Tootfinder

"It's a very silly book about a giant robot hotel, but it's also essentially a power fantasy about low-level service workers getting to punch out their boss with a robot and redefining their relationship to labor by flying off into space. Basically, it's high literature." https://mastodon.cl…

Filings: Apple laid off 600 employees in California; some layoffs correspond to addresses where Apple's display and car research teams were reportedly based (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Apple (AAPL) Laid Off More Than 600 Workers When Car, Screen Projects Stopped
Apple Inc. laid off more than 600 employees in California as part of the decisions to end its car and smartwatch display projects, according to filings with the California Employment Development Department.

What's particularly muddy right now is
how a rising number of cattle infections are impacting farm workers,
beyond the Texas case that occurred back in March.
Veterinarians and physicians in states with dairy cattle outbreaks told The Associated Press there are multiple reports of farm workers falling sick,
but confirming cases is proving challenging for one key reason:
Many workers are reluctant to get tested.
"You have groups of individuals that…

What would it take to spark an H5N1 bird flu pandemic? And how bad would it be? | CBC News
For several decades, scientists have rung alarms that a dangerous form of bird flu had pandemic potential. As H5N1 spreads to more species, including U.S. dairy cattle, how likely is that worst-case scenario?

"""
But now consider another accident. A report in the British Medical Journal describes the case of a construction worker who had jumped off some scaffolding. Beneath him, to his horror, was a 15 cm nail that pierced clean through his boot when he landed. The man […] was in agony, tortured by every small movement of his foot. He was given some even more powerful sedatives, fentanyl and midazolam. But when doctors removed the boot they discovered that the nail had not penetrated his foot at all. In fact, it had passed safely between his toes. There was no bodily injury causing the excruciating pain he felt, though it was completely genuine. In his case, however, the experience was produced entirely by his own powerful prediction machinery. Those searing pains were false perceptions created by his brain's predictions (based on the visual evidence) of serious injury and the kinds of feelings that might result.
"""
(Andy Clark, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality)
Honestly, I think the biggest conceptual leap here is realizing that pain that is neither caused by an injury, nor neuropathic in nature, can be very real and people aren't just "making up" or "imagining" things. The wiring of their brain fires up as in any other instance of pain.

> We think building this new tool – which makes cancelling union membership much, much, easier than cancelling Amazon Prime – is a breach of this law.
https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/05/02/legal-challenge-to-amazon-uks-new-one-click-…

Amazon has launched a new
“one-click to quit the union” tool,
and they’re relentlessly pushing it to every worker in their Coventry warehouse.
The QR code for the tool is displayed on each table in the canteen, in every meeting and training room, in every hallway, and every toilet, as well as shown every five minutes of the working day in screens at the centre of the warehouse.
If a worker scans the QR code and clicks the link, Amazon’s software automatically generates…

Legal challenge to Amazon UK's new "one-click to quit the union" tool - Foxglove
Following the news that Amazon warehouse workers in Coventry will soon get to vote on Trade Union recognition, Foxglove is supporting five workers at the Amazon UK Coventry warehouse to launch a legal challenge of Amazon’s latest union-busting tactic.

"The Facebook Pages of national news outlets lost approximately 64% of their Facebook engagement following the end of news availability for Canadian users. Local news outlets lost approximately 85%. Almost half of all local news outlets stopped posting on Facebook entirely in the four months following the ban."
And user used workarounds hurting newspaper visibility. Bad choice. But going to be repeated in CH 🤦

Unionized editorial workers at LexisNexis-owned Law360 authorize a strike; the union says the vote is partly due to planned layoffs after record profits in 2023 (Chris Roush/Talking Biz News)
https://talkingbiznews.com/media-news/law360-staffers-vote-to-strik…

Law360 staffers vote to strike - Talking Biz News
Unionized editorial workers at LexisNexis-owned Law360 voted to authorize a strike Monday. The union says the strike is due to lack of progress at the bargaining table, unlawful tactics that violate union members’ rights and planned layoffs following record profits in 2023. Law360 Union is part of the NewsGuild of New York, which represents nearly […]

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.19060 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csRO_…

Towards Human-Centered Construction Robotics: An RL-Driven Companion Robot For Contextually Assisting Carpentry Workers
In the dynamic construction industry, traditional robotic integration has primarily focused on automating specific tasks, often overlooking the complexity and variability of human aspects in construction workflows. This paper introduces a human-centered approach with a ``work companion rover" designed to assist construction workers within their existing practices, aiming to enhance safety and workflow fluency while respecting construction labor's skilled nature. We conduct an in-depth study on …

Unionized editorial workers at LexisNexis-owned Law360 authorize a strike; the union says the vote is partly due to planned layoffs after record profits in 2023 (Chris Roush/Talking Biz News)
https://talkingbiznews.com/media-news/law360-staffers-vote-to-strik…

Law360 staffers vote to strike - Talking Biz News
Unionized editorial workers at LexisNexis-owned Law360 voted to authorize a strike Monday. The union says the strike is due to lack of progress at the bargaining table, unlawful tactics that violate union members’ rights and planned layoffs following record profits in 2023. Law360 Union is part of the NewsGuild of New York, which represents nearly […]