Spotify – To The Moon, Part 2: 'The Birth of the Yolo' - The Journal. | Podcast on Spotify
The Society of Algorithms | Annual Review of Sociology
The pairing of massive data sets with processes—or algorithms—written in computer code to sort through, organize, extract, or mine them has made inroads in almost every major social institution. This article proposes a reading of the scholarly literature concerned with the social implications of this transformation. First, we discuss the rise of a new occupational class, which we call the coding elite. This group has consolidated power through their technical control over the digital means of production and by extracting labor from a newly marginalized or unpaid workforce, the cybertariat. Second, we show that the implementation of techniques of mathematical optimization across domains as varied as education, medicine, credit and finance, and criminal justice has intensified the dominance of actuarial logics of decision-making, potentially transforming pathways to social reproduction and mobility but also generating a pushback by those so governed. Third, we explore how the same pervasive algorithmic intermediation in digital communication is transforming the way people interact, associate, and think. We conclude by cautioning against the wildest promises of artificial intelligence but acknowledging the increasingly tight coupling between algorithmic processes, social structures, and subjectivities. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 47 is July 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
How to opt out of (or into) Amazon’s Sidewalk network
Here’s how to opt out of Amazon’s Sidewalk network.
Global Smartwatch Shipments Jump 35% YoY in Q1 2021
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What percentage of products on Amazon are sold by marketplace sellers?
In Q4 2020, 55% of products sold on Amazon were marketplace sellers' items. That's up from 53% in 2019 and 47% in 2015.
Calculated Risk: Update: Framing Lumber Prices Down from Recent Peak, Up Sharply Year-over-year
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The Donut Effect of Covid-19 on Cities | NBER
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.
Eurozone Inflation Above Target Sooner Than The ECB Expected
The annual rate of inflation hit the European Central Bank’s target for the first time since late 2018, as energy prices surged in response to a strengthening recovery in the global economy.
The Southwest Is America’s New Factory Hub. ‘Cranes Everywhere.’
Five states in the region accounted for 30% of U.S. job growth in manufacturing over three years, adding more than 100,000 jobs.
Why the US government murdered Fred Hampton -VOX
What to Consider When Tapping Your Home Equity as House Prices Rise
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Obama Explains How America Went From ‘Yes We Can’ to ‘MAGA’ · New York Times Opinion
How Leaders Can Encourage Imagination · Harvard Business Review
Is Sushi ‘Healthy’? What About Granola? Where Americans and Nutritionists Disagree
We surveyed Americans and a panel of nutrition experts about which foods they thought were good or bad for you.
Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism | Hawaii’s Economic Improvement Accelerating
DBEDT released its second quarter 2021 Statistical and Economic Report today. DBEDT revised its economic growth projection for 2021 to 3.5 percent, up from the 2.7 percent projected in February this year.
A little ‘generation’ debunking data exercise – Family Inequality
One example of the pitfalls of Pew’s “generations,” using environmental attitudes.
When the 80/20 Rule Fails: The Downside of Being Effective
You get one, precious life. How do you decide the best way to spend your time?
Curiosity Depends on What You Already Know
We seek novelty, but not too much.
How photonic integration can boost artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) badly needs a bump in speed to live up to potentials such as for autonomous vehicles; photonic integration may fill the breach.
Using Cell Phones as Space Weather Vanes - Eos
Tiny magnetometers have turned your phone into a compass, and new research shows they are sensitive to geomagnetic storms.
Castro Surveillance Camera Plan Raises Privacy Concerns
Crime concerns have sparked a new idea to add security cameras in San Francisco’s Castro District, but some community groups say cameras aren’t the answer and raise concerns about privacy.
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As conspiracy theories spread and misleading news stories are shared, educators are trying to battle misinformation with media literacy education.
How U.S. policy was designed to suppress wages (with Larry Mishel and Josh Bivens) · Civic Ventures
Can Wearable Devices Save Your Relationship?
In recent years, health-tracking wearables have become ubiquitous. What if we could use these devices to track the health of our romantic relationships and prevent conflicts?
