Corporations Will Not Save Us: The Sham of Corporate Social Responsibility

Last August, the Business Roundtable – an association of CEOs of America’s biggest corporations – announced with great fanfare a “fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders” and not just their shareholders. 

They said “investing in employees, delivering value to customers, and supporting outside communities“ is now at the forefront of their business goals — not maximizing profits.

Baloney. Corporate social responsibility is a sham.

One Business Roundtable director is Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. Just weeks after making the Roundtable commitment, and despite GM’s hefty profits and large tax breaks, Barra rejected workers’ demands that GM raise their wages and stop outsourcing their jobs. Earlier in the year GM shut its giant assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

Nearly 50,000 GM workers then staged the longest auto strike in 50 years. They won a few wage gains but didn’t save any jobs. Barra was paid $22 million last year. How’s that for corporate social responsibility?

Another prominent CEO who made the phony Business Roundtable commitment was AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, who promised to use the billions in savings from the Trump tax cut to invest in the company’s broadband network and create at least 7,000 new jobs. 

Instead, even before the coronavirus pandemic, AT&T cut more than 23,000 jobs and demanded that employees train lower-wage foreign workers to replace them.

Let’s not forget Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and its Whole Foods subsidiary. Just weeks after Bezos made the Business Roundtable commitment, Whole Foods announced it would be cutting medical benefits for its entire part-time workforce.

The annual saving to Amazon from this cost-cutting move is roughly what Bezos – whose net worth is $117 billion – makes in a few hours. Bezos’ wealth grows so quickly, this number has gone up since you started watching this video.

GE’s CEO Larry Culp is also a member of the Business Roundtable. Two months after he made the commitment to all his stakeholders, General Electric froze the pensions of 20,000 workers in order to cut costs. So much for investing in employees.  

Dennis Muilenburg, the former CEO of Boeing, also committed to the phony Business Roundtable pledge. Shortly after making the commitment to “deliver value to customers,” Muilenburg was fired for failing to act to address the safety problems that caused the 737 Max crashes that killed 346 people.  After the crashes, he didn’t issue a meaningful apology or even express remorse to the victims’ families and downplayed the severity of the fallout to investors, regulators, airlines, and the public. He was rewarded with a $62 million farewell gift from Boeing on his way out.

Oh, and the chairman of the Business Roundtable is Jamie Dimon, CEO of Wall Street’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase. Dimon lobbied Congress personally and intensively for the biggest corporate tax cut in history, and got the Business Roundtable to join him. JPMorgan raked in $3.7 billion from the tax cut. Dimon alone made $31 million in 2018.

That tax cut increased the federal debt by almost $2 trillion. This was before Congress spent almost $3 trillion fighting the pandemic – and delivering a hefty portion as bailouts to the biggest corporations, many of whom signed the Business Roundtable pledge. 

As usual, almost nothing has trickled down to America’s working class and poor. 

The truth is, American corporations are sacrificing workers and communities as never before in order to further boost runaway profits and unprecedented CEO pay. And not even a tragic pandemic is changing that. 

Americans know this. A record 76 percent of U.S. adults believe major corporations have too much power. 

The only way to make corporations socially responsible is through laws requiring them to be – for example, giving workers a bigger voice in corporate decision making, requiring that corporations pay severance to communities they abandon, raising corporate taxes, busting up monopolies, and preventing dangerous products (including faulty airplanes) from ever reaching the light of day.  

If the CEOs of the Business Roundtable and other corporations were truly socially responsible, they’d support such laws, not make phony promises they clearly have no intention of keeping. Don’t hold your breath.  

The only way to get such laws enacted is by reducing corporate power and getting big money out of our politics.

The first step is to see corporate social responsibility for the sham it is. The next step is to emerge from this pandemic and economic crisis more resolved than ever to rein in corporate power, and make the economy work for all. 

Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju said the first priority for this would be given to those who have qualified for the Olympics.

Mondo Duplantis of Sweden and Renaud Lavillenie of France tied for the gold medal Sunday during a men's pole vault competition held in their own backyards.

Most stakeholders agree that holding smaller competitions will be the best way forward post-lockdown.

