>Tractor Supply Company, which bills itself as the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the U.S., will eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) roles, withdraw its carbon emissions goals and stop sponsoring Pride events in response to criticism from conservative activists.
>The Fortune 500 company has been nationally recognized as an inclusive and diverse workplace, including last year in Bloomberg’s Gender Equality Index and Newsweek’s inaugural list of America’s Greatest Workplaces for Diversity.
>But it recently became the target of conservative ire for that very reason, as the latest in a growing series of retailers to face backlash over — and ultimately walk back — its DEI initiatives.
>Robby Starbuck, a music video director and Republican who ran unsuccessfully to represent Tennessee's 5th Congressional District in 2022, launched the campaign against Tractor Supply on X (formerly Twitter) earlier this month.
>He wrote on June 6 that it was “time to expose Tractor Supply,” which he said was one of conservatives’ most beloved brands but was at odds with their values. He pointed to its DEI hiring practices, in-office Pride Month decorations, climate change activism and “funding sex changes,” among other complaints.
A Biden aide said that it was “not an ideal start” for the president at the beginning of the debate, but that there was “no mass panic” at the campaign headquarters in Delaware.
The settlement covers Greg Bombard's 2018 arrest by a state trooper who said Bombard flipped him the middle finger — and a second, related citation nearly six years later, on Christmas Day.
>It all started, Greg Bombard said, with a broken coffee maker. That’s what prompted him to get into his car and head to Dunkin’ on a winter day in 2018.
>It ended this month when the state of Vermont paid Bombard $175,000 to settle the lawsuit that ultimately resulted from that short drive.
>The settlement covers Bombard’s arrest that day by a state trooper who said the St. Albans Town man flipped him the middle finger — and a second, related citation nearly six years later, on Christmas Day.
A news release from Washington State Department of Labor & Industries.
>A Wenatchee fruit grower is facing $353,000 in fines for safety violations that led to a worker being buried alive in a trench collapse last fall in Othello.
>Photographs obtained by the Washington Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) show multiple workers of Stemilt Ag Services LLC digging in a trench more than five feet deep and about 25-30 feet long without any type of cave-in protection such as sloping, shielding or shoring.
>A crew of 10 workers was repairing an irrigation pipe when a portion of the trench caved in on one of the workers, knocking him down and burying him. His co-workers were able to uncover his face after a couple of minutes to allow him to breathe while they dug for another 10 minutes to get him out of the trench. He was taken to the hospital with multiple crush injuries to his head, face, and body.
>“This could have easily ended in death, all because the employer chose to ignore rules to protect workers,” said Craig Blackwood, assistant director for L&I’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health.
>L&I cited Stemilt in March with five willful serious violations in connection with the cave-in. There was no protective system inside the trench to prevent a collapse, and no ladder or way for the workers to get out of the trench within 25 feet of where they were working. The piles of dirt dug from the trench were not set back at least two feet away from the edge. Dirt piles too close to the trench can cause the walls to collapse.
>Also, there was no one onsite with the knowledge needed to inspect the trench before workers went into it, and no training program for trenching and excavation work. The company was also cited for changing the scene by filling in the trench after the cave-in before L&I inspectors arrived.
>Willful violations are among the most serious and mean the employer knew or should have known the safety requirements, but chose to ignore them. The company is appealing the new citation.
>It’s not the first time Stemilt has been cited for trenching issues. The company was cited and fined nearly $17,000 in Quincy in 2021 for violating the same trenching safety rules.
>“We hope the latest fines will be the wake-up call that motivates Stemilt to keep their workers safe, before someone is killed,” said Blackwood.
>The company is now is now considered a severe violator and is subject to follow-up inspections to determine if the conditions still exist.
When Arizona passed the legislation that allowed for private school vouchers, the program was projected to cost $65 million in 2024 and $125 million in 2025. But the most recent estimates put that cost at a staggering $940 million per year, more than 1,000 percent of the initial estimate.
The Christofascists won't be satisfied until every school is a 100% Christian-run, 100% taxpayer-funded, stone-age-war-god-ideology fascist brainwashing center.
An ordained minister accused of drugging and raping a woman and molesting a child was arrested in Spokane Friday.
>An ordained minister accused of drugging and raping a woman and molesting a child was arrested in Spokane Friday.
>Russell Anders, 55, was arrested Friday morning at his home on the 1800 block of West Gardener Avenue in Spokane by a United States Marshals’ task force on an outstanding federal warrant.
>Anders is charged with second-degree rape and first-degree voyeurism in Spokane.