Identifying the policy levers generating wage suppression and wage inequality | Economic Policy Institute
Larry Mishel and Josh Bivens, Economic Policy Institute
There is now widespread acceptance across the political spectrum that the typical worker’s wages have grown very slowly or been stagnant for several decades but a consensus narrative explaining wage stagnation has not developed yet. [togglable text="expand abstract"]
The frequently invoked conventional explanations attributing wage problems primarily to automation and, somewhat, to globalization, cannot actually explain key wage developments over the last several decades. Moreover, portraying wage stagnation and growing wage inequality as the unfortunate byproduct of inevitable, positive forces such as automation that one neither can nor would want to alter is deeply misleading and, sometimes intentionally, is meant to absolve those with the most power—corporations and the most wealthy people—from their responsibility for the outcomes of their actions and to ignore the impact of racism and sexism.
Any explanation of wage stagnation must grapple with three key features of wage trends over the last four decades. First, wages and benefits for the typical worker have risen very slowly—frequently characterized as stagnant—and much more slowly than the productivity of the average worker. Second, the gap between the typical worker’s compensation and average productivity primarily results from two types of inequalities, primarily a growing inequality of wages and benefits but also a shift of income from labor to capital. Finally, while racial wage disparities grew, and gender wage disparities did shrink, the failure to eliminate these disparities and continue the progress achieved in the 1960s and 1970s has led for there to be higher inequality today.
This paper offers a narrative and supporting evidence on the mechanisms that suppressed wage growth over the last four decades since the late 1970s. We label this wage suppression rather than wage stagnation because it was an actively sought outcome—engineered by the political power and organizational strategies of corporate management and its political and judicial allies to suppress labor costs and wages and maintain gender and racial hierarchies—and was not the passive, unavoidable outcome of a "bad economy" or the byproduct of positive forces such as automation.
The key forces driving wage suppression have been changes in management practices/strategies and shifts in public policy, including both policy actions and omissions, that systematically undercut individual workers’ options and ability to obtain higher pay, job security, and high-quality jobs, along with a lack of action to counteract the racism and sexism that undercut the prospects of particular groups of workers. These dynamics are primarily located in the labor market and the strengthening of employers’ power relative to their white-collar and blue-collar workers. It is "as if" a team of corporate executives, lobbyists, and lawyers designed corporate strategies, reset government policies toward labor standards (e.g., minimum wage) and unions, shaped judicial opinions and the legal environment and weakened enforcement of existing labor standards and laws with the goal of limiting workers’ options in the labor market, limiting wage growth, and undercutting workers’ individual and collective bargaining power relative to their employers. These decisions were most adverse for workers with low and moderate wages, especially for African Americans so situated, thereby generating wage inequality whereby high earners and, especially those in the top 1.0% and 0.1%, fared far better than those in the bottom 90%. It was this growth in wage inequality, including the failure to close gender and racial disparities, and a shift of income from workers to owners of capital that explains the failure of wages for the vast majority to improve adequately.
This paper elaborates and empirically assesses the specific factors and mechanisms that developed since the late 1970s to undercut workers’ individual and collective bargaining power. We offer assessments of the impact of particular mechanisms on wage growth and wage inequality to demonstrate that their aggregate and cumulative impact can readily explain wage suppression and wage inequality. In particular, we examine the wage impacts of factors such as: excessive unemployment, resulting from faulty monetary (and budget) policies; eroded collective bargaining, resulting from corporate practices and adverse judicial and policy choices; weaker labor standards, resulting from a declining minimum wage, eroded overtime protections, and weaker enforcement of standards leading to greater "wage theft"; globalization, resulting from policy choices that undercut wages and job security of non-college-educated workers; gender and race/ethnic discrimination; shifts in corporate structures such as fissuring (or domestic outsourcing), industry deregulation, privatization, dominant buyers affecting entire supply chains, and increases in concentration of employers. [/togglable]
The Relatable Emotions of Depressed People From 3,000 Years Ago
"He eats bread and drinks beer but it does not go well for him, then says, ‘Oh, my heart!’ and is dejected."
All together now: the most trustworthy covid-19 model is an ensemble
Combining a multitude of predictions and projections, modeling teams hone the uncertainty.