#westinghouse — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

umweltFAIRaendern @[email protected] · 2026-05-09 · 12:02 UTC

Geopolitik, Atompolitik und Antrag im Bundestag: Statt Atomdeals mit russischen Atomkonzern – Uranfabrik abschalten – umweltFAIRaendern
https://umweltfairaendern.de/2026/05/06/geopolitik-atompolitik-und-antrag-im-bundestag-statt-atomdeals-mit-russischen-atomkonzern-uranfabrik-abschalten/ #geopolitik #Energieversorgung #Uran #vver #wwer #rosatom #framatome #bmukn #BMU #Uran #brennelemente #nuclearfuel #ANFLingen #Westinghouse
#ukraine #Russland #frankreich #Energiepolitik #bundestag #linksfraktion

#geopolitik #energieversorgung #uran #vver #wwer #rosatom

umweltFAIRaendern @[email protected] · 2026-05-09 · 12:02 UTC

Geopolitik, Atompolitik und Antrag im Bundestag: Statt Atomdeals mit russischen Atomkonzern – Uranfabrik abschalten – umweltFAIRaendern
https://umweltfairaendern.de/2026/05/06/geopolitik-atompolitik-und-antrag-im-bundestag-statt-atomdeals-mit-russischen-atomkonzern-uranfabrik-abschalten/ #geopolitik #Energieversorgung #Uran #vver #wwer #rosatom #framatome #bmukn #BMU #Uran #brennelemente #nuclearfuel #ANFLingen #Westinghouse
#ukraine #Russland #frankreich #Energiepolitik #bundestag #linksfraktion

#linksfraktion #bundestag #energiepolitik #frankreich #russland #ukraine

(Roughly) Daily @[email protected] · 2026-04-29 · 08:00 UTC

“The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.”*…

Images of Rastus Robot in an issue of Radio-Craft magazine from 1931

… which might be the same thing?

As more and more folks are fearing obsolescence (if not, indeed, subjugation) by emerging technology, Matthew Wills reminds us that this fear– especially as embodied in androids– has a long (and dark) history here in the U.S…

Our word “robot” comes from Karel Čapek’s 1921 play R.U.R. In it, historian of robots Dustin A. Abnet explains, Čapek repurposed the Czech word for “drudgery” or “servitude” to refer to the artificial workers produced by the play’s Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots) company. [See also here.] Created from synthetic organic material, and thus more android than mechanical, these worker-roboti ultimately overthrow their human masters.
The play was a sensation in Europe, and then a year later, in America, though something was lost in translation. Čapek used robots to criticize soulless Fordism—the “standardization and regimentation” of American capitalism—and hence the US’s political and cultural power in Europe and around the world. (Other Europeans would conceive of the robot in the same way, notably director Fritz Lang and screenwriter Thea von Harbou in the 1927 German film Metropolis.)
But a funny thing happened to these robotic symbols of American capitalism by the mid-twentieth century. They were Americanized by American capitalism. Americans, as Abnet notes, “turned a figure that initially rebelled against the dehumanizing effects of Fordism into a tamed electro-mechanical slave holding aloft a global empire of consumerism.”
Nowhere was this more literal than in the Westinghouse Electric Company’s “simple remotely controlled mechanical men and women” used to advertise the company’s products from 1927 to 1940. “Technology did not have to run amok, Westinghouse’s robots suggested; it could instead become a tamed slave that empowered each individual consumer to become his or her own master.” In the American context, where the language of master and slave was rooted in racism, Westinghouse “connected robots to romanticized white myths about slavery.”
“Americans had always racialized robot-like creations,” continues Abnet, citing the first American automaton (a caricature of a Native American) and the “grotesque minstrel-like caricatures of Black and Asian bodies” that made up automatons in the late nineteenth century.
Westinghouse’s creations, named Herbert Televox, Karina Van Televox, Telelux, Rastus, Willie Vocalite, and Elektro, were promoted as docile domestic workers. Abnet quotes the New York Times’ science and technology editor extolling the benefits of the first of these “mechanical slaves” in 1927: “it obeys without the usual human arguing, impudence or procrastination.”
Rastus, Westinghouse’s Great Depression-era robot, was the most overtly racialized of these corporate robot slaves. Rastus was modeled on a minstrel show character: “black rubber ‘skin,’ overalls, a white shirt, and a pail hat.” In addition, “the robot had a ‘rich, baritone voice’ that would have been read as unmistakably black.” While “all of Westinghouse’s other robots told jokes…Rastus and its blackness were themselves the joke.”
In 1930, Westinghouse’s President explicitly expressed the prevailing white romanticism of slavery. In the company’s Electric Journal, he argued that without the exploitation of the “muscles of others,” there could be “no art, literature, science, leisure, or comfort for anyone.” Rastus’s “tamed black body,” stresses Abnet, “underscored the larger rhetoric of slavery that shaped the fantasy the company offered white consumers.”
“Ultimately, Westinghouse’s robots were not just about more efficiently accomplishing work or ensuring greater leisure time; they were a symbol that deployed racialized slavery in ways that could reassure white Americans of their own freedom, their own mastery over both technology and the bodies of others.”
Čapek’s robots had successfully rebelled, killing all but one human. In America, that couldn’t happen, at least according to the corporations selling the robot idea. But fear of a robot rebellion, like the fear of slave rebellion before the Civil War, remained. Abnet notes that the “most common robot story in American science fiction during the 1920s and 1930s told a story of white men, using their cunning, strength, and willpower to restore their authority over the robots who should be their slaves.” Movies, especially science fiction serials, often told the same story.
A century after R.U.R. and forty years after The Terminator, the uneasiness engendered by robots (and their droid, cyborg, replicant, and AI cousins) persists, reflecting longstanding concerns about labor, autonomy, and power…