>On multiple occasions, a woman woke up after having drinks with Anders feeling off, according to court documents. She eventually was able to access his laptop and found videos of Anders having sex with her while she was unconscious after putting sleeping pills in her drinks, according to court records.
>She also found sexually explicit videos of children on the laptop, she told police.
>Anders was indicted last year in federal court in Seattle on one count of producing child pornography, along with possessing depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
>He also has pending Seattle cases, including charges of child molestation and sexual exploitation of a minor, among other similar crimes.
Same. I've had two used Dell laptops over the years, running Linux, and no major problems other than the batteries going bad. The most recent I've had for 10+ years now and it's still going strong. Pretty sure it's an ex-corporate machine if that makes any difference.
>Jackson, 78, was just 21 years old when he joined the Birmingham A's as one of a few Black players on the minor league team and at the height of violent racial strife in the American South.
>“Fortunately, I had a manager and I had players on the team that helped me get through it, but I wouldn't wish it on anybody,” Jackson said on the Fox Sports panel for the Negro Leagues tribute game on Thursday.
>When Jackson arrived in Alabama in the 1960s, the city of Birmingham was making headlines for its open abuse of Black Americans.
>Led by Bull Connor, the notorious city commissioner of Birmingham, racial tensions were at a fever pitch, marking a peak with the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which claimed the lives of four young Black girls.
>“I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and say 'the n***** can't eat here.' I would go to a hotel and they said, 'the n***** can't stay here,' ” Jackson said.
>“We went to Charlie Finley's country club for a welcome home dinner, and they pointed me out with the N-word. ‘He can't come in here.’ Finley marched the whole team out,” Jackson recalled, referencing the Alabama native and Major League Baseball franchisee Charles Finley.
Welp, I can see it's time to re-up as a member with the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and maybe a few more. I haven't been active in the Church:State fight since the early 2000s when GWB was kissing-up to Christofascists but the latter are really gaining momentum of late now that they have Their People in power from the SCOTUS on down to the lowliest municipal admin spot. We as a country are truly f*cked if we don't neutralize these people. I'll probably join TST too because I agree with them ideologically, they're doing some great women's health care work, and I want to make sure that I get on all the Christofascist's Lists as a certified Demonic influencer.
Smart TVs that track what people watch and how they watch it give political campaigns a new trove of data to exploit, with little transparency on how it’s happening.
>Televisions that can stream platforms like Hulu or Max usually come loaded with technology that collects information on what viewers are watching, and buyers consent to have their viewing tracked when they open their new TV and click through terms of service agreements. Sometimes, data firms can connect those viewing habits to a voter’s phone or laptop via their IP address, promising a trove of information about an individual and the ability to track them across screens.
>Other times, firms focus on dividing households into groups based on what they’re watching, how they use their TVs and how many campaign ads they’re seeing, which is a boon to political campaigns eager to target specific groups of voters. Connecting this data to voter files is increasingly a focus — a move that adds individual voting habits into the mix.
>Another Boeing whistleblower has stepped forward, a Senate office announced hours before the company’s CEO is set to testify Tuesday in Washington for the first time since the door plug of a 737 Max 9 blew off during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.
>Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s (D-Conn.) office identified the whistleblower as Sam Mohawk, a quality assurance inspector for the planemaker in Renton, Wash. Mohawk alleges Boeing improperly tracked and stored faulty parts, and that those parts were likely installed on airplanes including the 737 Max, which is manufactured at the Renton facility.
>“Mohawk has also alleged that he has been told by his supervisors to conceal evidence from the FAA, and that he is being retaliated against as result,” according to a statement from the Senate Homeland Security’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
>For most of his career at Spirit AeroSystems, Santiago Paredes worked at the end of the line. It was his job to catch production errors before the fuselage left the factory in Wichita, and Paredes caught a lot of them.
>“It’s poor quality. Poor quality of work, just plain and simple,” he says, flipping through photos on his phone of the serious mistakes that he flagged during his dozen years as a quality inspector at Spirit.
>Boeing is trying to rebuild its battered reputation for quality after a door plug blowout on a 737 Max in midair last January. The troubled plane-maker is in talks to buy Spirit AeroSystems, a key supplier that makes the fuselage for Boeing in Wichita, Kan.
>“They say the correct things like they've always said,” said whistleblower Santiago Paredes. “But I know how they really are.” A clash with management
>Paredes says he brought his concerns to his managers repeatedly. But they were more worried about getting fuselages out of the factory faster to keep up with Boeing’s backlog.
>“They were upset for me finding defects,” Paredes said. “It was never the people that created the defects fault. It was my fault for finding it.”
>It got to the point, Paredes says, that a manager ordered him in writing to essentially undercount the number of mistakes.
