social distancing

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Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order by Colin Kahl, Thomas Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, circular economy, citizen journalism, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, deglobalization, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, future of work, George Floyd, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, it's over 9,000, job automation, junk bonds, Kibera, lab leak, liberal world order, lockdown, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, megacity, mobile money, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, one-China policy, open borders, open economy, Paris climate accords, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, social distancing, South China Sea, spice trade, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, W. E. B. Du Bois, World Values Survey, zoonotic diseases

So it was in 2020.38 Many of the people most exposed to the pandemic’s impact suddenly found themselves on the front lines of environmental disaster. It created a vicious cycle: the plight of COVID-19 and the problems of flooding reinforced each other. The latter made it even more challenging to observe public health measures such as social distancing and frequent handwashing, while placing additional socioeconomic pressure on people already pushed to the brink by mounting joblessness and diminished remittances. The pandemic, in turn, made it more difficult for Bangladeshis to cope with the floods. Prior to COVID-19, many rural Bangladeshis adapted to seasonal flooding by working in cities until the water receded.

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From that point forward, however, it began to rise again, crossing the threshold of 100,000 daily cases on November 4 and reaching an astonishing 300,669 on January 8, 2021, the highest yet, with a seven-day average for daily deaths over 3,300.34 In the dark winter of 2020–21, each and every day more Americans were dying from COVID-19 than had been killed on 9/11. Yet, unlike the terrorist attacks two decades earlier, the pain and suffering caused by the pandemic did not unify the country. Instead, it became a point of partisan strife. The Trump administration continued to delegate most COVID-related decisions to the states, contributing to an incoherent patchwork of interventions. The aggregate availability of testing increased markedly, but it remained uneven across the country.35 States and localities also varied wildly in terms of mask mandates, social distancing requirements, stay-at-home orders, and business and school closures.

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Megan Bourdon and Qayyah Moynihan, “One of the Largest Cities in France Is Using Drones to Enforce the Country’s Lockdown After the Mayor Worried Residents Weren’t Taking Containment Measures Seriously,” Business Insider, March 20, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-drones-france-covid-19-epidemic-pandemic-outbreak-virus-containment-2020-3; Helene Fouquet and Gaspard Sebag, “French Covid-19 Drones Grounded After Privacy Complaint,” Bloomberg, May 18, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-18/paris-police-drones-banned-from-spying-on-virus-violators. 23. “COVID-19: The Surveillance Pandemic,” International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, accessed November 24, 2020, https://www.icnl.org/post/analysis/covid-19-the-surveillance-pandemic. 24. Samuel Woodhams, “COVID-19 Digital Rights Tracker,” last modified March 25, 2021, https://www.top10vpn.com/research/investigations/covid-19-digital-rights-tracker/. 25.

pages: 266 words: 80,273

Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One by Debora MacKenzie

Anthropocene, anti-globalists, butterfly effect, Citizen Lab, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, dark matter, Donald Trump, European colonialism, gig economy, global supply chain, income inequality, Just-in-time delivery, lockdown, machine translation, megacity, meta-analysis, microcredit, planetary scale, reshoring, social distancing, supply-chain management, TED Talk, uranium enrichment, zoonotic diseases

Even where there were plans, and even if they were followed, they were mostly devised for flu, which as we have seen is different from Covid-19 in many ways. Containment doesn’t work for fast-spreading flu, but as China showed, it works for Covid-19. The WHO delayed calling Covid-19 a pandemic partly because they feared countries would abandon containment and testing and rush straight to flu-inspired social distancing—and for some countries, it may have been right about that. Many countries at least tried to plan for a flu pandemic. But when a milder-than-feared pandemic hit in 2009, some countries actually rolled back even that preparation. A Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) co-chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, the WHO director-general during SARS, reported in 2019 that, “For too long, we have allowed a cycle of panic and neglect when it comes to pandemics: we ramp up efforts when there is a serious threat, then quickly forget about them when the threat subsides.

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In fact, those experts still are. Yes, the Covid-19 pandemic is a coronavirus, not a flu. They are quite different. But we’re talking here about pandemics in general. It is to be hoped that, having seen the Covid-19 pandemic, we handle the next flu pandemic better. It would be only fair, because the last flu pandemic messed up the way we are handling Covid-19. Flu, influenza A to be formal, is the one pandemic we know is coming. We know other diseases can go pandemic—and if anyone had any doubts, Covid-19 ended them. You can debate, perhaps, the pandemic potential of some of the viruses on the WHO’s priority list.

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Perhaps the WHO is still smarting from being attacked for declaring a flu pandemic in 2009—even though it was a textbook flu pandemic—and wants to be very careful with the word. If so, the world’s reaction to the swine flu pandemic did us all a disservice when Covid-19 arrived. The WHO was also worried that governments would somehow conflate pandemic and flu. That’s one reason flu matters so much to the story of Covid-19. When Covid-19 hit, most governments with pandemic plans had based them around flu: many are actually entitled “influenza pandemic plan.” Covid-19 is not flu, and that caused problems. Containment, where you isolate cases and trace and quarantine their contacts, was the WHO’s main recommendation for Covid-19 early in the pandemic.

Uncontrolled Spread by Scott Gottlieb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, additive manufacturing, Atul Gawande, Bernie Sanders, Citizen Lab, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, fear of failure, global pandemic, global supply chain, Kevin Roose, lab leak, Larry Ellison, lockdown, medical residency, Nate Silver, randomized controlled trial, social distancing, stem cell, sugar pill, synthetic biology, uranium enrichment, zoonotic diseases

., “Observational Study on 255 Mechanically Ventilated Covid Patients at the Beginning of the USA Pandemic,” medRxiv, May 31, 2021; and Harriet Alexander, “Was Trump Right About Hydroxychloroquine All Along? New Study Shows Drug Touted by Former President can Increase COVID Survival Rates by 200%,” Daily Mail, June 10, 2021. 46.US Food and Drug Administration, “FDA COVID-19 Pandemic Recovery and Preparedness Plan (PREPP) Initiative,” January 27, 2021, https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/reports/fda-covid-19-pandemic-recovery-and-preparedness-plan-prepp-initiative. 47.Levin, “Biden’s Pandemic-Policy Challenge.” 48.Richard Harris, “FDA’s Hahn Apologizes for Overselling Plasma’s Benefits as a COVID-19 Treatment,” National Public Radio, August 25, 2020. 49.Steve Usdin, “FDA Documents Shed Light on Chaotic COVID Decision-making during Trump Administration,” Biocentury, May 14, 2021. 50.Marcus Banks, “NIH Halts Outpatient COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Trial,” Scientist, March 4, 2021. 51.RECOVERY Collaborative Group, “Convalescent Plasma in Patients Admitted to Hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a Randomized Controlled, Open-Label Platform Trial,” Lancet (2021). 52.Katie Thomas and Noah Weiland, “The Covid-19 Plasma Boom Is Over.

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However, broader acceptance didn’t come about until a year later, in 2007, with the publication of the CDC’s Community Mitigation Guidance, in which NPIs held a prominent role.54 The approach outlined, however, differed from the strategies that would ultimately be imported into the COVID response. In workplaces, for example, Hatchett and Mecher didn’t envision that businesses would be closed entirely. Instead, businesses would follow plans to limit spread through social distancing. The plan Hatchett and Mecher crafted had discussed recommendations to close certain hospitality venues like theaters or bars, but broad stay-at-home orders, or “lockdowns,” were never considered as an option. The 2006 plan was thorough, but also limited in some important ways. It focused entirely on the risk from a pandemic flu, and didn’t contemplate a coronavirus, or even contain the word anywhere in its 233 pages.

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Hahn, “Bringing a Cancer Doctor’s Perspective to FDA’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic,” May 29, 2020, https://www.fda.gov/news-events/fda-voices/bringing-cancer-doctors-perspective-fdas-response-covid-19-pandemic; and Rowland, Cenziper, and Rein, “White House Sidestepped FDA to Distribute Hydroxychloroquine to Pharmacies, Documents Show. Trump Touted the Pills to Treat Covid-19.” 41.US Food and Drug Administration, “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Revokes Emergency Use Authorization for Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine,” June 15, 2020, https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-revokes-emergency-use-authorization-chloroquine-and. 42.US Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology, “Pharmacovigilance Memorandum.” 43.Laurie McGinley, “Controversy Erupts over Plan to Let Pentagon Authorize Unapproved Drugs for Battlefield Use,” Washington Post, November 9, 2017. 44.Laurie McGinley and Mark Berman, “Justice Department Says FDA ‘Lacks Jurisdiction’ over Death-Penalty Drugs,” Washington Post, May 14, 2019. 45.Leon G.

pages: 349 words: 99,230

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice by Jamie K. McCallum

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, antiwork, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, carbon tax, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, death from overwork, defund the police, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, occupational segregation, post-work, QR code, race to the bottom, remote working, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, side hustle, single-payer health, social distancing, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, TaskRabbit, The Great Resignation, the strength of weak ties, trade route, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, women in the workforce, working poor, workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration, zoonotic diseases

Peter Ganong, Pascal Noel, and Joseph S. Vavra, “US Unemployment Insurance Replacement Rates During the Pandemic,” working paper, Becker Friedman Institute, University of Chicago, August 24, 2020, https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/2020-62/. 35. Christopher Adolph et al., “The Pandemic Policy U-Turn: Partisanship, Public Health, and Race in Decisions to Ease COVID-19 Social Distancing Policies in the United States,” Perspectives on Politics, October 1, 2021, 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592721002036. Chapter 3: The Pandemic Proletariat 1. Julia Carrie Wong, “Amazon Execs Labeled Fired Worker ‘Not Smart or Articulate’ in Leaked PR Notes,” Guardian, April 2, 2020, Technology, www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/amazon-chris-smalls-smart-articulate-leaked-memo. 2.

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Conventional wisdom suggested that recovering from the pandemic recession meant controlling the spread of the virus. Yet, northeastern states, which did an overall better job of adhering to social distancing guidelines, still suffered worse economically. Southern and Sunbelt states that did a worse job of controlling the virus saw lower economic fallout. Blue states like California and Massachusetts were hit harder than red ones like Utah and Missouri. This trend persisted even as the COVID-19 infection profile and death rates shifted from blue states early in the pandemic to hot spots in red states during and after the summer of 2020.

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Nayga, “The Association Between Food Insecurity and Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” BMC Public Health 21, no. 1 (March 29, 2021): 607, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10631-0; Leah R. Abrams, Jessica M. Finlay, and Lindsay C. Kobayashi, “Job Transitions and Mental Health Outcomes Among U.S. Adults Aged 55 and Older During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Journals of Gerontology: Series B, no. gbab060 (April 10, 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbab060. 47. Eric B. Elbogen et al., “Suicidal Ideation and Thoughts of Self-Harm During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of COVID-19-Related Stress, Social Isolation, and Financial Strain,” Depression and Anxiety 38, no. 7 (2021): 739–748, https://doi.org/10.1002/da.23162. 48.

pages: 406 words: 88,977

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates

augmented reality, call centre, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, demographic dividend, digital divide, digital map, disinformation, Edward Jenner, global pandemic, global supply chain, Hans Rosling, lockdown, Neal Stephenson, Picturephone, profit motive, QR code, remote working, social distancing, statistical model, TED Talk, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Food and Drug Administration), 127 emergency use authorization for COVID vaccines, 141 therapeutics regulatory approval, 128 vaccine regulation, 158–59 Ferguson, Neil, 80 fire departments/fire brigades, 42–43, 43n Foege, Bill, 6, 28, 196, 231 fomites, 102 Ford, Gerald, 37 “For Third World, Water Is Still a Deadly Drink” (Kristof), 5, 5 Franklin, Benjamin, 42 Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, 192 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, 66, 71, 160 Frieden, Tom, 28 G Gates, Bill blog of, 141 conspiracy theories and, 18 economics of immunization and, 144 Fauci and, 15–16 funding and recruiting for IDM, 206–7 Gates Foundation work, 203, 213, 227 his father speaking on malaria, 200 How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, 5, 234 innovation and, 17 interest in infectious diseases, 5–6 mask wearing by, 110 meme claim about, 209 memo on gaps in the world’s pandemic readiness, 12–13, 13 Microsoft and, 231 observing a minimally invasive autopsy in Soweto, 60, 60–61 pledge of, 17 The Road Ahead, 239, 240 Seattle area as home, 66, 180–81 social distancing and twenty-eight tennis balls, 104, 104 in South Africa, 4 TED talk: “The Next Epidemic? We’re Not Ready,” 13, 14, 71 Vietnam visit, 170 virtual meetings and, 241, 243 wealth and COVID, 17 working dinners and, 4 World’s Fair (1964) and, 248–49 Gates, Melinda, 5, 8, 14, 15, 201 Gates Foundation board of trustees for, 15, 16 CEPI formed, 14 childhood diarrheal disease and, 7, 58 child mortality reduction and, 145, 203, 214, 214, 215 co-chairs, Bill and Melinda Gates, 15, 201 countries focused on, 8 COVID, early discussions, 3, 4 COVID work, funding, 14–15, 129n, 209–10 criticisms of, 16–17 decisions on urgent requests, 15 developing an affordable pentavalent vaccine, 168 Event 201 novel coronavirus exercise (2019) and, 186n funding vaccine manufacturing in developing countries, 169 Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and, 144–45, 144n, 145, 165, 209, 210, 215, 215, 251, 252 global health work, 7, 213–14 IDM and, 66n, 78 investing in education and digital tools, 247 mAb funding and, 116, 117 maternal mortality and, 7 mission, 201 public health systems and, 227 public policy and, 16–17 role in COVID vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics, 15–16, 15n “silent epidemics” and, 7 tracking the spread of COVID and, 14 Gattaca (film), 68 Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, 144–45, 144n, 145, 165, 209, 210, 215, 215, 251, 252 GBS (Guillain-Barré syndrome), 38 genome/genomic sequencing of pathogens, 68–70, 69, 76–77, 81, 101, 227, 252 antiviral drug development and, 123–24 for bioengineered pathogens, 195 of COVID, 72, 75, 76, 101, 205–7 global pandemic plan and, 225–27 spike proteins, mRNA vaccines, and, 152, 154 for vaccine development, 206 GERM (Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization), 42–52, 224–25, 252 annual cost, 51–52, 231 diplomacy and national or local leaders, 47–48 dual identity of, 48 emerging diseases as priority, 51 events in an outbreak response, 45–46 exercises (germ games) and, 48, 187, 191–92 function of, 43–44, 52 funding and staffing, 46–47, 224–25 funding source, 51n global fire department analogy, 43 historic antecedents, 42–43 identifying new tools, 231 pandemic prevention czar and, 229 precedents: EOCs, 48–51 primary mission, 233 public health systems and, 231, 232 roles of employees, 47 tasks and preparedness checklist, 48 WHO management of, 47, 51n Germany CEPI and, 14 child mortality and family size, 204 COVID management, 93, 108 vaccine manufacturers, 153, 231 Global Burden of Disease, 23, 23n Global Fund, 136, 207–8, 215, 252 global health, 197–215 child mortality, 145, 200, 201–4, 202, 205, 214, 214–15, 215 child mortality and family size, 204 COVID response and, 205 disparity in groups and countries most affected by COVID, 17, 197–200 Gates Foundation funding, 213–14 health gap, 199, 199–200, 199n, 205 HIV deaths, 199 malaria deaths, 199 maternal and infant mortality, 199, 200n progress made in, 201–5 tools used against COVID and, 205–13 vaccination programs, 208–10 vertical vs. horizontal approach, 212–13 See also health systems/public health systems global pandemic plan, 219–34 building the GERM team, 224–25, 229 comparison to military strategy, 219 creating a pandemic prevention czar, 229 improving disease surveillance, 225–27 making and delivering better tools, 220–24 sharing health data globally, 233–34 strengthening health systems, 227–34, 227n WHO’s role in, 233–34 global population, 204, 204n GOARN (Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network), 45 H health systems/public health systems, 17–18 a central authority and clear responsibilities needed, 229 COVID response and, 26 COVID’s impact on, 228 death records and, 57–58, 59, 225 detecting outbreaks and, 55–56, 81 establishing a supply chain and workforce, 230 funding for low-income countries, 228, 232–33 Gates Foundation work and, 227 GERM team and, 231, 232 global pandemic plan and, 226, 227–34, 227n government spending on, 231–32 improving, broad impact of, 212–13 improving primary care, 229 intubation, ventilators, and, 122 medical oxygen supply and, 120, 122 pandemic prevention and, 44, 225 primary health care, 227, 228, 229, 234, 238 software for, 225 testing and, 63–64, 77 vaccines and, 227 hepatitis B, 157 Hilleman, Maurice, 141–42 daughter Jeryl Lynn, 141–42 Hippocrates, 122 HIV/AIDS, 4, 6, 7, 222 antiviral drugs for, 124–25 billboard, Lusaka, Zambia, 8 contact tracing and, 97 fatalities and infections, 6–7, 7, 199, 199 generic drug manufacturing for, 132, 133, 163 Global Fund and delivering medicines, 207 medicines for low- and middle-income countries, 136 pre-exposure prophylaxis, 136 testing and genetic analysis, 70, 76 transmission, 194 vaccine and, 141, 155, 160, 170 HIV Vaccine Trials Network, 208 Hong Kong SARS outbreak (2003), 192 How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (Gates), 5, 234 HPV (human papillomavirus), 157 hydroxychloroquine, 111, 113 I IDM (Institute for Disease Modeling), 66, 66n, 78, 206–7 IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation), 23, 26, 66, 78, 79n, 206, 252 immune system, 150–51 innate immune response boosters, 137 Imperial College London, 206 India access to pneumococcal vaccine, 169 childhood immunizations and, 210, 211 COVID in, 30, 30–31, 34 COVID vaccination in, 35, 198, 211 digital vaccination certificates in, 211 generic drug manufacturing and, 133, 134n mucormycosis in, 114–15 pandemic preparation and, 219 polio campaigns, 212 smallpox campaign, 210 vaccine distribution and “last mile” delivery in, 173 vaccine manufacturing and, 165, 168, 169, 221 Indonesia, 219 country-scale germ game, 182–83 infectious diseases child mortality and, 58–59 endemic diseases, 6 engineered bioweapons, 10 epidemics, 6, 7 Gates’s interest in, 5–6 genetic information on pathogens and, 68–70, 68n, 69 global database for, 19 outbreaks, 6, 7, 7 pandemics, 6, 7, 8 rapid detection, 19, 53–82 transmission, 100 transmission reduction, 33, 84–110 variants, 32, 33 waves, 34 influenza, 8, 9, 9–10 eradicating, 21, 219 fatalities and hospitalizations, 21, 95–96, 96n genetic information and, 68, 68n mutations (variants), 69 1918 pandemic, 9, 9, 9n, 37, 84, 108–9, 109n NPIs and 2020–21 flu season, 95–96 oral blocker for, 175 prevention methods, 39 recurrence of strains, 96 reporting new types, 54 seasonal, 218 Seattle Flu Study, 14, 66–76, 226, 233 simulation, Indonesia, 182–83 swine flu (1976), mass immunization drive, 37–38 swine flu (2009–10), 9, 10 universal vaccines for, 19, 149, 178 in the U.S., lack of diagnosis and testing, 70 U.S. pandemic simulations, 186 vaccines, 146, 157 variants and flu shots, 32, 53 innovation, 17 in administering vaccines, 174, 179, 222 in broadband infrastructure, 249–50 in clinical trials, 126–27 COVID and, 39–40 in diagnostic testing, 64–66, 223–24, 234 the digital future and, 237–50, 237n in drug development, 123–25, 130, 137–38, 220–21 in education, 246–48 funding for, 219, 220 in generic drug manufacturing, 131–34, 132n, 223 in genetic information on pathogens, 76–77 metaverse technology, 243 private sector and, 39–40 as problem solver, 239 U.S. government and, 231 in vaccine development, 220–21 in vaccine distribution, 173, 221–22 in working remotely, 238–45, 244n International Health Regulations, 233 Iran, 25 J Japan backward contact tracing in, 100 bioterror attack in, 193 as health systems model, 230 masking in, 109 mRNA vaccines in, 154 partnership with the Gates Foundation, 14 postal workers and disease surveillance, 57 Jenner, Edward, 158, 158n Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine, 155, 159, 166 K Karikó, Katalin, 150, 150, 152–53, 250 Kenya, medical oxygen supply in, 121 Klugman, Keith, 4–5 Kristof, Nicholas, “For Third World, Water Is Still a Deadly Drink,” 5, 5 L Lassa fever, 50 Lawfare, 10n Lewis, Michael, The Premonition, 37n LGC, Biosearch, 65, 65 Lind, James, 126 lockdowns, 88, 89, 90, 94–95, 99 of nursing homes, 93–94 London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, modeling team at, 78 LumiraDx, 64, 114 M MacLachlan, Ian, 153 malaria, 5, 6, 7, 7 deaths, 199, 199, 200 Gates’s father speaking on, 200 Global Fund delivering bed nets, 207 human challenge study and, 130 IDM and, 206 reducing child mortality and, 215 vaccine development, 170 masks/mask mandates, 24, 85, 85–86, 105–10, 108 COVID and, specific countries, 109–10 effectiveness, 106–7, 110 N95 or KN95, 107–8, 107n, 108 resistance to, 108–9, 109n respirators, 107–8, 107n, 108 social standards and, 110 measles, 50 airborne transmission of, 101 India’s campaign, 211 reducing child mortality and, 215 vaccine, 139, 141, 174 vaccine micro-needle patches, 222 Médecins Sans Frontières, 51 Merck, 117, 132, 141 MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), 97, 157, 190, 191 Microsoft, 18, 225, 231 Moderna, 153, 154 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), 115–16, 136, 252 challenges with, 116–17, 120 Sotrovimab, 116 Mozambique, mortality surveillance, 59, 225 mRNA vaccines, 39, 149–55, 150, 154, 157, 208, 220, 252–53 clinical trials, 154 cold storage of, 172 companies that produce, 153, 156 DARPA and, 153 development of, 152–54, 155, 231, 250 emergency use authorization for, 154 instability of, 152 lipid nanoparticles and, 153, 162 production challenges, 162 safety of, 160, 161 second-source deals and, 166 theory of, 151–52 universal vaccines and, 178 virus genome mapping and, 154 mumps vaccine, 141–42 Mundel, Trevor, 14–15 Myhrvold, Nathan, 10–11 “Strategic Terrorism: A Call to Action,” 10n, 193, 194 N Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund, 31 New England Journal of Medicine, Gates paper in, 13, 14 New Yorker, “The Really Big One,” 180 New York Times, 141 “Coronavirus May Have Spread in U.S. for Weeks, Gene Sequencing Suggests,” 74 “The Mask Slackers of 1918,” 109, 109n “The Pandemic Has Split in Two,” 198 “For Third World, Water Is Still a Deadly Drink” (Kristof), 5, 5 New Zealand, COVID in, 25, 64, 101 Nexar, 65, 65 “Next Epidemic?

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It’s also because international travel is skyrocketing (or at least it was before COVID slowed its growth): In 2019, before COVID, tourists around the world made 1.4 billion international arrivals every year—up from just 25 million in 1950. The fact that the world had gone a century since a catastrophic pandemic—the most recent one, the flu of 1918, killed something like 50 million people—is largely a matter of luck. Before COVID, the possibility of a flu pandemic was, relatively speaking, well known; many people had at least heard of the 1918 flu, and they might have remembered the swine flu pandemic of 2009–10. But a century is a long time, so almost no one alive had lived through the flu pandemic, and the swine flu pandemic didn’t turn out to be a huge problem because it wasn’t much more fatal than the normal flu.

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Meanwhile, whether COVID subsides or comes roaring back, we also need to work on a separate, longer-term goal: preventing the next pandemic. For decades, people told the world to get ready for a pandemic, but hardly anyone made it a top priority. Then COVID struck, and stopping it became the most important thing on the global agenda. What I worry about now is that when COVID does subside, the world’s attention will turn to other problems, and pandemic prevention will once again get moved to the back burner—or taken off the stove entirely. We need to take action now, while all of us still remember how awful this pandemic was and feel the urgency of never allowing another one to arise.

pages: 735 words: 165,375

The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation by Edward Glaeser, David Cutler

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Alvin Toffler, Andrei Shleifer, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, business cycle, buttonwood tree, call centre, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, contact tracing, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, defund the police, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, discovery of penicillin, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Elisha Otis, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, future of work, Future Shock, gentrification, George Floyd, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, global village, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, Honoré de Balzac, income inequality, industrial cluster, James Hargreaves, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, job automation, jobless men, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, knowledge worker, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, out of africa, place-making, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Richard Florida, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, Socratic dialogue, spinning jenny, superstar cities, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech baron, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, trade route, union organizing, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, working poor, Works Progress Administration, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Shades of Social Distancing Today, the Black Death is generally treatable. Antibiotics cure most cases. But Alexander Fleming only discovered penicillin in 1928. In the Middle Ages, social distancing was the only possible response. The same was true for COVID-19 during most of 2020. Isolating the sick from the healthy is a reasonable response to a contagious pandemic, but different types of social distancing come with different costs and efficacy. The oldest form of social distancing is simply to remove the sick from the community. Leviticus 13:46 may be humanity’s oldest public health warning: “all the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.”

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It is estimated that one third of the world’s population caught the flu, though no exact number is available. As in the COVID-19 pandemic, cloth masks became ubiquitous, countries shut their borders, and cities experimented with enforced social distancing. Given the death tolls and the mode of transmission, the influenza pandemic would seem likely to have been just as disruptive to local economies as COVID-19. Yet it was not. François Velde of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago has done a remarkable job investigating the economic consequences of the influenza pandemic. He finds that “industrial output fell sharply but rebounded within months,” and “retail seemed little affected.”

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technical expertise and moral judgment: “Why Pandemic Disease and War Are So Similar,” Business Insider. By contrast, some: “New Zealand,” Worldometer. Containment is easier: Roy, “ ‘Can I Really Do This?’ New Zealand’s Ashley Bloomfield Reveals Self-Doubts at Height of Covid.” first national leader to do so: Meixler, “New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern Made History by Bringing Baby Neve to the U.N.” Together they form: World Health Organization, “New Zealand Takes Early and Hard Action to Tackle COVID-19.” handwashing and social distancing: Jefferies et al., “COVID-19 in New Zealand and the Impact of the National Response: A Descriptive Epidemiological Study.”

pages: 432 words: 143,491

Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle With Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott

Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, gig economy, global pandemic, high-speed rail, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, lockdown, nudge unit, open economy, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, Skype, social distancing, zoonotic diseases

In London’s Soho, there were extraordinary scenes as thousands of people were crushed cheek to jowl in narrow streets. They hugged, they snogged, they bellowed in each other’s ears without a thought for social distancing. They were having a great time – but was it too much, too soon? The scenes terrified those who understood the history of pandemics. Watching the events that day, Professor Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University and a member of the Scottish government’s Covid-19 Advisory Group, was reminded of the celebrations in 1918 when people thought the last great pandemic, the Spanish flu, was over after the first wave. ‘Back in 1918 there were pictures of parades of people celebrating.

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Abrahamson, Elkan 402, 403 Academy of Medical Sciences 237, 336, 338, 353 action plan, UK government (‘contain, delay, research, mitigate’ strategy) 152–66 All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus 396, 398 ambulance service 95, 190, 224, 237, 243, 247, 264, 265–7, 268, 269, 270, 273, 274–5, 282, 294, 290, 291, 392, 416 Arcuri, Jennifer 127–31, 310–11 Ardern, Jacinda 153–4, 308, 337 Ashton, John 100, 190 Ashworth, Jon 74–5, 143, 286 asymptomatic spread, Covid-19 135, 142, 144, 237–8, 332–3 Attwood, Peter 51–2, 55 austerity policies, UK government 7, 87, 88, 101, 104, 105 Austin, Raymond 243–6, 247, 249, 252, 296 Australia 18, 155, 180, 230, 231, 302, 308, 325, 337–8, 365, 394 Blair, Tony 77, 78, 87, 128 Bradshaw, Ben 316–17 Brexit 4, 5, 10, 76, 78, 81, 87, 90, 91, 101, 115–16, 138, 148, 153, 172, 230, 261, 383, 391, 397; Boris Johnson/UK government fixation with and appreciation of danger posed by Covid-19 4, 5, 6, 8, 15–16, 56–7, 64–5, 71–5, 76, 78, 87, 110–12, 115–16, 122–4, 132, 153, 383, 397; Brexit day 71–2; Cummings and 72, 111–13; Hancock and 68–9; Leave Campaign 57, 112, 213; lockdown and 61, 74, 302, 390–1; ministers’ approach to views of scientists and 103–4; no-deal 8, 78, 87, 90, 110, 111, 113, 390; pandemic planning/preparation and 6, 7–8, 15–16, 56–7, 64–5, 68, 72–3, 87, 90, 91, 101, 103–4, 105, 122, 123–4, 132; withdrawal treaty 5, 57 Brown, Gordon 78–9, 88 Buckland, Jane 51, 52 Cain, Lee 184, 213 Cameron, David 66, 77–8, 88, 155, 199, 200–1, 213 care homes/sector 7, 10, 105, 203, 214, 269, 280–4, 366, 384; Boris Johnson lays blame for crisis in on workers 332–3; death toll within 238–9, 263–4, 267, 284, 290; government advice to in early days of pandemic 141, 161; House of Commons’ public accounts committee report into care home crisis 333; lockdown and 280–1; patients discharged from hospital into 90, 203–4, 280–2; residents rejected for hospital admission 269, 282–4; staff 96, 141, 281–2, 290, 291, 310, 332–3 Charles, Prince 230 Cheltenham Festival 167, 168–71, 172, 183, 417 Chequers 115, 149, 151, 199, 216, 277, 295, 329 China 7, 8, 385; Covid-19 death toll in 70, 308–9; Covid-19 imported into UK from 63–4, 70, 72–3, 142; Covid-19 origins in 9, 15–29, 15; Covid-19 outbreak in and cover-up of 9, 30–52, 30, 56–7, 58, 59, 61, 62–3, 70, 75; economy, swift lockdown policy and 308–9; personal protective equipment (PPE) and 71, 85, 86, 122–3, 145; Sars (Sars-CoV-1) pandemic (2002) and 16, 17–20, 21; success of dealing with Covid-19 401; see also Wuhan Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention 22, 34 Churchill, Winston 2, 4, 397 Cobra (national crisis committee) 8, 55–6, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 70, 71, 75–80, 89, 99, 102, 106, 107, 124, 126, 127, 147, 148–9, 152, 153, 154, 174, 190, 196, 199–200, 212–13, 214, 220, 285, 286, 384; Boris Johnson fails to attend first five meetings of during Covid crisis 8, 55–6, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 70, 71, 75–80, 102, 106, 107, 124, 126, 127, 147, 148–9, 285, 286, 384 Conservative Party 60, 65–6, 84, 88, 106, 110, 112, 113, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 143, 249, 288; austerity policies 7, 87, 88, 101, 104, 105; Black and White Ball 119, 134–5, 137, 138, 141, 142, 150; Brexit and 4, 110, 111–12; general election victory (2019) 4, 57, 71–2, 76, 111–12, 116, 138, 319; leadership contest (2019) 68–9, 111, 189, 203, 401; lockdown and 296, 302, 319, 322, 329, 339, 340, 359 Conte, Giuseppe 192–3 Corbyn, Jeremy 76, 127, 137, 138, 240 Coronavirus Act (2020) 226–7 Coronavirus Clinical Characterisation Consortium 396 Cosford, Paul 64, 109 Costello, Anthony 181, 369 Covid-19 (Sars-CoV-2): asymptomatic spread of 135, 142, 144, 237–8, 332–3; first British deaths 51–2, 55, 159–60; first recorded cases in Britain 50–2, 55, 64, 72, 81–3, 107, 108–9, 140–1, 148, 150–1, 165; infectivity rate 60–1, 62, 71, 74, 109, 146, 287, 393, 394; long Covid 365; name 16; origins 15–29, 15; outbreak and cover-up of in China 30–52, 30; reproduction (R) rate 60–1, 139, 296–7, 303, 304, 306, 320, 325, 335, 336–7, 338, 339, 340, 346, 350–1, 354, 359, 363, 365, 387, 400, 403; second wave 11, 176, 183, 184, 310, 328, 330–1, 336, 338, 340–1, 344, 347, 350, 352, 353, 355, 359, 360, 363, 364, 366, 373–4, 376, 402–3, 417; vaccines 11, 27, 106, 178, 349, 353, 357, 387, 391, 393, 394; variants 144, 335, 386, 389, 393 Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group 402 Covid-19 Clinical Information Network (Co-Cin) 249–50 Covid Symptom Study app 50 Crabtree, David 281, 282, 283 Cummings, Dominic 72, 106, 111–14, 120, 126, 138, 139, 140, 153, 171, 195–6, 208, 209–10; Boris Johnson, breakdown of relationship with 363; Covid infection 234–5, 277–8; flouts lockdown rules 234–6, 277–8, 311–16; lockdown measures, becomes believer in swift and decisive (‘Domoscene conversion’) 195–6, 363, 399 Cygnus pandemic rehearsal (2016) 88–90, 95, 104 Daszak, Peter 27–8, 29, 41–2, 45–6 Davey, Ed 149, 299, 322 Davies, Nicholas 140, 184–5, 349, 370, 373 Davis, David 112, 115, 261 De Angelis, Daniela 160, 219, 366, 373 deaths, UK Covid-related 6, 7, 9–10, 11, 59, 61–2, 70, 73, 88, 89, 114, 133, 136, 140, 142, 148, 150, 154, 155, 161, 164–5, 169, 170, 175, 177, 178, 185, 187–8, 191–2, 193, 195, 196, 197, 201, 206, 211, 231–2, 256, 276, 277, 278–9, 280, 284, 287–8, 295, 297, 301–2, 305, 306, 324, 336, 337, 352, 356, 357, 359, 360, 361, 365, 366, 368, 369, 372–3, 376, 378, 385, 386, 391, 394–5, 401–2, 404, 405; deaths at home 263–73, 264, 290, 291; death rate/lethal potential of Covid-19 55, 75, 191–2, 378; European record high death rate 220, 287, 301–2, 305, 320, 307–8, 395, 396; first UK deaths 51–2, 55, 159–60; late lockdown in UK and 9–10, 220, 287–8, 307–10, 320–1, 358, 364–6, 379, 394–5, 397, 401, 404 Department of Health 71, 85, 92, 95, 100, 105, 149, 151, 155, 174, 180, 196, 260, 281 Diamond Princess 83–4, 124–5, 140, 148 Doctors’ Association UK 208, 217, 241, 261, 379 Dorries, Nadine 156, 180, 196–8, 226, 287, 347 Eat Out to Help Out scheme 333–4, 339, 344–5, 349, 375 Ebola 18, 26, 90, 92, 96, 189 Ebright, Richard 43–4, 47–9 economy, UK 4–5, 399; annual borrowing 306–7; Brexit and 4, 73–4, 148, 391; budget (2020) 105, 180–1; Eat Out to Help Out 333–4, 339, 344–5, 349, 375; false dichotomy between health of the nation and that of the economy, UK government offers 340, 379, 400–1; financial markets 146–7, 148, 172, 210; ‘furlough’ scheme 99, 105, 214, 306, 333; G7 group of developed nations, UK economy suffers more than any other 10, 333, 396; GDP, fall in 307–10, 395–6, 401; herd immunity and 177; lifting of lockdown measures and 279, 306–7, 319–20, 328–9, 333–8, 339, 340, 343–5, 371, 398, 399, 400–1; lockdown measures and 9, 61, 74, 156–7, 161, 177–8, 199, 204, 279, 296–7, 304–5, 306–10, 319, 333, 343, 350–1, 352–3, 354, 355–6, 337–8, 359, 360, 364–5, 368, 371, 372, 374, 376, 377, 379, 396, 398, 399, 400–1, 403; pandemic planning and 87, 88, 89, 96, 105, 114; return to offices, government encourages 335–6, 343–4; Sunak and, see Sunak, Rishi; total cost of combating effects of the pandemic 306–7; Treasury support packages 181, 204–5, 214, 306–7, 333–4, 339, 344–5, 350; unemployment 279, 319, 333, 350; World Bank: ‘The Sooner, the Better: The Early Economic Impact of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic’ report 307, 360, 368 Edmunds, John 132, 139, 140, 159, 160, 184–5, 327, 357–8, 362, 363–4 Edwardes, Charlotte 119–20 Elizabeth II, Queen 210, 230, 240, 241, 256, 295, 298 European Union (EU) 4, 5, 57, 65, 71, 72, 85, 90, 103, 124, 126, 309, 333, 391 facemasks 8, 10, 22, 84, 86, 94–5, 122, 123, 141, 145, 177, 179, 180, 182, 208, 276, 281, 334, 335–6, 374 Farrar, Sir Jeremy 63, 102, 108, 139, 220 Ferguson, Neil 59, 61, 71, 139, 159, 185, 205, 220, 300–1, 320, 321 Fetzer, Thiemo 344–5 financial crisis (2007–08) 88, 172 financial markets 146–7, 148, 172, 210 ‘following the science’, UK government claims to be 7, 153, 157–8, 163, 174, 181–2, 183, 194, 213 foot and mouth disease 79, 80, 167 France 1–2, 9, 33, 83, 86, 144, 149–50, 166, 191, 194, 195, 198, 209, 212, 217, 219, 297, 303, 310, 344, 376, 390 ‘gain-of-function’ experiments 26–7, 48 Gallagher, Mick 290–1 Germany 4, 9, 70, 90, 93, 98, 99, 162, 194, 198, 217, 219, 224, 297, 302, 307, 310, 364, 376 Ghebreyesus, Tedros Adhanom 70, 71, 83–4, 133 Good Morning Britain 104, 301, 315 Gove, Michael 78, 110, 212–13, 236, 256, 285–6, 339, 353, 358, 368, 376, 377, 399 Greater London Authority (GLA) 129, 130, 311 Grove, Betty 272–3 Gupta, Sunetra 254–5 Halpern, David 184, 192 Hammond, Philip 76, 110, 113 Hancock, Matt 55, 61–2, 65–6, 198–9, 249; background 65–7; big claims, propensity for making 141, 198, 238–9; Boris Johnson Covid infection and 256; Brexit and 68–9; care homes and 280; Christmas restrictions and 388; circuit breaker lockdown and 353, 368; Cobra committee and 106; contact tracing app and 325; Covid infection 233, 238; Covid variants and 389; Eat Out to Help Out and 339; Edwardes and 120; government decisions presented to public as if based on scientific advice, role in 157; herd immunity and 193, 198; hospital capacity and 203, 252–3; Italian travellers/airports and 142–4; late lockdown, on 220; masks and 336; Nightingale hospitals and 227; 100,000 tests per day target 239, 288, 298–9, 317; Operation Cygnus and 104–5; Operation Moonshot and 349–50; personal protective equipment (PPE) and 84–5, 93, 96; procurement practice and allegations of cronyism 288; restrictions to limit the spread of the virus, pushes for 363, 368, 398; testing and 97, 99, 239, 288, 298–9, 317 Hanks, Tom 180, 230 Harries, Jenny 181–3, 186, 214, 312, 317, 336 Heneghan, Carl 355–6, 359 herd immunity 106, 156, 164–5, 171, 174–9, 183–5, 187, 191–3, 194–5, 196–8, 200, 302, 354, 355, 356–7, 365, 394 Hibberd, Martin 43, 46, 47, 48, 63, 98–9, 101, 102–3, 287 High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID) 207–8 Hillier, Meg 105, 333 Horton, Richard 62, 101, 102, 225–6, 286–7 Imperial College London 9, 42, 59, 61, 108, 109, 131, 132, 136, 139, 149, 154, 156, 159, 160, 170, 176, 184, 185, 186, 193, 199, 200, 205, 211, 216, 242, 297, 300, 322, 346, 361, 377, 386, 393 Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) 128, 130–1, 310–11 Iran 58, 136, 137, 153 Ireland 165, 187, 188, 191, 305 Italy 9, 33, 64, 70, 119, 131, 132, 135–6, 142–5, 148, 151, 153, 161, 162, 165, 171, 172–3, 178, 187–8, 190, 191, 192–3, 194, 195, 200, 205–6, 210, 217, 219, 224, 225, 297, 301–2, 310, 344 Japan 59, 70, 125, 132, 178, 364 Javid, Sajid 72, 111, 112, 113, 119, 138 Jenrick, Robert 208, 289, 301 Johnson, Boris: action plan (‘contain, delay, research, mitigate’ strategy’) and 152–66; Arcuri and 127–31, 310–11; Brexit fixation and appreciation of danger posed by Covid-19 4, 5, 6, 8, 15–16, 56–7, 64–5, 71–5, 76, 78, 87, 110–12, 115–16, 122–4, 132, 153, 383, 397; cabinet reshuffle (2020) 110–11, 113–15; care workers, blames for crisis in care sector 332–3; Chevening and 114–15, 117, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125–7, 131, 137; child (Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas) 298; childhood 2; China and 56–7, 123–4; Christmas restrictions and 387–90, 404; circuit breaker lockdown and 352–80, 386; civil claims for negligence and violation of human rights against UK government, responsibility for 402–3; Cobra meetings, chairs 148–9, 152, 153, 154, 174, 196, 199–200, 212–13, 214, 220; Cobra meetings, fails to attend first five meetings of during Covid crisis 8, 55–6, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 70, 71, 75–80, 102, 106, 107, 124, 126, 127, 147, 148–9, 285, 286, 384; Conservative leadership contest and 68–9, 111, 189, 401; Covid infection and illness 10, 233–4, 235–6, 239–40, 241, 244, 247, 254–5, 262–3, 276–7, 295–7, 403; Cummings and 112, 113, 114, 235–6, 311–16, 363–4, 369, 370; EU, misses chance to pool resources with 126; ‘following the science’, UK government claims to be and 7, 153, 157–8, 163, 174, 181–2, 183, 194, 213; foreign newspapers criticise 302; general election victory (2019) 4, 57, 71–2, 116, 138; government decisions presented to public as if they were entirely based on scientific advice 157; Harries Twitter broadcast 181–3; herd immunity concept and 164–5, 174–6, 183–4, 187, 192–3, 194–5; holidays 57–8, 76, 109, 110, 114–17, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125–7, 131, 135, 137, 341, 342, 383; ‘irrational’ panic of Covid-19, dismissive of 4, 107–9, 204; lockdown measures and, see lockdowns, UK Covid-19; love affairs and children 116–121, 127–31; marriage 117, 118–19, 120–1; Mothers’ Day mixed message 214–15, 216; NHS surcharge for foreign health and social care workers and 310; Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich speech (2020) 5–6, 73–4, 84, 147, 204; popularity/public confidence in 6, 7, 284, 310, 315, 324–5; prorogues parliament (2019) 68, 69; public gatherings, attitude towards 165–6, 167–8, 181, 187; rewriting of timeline of Covid crisis 102; school closures and, see school closures; school meal vouchers and 323–4, 344–5; scientific advisers, split with 360–4; scientists, lays blame for crisis with 148, 321–2; shaking hands, proudly refuses to stop 162–4, 166, 175, 233; ‘Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives’ plan launched 213–15, 216, 305; Storm Dennis and 126–7; Storm Jorge and 171–2; Symonds and, see Symonds, Carrie; This Morning, appearance on 163–5, 175; travel corridors and 334–5; vaccines and 349 Johnson, Stanley 123, 262, 263 Kerslake, Lord 77–8, 154–5 Khan, Sadiq 200, 208–10, 213, 214, 217 King, Sir David 77, 155, 170–1, 219, 400–1 Labour Party 57, 66, 74–5, 76, 87, 105, 111–12, 127, 137, 143, 216, 240, 289–90, 316, 325, 329, 338, 368, 371, 389 Lancet, The 34, 55, 62, 101, 225–6, 286, 364 Lee, Phillip 89–90, 200–1 Li Wenliang 34–5, 81 Liu Xiaoming 56–7, 123, 124 lockdowns, UK Covid-19: behavioural fatigue concept and 201–2; Christmas and New Year restrictions (2020–21) 356, 385–95, 404; curfews 362–3, 369; dither and delay over, UK government/Boris Johnson 4–5, 9–10, 152–7, 160–1, 167–220, 218, 223, 224, 260, 261, 263, 287, 296–310, 319–21, 323, 325–7, 333, 334–5, 342, 345, 346, 348, 349, 350–1, 352–80, 387, 388–9, 390, 391, 393, 394, 396, 397–8, 400, 404–5; economic costs of, see economy; first (20 March 2020) 2–4, 8, 9, 10, 217–18, 223–327; first, discussed within government 61, 139–40; first, lifting of (4 July 2020) 325–51; Johnson lockdown speech (23 March 2020) 2–4, 9, 10, 217–18; local lockdowns 327, 338–9, 367–8; London lockdown first discussed 208–10, 217; public gatherings and 3–4, 149, 156–7, 159, 164–6, 167–70, 171, 174–5, 181, 182–3, 187, 189, 199, 213, 218, 327, 335, 348; second/circuit breaker begins (16 December 2020) 377–80, 386; second/circuit breaker, UK government delays 352–80; ‘Stay alert, control the virus, save lives’ advice 305; ‘Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives’ advice 213–15, 305; third (6 January 2021) 386, 393–4, 398, 404–5; tier system of restrictions 369–70, 371, 386, 388–9, 390, 393–4 London: Covid-19 in 108–9, 190, 200, 205–6, 236, 237, 246–8, 254, 256, 265, 266, 267–8, 272, 274–5, 283, 385–6, 388, 389, 390, 391–2, 393, 394; first lockdown and 205–6, 208–10, 212, 217 London Ambulance Service 190, 237, 265 London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) 43, 63, 71, 97, 98, 101, 132, 139, 140, 158, 159, 160, 184–5, 287, 349, 364 long Covid 365 Macintyre, Helen 118, 130 Macron, Emmanuel 212 May, Theresa 68, 76, 79, 88, 115, 199 Medley, Graham 63, 139, 146, 160, 163, 174, 372 Michie, Susan 163, 171, 188–9, 234 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome 16 Military World Games, Wuhan (2019) 32 modelling, Covid-19 9, 59, 61, 63, 71, 92, 103, 108, 131–2, 136, 139, 140–1, 146, 151, 154, 155, 158–61, 163–5, 170, 175, 176, 177–8, 184–5, 186, 193, 194, 195, 199, 205, 211, 216, 219, 220, 240, 297, 300, 321, 327, 336, 342, 343, 348–9, 366, 370, 372, 373, 376 Montgomerie, Tim 113–14, 121 Montgomery, Hugh 392 Montgomery, Sir Jonathan 211, 228, 229 Moral and Ethical Advisory Group (Meag) 211–12, 227, 228, 242, 243, 258 Morrison, Vivien 243, 244, 245–6, 247 Mostyn-Owen, Allegra 117 Nagpaul, Chaand 265, 273, 274, 275–6 National Health Service (NHS) 7; candle-lit vigil held by staff outside Downing Street 331–2; clapping for 10, 231, 239, 247, 275; critical care capacity figures, publication of suspended 225; Hancock and, see Hancock, Matthew; hospital capacity 84, 89–90, 145–6, 150, 151, 155–6, 161–2, 173–4, 177, 186, 192, 195, 196–8, 201, 202, 203–4, 206–7, 208, 211, 225, 226, 227–8, 241–54, 251, 252, 256–7, 258, 261, 265, 267, 268, 273–4, 280–1, 297, 337, 373–5, 377, 378–9, 391–2, 394, 396–7, 398, 401–2, 403–5; intensive care capacity/selection of patients for 3, 140, 145–6, 173–4, 195, 199, 211–12, 224–5, 227–9, 241–61, 251, 252, 256–7, 262–91, 296, 396–7; national pandemic stockpile 93–5; NHS England 85, 269; Nightingale hospitals 227, 246–7, 280, 377; pandemic planning/preparedness and 7, 8, 62, 74–5, 84–97, 122–3, 145, 285; personal protective equipment (PPE), see personal protective equipment (PPE); procurement practice 288–9; secrecy culture imposed on during Covid crisis 224–5, 227–9, 247–9, 260–1, 284, 373–4; staff deaths 290–1, 331–2; staff sickness and shortages 236, 237, 374; staff testing for virus 206–7, 236–9, 288; surcharge for foreign health workers 310; triaging dilemmas 173–4, 211–12, 224–5, 227–9, 241–61, 262–91, 373–5, 392, 396–7; ventilators and 3, 89, 126, 136, 146, 169, 200–1, 246, 255, 263, 274, 286, 296, 392, 397 Nature 26, 39–40, 42, 49, 50, 89 New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) 71, 95, 132, 161, 201 New Zealand 153–4, 155, 277, 308, 319, 337–8, 364, 365, 394, 395 News2 265, 266 Noon, Brian 270–2, 273 Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow 206, 289 No. 10 Downing Street, Covid-19 within 226, 232–3 Openshaw, Peter 132, 201 Osborne, George 65, 149 Oxford University 9, 65, 70, 108, 109, 131, 136, 144, 149, 154, 156, 158, 170, 186, 193, 199, 202, 203, 205, 211, 216, 237, 387, 391 Pagel, Christina 173–4, 254 pandemic planning 7–8, 84–101, 104, 122, 182, 208, 285, 290; Brexit and 6, 7–8, 15–16, 56–7, 64–5, 68, 72–3, 87, 90, 91, 101, 103–4, 105, 122, 123–4, 132; Cygnus pandemic rehearsal (2016) 88–90, 95, 104; stockpile, national pandemic 7–8, 87, 88, 93–6, 122, 182, 208, 285; Winter Willow pandemic rehearsal (2007) 87–8 parliament, UK 61, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 84, 85, 96, 105, 109, 110, 112, 115, 116, 180, 181, 203, 204, 205, 210, 220, 225–6, 234, 237, 262, 281, 282, 289, 290, 315, 317–18, 321, 332, 333, 340, 351, 368, 390, 396, 398 Parmar, Rinesh 217, 261, 379 Patel, Priti 110, 399–400 personal protective equipment (PPE) 7, 8, 63, 71, 85–91, 92, 93–7, 100–1, 104, 105, 122–3, 145, 169, 179, 181, 182, 207–8, 214, 217, 219, 226, 232, 247, 248, 249, 276, 281, 284, 285–6, 288, 290, 291, 297, 333, 336, 384; donation of to China from UK stockpile 101, 122–3, 285–6 Pillay, Deenan 27, 43 Powis, Stephen 139, 237, 238, 260–1, 397 public gatherings, UK government attitudes towards 3–4, 149, 156–7, 159, 164–6, 167–70, 171, 174–5, 181, 182–3, 187, 189, 199, 213, 218, 327, 335, 348 Public Health England (PHE) 64, 72, 83, 88, 94–5, 98, 99–100, 109, 122, 131, 132, 139, 141, 149, 150–1, 182, 187, 207, 238, 313 public inquiry, UK Covid-19 crisis 102, 189, 340, 379, 395, 402–3 quarantine 64, 70, 73, 97, 125, 142, 197, 226, 278, 316, 335, 399 Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham 248–9 Raab, Dominic 104, 110, 115, 254–6, 279, 286, 287, 289–90, 297, 303, 307, 322 Rashford, Marcus 324 reproduction (R) rate, Covid-19 60–1, 139, 296–7, 303, 304, 306, 320, 325, 335, 336–7, 338, 339, 340, 346, 350–1, 354, 359, 363, 365, 387, 400, 403 Ricciardi, Walter 136, 205–6 Riley, Steven 176–9, 343 Ross, David 116, 135 Scally, Gabriel 100, 180, 186, 192 school closures 83, 139, 140, 143–4, 145, 156, 159, 164, 181, 187, 188, 189, 191, 205, 304, 316, 318, 323–4, 339, 341–2, 343, 344–5, 346–7, 350, 353, 356, 372, 375, 384, 392–3, 394, 404 school meals, free 323–4, 344–5 Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) 42, 59–60, 61, 63, 71, 75, 92, 102, 108, 131, 138–40, 141, 146, 151, 158–9, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 171, 175, 176, 179–80, 184, 185, 189, 193, 201, 202, 205, 220, 232, 237, 249–50, 278, 300, 309, 321, 322, 323, 327, 331, 333, 334, 336, 338, 339–40, 345, 350, 352, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 360, 362, 369, 370, 372, 374, 392–3, 396–7, 398, 416 Scotland 89, 142, 166, 191, 213, 230, 258, 305, 315, 330, 335, 341, 365–6, 367, 388, 393 second wave, Covid-19 11, 176, 183, 184, 310, 328, 330–1, 336, 338, 340–1, 344, 347, 350, 352, 353, 355, 359, 360, 363, 364, 366, 373–4, 376, 402–3, 417 Second World War 2, 4, 68, 110, 225, 226, 240, 284, 307, 394 Sedwill, Sir Mark 58, 196, 233–4, 256 self-isolation 83, 140, 142, 143, 153, 154, 174, 180, 201, 205, 207, 230, 232, 233, 235, 236, 237, 291, 325, 374 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) (Sars-CoV-1) pandemic (2002) 16–17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 33, 34, 35, 40, 43, 45, 49, 63, 75, 106, 156 Shapps, Grant 78, 312 Shi Zhengli (‘Bat Woman’) 17–18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27–8, 29, 30–1, 34, 37, 39–40, 41, 42–3, 49, 50 Singapore 63, 82, 83, 102–3, 109, 132, 139, 156, 178, 190, 325, 364 social distancing 72, 139, 140, 142, 159, 188, 194, 201, 204, 205, 214, 216, 226, 230, 233, 234, 261, 296, 301, 303, 313, 318, 323, 326, 327, 329, 330, 335, 337, 341, 348, 369, 387 Soleimani, General Qasem 58, 137 South Korea 98, 154, 155, 156, 178, 189, 191, 202, 308, 319, 364 Spain 9, 83, 144, 170, 194, 195, 198, 217, 219, 225, 297, 310, 335, 344, 364, 366 Spanish flu pandemic (1918) 15, 55, 61, 287, 330, 344 Spectator, The 69, 117, 120, 260, 277, 278 Spi-B (behavioural group) 92, 162, 188 Spi-M (modelling committee) 63, 92, 140–1, 154, 160, 176, 219, 343, 348–9, 366, 370, 372, 373, 376 Sridhar, Devi 58–9, 136, 186, 192, 316, 330–1, 335, 347 Starmer, Keir 240, 289–90, 305, 306, 325, 338, 368, 370–1, 388–9 Stevens, Sir Simon 202–3, 260, 376–7 Stewart, Rory 110, 189–90, 401 Storm Dennis 122, 126–7 Storm Jorge 152, 171–2 Sturgeon, Nicola 213, 214, 305, 367, 388 Sunak, Rishi 113, 135, 180–1, 204–5, 213–14, 256, 279, 287, 306, 319, 323, 328, 329–30, 333, 334, 344, 353–4, 355, 357, 359, 368, 371, 372, 376, 398, 400 Sunday Times, The 6–7, 8, 40–1, 49, 67, 77, 81, 85, 101, 102, 122–3, 126, 127–31, 196, 225, 260, 285, 286, 322, 353, 378, 399–400 superspreaders 82–3, 107, 144, 186–7, 238, 333 Sweden 309, 356–7 Symonds, Carrie 72, 114, 116, 117, 119, 121, 150, 199, 216, 236, 256, 262, 277, 298, 329, 341, 342 testing, Covid-19 63, 93, 109, 122, 157, 185–6; airport 64, 143, 151, 190; antibody 19–20, 43; capacity 63, 92, 93, 97–100, 103, 109, 122, 156, 157, 179, 185–7, 191, 198, 203, 206–7, 211, 219, 226, 232, 236–9, 260, 273, 280, 281, 283, 284, 288–9, 296–9, 320, 321, 333, 346–7, 349–50, 384, 386; care sector and 203, 237, 280, 281, 283, 333; contact tracing 97, 98, 99–100, 103, 108, 109, 131–2, 152, 156, 159, 174, 175, 185–7, 199, 206, 211, 238, 316–17, 325, 346–7; contact tracing app 325; diagnostic kits 97; Gove blames shortage of chemical agents 236–7; medical staff and 206–7, 236–9, 288; 100,000 tests per day target 239, 288, 298–9; Operation Moonshot 349–50; pandemic planning and 92, 93; self-isolation and 83, 140, 142, 143, 153, 154, 174, 180, 201, 205, 207, 230, 232, 233, 235, 236, 237, 291, 325, 374; widespread testing dropped by UK government 185–7, 191, 232 travel: airports and 64, 141–5, 151, 226–7; French border with UK 1–2, 390–1; Italy, travellers to UK from 131–2, 142–5, 151, 153–4; travel bans 226–7, 390–1; travel corridors 334–5, 343; UK borders kept open 131–2, 142–5, 151, 153–4, 226–7 Treasury, UK 105, 111, 112, 113, 204–5, 213, 279, 306, 328–9 Trump, Donald 44, 58, 70–1, 233, 256, 262, 295, 302, 324–5 universities 339, 346, 350, 366–7, 375 vaccines, Covid-19 11, 27, 106, 178, 349, 353, 357, 387, 391, 393, 394 Vallance, Sir Patrick 59, 60, 139, 155, 157, 158, 161, 167–8, 176, 187, 191, 192, 196, 205, 220, 320, 321, 322, 326, 329, 336, 346, 348, 352, 353, 360–2, 370, 373, 399 variants, Covid-19 144, 335, 386, 389, 393 ventilators 3, 89, 126, 136, 146, 169, 200–1, 246, 255, 263, 274, 286, 296, 392, 397 Vernon, Martin 203, 269 Wakefield, Mary 120, 277 Walsh, Steve 82–3, 97, 107, 238, 333 Wang Yanyi 34, 42, 47 Wellcome Trust 63, 139 Wheeler, Marina 117, 118–19, 120–1 Whitty, Chris 59, 62, 71, 81–2, 91–2, 106, 139, 147, 155, 157, 158–9, 161, 174, 185–6, 187, 188, 189, 196, 202, 211, 227, 228, 233, 243, 282, 321, 322, 326, 329, 339, 342–3, 348, 352, 360, 361, 362, 370, 388, 399 Williamson, Gavin 318, 342 Winter Willow pandemic rehearsal (2007) 87–8 World Bank: ‘The Sooner, the Better: The Early Economic Impact of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic’ report 307, 360, 368, 398 World Health Organization (WHO) 17, 35, 38, 39, 57, 70–1, 77, 83–4, 133, 136–7, 178, 181, 185, 322, 364, 369 Wuhan, China 9, 15, 17–18, 19, 22, 23, 24–9, 30–49, 30, 50, 55, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 70, 72, 73, 82, 85, 91, 92, 98, 102, 139, 142, 154, 158, 160, 164, 225, 227, 285, 390, 395 Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (WCDCP) 34, 47 Wuhan Institute of Virology 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25–9, 38, 39, 40, 41–4, 45, 46–7, 48–9 Wyatt, Petronella 117–18, 341 Xi Jinping 56, 123 About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty.