At least 70% of U.S. Olympic sports organizations have applied for government funds during the coronavirus pandemic, a stark financial reality that underscores the frailties within the world's most dominant Olympic sports system.

Posted by: icon_uk

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The EU hosted a summit where over 40 countries and global organisations promised a starting figure of over $8 billion to the development of a covid-19 vaccine.

Much of the world is starting to experiment with opening up again in a new sort-of-post-Covid19 world, with places like Germany and Spain relaxing, gradually, some of the lockdown protocols, with strong limitations and provisos.

In New Zealand, consistent reminder that competent politicians exist Jacinda Ardern has suggested that the country may not have open borders for a long time to come.

In the UK, a phone app is being developed for contact tracingM and notification of people you may have been in contact with who develop Covid19, though in true current UK style, it's going against every other countries developed app by not using the personalised data storage method (Where your information never leaves your phone), but a centralised database, which is raising some concerns about the storage and disposal (or not) of this data.

The US government is planning on borrowing around 3 TRILLION dollars in the next quarter to pay for pandemic support initiatives. That's 3,000,000,000,000 (Which I only mention because I've never had a reason to type an actual number that big in a real world context!)

The US is also starting to open up in places, though the wisdom of this is being called into question by... well, pretty much everyone else on the planet, and a goodly number of the local population of course.

The Clone Wars seventh and final season came to an end with a frankly spectacular arc which saw Ahsoka Tano facing off against Darth Maul in the sort of iconic fight scene that, truth be told, the sequel trilogy was mostly completely lacking, at least on an emotional level), and giving us a chance to see the impact of General Order 66 from the point of view of Ahsoka, as well as the actual Clone Troopers who we have got to know and care about over the years of this series. THIS is how you do it!

The long overdue, repeatedly delayed, New Mutants movie was briefly appearing as forthcoming video on demand from Amazon, though without a release date, but it has now disappeared again. This DOES seem to suggest it might go straight to digital with no cinema release.

Also a new image of a new baddies form the movie have been released in the shape of the Smiley-Men.

And I've clearly been watching waaaay too much anime, or at least listening to too many anime soundtracks when a random video from something called Argonavis (A games based anime from what I can see) popped up and I thought "Gosh that sounds like Unison Square Garden" (who did "Orion o Nazoru", the belter of an OP for Tiger and Bunny) only to discover it's not, but it was written and arranged by two of the members.

In terms of podcasts, alongside old favourites like "Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men" (pretty much what it says on the tin and currently looking at Age of Apocalypse), "The NoSleep Podcast" (Horror fiction) and "The Arkham Sessions" (An actual qualified clinical psychologist, Dr Andrea Letamendi, examined, firstly "Batman the Animated Series" and is now looking at the "Doom Patrol" TV series for their depictions of mental conditions), I've just started Mockery Manor, a horror/mystery/drama set at a gloriously awful (and thankfully fictional) British theme park in the late 1980's.

So today's extra curricular activity for the community: What podcasts are you currently listening to that you'd recommend to others?


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Posted by: iamrman

I couldn't resist sharing some more fan art.

( Read more... )

Preventivní opatření proti nákaze covid-19 zasáhla jak firmy všech velikostí, tak živnostníky. Jenže právě osoby samostatně výdělečně činné patří podle vlády ke skupinám, které krize vyvolaná pandemií nejvíce ohrozí. Zejména pak ty, kteří mají živnost jako hlavní zdroj příjmů a nemají ji jako přivýdělek k zaměstnání. Jak je stát podpoří?

Ještě minulý týden byly úřední hodiny kontaktních pracovišť Úřadu práce ČR velmi omezené. Pobočky sice v pondělí otevřely, ani dnes ale na úřad nemusíte osobně, většinu záležitostí vyřídíte online. Poradíme jak na to a shrneme, kdy a v jaké výši máte nárok na podporu v nezaměstnanosti.

Pandemie koronaviru dolehla v březnu i na hypoteční trh. Objemy poskytnutých hypoték se propadly o čtvrtinu. Průměrná úroková sazba hypoték však roste již třetí měsíc v řadě, v březnu vzrostla na 2,45 procenta.