>“They wanted me to basically falsify the documentation on the amount of defects that were being found,” Paredes said. “They were telling me to lie.”
I swear he comes across as even more senile each and every day. But ...
The rich would support this - they can only consume so much after all, and most of that would be discretionary. No more income taxes on vast incomes, stop buying imported shit, huge win for them. The chowderheads supporting Drumpf would probably be enthusiastic about such an idea too - imagining their small paychecks without that hated tax deduction box and imagining no more paying every year for that scary tax return software. And then, they lose their jobs because countries that we export to retaliate with their own tariffs. Prices on pretty much everything goes through the roof (because even domestic products have foreign supply chains), and most of the cheap shit they used to be able to afford (like electronics from China, bulk foods from overseas and (fast-)foods made with it) they can't afford now.
Meanwhile, with the economy crashing, federal receipts (both tax and tariffs) dry up and it's Government Shutdown time. All working according to the Plan. Grandma and Grandpa lose their incomes and health care and have to move in with unemployed, impoverished JimBob and the wife, which is darn near intolerable what with all the hillbilly kids being home all the time now that the schools have been shut down. Kids that are wailing about being hungry all the time just like the oldsters.
It would be fun to see what carve-outs to the tax/tariff policy they'd have, to try to keep the MIC funded. Borrowing is of course the preferred way to fund it, but nobody's going to be touching the bonds issued by an actively collapsing national government.
"Bloomberg reported the memo indicated a “newer” first officer was flying at the time and inadvertently pushed forward on the control column."
So, is this another "pilot tries to crash the plane" incident? It's hard to imagine how a pilot could "inadvertently" shove the controls forward, especially at that altitude when both would totally dialed-in to flying the plane and doing their checklists and whatnot (vs. say, getting up to go to the toilet or something). Fortunately, "the event was addressed appropriately as we always strive for continuous improvement" said SW, so now I feel better.
Rep. Jim Carroll, D-Bennington, said his district-mate, Rep. Mary Morrissey, R-Bennington, has taunted him for years with verbal harassment.
It's right there in the paragraph about nuclear weapons.
>Less than an hour after taking off from Phoenix on May 25th, the plane experienced an uncontrolled side-to-side yawing motion known as a Dutch roll while cruising at 32,000 feet. The pilots of Southwest flight 746 were able to regain control and the plane landed safely in Oakland, according to a preliminary report from the FAA.
>“A Dutch roll is definitely not something that we like to see,” said Shem Malmquist, a commercial pilot who flies the Boeing 777 and an instructor at Florida Tech.
>The Boeing 737 Max 8 jet involved in the Dutch roll incident is less than two years old. According to the FAA, a post-flight inspection revealed damage to a backup power control unit, known as a PCU. That system controls rudder movements on the plane's tail.
By appointing extremists to set the limits of free speech, the government protects powerful interests from challenge. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 22nd May 2024 It’s not hard to spot the extremists inflaming public passions in Britain and disrupting our lives. They play an active ro...
Oh don't be such a baby.
I use the one that's built in to the Fastmail service. I have a custom domain just for aliases. The Fastmail alias-creation API is integrated with the Bitwarden app (which I use) so that makes creating new accounts (that use email addresses as usernames) on websites really easy. I also use Spamgourmet which is free, convenient, and has been around a very long time. No custom domains there, but they let you use a variety of their domains and they have some short ones which is nice, but I do find that they're blocked pretty often, mostly by major mailing list services.
Makes me think: this could be turned into a profitable new "sport". I'm imaging something like a boxing ring, where a Boeing whistleblower and a Boeing MBA fight it out in public. Could be pitched as quasi-legit, like boxing, or maybe something along the lines of "professional" wrestling. Tag teams, outrageous costumes, stories of insult ("the MBA shot my teamie in his pickup truck!", "this 'blower reduced dividends by $0.50/share!") and revenge. I don't follow fighting sports so maybe you guys could figure out something that would sell well in 2024+. You'd want betting of course, not sure if you could legally do that in IL or WA, might need to move Boeing HQ to Las Vegas. All profits would go to buying Boeing a new management and towards class-action lawsuit costs.
Welcome, life is good here. Stay the hell out of ID though - it might give you flashbacks.
My guess would be that the Idaho statesman web server doesn't like your IP address. Are you using a VPN or Tor? I can still access the article.
The career of Martin Bickeböller, a senior technical employee who made internal and FAA complaints alleging Boeing's loss of control over supplier manufacturing processes, is coming to a frustrating end.
