garrettgrimsley

You’d be dragging that wire over your rows of crops, potentially damaging them.

>however those Low/Minimum security zones account for more than half of the entire federal population

OK, but your claim that the "vast majority" of people locked up are there "because some plant is illegal" is still not valid. It would only be true if you're looking at only the people in camp/low classifications, which is why I argue that your perception is skewed. In reality, a little less than half of people in the Federal system are there for drug-trafficking offenses.

>Also consider that there are inmates that didn't actually commit violent crimes that are labeled as such because they received gun enhancements

This is not true. A 922(g) or other gun crime or enhancement does not count as a violent crime, it's a public order offense.

>firearms at their house while they were growing a plant

You keep circling back to this "growing a plant" thing, do you have information on how many people are imprisoned on marijuana charges? From all the drug-traffickers I met in the federal system, none were there for marijuana offenses. Every drug-trafficker I met was there for methamphetamine, cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, or some combination thereof. Can you show some data on the breakdown of substance types that backs up your claim?

>That article you linked tries to paint an invalid picture of how prison populations are kept artificially high to protect the jobs and industries that surround correction institutions. There are union groups across different sectors that rally hard to ensure that humans are warehoused to pay the bills.

The article mentions public-sector employee unions being the ones with an interest in keeping prisons open and staffed, do you have examples of the union groups in different sectors that do so? It would seem to me that a union in a sector that doesn't rely cheap prison labor would have no interest in keeping those prisons open.

I'm not even disagreeing that the prison population should be reduced, but your numbers and assertions are wrong.

>They are there because some plant is illegal.

That's a common belief, but it isn't true. More than half of people in state prisons are serving sentences for violent crimes. I see you were in the Feds, so it's almost half that are in there for a drug-trafficking offense. Your perception is likely somewhat skewed since you were in a low or camp, not a medium or pen. As you certainly know, there are security classifications in the BOP, and non-violent drug-traffickers typically won't be housed with the rapists and murderers. Someone with 0-11 points isn't going to be around someone with 24+ points.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths...

They can also go on the side of the road, with the added hassle of disposing of paper. Where do you think they use the bathroom when hiking or camping? And this is why I included cups in my original comment. They can't use bottles as easily on account of the narrow nature, so a cup with a larger mouth is preferred.

After dark, yes, go anywhere. During the day when people can potentially see you that would be a bad idea. If you can use the vehicle to block line of sight then that could also work.

It isn't limited to Amazon, and it isn't a side-effect of the pandemic. I work for UPS and even before the pandemic most drivers used a bottle or cup on a regular basis, especially if you're in a rural area. In denser areas you can use Port-a-Johns at construction sites or restrooms at businesses. Your commercial customers will likely allow you to use their restroom even if it is closed to the public. I've never heard of someone defecating in the vehicle. Leaving your bottles in the vehicle is frowned upon, but it happens.

“commonly known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party

“In 2015, just 8% of the nearly 1.53 million state and federal prisoners in the U.S. were in private facilities” [0]. Prison slavery is not concentrated in and won’t disappear by closing private prisons. [1]

[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/11/u-s-private...

[1]https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2020/8/5/private-c...

From the Zoom system requirements:

1:1 call

* 600kbps (up/down) for high-quality video

* 1.2Mbps (up/down) for 720p HD video

* Receiving 1080p HD video requires 1.8Mbps (up/down)

* Sending 1080p HD video requires 1.8Mbps (up/down)

Group call

* 800kbps/1.0 Mbps (up/down) for high-quality video

* For gallery view and/or 720p HD video: 1.5Mbps/1.5Mbps (up/down)

* Receiving 1080p HD video requires 2.5Mbps (up/down)

* Sending 1080p HD video requires 3.0Mbps (up/down)

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362023-System-r...

>The highways are policed. Parler was not.

“And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings.”

-TFA

>you should get the loading equipment from UPs

I work at UPS. We hand-load and unload everything. The loading equipment is a guy. If there is palletized volume then once it gets to the hub the pallet is broken down. When a trailer is being unloaded a worker is physically inside the trailer grabbing each and every individual package and placing them on a conveyor belt that takes the package to be sorted. Irregular packages (exceptional size, weight) are pushed out of the trailer and then loaded onto another, larger belt. This process may differ at other facilities, but that’s how it works in Raleigh, NC.

Speaking with the FedEx folks in my area, they’ve been working 7 on, 1 off. At UPS we’ve been doing 6 on, 1 off as we don’t work Sundays per the union contract.

Simply put, there's no way this is the case. There's a route that I and everyone else I've spoken to all run a certain way and improvements have not been incorporated into the route planning. On this particular route if you run the apartments when ORION wants you to then you'll arrive there after Amazon and FedEx have filled the parcel lockers with their delivery volume, and you'll spend an hour delivering your volume to each individual apartment door. On this route you need to deliver certain dense and volume-heavy areas before your pickups so that you'll have enough room to fit the pickups into the vehicle. I would love to see ORION automatically learn about when streets and such are added, removed, or otherwise changed, but that's a manual process. I can ask the dispatcher about what you're talking about, but as a driver I have seen no such behavior.