Early automatons in the US evolved from symbols of revolt into racialized figures tied to labor and the legacy of slavery: “How America Racialized the Robot,” from @jstordaily.bsky.social.

* Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

###

As we move on, we might recall that it was on this date in 1967 that Aretha Franklin’s up-tempo cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” enter the Billboard Hot 100. It rose steadily over the next several weeks, hitting #1 in June, where it stayed for two weeks and won Franklin two Grammy Awards at the 1968 ceremony, including the first of eight consecutive Grammys for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. An R&B classic, it has also become a protest anthem, thanks to its connections to both the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the second-wave feminist movement of the 1970s.

https://youtu.be/v4f22xl6Bvg?si=yn-pPhxjVoWgsA8k

#ArethaFranklin #automation #culture #history #KarelCapek #KarelČapek #OtisRedding #politics #prejudice #racism #Respect #robots #RUR #slavery #Technology #Terminator #Westinghouse

#arethafranklin #automation #culture #history #karelcapek #otisredding

Bytes Europe @[email protected] · 2026-04-03 · 15:58 UTC

NRC Extends Operating License for California’s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant https://www.byteseu.com/1915430/ #California #DiabloCanyon #license #LicenseRenewal #NRC #Nuclear #NuclearRegulatoryCommission #PacificGasAndElectric #pg&e #Westinghouse

#westinghouse #pg #pacificgasandelectric #nuclearregulatorycommission #nuclear #nrc

Nuclear @[email protected] · 2026-03-11 · 13:08 UTC

Fermi America™ Chief Nuclear Construction Officer Mesut Uzman Addresses NRC Regulatory Information Conference 2026, Showcasing Project Matador’s Position as America’s Most Advanced Nuclear Build

Project Matador Holds the Only Active Combin…
#Nuclear #america #AmericanNuclear #arsenal #Doosan #Matador #NRC #nuclear #NUCLEARENERGY #nuclearpowerplant #NuclearRegulatoryCommission #presidenttrump #Texas #TexasTechUniversity #TexasTechUniversitySystem #Westinghouse
https://www.europesays.com/2838229/

#westinghouse #texastechuniversitysystem #texastechuniversity #texas #presidenttrump #nuclearregulatorycommission