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pages: 561 words: 138,158

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy by Adam Tooze

2021 United States Capitol attack, air freight, algorithmic trading, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blue-collar work, Bob Geldof, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, clean water, cognitive dissonance, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, floating exchange rates, friendly fire, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, junk bonds, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, oil shale / tar sands, Overton Window, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, Potemkin village, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, QR code, quantitative easing, remote working, reserve currency, reshoring, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social distancing, South China Sea, special drawing rights, stock buybacks, tail risk, TikTok, too big to fail, TSMC, universal basic income, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, yield curve

See also migration and mobility Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), 207–8, 209, 296 remittances, 103, 161, 251 remote work, 98–99, 117 Renzi, Matteo, 284 repo market (repurchase market), 114–17, 121–22, 148, 165, 179 Republican Party, 20–21, 89, 219, 221–22, 225–27, 229, 269–70, 290, 299 Reserve Bank of Australia, 126 retail industry, 101 Rieder, Rick, 124 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 86–87 Romania, 104 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 20 Ross, Wilbur, 68 Rotary International, 32, 33 Russia: arms sales to Turkey, 267; and Chinese pandemic aid, 197; and development lending programs, 264; and early responses to pandemic, 11, 82–83; and emerging market debt crises, 159, 163, 165; financial crisis of 1998, 156; and lessons of 2020, 295; oil and gas resources, 18; and oil price war, 79–80; and vaccine development, 247–49; and WHO funding, 33 Ryan, Mike, 69 Sagasti, Francisco, 248 Salvini, Matteo, 285 Sanders, Bernie, 11, 21, 146, 201, 219, 224, 227, 270–71, 273, 284, 288, 291, 299 SARS-CoV-2 virus: characterization of, 4; “flattening the curve” efforts, 41–42, 75, 233, 250; historical perspective on, 27; infectivity of SARS-CoV-2, 51; mortality rates, 28, 36–37, 37–41, 169, 171; mutation/variants, 17, 44–46, 250, 266, 285; and second wave of pandemic, 223, 292; and social distancing measures, 10, 43–44, 45, 74–75, 80, 83–85, 89, 96, 107, 220, 233, 289 SARS epidemic (2003), 3–4, 34, 46, 52–53, 56, 62, 66–67, 238 Saudi Arabia, 33, 71, 79–80, 267, 295 Schäuble, Wolfgang, 134 Schnabel, Isabel, 180 Scholz, Olaf, 134, 185 Schumer, Chuck, 12, 272 Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF), 127 semiconductor industry, 211–12 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 46 Serum Institute, 237, 246, 251 service sector, 100–101 sex workers, 98 Shanghai, 57, 59–60, 274 Shanghai Accord, 291 Shanghai Stock Exchange, 55 Shingrix vaccine, 236 shipping industry, 106, 274 short-time working, 103–4, 137 Siberia, 189 Singapore, 206 Sino-American relations, 50 Sinopharm, 248 Sinovac, 248–49 smallpox, 30 Snyder, Timothy, 228 social contract, 11, 16, 131, 137, 141, 149–50 Social Democratic Party of Germany, 184–85 social distancing, 10, 43–45, 74–75, 80, 83–85, 89, 96, 107, 220, 233, 289 social safety net, 20, 135–36, 298 Solomon, David, 228 Songwe, Vera, 261, 262 Sonnefeld, Jeffrey, 228 South Africa: budget consolidation, 268; and debt relief programs, 251, 266; and early responses to pandemic, 88; and emerging market debt crises, 157–58, 166; and fiscal responses to pandemic, 132; and global vaccine rollout, 242, 243–44, 245; safari industry shutdown, 102; and scope of 2020 challenges, 12; and spread of pandemic, 233; and virus variants, 250 South African Reserve Bank, 266 South Asia, 103 South China Sea, 18, 206 South Korea: and China’s growing influence, 205; and climate agenda, 194; and early responses to pandemic, 66, 71, 73–74, 74–75, 78, 90; and emerging market debt crises, 165; and financial market turmoil, 125; and fiscal responses to pandemic, 133, 140; and global market stabilization efforts, 122; and global spread of Covid, 80; and history of epidemic diseases, 47; and testing technology, 74, 75; and Trump’s pandemic rhetoric, 77; and WHO funding, 33 Soviet Union, 30. See also Russia Spahn, Jens, 70, 72, 134 Spain: and development of European recovery fund, 186; and early responses to pandemic, 71, 85–86; and European sovereign debt crisis, 181, 182; and eurozone crisis legacy, 109; failures to suppress pandemic spread, 82; first Covid case, 69–70; and fiscal responses to pandemic, 133, 134, 137; and global response to pandemic spread, 96; and labor market challenges, 104 Spanish flu, 35, 37, 45 special drawing rights (SDRs), 162, 184, 253–54, 258, 260–62 Special European Council, 186 special lending facilities, 126, 127 Sputnik V vaccine, 247–49 Sri Lanka, 86, 102–3, 208–9, 256 Stalin, Joseph, 18 State Council (China), 50, 53, 57–58 State Planning Ministry, 59 Stern, Nicholas, 34 Strauss-Kahn, Dominique, 177–78 strikes, 85–86, 147 sub-Saharan Africa, 2, 28, 30–31, 155, 159, 161, 233, 236 subsidies, 140, 188 Summers, Larry, 143, 209, 272–73, 290 supply chain issues, 66, 86, 96–98, 244–45 sustainable development, 12.

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Hanson, “The China Shock: Learning from Labor-Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade,” Annual Review of Economics 8, no. 1 (2016): 205–40. 19. ILO, “COVID-19 and the World of Work,” Fifth Edition, International Labour Organization, June 30, 2020. 20. V. Strauss, “1.5 Billion Children Around Globe Affected by School Closure. What Countries Are Doing to Keep Kids Learning During the Pandemic,” Washington Post, March 27, 2020. 21. “COVID-19 Could Lead to Permanent Loss in Learning and Trillions of Dollars in Lost Earnings,” World Bank, June 18, 2020. 22. H. Else, “How a Torrent of COVID Science Changed Research Publishing—in Seven Charts,” Nature, December 16, 2020; www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03564-y. 23.

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Adam, “Special Report: The Simulations Driving the World’s Response to COVID-19,” Nature, April 2, 2020; www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6. 33. D. Cutler and L. Summers, “The COVID-19 Pandemic and the $16 Trillion Virus,” JAMA 324, no. 15 (2020): 1495–96. 34. W. K. Viscusi and C. J. Masterman, “Income Elasticities and Global Values of a Statistical Life,” Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis 8, no. 2 (2017): 226–50; law.vanderbilt.edu/phd/faculty/w-kip-viscusi/355_Income_Elasticities_and_Global_VSL.pdf. 35. L. A. Robinson, “COVID-19 and Uncertainties in the Value Per Statistical Life,” The Regulatory Review, August 5, 2020; www.theregreview.org/2020/08/05/robinson-covid-19-uncertainties-value-statistical-life/. 36.

pages: 245 words: 71,886

Spike: The Virus vs The People - The Inside Story by Jeremy Farrar, Anjana Ahuja

"World Economic Forum" Davos, bioinformatics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data science, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double helix, dual-use technology, Future Shock, game design, global pandemic, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, machine translation, nudge unit, open economy, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, side project, social distancing, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, zoonotic diseases

It examined the international health response and mused on the lessons to be learned to avoid such a crisis again. The resulting report, published in May 2021, contained immediate recommendations aimed at ending the Covid-19 pandemic: increasing vaccine supply, including the waiving of patent rights on vaccines if needed, plus the continued use of measures like isolation, quarantine and social distancing to curb transmission. As important are suggestions for how to make the WHO a stronger, more independent force for global health in the years to come. One idea is to introduce a single seven-year term for the WHO director general, rather than having shorter, renewable terms.

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p. 214 ‘Everything starts with smarter surveillance.’ ‘Britain to Work with WHO on “Pandemic Radar” to Track Diseases’. Reuters, 20 May 2021. www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-work-with-who-pandemic-radar-track-diseases-2021-05-20/ p. 216 UNAIDS, ‘COVID-19: Make it the Last Pandemic’, press statement, 12 May 2021. www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2021/may/20210512_independent-panel-pandemic-preparedness-response p. 221 ‘One of the most striking outcomes of the pandemic …’ Amy Maxmen and Jeff Tollefson, ‘Two Decades of Pandemic War Games Failed to Account for Donald Trump’. Nature, 4 August 2020. www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02277-6 Glossary ACT-Accelerator Access to Covid Tools-Accelerator asymptomatic A person is asymptomatic when they are infected with a disease, and can transmit it, but show no symptoms.

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He has been an MP (2001–08, 2015–), Mayor of London (2008–16), and was prominent in the Vote Leave campaign that led to Brexit. He became prime minister in July 2019, so led the country throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. He was himself hospitalised with Covid-19 in April 2020. His handling of the pandemic, particularly the timing of key decisions, has been repeatedly challenged. Maria Van Kerkhove Leads the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme and was in contact with Jeremy Farrar as news of human-to-human transmission of Covid-19 emerged. She has expressed surprise at the ‘idiosyncratic’ British approach to the pandemic and urges constant preparedness as part of the fabric of society. Marion Koopmans A virologist at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, Koopmans is a member of the Covid-19 Emergency Committee and has played a key role in researching the origins of the virus.

pages: 391 words: 112,312

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, business cycle, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, full employment, George Floyd, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, mouse model, Nate Silver, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, QAnon, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Bannon, the scientific method, TikTok, transcontinental railway, zoonotic diseases

The college’s president, H. Neil Matkin, had made his views of the virus known in an email to trustees: “The effects of this pandemic have been blown utterly out of proportion across our nation.” Iris hoped to be in a large classroom where students could be widely spaced, but she was assigned to teach a lab for a nurse’s aide course. There would be no social distancing. On October 2, a student was coughing and sneezing, complaining of allergies. That was the day Trump announced that he had Covid. Iris was repulsed when the president insisted on taking a car ride to wave at his supporters outside the hospital, with Secret Service agents in the car with him.

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THE SEARCH FOR PATIENT ZERO Patient Zero: Josephine Ma, “Coronavirus: China’s first confirmed Covid-19 case traced back to November 17,” South China Morning Post, March 13, 2020. “It now turns out”: Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson: “A Proposed Origin for SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” jonathanlatham.net/, jamiemetzl.com/. “China created this pandemic”: Jake Tapper interview with Peter Navarro, CNN, June 21, 2020. “enormous evidence”: Jack Brewster, “Pompeo: ‘Enormous Evidence’ Linking Wuhan Lab To Covid Outbreak,” Forbes, May 4, 2020. “I lost the race”: Peter Navarro, San Diego Confidential: A Candidate’s Odyssey, San Diego: QT Press, 1998, pp. 231-7.

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“Sometimes emotions”: Jeremy Page and Drew Hinshaw, “China Refuses to Give WHO Raw Data on Early Covid-19 Cases,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 12, 2021. spreading in Wuhan in November: Betsy McKay, “Covid-19 Was Spreading in China Before First Confirmed Cases, Fresh Evidence Suggests,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 19, 2021. can remain infectious: Dyani Lewis, “Can COVID spread from frozen wildlife? Scientists probe pandemic origins,” Nature, Feb. 26, 2021. packaging of frozen cod: Peipei Liu, et al., “Cold-chain transportation in the frozen food industry may have caused a recurrence of COVID-19 cases in destination: Successful isolation of SARS-CoV-2 virus from imported frozen cod package surface,” Biosafety and Health, Dec. 2020.

pages: 475 words: 127,389

Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live by Nicholas A. Christakis

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Atul Gawande, Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, classic study, clean water, Columbian Exchange, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, death of newspapers, disinformation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, helicopter parent, Henri Poincaré, high-speed rail, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, job satisfaction, lockdown, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical residency, meta-analysis, New Journalism, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, school choice, security theater, social contagion, social distancing, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, trade route, Upton Sinclair, zoonotic diseases

Van Lancker and Z. Parolin, “COVID-19, School Closures, and Child Poverty: A Social Crisis in the Making,” Lancet Public Health 2020; 5: e243–e244; J. Bayham and E.P. Fenichel, “Impact of School Closures for COVID-19 on the US Health-Care Workforce and Net Mortality: A Modelling Study,” Lancet Public Health 2020; 5: e271–e278. 68 S.B. Nafisah et al., “School Closure during Novel Influenza: A Systematic Review,” Journal of Infection and Public Health 2018; 11: 657–661; H. Rashid et al., “Evidence Compendium and Advice on Social Distancing and Other Related Measures for Response to an Influenza Pandemic,” Paediatric Respiratory Reviews 2015; 16: 119–126; R.M.

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The ability to understand a contagious and deadly disease builds directly on my years of teaching about public health, implementing global health interventions, serving as a hospice physician caring for the dying and bereaved, analyzing contagions using network science, and working as an academic sociologist studying social phenomena. The COVID-19 pandemic is still a moving target, however. As of this moment, there is much that is unknown—biologically, clinically, epidemiologically, socially, economically, and politically. In part, the reason is that our actions are changing the outcome of the story. It’s hard to know for sure what will happen. And there is much that only the passage of time will reveal, including the long-term health effects of the infection and the long-term consequences of our response to the contagion (such as how our physical and social distancing might affect the mental health and education of our children and the economic prospects of a generation of young people presently entering adulthood).

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I used estimates of these parameters that had emerged from China in February, and it seemed to me that SARS-2 had intermediate lethality and intermediate transmissibility, making it at least as bad as the influenza pandemic of 1957. Ultimately, 115,700 excess deaths occurred in the United States over three years due to the 1957 pandemic (that year, the population size of the country was 172 million, and cancer killed 255,000 people).59 This would be equivalent to roughly 300,000 Americans dying from COVID-19 by the end of the pandemic, a figure we are sure to surpass despite our extensive shutdowns. To be clear, the influenza virus that caused the 1957 pandemic is totally different from the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Both are riboviruses, meaning that they use RNA rather than DNA for their genetic code, but that is a very broad classification; it’s sort of like saying that dolphins and elephants are both mammals.

pages: 289 words: 86,165

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

"there is no alternative" (TINA), 15-minute city, AlphaGo, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-fragile, Asian financial crisis, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, cloud computing, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, David Graeber, Day of the Dead, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, failed state, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, green new deal, hiring and firing, housing crisis, imperial preference, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, invention of the wheel, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, Monroe Doctrine, Nate Silver, Nick Bostrom, oil shock, open borders, out of africa, Parag Khanna, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, popular capitalism, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, remote working, reserve currency, reshoring, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, social distancing, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, TED Talk, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, UNCLOS, universal basic income, urban planning, Washington Consensus, white flight, Works Progress Administration, zoonotic diseases

Pepinsky, “Partisanship, Health Behavior, and Policy Attitudes in the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” SSRN, March 30, 2020, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3562796. (Note: This study, and those by Painter and Qiu and Allcott et al. below, has not been peer-reviewed.) 86 less likely to shelter in place: Marcus Painter and Tian Qiu, “Political Beliefs Affect Compliance with COVID-19 Social Distancing Orders,” SSRN, July 3, 2020, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3569098; Hunt Allcott, Levi Boxell, Jacob Conway, Matthew Gentzkow, Michael Thaler, and David Y. Yang, “Polarization and Public Health: Partisan Differences in Social Distancing During the Coronavirus Pandemic,” SSRN, June 2020, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3574415. 86 thirty incidents of arson or vandalism: Adam Satariano and Davey Alba, “Burning Cell Towers, out of Baseless Fear They Spread the Virus,” New York Times, April 10, 2020. 86 “motivated reasoning”: Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Vintage Books, 2013), 98, 104. 87 “high-information voters”: Ezra Klein, “Why the Most Informed Voters Are Often the Most Badly Misled,” Vox, June 8, 2015. 87 “rationalizing voters”: Christopher H.

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In Brazil, this attitude was encouraged by the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, who dismissed Covid-19 as a “measly cold” and railed against medical experts’ advice on how to slow the pandemic. He fired one health minister and caused his replacement to resign. Despite government regulations, he refused to wear a mask, leading a Brazilian judge to order him to wear one. Bolsonaro ended up a victim of his own careless attitude: he announced in July 2020 that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Boris Johnson conspicuously did not socially distance in the early stages of the outbreak, and ended up in the ICU with Covid-19. In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador encouraged people to go out, attend rallies, shake hands, and hug—all in direct contradiction of his own public health officials.

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This book is about a “post-pandemic world” not because the coronavirus is behind us, but because we have crossed a crucial threshold. Almost everyone alive had been spared from experiencing a plague, so far. But now we know what a pandemic looks like. We have seen the challenges and costs of responding to it. The Covid-19 pandemic could persist, but even if it is eradicated, new outbreaks of other diseases are almost certain to occur in the future. With this knowledge and experience, we now live in a new era: post-pandemic. What exactly are the consequences of this pandemic? Some have suggested that it will prove to be the hinge event of modern history, a moment that forever alters its course.

pages: 361 words: 110,233

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, California gold rush, carbon footprint, Chelsea Manning, clean water, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, David Graeber, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drug harm reduction, East Village, Edward Jenner, ending welfare as we know it, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, food desert, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, informal economy, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, mandatory minimum, mass incarceration, means of production, medical bankruptcy, moral panic, Naomi Klein, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, peak TV, pill mill, QR code, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, Saturday Night Live, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, social distancing, the built environment, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, War on Poverty, white flight, working poor

only three years’ imprisonment: “South Korea,” HIV Justice Network, updated March, 2020, https://www.hivjustice.net/country/kr/. 4: Guilty Until Proven Innocent Long before viral videos: Tim Stelloh, “Video Shows NYPD Officer Punching Man After Alleged Social Distancing Violation,” NBC News, May 3, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-nypd-officer-punching-man-after-alleged-social-distancing-n1199141. the COVID-19 pandemic: Ashley Southall, “Scrutiny of Social-Distance Policing as 35 of 40 Arrested Are Black,” New York Times, May 7, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/nyregion/nypd-social-distancing-race-coronavirus.html. “the plague and Spanish flu”: Trevor Hoppe, Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 10.

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Black people and immigrants already had an increased likelihood of living in denser households, which limited their ability to practice social distancing; when they were incarcerated, social distancing was impossible. And when they were evicted, they often wound up in even more densely packed, intergenerational households, which put them even more acutely at risk for COVID-19. At the same time, people who were elderly, disabled, or experiencing homelessness often lacked the prophylactic possibilities of literacy and computer literacy. And yet, even as the pandemic unduly slaughtered people like them, U.S. governmental agencies often required them to use internet sign-ups, QR codes, or even two-factor cell phone authentication to access the prophylactic possibility of vaccination.

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Under Missouri law, people living with HIV are required to tell all their sexual partners that they are infected, even if they practice safe sex. Long before viral videos of NYPD arrests five years later, when almost exclusively Black and brown people were violently beaten by police for failing to practice social distancing or wear masks in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, State of Missouri v. Michael L. Johnson was the highest-profile pathogen-related prosecution in the United States. Johnson was accused not merely of keeping his HIV status to himself but of willfully lying to his partners, telling them he was HIV-negative before engaging in what the prosecutor would call the most “dangerous” form of sex possible.

pages: 1,072 words: 237,186

How to Survive a Pandemic by Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Anthropocene, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, double helix, Edward Jenner, friendly fire, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Helicobacter pylori, inventory management, Kickstarter, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, New Journalism, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, phenotype, profit motive, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, supply-chain management, the medium is the message, Westphalian system, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zoonotic diseases

—Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea Millions around the world may die in the COVID-19 pandemic.137 In the United States, a “best guess” estimate presented to the American Hospital Association was about a half a million American deaths.138 With sufficient social distancing, however, that may be reduced to under a hundred thousand.139 Even at half a million, it still, unbelievably, could be much, much worse. With thousands already dead, millions projected to perish, billions in lockdown, and trillions lost as markets tumble, COVID-19 is still only shaping up to be a Category 2 or 3 pandemic. Figure 1. Pandemic Severity Index (Courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,140 reformatted for print by Dustin Kirkpatrick) Fashioned after the Hurricane Severity Index to define the destructive capacity of a storm, the Pandemic Severity Index (figure 1) is the CDC’s attempt at classifying the destructive capacity of pandemics.141 It is based on case fatality rate, the percentage of those who fall ill who eventually succumb to the infection.

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Though the COVID-19 viral mutations to date don’t yet offer insight into the direction of its evolution,2952 we cannot rule out the possibility that the virus could transform in the near future to becoming even more transmissible or dangerous.2953 V SURVIVING THE NEXT PANDEMIC OUR HEALTH IN OUR HANDS Coming Soon to a Theater Near You Regarding future pandemics, one authority was quoted as saying, “Short of obtaining [antiviral] drugs, there’s not really much we can do to prepare.”2954 That’s hardly true. We know from the COVID-19 pandemic we can still practice defensive strategies, such as social distancing, respiratory etiquette, and other hygiene measures like hand sanitization. No one just comes down with the flu. You catch the virus from someone else or, more precisely, someone else’s virus catches you.

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WHEN ANIMAL VIRUSES ATTACK The Third Age Man-Made Livestock Revolution Tracing the Flight Path One Flu Over the Chicken’s Nest Coming Home to Roost Guarding the Henhouse III. PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS Cooping Up Bird Flu Race Against Time Lessons Unlearned IV. SURVIVING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Pumping the Brakes Treating and Avoiding COVID-19 How COVID-19 Ends V. SURVIVING THE NEXT PANDEMIC Our Health in Our Hands Be Prepared Pandemic Flu Planning Checklist VI. PREVENTING FUTURE PANDEMICS Tinderbox Reining in the Pale Horse AFTERWORD ACKNOWLEDGMENTS REFERENCES ALSO BY MICHAEL GREGER, M.D., FACLM ABOUT THE AUTHOR COPYRIGHT The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only.

pages: 199 words: 63,844

Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic by Rachel Clarke

Airbnb, Boris Johnson, call centre, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, disruptive innovation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, global pandemic, lockdown, social distancing, zero-sum game

For weeks we haven’t seen a single new patient in the hospital with Covid. The daily death tolls are now in single figures. We know though, from the Office for National Statistics, that the total number of excess deaths in the UK during the pandemic, whether from Covid or other causes, stands at 65,000. England has the worst excess death toll of any country in Europe. More people have died of the virus than lost their lives during the whole of the Blitz. Rates of mental illness have soared, the economy has tanked, and over 600 health and care workers have died, some of whom openly begged for proper PPE before Covid cost them their lives. There is, it is fair to say, much to feel angry about.

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., ‘Inequalities and deaths involving COVID-19: What the links between inequalities tell us’, Health Foundation, 21 May 2020. ‘Disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19’, Public Health England, Aug 2020. de Prudhoe, K., ‘My dad died alone because we played by the rules. Why is it different for Dominic Cummings?’, Huffington Post, 26 May 2020. Ellery, B., et al., ‘Loyalty to Dominic Cummings will cost lives, says scientist’, The Times, 25 May 2020. Fancourt, D., et al., ‘The Cummings effect: politics, trust, and behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic’, Lancet, 6 August 2020. Canale, D.

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Nor do we equally suffer the burdens and privations of the pandemic. Now that those workers once dismissed as ‘low-skilled’ have been rebranded as ‘key workers’, for example, they are rightly being lauded as essential lynchpins of British society. But will this new status result in commensurate pay rises, better terms and conditions of work, or even – most pressingly – in adequate PPE? For security guards, shelf stackers, cleaners and carers, viral loads of Covid are a daily reality. Some of us, statistically, are more likely to come out of this worse than others. Far from uniting the UK’s deep-seated economic and social divisions, the pandemic is serving to exacerbate them.

pages: 347 words: 103,518

The Stolen Year by Anya Kamenetz

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Anthropocene, basic income, Black Lives Matter, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, Day of the Dead, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, East Village, emotional labour, ending welfare as we know it, epigenetics, food desert, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, helicopter parent, informal economy, inventory management, invisible hand, Kintsugi, labor-force participation, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, medical residency, Minecraft, moral panic, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, rent stabilization, risk tolerance, school choice, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, wages for housework, War on Poverty, white flight, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Young people with LGBTQ identities are by some estimates more than twice as likely to be on the streets, in shelters, or couch surfing. The pandemic was a crisis for these young people several times over. They lost the support of school and community groups. Social distancing requirements and staff limitations meant fewer beds. Many cities, including New York, took steps to house more homeless people during COVID in hotels and similar places. But for teenagers there was more red tape. They had to go through a lengthy referral process. “So think of a kid who’s homeless that is scared and sick in the middle of a pandemic, sitting in an office somewhere, sometimes for up to two days, isolated by themselves until they get picked up to be brought to a hotel,” Jamie Powlovich, director of the Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services, told me.

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Even accounting for the trauma of these children’s life experiences, the dramatic overreliance on medication rather other forms of treatment has led to calls for reform. PROVIDERS WERE ALREADY AT CAPACITY During the pandemic, children had less access to mental health care than ever. They weren’t going to the doctor. They weren’t going to school. Psychiatric beds were sometimes repurposed for COVID patients, or capacity was restricted because of social distancing. Nick Chandler at Buena Vista Horace Mann says that a six-month wait list was par for the course, especially for clinicians who spoke Spanish. He says that families like Serena’s, who are stressed about basic needs like food and shelter, almost invariably have mental health needs as well.

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And the new generation of freedom schools that rose up when the schoolhouse door was closed. THE RACIAL TOLL OF COVID For people of color in America, COVID-19 was a second pandemic on top of the preexisting pandemic of racism. Asian Americans experienced a wave of hate crimes. President Trump repeatedly and publicly used language like “Chinese virus” and “kung flu” to describe the pandemic. Latinx, Native American, and Black people were at greater risk than white or Asian Americans of being severely sickened and killed by COVID. They often died at far younger ages. This meant they more often left young children behind.

pages: 304 words: 95,306

Duty of Care: One NHS Doctor's Story of the Covid-19 Crisis by Dr Dominic Pimenta

3D printing, Boris Johnson, cognitive dissonance, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, fake news, global pandemic, iterative process, lockdown, post-truth, Rubik’s Cube, school choice, Skype, social distancing, stem cell

This dark red wall of anger and frustration is penetrated by small glimmers of light: already a group of medical students is offering to provide key workers with childcare; a PDF file providing COVID management tips is jumping from group to group; and daily briefings are being set up at some hospitals to help keep staff up to date and informed. Some places seem to be ahead of the curve, arranging video teleconferences, closing clinics and practising social distancing. Other hospitals appear to be way behind, cramming all their staff into a single lecture theatre (where social distancing just isn’t possible) to make announcements, keeping clinics open, and even castigating staff for sending too many swabs to be tested for COVID, as they try not to be identified as a hospital with a high number of infections. My phone feels hot, crackling with the energy of a thousand frustrated voices.

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Out of the 138 patients admitted to Zhongnan Hospital in Wuhan, China, 4.3 per cent died. Shortly afterward, on 11 February, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced “COVID-19” as the name of the new disease. COVID-19 got its slightly robotic name to avoid the stigma surrounding some of its epidemic predecessors: Middle East Respiratory Virus, German Measles (not Measles), and Spanish Flu (not Spanish) – the latter being the last comparable pandemic, that of 1918, which I’d mentioned in my email to my dad. It occurred over 100 years ago and resulted in the deaths of an estimated 3 per cent of the world’s population.