Sněmovna schválila návrh zákona o některých opatřeních ke zmírnění dopadů epidemie koronaviru. Jaké úlevy se dočkají dlužníci a jaké jsou podmínky pro zastavení exekuce, vysvětluje právník Adam Stawaritsch.

Od 1. září 2022 nebude možné provozovat kotle na tuhá paliva, které nevyhovují přísnějším emisním normám. Včasnou výměnou kotle můžete ušetřit. Nejenže snížíte náklady za topení, ale stihnete navíc využít státní dotaci na jeho pořízení. Víte, jak na to? Otestujte své znalosti.

Finanční znalosti Čechů se začínají zlepšovat. V indexu finanční gramotnosti, který každoročně měří Česká bankovní asociace, dosáhli Češi 61 procentních bodů ze 100. Oproti loňskému roku to je o čtyři body více, což je doposud nejvyšší hodnota za posledních několik let. Problém ale je, že pětina lidí přiznává, že má finanční polštář vytvořený jen na pouhý měsíc.

Kvůli koronavirové pandemii lze očekávat silnou recesi. Česká národní banka proto v březnu dvakrát snížila základní úrokovou sazbu z 2,25 procenta na jedno procento. Některé banky na to už zareagovaly razantním snižováním úrokových sazeb na spořicích účtech, což zamíchalo žebříčkem nejlepších spořicích účtů. Ve spolupráci s Finparádou jsme zmapovali aktuální trend a sestavili nový žebříček.

Ze 60 na 80 procent denního vyměřovacího základu vzroste ošetřovné pro rodiče, kteří zůstali doma s potomky v souvislosti s uzavřením škol a školek kvůli koronavirové krizi. Senát novelu schválil v úterý 28. dubna 2020. Předlohu nyní dostane k podpisu prezident Miloš Zeman. Spočítejte si orientačně na kalkulačce iDNES.cz, kolik dostanete.

Pokud jste se rozhodli pro změnu místa, je to jednoduché. Výpověď můžete dát kdykoli a z jakéhokoli důvodu, vlastně i bez důvodu. Naproti tomu zaměstnavatel vás může propustit jen z důvodů vyjmenovaných v zákoníku práce. Jak je to ale v případě, že jste v karanténě nebo čerpáte ošetřovné? Na tyto a další otázky odpovídá advokát Pavel Nastis.

Firmy i finanční trhy mají za sebou první letošní kvartál. Bilance obou není z důvodu preventivních vládních opatření proti šíření nákazy covid-19 nikterak růžová. To potvrzuje i Partners index podílových akciových fondů.

Splácíte hypotéku, u níž se blíží zlomové datum fixace? Jak na to, když chcete brzy půjčku doplatit nebo ji refinancovat? A lze před doplacením využít odkladu splátek?

Nová zákon „Lex voucher“ stanovil pravidla pro vypořádání cestovních kanceláří s klienty. Na problematické situace, které mohou být s koupeným zájezdem spojeny, jsme se zeptali advokáta Ondřeje Vokála.

Do pracovních i osobních životů vstoupila pandemie, jakou nikdo nepamatuje. Krize, která nastává, se dotkne všech. Nad aktuální situací a tím, co nás letos čeká a co je klíčové pro rozhýbání ekonomiky, se v komentáři zamýšlí personalista Tomáš Surka.

Mohlo by se zdát, že pojišťovny budou v koronavirové době zaznamenávat zvýšený zájem o sjednání životních pojistek. Zejména kvůli krytí rizika pracovní neschopnosti, což se vztahuje i na onemocnění infekcí covid-19. Praxe je ale zatím opačná.

Česká rodinná firma SSI Group vznikla v době, kdy jsme ještě neznali mobilní telefony a podnikatelské prostředí 90. let bylo poměrně divoké. Přesto se ji Václavu Vodrážkovi společně se synem Janem a dalšími členy rodiny dařilo každý rok posouvat o něco dál. Letos tak na trhu významná bezpečnostní agentura oslaví 30 let svého působení na trhu.

