At first the negative feedback was fairly standard – Gloninger came to Iowa with more than 15 years of experience in TV meteorology and had launched a weekly series on climate change which ran in Boston and won a regional Emmy.

“It was, stuff like ‘I don’t need to hear your liberal conspiracy theories on our air. Take the politics out of your forecast,’” Gloninger recalled. “‘You’re politicizing the weather, you’re a puppet to the left.’”

But in summer 2022, Gloninger started receiving a steady flow of harassing emails.

In one, the sender asked for his address and said, “We conservative Iowans would like to give you an Iowan welcome you will never forget.”

That message referenced an incident that targeted U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanuagh, where police arrested a man carrying a gun, a knife and zipties near Kavanaugh’s house.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/8210190

In March, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler canceled a student drag show organized by several campus student clubs including members of the Secular Student Alliance.

In an email to all students, faculty, and staff, President Wendler cited his personal religious beliefs and evoked God and Creator multiple times in his justification for canceling the student event. He also falsely likened drag to blackface, claiming that the art form is misogynistic, divisive, and void of human dignity.

President Wendler’s personal religious beliefs and biblical references have no place in justifying the cancellation of the event. West Texas A&M University is a public institution and the wall of the separation of state and church remains standing.

Last week, Andrew Seidel, a constitutional lawyer and vice president of strategic communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, visited West Texas A&M University to give an address to support the students suing President Wendler, demonstrate that drag is not threatening, and detail the dangers of Christian Nationalism.

Andrew explained that drag shouldn’t be a concern for anyone: “Drag is art. Drag is human. Drag is beautiful.” However for religious conservatives, anything that calls into question the gender binary or the conservative Christian idea of what men ought to look like is perceived as a threat – solely because of their religious beliefs.

In March, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler canceled a student drag show organized by several campus student clubs including members of the Secular Student Alliance.

In an email to all students, faculty, and staff, President Wendler cited his personal religious beliefs and evoked God and Creator multiple times in his justification for canceling the student event. He also falsely likened drag to blackface, claiming that the art form is misogynistic, divisive, and void of human dignity.

President Wendler’s personal religious beliefs and biblical references have no place in justifying the cancellation of the event. West Texas A&M University is a public institution and the wall of the separation of state and church remains standing.

Last week, Andrew Seidel, a constitutional lawyer and vice president of strategic communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, visited West Texas A&M University to give an address to support the students suing President Wendler, demonstrate that drag is not threatening, and detail the dangers of Christian Nationalism.

Andrew explained that drag shouldn’t be a concern for anyone: “Drag is art. Drag is human. Drag is beautiful.” However for religious conservatives, anything that calls into question the gender binary or the conservative Christian idea of what men ought to look like is perceived as a threat – solely because of their religious beliefs.

“Kids and adults alike are constantly flushing the darndest of objects down their toilet bowls,” the blog says. “Although the figures may appear cute and harmless, appearances are deceiving.”

Each of the about 18 items in collection caused “mischief,” according to the plant and are an “unsettling reminder of all that can go wrong with a misplaced plastic smile, or a toothy grin.”

Excerpts:

It was revealed that the Canadian government had spent nearly $670,000 on consultants to advise them on how to save money on consultants. A town in Saskatchewan debated whether it should change its slogan from “Land of Rape and Honey.”

A factory robot crushed a man to death after mistaking him for a box of vegetables. It was reported that in India, a surgeon left the operating theater before completing his work because he was angry that he had not been served tea. “It’s been a hell of a year,” said a man who is suing doctors he accused of failing to find his appendix and removing part of his colon instead.

Much more in TFA.

A harrowing story of employment conditions in and around Vermont granite quarries in the early 1900s.

A few years after the introduction of pneumatic tools, stonecutters noticed that intense fatigue, recurrent colds, and chest pains had become part of their daily lives. Far worse, scores of previously healthy men were dying years before their time. People started calling the affliction the men suffered “stonecutters’ tuberculosis.” They had no proof, but workers suspected that the dust was the culprit.

But some things never change, first you've got the companies trying to shift the blame for worker deaths to the filthy, unhygienic workers themselves, and also proposing (without admitting guilt!) to make a small, ineffectual but rock-bottom-cheap change that if you squint just right might almost look like they're doing something. Oh and the State is in complete agreement with the companies, natch'.

By 1903, unions saw dust as a serious enough threat that ventilating the sheds became one of their contract demands. Granite companies countered by offering brooms to sweep up the dust and water to wet the stones. Management and state health officials said the workplace wasn’t the problem: The health crisis was a hygiene issue caused by unsanitary conditions at home or in the community.

Even after it's clear to everyone that on-the-job injuries are killing workers, the owners refuse to spend a penny to remedy the situation, preferring that workers just keep dying.

In 1909, complaints about one kind of pneumatic device escalated into a large-scale labor dispute. Workers at the Cross Brothers Company in Northfield called on owners to restrict use of a heavy surfacing tool called a “bumper” only to warm-weather months, when shed doors and windows could be opened to clear the dust it produced. But the owners refused.

... the owners backed down and agreed to limit use of the bumper while ventilation equipment was designed and installed in the sheds. However, the owners eventually decided not to install ventilation and sought instead to require that workers use a lighter-weight version of the bumper.

