- A Driver’s Suicide Reveals the Dark Side of the Gig Economy (NYT) "On Tuesday morning, Doug Schifter, a livery driver in his early 60s killed himself with a shotgun in front of City Hall in Lower Manhattan... He was not driving a car to supplement the income he was getting from his crepe business and he was not trying to make a little extra money for massage. He was not a participant in the gig economy; he was a casualty of it. While Uber has sold...'disruption' as positive for riders, for many taxi workers, it has been devastating. For decades there had been no more than approximately 12,000 to 13,000 taxis in New York... In 2013, there were 47,000 for-hire vehicles in the city. Now there were more than 100,000, approximately two-thirds of them affiliated with Uber."
- 'Pay What You Want' Isn't What You Want (Wired) "I’d rather these companies pay their workers more. It’s maddening to be expected to subsidize their race-to-the-bottom price wars with my cash and conscience. ...no good can come of turning a basic transaction into a 'pay what you want' situation. Especially when it lets gig-economy tycoons offer some employees—ahem, contractors—less than a living wage."
and
- Will Robots Take Our Children’s Jobs? (NYT) "So am I paranoid? Or not paranoid enough? A much-quoted 2013 study by the University of Oxford Department of Engineering Science — surely the most sober of institutions — estimated that 47 percent of current jobs, including insurance underwriter, sports referee and loan officer, are at risk of falling victim to automation, perhaps within a decade or two. Just this week, the McKinsey Global Institute released a report that found that a third of American workers may have to switch jobs in the next dozen or so years because of A.I. But is it really that dire?"
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- An End to Airline Red Tape—Or Consumer Protection? (WSJ-Paywall) "If the airlines get what they want, the government would weaken the tarmac delay rule—which imposes hefty fines for stranding passengers on planes for long periods—and eliminate a requirement that they show the full price of a ticket when people shop. Airlines also asked the DOT to scrap the 24-hour grace period for a full refund when buying a ticket and eliminate a rule that requires them to honor tickets sold for 'mistake fares,' among other changes."
- The Economy Is Fine: 7 Reasons Investors Shouldn't Panic (Kiplinger) "U.S. GDP Growth Is Accelerating. The Entire Global Economy Is Expanding. The Tax Overhaul Will Goose the Economy Even More. Business Spending Is Poised to Jump. Home Building Has a Good Year Ahead. Wages Are Rising. Consumer Spending Continues to Rise."
- Athleisure has overtaken athletics in the sneaker industry (Quartz) "...performance sneakers are struggling in a way the industry has possibly never seen. As sneakers have grown into the everyday footwear of choice—even in the office—for millions of Americans, performance shoes have been pushed aside by styles that co-opt their looks and comfort but shed their athletic intent."
NEWS:
- Against the Spending Bill (National Review) "A two-year spending deal means Republicans probably won’t go to the trouble of passing a formal budget for 2019. That would mean no chance for a so-called reconciliation process that could allow them to enact meaningful legislation with only 50 votes in the Senate."
- The Secret History of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco (Foreign Policy) "But why the focus on San Francisco? Why not close one of Russia’s other three consulates, in New York, Seattle, or Houston? The answer, I discovered, appears to revolve around an intensive, sustained, and mystifying pattern of espionage emanating from the San Francisco consulate. According to multiple former intelligence officials, while these 'strange activities' were not limited to San Francisco or its environs, they originated far more frequently from the San Francisco consulate than any other Russian diplomatic facility in the United States, including the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. As one former intelligence source put it, suspected Russian spies were 'doing peculiar things in places they shouldn’t be.' ...the San Francisco consulate served a unique role in Russian intelligence-gathering operations in the United States, as an important, and perhaps unrivaled, hub for its technical collection efforts here. ...U.S. officials have been keenly aware that, because of the consulate’s proximity to Silicon Valley, educational institutions such as Stanford and Berkeley, and the large number of nearby defense contractors and researchers — including two Energy Department-affiliated nuclear weapons laboratories — Russia has used San Francisco as a focal point for espionage activity."
