Pictured here is teenage Elizabeth Warren described in her yearbook as being "in the habit" of winning debates.



https://twitter.com/girlziplocked/status/1120901449834221568

Sigourney Weaver, who plays the iconic role of Ripley in the Alien movie franchise, surprised students at a New Jersey high school on Friday night as they restaged a play based on the sci-fi film, images of which went viral last month.

After students at North Bergen High put on a highly-talked production, Alien the Play, photos of their sets and costumes made from recycled material went viral after getting posted online.

The show’s art director and high school art techer Steven Defendini previously told BuzzFeed News that the cast and crew didn't “have really any budget,” so students were forced to be creative with their resources.

Astronaut costumes were created from moving blankets, while the helmets were made by combining floor mat foam and bottle caps. One of the sets, which is supposed to be a computer room, was even made from egg crate inserts.

The result was truly spectacular.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/krystieyandoli/sigourney-weaver-alien-play-north-bergen-school-new-jersey?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc

Nick Bosa was the second overall pick, he’s white and a vocal critic of Colin Kaepernick. Kyler Murray, was the #1 overall pick, he’s black and won the Heisman Trophy. Which one did the president take time to congratulate?

Congratulations to Nick Bosa on being picked number two in the NFL Draft. You will be a great player for years to come, maybe one of the best. Big Talent! San Francisco will embrace you but most importantly, always stay true to yourself. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1122136588589457410

Amazon’s fulfillment centers are the engine of the company — massive warehouses where workers track, pack, sort, and shuffle each order before sending it on its way to the buyer’s door.

Critics say those fulfillment center workers face strenuous conditions: workers are pressed to “make rate,” with some packing hundreds of boxes per hour, and losing their job if they don’t move fast enough. “You’ve always got somebody right behind you who’s ready to take your job,” says Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and a prominent Amazon critic.

Documents obtained by The Verge show those productivity firings are far more common than outsiders realize. In a signed letter last year, an attorney representing Amazon said the company fired “hundreds” of employees at a single facility between August of 2017 and September 2018 for failing to meet productivity quotas. A spokesperson for the company said that, over that time, roughly 300 full-time associates were terminated for inefficiency.

The number represents a substantial portion of the facility’s workers: a spokesperson said the named fulfillment center in Baltimore includes about 2,500 full-time employees today. Assuming a steady rate, that would mean Amazon was firing more than 10 percent of its staff annually, solely for productivity reasons. The numbers are even more staggering in North America as a whole. Amazon operates more than 75 fulfillment centers with more than 125,000 full-time employees, suggesting thousands lose their jobs with the company annually for failing to move packages quickly enough.

The documents also show a deeply automated tracking and termination process. “Amazon’s system tracks the rates of each individual associate’s productivity,” according to the letter, “and automatically generates any warnings or terminations regarding quality or productivity without input from supervisors.” (Amazon says supervisors are able to override the process.)

Critics see the system as a machine that only sees numbers, not people. “One of the things that we hear consistently from workers is that they are treated like robots in effect because they’re monitored and supervised by these automated systems,” Mitchell says. “They’re monitored and supervised by robots.”

The system goes so far as to track “time off task,” which the company abbreviates as TOT. If workers break from scanning packages for too long, the system automatically generates warnings and, eventually, the employee can be fired. Some facility workers have said they avoid bathroom breaks to keep their time in line with expectations.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516004/amazon-warehouse-fulfillment-centers-productivity-firing-terminations

The two 13-year-olds prepped all winter, raising money and getting into condition.

Now Paige Peters and Sophia Christian are bracing for a 5-mile journey Saturday as they attempt to cross the Straits of Mackinac while standing on paddleboards.

The eighth-graders at Cherryland Middle school in Elk Rapids are paddling to raise awareness about Great Lakes preservation and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS.

According to the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection Agency, PFAS is a man-made chemical used for manufacturing and a variety of industrial work but can affect health.



https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/04/24/pfas-straits-mackinac-paddleboard/3547839002/