Planned Obsolescence: The Outrage of Our Electronic Waste Mountain
Whole Foods Tracks Unionization Risk With Heat Map ; Etymology of Some Common Typos ; and More Picks
The Parched West Is Heading Into a Megadrought That Could Last for Centuries (Chris)
From Inside Climate News: “Several other megadroughts, generally defined as dry periods that last 20 years or more, have been documented in the West going back to about 800 A.D. In [a new Columbia University] study, the researchers, using an extensive tree-ring history, compared recent climate data with conditions during the historic megadroughts. They found that in this century, global warming is tipping the climate scale toward an unwelcome rerun, with dry conditions persisting far longer than at any other time since Europeans colonized and developed the region.”
Trump Erects a Blockade Stopping States and Hospitals From Getting Coronavirus PPE (DonkeyHotey)
The author writes, “Over the last few weeks, it has started to appear as though, in addition to abandoning the states to their own devices in a time of national emergency, the federal government has effectively erected a blockade — like that which the Union used to choke off the supply chains of the Confederacy during the Civil War — to prevent delivery of critical medical equipment to states desperately in need. At the very least, federal authorities have made governors and hospital executives all around the country operate in fear that shipments of necessary supplies will be seized along the way.”
As Amazon Cracks Down on Dissent, Workers Unite Over Coronavirus, Environment (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “Disparate groups of Amazon employees, as well as emboldened labor unions and environmental groups, are building and strengthening connections with each other as the company is roiled by the pandemic.”
Whole Foods Tracks Unionization Risk With Heat Map (Dana)
From Business Insider: “Whole Foods is keeping an eye on stores at risk of unionizing through an interactive heat map, according to five people with knowledge of the matter and internal documents viewed by Business Insider. The heat map is powered by an elaborate scoring system, which assigns a rating to each of Whole Foods’ 510 stores based on the likelihood that their employees might form or join a union.”
Etymology of Some Common Typos (Chris)
The author writes, “‘Trhe quiclk brownb fsocx jumptde over rtha laxy dopg,’ a typing-practice sentence that all of us learned in high school, includes, in this typed-super-fast version, at least eight different proto-language families struggling to be reborn.”