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE:
- Will Robots Take Our Children’s Jobs? (NYT) "So am I paranoid? Or not paranoid enough? A much-quoted 2013 study by the University of Oxford Department of Engineering Science — surely the most sober of institutions — estimated that 47 percent of current jobs, including insurance underwriter, sports referee and loan officer, are at risk of falling victim to automation, perhaps within a decade or two. Just this week, the McKinsey Global Institute released a report that found that a third of American workers may have to switch jobs in the next dozen or so years because of A.I. But is it really that dire?"
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- An End to Airline Red Tape—Or Consumer Protection? (WSJ-Paywall) "If the airlines get what they want, the government would weaken the tarmac delay rule—which imposes hefty fines for stranding passengers on planes for long periods—and eliminate a requirement that they show the full price of a ticket when people shop. Airlines also asked the DOT to scrap the 24-hour grace period for a full refund when buying a ticket and eliminate a rule that requires them to honor tickets sold for 'mistake fares,' among other changes."
- The Economy Is Fine: 7 Reasons Investors Shouldn't Panic (Kiplinger) "U.S. GDP Growth Is Accelerating. The Entire Global Economy Is Expanding. The Tax Overhaul Will Goose the Economy Even More. Business Spending Is Poised to Jump. Home Building Has a Good Year Ahead. Wages Are Rising. Consumer Spending Continues to Rise."
- Athleisure has overtaken athletics in the sneaker industry (Quartz) "...performance sneakers are struggling in a way the industry has possibly never seen. As sneakers have grown into the everyday footwear of choice—even in the office—for millions of Americans, performance shoes have been pushed aside by styles that co-opt their looks and comfort but shed their athletic intent."
NEWS:
- Against the Spending Bill (National Review) "A two-year spending deal means Republicans probably won’t go to the trouble of passing a formal budget for 2019. That would mean no chance for a so-called reconciliation process that could allow them to enact meaningful legislation with only 50 votes in the Senate."
- The Secret History of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco (Foreign Policy) "But why the focus on San Francisco? Why not close one of Russia’s other three consulates, in New York, Seattle, or Houston? The answer, I discovered, appears to revolve around an intensive, sustained, and mystifying pattern of espionage emanating from the San Francisco consulate. According to multiple former intelligence officials, while these 'strange activities' were not limited to San Francisco or its environs, they originated far more frequently from the San Francisco consulate than any other Russian diplomatic facility in the United States, including the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. As one former intelligence source put it, suspected Russian spies were 'doing peculiar things in places they shouldn’t be.' ...the San Francisco consulate served a unique role in Russian intelligence-gathering operations in the United States, as an important, and perhaps unrivaled, hub for its technical collection efforts here. ...U.S. officials have been keenly aware that, because of the consulate’s proximity to Silicon Valley, educational institutions such as Stanford and Berkeley, and the large number of nearby defense contractors and researchers — including two Energy Department-affiliated nuclear weapons laboratories — Russia has used San Francisco as a focal point for espionage activity."
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE:
- Despite Trump’s attempts to kill it, Obamacare is still pretty popular (Fast Company) "According to a new tally from the Associated Press, about 11.8 million have signed up for coverage this year. That’s 3% less than last year."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Photo Algorithms ID White Men Fine—Black Women, Not So Much (Wired) "The skewed accuracy appears to be due to underrepresentation of darker skin tones in the training data used to create the face-analysis algorithms. The disparity is the latest example in a growing collection of bloopers from AI systems that seem to have picked up societal biases around certain groups."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- The Sticky, Untold Story of Cinnabon (Seattle Met) "Jerilyn Brusseau grew up making cinnamon rolls with her grandmother... ...she originally feared her grandmother’s cinnamon rolls would seem too ordinary... However those 'ordinary' fragrant pinwheels of dough and dark, sticky filling built a fan base that stretched down to Seattle. Cinnabon still calls Jerilyn for the occasional TV appearance; she’s become the confection’s wholesome origin story and even has an official nickname, Cinnamom. In all these years, she hasn’t grown weary of her association with cinnamon rolls: 'Never, they have so much magic in them.'"
TODAY'S SONG:
- Blue In Green (Miles Davis)
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