>software before the driver took the truck

The UPS route-planning system is called ORION.

>they just follow the GPS

I'd reckon that anyone on a bid route or other route that they are familiar with can do better than what ORION gives us. We aren't taking solely distance into account, that would be far too simple. We're considering other factors too, including hard time constraints like next day air commit times, regularly scheduled pickups, irregular pickups, business hours, and whether we can even physically access the packages [0, 1] that the system wants us to deliver.

>I don't think drivers re-plan their shift.

We most certainly do, we wouldn't finish the day if we blindly followed trace.

[0] https://youtu.be/fMeBkPd8ZJk

[1] https://youtu.be/Oi4DW04_D5o

I see plenty of people wearing masks while hiking in Umstead State Park in Raleigh NC.

No, we're not talking about long haul trucking, which is done with tractors. To use an American example, the two-axle truck could be used for intra-city moving, like U-Haul. Speaking with my commercial customers, they also do their own intra-city deliveries of plumbing supplies and HVAC/appliances. Amazon runs two workers in a box truck for irregular packages. Furniture companies use box trucks for intra-city deliveries. Document shredding companies could use these trucks. Landscaping companies use trucks like the Isuzu NQR. Look around you at next time you're in a city and make a note of what trucks you see. That's what Volvo is targeting here

You two appear to be talking past each other. When Volvo says deliveries they likely don't mean residential deliveries in the typical P700/P800/P1000/P1200 package cars that people associate with UPS, and the analogous models at FedEx. The two-axle Volvo truck is comparable to a Freightliner M2 106, a straight-truck, not a package car. And the Volvo truck has a maximum GVWR of 16 tonnes, the final configuration would be lower, and you could operate it without a CDL. The poster is correct about licensing requirements. I do not have a CDL, but I can drive the straight trucks and package cars because they are under the 26,000lbs GVWR limit in my state.

They were likely taking issue with the statement “de facto against the law.” De jure is by law and de facto is in fact, and using them how that poster did does not make sense.

It would include that so that the BigCo couldn’t create a shell company or subsidiary to own the product and skirt the $100MM language

It's actually more complicated than that. In many states if you are convicted of a non-violent felony then at the end of your sentence your firearm rights are automatically restored. There are also the cases of pardons, expungements, and other restorations of civil rights. It varies by state, and while USC 922(g) outlaws firearm ownership possession by any felon, in practice the Federal courts look at whether the person has had their civil rights restored in the state of the alleged offense. When it comes to Federal charges, the prospect of amelioration is grim. In the Federal scenario, there is no expungement or pathway to restore your civil rights, but a pardon is possible. [0]

There's also a discussion to be had about your and the legal definition of a "gun." For example, antique firearms such as some black powder rifles are specifically excepted [1] from the Federal legislation, but it could vary on a state by state basis.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/921

Plenty, and I see where you’re coming from, but in the end the amount of work would increase to fill any saved labor.

This was my truck on Monday. Where should we put these dozens(?) of drones? https://imgur.com/a/wBn2Pfh

That amount of packages is not extraordinary, and in my car was more full today. I’m on lunch now, 166 stops down, 42 stops to go.

No, ma’am is the female equivalent of sir. They’re formal terms, not familiar like “buddy”

At the time that the videos were posted there was nothing secret about the coup. See this bit from the Bellingcat [0] investigation:

>By the time the video was first shared on Twitter, eight of Goudreau’s men were dead and two others captured as the boat they were on was intercepted at sea by the Venezuelan authorities. A second boat, soon on its way to Venezuela, would also be intercepted at sea the following day, resulting in the capture of eight of Goudreau’s men, including two American citizens.

The videos were in or subtitled in Spanish, so my take on it is that because they had not seized TV or radio stations in the country, they took to Twitter to get their message out. It could have been a call for support from the populace.

[0] https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/05/the-invasion-of-v...

I am also not an expert on it, but I think you ought to read up on it some. Even after the US withdrew from the JCPOA, Iran continued to comply with the terms of the agreement until at least Feb-May 2019 [0, 1, 2]. Keep in mind that this is long after the US announced in October 2017 that they would not re-certify [3] that Iran was complying with the agreement and in May 2018 when the US withdrew [4] from the agreement. In the October 2017 briefing, President Trump mentions that Iran "has committed multiple violations of the agreement. For example, on two separate occasions, they have exceeded the limit of 130 metric tons of heavy water." I looked into it and found the relevant language in paragraph 14 of Annex 1 of the JCPOA [5]. From page 24 of the PDF:

"All excess heavy water which is beyond Iran's needs for the modernised Arak research reactor, the Zero power heavy water reactor, quantities needed for medical research and production of deuterate solutions and chemical compounds including, where appropriate, contingency stocks, will be made available for export to the international market based on international prices and delivered to the international buyer for 15 years. Iran's needs, consistent with the parameters above, are estimated to be 130 metric tonnes of nuclear grade heavy water or its equivalent in different enrichments"

