At least half this article is emotional fluff. It's about 5000 words long.
I feel sorry for the author's loss and the safety incident (curing and sanding fiberglass in a non-exhausted space) she experienced is certainly both hazardous and inconsiderate.
That said, an organization created for the purpose of acquiring ever-larger power tools should have a better rule against that than "be excellent to each other".
This is what detailed, specific safety rules are for. If you found such a space and choose not to have them that's partially your responsibility.
If you do have such rules and the board chooses not to enforce them, then you can make an actual legal complaint against the board. You probably can anyway under some occupational regulation but it's going to be easier with the rule in place.
(Full disclosure here: I worked with Andrew, the author's husband, at his day job for two and a half years before he moved on, and we remain in contact on Facebook... I don't know if we're close enough to be called friends, but he's someone who I get along with and whose company I enjoy. I admit that I am posting this article purely to signal-boost serious ethical issues that are affecting people I care about.)
For what it's worth, that whole scene wasn't the point of the article. That was just staging for the real meat of the story to illustrate how much the Space's culture had changed since Andrew and Cole were on the board: when the Makerspace's finance committee, of which Andrew is a member, discovered evidence of what looks like financial malfeasance to them, they asked the board about the provenance of these transactions, and the board immediately convened a secret meeting with no notice where they banned the entire finance committee, including both Andrew, who was one of the co-founders of the Space, and the Makerspace's Treasurer, Ken Purcell, in absentia. That's not right.
There's a lot that's not right here. It's obviously corruption.
I sincerely wish that the author had written a clear, concise article about what happened. I'm not certain the article as written has a point except that she's sad.
Your paragraph here tells me more about what matters in this piece than the piece does, though I remember each of those details from my initial reading. They don't come together in the piece.
If you want to actually signal-boost this you might suggest to her that improving the signal-to-noise ratio would do a lot of good. Too much Wired magazine styling, too little exposition.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 19.6 ms ] threadI feel sorry for the author's loss and the safety incident (curing and sanding fiberglass in a non-exhausted space) she experienced is certainly both hazardous and inconsiderate.
That said, an organization created for the purpose of acquiring ever-larger power tools should have a better rule against that than "be excellent to each other".
This is what detailed, specific safety rules are for. If you found such a space and choose not to have them that's partially your responsibility.
If you do have such rules and the board chooses not to enforce them, then you can make an actual legal complaint against the board. You probably can anyway under some occupational regulation but it's going to be easier with the rule in place.
For what it's worth, that whole scene wasn't the point of the article. That was just staging for the real meat of the story to illustrate how much the Space's culture had changed since Andrew and Cole were on the board: when the Makerspace's finance committee, of which Andrew is a member, discovered evidence of what looks like financial malfeasance to them, they asked the board about the provenance of these transactions, and the board immediately convened a secret meeting with no notice where they banned the entire finance committee, including both Andrew, who was one of the co-founders of the Space, and the Makerspace's Treasurer, Ken Purcell, in absentia. That's not right.
I sincerely wish that the author had written a clear, concise article about what happened. I'm not certain the article as written has a point except that she's sad.
Your paragraph here tells me more about what matters in this piece than the piece does, though I remember each of those details from my initial reading. They don't come together in the piece.
If you want to actually signal-boost this you might suggest to her that improving the signal-to-noise ratio would do a lot of good. Too much Wired magazine styling, too little exposition.