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My ears would prick up when I heard any mention of COVID-19. On my commutes and breaks I continued to hoover up studies and news. Twitter became a valuable resource of other doctors and experts sharing and debating the research. Among the obligatory memes and outrage, Twitter emerged as the world’s largest medical forum. The topic: SARS-CoV-2 (the virus), or COVID-19 (the disease). Through all these sources, the numbers I’d only just started to pay attention to painted a bleak picture. A picture I’d seen before. A few years ago, a web developer worked with a group of virologists and epidemiologists to create a pandemic simulator. The mobile game was called Plague Inc. and the premise is relatively simple: with limited resources you craft an infection of various qualities (air spread, water spread, etc.) and choose where in the world to start it off.

pages: 420 words: 135,569

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today by Jane McGonigal

2021 United States Capitol attack, Airbnb, airport security, Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, basic income, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, circular economy, clean water, climate change refugee, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Community Supported Agriculture, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data science, decarbonisation, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, fiat currency, future of work, Future Shock, game design, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, index card, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mason jar, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microbiome, Minecraft, moral hazard, open borders, pattern recognition, place-making, plant based meat, post-truth, QAnon, QR code, remote working, RFID, risk tolerance, School Strike for Climate, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, stem cell, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, The future is already here, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, universal basic income, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator

., “The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States,” Annual Review of Political Science 22 (2019): 129–46, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034; Shanto Iyengar, Gaurav Sood, and Yphtach Lelkes, “Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization,” Public Opinion Quarterly 76, no. 3 (September 2012): 405–31, https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfs038. 7 Levi Boxell et al., “Affective Polarization Did Not Increase during the Coronavirus Pandemic,” working paper no. 28036 (October 2020), National Bureau of Economic Research, https://doi.org/10.3386/w28036. 8 Sebastian Jungkunz, “Political Polarization During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Frontiers in Political Science 3 (March 2021): 622512, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2021.622512; Hunt Allcott et al., “Polarization and Public Health: Partisan Differences in Social Distancing During the Coronavirus Pandemic,” Journal of Public Economics 191 (November 2020): 104254, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104254; Christos Makridis and Jonathan T.

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The simulation participants’ early 2020 messages remind me now of what we would later see play out during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Experts have noted that in places that suffered major outbreaks of the first severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, governments and businesses spent less time debating whether to take strong measures to prevent the spread of the novel virus. They acted faster, because they knew firsthand how bad things could get. And citizens in countries that had lived through the deadly 2003 SARS outbreak adopted public health measures like masking and social distancing faster, and more willingly, than their Western counterparts.5 All of this led to significantly more containment of the virus.

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And we are increasingly angry, fearful, or mistrustful of people outside our inner circle.6 At first, the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to decrease this social polarization. People from all walks of life banded together over shared worries and sacrifice.7 But as it wore on, studies show, partisan responses to mask wearing, stay-at-home orders, and vaccination actually increased social polarization. It created new categories of “us” versus “them”: maskers versus non-maskers, social distancers versus non-distancers, pro-vaccine versus anti-vaccine.8 Meanwhile, richer countries with successful vaccination campaigns found themselves living in a completely different reality from poorer countries without access to the vaccines or with struggling vaccination campaigns.

pages: 296 words: 96,568

Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus by Sarah Gilbert, Catherine Green

Boris Johnson, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, global pandemic, imposter syndrome, lockdown, lone genius, profit motive, Skype, social distancing, TikTok

It could be a completely unknown and unstudied virus: there are an estimated 1.67 million viruses circulating in the world, and it is thought that several hundred thousand of them are capable of infecting people. Scientists have studied 263 of these: about 0.04% of pandemic threats.2 Equally, there is a long list of nasty pathogens that we do already know about, and that we still have no vaccines or treatments for. One of those could cause the next pandemic. In 2020, with all eyes on the Covid pandemic, other known viruses were still circulating and spilling over into humans. In 2020 there were more than a hundred outbreaks of avian flu in birds and, in China and Laos, nine cases of human infection.

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The Times: ‘This is a remarkable achievement for British science and offers hope to the world of an end to the pandemic’, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-the-success-of-the-oxford-vaccine-great-british-breakthrough-ljwltmtbc. Guardian: ‘Vaccine results brings us a step closer to ending Covid’, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/23/vaccine-brings-us-a-step-closer-to-ending-covid-says-oxford-scientist. Financial Times: ‘Vaccine cements Oxford place as leader in battle against Covid’, https://www.ft.com/content/f147199b-11e6-444b-9514-94352bded128. Daily Express: ‘Jubilation at Oxford vaccine breakthrough’, https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-express/20201124/281496458834440.

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Having been through that process with the flu vaccine, later trials of ChAdOx1 did not need to start from such a low dose, and for the MERS vaccine trial in 2018 three different doses had been tested, omitting the very low one used in the influenza vaccine trial. For our Covid vaccine, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, having tested multiple ChAdOx1 vaccines previously, and knowing that we needed rapid onset of an immune response in a pandemic, only the highest dose was tested. We also knew that, in order to assess the vaccine’s ability to protect people from disease, we would have to wait for our volunteers to catch Covid-19 in the course of their normal lives. With some diseases, such as malaria or influenza, we can conduct what we call challenge trials, in which volunteers are intentionally exposed to the pathogen.

pages: 89 words: 27,057

COVID-19: Everything You Need to Know About the Corona Virus and the Race for the Vaccine by Michael Mosley

Boris Johnson, call centre, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, lockdown, microbiome, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, social distancing

Day 64 By March 3rd hundreds of Italians had died from Covid-19 and Italian hospitals were beginning to buckle under the pressure of so many sick and elderly patients. In the UK the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, had clearly not yet fully bought into the idea of social distancing. He said, at a press conference, “I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody.” Day 72 On March 11th the WHO acknowledged that the virus was spreading uncontrollably and that the world was in the grip of a serious pandemic. Despite this, the organizers of the Cheltenham festival decided it was a good idea to allow 250,000 people from all over the UK and Ireland to cram together at the races for four days, many of them packed cheek by jowl in the crowded terraces and bars.

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Since then scientists have identified four types of coronaviruses that can cause a mild cold, and three types that are deadly—those that cause SARS and MERS, and now Covid-19. How Is This New Virus Different from the Coronaviruses That Cause SARS or MERS? One of the key differences is that when you get infected with Covid-19 you can soon be shedding lots of viruses without knowing you are infected. Viral shedding seems to occur early on in an infection (typically two to three days after getting infected), and most people (roughly 80 percent) get such mild symptoms that they ignore it. At least 40 percent of people who get Covid-19 have no symptoms at all. That is what allowed Covid-19 to spread so far and so fast. Early on in the pandemic there were a lot of people getting on planes and going out to work blissfully unaware that they were infected.

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It was much more lethal than Covid-19, killing nearly 10 percent of those who got infected. But the good thing about SARS was that people didn’t start becoming infectious until they were already showing symptoms of the disease. Which meant that that particular coronavirus wasn’t able to hide among us. The SARS virus was also not as good at binding to the ACE2 enzymes in our respiratory tract as the Covid-19 virus, which made it far less infectious. And because the SARS virus did not have those two superpowers, the ability to hide and the ability to bind, it never turned into a pandemic. Although SARS caused a panic at the time, there were just 8,000 reported cases of it and “only” 774 people died.

pages: 285 words: 98,832

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, deep learning, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, double helix, energy security, facts on the ground, failed state, gentleman farmer, global supply chain, illegal immigration, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, out of africa, precautionary principle, QAnon, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, stem cell, tech bro, telemarketer, the new new thing, working poor, young professional

The graph illustrated the effects on a disease of various crude strategies: isolating the ill; quarantining entire households when they had a sick person in them; socially distancing adults; giving people antiviral drugs; and so on. Each of the crude strategies had some slight effect, but none by itself made much of a dent, and certainly none had the ability to halt the pandemic by driving the disease’s reproductive rate below 1. One intervention was not like the others, however: when you closed schools and put social distance between kids, the flu-like disease fell off a cliff. (The model defined “social distance” not as zero contact but as a 60 percent reduction in kids’ social interaction.)

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In February 2021, The Lancet published a long critique of the U.S. pandemic performance. By then 450,000 Americans had died. The Lancet pointed out that if the COVID death rate in the United States had simply tracked the average of the other six G7 nations, 180,000 of those people would still be alive. “Missing Americans,” they called them. But why stop there? Before the pandemic, a panel of public-health experts had judged the United States to be more prepared for a pandemic than other G7 nations. In a war with a virus, we were not expected merely to fare as well as other rich countries. We were expected to win. I like to think that my job is mainly to find the story in the material.

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” * The first death caused by COVID-19 recorded in the United States occurred in Seattle on February 28. In late April, Santa Clara County reclassified two earlier deaths after figuring out that they, too, had been caused by COVID-19. The first had occurred on February 6, the second on February 17. Both patients would have been infected by the virus roughly a month before death. As neither victim had traveled outside the area, the virus had clearly been circulating in the Bay Area by early January. † One of their two papers on the 1918 pandemic, as distinct from the pandemic plan. Charity wouldn’t learn that Carter and Richard had written the original pandemic plan for the country until many months later, when someone else told her.

pages: 489 words: 106,008

Risk: A User's Guide by Stanley McChrystal, Anna Butrico

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, airport security, Albert Einstein, Apollo 13, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 737 MAX, business process, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, cotton gin, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deep learning, disinformation, don't be evil, Dr. Strangelove, fake news, fear of failure, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Googley, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, inflight wifi, invisible hand, iterative process, late fees, lockdown, Paul Buchheit, Ponzi scheme, QWERTY keyboard, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, source of truth, Stanislav Petrov, Steve Jobs, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, wikimedia commons, work culture

no travel history to an outbreak area: Schumaker, “How Coronavirus Got Started”; Erin Schumaker, Morgan Winsor, and Ivan Pereira, “Latest American Infected with Coronavirus Has No Relevant Travel History: CDC,” ABC News, February 26, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-military-coronavirus-patient-cases-surge-italy-south/story?id=69225004. reports its first COVID-19 death: Taylor, “Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” died from it earlier: Stephanie Soucheray, “Coroner: First US COVID-19 Death Occurred in Early February,” Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, April 22, 2020, https://cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/coroner-first-us-covid-19-death-occurred-early-february. declares COVID-19 a “pandemic”: Chappell, “Coronavirus: COVID-19 Is Now Officially a Pandemic, WHO Says.” Thirty-eight Americans have died: “March 11 Coronavirus News,” CNN, March 12, 2020, https://cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-03-11-20-intl-hnk/index.html.

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We cannot get so distracted while expanding our use of technology that we fully remove humans from all parts of the process. We must not entirely cede control to technology. WFH As a response to the COVID-19 outbreak, many companies in early 2020 sent their employees to work from home. While these efforts were an act of solidarity with social distancing initiatives to slow the pandemic, they were also an acceleration of a trend underway for more than a decade. The changes to day-to-day work life were immediate and momentous. Workers often found themselves transported from a popular office open floor plan to makeshift offices in their kitchens and living rooms.

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On March 11, the WHO: Bill Chappell, “Coronavirus: COVID-19 Is Now Officially a Pandemic, WHO Says,” National Public Radio, March 11, 2020, https://npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/11/814474930/coronavirus-covid-19-is-now-officially-a-pandemic-who-says. reported global infections passed two hundred thousand: Jeannette Jiang, Emily Peterson, and Robert Heimer, “COVID-19 Updated Data & Developments—March 18, 2020,” Yale School of Medicine, March 18, 2020, https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/23224/, citing https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html. borne witness to countless pandemics: Bollyky and Patrick, “Improving Pandemic Preparedness,” 22.

pages: 357 words: 107,984

Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---And Prevented Economic Disaster by Nick Timiraos

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bonfire of the Vanities, break the buck, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, fear index, financial innovation, financial intermediation, full employment, George Akerlof, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Greta Thunberg, implied volatility, income inequality, inflation targeting, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, meme stock, money market fund, moral hazard, non-fungible token, oil shock, Phillips curve, price stability, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, Rishi Sunak, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, secular stagnation, Skype, social distancing, subprime mortgage crisis, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, unorthodox policies, Y2K, yield curve

Thousands of National Guard troops poured into Washington for Biden’s swearing-in on January 20, the largest military presence in the city since the Civil War.8 The National Mall, a two-mile expanse from the Lincoln Memorial to the US Capitol, was closed to the public for the socially distanced ceremony. Yellen sat under a blue blanket wearing a white disposable mask, and Powell accompanied his wife, both in cloth masks, to the inauguration behind fences ringed with razor wire on the West Front of the Capitol grounds. It was a stark visual symbol of both the pandemic and the riot. After taking the oath of office, the new president asked the country to join him in a silent prayer to remember those who died. “We will press forward with speed and urgency,” Biden promised, “for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility.” Date 2021 Covid-19 Cases Covid-19 Deaths Dow Jones Average VIX Fear Index Wednesday, January 20 24,251,909 396,387 31,188 (↑ 258) 21.58 (↓1.66) Chapter Seventeen THE INFLATION SURPRISE In 2018, a few weeks after Powell succeeded Yellen as Fed chair, he had hosted a farewell dinner for her at his home.

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Just as markets were rallying, Trump held a Rose Garden press conference in which he officially declared the pandemic a national emergency: “Two very big words.” He announced plans to surge the production of testing kits, and he tried to project calm. “We’ll remove or eliminate every obstacle necessary to deliver our people the care that they need and that they’re entitled to. No resource will be spared,” he said. Mnuchin announced he had reached a deal with Democrats that evening, the product of eighteen phone calls that day with Pelosi. The House bill sailed through on a 363-40 vote shortly after midnight. Date 2020 Covid-19 Cases Covid-19 Deaths Dow Jones Average VIX Fear Index Friday, March 13 3,450 57 23,185 (↑ 1,985) 57.83 (↓ 17.64) The right to remove Even though stock markets reversed most of Thursday’s fall, bond markets were still badly messed up.

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They feared a loan program run through the Treasury Department might steer loans to politically favored groups. That led to a second great irony of the Pandemic Crisis. Lawmakers had slapped the Fed’s wrists for using its lender-of-last-resort tools in 2008, imposing curbs to make those authorities more democratically accountable. Their message could be summed up along the lines of “Don’t do this again, Fed.” Now the senior leaders of both parties were sending a different message. “Fed, do something, and fast.” This was going to be Bagehot—on steroids. Date 2020 Covid-19 Cases Covid-19 Deaths Dow Jones Average VIX Fear Index Tuesday, March 17 9,577 126 21,237 (↑ 1,049) 75.91 (↓ 6.78) Chapter Eleven MONEY ALMOST STOPS Wednesday, March 18, was a nightmare.

pages: 106 words: 33,210

The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again by Richard Horton

Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Boris Johnson, cognitive bias, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, fake news, Future Shock, global pandemic, global village, Herbert Marcuse, informal economy, lockdown, nowcasting, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peace of Westphalia, Slavoj Žižek, social distancing, South China Sea, zoonotic diseases

As a group of Chinese doctors involved in the organisation and delivery of care to patients with COVID-19 noted, ‘By embracing Fangcang shelter hospitals, many countries and communities worldwide could boost their response to the current COVID-19 pandemic as well as future epidemics and disasters.’ Sadly, many countries afflicted by COVID-19 were unable to respond in such agile and creative ways. * While the epicentre of the pandemic was Wuhan, the virus quickly spread to other Asian nations. Singapore confirmed its first imported case of COVID-19 on 23 January. Inbound flights to the city-state were banned. Several clusters of disease were identified and close contacts were quarantined.

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One lesson of COVID-19 is that every country must now begin a national conversation about how far it is willing to go – and how much the public is willing to pay – for a health system that can save lives when a pandemic arrives again. As it surely will. Notes 1. Simiao Chen et al., Fangcang shelter hospitals: a novel concept for responding to public health emergencies, The Lancet, 2 April 2020. 2. Amitava Banerjee et al., Estimating excess 1-year mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic according to underlying conditions and age, The Lancet, 12 May 2020. 5 The Politics of COVID-19 … health professionals of the 21st century will find that they have entered what must become politicised professions.

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On 10 May, Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke to the nation. He said of COVID-19, ‘We didn’t fully understand its effects.’ His plaintive excuse will likely become the core defence of his government in the subsequent public inquiry into why the UK failed so spectacularly to protect its citizens. It is a defence that can be and must be refuted. * COVID-19 is not a crisis about health. It is something much worse. Every evening during the peak of the pandemic in the UK, citizens could scour graphs presented by medical and scientific advisors at a daily government press briefing. Was the pandemic advancing or in retreat? New cases of COVID-19. People in hospital with COVID-19.

pages: 244 words: 78,238

Cabin Fever: The Harrowing Journey of a Cruise Ship at the Dawn of a Pandemic by Michael Smith, Jonathan Franklin

airport security, Boeing 747, call centre, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, Donald Trump, global pandemic, lockdown, offshore financial centre, Panamax, Port of Oakland, Snapchat, social distancing, Suez canal 1869

Almost none of the passengers came from Argentina or South America. Their hopes of cruising with people from places where COVID-19 hadn’t yet taken hold were shattered. Aboard the Zaandam were 305 Americans, 247 Canadians, 229 UK citizens, 105 French, and 131 Australians. The passengers crowded around one another, leaning in, talking, hugging, laughing. No social-distancing protocols were visible. Claudia heard a cough, then another, and wanted to hide. “All those people were from where the pandemic was,” she recalled. “It was kind of scary.” Donna Mann and Jorge Hill, her seventy-nine-year-old partner, were discussing just that as they settled into their cabin.

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They’d identified 124 cruise ships languishing in U.S. waters, with nearly 95,000 workers aboard, and getting them off would be a complex task, given all the COVID-19 restrictions. Dr. Friedman had had a lot to do with creating these rules, and she was convinced there was no other choice. Her cruise ship group had dealt with outbreaks on thirty ships in the first two months of the pandemic. One pattern was clear. A ship’s crew was especially likely to spread the virus. It wasn’t their fault, she knew. Friedman’s boss, Dr. Martin Cetron, head of the CDC’s quarantine unit, had explained the challenges early on. Crew on a cruise ship simply could not be isolated or socially distanced. They bunked together, shared bathrooms, ate in cramped mess rooms, worked in confined spaces, frequently with limited ventilation.

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Windsor Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Smith, Michael (Journalist), author. | Franklin, Jonathan, 1964– author. Title: Cabin fever : the harrowing journey of a cruise ship at the dawn of a pandemic / by Michael Smith and Jonathan Franklin. Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, [2022] Identifiers: LCCN 2021049293 | ISBN 9780385547406 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385547437 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Zaandam (Cruise ship) | COVID-19 (Disease) | COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020– | Cruise ships. | Travel—Health aspects. | Ships—Disinfection. Classification: LCC RA644.C67 S622 2022 | DDC 614.5/92414—dc23/eng/20211220 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021049293 Ebook ISBN 9780385547437 ep_prh_6.0_140224945_c0_r0 For Adriana, my best friend and eternal love, and my four shining lights, Gabi, Pascual, Lucas, and Nico.

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, anti-communist, anti-globalists, autism spectrum disorder, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boris Johnson, Boycotts of Israel, Cambridge Analytica, capitalist realism, ChatGPT, citizen journalism, Climategate, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, critical race theory, dark matter, deep learning, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, feminist movement, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hive mind, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Jeffrey Epstein, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, lab leak, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical residency, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, neurotypical, new economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, phenotype, profit motive, QAnon, QR code, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, Rosa Parks, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, shared worldview, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, social distancing, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce

Once this is understood, the new alliances start to make more sense. Small businesses and freelancers who work with or on bodies were among the hardest hit by pandemic lockdowns. Some of the reasons for that made epidemiological sense: therapeutic work didn’t allow for social distancing, and exercise studios necessarily involve heavy breathing in enclosed spaces. But there were also ways that this sector got a particularly raw deal. Early Covid relief programs were heavily biased toward larger workplaces with many staff employees; small owner-operated fitness studios where most workers are on contract often fell through the cracks of government aid, even as they were still on the hook for massive urban rents.

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Klein MSCHF MSNBC Muirhead, Russell Mulllins, Garth multiplayer gaming multiple personality disorder Murdoch, Iris Musk, Elon Muslims Mussolini, Benito MyPillow Nakba naming systems Naomi: author’s feelings about name; in Old Testament NASA Nation, The National Health Service (NHS) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases nationalism, inclusive National Security Agency Native Americans; see also Indigenous people Natural Causes (Ehrenreich) Nazi Germany; Austria annexed by; autistic people in; children as viewed in; class solidarity replaced with racial solidarity in; colonialism and; disabled people in; Gemüt concept in; health culture in; Hitler in; IBM and; lands and people conquered by; Paris’s liberation from; vaccine programs in; Volk collective in Nazi Germany, Jews in; anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and; Covid mandate analogies to; “eternal Jew” caricature and; Kristallnacht and; Nuremberg Laws and; yellow stars worn by; see also Holocaust Nazis, neo- neoliberalism Nestlé Netflix neurodiversity Neurotribes (Silberman) New Deal New Democratic Party (NDP); Avi Lewis as candidate of Newman, Kevin New Republic, The Newsmax New Statesman, The New York City New Yorker, The New York Post New York Times, The Next Revolution, The Nicholas II Nike 9/11 attacks 1984 (Orwell) NoiseCat, Julian Brave No Logo (Klein) Northern Ireland Northrup, Christiane NPR Nunes, Rodrigo Obama, Barack Obama, Michelle O’Brien, Kate Occupy Wall Street (OWS) oil Old Testament; Naomi in oligarchy One Day at a Time On Property (Walcott) Operation Shylock (Roth) opioid crisis Orbán, Viktor Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Origins of Totalitarianism, The (Arendt) Orwell, George O’Shea, Brian othering Ottawa Otto, Mike Ottoman Empire Our Bodies, Ourselves (Boston Women’s Health Book Collective) Outrages (Wolf) Oxford Union Paglia, Camille Pakistan Palestinians “Pandemic Is a Portal, The” (Roy) pandemics; Covid, see Covid pandemic Paradise Lost (Milton) Parasite Parks, Rosa Parler Patel, Raj patents Patreon Patriot Act patriotism pattern recognition PayPal PBS Peck, Raoul pedophilia Peele, Jordan Pegasus Pelosi, Nancy and Paul Pennycook, Gordon People’s Party Peters, Tom Pew Research Pfizer pharmaceutical companies; Pfizer; see also Covid vaccines; vaccines Philippines Picture of Dorian Gray, The (Wilde) Pim, Bedford Pinochet, Augusto pipikism Plandemic plutocracy Poe, Edgar Allan pogroms police murders of Black people Poor People’s Campaign populism Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth) Potter, David poverty powell, john a.

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It wasn’t my neighborhood that was in line for demolition, nor was it my kid’s teachers who were getting fired so that public schools could be converted to private ones. But Covid … Covid was different. It scrambled my personal world, as it did all of our worlds. For the first four months, while I was still living in New Jersey, I was confined to our home with our neuroatypical son, trying in vain to help him learn online, and, more important, to soothe his porous soul, which could not help but absorb the terror that surrounded us. Ambulances picked up our neighbors, the virus tore through our friend group. I was still lucky—I wasn’t on the front lines in the Covid wards, but neither was I protected from the pandemic with my usual reportorial distance.

pages: 304 words: 86,028

Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream by Alissa Quart

2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, defund the police, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, financial independence, fixed income, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, high net worth, housing justice, hustle culture, illegal immigration, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, lockdown, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Lyft, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microaggression, Milgram experiment, minimum wage unemployment, multilevel marketing, obamacare, Overton Window, payday loans, post-work, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Scientific racism, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Snapchat, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tech worker, TED Talk, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, wealth creators, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

There were studies and theories, for example, that connected pioneer narratives to counties with poor public health practices during COVID. One study published in March 2022 in the Review of Economics and Statistics found that the more individualistic counties in the United States, many of them formerly frontier areas, engaged less in social distancing and were also less willing to receive COVID-19 vaccines. In another paper entitled “Rugged Individualism and Collective (In)action During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” from 2020, by a different set of researchers, economist Samuel Bazzi among them, also found that counties “with greater total frontier experience (TFE) during the era of westward expansion” had a “weak collective response to public health risks.”

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On Facebook and Reddit, the company’s workers posted about being denied pay for small failings—not being able to get a COVID test at one point, for example. A post on Reddit, “Has anyone received their covid pay from Instacart?” in the summer of 2020 led to a cascade of depressing responses. One worker said they had had “covid for weeks” and had filed for “covid pay.” They had been told they would be paid “within 14 days” but were “currently on day 14 with no pay/contact for weeks.” The furious worker continued: “Pretty crappy for a 14-billion-dollar company to not even pay their workers a fair sick pay in a pandemic they’re profiting off of.” (There were many such episodes during the pandemic at companies like Instacart and those far bigger: the New York attorney general’s office eventually filed suit in 2021 against Amazon: the complaint noted that there were eighty instances of confirmed COVID infections, but the company failed to close any part of the facility in response.)

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And when these workers are able to access funds, other taxpayers and the state foot the bill, and the drivers themselves are the ones paying taxes. For Okawa, the fear around COVID-19 had only intensified her frustration with the labor conditions of her driving. “A person should be treated with respect,” Okawa told me. “During the pandemic I realized how much we needed the sick leave.” The companies didn’t provide any of the protections from COVID they promised. At best, ten single-use masks arrived by mail from Uber, after a month. (Remember, Uber bought Postmates for $2.65 billion during the pandemic.) Her coworker got COVID. As Okawa put it, “Why can’t we have an organization that protects us, why can’t there be a union, why do we just have to say yes?”

pages: 248 words: 73,689

Age of the City: Why Our Future Will Be Won or Lost Together by Ian Goldin, Tom Lee-Devlin

15-minute city, 1960s counterculture, agricultural Revolution, Alvin Toffler, Anthropocene, anti-globalists, Berlin Wall, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brixton riot, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, charter city, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, cloud computing, congestion charging, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, data science, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, Enrique Peñalosa, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial independence, future of work, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Haight Ashbury, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, household responsibility system, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, income per capita, Induced demand, industrial robot, informal economy, invention of the printing press, invention of the wheel, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, John Snow's cholera map, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour mobility, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, Pearl River Delta, race to the bottom, Ray Oldenburg, remote working, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, Salesforce, Shenzhen special economic zone , smart cities, smart meter, Snow Crash, social distancing, special economic zone, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superstar cities, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Great Good Place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, white flight, working poor, working-age population, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Many cities still need to find a workable solution to this challenge. For this to work, city governments need to expand their breadth and depth of capabilities. During the Covid-19 pandemic, cities varied widely in their ability to detect outbreaks, implement and enforce social distancing measures, and roll out vaccines. Those that struggled should be investing now to ensure they are in a better position to handle future pandemics, and they need help from national and international authorities to do so. In areas from health to education to transport and beyond, competent municipal governments that are appropriately resourced and attract capable and motivated leaders are essential.

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If rich countries wish to reduce the risk of future pandemics, they will need to be willing to help poor countries pay for these changes. Preventing outbreaks from spiralling out of control also requires transforming cities from pandemic catalysts to pandemic choke points. Lockdowns are a vital tool for reining in uncontrolled transmission, but experience with Covid-19 shows that they cause immense hardship and economic damage. Contact-tracing technology, which proved woefully inadequate during Covid-19 in all but a few countries, needs to be stepped up in advance of the next pandemic. Fears of invasive surveillance can be mitigated by making it transparent what data will be collected, under what circumstances, and how that data will be stored and used.

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., 2007, ‘The human/animal interface: emergence and resurgence of zoonotic infectious diseases’, Critical Review in Biology, Vol. 33, No. 4. 11 The Economist, 2021, ‘The pandemic’s true death toll’. 12 For a full discussion of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, see Goldin, I., 2022, Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World (Sceptre). 13 Kharas, H. and Dooley, M., 2021, ‘Long-run impacts of Covid-19 on extreme poverty’, Brookings Institution (brookings.edu). 14 Sánchez-Páramo, C., et al., 2021, ‘Covid-19 leaves a legacy of rising poverty and widening inequality’, World Bank (worldbank.org). 15 Kharas and Dooley, ‘Long-run impacts of Covid-19 on extreme poverty’. 16 UN Women, 2022, Ukraine and the food and fuel crisis: 4 things to know, unwomen.org. 17 Hayward, E., 2021, ‘Covid-19’s toll on mental health’, Boston College (bc.edu). 18 The Economist, 2022, ‘Covid learning loss has been a global disaster’. 19 World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF, 2021, ‘The state of the global education crisis: a path to recovery’ (worldbank.org). 20 The Economist, ‘Covid learning loss has been a global disaster’. 21 Ibid. 22 Harper, K. and Armelagos, G., 2010, ‘The changing disease-scape in the third epidemiological transition’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol. 7, No. 2. 23 Kenny, The Plague Cycle, p. 177. 24 World Bank Data, 2022, ‘Air transport, passengers carried’ (data.worldbank.org). 25 Davenport, R., 2020, ‘Urbanization and mortality in Britain, c. 1800–50’, The Economic History Review, Vol. 73, No. 2. 26 O’Neill, A., 2022, ‘Child mortality rate (under five years old) in the United Kingdom from 1800 to 2020’, Statista (statista.com). 27 Kenny, The Plague Cycle. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Jones, K., et al., 2008, ‘Global trends in emerging infectious diseases’, Nature, Vol. 451. 31 Morand, S. and Walther, B., 2020, ‘The accelerated infectious disease risk in the Anthropocene: more outbreaks and wider global spread’, Working paper. 32 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021, ‘Zoonoses’ (cdc.gov). 33 Greger, ‘The human/animal interface’. 34 Ibid. 35 UNFAO, 2022, ‘State of the world’s forests’ (fao.org). 36 Young, R., 2014, ‘Take bushmeat off the menu before humans are served another Ebola’, The Conversation (theconversation.com). 37 Cawthorn, D-M. and Hoffman, L., 2015, The bushmeat and food security nexus: A global account of the contributions, conundrums and ethical collisions, Food Research International, Vol. 76. 38 Maxmen, A., 2022, ‘Wuhan market was epicentre of pandemic’s start, studies suggest’, Nature.com. 39 Kenny, The Plague Cycle. 40 Smitham, E. and Glassman, A., 2021, ‘The next pandemic could come sooner and be deadlier’, Center for Global Development (cgdev.org). 41 Barnes, O., 2022, ‘Just where and when will the next pandemic strike?’

pages: 134 words: 41,085

The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

Admiral Zheng, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, defund the police, Deng Xiaoping, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Future Shock, George Floyd, global pandemic, Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jeremy Corbyn, Jones Act, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, lockdown, McMansion, military-industrial complex, night-watchman state, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parkinson's law, pensions crisis, QR code, rent control, Rishi Sunak, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, trade route, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, Washington Consensus

., “Why New York Suffered When Other Cities Were Spared by Covid-19,” Bloomberg, May 28, 2020. 12.Armstrong et al., “Why New York Suffered When Other Cities Were Spared by Covid-19.” 13.Fareed Zakaria, “If New York Founders It Will Be Because of Bad Government, Not the Pandemic,” Washington Post, June 11, 2020. 14.Raphael Rashid, “Being Called a Cult Is One Thing, Being Blamed for an Epidemic Is Quite Another,” New York Times, March 9, 2020. 15.Laura Spinney, “The Coronavirus Slayer! How Kerala’s Rock Star Health Minister Helped Save It from Covid-19,” Guardian, May 14, 2020. 16.“New World Curriculum,” The Economist. 17.Shalini Ramachandran, Laura Kusisto, and Katie Hoanan, “How New York’s Coronavirus Response Made the Pandemic Worse,” Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2020. 18.Full disclosure: Paul Deighton is chairman of The Economist. 19.Gordon Lubold and Paul Vieira, “US Drops Proposal to Put Troops at Canadian Border,” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2020. 20.Teresa Coratella, “Whatever It Takes: Italy and the Covid-19 Crisis,” European Council on Foreign Relations, March 18, 2020. 21.Andy Hoffman, “Sex Workers Can Get Back to Business in Switzerland, but Sports Remain Prohibited,” Bloomberg, May 20, 2020. 22.YouGov, “Americans Trust Local Governments over the Federal Government on COVID-19,” April 27, 2020. 23.John Lichfield, “Coronavirus: France’s strange defeat,” Politico, May 8, 2020. 24.Anne Applebaum, “The Coronavirus Called America’s Bluff,” The Atlantic, March 15, 2020.

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The populists promised us that they could dynamite the establishment but still leave prosperity and security intact. In fact, they have made the crumbling Western castle’s problems worse. Without Covid, it might have taken time to reveal just how dilapidated it had become, especially in comparison with the gleaming new fort being built in Asia. Now, Covid has appeared like a hurricane, ripping the entire roof off. We can blame the populists and the pandemic as much as we want, but even if Donald Trump had stayed in light entertainment and the virus had never left Wuhan, a reckoning was coming. Western government has been crumbling for decades, overloaded with obligations, undersupplied with talent, and picked apart by special interests.

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Only about a third of Americans trusted Donald Trump’s medical advice.22 One poll in late April showed that 62 percent of the French had no confidence in their government’s handling of the crisis, with commentators, on both the right and the left, comparing France’s response to Covid to the country’s “strange defeat” by Germany in 1940.23 At its worst, this distrust created conspiracy theories: that the virus had been deliberately manufactured, either by China or Big Pharma or indeed the United States; that it spread through 5G towers and masks; that it was a plot to kill off the old. Bill Gates was blamed, because long before Covid he had (correctly) warned about the danger of a global pandemic in a TED talk, and invested cash in trying to find a cure. This nonsense has consequences: people have burned down scores of 5G towers, including sometimes towers that served medical facilities.

pages: 407 words: 108,030

How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations With Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason by Lee McIntyre

2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alfred Russel Wallace, An Inconvenient Truth, Boris Johnson, carbon credits, carbon tax, Climategate, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crisis actor, different worldview, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dunning–Kruger effect, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, experimental subject, fake news, false flag, green new deal, Higgs boson, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Shellenberger, obamacare, off-the-grid, Paris climate accords, post-truth, precautionary principle, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, scientific mainstream, selection bias, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Steven Levy, the scientific method, University of East Anglia, Upton Sinclair, Virgin Galactic, WikiLeaks

But still—through all of the media, webinars, podcasts, Zoom meetings, socially distanced visits, and family discussions—people have demonstrated a hunger for true and accurate information. Despite the unique challenges of a pandemic, it is instructive to look at some of the things that have been working in the fight against COVID-19 denial, with an eye toward how we might more effectively fight science denial on this and other topics in the future. Here are a few tools that are consonant with our findings so far in this book. 1. Graphs, charts, and tables work One of the most compelling means to get compliance in mask wearing, social distancing, hand washing, and other public health measures has been the wide availability of statistics from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which are prominently featured in the upper-right corner of virtually every news broadcast in America (even Fox News).

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Prior to the pandemic, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had struggled with the idea of whether it was Facebook’s job to police the sort of misinformation that was shared on his site.33 Famously, in 2019, he said that although he feared the erosion of truth, “I don’t think people want to live in a world where you can only say things that tech companies decide are 100 percent true.”34 At that time, the subject of conversation was misleading political ads (which he decided to allow).35 By the time of the pandemic—at least for misinformation about the coronavirus—Zuckerberg changed his tune. Amid charges that most COVID-19 misinformation had originated on Facebook, the company responded by pointing out that it had removed “hundreds of thousands of pieces of COVID-19-related misinformation,” including content that could “lead to imminent harm including posts about false cures, claims that social distancing measures do not work and 5G causes coronavirus.”36 On August 5, 2020, Facebook even removed a post from the Trump campaign that included a clip of Trump falsely claiming that children were “almost immune” to COVID-19.37 This, of course, raises the question of why Facebook doesn’t have a similar policy on climate denial or anti-vaxx misinformation, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.38 Other companies, like Twitter and YouTube, have also stepped up.

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YouTube has started to steer people toward credible news sources.40 Again, for those who care about the role that social media has played in exacerbating science denial in general—not to mention the larger issue of truth itself—it is frustrating that these companies have not been more proactive in trying to combat misinformation and disinformation that will inevitably cause harm. Perhaps the pandemic will open the door to more of these efforts, on other denialist topics, in the future. Lessons from Coronavirus: Unify and Conquer One of the most fascinating aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the chance to see what a denialist campaign looks like in real time, and learn what it may teach us about how to fight science denial in general. Many have noted, for instance, the startling parallels between COVID-19 denial and climate denial.41 In the coronavirus pandemic, we have a microcosm of the threat from global warming: it is an existential threat to the entire planet that portends fairly drastic economic impact and requires worldwide cooperation to address it.

pages: 506 words: 133,134

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future by Noreena Hertz

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, Asian financial crisis, autism spectrum disorder, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Broken windows theory, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, Cass Sunstein, centre right, conceptual framework, Copley Medal, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, dark matter, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Fellow of the Royal Society, future of work, gender pay gap, gentrification, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greta Thunberg, happiness index / gross national happiness, housing crisis, illegal immigration, independent contractor, industrial robot, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jessica Bruder, job automation, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Pepto Bismol, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Oldenburg, remote working, rent control, RFID, robo advisor, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Great Good Place, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, Wall-E, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, WeWork, work culture , working poor, workplace surveillance

Note that this forecast was before Covid-19 during which homeworking was the norm for most office workers. It is likely the take-up of remote working will now accelerate. 33 Erica Dhawan and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, ‘How to Collaborate Effectively If Your Team Is Remote’, Harvard Business Review, 27 February 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/02/how-to-collaborate-effectively-if-your-team-is-remote. 34 Bryan Robinson, ‘What Studies Reveal About Social Distancing And Remote Working During Coronavirus’, Forbes, 4 April 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2020/04/04/what-7-studies-show-about-social-distancing-and-remote-working-during-covid-19/. 35 Hailley Griffis, ‘State of Remote Work 2018 Report: What It’s Like to be a Remote Worker In 2018’, Buffer, 27 February 2018, https://open.buffer.com/state-remote-work-2018/. 36 See original tweet at https://twitter.com/hacks4pancakes/status/1106743840751476736?

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In The Lonely Century, Noreena Hertz recognises this and provides an enlightening, engaging and compelling analysis of the dangers posed by the loneliness pandemic not just to our individual health and happiness, but to our collective ability to reinvigorate society and tackle the many challenges we face today.’ Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ‘In this hugely stimulating and ambitious book, Noreena Hertz provides a powerful account of the causes and consequences of the loneliness pandemic that has swept across the globe. Filled with terrifying facts, eye-catching stories and bold ideas, it is a must-read for anybody concerned about the post-Covid-19 world that we are building.’ Carl Frey, Institute for New Economic Thinking, University of Oxford ‘In The Lonely Century, Noreena Hertz delivers a compelling vision for how we can bridge our many divides at this time of great change and disruption.

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Researchers found that healthcare workers in Beijing who had been quarantined during the 2003 SARS outbreak were more likely to be suffering serious depression three years later than those who had not been, even though SARS quarantine periods lasted typically less than a month, and often less than two weeks.51 Separate studies, also amongst hospital employees in Beijing, found that three years after the SARS outbreak alcoholism was higher amongst those who had been quarantined than those who were not, with significant numbers still suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, their symptoms including hyper-vigilance, nightmares and flashbacks.52 Such findings should be taken very seriously as we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic. Both we as individuals and governments must be mindful of the likely long-term mental health impacts of our recent forced isolation, and politicians must commit sufficient resources to addressing the fallout. At the extreme, loneliness can lead to suicide.53 Francie Hart Broghammer is Chief Psychiatry Resident at UC Irvine Medical Center in the US.

pages: 172 words: 50,777

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future by Julia Hobsbawm

8-hour work day, Airbnb, augmented reality, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cal Newport, call centre, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Graeber, death from overwork, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, digital nomad, driverless car, emotional labour, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Greensill Capital, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Ocado, pensions crisis, remote working, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snow Crash, social distancing, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Upton Sinclair, WeWork, work culture

‘The Future of Jobs Report 2020’, World Economic Forum, 20 October 2020, https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2020; see also McKinsey Global Institute, ‘The Future of Work After Covid-19’, 18 February 2021, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/the-future-of-work-after-covid-19; ‘More Than Half of Employees Globally Would Quit Their jobs if Not Provided Post-Pandemic Flexibility’, 21 May 2021, https://www.ey.com/en_ro/news/2021/05/ey-study--more-than-half-of-employees-globally-would-quit-their-; Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO, ‘The Professional and Technical Workforce: By the Numbers’, 2021 Fact Sheet, 27 September 2021, https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/the-professional-and-technical-workforce-by-the-numbers 5. See data from Office for National Statistics Coronavirus (Covid-19) Latest Insights: Work, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19latestinsights/work; and the World Bank: Michael Weber and David Newhouse, ‘These Types of Workers Were Most Impacted by the Covid-19 Pandemic’, World Bank Blogs, 23 September 2021, https://blogs.worldbank.org/jobs/these-types-workers-were-most-impacted-covid-19-pandemic 6. See Leesman, ‘Workplace 2021: Appraising Future-Readiness’, https://www.leesmanindex.com/media/Leesman-Workplace-2021-Report-1.pdf; and McKinsey, ‘Future of Work’, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work 7.

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Joanna Swash, CEO of outsourcing reception, PA and communications provider Moneypenny (and a member of the Forbes Business Council), was frank that her perceptions had been challenged by the pandemic when everyone had to go fully remote overnight: Before Covid-19 I thought we’ve got amazing offices, and that they are this space that everybody loves. What I learned was that our culture was so strong that it wasn’t just based on the office or on the physical environment, but it was based on that whole community feel, and how people trust each other. It should have been obvious to me, but that was a really big lesson at the start of the pandemic. A similar point was made by Chris Thurling, chair of Armadillo, a digital design firm which went fully remote during the pandemic, and who expanded his business during this period: I want to remain completely open-minded about whether we ever need to have a traditional office again.

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Jerry Useem, ‘The Psychological Benefits of Commuting to Work’, Atlantic, 29 July 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/admit-it-you-miss-your-commute/619007/ 40. ‘How Covid-19 Triggered the Digital and e-Commerce Turning Point’, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 15 March 2021, https://unctad.org/news/how-covid-19-triggered-digital-and-e-commerce-turning-point 41. ‘Southern California Renters are Moving to the Suburbs Post-Pandemic, Says New Study’, Propertyfundsworld, 20 May 2021, https://www.propertyfundsworld.com/2021/05/20/300587/southern-california-renters-are-moving-suburbs-post-pandemic-says-new-study 42. David Sharman, ‘Publisher Reveals it Now Employs More Journalists than in 2019’, HoldtheFrontPage, 26 July 2021, https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2021/news/publisher-creates-more-new-roles-in-bid-to-return-staffing-to-pre-pandemic-levels/ 43.

pages: 368 words: 102,379

Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick by J. David McSwane

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, commoditize, coronavirus, COVID-19, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, fake news, global pandemic, global supply chain, Internet Archive, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, microaggression, military-industrial complex, obamacare, open economy, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, ransomware, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Bannon, stock buybacks, TaskRabbit, telemarketer, uber lyft, Y2K

the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics Stephanie Mencimer, “Peter Navarro Is the Worst Possible Person to Be in Charge of Pandemic Supplies,” Mother Jones, April 9, 2020, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/04/peter-navarro-is-the-worst-possible-person-to-be-in-charge-of-pandemic-supplies/. Navarro was waging his brand Letter to John Polowczyk, COVID-19 Essential Medicine Briefing Update, March 26, 2020. He urged the president Ibid. Throughout the month of March J. David McSwane, “Documents Show Trump Officials Skirted Rules to Reward Politically Connected and Untested Firms with Huge Pandemic Contracts,” ProPublica, March 31, 2021, https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-covid-pandemic-contracts.

