.