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It ALSO Turns Out That An Employer Cannot Silence — On Its Own “Voices of Amazon” App, An Advocate For A Paid “Juneteenth” Holiday, At The Company…

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Over this holiday weekend, it seems the NLRB website is re-arranging access to its public charge documents, and its links to the FOIA offices. No matter; we’d archived them all as of last week.

So in today’s installment, we bring you… public record FOIA-obtained documents, from this batch of case files. That is from the evidence files in the JFK8 trial in Phoenix regional offices this week. It is a large 5.5 Mb file, so link up to use wi-fi, if you get charged for data over cell. And if you see any personal identifying information in these images of grievances, please remove before reposting. Otherwise, this is all part of public domain — we taxpayers pay for all of it, so “We, the people” may… in fact, offer it — as comment and criticism of Amazon’s labor practices, under bedrock free expression and free press principles.

In the central image at left (purple border), it turns out that Amazon runs a “Voices of Amazon” chatboard/app… ostensibly to address workplace concerns, at JFK8, among other locations. It further turns out that BEFORE the union vote was held there at JFK8, several Amazon workers were “locked out” from the board, solely for advocating for a new Amazon paid holiday called… “Juneteenth“.

Once an employer creates a bulletin board, real or virtual, it must be fair in administering it — especially as to labor’s organizing rights, under Section 8 of the NLRA. As Juneteenth has been celebrated in the community since the middle-1800s, as the widely understood “independence day” for formerly enslaved peoples in America (from the government of the United States)… this plainly strikes at the heart of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Of course, no employer is required to run chat boards. But once one does, the federal law applies. So, we are confident that the able ALJ in Phoenix Region will make up her own mind, at these NLRB administrative hearings, but you should really take a much closer look — this file is chock full of arguably violative photos and screen caps… 5.5 Mb worth.

नमस्ते

It Turns Out That… Promising Special Treatment, Or “Favors” — If An Employee Will Vote “No” On A Union… Violates Federal Labor Law. Unsurprising.

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As we’ve previously reported, Amazon is trying (Tangerine like, that — minus the violence, I guess) to deny that JFK8 workers voted 2-to-1 FOR the union.

Like that orange “big lie” itself, it will never be the case that Amazon execs are able to knock out over twice as many “yes” votes as there were no votes.

And down in baking-hot Phoenix, the ALJ heard yesterday that a consultant for the company misrepresented himself as an “auditor” (i.e., a threat of firing if information supplied by an employee was shown to be false) — and told workers (falsely, it turns out) that he would personally get all the concerns expressed “into Mr. Bezos’ hands” — but only if they voted “no” on the union.

This all was in addition to direct threats to union organizers, and the able ALJ is hearing that despite all these shenanigans, twice as many people voted for a union than voted against one at JFK8. Here is all of the latest, from Bloomberg originally, but Sen. Gillibrand and Sen. Sanders publicly called yesterday for Amazon to drop its “baseless” opposition, and admit that it lost — fair and square — and begin negotiating a fair and balanced collective bargaining agreement:

…An Amazon.com Inc. worker says a consultant hired to defeat a union campaign at a company warehouse in New York promised to take her workplace concerns to Jeff Bezos — a potential violation of US labor law.

During a National Labor Relations Board hearing Thursday, Natalie Monarrez testified that she had a 45-minute conversation in May 2021 with Bradley Moss, a labor consultant who she said introduced himself as an Amazon auditor. Moss asked her to list her concerns and said his boss “had direct ties to Jeff Bezos and would be relaying all of my concerns and issues” to the Amazon founder, Monarrez said… [she also said it was the first time anyone at Amazon asked her about working conditions, in her five years at the company].

“Unless a company has a pre-existing practice of soliciting grievances, beginning to do so during a union organizing campaign and promising to fix the grievances is coercive, in that it tells employees that they don’t need a union to address their issues,” former NLRB Chair Wilma Liebman, who led the agency under President Barack Obama, said in an email last week….