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contracts were handed out to anyone Ryan Gabrielson and Lydia DePillis, “A Closer Look at Federal Covid Contractors Reveals Inexperience, Fraud Accusations and a Weapons Dealer Operating out of Someone’s House,” ProPublica, May 27, 2020, https://www.propublica.org/article/a-closer-look-at-federal-covid-contractors-reveals-inexperience-fraud-accusations-and-a-weapons-dealer-operating-out-of-someones-house. Trump lieutenants steered contracts J. David McSwane, “Documents Show Trump Officials Skirted Rules to Reward Politically Connected and Untested Firms with Huge Pandemic Contracts,” ProPublica, March 31, 2020, https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-covid-pandemic-contracts. What barriers did exist were overcome J.

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With millions a year in donations Will Stone, “An Anti-Vaccine Film Targeted to Black Americans Spreads False Information,” Georgia Public Broadcasting, June 8, 2021, https://www.gpb.org/news/shots-health-news/2021/06/08/anti-vaccine-film-targeted-black-americans-spreads-false. according to an analysis Pandemic Profiteers: The Business of Anti-vaxx (London: Center for Countering Digital Hate, 2021). “the flu shot is 2.4x more deadly” Marisha Goldhamer, “Seasonal Flu Vaccines Are Safe, Needed during Covid-19 Pandemic,” Fact Check, September 25, 2020, https://factcheck.afp.com/seasonal-flu-vaccines-are-safe-needed-during-covid-19-pandemic. an osteopath named Joseph Mercola Ibid. He oversees about 159 employees Sheera Frenkel, “The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online,” New York Times, July 24, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/technology/joseph-mercola-coronavirus-misinformation-online.html.

pages: 250 words: 79,360

Escape From Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It by Erica Thompson

Alan Greenspan, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Big Tech, Black Swan, butterfly effect, carbon tax, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, data is the new oil, data science, decarbonisation, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Drosophila, Emanuel Derman, Financial Modelers Manifesto, fudge factor, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, hindcast, I will remember that I didn’t make the world, and it doesn’t satisfy my equations, implied volatility, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John von Neumann, junk bonds, Kim Stanley Robinson, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, moral hazard, mouse model, Myron Scholes, Nate Silver, Neal Stephenson, negative emissions, paperclip maximiser, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, random walk, risk tolerance, selection bias, self-driving car, social distancing, Stanford marshmallow experiment, statistical model, systematic bias, tacit knowledge, tail risk, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, The Great Resignation, the scientific method, too big to fail, trolley problem, value at risk, volatility smile, Y2K

If we had had no recourse to a model that could attempt to predict the future evolution of the pandemic, would we have made more or less effective decisions about mitigation? This counterfactual is difficult to imagine: presumably we would still be able to think through the mechanics of viral transmission and the effect of social distancing even without writing it down as a set of equations. Widespread availability of mathematical modelling has hardly given clear answers about strategy: the huge variety of political approaches to Covid-19 is testament to that. So while the ability to follow through our assumptions into quantitative plausible futures – including worst-case scenarios – is genuinely useful, I also think we have to take seriously Limbaugh’s challenge that ‘The modelers can’t be wrong… They have no weight on their shoulders.

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You can also imagine that the California ‘Big One’ earthquake has been well modelled, as well as major hurricanes hitting large population centres. Those who ran simulations of a viral pandemic in the last few years have had an interesting chance to check up on their assumptions since 2020. Pandemic appears not to have been officially used as a stress-test scenario by regulatory bodies, but health insurers at least have certainly had pandemic influenza as a known major possibility for years. Even where scenarios exist, the many and varied downstream impacts of the pandemic that are emerging, from supply-chain disruption and Long Covid to accelerated digitisation and the ‘Great Resignation’, are potentially major economic changes that will not have been factored in.

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This is the basis of the epidemiological models that informed the advice given by SAGE to the UK government in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. In practice they are much more complicated, dividing the UK into blocks of population density, defining where individuals live, how far they travel for work and how often they come into contact with other people of different ages. A lot of information about people and their behaviour goes into the model, as well as the characteristics of the virus itself. The actual progress of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, proved rather different from that predicted by the models, in which the spread and transmission of the virus closely paralleled population density.

pages: 318 words: 73,713

The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation by Cathy O'Neil

2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, call centre, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, crowdsourcing, data science, delayed gratification, desegregation, don't be evil, Edward Jenner, fake news, George Floyd, Greta Thunberg, Jon Ronson, Kickstarter, linked data, Mahatma Gandhi, mass incarceration, microbiome, microdosing, Nelson Mandela, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pre–internet, profit motive, QAnon, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Streisand effect, TikTok, Walter Mischel, War on Poverty, working poor

From the perspective of the aggrieved lower orders, the elite not only lay claim to the lion’s share of wealth but also see themselves as arbiters of truth. “There’s an anti-authority feeling in the world,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Science has an air of authority to it. So people who want to push back on authority tend to, as a sidebar, push back on science.” Not all vaccine skeptics are ignorant, by any stretch of the imagination. An alarming number of health workers, for example, resisted taking the COVID vaccine in 2021, even after tending for months to victims suffering in their emergency wards on any given day. For example, a group of 117 employees sued Houston Methodist Hospital in May 2021 for mandating staff-wide vaccines.

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GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT At a contentious meeting: Annie Gowen, “ ‘God Be with Us,’ ” The Washington Post, December 9, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/09/south-dakota-mitchell-covid-masks/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Crews lambasted the people mandating masks: J. Clara Chan, “NIH Official to Retire after He’s Exposed as RedState Editor Who Called Fauci a ‘Mask Nazi,’ ” TheWrap, September 21, 2020, https://www.thewrap.com/nih-official-to-retire-after-hes-exposed-as-redstate-editor-who-called-fauci-a-mask-nazi/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “people who get COVID-19 have behaved irresponsibly”: Alain Labrique et al., “Webinar: National Pandemic Pulse Round 1,” covidinequities.org, November 12, 2020, https://www.covidinequities.org/post/webinar-national-pandemic-pulse-round-1.

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See public policy; punching-up campaigns and action college admissions, 59 concern trolling, 33, 35 conspiracy theories/theorists, 101, 161, 163, 208. See also misinformation Cooper, Amy, 109–10 Cooper, Christian, 109–10, 116 COVID-19 pandemic: economic impacts of, 59, 67–68 mask wearing and masking controversies, 153–59, 163 stigmatization of COVID victims, 158–59 vaccine skepticism and resistance, 161–65 Covington boys, 97–100 crack epidemic, 39–46 Blossom Rogers’s story, 37–38, 39, 45–46, 168, 211 Crews, Bill, 156 criminal justice system: the criminalization of addiction, 40–41, 42–43, 44–45, 48, 51, 53–54 drug dependency treatment in prison, 53 economic exploitation of parolees, 68–73 the persistence of criminal charges online, 104–5 the private prison industry, 48 Crockett, Molly, 96 Cruz, Nikolas, 137 cults, 112, 113, 144 Cuomo, Andrew, 115 D De Blasio, Bill, 163 debt and debt abolition, 207–8 detoxifying shame, 10–13, 15, 89–91, 203–15 confronting our individual shaming behaviors, 90–91, 123–26, 210–15 taking collective action, 89–90, 203–9 diabetes, bariatric surgery and, 192–93, 194–95 dieting.

Reset by Ronald J. Deibert

23andMe, active measures, air gap, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Cal Newport, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, cashless society, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, confounding variable, contact tracing, contact tracing app, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, information retrieval, information security, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megastructure, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, New Journalism, NSO Group, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-truth, proprietary trading, QAnon, ransomware, Robert Mercer, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sorting algorithm, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, techlash, technological solutionism, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TikTok, TSMC, undersea cable, unit 8200, Vannevar Bush, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

We mapped how the coronavirus is driving new surveillance programs around the world. Retrieved from https://onezero.medium.com/the-pandemic-is-a-trojan-horse-for-surveillance-programs-around-the-world-887fa6f12ec9; See also Kamradt-Scott, A., & McInnes, C. (2012). The securitisation of pandemic influenza: framing, security and public policy. Global Public Health, 7(sup2), S95-S110. Drones were being offered up and used as part of COVID mitigation efforts: Gaulkin, T. (2020, April 1). Drone pandemic: Will coronavirus invite the world to meet Big Brother? Retrieved from https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/drone-pandemic-will-coronavirus-invite-the-world-to-meet-big-brother/ How easy it is to unmask real identities contained in large personal data sets: Narayanan, A., & Shmatikov, V. (2008).

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Numerous proposals worldwide to employ cell location data to assist in the effort to combat the spread of COVID-19: Glanz, J., Carey, B., Holder, J., Watkins, D., Valentino-DeVries, J., Rojas, R., & Leatherby, L. (2020, April 2). Where America didn’t stay home even as the virus spread. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html; Landau, S. (2020, March 25). Location surveillance to counter COVID-19: Efficacy is what matters. Retrieved from https://www.lawfareblog.com/location-surveillance-counter-covid-19-efficacy-what-matters; Anderson, R. (2020, May 12). Contact tracing in the real world.

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These negative externalities may have been amplified by the surge in demand for social media during the COVID pandemic, the enhanced power of the platforms that went along with it, and the unprecedented emergency measures that tapped into those platforms’ surveillance potential. On top of that, our insatiable lust for data and disposable devices is silently taxing resources, sucking up vast amounts of energy, and thus contributing to, rather than helping to mitigate, the climate crisis. While the COVID pandemic has given some reprieve in terms of CO2 emissions, thanks to a short reduction in airline and other fossil fuel–powered transportation, that reprieve will eventually pass.

pages: 342 words: 72,927

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet? by Pete Dyson, Rory Sutherland

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Black Swan, Boeing 747, BRICs, butterfly effect, car-free, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, choice architecture, cognitive bias, cognitive load, coronavirus, COVID-19, Crossrail, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, demand response, Diane Coyle, digital map, driverless car, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, fake news, functional fixedness, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, gig economy, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Greta Thunberg, Gödel, Escher, Bach, high-speed rail, hive mind, Hyperloop, Induced demand, informal economy, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, lockdown, longitudinal study, loss aversion, low cost airline, Lyft, megaproject, meta-analysis, Network effects, nudge unit, Ocado, overview effect, Paul Samuelson, performance metric, pneumatic tube, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Rory Sutherland, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, selection bias, Skype, smart transportation, social distancing, South Sea Bubble, systems thinking, TED Talk, the map is not the territory, The Market for Lemons, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, Veblen good, When a measure becomes a target, yield management, zero-sum game

This is a value judgement that trades off the need to reduce cognitive load with the problem that it makes London, especially South London, seem more transport-poor than it actually is – at least to tourists and North Londoners. The Thameslink line, a north–south link, was removed from the map in 1999 to make things simpler, but was then added again in 2020 to assist with social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Authorities insist that this is only a temporary measure, calling it a ‘complicated addition to the map’.11 But if they remove it again, passengers might well end up making needlessly complex journeys, as do many tourists who visit South London. (Another new line, the Elizabeth Line (formerly known as Crossrail), will be included by default, not least because it is operated by Transport for London rather than the British–French joint venture Govia, who at the time of writing run Thameslink services.)

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Transport is blind to our rapidly evolving online habits: in this case, we won’t get a clear picture of whether fleets of delivery vans are inefficiently servicing a small group of enthusiastic users, or whether they are efficiently substituting the need for lots of people to trudge around shops. An emerging finding from UK academic research suggests that the boom in online grocery shopping during Covid-19 has been largely attributable to people who were already doing it before the pandemic switching to doing it a lot more. How this splits by region and demographic is unclear.6 The data we have frames the conversation, while the data we need often goes unnoticed. * * * 6 COVID-19 TRANSAS. 2021. At a crossroads: travel adaptations during Covid-19 restrictions and where next? Report (https://covid19transas.org/category/reports/). Table 6. Behavioural adaptations requiring careful attention.

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As such, transport planners should take the long view: improvements that are made today will take decades, not just a few years, to be fully felt. Attracting a generation of young people can create customers for life. At the time of writing, we can only speculate on the habit-breaking effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which gave many a huge fresh start. One month into the pandemic, only 9% of Britons wanted life to return to ‘normal’: they were aware of cleaner air, more wildlife and stronger communities. The World Economic Forum found that 86% of people across twenty-eight countries wanted significant change to make the world a fairer and more sustainable place.17 Until recently, the behavioural economics literature looked quite underpowered, as it typically concentrated on the behaviour of individuals, examining social norms only to the extent they affect individuals rather than how those norms are formed and evolved in the first place.18 The evidence has grown into a consensus that large-scale changes in habits require shifting circumstances, not just personal willpower.

pages: 263 words: 77,786

Tomorrow's Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business by Alan Murray

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, call centre, carbon footprint, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, decarbonisation, digital divide, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, gun show loophole, impact investing, income inequality, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, knowledge worker, lockdown, London Whale, low interest rates, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, minimum wage unemployment, natural language processing, new economy, old-boy network, price mechanism, profit maximization, remote working, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, The Future of Employment, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor, zero-sum game

BRIGHT SPOTS EMERGE With any dramatic societal event, you can observe in the aftermath some lasting changes. During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, it soon became apparent what some of those changes would be: > The shift toward talent as the most important source of corporate value had continued. The trend could have been weakened by historic levels of unemployment, which made labor plentiful. But plentiful labor is not the same as plentiful talent, and the pandemic seemed to be leading an increasing number of talent-forward companies to take an “employees first” approach. Indeed, as the economy bounced back from COVID in 2021, it became clear that there was an unprecedented battle for talent, giving knowledge workers even more power in the economic debates to come

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I sat down with him in person in Fortune’s offices shortly before we closed them, as the pandemic was breaking news across the globe. He was feeling the pressures around personal protective equipment, the N95 masks in particular. 3M had started ramping up its manufacturing of PPE before it hit the American public that the need was desperate here at home. Roman explained: “Coming out of SARS, we had developed a strategy to have idle capacity available for the next pandemic. We didn’t anticipate a global pandemic like we’re facing with COVID-19. We responded and have been ramping up capacity ever since.”12 The priorities were clear to his leadership: “Protect our employees, so we could keep executing, fight the pandemic from every angle, and deliver for our customers and shareholders, as we went through the uncertainty that we were facing.

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Competition is the magic that makes capitalist economies successful. But solving society’s biggest problems—like a global pandemic—requires cooperation as well as competition. The scientists at pharmaceutical companies were competing with each other to be the first to develop vaccines and treatments for COVID. But they also were sharing data, knowledge, and even their facilities in ways that never would have been imaginable before the pandemic. “There’s so much collaboration, cooperation going on,” Daniel O’Day, chairman and CEO of Gilead Sciences, agreed. “The only competition in COVID is the virus itself. Companies have come together and collaborated in ways that we’ve never seen before.

pages: 460 words: 107,454

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab, Peter Vanham

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

Not since World War II were debt levels in advanced economies so high, the Wall Street Journal calculated,18 and unlike in the post-war period, these countries “no longer benefit from rapid economic growth” as a means to decrease their burden in the future. The COVID pandemic, of course, brought an exceptional acceleration of the debt load in countries around the world, and especially for governments. According to the IMF, by mid-2021, in the span of a mere 18 months, “median debt is expected to be up by 17 percent in advanced economies, 12 percent in emerging economies, and 8 percent in low-income countries”19 compared to pre-pandemic levels. But even without the pandemic, debt had been creeping up in the past three decades. As one example: in advanced economies, public debt rose from about 55 percent in 1991, to over 70 percent in 2001, and more than 100 percent in 2011.

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As the movement gained traction abroad though, it was often co-opted by the alt-right.11 In 2020, lastly, a final group of dissenting voices emerged: those that grew angry and mad at the global government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the greatest combined devastation to lives and livelihoods since the Spanish flu in 1918–1919. Around the world, people started spreading conspiracy theories about the alleged true nature of the pandemic. Some believed it was intentionally created and spread by China. Others saw in it an effort by their own governments to suppress the population and opposed public health measures on those grounds. Some even went so far as to suggest the World Economic Forum, the organization we work for, had a hand in the pandemic. In Germany, media reported that neo-Nazi elements were involved in the protests for freedom from government measures against the pandemic.

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“Singapore believes in strong government, not big government,” Senior Minister Tharman told us in an interview. That is not to say the Singapore model is flawless, of course. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed some painful shortcomings in the Lion City model. Initially, Singapore seemed to have a firm grip on the spread of COVID, a remarkable feat for an international city so closely connected to other hotspots of the pandemic. The government acted swiftly, putting in place a national test, trace, and treat strategy, and curtailing public life and (international) travel. But despite these early successes, the city-state did face a major outbreak, located initially in the city's migrant dormitories and spreading from there.

pages: 460 words: 107,454

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab

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pages: 289 words: 95,046

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis by Scott Patterson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Black Swan Protection Protocol, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, Bob Litterman, Boris Johnson, Brownian motion, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, commodity super cycle, complexity theory, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, disinformation, diversification, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, effective altruism, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, energy transition, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Extinction Rebellion, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, Gail Bradbrook, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, index fund, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Joan Didion, John von Neumann, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Spitznagel, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, money market fund, moral hazard, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, panic early, Pershing Square Capital Management, Peter Singer: altruism, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, proprietary trading, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative easing, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative ﬁnance, Ralph Nader, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, rewilding, Richard Thaler, risk/return, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Rory Sutherland, Rupert Read, Sam Bankman-Fried, Silicon Valley, six sigma, smart contracts, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, systematic trading, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, too big to fail, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, value at risk, Vanguard fund, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

But he wasn’t sure about the second question. Trump didn’t seem to be taking Covid-19 seriously at all. Nor were his top advisers. He asked Taleb if he could write a memo to the White House outlining his concerns. Taleb called Bar-Yam. “We should write something,” he said. It was January 24. Taleb, like Bar-Yam, had been studying the jarring mathematics of pandemics for years. Decades before, he’d learned about characteristics of financial markets that acted in ways similar to pandemics. Sudden crashes were extreme, often unpredictable events—like plagues and pandemics. He knew that highly contagious viruses can spread exponentially, resulting in mass death.

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Uncertainty, as well as the fossil fuel industry’s serial lies and denials, had paralyzed the world. Literal flames were frying its forests. I met Litterman in Washington, D.C., hours after his Senate testimony. It would be my last face-to-face meeting for months—as well as his—as lockdowns gripped the country in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Litterman told me he worried the Covid-19 virus would soon become a global pandemic, and he was right. “It’s a perfect example of when you have a risk-management problem—it’s urgent, you don’t know how much time you have,” he said. “With coronavirus, we wasted so many weeks.” The same was true for the climate. “We’ve got to slam on the brakes,” he said, referring to carbon emissions—and his experience with the flaming tanker.

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At the same time, the financial community should not simply be reactive—it should provide solutions. “As this report is being finalized, the United States is in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, with deaths already exceeding 180,000 from COVID-19, and an associated economic collapse,” Litterman wrote in the foreword to the 196-page report. He noted the similarities between the pandemic and global warming, including the fact that delaying addressing both problems “can be devastating.” The report, released in the midst of the 2020 presidential election, ongoing fear about the pandemic, and nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd, attracted almost no attention. Litterman wasn’t surprised.

pages: 82 words: 24,150

The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism by Grace Blakeley

Anthropocene, asset-backed security, basic income, Big Tech, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, debt deflation, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, don't be evil, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, global pandemic, global value chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, income inequality, informal economy, inverted yield curve, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, Philip Mirowski, post-war consensus, price mechanism, quantitative easing, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, reshoring, Rishi Sunak, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, social distancing, structural adjustment programs, too big to fail, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, yield curve

The stagnation of the past decade represented the death knell of the speculative mania that characterised the era of financialisation, which collapsed under the weight of its own excesses in 2008. Amid the pandemic, we have witnessed its replacement – state monopoly capitalism – begin to emerge. Within weeks of the declaration of a pandemic by the World Health Organisation on 11 March, it became clear that the public health emergency would cause widespread economic devastation. There were three quarters of a million confirmed cases of Covid-19 by the end of March and the constraints on ordinary economic activity imposed in response to its spread had brought the global economy to a standstill. The Great Lockdown – as the coordinated stay-at-home and social-distancing measures imposed by many states around the world have been termed – had an immediate impact on the labour market, output, incomes and consumption.

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The challenge these states face was made abundantly clear when Cyclone Amphan struck India and Bangladesh in May 2020. India, a middleincome country with high levels of poverty, had more than 100,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 3,000 deaths at the time of the disaster, while Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, had nearly 27,000 confirmed cases and around 400 deaths. Both states have weak public health infrastructures. They have struggled to roll out measures such as mass testing owing to state under-capacity and to achieve social distancing given the cramped living conditions faced by many families.24 The mass evacuations associated with Cyclone Amphan will only increase the challenge.

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Barry, ‘The Single Most Important Lesson From the 1918 Influenza’, New York Times, 17 March 2020. 2 Kim Moody, ‘How “Just-in-Time” Capitalism Spread COVID-19’, Spectre, 8 April 2020. 3 James Politi, ‘Fed’s Bullard Says Risk of Financial Crisis Remains’, Financial Times, 2 June 2020. 4 Stephen Morris, George Parker and Daniel Thomas, ‘UK Banks Warn 40%–50% of “Bounce Back” Borrowers Will Default’, Financial Times, 31 May 2020. 5 OBR, Fiscal sustainability report 2020, Office for Budget Responsibility, 2020. 6 Sergei Klebnikov, ‘How Bad Will Unemployment Get? Here’s What the Experts Predict’, Forbes, 31 March 2020. 7 Phillip Inman, ‘UK Economy Likely to Suffer Worst Covid-19 Damage, Says OECD’, Guardian, 10 June 2020. 8 International Labour Organization and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, ‘The Labour Share in G20 Economies’, report prepared for the G20 Employment Working Group, Antalya, Turkey, 26–27 February 2015. 9 Shawn Donnan, ‘Globalisation in Retreat: Capital Flows Decline since Crisis’, Financial Times, 21 August 2017; Susan Lund, Eckart Windhagen, James Manyika, Philipp Härle, Jonathan Woetzel and Diana Goldshtein, ‘The New Dynamics of Financial Globalization’, McKinsey Global Institute, August 2017. 10 Chibuike Oguh and Alexandre Tanzi, ‘Global Debt of $244 Trillion Nears Record Despite Faster Growth’, Bloomberg, 15 January 2019. 11 For a discussion of these forecasts, see Grace Blakeley, ‘The Next Crash: Why the World Is Unprepared for the Economic Dangers Ahead’, New Statesman, 6 March 2019. 12 Ibid. 13 Tithi Bhattacharya and Gareth Dale, ‘Covid Capitalism: General tendencies and possible “leaps”’, Spectre, 23 April 2020. 14 See IMF, Policy Responses to Covid-19: Policy Tracker, Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2020. 15 In full, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility, Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, Primary Dealer Credit Facility and Municipal Liquidity Facility. 16 Scott Minerd, ‘We Are All Government-Sponsored Enterprises Now’, Global CIO Outlook, Guggenheim Investments, 10 May 2020. 17 Philip Turner, ‘Containing the Dollar Credit Crunch’, Project Syndicate, 18 May 2020. 18 Robert Brenner, ‘Escalating Plunder’, New Left Review 123, May-June 2020, p. 22. 1 The Last Days of Finance Capitalism 1 BEA, ‘GDP by State’, Suitland, MD: US Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2020, bea.gov. 2 Drew DeSilver, ‘For Most U.S.

pages: 239 words: 74,845

The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees by Ben Mezrich

4chan, Asperger Syndrome, Bayesian statistics, bitcoin, Carl Icahn, contact tracing, data science, democratizing finance, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, gamification, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Hyperloop, meme stock, Menlo Park, payment for order flow, Pershing Square Capital Management, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, security theater, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, Two Sigma, value at risk, wealth creators

Which meant that although they were both focused on mathematics at the same university, separated only by two years, they’d barely crossed paths even before the pandemic. Unlike Jeremy and despite Covid, Casper had chosen to experience his sophomore year from a dorm room on campus because he’d wanted to be closer to his friends. From what Jeremy had gleaned from the first few weeks of the fall semester—a barrage of quarantines, weekly testings, social distancing requirements—it didn’t seem like Casper would have it much better than Jeremy, as isolated as he was. It hadn’t taken long for Jeremy to realize—whether it was in a dorm surrounded by classmates, or in an apartment surrounded by strangers—a pandemic was something you went through alone.

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His jacket was already off, draped over a corner of his chair, but it didn’t make any difference. If he had been at his desk in that office on Madison Avenue, instead of lodged in an extra bedroom in his rented pandemic home in Florida, it would have been thirty degrees outside the picture window behind him—the kind of view generally reserved for Wall Street bankers, still staggering despite the sparse traffic snaking through the pincushion of Midtown and between the Covid-emptied sidewalks—and he’d have turned the heat as far down as it would go. But here in Florida, the rivulets of sweat ran down the back of his neck and dampened the seams of his brightly patterned socks.

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Jeremy yanked his hood back as he moved deeper into his apartment, freeing his tangled mop of reddish hair, which sprang up above his high forehead like some sort of demented, rust-colored halo. He hadn’t been to a barber since before Covid, though he had tried to take clippers to himself a handful of times over the past few months, to his own detriment. Then again, one of the benefits of a pandemic was that it didn’t really matter how you looked, when most of your social life took place through a little square floating around the screen of your laptop. Zoom was the great equalizer, and a good, high-definition webcam beat a proper haircut every time.

pages: 665 words: 159,350

Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else by Jordan Ellenberg

Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Andrew Wiles, autonomous vehicles, British Empire, Brownian motion, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, deep learning, DeepMind, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, East Village, Edmond Halley, Edward Jenner, Elliott wave, Erdős number, facts on the ground, Fellow of the Royal Society, Geoffrey Hinton, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, government statistician, GPT-3, greed is good, Henri Poincaré, index card, index fund, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John Conway, John Nash: game theory, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Bachelier, machine translation, Mercator projection, Mercator projection distort size, especially Greenland and Africa, Milgram experiment, multi-armed bandit, Nate Silver, OpenAI, Paul Erdős, pets.com, pez dispenser, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, side hustle, Snapchat, social distancing, social graph, transcontinental railway, urban renewal

His argument on the random walk was meant to show that, after the number of mosquitoes in a region had been reduced, it would take quite some time for enough mosquitoes to wander into the area to push it back over the epidemic threshold. That’s a key idea for the battle against COVID-19, too. We don’t need to eliminate every transmission of the disease, which is a good thing, since that’s impossible. Epidemic control is not about perfectionism. 77 TRILLION PEOPLE WILL CATCH SMALLPOX NEXT YEAR In the spring of 2020, at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the disease was clearly tracing out the kind of geometric progression you don’t want to see. Cases of COVID-19 were growing by about 7% every day. That meant every week the cases were getting multiplied by 1.07 seven times, which amounts to a 60% increase.

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.* Chomsky retorts that, be that as it may, methods like Google’s provide no insight into what language really is; they’re like Galileo observing the parabolic arc of a projectile before Newton stepped in to lay down the laws. They’re both right, about language, and about pandemics, too. You can’t do without a certain amount of both curve fitting and reverse engineering. One of the most successful modelers of the pandemic in 2020, a recent MIT graduate named Youyang Gu, ably combined both approaches, using a Ross-style model of differential equations designed to mimic the known mechanics of COVID-19 transmission, but using machine learning techniques to tune the many unknown parameters in that model to match the observed pandemic-so-far as well as possible. We need to catalog as much as we can about what happened yesterday if we want to predict what’s happening tomorrow, but we are never going to have billions of past pandemics to look at, and if we want to be prepared for the next viral novelty, we had better look for laws.

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The contemporary world is wrinkled as heck. Before we even knew there was a pandemic, COVID-19 was on planes between China and Italy, between Italy and New York, between New York and Tel Aviv. If we somehow didn’t know there was such a thing as an airplane, we could infer it from the nature of the pandemic spread. And yet the standard geometry of the Earth’s surface still plays a role. The hardest-hit parts of the United States in the spring of 2020 weren’t the cities with the international airports and the jet-setting residents; they were the places you could drive from New York. Pandemics travel both fast and slow, in whatever vehicle they can hitch a ride on.

pages: 569 words: 156,139

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, air freight, Airbnb, Amazon Picking Challenge, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, business climate, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, fake news, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, gigafactory, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kiva Systems, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, NSO Group, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, private spaceflight, quantitative hedge fund, remote working, rent stabilization, RFID, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, search inside the book, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tech billionaire, tech bro, techlash, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, two-pizza team, Uber for X, union organizing, warehouse robotics, WeWork

Jack Young – Places/Alamy Vociferous opposition greeted Amazon’s decision to locate half of its second headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, New York. Protesters unfurled anti-Amazon banners and jeered at an HQ2 city council hearing in January 2019. Amazon cancelled its plans to build new offices there only days later. Drew Angerer/Getty Images At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, criticism flooded in from Amazon’s hourly workforce. Despite instituting temperature checks, social distancing guidelines, and other safety measures, some employees were still getting sick and workers protested that the company was prioritizing sales over safety. Leandro Justen After it resisted making Bezos available to testify before Congress, Amazon was forced to relent.

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track the location of employees inside warehouses: Mark Di Stefano, “Amazon Drops Pandemic Test to Track Warehouse Workers Through Wi-Fi,” The Information, November 30, 2020, https://www.theinformation.com/articles/amazon-drops-pandemic-test-to-track-warehouse-workers-through-wi-fi (January 26, 2021). in twenty-three states: Paris Martineau, “Amazon Quietly Expands Large-Scale Covid Testing Program for Warehouses,” The Information, September 24, 2020, https://www.theinformation.com/articles/amazon-quietly-expands-large-scale-covid-testing-program-for-warehouses (January 26, 2021). thousands of tests a day across 650 sites: “Update on COVID-19 Testing,” Amazon, October 1, 2020, https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/update-on-covid-19-testing (January 26, 2021).

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For despite the heightened suspicion of big tech and of Amazon’s tightening grip over Western economies, the company had become a salvation of sorts in the year 2020—a life preserver, thrown to millions of households around the world, as they quarantined amid the relentless assault of the Covid-19 pandemic. CHAPTER 15 Pandemic Amazon’s recent challenges seemed like mere speed bumps. The HQ2 misadventure, the drama in Bezos’s personal life, the loss of the JEDI contract, and battles with Donald Trump and antitrust regulators—they barely slowed Amazon’s inexorable rise. Jeff Bezos and his global empire appeared, at least in the moment, totally unbound from the laws of corporate gravity that slowed the growth of large enterprises, inhibited their agility, and clouded the judgment of senior leaders with exorbitant wealth.

pages: 319 words: 102,839

Heavy Metal: The Hard Days and Nights of the Shipyard Workers Who Build America's Supercarriers by Michael Fabey

Albert Einstein, augmented reality, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 747, company town, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, George Floyd, glass ceiling, illegal immigration, Minecraft, Ronald Reagan, social distancing, South China Sea, union organizing

Courtesy of Hampton Roads Naval Museum Newport News Shipbuilding president Jennifer Boykin shows Caroline Kennedy the sweet spot to smash the champagne bottle for the carrier John F. Kennedy. It was not the first such moment for either. Courtesy of the author After Covid cases started in Newport News Shipbuilding, the yard started taking steps to protect the workforce, mandating masks, social distancing, and temperature checks at the gates. The pandemic wreaked havoc with shipyard shifts, supply chains, and shipbuilding schedules. Courtesy of Huntington Ingalls Industries To prove the Ford, Kennedy, and later carriers are combat ready, even with their new systems, the Ford underwent shock trials in the summer of 2021, during which the US Navy exploded underwater charges with the force of 3.9 magnitude earthquakes.

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To help develop action plans to address those needs, while keeping the yard operational and Covid-19 compliant, on April 2, yard president Jennifer Boykin established a Covid-19 Crisis Action Group (CAG) of team leaders from all over the yard to work on recommendations on how to safely and efficiently operate during the pandemic. A new vice-presidential steering committee considered recommendations and sent ones it approved to Boykin. This prevented VPs from coming up with individual plans for their own operations and interfering with overall company interests. Four subteams formed under the CAG helped the yard respond to the pandemic quickly and with some agility.

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Technical issues regarding the elevators and other systems now delayed the first deployment to 2022 at the earliest, or about five years after the ship was commissioned into service. Worse, for those on CVN 79, Covid-19 and the Ford fixes continued to delay Kennedy work. During normal times, the yard ramped up the workforce to catch up. The virus, though, prevented anything like that. Like the Outlaws, Jennifer Boykin hoped everyone in the region would take Covid-19 seriously as the virus refused to wane in the summer months. In a July 14 message to yard workers, she noted not only a rise in community cases, but also some “social-distancing lapses during eating breaks inside the yard.” As a result, she lamented, the yard saw the highest spikes in the region and the facility thus far in July.

pages: 338 words: 85,566

Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel, Stian Westlake

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Andrei Shleifer, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, book value, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, Charles Lindbergh, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, congestion charging, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decarbonisation, Diane Coyle, Dominic Cummings, Donald Shoup, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, equity risk premium, Erik Brynjolfsson, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, facts on the ground, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, general purpose technology, gentrification, Goodhart's law, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, index fund, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, inflation targeting, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, job-hopping, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, market design, Martin Wolf, megacity, mittelstand, new economy, Occupy movement, oil shock, patent troll, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, postindustrial economy, pre–internet, price discrimination, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, remote working, rent-seeking, replication crisis, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Sam Peltzman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, skeuomorphism, social distancing, superstar cities, the built environment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, urban planning, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, work culture , X Prize, Y2K

Not everyone can work from home, but an estimated 47 percent of the UK workforce was working remotely in the summer of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. What will the effects of WFH be on an economy increasingly reliant on intangibles? Working from Home versus Working at Work At least some employees rather enjoy working from home.35 In doing so, they avoid commuting, deal with caretaking responsibilities, minimise distractions from coworkers, maintain social distancing, and perhaps even enjoy more free time. On the employer side, many firms whose employees are working from home are asking themselves, What’s the point of paying sky-high rents solely for the privilege of an empty office, surrounded by other empty offices?

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Here, too, we see a paradox as many people complain of a growing sense of frenetic, stressful, and wasteful contestation in economic life, with the objectively affluent, and even the rich, seeming to have to work harder and harder to keep up. Fragility. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that even the world’s richest economies are not immune to natural forces. Indeed, the damage caused by the pandemic is linked to the complexity and sophistication of the economy. Our large, dense cities, our complex international supply chains, and the unprecedented interconnectedness of our global economy allowed the virus to leap from country to country and increased the cost of the lockdowns needed to control it. Even fifteen years ago, a pandemic outbreak in a remote area of China would be at most a minor news story for the rich world.

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Fragility The idea that modern societies’ vulnerability to threats such as pandemics and climate change comes from our failure to invest in intangibles is counterintuitive. Indeed, most people would assume the opposite: that fragility is caused by worrying too much about fluffy things like intangibles, and not enough about robust physical things. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, much public debate focused on the tangible capital necessary to fight it. International observers were impressed with how fast China built a new COVID-19 hospital in Wuhan. Westerners nervously wondered if they could build new hospitals as quickly and worried that they might not have enough ventilators to meet peak demand or enough factories to produce protective equipment.

pages: 226 words: 58,341

The New Snobbery by David Skelton

assortative mating, banking crisis, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, centre right, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, critical race theory, David Brooks, defund the police, deindustrialization, Etonian, Extinction Rebellion, financial deregulation, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, housing crisis, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, knowledge economy, lockdown, low skilled workers, market fundamentalism, meritocracy, microaggression, new economy, Northern Rock, open borders, postindustrial economy, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Right to Buy, rising living standards, shareholder value, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, TED Talk, TikTok, wealth creators, women in the workforce

That promise must still be delivered. COVID-19 – A CALL TO ACTION Our national experience during the Covid-19 pandemic has made the necessity for the promised change even more urgent. The pandemic has clearly shone a light on the tilted nature of the economy, and as we have previously discussed, the lowest paid have been more exposed to both the health and financial risks of the virus. Lockdowns have meant that high-income earners have built up savings, whereas those on lower incomes have seen savings disappear and debt grow. The fact that people working in elementary jobs were more than twice as likely to die of Covid was a stark reminder that the UK’s economic divides aren’t merely theoretical.

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INDEX Adams, Gladstone 1 Alipoor, Javaad 1 Ant and Dec 1 Arts Council 1 Arts and Humanities Research Council 1 Ashcroft, Lord 1 associative mating 1 Atlas Shrugged (Rand) 1 Attlee, Clement 1, 2, 3 Bale, Tim 1 banking crisis (2008) 1 BBC coverage of EU referendum 1 diversity targets in 1 identity politics/wokeism in 1 middle-class dominance of 1 working-class representation in 1 Bevin, Ernest 1 Beyond the Red Wall (Mattinson) 1 Blair, Tony 1, 2, 3 Bloodworth, James 1, 2 Blue Labour 1 Bohonos, Jeremy 1 Bourdieu, Pierre 1, 2 Brahminisation of Social Democratic parties 1 Brecht, Bertolt 1 Brennan, Jason 1 British Library 1, 2 British Medical Journal 1 British Museum 1 British Social Attitudes Survey 1, 2 Brooks, David 1, 2, 3 Brown, Gordon 1, 2 Buerk, Michael 1 Burchill, Julie 1 Bush, Vannevar 1 Butler, Dawn 1 Cable, Vince 1 Cameron, David 1, 2, 3, 4 Carry On films 1 Cartoon Museum 1 Cass, Oren 1 Cedefop polls 1 Centre for Cities 1 Chamberlain, Joseph 1 Change UK 1 Channel 4 News 1 Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 1 Churchill, Winston 1, 2 Class Ceiling, The (Friedman and Laurison) 1 Clegg, Nick 1 Clinton, Bill 1 community building 1 Conservative Party economic policies of 1 membership of 1 pro-worker politics 1 quango appointments 1 on social issues 1 values of 1 working-class support for 1, 2 corporate governance 1 Countryfile 1 Covid pandemic 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Cowley, Tim 1 Cruddas, Jon 1 cultural capital 1 culture and cultural capital 1 and ‘four lads’ meme 1 and identity politics/wokeism 1 middle-class domination of 1 as national unifier 1 pro-worker policies 1, 2 representation of working class 1, 2 working-class values in 1 Davie, Tim 1, 2, 3 Davis, Andrew 1 Deneen, Patrick 1 dignity of work 1 Disraeli, Benjamin 1, 2, 3 Durham University 1 economics and corporate governance 1 and Covid pandemic 1 decline of skilled work 1 and dignity of work 1 impact of changes on working class 1 industrial policies 1 inevitability of change 1 investment in workers 1 and meritocracy 1 pro-worker policies 1, 2, 3 revival of manufacturing 1 and shareholder value theory 1 and social mobility 1 wage stagnation 1, 2, 3, 4 Economist, The 1 education and access to professions 1 David Skelton’s experience of 1 and identity politics/wokeism 1 pro-worker policies 1, 2 reinforcement of class divide after 1 universities in 1, 2 and vocational/technical education 1, 2 white working-class children in 1 working class let down by 1, 2 Eliot, T.

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Twelve years after the banking crash came another catastrophe that hit hardest those communities who were suffering the most from over a decade of stagnating real wages. With over 100,000 deaths, Covid-19 was devastating for the entire country, but the lower down the income scale you were, the worse hit you were by both the economic and the health impacts of Covid. Put simply, it’s easier to work from home in most middle-class jobs than in most working-class jobs, and social distancing was simply not an option in many unskilled positions. One study found that those with household incomes of over £50,000 a year were six times more likely to be able to work from home than those whose household income was less than £20,000.

pages: 601 words: 135,202

Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis by Jeanna Smialek

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, decarbonisation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Akerlof, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Henri Poincaré, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, junk bonds, laissez-faire capitalism, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, meme stock, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, short squeeze, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, working-age population, yield curve

The situation was serious, Powell told his colleagues. They needed to think it through. They ran through an analysis of what could happen with the virus and what it would mean. What were the economics of a pandemic in 2020? “There could be a very large social distancing impact on demand,” Stacey Tevlin, the Fed Board’s head of research and statistics, told her colleagues. The phrase “social distance” was still a new one. It sounded alien, almost funny. “How bad are we talking, Rich?” Powell asked his second-in-command, searching for a worst-case scenario. “Probability distributions have means, right tails, left tails,” Clarida hemmed, referencing the common statistical bell curve: The right tail includes low-probability good outcomes, the left low-probability bad ones, and the middle is made up of more likely, less exciting scenarios.

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Ramamurti had spent oversight hearings pushing for stricter limits on business loans and corporate programs, but also for a more expansive reading of the Fed’s role as lender of last resort. In a letter co-authored with Representative Ayanna Pressley, one of the members of the squad of first-time Democratic Congress members, Ramamurti had criticized what he saw as misplaced ambitions. “You have both acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic has had an outsized impact on Black and Brown communities and women, and the Federal Reserve recently proclaimed that its full employment mandate—which applies to the CARES Act programs—is a ‘broad-based and inclusive goal,’ ” the pair wrote. “And yet, your design of these programs appears to be widening racial and gender gaps rather than closing them.”[11] Senator Toomey, on the other hand, viewed the Democratic agenda with worried skepticism.