>For senior Boeing engineer and whistleblower Martin Bickeböller, a 37-year career at the jet maker is coming to a frustrating end.
>For a decade, in complaints filed internally at Boeing as well as with the Federal Aviation Administration and Congress, Bickeböller documented significant shortfalls in Boeing’s quality control management at suppliers that build major sections of the 787 Dreamliner.
>The FAA substantiated his claims in complaints in 2014 and 2021 and required Boeing to take corrective action. His latest complaint, submitted in January, alleges Boeing has not properly implemented the fixes it committed to after those earlier complaints.
Bickeböller doesn’t point to a single safety issue but rather to a systemically flawed oversight process.
>He asserts that Boeing lacks control of the manufacturing processes at its suppliers to the extent that it cannot ensure — as safety regulations require — that every plane delivered meets design specifications.
>Separately in January, Bickeböller filed an aviation whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Labor Department alleging that Boeing has retaliated against him.
>He claims Boeing sidelined him from his central work and penalized him with lowered performance reviews.
>Bickeböller, 66, earned his doctorate in theoretical nuclear physics at UW. He joined Boeing in 1987 and rose to become a technical fellow, designating him a top company engineer.
>His expertise at Boeing and his central concern is what’s called “configuration control” — which means guaranteeing that any jet delivered to an airline is built exactly as designed with all parts installed correctly.
>Annabelle Jenkins walked onto the stage during her graduation ceremony from the Idaho Fine Arts Academy in the West Ada School District with a book tucked into her sleeve.
>When she stood before West Ada Superintendent Derek Bub, she slipped out the book — the graphic novel of “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and Renee Nault — faced the audience and smiled, and handed it toward Bub. It was one of 10 books the West Ada School District had removed from libraries earlier in the school year.
>Bub did not take the book. Jenkins dropped it at his feet and walked off the stage without shaking his hand.
>A TikTok video she posted of the incident that night garnered over 24 million views and more than 15,000 comments.
>As the week draws to a close, clients of Cencora and The Lash Group have been submitting breach notifications to state attorneys general.
>The Lash Group partners with pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies, and healthcare providers to facilitate access to therapies through drug distribution, patient support and services, business analytics and technology, and other services. Their substitute notice explains that based on their investigation, personal information including personal health information was affected, “including potentially first name, last name, date of birth, health diagnosis, and/or medications and prescriptions.”
>With only partial numbers from some clients available, there are already 542,062 patients affected. When full numbers are revealed, the grand total for this incident will likely be significantly higher. (See UPDATE below)
>Update 1: Added Johnson & Johnson entries and Abbott entry, bringing current partial total affected to 717,723 for 18 clients.
>Update 2: Added Amgen, but no numbers available, so partial total remains at 717,723 but for 19 incidents.
"We're talking about the official priority list of the governing party of the second-most populous state in America," said one advocate and author.
Donald Trump tells the world he intends to be an authoritarian. So why won’t journalists repeat it?
>Trump is a fascist. But the mainstream political press doesn’t want to say it. They want to act like 2024 is just another election year.
>With their obsession with horse-race coverage, political reporters tend to judge what Trump says or does by whether his words and actions will help him politically. By doing so, the press is saying that Trump’s racism, corruption, criminality, and insane abuses of power matter only so far as his electability.
>There are exceptions: major news organizations, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have done some important stories about Trump’s dictatorial plans for a second term. But those investigative stories are drowned out by the chorus of horse-race stories — sometimes published on the same days and by the same news organizations behind more substantial coverage.
>The media is sleepwalking.
>I’ve often wondered how the press, both in Germany and around the world, failed to see Hitler for the monster that he was before he gained power. After Trump, I think I understand.
If you have any interest in this SCOTUS outrage, you might appreciate the analysis in this (free) podcast episode from Straight White American Jesus:
Did you ever get that library? https://piped.video/watch?v=znlxif61eGw
Yep, I'm now adding ND to my list of states to completely boycott with my tourist $. Fortunately, most of these states have about as much appeal as an un-flushed toilet so no great loss.
That number was way off. The venue can't even hold that many people. Imagine that.
>Did you hear? Eleventy bazillion people showed up to hear Donald Vonshitzinpants drone on for hours about himself in Wildwood, New Jersey. Welp, Lisa Fagan, spokesperson for the city of Wildwood, is the one who guestimated that between 80,000 and 100,000 attendees were there, "based on her own observations on the scene Saturday, having seen 'dozens' of other events in the same space." This really needs a 'Sure, Jan" gif. Trumpers ran with that number, but Fagan and I'm going to guess that she's a Trump supporter, who knows, was way off.