The finalists are:

• Neil Clarke
• Ellen Datlow
• C.C. Finlay
• Jonathan Strahan
• Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas
• Sheila Williams

I'm a subscriber to Uncanny Magazine, edited by the Thomases, and a Patreon supporter of Clarkesworld, edited by Neil Clarke. I keep up with neither magazine as much as I'd like, but I generally enjoy both of them. Uncanny Magazine in particular has a very high hit rate for me when I do make time to read it.

(I also had the pleasure of meeting Neil Clarke in his kaffeeklatsch at Dublin Worldcon last year, which I really enjoyed & learned a lot from.)

I have one of Jonathan Strahan's anthologies from last year, Mission:Critical on my to-read pile, and I've also been eyeing the Made to Order: Robots and Revolution anthology published this year.

Ellen Datlow edits a lot of horror, which I'm cautious of, and I happen not to have read any of the Tor.com short fiction she acquired last year, but that could be remedied (in a well-lit room during the day, etc). She also lists a couple of anthologies, and while I'm not touching a Best Horror of the Year anthology, I might risk the ghost stories anthology.

C.C. Finlay and Sheila Williams edit respectively F&SF Magazine and Asimov's Science Fiction, neither of which I subscribe to or read regularly, but because I'm already not keeping up with the things I do subscribe to, not for any stronger or more considered reason.

The finalists are:

• Sheila E. Gilbert
• Brit Hvide
• Diana M. Pho
• Devi Pillai
• Miriam Weinberg
• Navah Wolfe

You can find lists of books published in 2019 edited by each of these finalists at this crowdsourced page at File 770, of which:

• Brit Hvide: 2 books on my wishlist
• Devi Pillai: 1 read, 2 on wishlist
• Miriam Weinberg: 2 on wishlist
• Navah Wolfe: 1 read, 1 on to-read pile

Devi Pillai edited A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, which I love so much, and Navah Wolfe edited The Twisted Ones by Ursula Vernon, which is one of the few marketed-as-horror books I have willingly read. (It won't ever be my favourite Vernon book, but it was a good read.)

The finalists are:

• Tommy Arnold
• Rovina Cai
• Galen Dara
• John Picacio
• Yuko Shimizu
• Alyssa Winans

Just looking up those websites has given me a lot of pleasure - my art knowledge continues to be "I don't know much but I know what I like" - and I'm looking forward to taking more time to consider each of the finalists more carefully.

I'm pleased to see Galen Dara on the shortlist, I've seen her work frequently in Uncanny, Lightspeed & Fireside Magazines, and usually like it. I was lucky enough to get into a kaffeklatsch with John Picacio at Dublin Worldcon last year (although I came there sideways, through interest in his work founding The Mexicanx Initiative, which was a finalist for Best Related Work), which was a great experience.

The finalists are:

• Beneath Ceaseless Skies, editor Scott H. Andrews
• Escape Pod, editors Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya, assistant editor Benjamin C. Kinney, audio producers Adam Pracht and Summer Brooks, hosts Tina Connolly and Alasdair Stuart
• Fireside Magazine, editor Julia Rios, managing editor Elsa Sjunneson, copyeditor Chelle Parker, social coordinator Meg Frank, publisher & art director Pablo Defendini, founding editor Brian White
• FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, executive editor Troy L. Wiggins, editors Eboni Dunbar, Brent Lambert, L.D. Lewis, Danny Lore, Brandon O’Brien and Kaleb Russell
• Strange Horizons, Vanessa Rose Phin, Catherine Krahe, AJ Odasso, Dan Hartland, Joyce Chng, Dante Luiz and the Strange Horizons staff
• Uncanny Magazine, editors-in-chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, nonfiction/managing editor Michi Trota, managing editor Chimedum Ohaegbu, podcast producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky

In this category, everything but FIYAH is available free online, supported by subscriptions / Patreons etc. FIYAH puts a list of contents of each issue, and also publishes a Spotify playlist for each quarterly issue. Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fireside Magazine and Strange Horizons also all publish podcasts of each of their fiction / poetry, and Uncanny Magazine publishes two podcasts per issue which cover some but not all of the content (as far as I can tell). Escape Pod is of course a fiction podcast to start with, but does provides transcripts of its episodes.