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But as of Powell’s tenure, decades of crises and a few pivotal characters had fundamentally changed the Fed’s purpose and function in America’s economy. By the time we all learned the term “social distancing” and became armchair experts on mRNA in 2020, the Fed had become central banker to the world, the most important economic policy setter in history, and the enabler of modern finance. And the following year, as inflation took off in the wake of the government’s sweeping response to the pandemic, it was the Fed that America would look to as its first line of defense. * * * — In the modern era, the central bank’s most basic job is—as it has been for decades—to keep the economy humming along at a steady but sustainable pace.

pages: 414 words: 117,581

Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix by Dade Hayes, Dawn Chmielewski

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, Apollo 13, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Big Tech, borderless world, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, data science, digital rights, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, George Floyd, global pandemic, Golden age of television, haute cuisine, hockey-stick growth, invention of the telephone, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Jony Ive, late fees, lockdown, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mitch Kapor, Netflix Prize, Osborne effect, performance metric, period drama, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, QR code, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, remote working, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, Steve Jobs, subscription business, tech bro, the long tail, the medium is the message, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, vertical integration, WeWork

See also NBCUniversal acquisition of NBCUniversal, x, 84, 124–32 acquisition of Sky, 96, 128–29, 131–32, 307 Disney and, 126–27, 152, 176 streamatis personae, x TV Everywhere, 83, 84 Xfinity, 101, 123–24, 198, 199, 248 Comedy Central, 144, 221 Coming 2 America, 265, 298 Community, 137–38, 266 Conjuring, The: The Devil Made Me Do It, 305 Connelly, Tim, 116 Consumer Electronics Shows, 56–57, 116 Conway, Ron, 99 Cook, Tim, ix, 6, 100, 103–4, 105, 178–79, 259 Cooper, Morgan, 113 Coppola, Francis Ford, 156 Coppola, Sofia, 103 Cosby Show, The, 212 Cotillard, Marianne, 265 COVID-19 insurance, 275 COVID-19 pandemic, xiii–xx, 31, 110, 188, 192, 230, 244, 249–50, 251, 257, 271–72, 284–85 COVID-19 vaccines, 285 Crackle, 140 Crawford, Joan, 29 Crawford, Katherine, 46 Crazy Rich Asians, 253, 304 Crédit Lyonnais, 299 Criterion Collection, 156–57 Crown, The, 56, 75, 98, 159–60, 184, 237 Crudup, Billy, 6–7, 10, 98, 247 Cruella, 278, 305 Cruise, Tom, 283 Crunchyroll, 156, 221 CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, 143 Cuarón, Alfonso, 32, 156, 233 Cuban, Mark, 23, 255 Cue, Eddy, ix, 10, 100, 101, 102, 133–34, 179–82, 184–85 Cukor, George, 29 Cuoco, Kaley, 282 Curai, 49 Cuse, Carlton, 152 Daily Chill, The, 119 Daily Essentials, 116, 118, 119 Damon, Matt, 295 Dancing with the Stars, 243 Daniel, Kareem, xi, 277–78 Dark, 233 Da Vinci Code, The, 192 Davis, Colin, 114 DAZN, 135, 141 DC Universe, 156 Deadline, xvii, 288, 295 Dean, Howard, 53 Dear Evan Hansen, 213 Dear White People, 278 Death on the Nile, 272 Defending Jacob, 104 DeGroff, Dale, 204 Delrahim, Makan, 63 Del Toro, Guillermo, 113, 156 Demimonde, 223 De Niro, Robert, 11–12, 15–16, 302, 310 Denson, Denise, 87 Desperate Housewives, 79, 80, 82 DeVillier, Lauren, 311 DiCaprio, Leonardo, 12, 31, 156, 260, 310 Dick, Kirby, 186 Dick, Philip K., 295, 296 Dickinson, 104, 179, 245 Die Hart, 118 Diller, Barry, 108–9 Dinklage, Peter, 61, 77 Diop, Mati, 15 DirecTV, 62, 123, 134, 218–20, 289 Discovery, 5, 128 acquisition of Scripps, 131, 306 proposed merger with WarnerMedia, 289–90, 303, 306–8, 313–14 Discovery+, 307–8 Dishmantled, 118 Dish Network, 89, 123 Disney (Walt Disney Company), 5, 78–96, 271–80 acquisition of 21st Century Fox, 63, 95–96, 128–29, 131, 152, 168–70, 306 acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC, 78–83, 107, 122, 126 alliance with Apple, 78, 79–81, 83–84, 173 ClassPass, 311 COVID-19 pandemic and, 271–72, 275–76, 277, 278 deal with Hulu, 63, 88, 95, 131, 145, 150–53, 168, 318 digital wake-up call, 79–84 Go Network, 90–91 Investor Days, 103–4, 167–68, 177, 208, 211, 223, 277, 278 NBCUniversal and, 126–27, 307 Netflix and, 50–51, 79, 87–89, 126, 160, 175–76, 230–31, 234–35, 317–18 streamatis personae, xi streaming, 79–96, 124, 135–36, 167–77, 272–80, 308 TV Everywhere, 83–88 Disney, Walt, 147 Disney+, xviii, 152, 167–77, 196, 216, 230–31, 272–80, 308–9, 317–18 launch difficulties, 241–44 Premier Access, 260, 276–77, 279, 305 subscribers, 175–76, 190, 210–11, 244, 252–54, 260, 279, 305, 317 Disney Consumer Products, 277 Disney Cruise Line, 176 Disney FastPass, 274 Disneyland, xiii, 176, 243, 271–72 DisneyLife, 93–94 Disney Vacation Club, 243 Disney Vault, 273–74, 278 DisneyWar (Stewart), 90 Dockery, Michelle, 104 Dr.

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That scenario was championed by cinephiles in the spring of 2021 when Hollywood’s famed Cinerama Dome and ArcLight Cinemas announced they were closing due to the pandemic. “Netflix, you know what to do,” tweeted journalist Yashar Ali. Show-business glamour isn’t the first thing that comes to mind during a trip through the area surrounding Icon. Tinged with grit, it has witnessed more than a century of boom-and-bust cycles. A Denny’s restaurant two blocks down Sunset is a favorite of panhandlers. Day laborers pack the parking lot of Home Depot just on the other side of the freeway. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a widespread rethink of office spaces in many business sectors, Netflix announced a major expansion to a building across the street.

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Moviegoing, one of the oldest rituals in American cultural life, had officially returned after the depths and deprivations of the coronavirus pandemic. The atmosphere in the theater turned celebratory, even giddy, a mood uncannily matched by the high-spirited film itself. The premiere of In the Heights was kicking off the twentieth annual Tribeca Film Festival, the first festival in North America to feature in-person screenings since COVID-19 hit in early 2020. “Before COVID,” Tribeca cofounder De Niro said before the lights went down, “the simple act of going out to a movie theater was something that you would take for granted.

pages: 475 words: 134,707

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt by Sinan Aral

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, death of newspapers, deep learning, deepfake, digital divide, digital nomad, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Drosophila, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental subject, facts on the ground, fake news, Filter Bubble, George Floyd, global pandemic, hive mind, illegal immigration, income inequality, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lockdown, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, mobile money, move fast and break things, multi-sided market, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, performance metric, phenotype, recommendation engine, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Russian election interference, Second Machine Age, seminal paper, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, skunkworks, Snapchat, social contagion, social distancing, social graph, social intelligence, social software, social web, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yogi Berra

We organized Zoom meetings to brainstorm how we could contribute to efforts to address the pandemic. While stressing the need to first do no harm, I reached out to my contacts at social platforms around the world to see how we could help. In a week, we created three projects supporting national and international health organizations, measuring the effect of social distancing on COVID-19 spread and fighting pandemic misinformation online. I reached out to Facebook and suggested a collaboration. They responded quickly and said that, since we already had a data licensing agreement, they could share data right away. We focused on modeling the effect of social distancing on the pandemic’s spread.

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In the same way negative social media content creates negative value on the Hype Machine, influencers can encourage both positive and negative behaviors. When Charnas advertised her flight out of New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials criticized the communication as harmful for influencing her followers to do the same. Our research showed that social media connections created geographic and social spillovers that dramatically affected adherence to social distancing during the pandemic. A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. —HERBERT SIMON In September 2016, as Alexander Nix, the now-disgraced former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, strode confidently onstage at the Concordia Annual Summit in New York to talk about “the power of big data in global elections,” the conference sound system played “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival as his hype music.

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In Nigeria, for example, a hoax meme suggested you could cure the disease by excessively drinking salt water, which led to several deaths. A similar pattern repeated itself during the COVID-19 pandemic. While social media delivered lifesaving information and provided human connection at a time of forced social distancing, misinformation and hoax cures also spread around the world, hindering public health efforts to contain the pandemic. The Transparency Paradox Immediately after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, in an interview by Martin Giles for the MIT Technology Review, I predicted the Hype Machine was about to face a dilemma that would pull it in competing directions.

Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy by Andrew Yang

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, basic income, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, blue-collar work, call centre, centre right, clean water, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, data is the new oil, data science, deepfake, disinformation, Donald Trump, facts on the ground, fake news, forensic accounting, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, income inequality, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Roose, labor-force participation, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, medical bankruptcy, new economy, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pez dispenser, QAnon, recommendation engine, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, surveillance capitalism, systematic bias, tech billionaire, TED Talk, The Day the Music Died, the long tail, TikTok, universal basic income, winner-take-all economy, working poor

Let’s move this country of ours—the one we love and will leave to our children—Forward. AFTERWORD I wrote this book while I was deciding to run for mayor of New York City. It was both an easy and a hard decision. Seeing New York City hollowed out by the COVID-19 pandemic was heartbreaking. Thousands of restaurants and small businesses closed, Fifth Avenue was partially boarded up, and Broadway’s lights went out. More than 30,000 New Yorkers died from COVID-19, and, according to one estimate, more than 200,000 left the city’s metro area in 2020. The coronavirus devastated New York and made living among millions of other people a drawback instead of a strength.

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Here are some of the indicators Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020), 81. Economists estimate that 42 percent Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis, “COVID-19 Is Also a Reallocation Shock,” National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2020. One in six Americans Megan Leonhardt, “1 in 10 Americans Are Struggling to Afford Enough Food amid the Pandemic,” CNBC, Sept. 10, 2020; Claire Hansen, “1 in 5 Young Children Don’t Have Enough to Eat During the Coronavirus Pandemic,” U.S. News & World Report, May 6, 2020. Thirty percent of Americans missed Igor Popov, Chris Salviati, and Rob Warnok, “Missed Payments Stabilize in June—at Alarming Levels,” Apartment List, June 9, 2020.

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Facebook had just lost Robert Channick, “Nearly 1.6 Million Illinois Facebook Users to Get About $350 Each in Privacy Settlement,” Chicago Tribune, Jan. 14, 2021. CHAPTER 14: LOYALTY CUTS BOTH WAYS The data shouted the same thing Mark E. Cziesler et al., “Mental Health, Substance Use, and Suicidal Ideation During the COVID-19 Pandemic—United States, June 24–30, 2020,” CDC, Aug. 14, 2020. Racism against Asian Americans “Covid-19 Fueling Anti-Asian Racism and Xenophobia Worldwide,” Human Rights Watch, May 12, 2020. Asian Americans had historically voted “The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the U.S. Electorate,” Pew Research Center, Sept. 23, 2020. The final tally “Kentucky Results,” NPR, accessed March 1, 2021, apps.npr.org/elections20-primaries/states/KY.html.

pages: 309 words: 81,243

The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent by Ben Shapiro

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Web Services, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, defund the police, delayed gratification, deplatforming, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, future of work, gender pay gap, George Floyd, global pandemic, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Herbert Marcuse, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, Jon Ronson, Kevin Roose, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, microaggression, mutually assured destruction, New Journalism, obamacare, Overton Window, Parler "social media", Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steven Pinker, Susan Wojcicki, tech bro, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, War on Poverty, yellow journalism

Treating science as politics undermines science; treating politics as science costs lives. That’s precisely what the authoritarian Left does when it invokes The ScienceTM to justify itself. We saw The ScienceTM prevail over science itself repeatedly during the pandemic, to ugly effect. Perhaps the most robust finding with regard to Covid—a finding replicated across the globe—was that large gatherings involving shouting and singing were inherently more dangerous than sparsely populated, socially distanced situations. The media quickly seized on this fact, for example, to chide anti-lockdown protesters for their irresponsibility, claiming that even outdoor protests could be unsafe.1 Meanwhile, local officials in many areas went beyond the science itself, closing beaches, hiking trails, and even public parks—areas that were in no way chief vectors for transmission.2 Republicans who refused to close beaches in largely unaffected areas, like Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, were heavily criticized.3 All of the pro-lockdown policy and rhetoric was justified with appeals to science.

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Maura Jones, explained, “I would argue that, yeah I’m a doctor and I encourage you to social distance and I care about coronavirus and I know that it’s a real threat, but racism is, to me to my family, the bigger threat right now and it has been for hundreds of years.” Dr. Jasmine Johnson joined a protest by the University of North Carolina Student National Medical Association with a sign reading, “Racism is a pandemic too!” She claimed that racism was the root cause of racial disparities in death statistics from Covid—and therefore suggested that protest was actually a public health good.11 Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, made the most insane case of all: that the protests would fuel Covid spread, but that this didn’t matter.

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In late 2020, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, laid out his support for what he called “the Great Reset.” Schwab explained in Time that the Covid pandemic had pushed forward a key question: “Will governments, businesses and other influential stakeholders truly change their ways for the better after this, or will we go back to business as usual?” Now, this was truly an odd question. Prior to the pandemic, the world economy was in the midst of a boom time. Unemployment rates in the United States had dropped to record lows; economic growth was strong. What, then, was the impetus for corporations “changing their ways for the better”?

pages: 389 words: 111,372

Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis by Beth Macy

2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, defund the police, Donald Trump, drug harm reduction, Easter island, fake news, Haight Ashbury, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, Laura Poitras, liberation theology, mandatory minimum, mass incarceration, medical malpractice, medical residency, mutually assured destruction, New Journalism, NSO Group, obamacare, off grid, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, pill mill, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, single-payer health, social distancing, The Chicago School, Upton Sinclair, working poor, working-age population, Y2K, zero-sum game

There’s people injecting drugs and stealing my kids’ bicycles—fuck ’em!’” Two months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I reached out to Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the husband-and-wife economist duo who first reported America’s declining life-expectancy trend and coined the term “deaths of despair” as an explanation for soaring opioid, alcohol, and suicide deaths (particularly among middle-aged White men and women who hadn’t gone to college). Back then, Mount Airy had very few reported COVID cases and zero COVID deaths. But overdoses in the county were up 29 percent from the previous year, with an uptick in methamphetamine, polysubstance, and alcohol-poisoning deaths.

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Deaton told me about a friend at Princeton who was healthy and in her early thirties, and yet had nearly succumbed to COVID in the pandemic’s early weeks. Despite their friend’s connections and relative affluence, she could not access a COVID test when she got sick. “Economists know the free market doesn’t respond to emergencies—you don’t put out a bid when someone’s drowning in the ocean,” Deaton said. The madness that was America’s piss-poor response to the coronavirus was the same madness that had long imperiled addiction treatment, only literally no one was immune from COVID, not even then-President Trump. “Illicit drugs can’t get here from China now, but the ABC stores will deliver booze to your door!”

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If life-expectancy declines persist, experts predict it will take more than a century to recover. Roughly six months into my reporting for this book, COVID-19 emerged in March 2020. Overdose deaths went up as the pandemic further isolated people with substance use disorders (SUDs). That community was already plagued by the poisoning of street drugs with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin, and an environment that makes it far easier for people with addictions to use illicit drugs than to access treatment for addiction and their underlying mental health issues. Within the first pandemic year, the overdose count was 29 percent higher than the year before, and the numbers kept climbing.

pages: 458 words: 132,912

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America by Victor Davis Hanson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, bread and circuses, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, defund the police, deindustrialization, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, El Camino Real, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, George Floyd, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Nate Silver, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, old-boy network, Paris climate accords, Parler "social media", peak oil, Potemkin village, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, school choice, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, tech worker, Thomas L Friedman, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Somehow tribal tensions superseded even notions of public health in a time of pandemic. Over one thousand health care professionals nationwide offered an unapologetic defense of the seemingly selective enforcement of COVID-19 quarantines: “We created the letter in response to emerging narratives that seemed to malign demonstrations as risky for the public health because of COVID-19. Instead, we wanted to present a narrative that prioritizes opposition to racism as vital to the public health, including the pandemic response.” President-elect Joe Biden almost immediately announced he would be helping small businesses adversely affected by the pandemic and lockdown primarily on the basis of the race or ethnicity of their owners.

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With each clap of the crowd, he gained a new enemy in Washington, even as he seemed oblivious of the growing number—and underappreciated and often silent wealth and power—of his various political opponents. Finally, Trump took on globalization, especially after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. He focused in general on the practice of unfettered but asymmetrical transnational trade and in particular on the mercantilism of China, soon to be further suspect given the Wuhan, China, origins of COVID-19. When the pandemic hit, the United States and China were deadlocked in a trade war. The American pushback had both angered and surprised the Chinese, who had thought their imminent global hegemony a foregone conclusion.

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Accurate data about rates of transmission, infectiousness, and lethality were impossible to come by due to the general chaos of the times and the politicization of the disease both in the United States and abroad.3 In stark terms, details about the pandemic were either deemphasized or exaggerated—depending upon the politics of the respective agency, media, or individual medical expert. Was Trump doing well in combatting the plague? After all, deaths per million in America for most of the pandemic were about on par with those in major European nations such as the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy—while the US economy remained far stronger despite a national lockdown. Or was he doing poorly because the COVID-19 death rates were lower in Germany? Did COVID-19 hit the United States like no other virus because it seemed to have killed more Americans than any infectious agent since the 1918 flu pandemic?

pages: 236 words: 73,008

Deadly Quiet City: True Stories From Wuhan by Murong Xuecun

Boris Johnson, citizen journalism, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, global pandemic, lockdown, megacity, Ponzi scheme, QR code, social distancing, TikTok

Australia’s proposal for an international inquiry into the origins and responses to the coronavirus pandemic is gathering international support, with the EU collecting signatures for a motion establishing an inquiry at the meeting of the World Health Authority. The performance of the WHO will also be investigated. More than 100 million residents of north-east Chinese province Jilin are put into lockdown after outbreaks of COVID-19. On 19 May, the World Health Assembly adopts without opposition a resolution to establish an inquiry into the origins and responses to the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 cases exceed five million globally, with 340,000 dead.

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Everyone has a personal QR code which is required to prove you are legal and uninfected just to be able to take subway journeys, enter restaurants, or shop at supermarkets. No one cares anymore about privacy or rights because they disappeared long ago in China. In the foreseeable future, COVID-19 prevention policies that treat people with contempt will continue. When the day comes that COVID-19 is no longer a pandemic, Xi Jinping will not relinquish ruling by QR code. It will shackle China for a long time to come because the QR codes report people’s movements; and when required it can be changed to ensure that ‘petitioners’ and dissidents, as well house church congregants, have no options to seek justice.

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You will hear the inner voices of people who were unable or too scared to speak out. You will share their torments. But bear in mind that these tragedies are just the beginning of an even greater tragedy. * On 27 July 2022, while living in Australia, I became infected with COVID-19, but unlike my compatriots I did not feel fear or concern. Instead, I felt relieved. I wrote a book about Wuhan, detailing many stories about COVID-19 but I had not actually experienced the illness myself. That had been on my conscience. ‘It’s all right,’ I could now whisper to myself. ‘I finally know what it’s like.’ My symptoms were very mild, like a light cold with a slight fever and aching muscles.

pages: 301 words: 90,276

Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing by Andrew Ross

8-hour work day, Airbnb, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, carbon footprint, Celebration, Florida, clean water, climate change refugee, company town, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, do what you love, Donald Trump, drive until you qualify, edge city, El Camino Real, emotional labour, financial innovation, fixed income, gentrification, gig economy, global supply chain, green new deal, Hernando de Soto, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, Housing First, housing justice, industrial cluster, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, land bank, late fees, lockdown, Lyft, megaproject, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage tax deduction, New Urbanism, open immigration, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peter Calthorpe, pill mill, rent control, rent gap, rent stabilization, restrictive zoning, Richard Florida, San Francisco homelessness, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, starchitect, tech bro, the built environment, traffic fines, uber lyft, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, working poor

“If you dig a firepit,” Louise points out, “you’ll hit water pretty quickly here.” By the end of the pandemic summer of 2020, the camps were filling out again with returnees, new arrivals from a wave of motel evictions, and a sprinkling of COVID refugees. During the coronavirus crisis, concentrations of unhoused people in cities around the country were seen as public health threats, and some widely ridiculed alternatives to shelters were introduced by authorities. As most hotel rooms nearby lay empty, San Francisco opened a “safe sleeping village” for socially distanced homeless in the Civic Center Plaza, just yards from City Hall. Las Vegas officials, more notoriously, converted a parking lot into a quarantine area for rough sleepers.

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Cloud Airfield Site,”GrowthSpotter, October 20, 2020, https://www.growthspotter.com/news/osceola-county-developments/gs-news-rental-homes-20201020-g4ha5dgpcfaudaqtedstl2uhzy-story.html. 18. Occupancy data for all Florida tourist properties can be found at “COVID-19 FL Tourism Impacts,” Visit Florida, https://www.visitflorida.org/resources/crisis-preparation/covid-19-resources-and-information-for-businesses/covid-19-fl-tourism-impacts/. 19. Ken Storey, “Route 192 in Kissimmee Is About to Get a Dubai-Style Resort,” Orlando Weekly, April 4, 2016, https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2016/04/04/route-192-in-kissimmee-is-about-to-get-a-dubai-style-resort. The pandemic recession put paid to the most ambitious version of the site plan; the towers were dropped and retail scaled back to reflect grimmer economic forecasts.

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The magic they conjure up from their hearts is the monetary lifeblood of the company, underwriting its vast profits year after year. By any measure, they are owed a whole lot more than $15. OUT OF WORK The COVID-19 pandemic delivered a sharp blow to most employers, especially small businesses with scarce capital reserves. It also broke the momentum of rising wages across the country. After mass layoffs, the ready availability of workers desperate for jobs meant that demands for higher pay would be on mute for a while. During the first months of the pandemic lockdown, national unemployment levels went from record lows to record highs. LHT industry employees in top travel destinations like New York, Hawaii, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, Atlantic City, Myrtle Beach, Flagstaff, and Orlando were the hardest hit of all.

pages: 223 words: 60,936

Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere by Tsedal Neeley

Airbnb, Boycotts of Israel, call centre, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, discrete time, Donald Trump, future of work, global pandemic, iterative process, job satisfaction, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, lockdown, mass immigration, natural language processing, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, Silicon Valley, social distancing

Like other global leaders entering an emergent market, she was bound to work in conditions rife with ambiguity. Seven years later, she would work in even greater ambiguity—as well as volatility, uncertainty, and complexity—when the worldwide pandemic caused by COVID-19 blew open the world. I will describe how she responded a little later. We don’t know what the long-term effects of COVID-19 will be on organizations, industries, and societies, although we do know that the world has profoundly changed. During the pandemic, every government leader had to make decisions that weigh the losses and gains of quarantine versus business as usual while not being able to accurately predict the consequences of whatever strategy they designate.

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Accurate and effective communication channels between official agencies, medical administrators, and personnel were already active; testing and tracing technology was in place; and people understood the purpose of stay-at-home precautions. The population remained relatively unscathed because leadership at many levels was able to accurately frame and anticipate the 2020 COVID-19 health crisis by building a coordinated, country-wide task force. Singapore’s leaders clicked into and framed the risks they saw on the horizon. GENERATE SOLUTIONS WITH DIVERSE MINDS The crisis unfolding in 2013 around Molinas in Turkey, while not as volatile, complex, or far-reaching as the COVID-19 pandemic (although she too would have to reckon with the events of 2020), is more indicative of the crises that global leaders face on a regular basis.

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Periodic relaunches are important in good times but crucial in times of uncertainty, as James’s story illustrates. The team might need to switch to a new mediating tool that calls for new norms of communication. The government might introduce new regulations or laws that affect people’s work patterns, as we saw when millions were switched to working from home during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries, markets, or entire industries might make a sudden shift that requires the team to reorient their goals. Periodic relaunches are the only structured mechanisms to give teams the ability to quickly pivot in a systematic way. GETTING ALIGNED ON SHARED GOALS Contrary to what many people believe, team alignment is not synonymous with agreement.

pages: 245 words: 75,397

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader by Colin Lancaster

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, asset-backed security, beat the dealer, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, Carmen Reinhart, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, collateralized debt obligation, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, Edward Thorp, family office, fear index, fiat currency, fixed income, Flash crash, George Floyd, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, index arbitrage, inverted yield curve, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, National Debt Clock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, oil shock, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, social distancing, SoftBank, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, The Great Moderation, TikTok, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, value at risk, Vision Fund, WeWork, yield curve, zero-sum game

Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader Colin Lancaster Contents Part 1: The Late Stages of a Bubble Chapter 1 Sushi, Sake and a Breakdown in the repo markets October 2019 Chapter 2 Viva Las Vegas November 2019 Chapter 3 The Star Tavern and Life in Knightsbridge December 2019 Part 2: The Crash Chapter 4 The Virus Spreads January 2020 Chapter 5 Risk Management and an Inflection Point February 2020 Chapter 6 Market Crash March 2020 Part 3: The Aftermath Chapter 7 QE Dreaming April 2020 Chapter 8 Economic Data Worse than the Great Depression May 2020 Chapter 9 Lessons from the Gilded Age; Back to Market Highs June 2020 About the author Acknowledgments Publishing Details For Tia, Victoria, Sophia, and Maria “We have always found, where a government has mortgaged all its revenues, that it necessarily sinks into a state of languor, inactivity, and impotence.” David Hume This book tells the story of a global macro trader working amidst the greatest market panic that we’ve seen since the Great Depression. As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the world, readers are taken through the late-stage decadence of an exuberant market bubble to the depths of the market crash and into the early innings of a recovery. It provides readers with a front row seat on trading activity, allowing them a view of the market’s heartbeat.

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The virus is still spreading: nearly 65,000 confirmed cases, 5,000 new cases announced yesterday, and over 1,100 deaths to date. It even has its own name now: COVID-19. It’s nastier than originally thought. It can cause severe acute respiratory distress syndrome and multiorgan failure. The central banks respond: more liquidity. The PBOC is buying everything that isn’t nailed to the floor. And for good measure, the Fed also dumped in another $80 billion. Pandemics are tricky for the markets. They’re the type of exogenous shock that comes out of nowhere and can have dramatic economic consequences if not contained.

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“Rabbi, what else do you like?” I say. “Let me dig some more. I’ll take a look at past pandemics to see what has moved the most: Spanish flu, SARS, MERS, and H1N1. Anything else?” “Let’s look at hedge fund positioning,” I say. “Let’s look for the most crowded names.” “Good idea.” “Anything else?” I ask. “Well,” the Rabbi says, “Kraft finally got downgraded. We will see more fallen angels. Corporate leverage has risen so much. And credit spreads just keep coming in. You’re just not getting paid to own credit. And if COVID-19 gets worse, credit spreads will really move. We should pile on.” “Let’s sell some more.”

pages: 314 words: 75,678

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates

agricultural Revolution, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, fear of failure, Ford Model T, global pandemic, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of air conditioning, Louis Pasteur, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, negative emissions, oil shock, performance metric, plant based meat, purchasing power parity, risk tolerance, social distancing, Solyndra, systems thinking, TED Talk, the built environment, the High Line, urban planning, yield management

Let’s put all this into terms that everyone who is experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic can relate to. If you want to understand the kind of damage that climate change will inflict, look at COVID-19 and then imagine spreading the pain out over a much longer period of time. The loss of life and economic misery caused by this pandemic are on par with what will happen regularly if we do not eliminate the world’s carbon emissions. I’ll start with the loss of life. How many people will be killed by COVID-19 versus by climate change? Because we want to compare events that happen at different points in time—the pandemic in 2020 and climate change in, say, 2030—and the global population will change in that time, we can’t compare the absolute numbers of deaths.

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By the end of the century, if emissions growth stays high, climate change could be responsible for 75 extra deaths per 100,000 people. In other words, by mid-century, climate change could be just as deadly as COVID-19, and by 2100 it could be five times as deadly. The economic picture is also bleak. The likely impacts from climate change and from COVID-19 vary quite a bit, depending on which economic model you use. But the conclusion is unmistakable: In the next decade or two, the economic damage caused by climate change will likely be as bad as having a COVID-sized pandemic every 10 years. And by the end of the 21st century, it will be much worse if the world remains on its current emissions path.*2 Many of the predictions in this chapter may sound familiar to you if you’ve been following climate change in the news.

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Launching Mission Innovation with world leaders at the 2015 UN climate conference in Paris. (See this page for the names of those photographed.) In 2020, disaster struck when a novel coronavirus spread around the world. To anyone who knows the history of pandemics, the devastation caused by COVID-19 was not a surprise. I had been studying disease outbreaks for years as part of my interest in global health, and I had become deeply concerned that the world wasn’t ready to handle a pandemic like the 1918 flu, which killed tens of millions of people. In 2015, I had given a TED talk and several interviews in which I made the case that we needed to create a system for detecting and responding to big disease outbreaks.

pages: 371 words: 122,273

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency by Vicky Spratt

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, basic income, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, edge city, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, garden city movement, gender pay gap, gentrification, gig economy, global pandemic, housing crisis, Housing First, illegal immigration, income inequality, Induced demand, Jane Jacobs, Jeremy Corbyn, land bank, land reform, land value tax, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, mass immigration, mega-rich, meta-analysis, negative equity, Overton Window, Own Your Own Home, plutocrats, quantitative easing, rent control, Right to Buy, Rishi Sunak, Rutger Bregman, side hustle, social distancing, stop buying avocado toast, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, working-age population, young professional, zero-sum game

Available at bradford.gov.uk/media/5756/bradford-homelessness-evidence-base-2020-to-2025.pdf just over one fifth (22 per cent) of rough sleepers: Combined Homelessness and Information Network, CHAIN Annual Report: Greater London, April 2020–March 2021, Greater London Authority (2021). 2,000 of the people housed: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Investigation into the housing of rough sleepers during the COVID-19 pandemic, National Audit Office (11 January 2021). Available at www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Investigation-into-the-housing-of-rough-sleepers-during-the-COVID-19-pandemic.pdf the High Court ruled that there was a legal basis: NRPF Network, ‘High Court rules councils can accommodate rough sleepers with no recourse to public funds during the Covid-19 pandemic’, 22 March 2021, www.nrpfnetwork.org.uk/news/accommodating-rough-sleepers This ruling came out of an important legal case: ‘The Queen (on the application of Timon Ncube) v.

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Staying at home might have been safe for some during the pandemic, but home proved to be a major site of transmission for those living in cramped conditions. ‘The exact location of infections is one of the big data gaps of the pandemic,’ Tunstall told me over Zoom. ‘But there can be no doubt that a substantial proportion of all Covid transmission in the UK would have occurred at home. A Chinese study found that during their lockdown, 69 per cent of infections were at home, for instance.’ Professor Tunstall also cited a UK study which found that, when the government’s tier system was in operation during the pandemic, people in areas categorised as Tier 4 (that is, the most restricted) had an average of five contacts with other people per week, and 1.5 of these were at home.

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By the autumn of 2021, that still had not happened. Part Three Utopian Thinking: The Problem of Change Historically, disasters – pandemics and world wars – have forced humans to break with the past and imagine the world anew. Will coronavirus do the same? We know that poor housing added to the hardship wrought by Covid-19. Policy responses to the pandemic have so far been necessarily short term. While short-term help is clearly needed, the pandemic provides an opportunity to rethink the direction of our social policies over the longer term. It has demonstrated that serious gaps in the social safety net can quickly become catastrophic when the system comes under pressure from the very sort of external forces it was meant to indemnify us against.

AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee, Chen Qiufan

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, active measures, airport security, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, DALL-E, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, digital map, digital rights, digital twin, Elon Musk, fake news, fault tolerance, future of work, Future Shock, game design, general purpose technology, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, GPT-3, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, information security, Internet of things, iterative process, job automation, language acquisition, low earth orbit, Lyft, Maslow's hierarchy, mass immigration, mirror neurons, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, OpenAI, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, plutocrats, post scarcity, profit motive, QR code, quantitative easing, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, smart transportation, Snapchat, social distancing, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, synthetic biology, telemarketer, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, trolley problem, Turing test, uber lyft, universal basic income, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, zero-sum game

She opened her eyes and reached out for Garcia, ready for a long-overdue plastic-textured embrace. ANALYSIS AI HEALTHCARE, ALPHAFOLD, ROBOTIC APPLICATIONS, COVID AUTOMATION ACCELERATION “Contactless Love” transpires in a society transformed by an ongoing pandemic—in this case, the prospect of the COVID-19 pandemic lingering for decades as a mutating seasonal virus. This hypothesis is, of course, just speculation. However long COVID stays with us, what has become clear now is that AI will reshape healthcare, from speeding the discovery of vaccines and drugs to accelerating the integration of technologies like AI diagnostics into existing care.

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The heroine of this story takes the desire to close oneself off from the world to an extreme, however, setting up a conflict between pursuing love and avoiding human contact. “Contactless Love” explores some of the questions raised by the arrival of a globe-altering pandemic, including its stresses but also how COVID-19 has accelerated other trends that may be positive, including new drug discovery, precision medicine, and robotic surgery, all enhanced by AI. In my commentary, I will describe how AI will disrupt conventional medicine, as well as give a road map for the commercialization of robotics. In two decades, COVID-19 will be remembered not just as a pandemic, but as an automation-accelerating event. THE NIGHTMARE HAD returned. Chen Nan was a ghost levitating in midair, watching her five-year-old self from the outside.

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CONVENTIONAL DRUG AND VACCINE DISCOVERY Drug and vaccine discovery have historically been extremely time-consuming and costly. It took over a hundred years to develop and perfect a vaccine for meningitis. Pharmaceutical companies were able to move much faster in developing vaccines for COVID-19, spurred on by unprecedented spending (the U.S. government alone spent $10 billion just in 2020) to run multiple clinical trials and manufacturing efforts on parallel tracks. Had COVID-19 been as contagious or as lethal as the worst pandemics, however, even waiting a year for a vaccine would have been too long. So we need to continue to accelerate the speed of vaccine and drug development. Drug discovery requires an understanding of how virus proteins, which are sequences of amino acids, fold into unique 3D shapes.

pages: 445 words: 122,877

Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity by Claudia Goldin

coronavirus, correlation coefficient, COVID-19, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, estate planning, financial independence, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Grace Hopper, hiring and firing, income inequality, Internet Archive, job automation, labor-force participation, longitudinal study, occupational segregation, old-boy network, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, remote working, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, young professional

But, as I noted then, Group Five includes women who are even younger, and its end date is not yet clear. 222 “Pandemic Will ‘Take Our Women 10 Years Back’ …” Amanda Taub, “Pandemic Will ‘Take Our Women 10 Years Back’ in the Workplace,” New York Times, September 26, 2020. 222 “Pandemic Could Scar a Generation of Working Mothers,” Patricia Cohen and Tiffany Hsu, “Pandemic Could Scar a Generation of Working Mothers,” New York Times, June 3, 2020. 222 “How COVID-19 Sent Women’s Workforce Progress Backward.” Julie Kashen, Sarah Jane Glynn, and Amanda Novello,“How COVID-19 Sent Women’s Workforce Progress Backward,” Center for American Progress, October 30, 2020, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2020/10/30/492582/covid-19-sent-womens-workforce-progress-backward/. 222 “… you’re allowed only a kid or a job.”

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Today, college graduates represent almost 45 percent of all US women in their late twenties. The anxieties and discontent of the college-graduate group are palpable. Newspapers and news feeds are filled with disquieting prophecies about the future of the younger members of Group Five: “Pandemic Will ‘Take Our Women 10 Years Back’ in the Workplace,” “Pandemic Could Scar a Generation of Working Mothers,” and “How COVID-19 Sent Women’s Workforce Progress Backward.” In the age of COVID, those with children and others to care for are struggling to put in the hours, publish the academic papers, write the briefs, and attend to demanding clients on Zoom. According to these predictions, a rug is being pulled out from under those who were finally able to achieve historic rates of career and family.

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See also gender earnings gap; inequality of income economic downturns: caregiving connections to, 219, 231–32, 237; COVID-19 pandemic creating, 74, 219, 221–23, 226, 231, 235; Great Depression as (see Great Depression); marriage effects of, 93; “she-cessions” as, 223 economic growth, 22–23 Economics of Household Production (Reid), 47, 48 education: advanced and professional degrees in (see advanced and professional degrees); age at time of, 41, 50, 265n41; antibias or diversity, 155; antidiscrimination laws for, 130, 225; coeducation in, 42, 82–83, 225, 266n43, 273n83; cost of, 90–91; college graduation rates, 41; COVID-19 pandemic effects on, 16, 203, 219, 221, 225, 227–29, 231; drop-out rates in, 85, 86–87, 274n87; gender earnings gap and, 159–60, 287n160; gender statistics on, 5–6, 41–42, 91–92, 275n92; of Group One women, 25–27, 39–45, 41, 49–50, 269n59; of Group Two women, 28–29, 39–45, 41, 70–71, 86; of Group Three women, 29–30, 39–45, 41, 86, 91–92, 95–96, 101–2, 104, 105–6, 112, 124, 274n86, 276n95, 277n101, 278n104; of Group Four women, 30–33, 39–45, 41, 112–13, 115, 117, 122, 127–30, 129, 139, 146, 199, 284n139; of Group Five women, 33, 39–45, 41, 139, 148–49, 149, 284n139; high school movement for, 71; lowered barriers to, 22; major selection for, 95–96, 101–2, 112, 128–29, 276n95, 282n128; marriage effects on, 35, 86–87; occupation-specific, 95–96, 112; for pharmacists, 190; pregnancy effects on, 36; prohibitions on, 20; sex ratio of, 41–42, 91–92, 275n92; single-sex institutions for, 42, 44; social class and, 42, 43, 50; white-collar work demands for, 70–71.

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia

anti-communist, antiwork, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, California gold rush, clean water, climate change refugee, collective bargaining, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, dark matter, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, extractivism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Food sovereignty, G4S, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, land reform, late capitalism, lockdown, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, pension reform, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, social distancing, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

Racialized women are overrepresented in the underpaid care sector, currently a front line in the struggle for a new green economy and whose value as an essential service socially reproducing life is crystal clear during the Covid-19 pandemic. Nurses, cleaners, teachers, domestic workers, grocery clerks, service workers, single mothers, and land defenders leading political struggles during the pandemic, and well before it, trenchantly assert that inequality is a product of austerity and also of differences made through nationality, race, gender, sexuality, and ability, which are co-constituents of class relations. As interdependent and interwoven societies, our fiercely internationalist struggle is not against “foreigners” but against any oppressors. State responses to the global Covid-19 pandemic have blown off the lid on border and rule practices and exposed the fault lines in our societies.

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(Spain: FRIDE and the Gulf Research Center), 49. 21.Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 22.De Bel-Air, “Demography, Migration and Labour Market in Saudi Arabia,” 5. 23.Adam Coogle, Detained, Beaten, Deported: Saudi Abuses against Migrants during Mass Expulsions, Human Rights Watch, May 10, 2015, www.hrw.org/report/2015/05/10/detained-beaten-deported/saudi-abuses-against-migrants-during-mass-expulsions. 24.Coogle, Detained, Beaten, Deported; International Organization for Migration, “Ethiopian Diaspora Continues its Support to IOM for Migrants Returning Home from Saudi Arabia,” February 18, 2015, https://ethiopia.iom.int/ethiopian-diaspora-continues-its-support-iom-migrants-returning-home-saudi-arabia. 25.Human Rights Watch, “Saudi Arabia: Events of 2018,” World Report 2019, www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/saudi-arabia. 26.AlShehabi, “Policing Labour in Empire.” 27.Hanieh, Lineages of Revolt, 131. 28.International Labour Organization, “Labour Migration: Facts and Figures in Arab States,” www.ilo.org/beirut/areasofwork/labour-migration/lang--en/index.htm. 29.Hadi Ghaemi, Building Towers, Cheating Workers: Exploitation of Migrant Construction Workers in the United Arab Emirates, Human Rights Watch, November 11, 2006, www.hrw.org/report/2006/11/11/building-towers-cheating-workers/exploitation-migrant-construction-workers-united. 30.Human Rights Watch, “The Island of Happiness”: Exploitation of Migrant Workers on Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, May 2009, www.refworld.org/pdfid/4a125f4b2.pdf. 31.Human Rights Watch, Migrant Workers’ Rights on Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates: 2015 Progress Report, February 10, 2015, www.hrw.org/report/2015/02/10/migrant-workers-rights-saadiyat-island-united-arab-emirates/2015-progress-report. 32.International Trade Union Confederation, The Case against Qatar, March 2014, www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/the_case_against_qatar_en_web170314.pdf. 33.Pete Pattison, “Revealed: Qatar’s World Cup ‘Slaves,’” Guardian, September 25, 2013, www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/revealed-qatars-world-cup-slaves. 34.Robert Booth, “Qatar World Cup Construction ‘Will Leave 4,000 Migrant Workers Dead,’” Guardian, September 26, 2013, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/sep/26/qatar-world-cup-migrant-workers-dead; Pattison, “Revealed.” 35.Amnesty International UK, “Qatar’s Lifting of Travel Restrictions for Many Migrant Workers Welcomed,” September 5, 2018, www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/qatars-lifting-travel-restrictions-many-migrant-workers-welcomed. 36.Amnesty International, “Qatar: Migrant Workers Illegally Expelled During COVID-19 Pandemic,” April 15, 2020, www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/04/qatar-migrant-workers-illegally-expelled-during-covid19-pandemic/. 37.Pete Pattisson and Roshan Sedhai, “Covid-19 Lockdown Turns Qatar’s Largest Migrant Camp into ‘Virtual Prison,’” Guardian, March 20, 2020, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/20/covid-19-lockdown-turns-qatars-largest-migrant-camp-into-virtual-prison. 38.Priyanka Motaparthy, “Understanding Kafala: An Archaic Law at Cross Purposes with Modern Development,” Migrant-Rights.org, March 11, 2015, www.migrant-rights.org/2015/03/understanding-kafala-an-archaic-law-at-cross-purposes-with-modern-development/. 39.Bina Fernandez and Marine de Regt, “Making a Home in the World: Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East,” in Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East: The Home and the World, Bina Fernandez and Marine de Regt, eds.

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In the US in 2019, thousands of “Close the Camps” mobilizations, demanding closure of detention facilities incarcerating migrant children and families, swept across the country. On May Day of the following year, mostly immigrant and racialized retail, warehouse, and food service workers at Amazon, Target, Whole Foods, and Instacart led protests and strikes for higher pay and better safety protections during the Covid-19 pandemic, while also refusing a return to pre-pandemic “normalcy.” Around the same time, tens of thousands of jobless and desperate mostly caste-oppressed migrant workers and day laborers in India’s major cities defied a national lockdown, thousands of them battling with police as they attempted to make their way home to their villages.

pages: 392 words: 114,189

The Ransomware Hunting Team: A Band of Misfits' Improbable Crusade to Save the World From Cybercrime by Renee Dudley, Daniel Golden

2021 United States Capitol attack, Amazon Web Services, Bellingcat, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Brian Krebs, call centre, centralized clearinghouse, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake it until you make it, Hacker News, heat death of the universe, information security, late fees, lockdown, Menlo Park, Minecraft, moral hazard, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, operational security, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Picturephone, pirate software, publish or perish, ransomware, Richard Feynman, Ross Ulbricht, seminal paper, smart meter, social distancing, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, tech worker, Timothy McVeigh, union organizing, War on Poverty, Y2K, zero day

“Yeah, it was definitely the work of an amateur,” Michael answered. Another ransomware strain that Michael cracked that weekend invoked the pandemic in its name—DEcovid19—and ransom note. “I am the second wave of COVID19,” the note said. “Now we infect even PC’s.” * * * While Michael escaped COVID-19, at least three of his teammates weren’t so fortunate. As a loner and hermit, Fabian considered himself at low risk. He had been staying home and social distancing long before everyone had to. Even his food was delivered to his apartment. “I didn’t know my lifestyle was called quarantine,” he joked.

…

Patrick’s Day in 2020, with holiday festivities canceled as COVID-19 swept across the United States, Lawrence Abrams messaged his contacts in the ransomware gangs. Led by Ryuk, the gangs had been steadily attacking bigger targets and demanding bigger ransoms. Then came the pandemic. By increasing society’s dependence on computers, it played into the attackers’ hands. A reign of terror loomed, with hospitals especially vulnerable because they were deluged with patients and their cybersecurity was often weak. So Lawrence asked the hackers to spare hospitals and other medical facilities for the duration of the pandemic. He appealed to them as ordinary, decent people with parents, children, and partners they loved.