It really hadn’t struck us until just now how much Mr. Bezos’ move (via his hand-picked execs) at JFK8 is like… Tangerine’s delusions. Time to face reality. Get on with it. Recognize that you lost — and start hammering out a fair contract. That will encourage other facilities to just vote to join — so the strategy would be to sign a fair and balanced contract now.

It will only get worse from here, if union leaders perceive that Amazon is just scorching the Earth to delay this inevitable outcome.

Off — to a busy day, in now less humid sunshine… smiling.

नमस्ते

Hinderaker Loved Enron’s GOP “Privatization”… Until It Imploded.

~ condor ~ 1 Comment

Here is Hinderaker’s latest “but it is bad only when Democrats do it” shibboleth.

That is to say, most of the broken electricity grids… are in states dominated by oil/GOP (Texas) interests that spent over two decades raping ordinary households, to line their already fat pockets, while refusing to invest in upkeep and modernization cap ex.

This is all yours to own, moron.

So either pipe down, or press the GOP to fix it.

The Origin — Of The Black Death, In Western Europe… Now Solved.

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What is this about? Now you know.

It seems we finally have proof of where and how the so-called “Black Death” traveled to Western Europe in about 1347. Using DNA from teeth, in graves marked with a suggestion that they all died suddenly, together, in the remote Tian Shan Mountains, near Lake Issyk-Kul, in Kyrgyzstan — about five years before the plague is first known to have killed, in Europe. Do go read it all:

…For seven of the individuals, the researchers were able to extract and sequence DNA from their teeth. In this genetic material, they found the DNA of the plague bacterium — which scientists call Yersinia pestis — in three of the individuals, who all had the death year 1338 inscribed on their tombstones.

This confirmed that the pestilence mentioned on the tombstones was indeed the plague, which is spread from rodents to humans via fleas….

In 1347, plague first entered the Mediterranean via trade ships transporting goods from territories around the Black Sea. The disease then spread across Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, claiming up to 60% of the population, according to the study that published in the journal Nature on Wednesday….

Smiling in the heat — in spite of myself. This is outstanding pandemic bio-science, across nearly 680 years. Be excellent to one another.

नमस्ते

Amazon’s Management Loses Special Appeal Request — As Untimely Filed.

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It sure seems as though upper management at Amazon is so “silo-ed,” that it is not talking internally in anything like a real-time fashion. That’s a problem at most big companies — but Mr. Bezos ought to weigh in, as his largest single stake — in his vast share of the planet’s net worth… is flirting with a permanent, company wide collective bargaining order — across all US facilities, now. Ouch.

These upper level managers cannot “four corners” stall their way through the game, any longer. The union is barrelling forward, on down the tracks now — under a full head of steam, and Amazon has been woefully last century in its approach to this problem.

OTOH, this may be just what the company needs: real workers’ representation — and real… reform. Stay tuned. The hearings continue in Phoenix now; the first loss for Amazon is already on record:

…On May 25, 2022, Judge Esposito ordered the hearing in these unfair-labor-practice cases to proceed by videoconference and set forth various parameters and safeguards governing the remote proceeding. The hearing was set to begin at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, June 6 and continue on consecutive days that week and the following week. On Friday, June 3 at 4:40 p.m., the Respondent [Amazon] filed with the Board the instant special appeal request, accompanied by a request that the Board stay the proceedings pending its decision on the appeal. On June 6, the hearing began, as scheduled….

[Amazon] waited nine days to file its special appeal request, then did so just twenty minutes before the close of business on the business day before the hearing was set to open….

Even if the request had been timely, we would deny the appeal on the merits because the Respondent has failed to demonstrate that the judge abused her discretion. Specifically, with respect to the Respondent’s contention that the judge erred in failing to provide for party representatives to be present at the remote location from which each witness will testify, the Board has held that the safeguards in Section 102.35(c)(2) of the Board’s Rules and Regulations do not apply in all respects to a hearing conducted entirely via videoconference….

Be excellent to one another — and do try to stay cool… we have ripe cherries iced, and fresh lemonade, also at the ready… for the whole of the hazily-heated-sweltering day here. Smile.