I subscribe to Uncanny Magazine & FIYAH, I had a subscription last year to Fireside Magazine, I support Strange Horizons on Patreon and I'm on Beneath Ceaseless Skies's mailiing list to get notifications of new issues, even if I don't always read them. I'll need to have a bit of a think about how I'll rank them.

The finalists are:

• The Book Smugglers, editors Ana Grilo and Thea James
• Galactic Journey, founder Gideon Marcus, editor Janice Marcus, senior writers Rosemary Benton, Lorelei Marcus and Victoria Silverwolf
• Journey Planet, editors James Bacon, Christopher J Garcia, Alissa McKersie, Ann Gry, Chuck Serface, John Coxon and Steven H Silver
• nerds of a feather, flock together, editors Adri Joy, Joe Sherry, Vance Kotrla, and The G
• Quick Sip Reviews, editor Charles Payseur
• The Rec Center, editors Elizabeth Minkel and Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

The only one of these I follow is The Rec Center, a weekly email of fan news and fanfic recommendations, which I've subscribed to for about 18 months now. That's also the only finalist where the 2019 output isn't easily viewable (but cunningly I already have the emails in my archive folder).

The finalists are:

• Be The Serpent, presented by Alexandra Rowland, Freya Marske and Jennifer Mace
• Claire Rousseau’s YouTube channel, produced & presented by Claire Rousseau
• The Coode Street Podcast, presented by Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe
• Galactic Suburbia, presented by Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce and Tansy Rayner Roberts, producer Andrew Finch
• Our Opinions Are Correct, presented by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders
• The Skiffy and Fanty Show, presented by Jen Zink, Shaun Duke, Paul Weimer, Alex Acks, Trish Matson, David Annandale, and The Skiffy and Fanty Crew

I'm not familiar with any of these, and I'm not confident of finding time to change that between now and voting time. But I have at least bookmarked the YouTube playlist (she helpfully made a "Hugo Voter Packet" playlist!) and downloaded some sample episodes from each podcast to listen to.

The finalists are:

• Cora Buhlert
• James Davis Nicoll
• Alasdair Stuart
  • 2019 post of all eligible work
  • writer's selection from eligible work
• Bogi Takács
• Paul Weimer:
  • 2019 posts at nerds of a feather
  • writing at Skiffy and Fanty Show
  • writing at tor.com
• Adam Whitehead

Another category in which everything is free to read online. Some of the fan writers already helpfully have their Hugo packets prepared and easily found on their respective sites too, which is pretty impressive. My starting point is that I sometimes read James Davis Nicoll's reviews and I've read some of Bogi Takács's work, but I haven't routinely read any of these finalists.

Good things: jack and I went to see the Troy exhibition at the British Museum. With a bit of time and energy left after that, we also visited the Aztec room. And then we went out for pancakes at my favourite spot. And it was generally lovely.

Then we had a go at some tabletop roleplaying, with OSOs and their younger two. jack had put together a cut-down system, roughly D&D based but a lot lot lot less complex and fiddly. And a delightful little one-shot story about saving a baby giant turtle from a suspicious sea captain, set in an archipelago of islands on the back of giant turtles. jack really encouraged us to develop fun characters, and we're all excited to play more in this setting.

I have plans for an exciting date with ghoti_mhic_uait next week, and I think after that no more travel for fun. Honestly I'm not sure about this week either. Maybe it isn't morally or safety-wise sensible to visit a huge tourist spot in the capital. I'm expecting several months of somewhere between boring and terrifying, and I'm not really impatient for that to start.

ghoti_mhic_uait bought me and jack an annual membership of the British Museum for our birthdays. And it was a really good time to visit as members; the Troy exhibition, in its last weekend, was completely sold out for non-members, plus it was lovely to be able to go to the museum semi-spontaneously rather than having to plan for a particular time and buy tickets. I probably wouldn't have made a special trip or paid lots of money to see Troy, but when it was low pressure it was worthwhile.

Basically what they've done is presented objects that represent the myth as told in Classical literature, so lots of vases and friezes and so on, arranged to recount the story of the fall of Troy. And then they have a gallery of Renaissance responses to the Trojan myth, and then a gallery of modern (ish) responses. Nice curation, lots of ideas about how the myth was interpreted through the culture of the time. And a marvellous collection of objects, the BM has really a lot of good blackfigure vases and beautiful neo-Classical objects. There is also quite a lot of commentary about how war is actually bad rather than epic, and thoughtful stuff about attitudes to women, and it's 2020 so we're no longer doing the ridiculous 'no homo' thing about Achilles and Patroclus.