…

But in recent years, hundreds of strains, with odd names like Bad Rabbit and LockerGoga, have paralyzed the computer systems of millions of companies, government offices, nonprofit organizations, and individuals. Exploiting society’s near-total dependence on computers, criminal hackers demand thousands, millions, or even tens of millions of dollars to restore operations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a wave of cyberextortion crippled hospitals and other vital services, shuttered businesses and schools, and further isolated people from relatives, friends, and coworkers. Matthew saw a parallel between the two epidemics. “It was kind of ironic, the computer virus at the same time as the real virus,” Matthew said.

pages: 173 words: 55,328

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal by George Packer

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, anti-bias training, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, defund the police, deindustrialization, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, fulfillment center, full employment, George Floyd, ghettoisation, gig economy, glass ceiling, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, liberal capitalism, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, meritocracy, minimum wage unemployment, new economy, Norman Mailer, obamacare, off-the-grid, postindustrial economy, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, QAnon, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, too big to fail, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, white flight, working poor, young professional

Or, at most: “Wear the damn mask!” Actual persuasion across this divide was rare. It usually required an extraordinary circumstance. In one of the worst weeks of the pandemic, a nurse in El Paso named Ashley Bartholomew was completing her shift in the COVID intensive care unit. A patient who had begun to recover was watching TV—a story about El Paso’s critical need for refrigerated morgue trucks. Suddenly he said, “Fake news. I don’t think COVID is really more than a flu.” “Now you think differently, though?” Bartholomew asked, unsure what he meant. “No, the same,” the patient said. “I should just take vitamins for my immune system.

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Some patients refused to believe it was real until their last breaths. Some not even then. It didn’t matter what the experts said. The populists refused to believe them because they were experts, as protective of their status as any other group. And the experts had sometimes been wrong. A COVID denier could point to the early testing debacle at the CDC, and the confused messages on social distancing, masks, and asymptomatic transmission, to argue that the experts had their heads up their asses. Without a shared reality, every data point, every body count just proves its opposite, like a knot getting tighter the harder you try to undo it. Once politics becomes an identity clash or tribal war, a death spiral can set in that’s very hard to escape.

…

The same spirit that drove Clara Barton, a government clerk with no training in health care, to bring medical supplies and comforting words to wounded Union soldiers in Washington at the start of the Civil War would carry Americans through the plague of COVID-19. Here finally was a crisis that could pull Americans together as hadn’t happened in the two decades since September 11, 2001. The biology of a pandemic is designed to show the limits of individualism and affirm a truth that’s too hard to keep in mind—our common humanity. Everyone is vulnerable. Everyone’s health depends on the health and behavior of others. No one is safe unless everyone takes responsibility for everyone else.

pages: 385 words: 112,842

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy by Christopher Mims

air freight, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, big-box store, blue-collar work, Boeing 747, book scanning, business logic, business process, call centre, cloud computing, company town, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, creative destruction, data science, Dava Sobel, deep learning, dematerialisation, deskilling, digital twin, Donald Trump, easy for humans, difficult for computers, electronic logging device, Elon Musk, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, gentrification, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, guest worker program, Hans Moravec, heat death of the universe, hive mind, Hyperloop, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, intermodal, inventory management, Jacquard loom, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, Kiva Systems, level 1 cache, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, lone genius, Lyft, machine readable, Malacca Straits, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, Nomadland, Ocado, operation paperclip, Panamax, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, polynesian navigation, post-Panamax, random stow, ride hailing / ride sharing, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, Rodney Brooks, rubber-tired gantry crane, scientific management, self-driving car, sensor fusion, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, six sigma, skunkworks, social distancing, South China Sea, special economic zone, spinning jenny, standardized shipping container, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, Toyota Production System, traveling salesman, Turing test, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, workplace surveillance

See ships and shipping containerized shipping, 13–23; Amazon’s yellow totes compared to, 163; dimensions, strength, and structure, 18–19, 70–71; dwell time in ports, 83–84; e-commerce and development of, 14–15; as intermodal transport systems, 19; loading and transport process, 19–23; order of stacking containers, queuing theory, and grooming, 81–83; reefers (refrigerated containers), 34–35; scale of global shipping commerce, 22–23, 25–26; twistlocks and lashings securing containers, 34, 69, 84; Vietnam, in global supply chain, and, 15–23; Vietnam War and development of, 13–14 Continental Divide, 133 “continuous improvement,” 222, 223, 226, 228–30, 232 conveyor belts/conveyors, 163–70, 189, 194 Convoy (film), 109 Cook, Tim, 270 coronavirus. See Covid-19 pandemic corporate culture. See Bezosism; management systems Cosco Shipping Lines, 22, 48, 57, 70 Costco, 167 cotton gin, 212 Covariant, 246 Covey, Joy, 224, 275–76 Covid-19 pandemic: Amazon affected by, 7–8, 14–15, 217; automation and, 76; China, initial outbreak in, 2, 6, 29; “essential” workers in, 90; global health emergency, WHO declaration of, 30, 108; initial lockdown, 195, 255; shipping crews affected by, 27–29; shipping volumes and panic buying, 11, 76, 184, 195, 255, 266, 276, 287–288; supply chain affected by, 2, 6–9, 10; as supply shock, 10, 12; testing for, 6, 9, 68; U.S., first cases in, 6, 45 Coyote (logistics firm), 138 CPA (closest point of approach), 38 CPUs, 173–74 Croker, Sewall K., 128 CTC (Copenhagen Telephone Company), 82 Cummins (diesel engine company), 130 Cuomo, Andrew (governor of New York), 9 cyborgs, modern workers as, 15, 42, 219 cycle time, 215 D’Andrea, Raffaello, 182–83 DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), 247 Darwin, Charles, 83, 87, 160 Darwinism of Bezosism, 203, 209–11 De Beukelaer, Christiaan, 28 Delaware, as flag state, 32 delivery of goods to consumers, 271–88; accidents, injuries, and dangers in the workplace, 272, 275–76, 279–80; communication with drivers, 284–86; contactless delivery, 266; from delivery stations, 261–62; dogs, encounters with, 285; loading and organization of goods on truck, 274; on-time delivery, Amazon’s concern with, 223–24, 225–27; physical demands of, 272–73; robotic delivery, 263–70; routes, mileage, and route planning, 281–84; speeding, dangers of, 275–76; subcontracting/franchising, 278–81; training and methodology of, 271–75.

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See also automation, at ports; containerized shipping; longshoremen ship-to-shore (STS) cranes, 20, 23, 34, 68–71, 77–78, 81 shoe sorters, 258 Silicon Valley, 73, 93, 166, 275 Six Sigma, 222–23 SLAM (scan, label, apply, manifest), 193–94 SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping), 143, 146–47, 268 slavery: cotton gin and African American chattel slavery, 212; crews on container ships during pandemic, 28; Nazi slave laborers, 144; robots as slaves, 219; scientific management (Taylorism) as form of, 232; wage slavery of long-haul truckers, 157 slow steaming, 35–36 slungshot, 65 “smalls,” 260 smartphones: delivery drivers, communication with, 284, 286; Moore’s law and, 153; positional systems in, 145, 146; rapid delivery systems for, 265; Starship robotic delivery using computing power of, 268; supply-chain miles required to assemble, 12; truck drivers and, 120; Vietnam, manufacturing in, 16 Smokey and the Bandit (film, 1977), 109 Soft Robotics, 246, 247 sortation centers, 252–61 South China Sea, navigation in, 37–40 space flight, 144, 145, 247–48 stack ranking (rank and yank), 204 Stalin, Joseph, 61 “standard work,” concept of, 230 Staples, 168, 182, 212 Star Wars (film, 1977), 109 Starbucks, 123, 263–65 Starship Technologies, 263–70 status competition, 91 steel production, 99–100 Stein, Gertrude, 98 Stone, Brad, The Everything Store, 170, 275 stopwatches, 96–97 stressful working conditions: at Amazon, 171–76, 191, 214–16, 234; automation, surveillance, and work intensification, 113, 157, 174–75, 203, 211–14, 231–32, 234–35; scientific management and, 88, 95, 97, 98, 213, 234; shipping crews affected by Covid-19 pandemic, 27–29; for truck drivers, 110–13, 117, 120–21, 125, 135, 157; turnover and, 113 strikes and striking, 33, 71, 88, 98, 277 STS (ship-to-shore) cranes, 20, 23, 34, 68–71, 77–78, 81 Suez Canal, 38, 91 supply chain, 1–12; consumer culture and, 1; Covid-19 pandemic, effects of, 2, 6–9, 10; factory system, incorporation into, 2, 90–92; Southeast Asia’s role in, 10–12; “supply shocks,” 9–12. See also delivery of goods to consumers; management systems; ships and shipping; trucks and truck drivers; warehouses and warehousing surveillance: combined with work intensification, and automation, 113, 157, 174–75, 203, 211–14, 231–32, 234–35; of delivery drivers, 26; of workers for behavior leading to injury, 238, 286 surveillance capitalism, 231 survivalists, 7 swarm robotics, 78 Swift (trucking company), 107, 112 Target, 109 tarmac, invention of, 129 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 87–90, 93–98, 103, 104, 105, 113, 213; The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), 95, 97, 98; Shop Management (1903), 95 Taylor, Robert, 216 Taylorism.

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Adding you, the consumer, to the equation and molding your behavior to make it more compatible with this system, through algorithms and marketing tricks, is trivial compared to all the effort that comes before you click the Buy button. By dumb luck, I managed to put myself at the start of the journey of an item, in a factory in Vietnam, at the very moment the global Covid-19 pandemic was just getting started in China. The pandemic stretched the supply chain described in this book to its very limit and beyond. Trends that might have taken a decade were compressed into a span of a few months. Virtually overnight, we were all checking our phones daily, looking for that little notification: Arriving Today.

pages: 516 words: 116,875

Greater: Britain After the Storm by Penny Mordaunt, Chris Lewis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, accelerated depreciation, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, banking crisis, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bob Geldof, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Attenborough, death from overwork, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, failed state, fake news, Firefox, fixed income, full employment, gender pay gap, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, impact investing, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, lateral thinking, Live Aid, lockdown, loss aversion, low skilled workers, microaggression, mittelstand, moral hazard, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, Ocado, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Panamax, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, quantitative easing, remote working, road to serfdom, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, transaction costs, transcontinental railway

There’s a long list of things the British never discuss: constipation, sex, depression, relationships, thrush, money, toilets, feelings, seborrhoea, logorrhoea, gonorrhoea, Chris Rea, diarrhoea, duty or death. And they like personal space. During Covid, the World Health Organization only required social distancing to one metre.21 The British chose two metres. Consequently, all Covid queues were colossal – past Nando’s and several times round the car park.22 THE DOUBLE ENTENDRE AND EUPHEMISMS The apologising, the embarrassment about complaining, the use of humour as a palliative are also present in the British approach to sex.

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NOTES 1 Sadly, they themselves both disappeared in January 2021 and May 2020 from cancer and Covid respectively. 2 http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2013/10/10-places-brits-love-to-live-in-america 3 https://www.businessinsider.com/british-expats-most-population-destinations-2015-9#4-spain--381025-expats-spain-is-still-high-on-the-list-where-brits-go-for-the-cheap-booze-sunny-weather-and-relatively-easy-integration-into-the-culture-14 INTRODUCTION Three great storms engulfed Britain in the ten years between 2010 and 2020: the financial crisis, the Brexit referendum and the global pandemic. They were similar in the following respects: they were unlike anything in living memory; they derailed longer-term government plans; they required unprecedented, profound and prolonged intervention; they were all eclipsed by each other; they exposed vulnerable communities; they revealed the British character; and they happened because Britain was more connected to the world than ever before.

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QUEUES We queue up at school, in Parliament to vote, at Glastonbury (indeed, all festivals and sports events), at the pub, to get into clubs, to get the latest bargain, at the bank, at the Post Office, on parents’ evenings, in A&E, at petrol stations, at cash machines, for changing rooms, on the phone, in fast-food restaurants, in supermarkets, for public toilets, at Hamleys for the latest Christmas gift, outside the royal palaces, for amusement park rides, at football grounds, for the dole, for social housing, even at the crematorium. Covid introduced yet more opportunities to queue offline at ‘drive-thru’ test centres or online to get on to the Ocado website. It’s all tied up with patience, manners, decency, fair play and democracy. That’s why the country hated the stockpiling that preceded the pandemic (even as people were doing it themselves). That’s why they allow vulnerable people to go ahead of them in supermarkets. There is evidence that the British will spend almost six months of their entire lives queuing up for stuff.19 In some places, like Wimbledon or for royal weddings, it’s even seen as part of the ‘fun’ to queue outside all night in a tent.

pages: 288 words: 86,995

Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything by Martin Ford

AI winter, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, Big Tech, big-box store, call centre, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, deskilling, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, factory automation, fake news, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Googley, GPT-3, high-speed rail, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, informal economy, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Law of Accelerating Returns, license plate recognition, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Mitch Kapor, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, Ocado, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, passive income, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, post scarcity, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, remote working, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Altman, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, SoftBank, South of Market, San Francisco, special economic zone, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, Turing machine, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, very high income, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

And as things have become ever more unequal, the mechanism that distributes the income that powers consumer demand is eroding, and that in turn is undermining economic growth and dampening down the sustained rise in productivity that is crucial to future prosperity. The pandemic has completely upended things and plunged us into an unprecedented economic crisis, but all these trends remain in place and will likely produce headwinds that will make it even more challenging to recover from our current predicament. POST COVID-19 AND RECOVERY The coronavirus pandemic has unleashed a global economic crisis of unprecedented ferocity. In the United States and in countries throughout the world, millions of jobs have been lost very nearly overnight, entire sectors have been virtually shut down and the economy has plunged into the deepest downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

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Joseph Zeballos-Roig, “Kamala Harris supports $2,000 monthly stimulus checks to help Americans claw out of pandemic ruin—and she’s long backed plans for Democrats to give people more money,” Business Insider, August 15, 2020, www.businessinsider.com/kamala-harris-biden-monthly-stimulus-checks-economic-policy-support-vice-2020-8. 3. Bob Berwyn, “What does ‘12 years to act on climate change’ (now 11 years) really mean?,” Inside Climate News, August 27, 2019, insideclimatenews.org/news/27082019/12-years-climate-change-explained-ipcc-science-solutions. 4. Bill Gates, “COVID-19 is awful. Climate change could be worse,” Gates Notes, August 4, 2020, www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Climate-and-COVID-19. 5.

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“The human touch still really matters.”28 Roughly two days before the article appeared on Bloomberg’s website, the first documented case of COVID-19 had emerged in Wuhan, China. Over the course of the next few months, all our calculations around the perceived value of a “human touch” were, of course, reset and recalibrated with a speed that would have once been unimaginable. There can be little doubt that in virtually any environment where human workers come into direct contact with customer traffic, the coronavirus crisis is going to significantly accelerate the push toward automation. This will be true not only because of concerns around social distancing and hygiene, but also as a result of the inevitable escalation of a focus on efficiency in the wake of the economic downturn spawned by the virus.

pages: 225 words: 70,590

Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives by Chris Bruntlett, Melissa Bruntlett

15-minute city, An Inconvenient Truth, autonomous vehicles, bike sharing, BIPOC, car-free, coronavirus, COVID-19, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, global pandemic, green new deal, Jane Jacobs, lockdown, Lyft, microplastics / micro fibres, New Urbanism, post-work, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, social distancing, streetcar suburb, the built environment, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, white flight, working-age population, World Values Survey

We soon started receiving packages—coffee from our favorite coffee company, groceries from the nearby green grocers, flour ground at the nearby windmill, and even beer from one of our craft breweries. We even did the same for our family in Canada, ensuring that birthdays and holidays were still meaningful during a pandemic. These options for hyperlocal, sustainable delivery meant these entrepreneurs—many of whom were our neighbors—could compete with the Amazons and Uber Eats of the world, and a situation that might have forced them to close their shutters allowed them to thrive. The question that now remains is whether the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis will be enough for car-dependent regions to pivot and create a “new normal.” But their reaction to the coronavirus lockdown, and the unique conditions experienced by people across the planet, has allowed for some optimism.

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Activities we had grown to love in our first year became our medicine for sanity: meanderings in the city center, and getting lost on the streets in our neighborhood helped us briefly forget about what was happening around us, not to mention giving us much needed time away from our children (as any parent can attest). However, with guidance in place to ensure social distancing of 1.5 meters (5 feet), and most residents also looking for outdoor reprieve, it sometimes proved difficult to maintain physical distance during daytime walks or rides. So we adjusted, taking our daily trips in the later evening, not only enjoying fewer pedestrians and cyclists on the streets but also the immense calm and quiet. As stated earlier, with traffic-calmed streets, we experienced much less traffic noise in Delft than in cities where we have lived before. But during the COVID-19 crisis, that was amplified, as most people stayed home and cars all but disappeared.

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On June 1, the national government announced restaurants could open again as long as the 1.5 meter (5 feet) social distancing maatregelen (measures) were maintained. With most of Delft’s communal patio space created long ago when the streets and squares of the city center were stripped of cars, all restaurateurs needed to do was bump their tables a little farther apart, and claim the additional 25 percent of terrace space afforded to them by the municipality. For Americans, the OPEC oil crisis was a missed opportunity, but one they hopefully won’t repeat, as discussion of a Green New Deal emerges to aid the COVID-19 recovery. Critically, this stimulus can’t just switch the fuel source for all of the cars in the country, but must also include recoverable, reliable, and sustainable alternatives.

System Error by Rob Reich

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, AI winter, Airbnb, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, AltaVista, artificial general intelligence, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deplatforming, digital rights, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, financial innovation, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information security, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Lean Startup, linear programming, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, move fast and break things, Myron Scholes, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, NP-complete, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, Philippa Foot, premature optimization, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software is eating the world, spectrum auction, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, strong AI, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trolley problem, Turing test, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, union organizing, universal basic income, washing machines reduced drudgery, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, When a measure becomes a target, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, you are the product

At this same unprecedented time, we experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, which as of this writing has taken more than 3 million lives worldwide while upending work, education, the economy, and our personal lives. The pandemic caused one of those rare moments of instantaneous behavior change with extraordinary long-term implications. Vladimir Lenin is alleged to have said, “There are decades when nothing happens, and then there are weeks where decades happen.” Overnight, much of the world shifted to working from home and schools closed as public health authorities imposed social distancing rules and in some areas shelter-in-place orders.

…

A veritable alphabet soup of abbreviations—the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)—speaks to the seriousness with which policy makers have sought to balance privacy protections with the government’s need to access information on people’s credit, health status, and education records. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought these issues into sharp relief. Effective strategies of pandemic surveillance have the potential to benefit all of us as we confront a once-in-a-century public health crisis. But whereas the Chinese government is comfortable with mandating access to people’s personal information, in a democracy, the growth of digital contact tracing depends on balancing the public health benefits against people’s concerns about privacy. The efforts by Apple and Google to develop a COVID-19-tracing technology demonstrate this careful balancing act at work.

…

Doing that will require our democratic and civic institutions to work together with tech companies to infuse a broader set of values into how technology is developed and deployed. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed just how many digital tools and services, such as videoconferencing, have become essential to our lives. And there was certainly civic-minded engagement by tech companies, as search engines and social networks proactively communicated scientific information about face masks and other health-promoting measures to their users. AI tools were also deployed in the search for COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines. As the pandemic recedes from view, it’s time to chart a new path forward. Despite deep political polarization and legislative stalemates in many democracies, especially in the United States, our politics are open to a serious moment of reckoning with technology.

pages: 250 words: 75,151

The New Nomads: How the Migration Revolution Is Making the World a Better Place by Felix Marquardt

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, carbon tax, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, digital nomad, Donald Trump, George Floyd, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joi Ito, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, Les Trente Glorieuses, out of africa, phenotype, place-making, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, QAnon, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sustainable-tourism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Yogi Berra, young professional

Being able to do your work from anywhere is only any good if you genuinely like and have a connection to the anywhere that you happen to be in. Covid-19, perhaps by necessitating social distancing, showed equally the importance of social contact. Many of us have now tasted the isolated life of the digital nomad, connected only via the internet, and its attractions are dubious. Location is just as important as ever, but chief among the draws of a place are the people with whom you share it. In short, rather than altering my opinions, the pandemic reaffirmed the things I had been thinking, and the journey that I had been on during the writing of this book.

…

Though I have reduced my flying considerably, even before the pandemic, I haven’t been able to square this circle thus far. As I write this, the life of the digital nomad has been both disrupted enormously by coronavirus, and, also, reified for the rest of us. Covid-19 showed that working from home is possible for far more people than we expected. With hundreds of business closing their offices but maintaining their operations, it seems likely that many of these workers will not want to go back to the daily grind of either long commutes or small living quarters when the pandemic finally releases its grip. Similarly, many people have been laid off, meaning that the freelancers that swell the ranks of the digital nomads are in demand.

…

Africa’s share of the global population is 17 per cent, but the continent generates only 4–5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. It is impossible to know what impact Covid-19 will have on these statistics in the long term. But, with the aviation industry facing a moment of existential threat, we have the opportunity to think strategically about what we want from the future of flying, and the future of migration. With train travel, and slower travel, more practical during the pandemic, perhaps behaviour change will follow. More philosophically, with flights grounded, the coronavirus has reminded us just how exceptional flying is for the vast majority of humans.

pages: 651 words: 162,060

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions by Greta Thunberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, basic income, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, BIPOC, bitcoin, British Empire, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, degrowth, disinformation, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Food sovereignty, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, land tenure, late capitalism, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, phenotype, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, retail therapy, rewilding, social distancing, supervolcano, tech billionaire, the built environment, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

All these impacts interact in unpredictable ways and make it exceedingly difficult to predict exactly how much economic damage will be associated with what degree of warming. Still, people try. In 2021, Moody Analytics estimated that the global economic toll of 2°C of warming would be $69 trillion. A study undertaken by Swiss Re estimated that 2.6°C of warming by 2050 would inflict three times more economic damage than the Covid-19 pandemic. Unlike the Covid pandemic, however, the damage inflicted by warming will only grow worse every year. Three degrees of warming would produce a world that hasn’t existed since humans emerged as a species. There was plenty of life back then, but no humans. It’s certain that such a world could not support 7.8 billion people.

…

But that rhetoric, still empty, also suggests the possibility that the unprecedented collective action and public intervention made necessary by the pandemic may not mark a one-time shift – and indeed that some of that new willingness may come climate’s way soon. ‘Anything we can do, we can afford,’ John Maynard Keynes declared in the midst of the Second World War. The pandemic reminded us of that principle; with climate change, the world might hope to actually enact it. The pandemic was humbling, too, teaching those who didn’t know it already that crises don’t reliably or simply solve rivalries and prejudices and the basic crimes of human indifference. And if Covid-19 also taught us, positively, that people respond when they perceive an imminent and immanent threat, it brought some negative lessons as well.

…

Many have wondered what the first disaster to bring the modern, globalized world to a temporary standstill would be. Some kind of resource-related conflict, an energy crisis or financial collapse, perhaps. Instead, it was a pandemic that appeared and changed our lives overnight. In the winter of 2022, when we were finishing this book, it was not possible to say for sure that Covid-19 had been transmitted to humans from other animals, in this case bats. There are still uncertainties. What we do know, however, is that most pandemics do come from animals; they are zoonotic diseases. In fact, 75 per cent of all new infectious diseases originate from wildlife. Natural habitats should work as a protecting shield, but once you strip back too much of that natural barrier we are exposed to increasing levels of risk.

pages: 295 words: 89,441

Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley by Atsuo Inoue

Adam Neumann (WeWork), air freight, Apple II, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, business climate, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, fixed income, game design, George Floyd, hive mind, information security, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Masayoshi Son, off grid, popular electronics, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, social distancing, SoftBank, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TikTok, Vision Fund, WeWork

WeWork continues to evolve, with 70 per cent of the world’s largest companies – such as ByteDance, Google, Facebook and Goldman Sachs – having accessed its services. In any sector or business, being at the right place at the right time – random acts of fate, essentially – plays an important role in success and with the Covid-19 pandemic and social-distancing requirements companies have been forced into a rethink of population density within the workplace, with some concluding agreements with WeWork to accommodate their employees. It also presents a solution in terms of new trends in reducing the distance between the workplace and employees’ places of residence, such as with Facebook telling its employees they can work from any WeWork they please.

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You have to have Zoom meetings so often, too. In this sense, the new sharing-economy, such as WeWork, shared offices, shared cars, shared travel, or gig-workers, food delivery, Zoom as well, brings about a new lifestyle and work style, and the pandemic is accelerating the penetration of the new styles for sure. So, in post-COVID, that (implying the lifestyle and working style before the pandemic) will be reviewed as a matter of fact.’ Son himself is confident, citing the T-Mobile and Sprint merger as an example of America leading in the technology sector going forward as T-Mobile has become the world leader in 5G, with a successfully rehabilitated and rebranded Sprint becoming the pride of America.

…

Looking at these figures from an advertising revenue standpoint TikTok is vastly superior, underscoring the capacity of ByteDance’s algorithm to provide users with the content each and every one of them wants to see.’ Claure was in New York during the early stages of the COVID outbreak when the city was locked down, when the local government deemed letting people go to their place of work was too big a risk as they needed to keep the number of infections down. Claure also owns a home in Miami, but the situation there was even more dire. So, to escape the pandemic, he and his family headed off for Aspen, Colorado with its incredibly low infection rates as simply waiting the pandemic out was not an option for him and he wanted to keep everyone safe. ‘It hasn’t been as wonderful as I make it look on Twitter, I can assure you.

The Trauma Chronicles by Westaby, Stephen

Albert Einstein, British Empire, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, James Dyson, lockdown, Nelson Mandela, social distancing, Stephen Hawking

What’s more, prolonged periods on a positive pressure ventilator sealed their fate. Should that be the case for Covid, steroids might help to damp down the inflammation. That dawned upon me on Valentine’s Day 2020, and I considered trying to share the suggestion. Needless to say, my interest in the cardiovascular consequences of Covid extended beyond curiosity. The virus caused heart failure and I was developing a unique artificial heart that did not need an electric power cable exiting through the skin. Now it seemed the pandemic would decimate organ transplantation on a worldwide basis. A realistic alternative would be needed, which I hoped would prove preferable to the complications of immunosuppression in the long term.

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Patients with heart disease fared no better in the pandemic. Heart surgery virtually stopped apart from dire emergencies and was still bumping along the bottom two years later. Catheter laboratories closed with staff re-assigned to Covid roles, so coronary angioplasty and the use of catheter deployed heart valves were brought to a halt. By Autumn 2021, the British Heart Foundation calculated that more than 275,000 symptomatic cardiac patients were left waiting for investigations and treatment. In the words of their Medical Director ‘we saw growing waiting lists even before the pandemic. Now the pressure on the NHS has grown and the scale of the current cardiovascular crisis is unsustainable.’

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The National Audit Office cautions that ‘if 50% of missing hospital referrals return to the NHS and activity grows only in line with pre-pandemic levels, the waiting list will reach 12 million patients by 2025. Should 50% of missing referrals return and the NHS succeeds in increasing its activity by 10% more than planned, the waiting list will still be 7 million.’ Despite diversionary political banter, the UK simply does not have the doctors, nurses nor hospitals to cope with the workload. In 2018 we imported more doctors than we trained, many from third world countries that could ill afford to lose them. In 2019 this figure was an appalling 60%. At the peak of the pandemic in 2020, 30% of beds were occupied by Covid patients.

pages: 329 words: 100,162

Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following by Gabrielle Bluestone

Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Bellingcat, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, cashless society, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, financial thriller, forensic accounting, gig economy, global pandemic, growth hacking, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, hype cycle, Hyperloop, Kevin Roose, lock screen, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Mason jar, Menlo Park, Multics, Naomi Klein, Netflix Prize, NetJets, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, post-truth, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Russell Brand, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, tech bro, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Vision Fund, WeWork

The virus had spread around the world, wreaking particular havoc in China and Italy, and after a month of stalling, New York City was itself just two days away from shutting down all its schools, bars, and restaurants. But just off the Bowery in SoHo, in the face of a global pandemic, dozens of people had crammed together, collectively risking their lives for something even more viral than COVID-19: a Supreme drop. As it was, the news of the virus made it a great day to score the elusive skateboarding gear. Justin Marchesani and Roland Carlor, two New York City fans of the brand who I caught leaving the store, said that for an 11 a.m. drop on a Thursday, the line was short and fast-moving.

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Prosecutors also pointed out that not only had McFarland never mentioned health problems before, but in a recent medical exam, he indicated he had no allergies or respiratory or cardiovascular problems. But Elkton, the Ohio prison to which McFarland had been transferred, reportedly had an outbreak of COVID-19 so bad the National Guard had to be called in. On July 4, McFarland tested positive for coronavirus. “Tested positive for COVID today,” McFarland told a New York Post reporter. “Being put in isolation in a big room with 160 other people who have it at this jail.”234 Like many things after COVID-19, McFarland’s status was no longer funny. But for such a serious ordeal, it would seem not much was learned. In October, McFarland was sent back to solitary confinement, this time for launching a podcast from prison, which had been recorded over the phone.

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It’s like our phones are making us all idiots.” Conclusion Like vaccinations, jade eggs, and the value of Elon Musk’s companies, COVID-19 quickly turned into an emotional referendum. In this country, at least, how you feel about an issue supersedes any scientific facts, and some people have simply chosen not to believe in the virus, dismissing the advice of epidemiologists as political spin. At the end of the summer, WeWoreWhat’s Danielle Bernstein revealed she had been diagnosed with COVID. She’d been on public lockdown for less than two weeks when anonymous call-out accounts began buzzing that maybe she’d made the whole thing up to cover for her lack of Fashion Week appearances.

pages: 282 words: 93,783

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World by David Sax

Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, bread and circuses, Buckminster Fuller, Cal Newport, call centre, clean water, cognitive load, commoditize, contact tracing, contact tracing app, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, digital capitalism, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fiat currency, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, indoor plumbing, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Minecraft, New Urbanism, nuclear winter, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peter Thiel, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, retail therapy, RFID, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, TikTok, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unemployed young men, urban planning, walkable city, Y2K, zero-sum game

But that is starting to change as more evidence becomes available on the proactive benefits of increased face-to-face conversation. In one study, groups with stronger associational social ties (like church groups or basketball leagues) were shown to have fared better during the early phase of the pandemic, seeing fewer deaths and infections than people on their own. As the study’s author, demographer Lyman Stone, told me, conversation helped these groups create “pandemic resilience.” Each time the individuals in these groups discussed COVID-19 during the early months of 2020, they exchanged important information, which changed group and individual behavior. You met your friend in the dressing room before the hockey game, saw them wearing a mask, and asked them why; they explained about airborne virus spread, and you began wearing a mask.

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“NYC Is Dead Forever. Here’s Why.” LinkedIn. August 13, 2020. www.linkedin.com/pulse/nyc-dead-forever-heres-why-james-altucher. Chapter 1 “Nearly Half of US Employees Feel Burnt Out, with One in Four Attributing Stress to the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Eagle Hill Consulting. April 14, 2020. www.eagle hillconsulting.com/news/half-us-employees-burnt-out-stress-from-covid19 -pandemic. Robinson, Brian. “Remote Workers Report Negative Mental Health Impacts, New Study Finds.” Forbes. October 15, 2021. Grant, Adam. “There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing.” New York Times. April 19, 2021.

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This future, made possible by artificial intelligence, big data, mobile computing, the internet, electric cars, smart scooters, virtual reality, and blockchain, would make us happier, healthier, smarter, richer, and just better-off. And then one day, just like that, our digital future arrived. Late in 2019, a sick bat emerged from its cave somewhere in China, pooped near a pangolin (or some other creature), and set off a chain of events that none of the tech oracles predicted (except Bill Gates). The COVID-19 pandemic happened so suddenly and so completely that few people even realized the scope of what they were experiencing. On Wednesday we were dropping our kids off at school, heading into the office, going out for lunch, and seeing a play after dinner; by Saturday we were assessing how many cans of beans we owned and which sourdough recipe was the simplest, while figuring out how to simultaneously stream a yoga class through the television, take a conference call in the closet, and get our kids enough digital devices to do school and play Roblox all day long.

pages: 370 words: 112,809

The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future by Orly Lobel

2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, Amazon Mechanical Turk, augmented reality, barriers to entry, basic income, Big Tech, bioinformatics, Black Lives Matter, Boston Dynamics, Charles Babbage, choice architecture, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, deepfake, digital divide, digital map, Elon Musk, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, game design, gender pay gap, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Chrome, Grace Hopper, income inequality, index fund, information asymmetry, Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, iterative process, job automation, Lao Tzu, large language model, lockdown, machine readable, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, microaggression, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, occupational segregation, old-boy network, OpenAI, openstreetmap, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, performance metric, personalized medicine, price discrimination, publish or perish, QR code, randomized controlled trial, remote working, risk tolerance, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social distancing, social intelligence, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, The Future of Employment, TikTok, Turing test, universal basic income, Wall-E, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, work culture , you are the product

A dramatic population gap has resulted: it is predicted that by 2030, China will have over 30 million more men than women, which means that countless men will end up lonely and isolated, facing barriers to starting human relationships. All over the world, the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated starkly how socially isolated we can become, and the mental health problems that can ensue. The loneliness and isolation of a global pandemic offer a poignant use case for the value of having robots (sexual and otherwise) in our homes. In an interview with Forbes, the CEO of Realbotix and creator of the sex robot Harmony claimed that sales were 75 percent higher than they were before the pandemic.14 Another possible benefit of sex robots is a safer sex industry. It’s an empirical question, like many of the other envisioned benefits, whether sex robots would indeed help reduce trafficking and protect against diseases and other negative consequences of prostitution.

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More people are likely to start a relationship through online dating than any other type of dating. Already, over a third of new married couples say they met online. With same-sex couples, the percentage of online matches is even higher. And the Covid-19 pandemic made people rely on digital dating even more than in the past, connecting people when bars and parties were on hold. Bumble, Tinder, OkCupid, and Match.com all reported dramatic increases in traffic during the first months of the pandemic. OkCupid reported a 700 percent increase in dates in the second quarter of 2020, and Bumble reported a 70 percent rise in video calls during the same time frame.1 “What the internet apps do is that they enable you to see, for the first time ever in history, the market of possible partners,” says Eva Illouz, director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, who has studied the ways in which capitalism and the modern world have transformed our emotional and romantic lives.2 Online dating apps can expand the pool of potential love matches and can re-engineer our patterns of dating and mating like never before.

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The social integration of robots and the valuing of human care can be mutually reinforcing as society navigates the realities of the future. The Loneliness Pandemic I mentioned before that in the summer of 2018, I helped officiate my uncle Raffi’s wedding to his husband, during which I read from the Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges: “Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.” Loneliness has become an international pandemic. Marriage is in decline around the world, and social isolation caused by Covid-19 removed many from their everyday interactions.

pages: 445 words: 135,648

Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno by Nancy Jo Sales

Airbnb, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, digital divide, Donald Trump, double helix, East Village, emotional labour, fake news, feminist movement, gamification, gender pay gap, gentrification, global pandemic, helicopter parent, Jaron Lanier, Jeffrey Epstein, labor-force participation, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, moral panic, New Urbanism, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PalmPilot, post-work, Robert Durst, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, techlash, TikTok, women in the workforce, young professional

“My friend broke quarantine to have sex and got Covid,” said a woman I follow on Twitter in a viral tweet of May of 2020. “Thank goodness it wasn’t something treatable, like syphilis,” one commenter noted sarcastically. But other commenters were jocularly sympathetic with the Covid catcher. One man tweeted: “Worth it.” A woman responded: “What about all the people that slutted it up and didn’t get Covid. We rarely hear their heroic tales.” “A side chick is testing my willpower daily,” commented a man. “Can’t do it, but she’s not making it easy. Apparently doesn’t give [a fuck] about a pandemic, constantly sending nudes and telling me to stop being scared.

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Ollstein, Alice Miranda, and Mohana Ravindranath. “How Some—but Not All—Dating Apps Are Taking on the STD Epidemic.” Politico, December 10, 2019. www.politico.com/news/2019/12/10/dating-apps-stds-080159. Olson, Loren A. “Do You Need a Hug? I Do: Anxiety in the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Psychology Today, March 26, 2020. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finally-out/202003/do-you-need-hug-i-do-anxiety-in-the-covid-19-pandemic. Ortutay, Barbara. “Dating Apps Face US Inquiry over Underage Use, Sex Offenders.” Associated Press, January 31, 2020. https://apnews.com/a93a6e2b02b7f979efca92ea7266e9f2. Padilla, Mariel. “North Carolina Lawmakers Pass Bill to Close Sexual Assault Loopholes.”

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In 2015, Tinder responded with a cease-and-desist order when the AIDS Healthcare Foundation put up billboards and bus ads across LA warning that online encounters on dating apps like Tinder and Grindr could lead to unsafe sex. Under pressure, the following year, Tinder agreed to add a health and safety section to its app, as did other major sites such as OkCupid and Grindr. “But who reads that?” asked a young man I spoke to. “And who really cares?” As the Covid-19 pandemic began to spread, I wondered if dating apps were factoring into this new public health crisis. Not many people were asking this question in public, with the exception of an opinion piece I saw in the New York Times in March of 2020: “Can we really afford to rely on horny people forced to stay at home all day to ‘make the best-informed decisions’ about everyone else’s health?”

pages: 450 words: 144,939

Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy by Jamie Raskin

2021 United States Capitol attack, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, back-to-the-land, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, defund the police, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, failed state, fake news, George Floyd, hindsight bias, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lyft, mandatory minimum, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, public intellectual, QAnon, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Bannon, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem

But it became painfully clear to me—yes, even to me, of the perpetual naïve faith that friendship and community can overcome all obstacles—that Jim Jordan considered us his enemies in the most basic sense and that his time in Congress was going to be spent demonstrating his absolute devotion to one person alone: Donald Trump. On our COVID-19 subcommittee, Jordan acted nimbly to cover up for what I saw as Trump’s recklessness, incompetence, and mismanagement of the pandemic response. He ridiculed and heckled Dr. Fauci. He tore into the urgent public health mandates of masking and social distancing, which were pretty much all we had to protect ourselves before the vaccines came out. He ignored or minimized the massive death toll of COVID-19, and blamed the economic problems caused by the COVID public health disaster on “Democrat governors.” When he went sailing off on an anti-Chinese polemic and filibuster, I would seek recognition to recount at least nineteen different occasions on which Donald Trump lavishly praised the beautiful performance of General Xi and the Chinese autocratic government in the first five months of the COVID-19 crisis.

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Trump and his collaborators were turning the richest and most scientifically advanced nation on earth into a failed state, defined as a nation that cannot deliver the basic goods of existence to its own people. That would include the essential good of protection against deadly diseases. The U.S. response to COVID-19 was a historic debacle that will be studied forever as a test case for public health catastrophes, what not to do when a pandemic happens. At a time that called for the best and most enlightened democratic leadership in the world, we simply had the worst. The summer of 2020 brought little relief from COVID-19, but there was one strange silver lining to the situation. Protracted social isolation gave Americans the chance to witness and then really see the continuing brutal violence wielded by certain police officers and certain police forces against African American citizens.

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We drove down to Lafayette Square and found lots of elaborate Trumpian military fencing under construction as COVID-safe masked crowds of nonviolent youthful protesters gathered to chant support for the sweeping reforms contained in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The homemade signs were vivid: “If You Don’t Like Wearing Your Mask Every Day, Try Breathing While Black,” “Black Lives Matter/Black Votes Matter,” “Who Do You Call When a Cop Is the Murderer?” and “George Floyd Mattered.” We wended our way through the crowd in our masks, trying to maintain social distance as best as we could, even as we warmly greeted constituents who were excited to bump into me there.

pages: 495 words: 114,451

Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs by Juli Berwald

23andMe, 3D printing, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Black Lives Matter, carbon footprint, Charles Lindbergh, circular economy, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, en.wikipedia.org, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial innovation, Garrett Hardin, George Floyd, Google Earth, Gregor Mendel, Greta Thunberg, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), lateral thinking, Maui Hawaii, microbiome, mouse model, ocean acidification, Panamax, Paris climate accords, Skype, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, TED Talk, the scientific method, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Traditional Owners: “Traditional Owners of the Great Barrier Reef,” Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, 2021, https://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/our-partners/traditional-owners/traditional-owners-of-the-great-barrier-reef. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT carbon emissions fell: E&T editorial staff, “Largest CO2 Emissions Drop in History Due to Covid-19 Pandemic,” Engineering & Technology, October 15, 2020, https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2020/10/covid-19-pandemic-caused-largest-co2-drop-in-history/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 37. Flicker Breonna Taylor: Darcy Costello and Tessa Duvall, “Who Are the Louisville Officers Involved in the Breonna Taylor Shooting?

…

So many problems had come to the forefront during the pandemic. Failures of the medical system and institutionalized racism were unavoidable, along with the continued lack of response to climate change. So much of my relentless reading had shown just how interconnected these problems were. How climate change was really a problem that disproportionately affected people of color. How climate refugees will be forgotten by the medical system. How people of color died during the pandemic at almost twice the rate of white people. How as a group Hispanic, Black, and Indigenous children made up 75 percent of juvenile deaths from COVID-19, while representing only 41 percent of the population.

…

You can choose to lock in decades of environmental destruction, or we can turn this grim experience into something good.” Like our struggles with Isy and the insistent bleaching of the corals, the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare weaknesses. It showed problems that were already lurking beneath the surface—problems with our health care system, problems with inequality, problems with climate change. But like the way residential treatment upended the small world of our family and then brought it back together again, the devastation brought by the COVID crisis is an opportunity to rebuild better. In Europe, an economic recovery package worth $800 billion required energy-efficient building and a transition away from fossil fuels.

pages: 363 words: 109,834

The Crux by Richard Rumelt

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, air gap, Airbnb, AltaVista, AOL-Time Warner, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, biodiversity loss, Blue Ocean Strategy, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, creative destruction, crossover SUV, Crossrail, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, double entry bookkeeping, drop ship, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, financial engineering, Ford Model T, Herman Kahn, income inequality, index card, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Just-in-time delivery, Larry Ellison, linear programming, lockdown, low cost airline, low earth orbit, Lyft, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, meta-analysis, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, packet switching, PageRank, performance metric, precision agriculture, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, search costs, selection bias, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, software as a service, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stochastic process, Teledyne, telemarketer, TSMC, uber lyft, undersea cable, union organizing, vertical integration, WeWork

As I write this paragraph, I am homebound by the COVID-19 virus. Unlike South Korea, the US government was unable to quickly respond to the new virus. The media wanted to blame President Trump, but, for all his failings, the main problem was systemic. The US Department of Health & Human Services is a giant bureaucracy that manages both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). As the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, there was mistrust, infighting, politics, and incompetence throughout the whole system. Despite years of warnings and studies about possible pandemics just like COVID-19, no one had an action plan.

…

The required grit is not there. PANDEMICS As I write this paragraph in the fall of 2020, I am holed up at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here in Oregon, early in the pandemic, Oregon Health Authority director Patrick Allen told the state legislature that “without extraordinary efforts by the federal government, we are going to run out of needed protective gear for front-line health care workers.” Similar alarms are being raised across the country, as local health bureaucrats realized that they had failed to plan for an inevitable national emergency. Pandemics are not predictable, but they are inevitable.