The Japan Times @[email protected] · 2026-03-04 · 16:42 UTC

Japan and the United States are working to include a nuclear power project in the second round of deals under Japan's $550 billion investment package, sources have said. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/03/04/japan-us-nuclear-power-project/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #business #usjapanrelations #us #investments #nuclearenergy #westinghouse

#business #usjapanrelations #us #investments #nuclearenergy #westinghouse

umweltFAIRaendern @[email protected] · 2026-02-28 · 13:07 UTC

Urandeals: Lieferketten und Verarbeitung – Wie die Europäische Union den Brennstoff-Nachschub für den Betrieb von Atomkraftwerken organisiert – umweltFAIRaendern
https://umweltfairaendern.de/2025/07/13/urandeals-lieferketten-und-verarbeitung-wie-die-europaeische-union-den-brennstoff-nachschub-fuer-den-betrieb-von-atomkraftwerken-organisiert/

#Uran #uranverarbeitung #Atomkraft #Atomstrom #Atomenergie #uranbrennstoff #nuclearfuel #anf #Westinghouse #rosatom #anf #TVEL #energieversorgung #Energiepolitik #klimakrise #fridaysforfuture #energiewende

#uran #uranverarbeitung #atomkraft #atomstrom #atomenergie #uranbrennstoff

Energy @[email protected] · 2026-02-19 · 23:07 UTC

SB Energy Tapped for Proposed 9.2‑GW Ohio Gas Power Plant in First Tranche of $550B U.S.–Japan Deal: What We Know

The Trump administration is touting a…
#Energy #AEP #aiinfrastructure #Bechtel #carrier #Datacenters #gaspower #gevernova #HitachiGEVernovaNuclearEnergy #Kiewit #KinderMorgan #Meta #MitsubishiElectric #NuScalePower #Oklo #OpenAI #Panasonic #pjminterconnection #SBEnergy #SoftBankGroup #toshiba #TrumpAdministration #u.s.-japantradedeal #Westinghouse
https://www.europesays.com/2791262/

#westinghouse #u #trumpadministration #toshiba #softbankgroup #sbenergy

oatmeal @[email protected] · 2026-01-08 · 20:20 UTC

@dbattistella weren’t many of them USA companies?

#GM General Motors - Owned Opel factories that produced military trucks and vehicles for the Wehrmacht. By 1942, approximately one-third of Wehrmacht trucks were produced at Ford and GM facilities in Germany.

#Ford Ford Motor Company - Ford-Werke facilities in Cologne produced military vehicles including trucks and half-tracks. US Army investigators found the operations functioned with knowledge of Detroit headquarters and used forced labor.

#IBM - Through majority-owned German subsidiary Dehomag, supplied punch-card tabulating equipment used for census operations and tracking populations (transfer). Equipment was used from the early 1930s through the war.

Standard Oil - Had major investment partnership with IG Farben chemical company as second-largest stockholder. Supplied oil and maintained economic ties with German industrial interests throughout the 1930s.

#ITT - Owned 25% stake in Focke-Wulf aircraft manufacturer through subsidiary C. Lorenz AG. Also owned shares in Signalbau AG which produced radar equipment and transceivers for the Wehrmacht.

Eastman Kodak - German subsidiary Kodak AG produced film, fuses, triggers, and detonators. Used forced labor at Stuttgart and Berlin facilities. Continued importing goods purchased from Germany through neutral countries like Switzerland.

Coca-Cola - Operated bottling plants including one in Essen. Sold 4.5 million cases in Germany in 1939, up from 100,000 cases in 1933. Sponsored the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

DuPont - Had German operations and investments documented in early 1930s, though specific wartime activities are less clear in the sources I found.

International Harvester - Manufacturing operations in Germany with investments growing by 33% annually in the mid-1930s according to company president Sydney McAllister.

Singer - Maintained German subsidiary operations through the 1930s and into the war period.

#Westinghouse - Had documented German investments and operations continuing through the 1930s.

General Electric - Maintained German business connections and investments through the 1930s.

Union Banking Corporation (Prescott Bush) - Banking firm that reportedly transferred funds to German industrial interests in the early 1930s, with particular ties to steel magnate Thyssen.

#gm #ford #ibm #itt #westinghouse