My favourites were this gorgeous little bowl with a really sweet picture of Eris:


And a stunning pre-Raphaelite portrait of Clytemnestra immediately post-murder, which I couldn't photograph due to the lighting, and can't find an image of online.

Then we went to have tea in the special members' room. The main advantage is that it's quieter than the main tea-room, as it isn't in a huge echoing hall. We reckoned we had enough time and energy left to look at one more thing, and Jack was excited to see the famous double-headed turquoise snake from the meso-American gallery. I fell slightly in love with this grumpy woman who shares the room with it:


On the way we wandered past a staircase with some cool mosaics, the Wellcome gallery with has a Moai that they're in the process of returning to the Rapa Nui peoples they stole it from, and the gallery of indigenous North American stuff, much of which is again, stolen. Also the Enlightenment room, which I'm interested to go back to with more time, partly because it contains more stuff that the British Museum actually has a right to than a lot of the galleries!

Dinner was pancakes and mango lambic beer at My Old Dutch in Holborn, which has been a tradition since I visited the BM with my friend MK and his then two-year-old.

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We are stalled on Bangladeshi films for our world film project, because whenever we try to search we find films actually from Bangladesh completely swamped by Indian films in the Bengali language. So we fell back to watching Porco Rosso, which jack is fond of and I hadn't seen.

It was a very sweet date night movie, and I don't have a whole lot to say about it. I loved the landscapes, and I really enjoyed the characterization, particularly of Porco Rosso and Fio. The film is interestingly aware that hinting at romance between a middle-aged man and a 17yo girl is creepy, but it's also not not a romance.

The plot doesn't make a great deal of sense; like, the purported flashback to explain why Porco Rosso is under a curse to turn into a pig doesn't really explain what his experience as a fighter pilot has to do with the curse. There is a dramatic showdown between PR and his arch-rival, except that it ends with a weird anti-climax where they both run out of ammo and end up standing the sea punching each other. And there are evil fascists being evil in the background, but it's not a war movie about defeating the Fascists, nor a fatalistic film about how Italy is about to succumb to evil. And even the central romance doesn't really go anywhere; the ending is deliberately ambiguous about whether PR actually gets together with the beautiful woman who is in love with him.

That sounds a bit negative, which it isn't meant to be. It's enjoyable, it has a lot of cute and funny moments, the animation is really lovely. I was very happy to just go with the flow and accept that it didn't follow what I expected from the structure.

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Hi,

Not too much to add this month. A new direct flight to Montreal this summer popped up, so we took a trip there last weekend. I had never been, and it is a fun city, with good food, beer, music, geodesic domes, and other things. I always try to participate in a local running race if I can, and there was a small 10k fundraiser near the Olympic stadium. I managed a 43m39s (about 7 min/mile), which is not bad for an old guy, finishing in 11th place. It's not like I was just out for a jog, but I certainly didn't put maximum effort here, because I also wanted to enjoy the rest of my vacation day and anyway I retired from the 10k distance in post 990. I used to think that I was never going to be able to beat the times that I recorded in my late 20s when I felt young. But the decade+ of regularly running hard must have some long-term effects, because I'm pretty sure I could have run 6m30s miles here without dying, and perhaps with a death effort (not to mention losing 10 pounds or so) I could have set a personal record. This also happened with a 5k I did a couple years ago. Good to not feel washed up, but of course this is just talk unless I prove it!

Speaking of old, I'll probably turn 40 before the next post (September 27)!

I have been getting deep into this project described in the previous post, but which remains confidential, as they do. But it finally gave me a reason to get an oscilloscope! I have a lot of traveling to do in September so I'm unlikely to finish it (and video, etc.), but the project is still very much in the fun state, so maybe that's good news for me.

