Amazon has been explicit about its vision to become a leaner organization and use automation to fill in the gaps, and that ethos seems to have taken root in the company's HR department—which was reportedly a major target of the recent layoffs.
Despite citing the “transformative” nature of generative AI in its layoff announcement, the company has denied that its investment in automation was directly responsible for the job losses.
But interviews with warehouse associates and former HR employees, along with legal filings, reveal how Amazon’s growing reliance on automation appears to be removing humans from the HR process.
Hiring kids just barely in their twenties to do it too 50 bibles 30 qurans and one of every book ever made shredding the covers and pages a few at a time. To digitize them. Why destroy them when they can scan without destroying them.
Dr. Michael Baden is a forensic pathologist who was involved in all the high profile criminal cases including the case of Marlon Brando's son, Christian, who shot his half-sister's boyfriend. Despite the fact that it appeared that Christian had shot Drollet from above and that the bullet had exited the body, no bullet was recovered from his body or from the couch. Dr. Baden insisted on looking at the scene, and like the officers, failed to find the bullet in the couch or the body.
Baden noticed that the room has a shag rug. He got down on his hands and knees and eventually found the bullet under the rug. That tended to support how Christian had described things.
Dr.Baden wrote: "I'd later testify that the bullet's trajectory through Drollet's neck and into the shag carpet showed that he had been sitting up on the couch. Gunshot residue tests performed by police showed that Drollet's hand was near the muzzle when it discharged-consistent with Christian's statement that the weapon
went off accidentally when Drollet tried to grab it."
"It's very hard to see an entry hole in a shag rug," Baden explains. "But what impressed me most in that case was when we found the bullet and we called the police. A sergeant came and I asked why the officers at the crime scene hadn't done a better job looking for the bullet. I'll never forget what he said. 'Look, doc. If you do a lousy job all the time, just because an important case comes up doesn't mean you can now do a good job. You don't know how to do it any better.' That will live with me forever. Unless you do the best job you can with every crime scene and every autopsy, you won't do it right when more important ones come in. To us, every case is equally important. When it comes to death, we're all equal."
https://www.crimelibrary.org/criminal_mind/forensics/autopsy/5.html
Another Sources:
Book: AMERICAN AUTOPSY.
There is an interesting phenomenon called the "News Will Find Me" mentality: you assume that if something is worth your while, it will eventually find its way into your news feed or your group chat.
Sure, it seems like a fairly efficient approach at first glance. But in fact, this approach can change your opinion about whose opinion you value. Gradually, the recommendation of the algorithm becomes just as reliable as a decision made by editors of a news website. At this point, you stop making your own decisions, and it is the feed that chooses what you see. The scary thing about it is not only that you get wrong information, but that you think you are well-informed because everything is done upstream.
Here is a great article that breaks down the results of this Penn State study and explains how much of your opinion is now shaped before you see it: https://www.thinkabout.info/articles/you-are-probably-stuck-in-news-will-find-me-trap
I would love to hear what everyone thinks about it: do you still look for news actively, or has the news feed taken over everything?
The city of Vallejo has been forced to release its investigation into a macabre police ritual, first exposed by Open Vallejo six years ago, in which officers bent the tips of their star-shaped badges to mark each civilian they killed. Officers called the tradition, “The Badge of Honor.”
Open Vallejo’s reporting sparked immediate impact. Vallejo police shot someone on average every four months between 2000 and 2020, often fatally, data shows. The most recent killing came less than two months before this newsroom exposed the badge-bending ritual in July 2020; the department has not killed anyone since. When California passed a landmark 2021 law banning law enforcement gangs, the bill’s bicameral analyses cited the badge-bending revelations.
The California Department of Justice opened a review of Vallejo police in 2020, citing the “number and nature” of shootings by officers. A voluntary reform effort stalled, and in 2023 Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the city, alleging a pattern of excessive force. Vallejo agreed to court-enforced reforms.
Vallejo announced its own investigation days after Open Vallejo’s article was published. The city hired former Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano, then refused to release his report. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and Open Vallejo each sued under California transparency laws. In 2025, a state appeals court ordered the report disclosed in the ACLU’s case, which Open Vallejo supported with two friend-of-the-court briefs, and the California Supreme Court declined to intervene.
