lucullus

Out of interesst: Do you then reopen the lid to check for shitstains left in the bowl, that would need cleaning before you leave?

Ah, ok. That exlains it. It's really a shitty move. I guess no CEO or other high up manager in the US would do this differently. What a shit

That's not union busting, is it? I understand the leadership problems, but we were talking about union busting specifically

I was speaking of union bustion actions in WMF. I already know about these law firms

including those laid off, since some are still hoping to find jobs elsewhere at the WMF, and others are depending on severance pay

Am I too european to understand this? If they "get jobs elsewhere at the WMF" this is not a layoff, is it? I know the US has nearly no worker protections, so maybe that makes it a layoff. Do they need to interview for these positions again?

If this were something other than Community Tech, maybe I could convince myself it's all just a coincidence. But the WMF has been on a generally upward trajectory at avoiding decisions that will piss off the entire community. "Don't disband CommTech" might as well be the "don't mess with the pancreas"of WMF governance. The only explanation for the WMF doing this—not just reörganizing but outright laying off the team—is that they are so determined to prevent the union from becoming official that they are willing to risk the massive community blowback (which, from a corporate-brain point of view, is a greater downside than the five people left jobless).

That paragraph I don't understand. Why is union busting the only explanation?

From one of the comments of that Reddit thread:

the union was apparently formed exactly 90 days prior to the layoff announcement; under california state law (where they are located) “a termination within 90 days of protected union activity creates a rebuttable presumption that the termination was illegal retaliation”

I think that is an interesting detail here, though I have not bothered to go through the sources for this.

Where they actually fired? From skimming your linked article it was more of a restructuring, moving them to different positions. The restructuring might be ill advised, though I could not find real information about any connection to the union topic, besides someone from the community claming that, without further information on that connection.

Ok, then I misunderstood your arguments. I understood "Away from people" an argument for increasing the distance to wind turbines. They are already normally build 500 to 1500m away from people. I also saw it in my local context. In germany we had the conservatives argue for increasing the mandated distances further, triggered by the far rights hate for renewables, which would make it impossible to build them in large parts of the country.

When we talk about wind turbines vs datacenters, I think a big argument is the actual direct value for the community. Providing clean energy gives more and direct value to a community, while the AI datacenter are mainly bringing the benefit of slop. Both are done in the capitalism way, but Datacenters (especially AI DCs) are way farther away from the consumer.

Thats not what it is effectively saying though. It says, that if you suggest, that infrasound from wind turbines is a medical problem, then people will have medical problems. That is the nocebo effect for you, not infrasound.

Also: There are many other sources of infrasound in our lifes. For example using a car. Wind turbines at typical distances are about 75db while driving in a car is more like 100db. If you open one of the rear windows while driving 130db. Where are the adverse effects of these?

You might want to look at these https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/handle/10024/162329 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00220/full#h11

For those speaking german, I'm linking to a podcast episode of the Quarks Science Cops (Public Broadcast) about this topic. Link to Youtube

Spoiler: We already have way louder infrasound producers near us. Wind turbines are already build in quite a distance to be safe from flying debris in case of a catastrophic mechanical breakdown of the spinning blades.

From the first scimming, I would not give much credit to that study. Only 29 participants. But most importantly it was not double blind. The participants where instructed on what exactly the study wanted to find out and could easily see, how far they where from the wind turbine at the testing sides. Thats a programmed placebo effect.

Also: They only measured at 2 sites. The outdoor site was only 20m from the wind turbine. That is a distance not even relevant to placement of wind turbines. The safety distance to the spinning blades will already be significantly higher, at least 100m. So the measurement at that side might be interesting, but irrelevant.