“The safety and well-being of our employees and partners is our top priority right now,” Richard Rocha, an Amazon spokesman…

I’m curious to know: Was their safety and well-being was the top priority a few hours earlier, when the National Weather Service issued a tornado watch?

Here are a few related questions:

  • Does Amazon have a plan for moving everyone in the building to shelter if a tornado warning is issued?
  • Have they tested that plan?
  • How long does it take to move people from the most distant parts of the building to shelter?
  • Does someone have the job of monitoring for a tornado warning?

Source: Deaths Confirmed After Tornado Hits Amazon Warehouse in Illinois – The New York Times

When climate-change deniers want to spend more and more on border security, it’s a clear sign that they know perfectly well that climate change is happening.

“The debt pearl-clutchers are right: We are saddling our children and grandchildren with a bill they won’t be able to pay. But that bill doesn’t come from minting the money we need to save our species and civilization from the emergency on its doorstep – it comes from the false economy of skimping on climate and buying guard labor instead.”

Source: Pluralistic: 26 Oct 2021 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Way back on June 9th I ordered a fancy new umbrella. The vendor created a shipping label that very day, and sent me a tracking number. For reasons (perhaps among them, as they claim on their website, precautions in the warehouse against COVID-19), it was six days before they actually handed the package over to the shipper.

As soon as I’d ordered it, I looked ahead at the weather forecast, wondering if there’d be some rain to use it in, but it looked like a full week of dry weather. Of course, after it took a week to actually ship the package, things had changed. Happily, the package was on-track to arrive Saturday—I’d have my new brolly in hand just hours ahead of forecast thunderstorms!

But then the package followed a mysterious path on it’s way from Wisconsin to Illinois:

  • Jun 9 2020 Shipment information received
  • Jun 15 2020 Shipment tendered to UPS MI BELLEVILLE, WI
  • Jun 15 2020 Package received for processing Avenel, NJ
  • Jun 16 2020 Package processed by UPS MI Avenel, NJ
  • Jun 17 2020 Package transferred to dest MI facility Avenel, NJ
  • Jun 19 2020 Package received by dest MI facility Kansas City, MO
  • Jun 20 2020 Package enroute to USPS for induction Kansas City, MO
  • 20 Jun 2020 22:29 Shipment Acceptance at PO Hazelwood, MO

In what way is this a sensible?

I mean, I’m willing to cut the vendor some slack for taking six days between sending shipment information and then actually tendering the package. I’m sure precautions against COVID-19 reduce their efficiency in shipping things out of their warehouse. But sending the package from Wisconsin to Illinois via New Jersey and then Missouri? They spent 5 days getting the package to a different adjacent state, to a city only 72 miles closer than where it started!

Now that the package is in the hands of the post office, I figure it will actually get here in a couple of days, just about the time the wet weather ends and it gets sunny and dry for a few days.