Almost out of time to even finish this post before the month expires. But brief recommendations: I've been playing and liking Dicey Dungeons. It is good and has a very wholesome and pleasant style. Sometimes you need that. I also really like the new album called Anak Ko by Jay Som. Great production, songwriting, vocals, everything.

Hello, and welcome to one of two Fantastic Strangelings Book Club discussions for this month! “What is the Fantastic Strangelings Book Club and how can I join?”  Just click here, sweet baby angel face. This discussion though is about a … Continue reading →

It may be tempting at the start of a new project to create the first database tables manually, or write SQL scripts that you run manually, especially when you first have to spend a significant amount of time on sifting through all the migration libraries and then some more to get it working properly.

Going through this process did slow me down at the start of the project but I was determined to use a migration tool because hunting inexplicable bugs that only happen in production just to find out there is a definition mismatch between the production and development databases is not fun. Using such a tool also motivates you to write both the setup and teardown steps for each table while the current design is still fresh in your mind.

At first I considered a standalone migration tool because I expect them to be very good at that single task. However, learning the idiosyncrasies of a new tool and trying to make it fit seamlessly into my development workflow seemed like more trouble than it is worth.

I decided to stick with a Common Lisp library and found the following seven that work with PostgreSQL and/or Postmodern:

• Postmodern-passenger-pigeon
• database-migrations
• cl-migrations
• Mito
• Crane
• Orizuru-orm
• cl-mgr

I quickly discounted Crane and Mito because they are ORM (Object Relational Mapper) libraries which are way more complex than a dedicated migration library. Development on Crane have stalled some time ago and I don't feel it is mature enough for frictionless use yet. Mito declares itself as being in Alpha state; also not mature enough yet.

I only stumbled onto cl-mgr and Orizuru-orm long after making my decision so I did not investigate them seriously. Orizuru-orm is in any case an ORM which I would have discounted because it is too complex for my needs. CL-mgr looks simple, which is a good thing. It is based on cl-dbi which makes it a good candidate if you foresee switching databases but even if I discovered it sooner I would have discounted it for the same reason as CL-migrations.

CL-migrations looks very promising. It is a simple library focusing only on migrations. It uses clsql to interface with the database which bothered me because I already committed to using Postmodern and I try to avoid adding a lot of unused code to my projects. The positive side is that it interfaces to many different databases so it is a good candidate if you are not committed to using Postmodern. It is also a stable code base with no outstanding bug reports.

The two projects I focused on was Postmodern-passenger-pigeon and Database-migrations because they both use Postmodern for a database interface.

Postmodern-passenger-pigeon was in active development at the time and it seemed safer to use than Database-migrations because it can do dry runs, which is a very nice feature when you are upgrading your production database and face the possibility of losing data when things go awry. Unfortunately I could not get it working within a reasonable amount of time.

I finally settled on Database-migrations. It is a small code base, focused on one task, it is mature and it uses Postmodern so it does not pull in a whole new database interface into my project. There are however some less positive issues.

The first issue is a hindrance during development. Every time the migrations ASDF system (or the file containing it, as ASDF prefers that all systems be defined in a single file) is recompiled it adds all the defined migrations to the migrations list. Though each one will only be applied once to the DB it is still bothersome. One can then clear the list with (setf database-migrations::*migrations* nil) but then only newly modified migration files will be added. The solution then is to touch the .asd file after clearing the migrations list.

The second negative point is quite dangerous. The downgrade function takes a target version as parameter, with a default target of 0. This means that if you execute downgrade without specifying a target version you delete your whole database.

I am currently using Database-migrations and it works well for me. If for some reason I need to switch I will use cl-migrations.

Using Database-migrations

To address the danger of unintentionally deleting my database I created a wrapper function that does both upgrade and downgrade, and it requires a target version number.

Another practical issue I discovered is that upgrades and downgrades happen in the same order as they are defined in the migration file. If you create two tables in a single file where table 2 depends on table 1 then you can not revert / downgrade because Database-migrations will attempt to delete table 1 before table 2. The solution here is to use the def-queries-migration macro (instead of def-query-migration) which defines multiple queries simultaneously . If you get overwhelmed by a single definition that defines multiple tables the other option is to stick with one migration definition per file.

Anyone know what this lovely tree is? Spotted in Mills Park.

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