>The story has changed. Wildwood officials now say the 80K to 100K number was not the number on the beach at the rally but the total number of people "in our town," including restaurants, bars, and other places. Imagine that.
>Two years ago, some incumbent Republicans lost primary elections to challengers to their right, marking the growth of hard-line conservatives in Idaho politics.
>Those legislative victories bolstered a far-right voting bloc at the Statehouse and strengthened the Idaho Freedom Caucus, whose membership and influence have fought with and sometimes swayed the state’s red majority. Far-right lawmakers have endorsed fringe views and proposed passing a range of bills, like ones to outlaw COVID-19 vaccines, limit same sex marriage or pursue the phantom of growing cannibalism.
>Now, a set of legislative candidates with extreme views on abortion, COVID-19, the 2020 election and gender-affirming medicine who would be new to the Capitol are running in the May 21 Republican primary.
>As Republicans clash in competitive primaries, these challengers in Treasure Valley races have expressed hard-line views, shared misinformation or perpetuated conspiracy theories prominent in far-right circles.
Freedom Caucus Network power broker Maria Nate blasted controversial state Rep. Heather Scott for support...
>The recording, which we are not posting at the request of our source, is an unfiltered look into a fracture among key far-right figures in Idaho politics, in a state where many races turn on contests of conservative purity.
>It’s a portrait of the tangled relationship between a power broker and a politician. It includes Nate insulting other legislators and accusing Scott of joining the establishment. It shows Scott questioning both whether God wants women in leadership and whether she wants to remain in Idaho at all.
>Heather Scott and Maria Nate have each established their own perch in Idaho politics.
>Scott, from her district near the top of the Idaho Panhandle, has made plenty of headlines. During her first week in office, lawmakers accused her of cutting down a piece of the fire suppression system because she believed it was a “listening device” — a claim she denies.
>She’d explained that the Confederate flag she’d been photographed waving was merely signifying her support for “free speech.” She’d been removed from a committee after she was overheard saying that female House members “spread their legs” to get leadership positions — the same month that Moyle married a fellow legislator.
>But despite all that — or, perhaps, because of all that — she’s cultivated an army of die-hard supporters from the North Idaho grassroots.
>“Heather, do you just not trust me because I’m a woman?” Nate asked. “I do wonder, because you’d said to me a lot of times that women need to follow men.”
>Scott insisted she trusted Nate but acknowledged that she does “think men are stronger leaders.”
>“I just think that’s how God designed us,” Scott said. “Obviously, we’re in a time of attack and crisis. And I think that God has put a lot of women in leadership positions because we’re in judgment. That’s why we’re always — it’s not natural, I don’t think.”
If only the rest of the military would Mann-up like this.
The California-based Raw Milk Institute called the warnings "clearly fearmongering." The institute's founder, Mark McAfee, told the Los Angeles Times this weekend that his customers are, in fact, specifically requesting raw milk from H5N1-infected cows. According to McAfee, his customers believe, without evidence, that directly drinking high levels of the avian influenza virus will give them immunity to the deadly pathogen.
By all means, drink up, morons, get the hell out of our gene pool, we've got enough troubles without your Dimwit DNA.
I refuse as well, and will continue to refuse, at least until my 1997 and 2005 vehicles can no longer be repaired for some reason. I'd love some EV tech but the idea of driving a Big Brother vehicle that's fender-to-fender loaded with spyware and "features" that can only be enabled via subscriptions is horrifying and dystopian. Also forget all the Big Screen distractions inside and all the self-driving antifeatures. At least 1/2 of my driving is done for pleasure and I expect to be focusing on the road and what's happening around me.
literally cutting of your own nose
"Literally"? Really? People lusting after BYD products have no noses now?
“Probably the biggest misunderstanding is they’re all homeless,” Carolyn Pieciak, the retiring founding leader of St. Brigid’s in Brattleboro, says of a surprising shift in clientele statewide.
>“Probably the biggest misunderstanding is they’re all homeless,” she said. “Instead, 76% are low-income elderly who worked their whole lives, are living on Social Security and are struggling.”
>The newly named soup kitchen opened on St. Patrick’s Day 1982. It soon was serving an average of two dozen people,
>“We thought this was a temporary fix — we never thought it would last,” Pieciak said. “Things were not good then, but they’re horrible today.”
>The local influx of older patrons mirrors the situation statewide. According to “The State of Senior Hunger in America” report by the national hunger relief organization Feeding America, an estimated 8% of Vermont elders are considered “food insecure.”
>“We know that inflation and the increase in food prices have hit people on fixed incomes hard,” said John Sayles, CEO of the Vermont Foodbank.