…

It would lay out the conditions that might warrant forced obedience versus those that permit a modicum of individual freedom. COVID-19’s mortality rate for those under seventy is apparently less than 1 percent. What if the pandemic is truly horrific, with a 10 percent mortality rate, then what? And could anyone have predicted that the media and politicians would use the disease as a tool to bludgeon their rivals? The big success in the United States with regard to the pandemic was not any long-range strategic plan but the highly crux-based strategic “Warp Speed” project. Before COVID-19, developing a vaccine was a long-term affair. The fastest prior vaccine development was for the mumps, which took four years.

pages: 491 words: 141,690

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire by Jeff Berwick, Charlie Robinson

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, airport security, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, bank run, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, Corrections Corporation of America, COVID-19, crack epidemic, crisis actor, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, dark matter, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy transition, epigenetics, failed state, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, fiat currency, financial independence, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, illegal immigration, Indoor air pollution, information security, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, mandatory minimum, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, microapartment, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, new economy, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open borders, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pill mill, planetary scale, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, pre–internet, private military company, Project for a New American Century, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reserve currency, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, South China Sea, stock buybacks, surveillance capitalism, too big to fail, unpaid internship, urban decay, WikiLeaks, working poor

So what makes COVID-19 so different? First, allegedly, it is more contagious, more deadly, and easier to contract than all those other viruses. Miraculously, despite all these extremities, this will be the one disease that they can cure by the vaccine. This claim comes despite the fact that even the plain, old, garden variety Coronavirus that causes common household flu and colds, cannot be prevented by a single vaccine, because the strains mutate every season. Second, for the first time in history, the world has been “forced” to adopt severe tactics to slow the spread of COVID-19: social distancing, shutdowns, closures, and cancellations.

…

Collusion on a grand scale involves many players – individuals and organizations with competing (and often concealed) goals and agendas. Between herding angry cats and managing contingencies, it is impossible to entirely prevent cock-ups, errors, and betrayals. COVID-19: Conspiracy Lies! Lies! Lies! So what do people call it when conspiracy theories become conspiracy facts? This is important because the 2020 Designer “Pandemic” is the product of a longstanding pattern of events and behaviors – turning virtually every “conspiracy theory” into fact, with corroborating evidence! COVID-19 has brought it all together. The global power elite plotting to impose a totalitarian New World Order. Implementation of an authoritarian world government controlled by the United Nations and a global central bank.

…

On 11 February 2020, WHO announced a name for the new coronavirus disease: COVID-19. ‘CO’ stands for corona, ‘VI’ for the virus, and ‘D’ for the disease. The 19 is for 2019. Sounds plausible enough, right? The Plague, Spanish Flu, SARS, MERS, Ebola, Swine Flu – humanity has seen them all. Many of them were essentially lies as well. But, outbreaks happen, people get infected, some die, life goes on, the disease goes away. No vaccine was necessary. The world economy was not put on hold. SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), caused by a coronavirus, is an epidemic disease that seemed on the brink of a pandemic in the early 2000s. It spread rapidly from its origin in Asia in 2002-2003 to Europe and the Americas before it just disappeared.

pages: 524 words: 130,909

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power by Max Chafkin

3D printing, affirmative action, Airbnb, anti-communist, bank run, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Blitzscaling, Boeing 747, borderless world, Cambridge Analytica, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, David Brooks, David Graeber, DeepMind, digital capitalism, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Ethereum, Extropian, facts on the ground, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, Frank Gehry, Gavin Belson, global macro, Gordon Gekko, Greyball, growth hacking, guest worker program, Hacker News, Haight Ashbury, helicopter parent, hockey-stick growth, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, life extension, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, moral panic, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, operational security, PalmPilot, Paris climate accords, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, Peter Gregory, Peter Thiel, pets.com, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative ﬁnance, randomized controlled trial, regulatory arbitrage, Renaissance Technologies, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, social distancing, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, techlash, technology bubble, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, the new new thing, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, Vitalik Buterin, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Y Combinator, Y2K, yellow journalism, Zenefits

In an interview a week before the primary—and two weeks after getting his latest check from Thiel’s PAC—Kobach told an interviewer that he believed hospitals and doctors were exaggerating the severity of the pandemic to hurt Trump, by recording accidental deaths, like car accidents, as COVID deaths. “I believe that the numbers are being cooked,” he said. On primary day, he lost to Marshall by fourteen points. * * * — experts had called for a gradual reopening of the economy and the continued reliance on social distancing and masks. Trump dismissed all of this as political posturing, insisting, at various times, that the terrible virus was being vanquished by his administration, or that it actually was no worse than the flu, or both.

…

Boudette, “Hundreds of Tesla Workers Tested Positive for the Virus after Elon Musk Reopened a Plant, Data Shows,” The New York Times, March 13, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/13/world/tesla-elon-musk-coronavirus-outbreak.html. virus as the “sniffles”: “Trump Says Son Barron’s Covid Illness ‘‘Just Went Away,’ ” NBC News, October 22, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/video/trump-says-son-barron-s-covid-illness-just-went-away-94447173800. “control the pandemic”: “Mark Meadows: We’re Not Going to Control the Pandemic,” CNN, October 25, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN9T73GWam0. planning on doing immediately: Danny Crichton, “In Its 5th Filing with the SEC Palantir Finally Admits It Is Not a Democracy,” TechCrunch, September 21, 2020, https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/21/palantir-is-not-a-democracy/.

…

By late March more than 550,000 Americans had died from COVID, making the pandemic deadlier than U.S. casualties in World War I and World War II combined. The United States has suffered one of the worst per-capita mortality rates in the world. How had those grim figures not moved him to break with Trump or to at least spend his money more ambitiously to try to help? How was it that his most ambitious donation of 2020 had been to the political action committee of one of America’s most prominent nativists, Kris Kobach? I tried to ask him about this, of course. But the promised interview never materialized, and as COVID-19 case levels soared anew, Thiel’s representative stopped returning my emails.

pages: 533 words: 125,495

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, backpropagation, basic income, behavioural economics, belling the cat, Black Lives Matter, butterfly effect, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, classic study, clean water, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Attenborough, deep learning, defund the police, delayed gratification, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Easter island, effective altruism, en.wikipedia.org, Erdős number, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, fake news, feminist movement, framing effect, George Akerlof, George Floyd, germ theory of disease, high batting average, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, index card, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, libertarian paternalism, Linda problem, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, microaggression, Monty Hall problem, Nash equilibrium, New Journalism, Paul Erdős, Paul Samuelson, Peter Singer: altruism, Pierre-Simon Laplace, placebo effect, post-truth, power law, QAnon, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, replication crisis, Richard Thaler, scientific worldview, selection bias, social discount rate, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, sunk-cost fallacy, TED Talk, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, twin studies, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, Walter Mischel, yellow journalism, zero-sum game

Russia has a female president. The world suffers a new and even more lethal pandemic than Covid-19. Vladimir Putin is constitutionally prevented from running for another term as president of Russia and his wife takes his place on the ballot, allowing him to run the country from the sidelines. Massive strikes and riots force Nicolás Maduro to resign as president of Venezuela. A respiratory virus jumps from bats to humans in China and starts a new and even more lethal pandemic than Covid-19. After Iran develops a nuclear weapon and tests it in an underground explosion, Saudi Arabia develops its own nuclear weapon in response.

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Yet in that same year, the Covid-19 pandemic set off a carnival of cockamamie conspiracy theories: that the disease was a bioweapon engineered in a Chinese lab, a hoax spread by the Democratic Party to sabotage Donald Trump’s chances of reelection, a subterfuge by Bill Gates to implant trackable microchips in people’s bodies, a plot by a cabal of global elites to control the world economy, a symptom of the rollout of fifth-generation mobile data networks, and a means for Anthony Fauci (director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) to earn windfall profits from a vaccine.1 Shortly before the announcements of the vaccines, a third of Americans said they would reject them, part of an anti-vax movement that opposes the most benevolent invention in the history of our species.2 Covid quackery has been endorsed by celebrities, politicians, and, disturbingly, the most powerful person on earth at the time of the pandemic, US president Donald Trump. Trump himself, who was consistently supported by around 40 percent of the American public, raised further doubts throughout his presidency on our collective capacity for reason. He predicted in February 2020 that Covid-19 would disappear “like a miracle,” and endorsed quack cures like malaria drugs, bleach injections, and light probes.

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For instance, in most years between 1992 and 2015, an era that criminologists call the Great American Crime Decline, a majority of Americans believed that crime was rising.34 In their “Ignorance Project,” Hans and Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling-Rönnlund have shown that the understanding of global trends in most educated people is exactly backwards: they think that longevity, literacy, and extreme poverty are worsening, whereas all have dramatically improved.35 (The Covid-19 pandemic set these trends back in 2020, almost certainly temporarily.) Availability-driven ignorance can be corrosive. A looping mental newsreel of catastrophes and failures can breed cynicism about the ability of science, liberal democracy, and institutions of global cooperation to improve the human condition.

pages: 265 words: 75,202

The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism by Hubert Joly

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, behavioural economics, big-box store, Blue Ocean Strategy, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Brooks, do well by doing good, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), fear of failure, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, imposter syndrome, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, lateral thinking, lockdown, long term incentive plan, Marc Benioﬀ, meta-analysis, old-boy network, pension reform, performance metric, popular capitalism, pre–internet, race to the bottom, remote working, Results Only Work Environment, risk/return, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, supply-chain management, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, young professional, zero-sum game

So was revitalizing Carlson Wagonlit Travel at a time when internet travel booking was supposed to kill the business. The Covid-19 pandemic that swept across the world in 2020 created significant challenges, threatening the survival of many companies. Yet the severe constraints around health and safety also offered new possibilities. Being forced to rethink process, products, and services brought about new ways to tap into unexplored demand and unleash new growth. Before the Covid-19 crisis, for example, Adobe, the digital creativity company, would hold an annual conference in Las Vegas for 15,000 attendees. In 2020, they could not physically gather because of social distancing and safety concerns.

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Leadership requires combining vulnerability with making sometimes tough decisions and giving hope. Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson’s video message to employees on March 19, 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, is a master class in emotional intelligence and vulnerability. He appeared, shockingly to many, without his full head of hair, because of treatment for pancreatic cancer. He first talked about employees directly affected by the virus, offering support. He then explained that the impact of the pandemic and the restrictions taken to contain the outbreak were battering Marriott’s hospitality business. There was no sugarcoating, but no panic either as he went on to explain what the company was doing to mitigate the crisis.

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More and more people hold the system responsible for social fractures and environmental degradation. Employees, customers, and even shareholders expect much more from corporations than a blind pursuit of profit. Disengagement at work is a global epidemic. More recently, a new civil rights movement and the Covid-19 pandemic have accelerated the need to rethink our system if we want to tackle the enormous challenges facing us. Business can be a force for good in this fight; it is uniquely positioned to help address some of the world’s most pressing issues. A growing number of business leaders agree. But they and I know from experience that it is hard to do.

pages: 492 words: 152,167

Rikers: An Oral History by Graham Rayman, Reuven Blau

Bernie Sanders, biofilm, collective bargaining, COVID-19, crack epidemic, housing justice, Saturday Night Live, social distancing

Even if I could stay six feet, how vast and prolonged a game of human Tetris it would be to stay six feet away from another human being at all times in a dorm with fifty people. DIMITRI ANTONOV: That’s the thing we always kinda laughed about: where’s the social distancing? And still we didn’t even get masks or anything. That was February all the way up to March. We got masks late in March. I can understand why people were so frustrated and why it caused altercations because if anybody did have COVID, it’s like, well, what are we gonna do? JULIA SOLOMONS, social worker, Bronx Defenders: Early on in the pandemic, the Department of Correction stated that they had hundreds of thousands of masks that they were making available for staff and for clients.

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See King, Amin “Minister” Frey, Matt after Rikers, 412 causes of violence, 91 desensitization to violence, 80 incarceration of mentally ill, 118–19 detainees’ housing assignments, 340–41 quality of medical care, 138–39 trauma of violence, 81 Frey, Warner, 368–70, 412 G Gangi, Robert after Rikers, 412 conditions in bullpens, 27–28 difficulty of detainees obtaining medical care, 130 high school in Rikers, 244 on racism in Rikers, 33 superiors not taking “the Program” seriously, 247 Gang Intelligence Unit (previously Gang Intelligence Task Force), 73 gangs bandannas as identification, 68–69 changes in purpose of, 77–78 in control of housing areas, 236, 238–39, 243, 270, 305, 306 drugs and, 176 entrance into, 13–14, 60–61, 65 escapes and, 207 history of, 12, 56, 57, 59, 61, 62–64, 68–71 housing assignments according to affiliation, 74–75 ignored by officers, 60–61 officers as members of, 77, 83, 311 officers working with leaders of, 61–62, 66, 68, 177 phone use controlled by, 50, 66, 72–73, 239, 240 power of, 61, 66–68, 72, 73–74 reasons for joining, 63, 75 gangs and violence in bullpens, 36–37 to establish credentials, 59 in housing areas, 14–15, 56–58, 60 marking teenagers, 245–46 between members of different, 49–50, 56–57, 60, 69, 72–73, 193–94 riots, 189–90 teenagers marked by, 245–46 teenagers preyed on by, 247–48 Gangster Killer Bloods, 70–71 Garcia, Biany being transsexual in Rikers, 272–73 on being transsexual in Rikers, 271, 274 Gastineau, Mark, 258–59 Gavin, Edward after Rikers, 412 attempted escape and, 210–11 community jails, 391–92 first day as officer, 15–16 food brought in for mobsters, 151 graduation ceremony of, 221 hostage situation, 195–97 on officer hitting Camacho, 259–60 on suicide, 115–16 Gilmore, Kenny after Rikers, 412 conditions in bullpen, 12 on visits, 191 Gilroy, Vincent, 3 Ginsberg, Allen, 149, 156 Giuliani, Rudy conditions in Rikers and, 277, 285 Jacobson and, 345, 346 Seabrook and, 365 “Gladiator School,” 237, 240 Glazer, Elizabeth, 362 de Blasio and criminal justice policy, 386 mentally ill detainees, 123 officers feeling like stepchildren among law enforcement officers, 374–75 power of Seabrook and, 362, 363 reduction of Rikers population, 388–89 on Sturz, 378–79 Gordon, Diane, 382 Green, Mark, 366 Grice, Marcus, 266 after Rikers, 412 on being attacked, 275 being HIV positive, 265 on fear of being in Rikers, 266 in general population teenage housing, 269–70 housing for homosexual teenagers, 271–72 officers’ treatment of LGBTQ detainees, 273–74 reading palms for officers, 270 on surviving Rikers, 275 Grieco, Martha after Rikers, 411 dangerous temperatures in housing areas, 288 Rikers as trigger for mentally ill, 114–15 Gristina, Anna after Rikers, 412 coloring hair with food, 160 on death due to officers’ inaction, 129–30 on fear of leaving, 406 in protective custody for mentally ill, 11–12, 115 violence to establish credentials, 90 on walking in water through metal detectors, 285–86 guilt crack epidemic and pleas of, 388 presumption of, 31, 244–45 reasons for pleading, 26, 32, 33, 35–36, 37–38 refusal to admit, 324–25 H handicapped individuals, 342 Hanley, Jim, 372 Harris, Darrel, 190 Harris, Dupree after Rikers, 413 basic facts about, 292 changes in purpose of gangs, 77–78 early gangs as brotherhoods, 62–64 on power of gang leaders, 73–74 searches of detainees after visits, 296–97 Harris, LaSharn, 293 after Rikers, 413 process visitors undergo, 293–94, 295, 296 racism of officers, 300 travel difficulties for visits, 292 Haynes, Derrick, 126 after Rikers, 249, 413 difficulty of obtaining medical care, 125–26, 128, 129 on gangs marking teenagers, 245–46 officers helping released teenagers, 248–49 riot in chapel, 246–47 Henagin, Lawrence after Rikers, 413 being beaten by officers, 45–46 being white detainee, 45–46, 51 on gang violence, 36–37, 72–73 riot over bananas, 89–90 Hernandez, Devonte after Rikers, 413 on getting used to teen housing area, 241 importance of visits to detainees, 299 on meeting detainees on outside, 249–50 mother’s visit experience, 294 officers ignoring violence between detainees, 243 transfer of, 250–51 vulnerable teenagers preyed on by gangs, 247–48 Heyward, Gary after Rikers, 413 beating detainees for making inappropriate sexual comments or advances to officers, 85 getting slashed, 88 ingenuity of detainees, 325 making weapons, 166 smuggling contraband, 173–74 suicides by officers, 228 history of drug use, 3 of gangs, 56, 57, 59, 61, 62–64, 69–71 of island Rikers is on, 5–6, 41 of racism, 48–49 Rikers Island Penitentiary plan, 6 of solitary confinement, 93–94 homeless individuals as detainees, 29, 117 Horn, Martin after Rikers, 413 on de Blasio and jails, 390 developing county-based jails, 384–85 on development of gangs in jails/prisons, 71 detainees bullying detainees, 17 insular environment of Rikers, 383–84 power of gangs, 72 Seabrook and Bloomberg, 366 selling Rikers, 381 “House of Dead Men,” 6 House of Detention for Men (HDM), 30 House of Xtravaganza, 267 housing areas alternative facilities due to overcrowding in, 400–401 assigning detainees to, 340–41 being removed from, before release, 399–400 blocked fire escape routes, 277–79 celebrity detainees in medical, 252, 255 conditions in, 286, 342 dangerous temperatures in, 287–88 declassification of heat-sensitive individuals and high temperatures in, 289–90 gangs and violence in, 56–58, 60 gangs in control of, 12, 236, 238–39, 305 infestations of mice, roaches, water bugs, rats, and spiders, 150, 280, 290 for detainees with COVID-19, 343–44 for LGBTQ detainees, 264, 270 for pregnant women, 145–46 sanitary measures during COVID-19 in, 332, 333–34, 338–39, 344 searches in, 356 social distancing during COVID-19, 332, 334, 339, 340, 341, 344 spread of COVID-19 in, 337 squalor of, 16 use of unready, new, 280 violence as constant in, 341 housing areas for teenagers gangs in control of, 243, 305, 306 as “Gladiator School,” 237, 240 for LGBTQ, 266 LGBTQ in regular, 269–70, 271–72 new jail for male, 235 state prisoners housed in, 245 violence in, 84, 237, 239, 240, 246 “Howl” (Ginsberg), 149, 156 Hunt, Ervin “Easy,” 30 after Rikers, 414 “bullpen therapy,” 32 detainees and civilians in kitchens, 156 own recidivism, 30, 39–40 on sister, 31–32 on working in kitchen, 151 Husamudeen, Elias after Rikers, 414 discrepancies in and manipulation of statistics, 349–50 effectiveness of solitary confinement, 100–101 Norman and, 364 Hylton, Donna after Rikers, 414 being forced to take medication, 133–34 conditions in clinic, 133 I infirmary/clinic, conditions in, 281 intake process, 8–9, 26 Israel, Stan, 363, 364 J Jacobson, Michael, 346 after Rikers, 414 on appointment as acting commissioner, 346–48 effects of “bullpen therapy,” 38–39 Giuliani and programs, 345 quality of medical care, 134 Seabrook and, 371–72 “Jails for the ’80s,” 384–85 James, Jesse, 309, 311 Ja Rule, 254, 256 Jay-Z, 256–57 John, Kadeem, 241–42 Johnson, Robert, 310 Jones, Latanya, 44–45, 323, 324 journalism, importance of, 387–88 K Kelly, Nellie, 307 after Rikers, 414 brother Ronald Spear, 306, 307–12 Kelly, Ray, 211 Kerik, Bernard after Rikers, 414 basic facts about, 347 on closing Rikers, 391 data collection and preparation process, 355 first impression of Rikers, 9 gang violence, 57 improvements fought by, 277 keeping food hot, 154 reduction of violence and, 352–53 Seabrook and, 368, 370–71 weapons smuggled in, 164–65 Kessler, Eve after Rikers, 415 constant violence, 89 corruption in Corrections Department, 16 manipulation of statistics, 360 number of mentally ill in jails, 117 record keeping by Department of Corrections, 359 on Seabrook, 364 Kev (Boxing Kev), 69 Keys, Alicia, 256 King, Amin “Minister,” 183 after Rikers, 415 basic facts about, 182, 187 drug business in Rikers, 182–83 power of gangs, 66–68 weapons in Rikers, 184–87 Kinkead, Mik, 298–99 Koch, Ed improvement of conditions in Rikers and, 148, 277 sale of Rikers, 379, 381 Sturz and, 376, 379, 380 Koehler, Richard after Rikers, 415 arrival of crack in New York City, 25 changing categories for “use of force,” 355 manipulation of statistics, 354–55 officers always getting blamed, 225 overcrowding and riots, 188 Seabrook and, 364 weapons, 164 Kuby, Ron innocent detainees labeled as criminals, 244–45 lessons taught to teenagers, 244–45 racism in Rikers, 48–49 Rikers as shelter for homeless mentally ill, 123–24 solitary confinement as frequent punishment, 94–95 L Lamashtu, Erobos Abzu, 197–99 Lampe, Bobby, 89 Lasker, Morris, 156, 380 laundry, conditions in, 281–82 Lee, Tami, 253 after Rikers, 415 ghosts at Rikers, 224 kosher food, 157 on self-discipline, 218 sexual relations between officers and detainees, 229–30 smuggling method, 175–76 Tupac at Rikers, 252–53 LGBTQ detainees attacks on, 272, 273, 275 deaths of, 264–65, 268 frequency of sexual attacks on, 264 in general population housing areas, 269–70 HIV positive, 265 hormones for transsexual individuals, 272–73 housing areas for, 264, 270 housing for teenage, 266, 271–72 romances in Rikers, 269 teenage girls, 269 Lindsay, John, 5 lingo, 15 Lippman, Jonathan Close Rikers campaign and, 377 death of Murdough and, 387 on need for criminal justice reform, 386 role of judiciary in criminal justice reform, 386–87 Lippman Commission closing Rikers and, 389–90 members, 389 public discussion of Rikers and, 389 reduction of Rikers population, 387 Sturz and, 385–86 Lombardi, Rick after Rikers, 415 attempted water escape and, 214 beating of teen not following “the Program,” 241–42 beginning of gangs in Rikers, 61, 69 being attacked by detainees, 64–66 being injured in protective custody, 76–77 contraband, 228–29 escapes and, 211, 212, 213 gangs and drugs, 176 gangs in control of housing areas, 238–39, 243 Gastineau, 258–59 hiding places for drugs, 177–78 high level of violence, 89 on hostage situation, 192 housing teenagers with state prisoners, 245 manipulation of statistics, 358–59 officers as gang members, 77 officers working with gangs, 61–62 “the Program” leading to violence, 239–40 Tackmann, 205 weapons, 176–77 Love, Michael, 60–61, 104 Lynch, Patty, 371 M Magro, Baldassare, 163 Mahon, Pete, 196–97 Malcolm, Ben, 223 Mark-Viverito, Melissa, 386 Marques, Stuart, 381–82, 393 Marte, Coss, 14–15, 415 Martin, Glenn after Rikers, 415 Close Rikers campaign, 377 failure of plan to sell Rikers and have community jails, 383 on process of reform, 394–95 Sturz’s commitment to reform, 385 McCray, Antron, 7 McGovern, James after Rikers, 403, 415 contracts being put on detainees, 91 escapes, 208–9, 212, 215 food for mobsters, 151 detainee counts, 208 on riot (1987), 192 violence between detainees, 36 weapons hidden by detainees, 37 McGrath, George, 235 McMickens, Jacqueline, 221 after Rikers, 415 difficulties of being officer, 220 food hoarding, 153 importance of personal ethics, 226–27 location and access to Rikers, 390 need for solitary confinement, 96 officer training and, 222 reasons for what appears to be cruelty by officers, 122–23 on relations between officers and detainees, 14 on resources to improve Rikers, 391–92 medical care celebrities in medical dorms, 252, 255 conditions in infirmary/clinic, 133, 281 by Corizon Health Inc., 125 during COVID-19, 335, 337 dental, 153 difficulty of obtaining, 125–29, 130 for homeless individuals, 117 hormones for transsexual individuals, 272–73 hospitalization, 128–29 detainee complaints about, 308–9 detainees forced to take medication, 133–34 lawsuit against hospital, 133 nurses covering for officers, 62 officers’ failure to provide medical care, 28, 129–32, 330 officers refusing to get, 129–32 during pregnancy, 141–47 quality of, 134–35, 138–39 in solitary confinement, 101–2, 104–5 Meldish, Joey, 168, 169 mentally ill individuals arrests of, for misdemeanors, 29 as “Brad H.,” 111 as caring for each other, 117–18 conditions in unit designed for, 286–87 death of, 286 estimated number of, in jails, 117, 119 heat-sensitivity and, 286, 289–90 inability of, to comply with officers’ orders, 119 poor treatment of, by detainees and staff, 108–9 problems created by, 113–14 in protective custody, 11–12, 115 Rikers as shelter for homeless, 123–24 Rikers as trigger for, 114–15 self-destructive behavior of, 111–13 in solitary confinement, 93, 95, 104–5, 108, 109–11 specialized units for, 119–20 suicide committed by, 116 mental observation units, 121–22 misdemeanors bail for, 26, 268 individuals arrested for, 29 sentences for, 31 Mitchell, Levi information about COVID-19, 344 social distancing during COVID-19, 340, 341 mobsters food for, 151, 158–59 privileges given to, 168–69, 262 Montanez, Paradise, 269 Montefiore Hospital, 134–35 Morse, Kathy after Rikers, 415 first impression of Rikers, 9 teenagers being in solitary confinement, 99 Murdough, Jerome, 286, 387 Murray, Archibald, 291 Mushlin, Michael after Rikers, 416 community jails, 393 on Department of Corrections fighting any improvements, 276–77 failure of community jails plan, 382–83 lawsuits against conditions in New York City jails, 379–80 Sturz and closing of Rikers, 380–81 N Newsday, 164 New York magazine, 347 The New York Times, 6, 148, 235, 380 Ninja Turtles, 42, 62, 86, 193 O odor of Rikers, 7 Oppenheim, Rachel, 328–29, 330–31, 416 Oppenheim, Tom, 319, 320 orange alerts, 15 Osei, Doris, 246, 250–51, 299–300 P “the pack up,” 396 Pasqua, Frank, III after Rikers, 414 conditions in housing areas, 286, 290 hiding contraband, 170 his contraband business, 178–80 detainees’ attempt to intimidate him, 85–86 detainees cleaning hazardous waste, 279 detainees cooking for selves, 161 KK (officers’ mess), 158–59 life as mobster in Rikers, 168–69 Pataki, George, 364–65 Perez, Mario “Machete” after Rikers, 416 fighting to establish credentials before gangs, 59 separation of detainees by borough, 59 Petcheam, Suzy, 320, 321, 321–22 Petraro, Anne, 108, 112 Philadelphia Gay News, 264 phones fights over, 17 gang control over, 50, 66, 72–73, 239, 240 selling PIN numbers, 12–13 in solitary confinement, 105 during visits, 292 Picciano, John, 371 Pierce, Gregory after Rikers, 416 emotional shutdown of, 85 officers beating detainees, 84–85, 87 punch (drink), 152 violence to prevent sexual attacks, 84 pleas, reasons for guilty “bullpen therapy,” 26, 32, 33, 35–36 crack epidemic and, 388 pretrial detention, 37–38 Polanco, Layleen, 266–67 Ponte, Joseph, 362, 363, 403 Powers, Peter, 346 Powitz, Robert after Rikers, 416 on age of units, 279–80 conditions in infirmary, 281 conditions in unit for mentally ill, 286–87 lack of cooperation from New York City to improve conditions, 276–77, 284–85, 286, 289–90 pregnancy abortion and, 146–47 methadone treatment during, 141 officers’ treatment during, 146–47 in pregnancy housing unit, 145–46 in regular housing unit, 141–43 in solitary confinement, 143–44 Price, Grace, 6–7, 416 Prison Health Services (PHS), 135.

…

See solitary confinement R race and racism administration and, 49 attacks by other detainees and, 87 being white in black prison world, 45–46, 51 in bullpens, 33 as foundation of criminal justice system, 393–94 history of, 48–49 as institutional in Rikers, 48–49 internalization of, 50–51 of officers, 300 plantation mentality of officers, 52–53 Rikers as out-of-sight and out-of-mind and, 384 Spanish female detainees cleaning officers’ quarters, 51–52 treatment of people of color by officers of color, 46–48 violence among detainees, 63–64 Ramsey, John, 97, 416 recidivism, 30, 39–40 rehabilitation, 31 released, being basic facts about, 396 being removed from housing before, 399–400 celebrities, 255–56 looking back at Rikers and, 401–2 need to keep last day secret, 401 waiting for bail and, 398–99 Revolving Door, 26, 29, 32 Ricciardi, Celeste on contraband contact lenses, 170 having abortion, 146–47 in pregnancy unit, 145–46 process visitors undergo, 295 transportation difficulties, 295 Rice, Daniel being handicapped during COVID-19, 342 sanitary measures during COVID-19, 338, 344 social distancing during COVID-19, 344 spread of COVID-19 in housing, 337 Richards, Stanley, 167 after Rikers, 416 house gangs, 12 intake process, 8–9 smuggling contraband, 166–68 Richman, Murray “Don’t Worry,” 254 Riker, Richard, 41 Rikers Island jails conditions in, 16, 281–82 COVID-19 and population reduction, 395 first impressions of, 7–10 ghosts at, 224 opening of new jails, 188 proposal to replace, with community jails, 377, 380–83, 391–92, 393 proposal to sell, to New York State, 379, 380–83 trip to, 5, 6–7, 361–62, 368–70, 372–73, 390 riots causes of, 188–92, 199–200, 232–33 in chapel, 246–47 development of, 192–93 officers’ treatment of detainees after, 193, 198 by teenagers, 232–33 Robinson, Christopher, 236, 306 Rosario, Edward-Yemil “Eddie” after Rikers, 416 alternative facilities due to overcrowded housing areas, 400–401 on effects of “bullpen therapy,” 39 food in bullpen, 149 detainee helping him fight charges, 330 officers’ dehumanizing treatment of detainees, 8, 34, 135–36 officers instigating problems among detainees, 50 officers’ treatment of detainees after riot, 193 poor quality of food, 152 problems created by mentally ill, 113–14 racism as foundation of criminal justice system, 393–94 on riot, 192–93 on visits, 292 Rothenberg, David, 327–28, 417 Ruggiero, Angelo, 180 S Sadat X after Rikers, 419 cleaning up hazardous waste, 279 conditions in bullpen, 34–35 friendships with officers, 258 keeping last day secret, 401 need to forget time in Rikers, 263 process visitors undergo, 293 retaliation by officers, 259 time spent at Rikers, 254 Salaam, Yusef after Rikers, 417 on odor of Rikers, 7 poor quality of food, 149 violence against detainees accused of child molestation or rape and, 295 violence against visitors, 295 Samuels, Kenneth, 17 Sanders, Bernie, 265 Schembri, Tony, 346, 348 school-to-jail pipeline, 43–44 Schriro, Dora, 213, 214, 367, 403 Schwartzbaum, Sidney, 374 after Rikers, 404, 417 background of, 219 community jails, 391 desensitization to violence, 83–84 effect of crack on Rikers, 351 gang violence, 56, 60 hierarchy among detainees, 87–88 Kerik and reduction of violence, 352, 353 as officer on probation, 223–24 officers keeping order in ranks, 227 officers’ reaction to detainee fights, 17 officers’ training, 12, 219 sale of Rikers and community jails, 381 Seabrook and pensions, 373–74 stopping attempted escape, 221–22 Seabrook, Norman “Stormin’ Norman” bridge to Rikers protests and, 361–62, 368–70, 373 elected COBA president, 364 Finkle and, 367 imprisonment of, 375 Jacobson and, 372 Kerik and, 368, 370–71 Koehler and, 364 Pataki endorsement and, 364–65 political relationships of, 364–66 power of, 361–63, 364, 366, 368 Schwartzbaum and pensions, 373–74 use of force by officers, 268 Seed, Kretzmer Gabriel, 120–21 Seelig, Phil, 363–64, 372, 381 sentences for misdemeanors, 31 rationale for, 27 revolving door of Rikers and, 32 Sessoms, Karen being a female officer in solitary confinement, 100 difficulty of obtaining medical care, 127–28 fight between detainees and officers, 92 injured in Rikers, 405 on physical and spiritual damage created by Rikers, 405–6 sexual comments/attacks frequency of, on LGBTQ individuals, 264 by detainees to detainees, 84 by detainees to officers, 85 by officers to visiting wives, 300 sexual relations between officers and detainees, 230 between officers and superiors, 230, 231 Shakur, Tupac, 252–53 Shanies, David, 267–69 Sheinkopf, Hank, 16 Shepherd, Bernard, 325–27, 417 Shyne, 256–57 “Sick Call” problems, 125–27 Skinner, Terrence, 351 after Rikers, 417 attempted officer-aided escape, 214–15 being polite with detainees, 233–34 explaining use of force, 350, 351–52 Gang Intelligence Unit, 73 increasing number of arrests, 355–56 increasing number of searches, 356 manipulation of statistics, 353–54, 356, 359–60 sexual relations between officers and detainees, 230 sexual relations between officers and superiors, 230, 231 suicide in solitary confinement, 105–6 teenagers’ riot over ice cream, 232–33 training, 222 Smagler, Stephanie, 81, 417 soap (laundry), 281–83 solitary confinement celebrity status after being in, 106–7 COBA and, 362 deaths in, 264–65, 268 effectiveness of, 94, 100–101 excessive heat in, 94, 276 female officers in, 100 food in, 94, 95, 106 as frequent punishment, 94–95 history, 93–94 individuals with medical conditions in, 267–68 medical care in, 101–2, 104–5 mentally ill in, 93, 95, 104–5, 108, 109–11 as necessary tool, 94, 96 negative psychological effects on health staff of, 97 negative psychological effects on detainees of, 93, 94, 96–99, 100, 102–4 New York City limits on length of, 94 official grievances about, 99 phone use when in, 105 suicide in, 95, 105–6 teenagers in, 93, 99 Tocqueville on, 93–94 United Nations definition of, 93 Solomons, Julia after Rikers, 417 booth visits, 299 changing definition of and categories for “use of force,” 358 disconnect between policies and actual practices, 342 dogs during visits, 296 mask-wearing during COVID-19, 339–40, 343 number of mentally ill in jails, 119–20 officers’ allowing violence between detainees, 87 Spear, Ronald basic facts about, 306, 307–8, 312 death of, 305, 306, 309–12, 414 medical treatment in Rikers, 308–9 St.

pages: 265 words: 93,354

Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays by Phoebe Robinson

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-bias training, Black Lives Matter, butterfly effect, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, defund the police, desegregation, different worldview, disinformation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, emotional labour, financial independence, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hiring and firing, imposter syndrome, independent contractor, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joan Didion, Lyft, mass incarceration, microaggression, off-the-grid, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Rosa Parks, Sheryl Sandberg, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, too big to fail, uber lyft, unpaid internship, W. E. B. Du Bois

Despite the tragedies of Sandy Hook Elementary, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and a long list of other school shootings, we don’t protect our students and restrict the kinds of guns that can be purchased because some people’s allegiance is to the Second Amendment and not to the safety of our youth. Hell, look at the national response to Covid-19 in America. We can’t even come together in the face of a global pandemic. After nine months of the federal government spreading disinformation, coupled with the nation’s “me first” mentality, which resulted in many people refusing to wear a mask and socially distance, more than three thousand people were dying per day, meaning that each day we were surpassing the total deaths on 9/11. So the notion that not having children is this grand disrupter to an otherwise idyllic civilization doesn’t hold water.

…

These situations were, of course, just the tip of the iceberg, but whatever your 2020 quarantine situation was, it’s safe to say you didn’t see this coming. Honestly, outside of a select few (e.g., Bill Gates, who, back in a 2015 TED Talk, stated that many governments were woefully underprepared if a virus pandemic seized the world), most of us were too consumed with our day-to-day responsibilities to ponder potential doomsday scenarios. But another part of the reason Covid so totally and utterly blindsided many of us is because it happened in 2020. This shit wasn’t supposed to happen then! Covid-19 showing up and canceling 2020 felt much more significant than it would in any other year. I mean, c’mon! Astrologists and numerologists practically alluded to everything being amazing in 2020!

…

Now, I’m not trying to sound ungrateful, because I know the alternative—quarantining solo—is rife with its own set of challenges, including boredom, isolation-induced dark thoughts, not having anyone to share newfound financial burdens due to unemployment or being furloughed with, and the absence of human contact. Touch deprivation became a topic of national discussion and legitimate concern during Covid-19 because of social distancing. And as time went on, some were starting to feel its effects. In Megan McCluskey’s article “The Coronavirus Outbreak Keeps Humans from Touching. Here’s Why That’s So Stressful” on Time.com, she investigated this new normal and referenced a 2014 study conducted by psychologist Sheldon Cohen and other researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

pages: 642 words: 141,888

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination by Mark Bergen

23andMe, 4chan, An Inconvenient Truth, Andy Rubin, Anne Wojcicki, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, book scanning, Burning Man, business logic, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, cloud computing, Columbine, company town, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, digital map, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, game design, gender pay gap, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, Golden age of television, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, growth hacking, Haight Ashbury, immigration reform, James Bridle, John Perry Barlow, Justin.tv, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Kinder Surprise, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Minecraft, mirror neurons, moral panic, move fast and break things, non-fungible token, PalmPilot, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, systems thinking, tech bro, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, TikTok, Walter Mischel, WikiLeaks, work culture

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT said it had not been informed: Megan Farokhmanesh, “YouTube Didn’t Tell Wikipedia About Its Plans for Wikipedia,” The Verge, March 14, 2018, https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/14/17120918/youtube-wikipedia-conspiracy-theory-partnerships-sxsw. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT global pandemic struck: A YouTube spokesperson said the company “took a strong supportive stance on vaccines from the very beginning” of the COVID-19 pandemic “and was one of the first companies to implement a COVID-vaccine misinfo policy.” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 29: 901 Cherry Avenue or Green Nasim: Daisuke Wakabayashi, Thomas Erdbrink, and Matthew Haag, “ ‘Vegan Bodybuilder’: How YouTube Attacker, Nasim Aghdamn, Went Viral in Iran,” The New York Times, April 4, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/nasim-aghdam-youtube-shooter.html.

…

On February 9, 2020, there was a sharp rise in people searching the site for anything on the terrifying new virus. Engineers working on Google search saw the same thing. Google closed its offices on March 6, days before much of the country shut down. By May, as the grim reality of the pandemic settled in, Susan Wojcicki arranged a video chat with Hank Green that he would broadcast. The pioneering YouTuber had already addressed COVID-19 on his science channel and his personal vlog (“The Anxious Scroll”). He welcomed Wojcicki, who looked into her webcam in front of a massive white inlaid bookshelf stacked neatly with paperbacks and family photos. “Well, let’s get this out of the way,” Green began.

…

In March, YouTube halted some human moderation until lawyers sorted out how reviewers could screen “egregious content” from homes. YouTube, Wojcicki explained, leaned on its new self-regulation systems. Engineers built a “shelf” to prominently display select videos about COVID-19 on the site and rejiggered code to promote videos from established news outlets and medical authorities higher in rankings. In April, YouTube wrote a new rule banning videos with “medically unsubstantiated” claims, and the company said viewers were primarily fed “authoritative” footage on the pandemic. Weeks before Wojcicki sat with Green, Brits who had been stirred up by web conspiracies, which claimed 5G networks spread the virus, attacked several cell towers.

pages: 208 words: 57,602

Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation by Kevin Roose

"World Economic Forum" Davos, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, automated trading system, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, business process, call centre, choice architecture, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, disinformation, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, fake news, fault tolerance, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Freestyle chess, future of work, Future Shock, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Google Hangouts, GPT-3, hiring and firing, hustle culture, hype cycle, income inequality, industrial robot, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, lockdown, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Narrative Science, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, OpenAI, pattern recognition, planetary scale, plutocrats, Productivity paradox, QAnon, recommendation engine, remote working, risk tolerance, robotic process automation, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, work culture

In early 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the Bay Area, Marcus Books was forced to temporarily close its doors. And like a lot of businesses, it faced an uncertain future. But its community rallied behind it, starting a GoFundMe page and raising money to keep the store in business. Then, in May, George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed by police in Minneapolis. Protests filled the streets of America’s cities, and orders started pouring into Marcus Books from all over the country from people who wanted to support its mission. It’s selling five times as many books as it was before the pandemic, and its GoFundMe donations ballooned to $260,000, more than enough to keep the store afloat.

…

I’d favor a UBI-style plan coupled with Medicare for All and generous unemployment benefits for workers who are displaced by automation, similar to how the federal government stepped in with emergency cash transfers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Whatever we do, it’s inarguable that any collective action would be better than doing what we’re currently doing to address automation-related economic pains on the federal level in the United States, which is essentially nothing. In addition to big nets, we also need to think about the small webs we can create to support each other through this technological transition. Because in the absence of some fairly radical economic and policy changes, we’re going to have to do a lot of this ourselves. Our response to the Covid-19 crisis is a useful guide here.

…

After all, unemployment in the United States was still near a record low, and while corporate executives were chattering among themselves about AI and automation, there wasn’t much obvious evidence that it was taking a toll on workers yet. Then Covid-19 arrived. In the spring of 2020, much of the United States entered shelter-in-place lockdowns, and my phone began lighting up with calls from tech companies telling me how the pandemic was affecting their plans for automation. The difference, now, was that companies wanted to publicize their efforts to automate jobs. Robots don’t get sick, after all, and companies that could successfully replace humans with machines could continue making goods and providing services even while the virus was raging.

pages: 206 words: 64,212

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris

airport security, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, David Sedaris, defund the police, desegregation, do what you love, Donald Trump, Ferguson, Missouri, George Floyd, index card, McMansion, Minecraft, pre–internet, QAnon, Skype, social distancing, Transnistria

A quick stop for coffee and we’d continue on to Emerald Isle, where the coronavirus was widely thought to be a hoax, and unmasked people looked at you the same way that New York heroin addicts did, as if to say, Yeah, and what the fuck are you going to do about it? It wasn’t strangers I was worried about, though. If COVID were to get me, it would have come from a friend or acquaintance. Throughout the height of the pandemic, Hugh and I had dinner parties—at least two a week, and sometimes up to four. When questioned, I’d explain that the guests we invited were members of our bubble. But it wasn’t true. Anyone willing to leave their house was welcome. We ate a lot of ground water buffalo those first few months.

…

It’s so freeing, no longer listening to political podcasts—no longer being enraged. I still browse the dailies, skipping over the stories about COVID, as I am finished with all that as well. The moment I got my first shot of the vaccine, I started thinking of the coronavirus the way I think of scurvy—something from a long-ago time that can no longer hurt me, something that mainly pirates get. “Yes,” the papers would say, “but what if there’s a powerful surge this summer? This Christmas? A year from now? What if our next pandemic is worse than this one? What if it kills all the fish and cattle and poultry and affects our skin’s reaction to sunlight?