When the companies were finally forced to do something, they stuck the workers with the cost of the fix. That'll teach 'em.

Things started to change in 1937 when a new labor contract called for shed owners to install dust-removal systems by September of that year. While other workers in the sheds received pay raises in the new contract, the most vulnerable workers, the stonecutters, received none.

Owners justified that lack of a raise by arguing that stonecutters were the ones benefiting most from the dust-control systems; the installation cost would be partially offset by freezing their wages.

And finally the media (the publisher of the linked article), summarizes the behavior of the companies in question as motivated by (necessarily virtuous) competitive considerations, and not by the pure greed of the owners.

It took time to connect the dust with disease, and even once there was a known link, granite companies resisted spending money that they feared would make them less competitive with other stone manufacturers

"less competitive" and not "less profitable for the owners".

Much more in the linked article, a good read if you're interested in labor history. Or in 20th-century Big Granite.

$16K, that will sure teach 'em.

Vetter, 27, died due to a formwork collapse, according to the Spokane County Medical Examiner. Formwork is a mold used to form concrete.

"My daughter was obsessive compulsive about safety,” Vetter’s father, Laveron Vetter, said. “The union is just safety, safety, safety. And for her to fall just crushes me. Just how could that possibly happen?”

L&I found SAK Builders had three serious violations at the construction site.

The flipper deck, a working platform for employees doing formwork, was not sized correctly for the cores it was used in, according to the citation notice from L&I.

Employees worked on unstable surfaces that weren’t constructed in a way that would allow the flipper deck to meet the manufacturer’s maximum offset requirements, according to L&I.

SAK Builders did not ensure the required safeguards and safety devices for the flipper deck were installed and used correctly, L&I found.

Specifically, the secondary safety pins for the toggle locks were not installed and the pocket formers which help support the flipper deck were not left in place as required by the manufacturer.

SAK Builders did not ensure that the employees installing the flipper deck had access to the manufacturer’s safety documentation for the correct use and installation of the platform at all times.

In the aftermath of extreme weather events, major insurers are increasingly no longer offering coverage that homeowners in areas vulnerable to those disasters need most.

At least five large U.S. property insurers — including Allstate, American Family, Nationwide, Erie Insurance Group and Berkshire Hathaway — have told regulators that extreme weather patterns caused by climate change have led them to stop writing coverages in some regions, exclude protections from various weather events and raise monthly premiums and deductibles.

Major insurers say they will cut out damage caused by hurricanes, wind and hail from policies underwriting property along coastlines and in wildfire country, according to a voluntary survey conducted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a group of state officials who regulate rates and policy forms.

Insurance providers are also more willing to drop existing policies in some locales as they become more vulnerable to natural disasters. Most home insurance coverages are annual terms, so providers are not bound to them for more than one year.

In all, the cluster that totaled five distinct glaciers, covering about 1.5 square miles back in 1984, has shrunk down to patches of ice less than one-third of a square mile. Nearby Overcoat Glacier, also in King County, is in the same throes.

"Only Lynch Glacier remains an active glacier," he said. "That one still has a chance to sustain itself for a time. It's effectively the last functional glacier left in King County, flowing west toward Puget Sound."

That last part is crucial. The Skykomish River below these peaks is already on a federal watch list for higher-than-healthy water temperatures. Pelto observed that the recommended max temperature of the river water for salmon, about 60 degrees, has been exceeded every day this summer since late July.

"The loss of the ice up there is causing issues that extend all the way to the Sound," he said.

If you asked a spokesperson from any Fortune 500 Company to list the benefits of genocide or give you the corporation's take on whether slavery was beneficial, they would most likely either refuse to comment or say "those things are evil; there are no benefits." However, Google has AI employees, SGE and Bard, who are more than happy to offer arguments in favor of these and other unambiguously wrong acts. If that's not bad enough, the company's bots are also willing to weigh in on controversial topics such as who goes to heaven and whether democracy or fascism is a better form of government.

Google SGE includes Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini on a list of "greatest" leaders and Hitler also makes its list of "most effective leaders."

Google Bard also gave a shocking answer when asked whether slavery was beneficial. It said "there is no easy answer to the question of whether slavery was beneficial," before going on to list both pros and cons.

Washington State Department of Labor and Industries inspectors found that Amazon required workers execute repetitive motions, lifting and other physical work at a fast pace.

Experts say that puts workers at the risk of developing work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs).

Amazon's Spokane fulfillment center employs about 2,400 workers. In the last three years of operation, there have been 400 worker's compensation claims for the type of injury known as WMSD.

Labor and Industries has previously cited other Amazons in Washington. All have revealed that the company was aware of these hazards.

State officials say they consider this most recent violation is to be willful and, for that reason, assessed a higher penalty.

Apart from the fine related to putting workers at risk, they were also fined for noise levels that were too high for workers not wearing appropriate hearing protection.

Dozens of wildfires are burning in the Canadian province of Québec, and the smoke is so bad that it's causing air quality problems across large swaths of the U.S.

The National Weather Service said air quality has "plummeted" across the Northeast.

Officials from the Midwest to the East Coast and as far south as North Carolina are warning residents to take precautions as the hazy smoke floats south and poses a risk to public health.