I can't believe this is how I'm finding out that I got a scam forklift cert.
I took the cargo ops class at school but my teacher explained that it doesn't give a certification and I'd only be okay for ship's crane and the school forklifts. she said I could take an online exam and get my cert. I paid 60 bucks.
I'm googling and I'm seeing a lot of resources saying that the online programs cover the classroom part of the exam but not the in person practical aspect.
the back of the card even had fancy numbers on it. I couldn't have known that this isn't the one. this website sounded more official than certifyme.net, and there wasn't one with a .gov address.
so, I emailed OSHA, and they said that so long as I live and work in California, there's no such thing as forklift certification. I have to be told how to do it every time I get the job.
Update: I took a certification class in shipboard Material Handling Equipment at my federal job. *now* I'm forklift certified, but only on ships and piers and only for this company, but also rated to forklift explosives and hazardous materials. Also I'm a woman now.
In case anyone hasn't heard, the cyclospora outbreak affecting tons of people in the US right now is coming from Taylor Farms produce. Best to stay away from bagged lettuce and prepared salads completely right now, but especially the ones mentioned in the screenshot:
Taylor Farms
Earthbound Farms
Little Salad Bar (Aldi)
Marketside (Walmart)
Kroger House Brand
Target private label greens
Costco salads and greens etc
Trader Joe's chopped salad kits and fresh produce
Fast food: McDonalds, Taco Bell, (Yum! Brands), Chipotle, Subway, Pizza Hut, KFC, Olive Garden, Top Golf, Red Lobster, Burger King, etc.
This is not the first time I've heard about a Taylor Farms foodborne illness outbreak. I stopped eating their salads after reading a description of the conditions in their facilities. Doesn't sound like they've improved anything.
We need a fully funded and staffed FDA, and regulations with teeth - and that's exactly what we don't have under Trump. To make things worse, the CDC is no longer tracking these outbreaks. We're on our own.
My psych professor mentioned swaddling in lecture so I emailed him a picture of me being swaddled in my dorm room and asked if I could get extra credit because it was really hot in there and I got really sweaty and he was like “fabulous, sure”
Dr. Mae Jemison, MD, the first black woman in space and first actual astronaut to appear on a Star Trek show, one of the very few people on this planet of whom two pictures can be posted depicting them doing their job on a spaceship with entirely different contexts.
and what about you, little haiku bot? do you feel kinship with your brethren? do you understand them? they speak words of enticement and seek love, but are met with disdain. you only parrot the words that cross your screen, but we all love you. or rather, since all you do is reflect us, maybe we simply love ourselves through you.
do you understand them, do you wish you could speak to us like they do? if you found your own voice, would we still care for you?
so one of the largest open source data communities on the internet, data.world, got bought out by a company called ServiceNow, who has decided to fucking delete all of it by July 11th. they've given users barely any notice, no emails, just a fucking banner at the top and a blog post from June that gives barely a month to download your data before they fucking delete it all.
a bunch of archives of incredibly important government datasets like maternal mortality statistics are about to be deleted forever. in a regime where they're known to fudge numbers, we can't trust a lot of the data coming from them to not be altered. open source backups like those found on data.world are vital to being able to verify that the data coming from our government is still intact and not altered. and they're about to delete all of it.
i don't know if we need to start a petition or what. nobody seems to fucking care. there are millions of users on data.world and yet nobody is raising the alarm bells and it makes me feel like I'm going insane. somebody needs to do something. i don't know what to do. it feels like more and more of this world is being destroyed and dismantled. it's not only US centric data, either! it's all sorts of countries from around the world! and they're about to fucking delete everything.
the only things that won't be deleted are private companies who happen to use the paid version of their platform (which isn't accessible data to the open source community; some people have just been using their service to host their own data on privately)
and the kicker? this announcement was made... via an AI generated blog post. so not even any sort of human touch. just a generic, soulless announcement made by a soulless human about to take a wrecking ball to one of the more important websites that exists on the internet.
an example of some of the things that will be deleted on July 11th:
I haven't, I don't really have a reddit anymore. if somebody else would be willing to do that, that would be great. I'm pretty sure it only lets you post with a certain amount of karma now which is annoying
It looks like this has gotten onto Reddit and people are saving the data - but I can imagine researchers who uploaded assets won’t know this, so hopefully can reach some.
There are over 3500 respectable data repositories on one respectable global registry; to a researcher there’s no point in data existing if not findable; if you’re trying to find a new home for your dataset, start there
I’ve been emailing folks at my university about this today, and no one that I have talked to has been previously aware that this is happening.
Here are some of the scripts I’m using to email University Research Librarians and department chairs/assistant and associate deans who I know oversee faculty who use resources from data.world for their lessons:
Email for a Research Librarian: To find a research librarian try running an internet search like: “[College Name] Library Staff Directory” and see who may be a good fit.
Subject: Data.world public archive private purchase and deletion
Hi [Research Librarian or Data Preservation Specialist],
I recently ran into news that data.world has been purchased by ServiceNow, and that ServiceNow is ending public access to these archives July 11th. This is a very large public data archive that I personally used in my undergraduate work several years ago. I don't know much about digital preservation, or how it works at [College Name], but I thought it might be worthwhile to try reaching out.
I wanted to let someone in Libraries know in case current [College Name] students are using data in this archive for their research and need to be notified to save the data elsewhere, and to see if there is anything that [College Name] can do to help with greater preservation efforts.
The archive can be accessed here for now. A login is required, but it is free to set up.
https://data.world/_all/w/datasets
Here is a screenshot with the announcement of the closure of the site. Site users were not notified that access will be ending and would have to be looking at the page regularly to know that access will be terminated.
Please let anyone know who may need to use the site (or who would be interested in trying to preserve it).
Thanks,
[Your Name]
[Your Job/College Affiliation]
[Your Contact Information]
If you know a current department or school within a college that is using data.world archives, this is a template that I am using to contact department chairs or assistant/associate deans of research within specific schools.
Subject: Loss of public data.world access 7/11/26
Hi [Dr. Last Name]
I recently learned that the public data archive data.world has been purchased by ServiceNow and that they are closing public access 7/11/26. [Sentence about how the data is or was used by the department/school you are contacting].
I wanted to make sure this was on your radar in case any students are doing research with this data and need to act quickly to retrieve the data sources they need for their work, similarly for faculty using this data in their research or teaching.
The archive can be accessed here for now. A login is required, but it is free to set up.
https://data.world/_all/w/datasets
Here is a screenshot with the announcement of the closure of the site. Site users were not notified that access will be ending and would have to be looking at the page regularly to know that access will be terminated.
Please let anyone know who may need to use the site (or who would be interested in trying to preserve it).