Refer to IAEA reports [6] dated 26 February 2016 [7], 9 November 2016 [8] for the two occasions that are referenced. Iran's needs of heavy water were estimated to be 130 metric tonnes. Beyond that, they would have to sell and deliver the water to an international buyer. IAEA reports indicate that this is what Iran was doing. Paragraph 10 of the Nuclear section of the JCPOA contains more language relating to heavy water. From page 9 of the PDF:

"There will be no additional heavy water reactors or accumulation of heavy water in Iran for 15 years. All excess heavy water will be made available for export to the international market"

Again, it appears that this is in-line with what Iran was doing. Heavy water in excess of 130 metric tonnes was sold and delivered to international buyers. In addition to the 130 metric tonnes stored within Iran, heavy water was allowed by the Joint Commission to be stored outside of Iran, with some sources [9] calling this a loophole in the cap. Regardless of whether or not you believe that exceeding the 130 metric tonnes of heavy water constitutes a violation, there's a dispute resolution mechanism included in the JCPOA. See paragraphs 36-37 on pages 19-20 of the PDF. The US could have used this dispute resolution process to address concerns about violations of the agreement, but did not.

I will take your "path" to refer to the JCPOA. It should be clear that rather than Iran first stepping off this path, it was the US that did so. It was not after all processes set forth in the agreement were exhausted that the US left the agreement, but instead the decision is made in lieu of engaging in dispute resolution. Note that in the withdrawal briefing [4] President Trump made no references to violations of the JCPOA by Iran, but instead lists criticisms of the JCPOA itself. Given that the US did not utilize the dispute resolution mechanism process established by the JCPOA, and the fact that criticisms of the JCPOA greatly outnumber the Iranian violations of the JCPOA, it is my view that the withdrawal from the JCPOA by the US was not in response to Iran straying from the path.

There are a couple of other grievances that President Trump cited in his October 2017 [3] briefing, but I could find no support for them, and so I don't address them here.

[0] https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/19/06/gov2019-21.pd...

[1] https://news.yahoo.com/iran-still-holding-end-nuclear-deal-i...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-iaea/iran-st...

[3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...

[4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...

[5] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2165399/full-text...

[6] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iran/iaea-and-iran-iae...

[7] https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/gov-2016-8-derestri...

[8] https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/16/11/gov2016-55.pd...

[9] https://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Closi...

> a high-ranking gang leader directed accomplices in Georgia

Small world! I knew a couple of the people that carried out this kidnapping, as well as the FBI agents on the other side of it. Jakym Tibbs, aka Jak, got 52 years, and Jevante Price, aka ATL aka Flame, got 20 years. Played a lot of chess with both guys. Melton, the gang leader that ordered the kidnapping and was directing the kidnappers to murder and dismember the victim, was already serving a life sentence when this occurred. They moved him to ADX Florence after this happened.

Not OP, but I spent 11 months technically in US Federal custody, but in practice I was incarcerated in various county jails [0] that they contract with. I have experience with PayTel and Securus. At the facilities I housed in the digital > printed letter systems were not offered [1], everything was through USPS or your standard parcel carriers for packages. Books from outside were allowed. Global Tel Link, Securus, and PayTel have a very literal captive customer base when it comes to phone communications. While almost everyone wrote letters, a phone call is a much different form of communication. You can actually have a live conversation with a loved one! You can hear their voice, and respond in real time. For this reason, we paid the price demanded by the companies. In my state of North Carolina, the maximum price of a local call through PayTel was $.40/minute. The long-distance rates were cheaper, and so people would get Google voice numbers to get the cheaper rate.

[0] Wake County Detention Center, Edgecombe County Jail, and Albemarle District Jail.

[1] I could absolutely see these systems being utilized. They could take the roundtrip latency of text-based communication down to a day if the facility had a kiosk from which we could send replies. I was told by people on the yard that this is how CorrLinks works.

To add yet another data point as the many other commenters have already done: I work at UPS in a distribution hub. Today, Friday April 17th, we're doing parcel volume of around 215,000. On a typical Friday this time of year we do around about 120,000 parcels. My hub is hiring more workers, extending shifts, and asking more workers to work double-shifts. Volume has increased so much at some hubs that the volume is being re-routed through other hubs to help deal with it. Why else would Amazon be hiring 175,000 people in a month? We're experience peak season volume in April.

Online sales are absolutely up.

>because they can read it back to me when I call them, but the drivers don't seem to use it on the ground.

I guess the notes they can keep and the notes they put in the scanner are separate. Is the door a really really far walk or something? I can't imagine the drivers are just ignoring the note. I'm guessing that it's just not in the scanner. Really what I'd like to see is the ability for drivers to create/edit notes themselves, instead of having to rely on the operations folks to do it for them. Would be better to have all of the access codes in the scanner instead of a giant text message that we pass around

>Thanks for the inside baseball, it's fascinating to learn more about this process.

You're welcome! I still find it fascinating seeing how it all works. What happens in the hubs is basically a giant bucket sort with lots of conveyor belts and sweat