While That State’s Media May Be… Untrustworthy, As To Veracity In China — The Below Monster Dish MAY Have Detected Deep Space “Intelligent” Radio Signals

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I won’t link the Chinese pressers, as it is highly likely that the big old honking dish is picking up reflected radio interference — from this planet. But I will genuinely hope I am wrong, and this isn’t a stunt by Xi. I’d love to be wrong here. So, in responsibly-skeptical fashion, I will instead just run what we know for certain, from reliable on the ground reporting — about this vastly-superior to Arecibo dish. [And we all know, Arecibo is EOM.] Looking back to Fall 2016, then:

[Dateline: Sept. 2016] It seems that — for me — interstellar space science is lately filling the void of the slow news trickle, out of Merck. For we know nature simply abhors a vacuum. And this latest piece of news is anything but that. Smile.

Eclipsing Arecibo (in Puerto Rico) in dish diameter (nearly doubling it) — and completely blowing it away in overall sky coverage — this is an engineering marvel.

It positively buries Arecibo on sky coverage because, as opposed to being fixed into the mountain-side, this Chinese FAST radio dish can “gimbal” almost 40 degrees, in any direction by altering the shape of its parabolic dish’s curve — thus covering a much wider swath of sky. [But as we all remember from Billy Bob Thornton in Armageddon, it is “a big a$$ sky….”]

In any event, this stretches our ability to look back in time, to much closer to when the Universe was first born. Courtesy my lovely eldest daughter, via National Public Radio:

…Xinhua reports the telescope cost $180 million, and displaced 8,000 people from their homes to create the necessary 3-mile radius of radio silence around the facility. It will be used for “observation of pulsars as well as exploration of interstellar elements….”

[FAST will also be used to search for] interstellar communication signals, [which] could be more simply referred to as searching for intelligent extraterrestrial life. “In theory, if there is civilization in outer space, the radio signal it sends will be similar to the signal we can receive when a pulsar… is approaching us,” Qian told Chinese state media….

To be certain, China’s space science prowess is indisputable (see graphic at left), as they have since soft-landed multiple robotic missions, now driving on Mars, as we speak. That’s my June 2022 “fair balance” update, to my opening paragraphs.

Indeed. [And perhaps one day, at least possibly, we might — with this device — hear a signal. One that might suggest we are not alone in this Universe. I firmly believe we are not — but as a scientist — I’d like even just a small hint, of some proof of that idea. That is also why I’ll be watching the Europa news, this afternoon.] Be excellent to one another — for at least for now — we are all we know we have.

नमस्ते

[U] So — A Tuesday Lunchtime Dose Of… Whimsy: Did A Google AI Application… Become Self-Aware Last Week? Is “Skynet” Already Here?!

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[Martin Shkreli has so many ghost / fake accounts, this is the revised graphic.]

It seems Google has placed one of its software engineers in San Fran… on leave. It seems he thinks that an artificial intelligence suite he was working on… became self-aware. Sentient. A silicon life form, if you will. And so, of course, Google will fire him, for saying so:

…A senior software engineer at Google was suspended on Monday (June 13) after sharing transcripts of a conversation with an artificial intelligence (AI) that he claimed to be “sentient”, according to media reports. The engineer, 41-year-old Blake Lemoine, was put on paid leave for breaching Google’s confidentiality policy.

When Lemoine and a colleague emailed a report on LaMDA’s supposed sentience to 200 Google employees, company executives dismissed the claims.

“Our team – including ethicists and technologists — has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims,” Brian Gabriel, a spokesperson for Google, told the Washington Post….

I do not mean to make fun of him (and the Google spokesperson seems… utterly humorless). . . yet I highly doubt that a Cyberdyne Systems moment looms for us all. It is just a nice echo of art, being imitated (rather poorly) by… life. Onward, into a sticky hot sunny afternoon! Be excellent to one another….

नमस्ते

Hinderaker *Gently* Scolds… Tangerine. Just about Two And A Half YEARS Too… LATE.

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Here it is.

Hinderaker, for the first time ever, directly rebukes… Tangerine’s big fat election lies — from November 2020… that is now 30 some months ago, BTW.

We all know the only reason his keyboard went active at noon today, is that Bill Barr has now testified under oath that he told Tangerine his election claims were “bullshit” by December 2020.

Barr and several others in the West Wing flat out discussed the 25th Amendment, as to Trump, due to these “detached from reality” lies (and those are Barr’s words).

But it took John 30 months to clear his throat.

Ashley Babbitt’s death (Ex-USAF) is (at least in part) Hinderaker’s — and Barr’s — and of course Tangerine’s (and Ivanka’s and Jared’s and Junior’s) to explain to their respective makers, when the day comes… and it will — for each of them.

So do shut it, you shameless charlatan, Hinderaker. Your maker will judge you — for all of this.

Out.

When Hinderaker Is In Favor Of A Supposed Senate / GOP “Guns” Measure… You Know It’s A Con.

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To be clear, I am certainly in favor of more mental health screening services, and more mental health facilities, available without regard to ability to pay.

But to call this bill “gun reform” is to… lie openly.

The ban on AR-15 / AK-47 and similar automatic and semi-automatic assault rifles… is NOT being reinstated, as was last the federal law, under Bill Clinton.

This is a cynical calculation by the NRA / GOP — as pure political theater. The proof is that Hinderaker sneeringly labels it “acceptable” — as a price to pay, for avoiding a political howling at the mid-terms:

…And if “doing something” deflates the gun control issue politically, at least for the time being, this is not a bad price to pay….”

So… to be clear, Hinderaker sees 19 defenseless, murdered grade school kids, many with their heads nearly blown off, by the AR-15 rounds, as just a bit of political price to pay, to keep the NRA death lobby rolling in dough, and blood.

He. Is. Disgusting.

Me thinks AOC ought to organize a “block this BS bill” movement, in the House (by Democrats) — solely to prevent GOP from claiming they passed a measure that addresses the massacres of Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, NY (Tops) and Boulder, Colorado — King Soopers. And a hundred others.

But I do want to see more mental health services reimbursement become law, so let’s vote it in, and be clear-eyed and still call out the NRA controlled GOP-ers who are blocking a real assault weapons ban, at the mid-terms.

Out.

[Sunday Space Science:] Do All Rocky Worlds, At “Goldilocks Distances” Have Oscillating Cores? One Day we May Know — By Studying Mars.

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So, whimsically, we see John Carter (now of Barsoom), looking back at Jasoom — and wondering if Mars does… the same. [I’d bet it does.]

The data coming out of USC neatly explains why a few miliseconds of extra sunlight have been seen, over a six year cycle repeatedly on Earth, since at least the time that Nixon was in office. Here’s the whole story — and a bit:

…Believed to consist mostly of an iron-nickel alloy, the inner core is mainly a solid ball with a radius of about 760 miles (1,220 km). It rotates slightly faster than the planet as a whole (from time to time, only now), which is called “super-rotation”….

University of Southern California (USC) scientists have found evidence that the Earth’s inner core oscillates, contradicting previously accepted models that suggested it consistently rotates at a faster rate than the planet’s surface.

Their study, published today (June 10, 2022) in the journal Science Advances, shows that the inner core changed direction in the six-year period from 1969-74, according to the analysis of seismic data. The scientists say their model of inner core movement also explains the variation in the length of a day, which has been shown to oscillate persistently for the past several decades….

I’d be willing to bet that this oscillating inner core dynamic is a common feature of rocky worlds in this size class, and may help preserve both the atmosphere and the magnetic field, of such worlds. . . kind of like a gyroscope’s action — but on a planetary scale. We already know that there is a region under Africa where anomalies in the magnetic properties of the planet exist… like a void in a layer cake.

Perhaps this oscillation helps ameliorate that effect, to keep planets from… dying, like Barsoom did some 3 billion years ago. Who knows? But some future mission to Mars may confirm or refute this idea. It is fascinating that the USC data stems from another earlier oscillation period (1979-to-1984), then in… the Big Easy. Onward, grinning….

नमस्ते