…

Lucky-Go-Happy Throughout the worst of the pandemic I, like everyone, thought of the many things I’d failed to appreciate back when life was normal: oh, to be handed an actual restaurant menu; to stand so close to a stranger that you can read the banal text messages that are obviously more important to him than his toddler stumbling off the curb and out into traffic. Many felt that they had taken their jobs for granted, but not me. I always loved my work, or at least the part of it that was public and involved reading out loud. The last show I did before COVID robbed me of my livelihood was in Vancouver, British Columbia, in a theater I didn’t much care for, a rock house with a grim, cramped lobby and the sort of dressing room you see in movies about performers who overdose on drugs because their dressing rooms are so depressing.

pages: 371 words: 109,320

News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World by Alan Rusbridger

airport security, basic income, Bellingcat, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, crisis actor, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Google Earth, green new deal, hive mind, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Murray Gell-Mann, Narrative Science, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, post-truth, profit motive, public intellectual, publication bias, Seymour Hersh, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, tech baron, the scientific method, TikTok, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, yellow journalism

Most recently, look at the news channel’s coverage of coronavirus in late February/early March 2020 to see how the almost perfect correlation in numerous Fox hosts mirrored the White House line – a journey from outright scepticism to belated acknowledgement of the gravity of the pandemic. By April 2020 the channel’s coverage of Covid-19 was sufficiently misleading that a group of seventy-four professors of journalism and journalists wrote an open letter condemning the coverage as ‘a danger to public health . . . Indeed, it is not an overstatement to say that your misreporting endangers your own viewers – and not only them, for in a pandemic, individual behaviour affects significant numbers of other people as well.’ (SEE: HYPOCRISY) The disquiet was evidently shared by James Murdoch, who resigned from the board of News Corp in July 2020 citing ‘disagreements over certain editorial content’.

…

Beginning with Donald Trump’s descent on the golden escalator and declaration about Mexicans being rapists, US outlets have been debating how to report his bombastic, xenophobic and often untrue statements. During the Covid-19 pandemic Trump frequently referenced the ‘foreign virus’ and ‘China virus’, which CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta said ‘smacked of xenophobia’. The justice correspondent for the Nation, Elie Mystal, pointed to the connection between Trump’s rhetoric and a rise in hate crimes against Asians, writing, ‘If the media were doing their job, this would be the story: The president of the United States is putting lives at risk during a global pandemic by inciting violence against fellow Americans.’ Before Trump, though, xenophobic language, especially against Muslims, was prevalent in cable news.

…

In the UK this new landscape is regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority, along with the Competition and Markets Authority, which have released their own guidelines on the conduct of influencers (comparative guidelines are currently looser in the US). Covid-19 hit the world of influencers just as it did more mainstream forms of media. Their revenues dried up as the global economy went to sleep. Some were praised for broadcasting responsible messages about social distancing to vast audiences whom mainstream media was missing. Others were panned for spreading rubbish. Economic fragility. Dilemmas about trust while seeking authenticity. New media, old problems.

pages: 344 words: 104,522

Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam by Vivek Ramaswamy

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-bias training, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, carbon footprint, clean tech, cloud computing, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, critical race theory, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, defund the police, deplatforming, desegregation, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fudge factor, full employment, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, green new deal, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, impact investing, independent contractor, index fund, Jeff Bezos, lockdown, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, microaggression, military-industrial complex, Network effects, Parler "social media", plant based meat, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, random walk, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Bork, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, single source of truth, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, Susan Wojcicki, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade route, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, Virgin Galactic, WeWork, zero-sum game

So it’s difficult to view his widely publicized comments about election fraud and his “prayers” that Trump use military force to retain power in January 2021 as being entirely separate from his own commercial agenda.28 The Chinese have gotten in on the act too. During the COVID-19 pandemic, one state-affiliated Chinese company charitably “donated” drones to local US law enforcement agencies to help enforce social distancing and contact tracing during the national lockdown. The trick? Free surveillance. The victims of pre-2008 capitalist excess were the cash-strapped strippers and little people and, arguably, in certain cases, the shareholders and clients who were shortchanged a few bucks to pay for lavish entertainment.

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An injustice somewhere became a pandemic everywhere. Under its stated standard, YouTube would’ve banned any videos in January 2020 that claimed that human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 was possible, given the official WHO stance at the time. In retrospect, that was arguably the most dangerous lie about public health in modern history. As of this writing, the issue remains relevant to other scientific debates surrounding COVID-19 as well. In the spring of 2020, the FDA approved a drug called remdesivir, which it says shortens the duration of hospital stays for patients with severe COVID-19. Tens of thousands of patients hospitalized in the United States went on to receive remdesivir, including one of my family members.

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Subramanian went so far as to argue that ESG metrics are the best measure for signaling future earnings risk—superior even to financial risk factors like the level of a company’s leverage, or debt burden.6 Harvard Business School professor George Serafeim, working in collaboration with Boston mutual fund manager State Street, observed that “during the market collapse” in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, “firms experiencing more positive sentiment on their human capital, supply chain, and operational response to COVID-19 experienced higher institutional money flows” and less downside in share prices.7 Similar analyses abound. Morningstar found that sustainable index funds outperformed traditional index funds in the first quarter of 2020.8 Hermes Investment Management observed in 2018 that companies with good or improving ESG characteristics outperform companies with poor or worsening characteristics.9 Countless other reports come to similar conclusions.

pages: 486 words: 150,849

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History by Kurt Andersen

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, airline deregulation, airport security, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, American ideology, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, blue-collar work, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, Burning Man, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, centre right, computer age, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, cotton gin, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, ending welfare as we know it, Erik Brynjolfsson, feminist movement, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, Future Shock, game design, General Motors Futurama, George Floyd, George Gilder, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, High speed trading, hive mind, income inequality, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jitney, Joan Didion, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, lockdown, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, Naomi Klein, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, obamacare, Overton Window, Peter Thiel, Picturephone, plutocrats, post-industrial society, Powell Memorandum, pre–internet, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Seaside, Florida, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, tech billionaire, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban planning, urban renewal, very high income, wage slave, Wall-E, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working poor, young professional, éminence grise

Plus, the AFP president practically gasped—“I cannot imagine how we would be responding” to the pandemic “if the entire nation, every citizen in this nation, was trapped in a single-payer all-in government-run system.” The men agreed that the federal public health bureaucracies hadn’t done a good job on COVID-19, of course, but that the president was now cracking the whip. As for financial assistance to citizens, the lesser Koch minion said that if the federal government had “exercised fiscal discipline before now, we’d be in a position to help people more” in ways that “might include spending some money.” The economic libertarians’ de facto pandemic czar for a while was Stephen Moore, the right-wing Zelig and early Trumpist so second-rate that in 2019 even the Republican Senate wouldn’t consent to put him on the Federal Reserve Board.

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*4 Loeffler, appointed in 2019 to fill an empty seat in Georgia, had been a senator for only eighteen days when she attended that pandemic briefing in January. She’d worked for years for her husband’s company, before and after marrying him, mainly as his head of PR but recently running its new cryptocurrencies division for $3.5 million a year. *5 Right-wing fantasies and misinformation about COVID-19 on Fox News apparently caused unnecessary deaths. “[Sean] Hannity originally dismissed the risks associated with the virus before gradually adjusting his position starting late February,” according to the research by economists in their paper “Misinformation During a Pandemic,” but “[Tucker] Carlson warned viewers about the threat posed by the coronavirus from early February….Greater viewership of Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is strongly associated with a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the early stages of the pandemic.”

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What I said at the end of Fantasyland I’ll restate (and I first drafted this paragraph, it’s important to note, a year before COVID-19 existed): societies do come to existential crossroads and make important choices. Here we are. The current political and economic situation wasn’t inevitable, because history and evolution never are. Nor is any particular future. Where we wind up, good or bad, is the result of choices we make over time—choices made deliberatively and more or less democratically, choices made by whoever cares more or wields more power at the time, choices made accidentally, choices ignored or otherwise left unmade. Even before the pandemic and its economic consequences, and before the protests and chaos following the murder of George Floyd, we were facing a do-or-die national test comparable to the big ones we passed in each of the three previous centuries—in the 1930s, the 1850s and ’60s, and the 1770s and ’80s.

pages: 572 words: 124,222

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities by Michael Shellenberger

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, business climate, centre right, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crack epidemic, dark triade / dark tetrad, defund the police, delayed gratification, desegregation, Donald Trump, drug harm reduction, gentrification, George Floyd, Golden Gate Park, green new deal, Haight Ashbury, housing crisis, Housing First, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, mandatory minimum, Marc Benioﬀ, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peoples Temple, Peter Pan Syndrome, pill mill, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, remote working, rent control, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, social distancing, South of Market, San Francisco, Steven Pinker, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, walkable city

Newsom appeared to make good on his commitment in April 2020 by helping San Francisco and other California cities use federal stimulus funding to rent hotel rooms for the homeless to shelter in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, an initiative called Project Roomkey. Doing so was an obvious win-win-win for hotel owners who could have been bankrupted by the pandemic, for the homeless who were uniquely vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19, and for the public. Jennifer Friedenbach of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness praised Newsom, whom she had criticized fiercely over the years, telling National Public Radio, “I’m a big believer in redemption.”6 Newsom appears to understand that addiction and mental illness are core drivers of homelessness, and to genuinely care about the problem and the people impacted by it.

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“We find the Governor’s budget proposal falls short of articulating a clear strategy for curbing homelessness in California,” it wrote.9 Now, there is evidence that the response to COVID-19 by progressive cities including San Francisco made the addiction crisis worse. Before the pandemic, many street addicts would be occasionally arrested and forced to detox and get clean for a few days or weeks, but during the pandemic many remained intoxicated without interruption, worsening their addictions. “Morgan was really into meth,” said Kelly Stamphill, who tracked down her fentanyl-addicted son in a Tenderloin Safe Sleeping Site in March 2021.

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Many of the problems stemmed from COVID-19. California’s prisons, jails, and homeless shelters were under orders to reduce their occupancy. Fewer people were being arrested for public intoxication and aggressive behavior. More people started sleeping in front of our office, the boarded-up secondhand clothing store next door, or the former S&M shop next to it, frequently leaving their trash and waste for us to clean up in the morning. And we started finding people passed out on the sidewalk, sometimes with their pants around their knees. But none of these problems started with the pandemic. Between 2008 and 2019, eighteen thousand companies, including Toyota, Charles Schwab, and Hewlett-Packard, fled California due to a constellation of problems sometimes summarized as “poor business climate.”1 California has the highest income tax, highest gasoline tax, and highest sales tax in the United States, spends significantly more than other states on homelessness, and yet has worse outcomes.2 “I came out here in 1983,” said HBO’s Bill Maher to Representative Adam Schiff in the fall of 2020.

pages: 439 words: 131,081

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, Bellingcat, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, call centre, centre right, cloud computing, Comet Ping Pong, Computer Lib, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, dark pattern, data science, deep learning, deliberate practice, desegregation, disinformation, domesticated silver fox, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Filter Bubble, Future Shock, game design, gamification, George Floyd, growth hacking, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker News, hive mind, illegal immigration, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Roose, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, military-industrial complex, Oklahoma City bombing, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, profit maximization, public intellectual, QAnon, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, social web, Startup school, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech worker, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, TikTok, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator

“The challenge I’ve got with them is to put sustainability and maturity over absolute profit,” he told a development publication, speaking more bluntly than he might have with news outlets. “And that’s a tough conversation to have, because they’ve all got bottom lines.” He met regularly with corporate liaisons throughout the pandemic. But evidence of real-world harm only continued mounting. Americans who used Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, one study found, became more likely to believe that vitamin C could successfully treat Covid or that the government had manufactured the virus. Millions were rejecting masks and social distancing and would later reject vaccines. Doctors reported more and more patients refusing lifesaving treatments based on something they’d seen online, much as Brazilian families tormented by Zika had done just one year earlier, and often citing the same conspiracies.

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A Facebook obsessive, he repeatedly reposted already-viral Covid, anti-vaccine, and pro-Trump conspiracies swirling across the platform—a typical Facebook superposter, not unlike Rolf Wassermann, the German artist who’d amplified whatever the platform pushed in front of him. But Barnett was absorbing a social media ecosystem now far more toxic than Germany’s. He attended a Facebook-organized rally at his state capitol in September, carrying an AR-15, to protest Covid restrictions. He came to believe, a friend later said, that shadowy powers intended to exploit the pandemic to insert microchips in citizens’ foreheads, a vague echo of Plandemic and QAnon beliefs.

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And Why It Matters,” Max Fisher, New York Times, April 8, 2020. 9 Facebook reported a 70 percent: “Eight: ‘We Go All,’” Kevin Roose, New York Times, June 4, 2020. 10 jumped from 9 to 16 percent: “YouTube Controls 16% of Pandemic Traffic Globally: Sandvine,” Daniel Frankel, Next TV, May 7, 2020. 11 was everywhere by April: In April 2020, the advocacy group Avaaz identified 100 Covid-conspiracy posts on Facebook with 1.7 million combined shares. “How Facebook Can Flatten the Curve of the Coronavirus Infodemic,” Avaaz, April 15, 2020. 12 small-town missionary’s Facebook: His post received 18,000 shares. “Fact-Checking a Facebook Conspiracy about Bill Gates, Dr. Fauci and Covid-19,” Daniel Funke, Politifact, April 14, 2020. 13 “Coronavirus is a government made”: Her post received 90,000 shares and 350,000 likes.

pages: 342 words: 114,118

After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made by Ben Rhodes

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, British Empire, centre right, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, gentrification, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, independent contractor, invisible hand, late capitalism, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, new economy, obamacare, open economy, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, QAnon, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, South China Sea, the long tail, too big to fail, trade route, Washington Consensus, young professional, zero-sum game

Repair some roads here!” COVID-19 underscored this danger for Putin. As Navalny and I spoke, Russia’s economy was spiraling into a deeper hole, even as Putin was ramming through “constitutional reforms” to allow himself to stay in power well into the 2030s. The pandemic itself was mismanaged, alternatively denied and attacked, responsibility delegated down to lower-level officials who were never empowered to do their jobs. Navalny complained about the shipment of vital medical supplies that Putin had sent to the United States and Western European countries early in the pandemic as evidence of his increasing fixation on his geopolitical standing, a trolling czar.

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I thought about what Maria Stepanova had told me about COVID, why it might prove to be a circuit breaker to the spread of nationalism and its inexorable march toward violence. “It is a war without an enemy,” she’d said, “without the language of hate or the necessity to fight.” As much as the nationalists sought to mobilize the language of hate in response to the pandemic, enough people around the world could plainly see that what was required was a response based on science and reason, on facts and the very idea of objective reality that had come under assault. Meanwhile, the economic fallout from COVID was casting an even harsher light on the fundamental corruption of those in power—their personal wealth and the offensive inequality of the systems that they presided over.

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The ferry reached the dock and I joined an orderly procession of people walking onto the shore. * * * — At the height of the COVID lockdown in the United States, China introduced a national security law that essentially eliminated the legal divisions between mainland China and Hong Kong. Wrapped in the guise of securitized goals like antiterrorism, the laws placed Hong Kong at the whims of their Beijing rulers. Opposition figures and democracy activists were detained. The repression and pandemic kept the street protests to a minimum. Power does not give up without a fight. In July 2020, I got on a video call with John, Lorraine, and Charles, the young people who had been my guides through the mindset of Hong Kongers.

pages: 463 words: 115,103

Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect by David Goodhart

active measures, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, assortative mating, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, centre right, computer age, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, data science, David Attenborough, David Brooks, deglobalization, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, desegregation, deskilling, different worldview, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, emotional labour, Etonian, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Flynn Effect, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, gender pay gap, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income inequality, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, lockdown, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, meritocracy, new economy, Nicholas Carr, oil shock, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, post-industrial society, post-materialism, postindustrial economy, precariat, reshoring, Richard Florida, robotic process automation, scientific management, Scientific racism, Skype, social distancing, social intelligence, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thorstein Veblen, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, wages for housework, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, young professional

This finding, which was also found to hold outside Whitehall, is based on the idea that low status in a hierarchy produces constant stress and anxiety—especially for men, who derive more status from work than women—and this produces higher levels of cortisol, which damages the immune system. This could be part of the explanation for why at the height of the pandemic men in low-skill jobs were twice as likely to die from Covid-19 as in the wider working population, at least in the United Kingdom. Although there is a commonsense connection between poverty, poorer health, and longevity, Marmot’s work has been criticized for its assumptions about status and stress. Many people go to work just to earn a living and derive their status from things outside work; moreover, high stress is also associated with high-status individuals with large responsibilities.

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And even if there were an authority we could all trust who could spell out the relative risks of different courses of action, there is every likelihood that there would be fundamental disagreements between people of different temperaments as to which course to take, as there was at the height of the Covid-19 crisis. The same applies to how much we should forgo current consumption to invest in minimizing the threat from future pandemics and the threat of antibiotic resistance. Another imminent value challenge concerns human enhancement and “playing God.” Already there are many pharmacological ways of temporarily enhancing brain functioning, and in the future we might be able to manipulate our own DNA to improve cognitive ability or select the embryos of our babies to favor only those with the highest innate ability.I The more optimistic accounts see cognitive improvement technology as narrowing the current cognitive divides in the way that glasses level out the optical playing field for those with good and poor eyesight.

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Socializing the costs would add an extra 1 percent to UK public spending.47 But whatever happens to the funding of the system, the status of the people who work in it will also remain an issue if the United Kingdom and the United States, and other rich societies are going to avoid an even more intense recruitment crisis into these jobs. The longer term response to the Covid-19 crisis will surely be not only to build more emergency capacity into our health services but also to raise the status and pay of the Cinderella parts of the care economy, above all elderly care. In much of Europe care homes for the elderly reported a disproportionate number of Covid-19 deaths as protective measures focused on health systems. All reputable surveys of future skill requirements in rich countries focus on what Adair Turner calls the “Hi-Tech, Hi-Touch” combination, meaning higher-order cognitive and technical skills on the one hand and interpersonal skills in education and health on the other—sometimes shortened to “coders and carers.”

pages: 741 words: 164,057

Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing by Kevin Davies

23andMe, Airbnb, Anne Wojcicki, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Asilomar, bioinformatics, California gold rush, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Downton Abbey, Drosophila, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, epigenetics, fake news, Gregor Mendel, Hacker News, high-speed rail, hype cycle, imposter syndrome, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, life extension, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, Mikhail Gorbachev, mouse model, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, phenotype, QWERTY keyboard, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rolodex, scientific mainstream, Scientific racism, seminal paper, Shenzhen was a fishing village, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social distancing, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, TED Talk, the long tail, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, traumatic brain injury, warehouse automation

The most important arms race on the planet takes place between two implacable enemies, the nuclear superpowers of the microbial world—bacteria and the viruses (or bacteriophages) intent on their mutual destruction. This war has raged for life eternal, a billion years at least. We didn’t need to experience the COVID-19 pandemic to know that viruses are the invisible menace, harbingers of sickness and death. “The single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance on this planet is the virus,” Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg famously said. Beyond social distancing and some natural immunity, the human species mounts a variety of countermeasures, including vaccines and a battery of tailored or repurposed drugs and therapies. The threat is never extinguished, because viruses are able to mutate, evolve, capture genetic material from their hosts, and continually reinvent themselves.

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Ed Yong, “How the Pandemic Will End,” Atlantic, March 25, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/. 9. Megan Molteni and Gregory Barber, “How a Crispr Lab Became a Pop-Up Covid Testing Center,” WIRED, April 2, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-lab-turned-pop-up-covid-testing-center/. 10. Matthew Herper, “CRISPR pioneer Doudna opens lab to run Covid-19 tests,” STAT, March 30, 2020, https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/30/crispr-pioneer-doudna-opens-lab-to-run-covid-19-tests/. 11. Megan Molteni and Gregory Barber, “How a Crispr Lab Became a Pop-Up Covid Testing Center,” WIRED, April 2, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-lab-turned-pop-up-covid-testing-center/ 12.

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A few months later, Doudna faced a new and unexpected public health crisis from of all things a virus: the novel coronavirus.8 As she and her colleagues prepared to shutter their labs for the pandemic, Doudna felt an overwhelming responsibility to help the local community. On March 13, she addressed her IGI colleagues with pronounced fire and emotion and told them it was time to step up. “Folks, I have come to the conclusion that the IGI must rise and take on this pandemic,” she said.9 With a gaping shortfall in COVID-19 testing capacity, Doudna and colleagues decided to turn a 2,500-square-foot space into a COVID-19 test center. The response to a call for volunteers was stunning: hundreds of people volunteered to help in any way they could.

pages: 211 words: 78,547

How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement by Fredrik Deboer

2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, Bernie Sanders, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, David Brooks, defund the police, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, George Floyd, global pandemic, helicopter parent, income inequality, lockdown, obamacare, Occupy movement, open immigration, post-materialism, profit motive, QAnon, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, social distancing, TikTok, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, We are the 99%, working poor, zero-sum game

But toward the end of his tenure, the United States was engulfed in a singular crisis. The Covid pandemic had its genesis in 2019 (thus Covid-19), but bloomed into a full-blown global emergency in March 2020. As large-scale lockdowns were established in the United States, it became clear to many Americans that their basic way of life would be deeply disrupted. Being forced to stay home for long periods made an already internet-addicted country turn even more deeply into its smartphones. Mask mandates and social-distancing guidelines made rare trips outside, such as to get groceries, into tense affairs. Fairly early in the pandemic, it would be conclusively proven that outdoor transmission of the virus was extremely unlikely, but for some months most people masked outdoors and would often take a wide path around others as they walked by.

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In 2020, a year that was sold at the time as a moment of unique political foment—as a “reckoning”—we saw the American progressive movement drift from the essential to the inconsequential, from the material to the illusory, in much the same way. Early that year, an unprecedented global pandemic bloomed in front of our eyes. The novel coronavirus Covid-19 exploded out from China and across the face of the globe in the span of a few months. There have been deadlier diseases, and there have been diseases that have wrought more havoc, but there had never before been a disease that so took advantage of a globalized and interconnected Earth, of our now-small world.

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The Trump presidency had enflamed the country, his boorishness and serial scandals convincing many that the 2020 presidential election would prove to be one of the most consequential of our lifetimes. Along with sustained rage at Trump’s long history of racist and misogynist statements, there was despair at his handling of the Covid-19 crisis. In March of that year, the virus had bloomed into a pandemic, spreading across our globalized world with unprecedented speed. In response to the crisis, state and city governments across the country had enforced lockdown policies that closed public spaces and kept people in their homes. Fear gripped the country as the virus killed hundreds of thousands, and being shut inside ratcheted up the tension.

pages: 391 words: 106,255

Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge by Ted Conover

autism spectrum disorder, banking crisis, big-box store, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, carbon footprint, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, fixed income, gentrification, George Floyd, McMansion, off grid, off-the-grid, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, place-making, social distancing, supervolcano

* * * — Even if few people had been infected yet by Covid-19 in my part of the flats, much of the turmoil of the outside world filtered in via television and social media. I stopped by a neighbor’s place; he told me, “If you have any money in the bank, get it out.” But why? “Last night it took one trillion dollars to cover the daily bank rate”—I wasn’t sure what this was—“as opposed to the two hundred million dollars in the last banking crisis.” The core problem, he added, wasn’t the pandemic but that the media overdramatized the Covid situation. I allowed that this might be true in certain situations, but I told him I believed there were solid reasons for alarm.

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Lance of La Puente had found his gregarious nature challenged by the pandemic; spending workdays at home was difficult for him. A new hobby seemed to help: a friend of a friend had sent him a high-end telescope, and on dark nights he would head out to photograph the heavens from different spots in the valley. One night he asked to set up at my place, and I got to peer with him at deep sky objects (such as the Hercules Cluster and Andromeda Galaxy) that were light-years away. At the same time, over cups of tea, he told me he’d recently recovered from a breakthrough case of Covid; the apparent source was an anti-vaxxer relative who had stayed with him and his wife for a few days.

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See also La Puente; San Luis Valley (SLV) prairie (flats); and specific towns and settlements cattle grazing and, 95 cheap land in, 11, 14 Hershey arrest and, 169–70 Hispanic culture and, 190 land sales and regulations, 132–34 land use restrictions, 28–29 map of, 10 mental-health services and, 212 old wells and cattle in, 121 services strained, 28–29 subdivision and land sales, 122–35, 125, 265n taxes and, 28, 122, 124, 131–35 tire collections and, 70 Costilla County assessor, 131–32, 134 Costilla County child protective services, 181 Costilla County code enforcement, 3, 17, 28–34, 31, 47, 50–54, 86–88, 92, 184, 203 Costilla County commissioners, 87, 124, 132–34 Costilla County Corporation, 89 Costilla County Free Press, 233 Costilla County jail, 29 Costilla County manager, 116 Costilla County sheriff and deputies, 85–86, 88, 244–45 Costilla Estates Development, 114, 116–21, 118 Costilla Land Company, 110, 252 Costley, Jeremy, 47 County Road G, 10 Cove Lake, 98–99 Covid-19 pandemic, 217–19, 223–26, 235–40, 245, 256–57 stimulus payments, 237–40 Coyotes (Conover), 246 Craigslist, 130, 130 Creede, Colorado, 62 Creole Americans, 144 Crested Butte, Colorado, 193 Crestone, Colorado, 10, 86, 234 crime, 29, 63, 80, 190–91, 198, 258 child abuse, 19, 169, 194–97, 265n domestic abuse, 178, 181, 194–96, 259 murder, 21–22, 94, 190–99 serial killings, 191–92 theft, 79, 107, 173, 193, 263n Cronon, William, 247, 268n Crouch, Pat, 197 Cumbres & Toltec railroad, 14 D dab lounges, 98 Dallas, 77 Dear, Robert, 12, 94 Deep South, 138 deer, 38–39, 202 Del Norte, 210 DeLorme road atlas, 35 Demetrius (abuse victim), 197 Democrats, 138 Dempsey, Jack, 61–62, 263n Denver, 11, 39, 73, 90–91, 126, 145, 190, 259 Denver, John, 127 Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, 14, 117, 118, 252 Denver Broncos, 21, 60 Denver Post, The 55–56 Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Operations, 49 Desmond, Matthew, 240n diabetes, 25 Dilley, Damian, 178 Dilley, Jeremiah, 181–84, 183 Dilley, Zahra (Ankhzahra Soshotep), 175–85, 183, 214, 220, 240, 255–56, 266n direct-mail land sales, 124–26 DIY Hunting Map, 36, 121 Dog Latin, 89 dogs, 36, 40, 42, 44–45, 50–51, 54, 57, 59, 72, 77–79, 94, 101–3, 150, 152, 158, 160–61, 166–68, 170, 176, 201, 210, 213–15, 266n Donaldson, Billy and Martha Jo, 135–37, 136 “Don’t Fence Me In” (Porter), 249 Doon, Ben, 95 driver’s licenses, 53, 91–92 drought, 227–29 Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), 58 drugs, 57–59, 58, 63, 92, 103–4, 161, 198, 207, 211–12, 263n.

pages: 295 words: 87,204

The Capitalist Manifesto by Johan Norberg

AltaVista, anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, failed state, Filter Bubble, friendshoring, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Greta Thunberg, Gunnar Myrdal, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Indoor air pollution, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, Minecraft, multiplanetary species, Naomi Klein, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, open economy, passive income, Paul Graham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, planned obsolescence, precariat, profit motive, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sam Bankman-Fried, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, social distancing, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Virgin Galactic, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey, X Prize, you are the product, zero-sum game

INDEX NB Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations Afghanistan, 160–61, 256 Africa, 30–35, 70, 267, 282 colonisation, 31 independence, 31–4 Sub-Saharan Africa, 30–31 AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), 170 Albania, 50 Algeria, 251 Alphabet, 179 AltaVista, 169, 174 Amazon, 169–72, 178–9 Amazon Prime, 179 Andersson, Magdalena, 8 Angola, 239 Annan, Kofi, 3 Ant Group, 227 AOL (America Online), 169–71, 174 Apple, 107–8, 159, 163, 169–73, 179 Apple TV, 179 Arab Spring, 215 Aristophanes, 73 Aristotle, 70 ARPA, 183–6 ARPANET, 184–5 Asia, 267, 282 Asp, Anette, 287 Attac, 2–3, 6 Australia, 11, 258, 267, 282, 285 Ayittey, George, 31 Bangladesh, 235 Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 144 Bankman-Fried, Sam, 153 Bao Tong, 212 Baran, Paul, 184, 186–7 Bastiat, Frédéric, 114 Beijing, China, 209 Belgium, 285 Berggren, Niclas, 62 Bergh, Andreas, 56, 103 Bezos, Jeff, 127 Biden, Joe, 76, 217 big companies, 141, 146–50, 176–7, 292 BioNTech, 177 biotechnology, 195 Björk, Nina, 263, 265, 272, 274–5, 278 BlackBerry, 174 Blair, Tony, 170 Blockbuster, 151 Blue Origin, 202 Bolivia, 47 Bolt, Beranek and Newman, 184 Bono, 4, 170 Botswana, 34–5 Boudreaux, Donald, 125 Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Lerner), 190 Brazil, 11, 29, 239, 258 Brexit, 116–18 Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (Graeber), 86, 98–9 business regulation, 139–41 Callaghan, James, 10 Canada, 102, 267, 283 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 128 capital income, 130–31 Carbon Engineering, 255 Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 29 Carlson, Tucker, 146 cars, 158 Carter, Jimmy, 10 Case Deaton, Anne, 108–11, 136 Castillo, Pedro, 30 Chávez, Hugo, 43, 135 child labour, 20 child mortality, 19–20, 20 Chile, 11, 29–30 China, 5, 7, 11, 19, 24–5, 76, 78–80, 83–4, 104–7, 204–29, 239, 258 agricultural productivity, 206–7, 209 Communist Party, 182, 204–9, 211–12, 215–18, 221–3, 226–8 deindustrialization, 84 economic development, 205–29 environmental issues, 251–3, 257 exports, 209–10 industrial policy, 205, 212–13, 217, 223–4, 296 innovation strategy, 182, 192 innovation, 226–8 poverty, 213, 214 Reform and Opening Up programme, 212 state-owned companies, 208 WTO and, 205, 209, 211 China’s Leaders (Shambaugh), 215 Chirac, Jacques, 191 Chomsky, Noam, 49 Christianity, 264–5 Churchill, Winston, 135 Clark, Daniel, 87 climate change, 5–7, 230–60, 293 carbon border tariffs, 258 carbon tax, 256–7, 259 energy supplies, 233–5, 253–6, 259 greenhouse gas emissions, 231, 233–5, 238, 240–41, 244, 253–9 see also environmental issues Climeworks, 255 Clinton, Hillary, 140 Coase, Ronald, 206 Cohen, Linda, 189 communism, 2, 25–6, 241–3, 290–91 Communist Manifesto, The, 1848, 2 community, 267 Compaq, 174 Concorde, 191 Confucianism, 22, 25 Congo-Brazzaville, 30 Congo, 239 consumer culture, 160–62, 287–8 Cook, Tim, 173 cooperation, 278–9 Coopersmith, Jonathan, 188–9 Corbyn, Jeremy, 43 coronavirus see Covid-19 pandemic Council of Economic Advisers, 147, 152 Covid-19 pandemic, 8, 21, 76–81, 223, 232–3, 270 Cowen, Tyler, 154 Credit Suisse, 132–3 crony capitalism, 139–40, 291 culture wars, 12–13 Czechoslovakia, 26 Dalits, 63–4 dating profiles, 154 ‘deaths of despair’, 7, 108–10, 136, 271, 293 Deaths of Despair (Deaton and Case Deaton), 136 Deaton, Angus, 19, 108–119, 136 DeepMind, 177 degrowth, 232–5, 254–5 ‘deindustrialization’, 83–5 democracies, 26, 37, 46 Deneen, Patrick, 262–5 Deng Xiaoping, 24, 46, 205, 212–13 Denmark, 91, 285 ‘dependency theory’, 27–8 Detroit, Michigan, 87–8 dictatorships, 11, 24, 29, 32, 42–8 Digital Equipment Corporation, 174 disability-adjusted life years (DALY), 237 dishonesty, 153–6 Disney, 178 Dominican Republic, 225 Easterlin, Richard, 279 ‘Easterlin paradox’, 279–80 Easterly, William, 39 Ecclesiazusae (Aristophanes), 73 Economic Freedom of the World index, 35–7 economic freedom, 35–42, 36, 57, 58–62, 58, 77–8 Economist, The, 179, 192 education, 20, 94 Energiewende, 191, 192–3 Engels, Friedrich, 2, 277, 290–91 Enlightenment, 73 entrepreneurship, 123–4, 128–9, 152–4 ‘welfare entrepreneurs’, 197 environmental issues, 236–41, 245–52, 293 agriculture, 239–40 air pollution, 237–8 biodiversity, 238–9, 249–50 deforestation, 239 health and, 236–8, 237 plastics, 247–8 prosperity and, 245–52, 249 transportation, 250–51, 254–5 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), 248, 252 Estonia, 26 Ethiopia, 277 Europe, 22, 239, 267, 282 European Centre for International Political Economy, 79 European Union (EU), 4, 68, 79, 116, 164, 258–9 Everybody Lies (Stephens-Davidowitz), 155 Facebook, 163, 167–75, 179–80 Fallon, Brad, 192 famine, 29 Fanjul, Alfonso and José, 140 fascism, 75 Federal Communications Decency Act (USA), 174 Feldt, Kjell-Olof, 11 feudalism, 73, 75 Financial Fiasco (Norberg), 142 financial markets, 141–3 Financial Times, 8, 267 Finland, 76, 78, 268, 285 Foodora, 102 Forbes’ list, 129–30 forced technology transfers, 211 Foroohar, Rana, 8 Fortune 500 list, 151 Fortune magazine, 169 France, 79–80, 97, 159, 192, 281, 285 Fraser Institute, 35 free markets, 2–4, 6, 23, 58–62, 65–82, 83, 290–97 happiness and, 279–89, 282, 284, 286 human values and, 261–89 Friedman, Thomas, 204 ‘friendshoring’, 79 Friendster, 170 GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft), 169–70 Gallup World Poll, 267 Gandhi, Indira, 245 Gapminder, 18 Gates, Bill, 124–7, 274 GDP (Gross Domestic Product), 5, 23, 26, 33, 35, 49–56 General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR), 164 generosity, 274–7 Georgia, 26, 215 Germany, 26, 84, 97, 101, 192–3, 196, 268 gig economy, 101–3 Gingrich, Newt, 191–2 Gini coefficient, 132 global financial crisis, 2008, 4–5, 142–3 global supply chains, 41–2, 58–61, 76, 81 Global Thermostat, 255 global warming see climate change globalization, 3–8, 17, 19, 80, 103–10, 117 Google, 163, 169–73, 179–80 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 215 Graeber, David, 86, 98–9 Grafström, Jonas, 240 Greece, 26, 254 Green Revolution, 239–40 green technology, 243, 251–5 Greider, Göran, 50, 241 growth, 49–57 degrowth, 232–5, 254–5 government and, 55–6 health and, 52–3 poverty and, 53–4 Guangdong, China, 207–8 Guardian, 3, 169 Halldorf, Joel, 262, 265 happiness, 279–89, 282, 284, 286 Hawkins Family Farm, 140 Hawkins, Zach, 140 Hayden, Brian, 161 Hayek, Friedrich, 66 Helm, Dieter, 193 Henrekson, Magnus, 56 Hertz, Noreena, 261, 262, 265, 268, 272, 274–5, 278 Hillbilly Elegy (Vance), 87 Hinduism, 22, 25 Hong Kong, 23, 205, 207 Horwitz, Steven, 294 housing market, 131, 142–3, 208–9 How China Became Capitalist (Wang and Coase), 206 How Innovation Works (Ridley), 188 Hsieh, Chang-Tai, 148–9 Hu Jintao, 215–16 Hugo, Victor, 25 Hume, David, 284 Hungary, 26, 283 IBM, 151 Iceland, 285 IKEA, 119, 141, 147 illiteracy, 20, 20 ‘import substitution’, 27–8 In Defence of Global Capitalism (Norberg), 3, 17, 33, 38, 42, 146, 151, 156, 169, 204, 214, 230–31 income, 22, 55, 88–96, 95, 134–5, 285, 291 low-income earners, 136–8 minimum wage, 90 wage stagnation, 89, 92–3 see also inequality India, 11, 24–5, 63–4, 70, 234, 239, 251, 258 caste system, 63–4 Indonesia, 239 industrial policy, 182, 188–203 Industrial Revolution, 22 inequality, 7, 27, 42, 54–5, 110, 131–8, 133, 285–7 happiness inequality, 131–2 income, 285–7 life expectancy and, 136–8 infant mortality, 19–20, 235, 291 Infineon, 196 inflation, 8, 10–11, 69 innovation, 65–6, 122–3, 125, 151, 181–203 government policy and, 181–203 innovation shadow, 169, 176 prizes and, 199 research, 199–200 subsidies and grants, 196–7 Instagram, 168, 177 integrity, 164 intellectual property, 41, 210–11 International Disaster Database, 235 International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 238 internet, 162–8, 183–7 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), 231 iPhone, 107–8, 156, 159 Iran, 220 Iraq, 251 Ireland, 285 Italy, 97, 285 Jackson, Jesse, 43 Jacobs, A.

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If we trust the broad simple correlations, it seems we need personal freedom and free markets to remedy the existential isolation that equality and spirituality can’t solve; it’s not the other way around.19 Several indicators of loneliness and isolation worsened sharply during the pandemic, and it will take a long time until we learn whether this is a temporary dip or a new trend. However, this is the predictable result of government-enforced social distancing, when people were commanded to stay at home and kids were not even allowed to meet their classmates. If anything, it is a counter-argument to the hypothesis that too much liberty and mobility make us lonely. On average, there is also no evidence for the large increase in mental illness that most of us assume exists (again with the caveat that the pandemic probably worsened these problems, at least temporarily).

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Trotsky did not mind using that principle against his opposition but protested when Stalin used it against Trotskyites. Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is It Going?, Pathfinder Press, 1972, p.283. 25. ‘Covid-19 exposes EU reliance on drug imports’, Financial Times, 20 April 2020. 26. Vincent Geloso & Jamie Bologna Pavlik, ‘Economic freedom and the consequences of the 1918 pandemic’, Contemporary Economic Policy, vol.39, no.2, 2021. 27. Christian Bjørnskov, ‘Economically free countries have fewer and less severe economic crises’, Timbro briefing paper, no.29, 2020. 28. Keith Bradsher, ‘China delays mask and fan exports after quality complaints’, The New York Times, 11 April 2020.

Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power by Rose Hackman

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Lives Matter, cognitive load, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark triade / dark tetrad, David Graeber, demand response, do what you love, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, game design, glass ceiling, immigration reform, invisible hand, job automation, lockdown, mass incarceration, medical bankruptcy, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, performance metric, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

A 2014 study of almost seven hundred tipped workers by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United found that 80 percent of female servers experienced sexual harassment from customers.18 Another study from 2020 found that harassment of servers had significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the health crisis giving way to a host of new specialized sexual comments. Servers reported patrons making comments like “I can’t ever imagine myself social distancing from your sexy ass,” and demanding servers take their mask off their face so they could decide how much to tip.19 The creative new attacks on bodily integrity, to now include the threat of infection from a deadly disease, only make the power dynamics at play in this scenario more explicit.

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She sat down, focused on breathing, and slowly calmed herself, preparing for what was ahead. That first COVID-19-pandemic shift, there was little reassurance outside of her own to be found. No one had a plan; the nurses around her, her immediate superiors, were scared; and there weren’t enough gloves or masks to go around. Midway through her shift, one of the colleagues she had been working alongside went to the emergency room and tested positive. As a patient care technician, a job also referred to as a nursing assistant, she was expected to take patients’ vitals every four hours, but with the new pandemic situation she was tasked with extra duties not usually hers, including meal delivery and general care.

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“The Great Resignation: Why People Are Leaving Their Jobs in Growing Numbers,” NPR.org, October 22, 2021, accessed February 12, 2022, https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1048332481/the-great-resignation-why-people-are-leaving-their-jobs-in-growing-numbers. 14. “Men Have Now Recouped Their Pandemic-Related Labor Force Losses While Women Lag Behind,” National Women’s Law Center, February 4, 2022, accessed February 12, 2022, https://nwlc.org/resource/men-recouped-losses-women-lag-behind/. 15. “Low-Paid Women Workers on the Front Lines of COVID-19 Are at High Risk of Living in Poverty, Even When Working Full-Time,” National Women’s Law Center, April 2, 2022, accessed February 13, 2022, https://nwlc.org/press-release/low-paid-women-workers-on-the-front-lines-of-covid-19-are-at-high-risk-of-living-in-poverty-even-when-working-full-time/. 16.

pages: 490 words: 153,455

Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe

Ada Lovelace, air traffic controllers' union, Amazon Mechanical Turk, antiwork, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, call centre, capitalist realism, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, desegregation, deskilling, do what you love, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, emotional labour, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, gamification, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, Grace Hopper, green new deal, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, informal economy, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, late capitalism, lockdown, lone genius, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, means of production, mini-job, minimum wage unemployment, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, new economy, oil shock, Peter Thiel, post-Fordism, post-work, precariat, profit motive, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, school choice, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, traumatic brain injury, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, unpaid internship, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, War on Poverty, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration

“They want to reinforce the separation between your education and your work so that the internship is not full work, it is really something you do when you are in training,” said Marcoux. “They want it to be more supervised, but they still want it to be something separate from the labor law that we know right now.” 40 The COVID-19 pandemic, she said, “amplified the hypocrisy of school administrations who severely punished interns for striking their internship.” Some of those interns had been forced to retake a full year of school to complete the internship, but when some of them had to miss interning time because the pandemic closed many of the businesses, she explained, “the non-completion of their internship was not deemed to compromise their professionalism or ability to start working.”

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Members of the UK Parliament have even formed an all-party group to look into the gaming industry, though Agwaze noted that GWU-UK’s invitation to speak to the group had been delayed as a result of Brexit and the general election in December 2019, and then because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, it marked a change from the assumption most people had, he said, that “it’s fine, because it is video games. It must be fun, even in its working conditions.” With the pandemic, Agwaze said, some of the union’s usual means of gaining new members—in-person meetings and speaking engagements—had to be scrapped, and the 2020 Game Developers Conference, where they’d planned a panel, was postponed.

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The framework begun in Chicago is now known as “Bargaining for the Common Good.” It provides a way for unions—not just teachers but many different kinds of unions—to bring demands to the bargaining table that benefit the community at large. 45 That kind of union ethos served teachers well when the COVID-19 pandemic began. In New York, as it became clear that the virus was spreading across the city, teachers mobilized to pressure the city’s Department of Education to close schools. Organizing networks that had begun as a reform movement within the union sprang into action, using video calls to discuss what to do.

pages: 295 words: 81,861

Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation by Paris Marx

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Californian Ideology, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, cashless society, clean tech, cloud computing, colonial exploitation, computer vision, congestion pricing, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, DARPA: Urban Challenge, David Graeber, deep learning, degrowth, deindustrialization, deskilling, Didi Chuxing, digital map, digital rights, Donald Shoup, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Elaine Herzberg, Elon Musk, energy transition, Evgeny Morozov, Extinction Rebellion, extractivism, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, frictionless, future of work, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, George Gilder, gig economy, gigafactory, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, green new deal, Greyball, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, independent contractor, Induced demand, intermodal, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, jitney, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, late capitalism, Leo Hollis, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Benioﬀ, market fundamentalism, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Murray Bookchin, new economy, oil shock, packet switching, Pacto Ecosocial del Sur, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, price mechanism, private spaceflight, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, safety bicycle, Salesforce, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, social distancing, Southern State Parkway, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Stop de Kindermoord, streetcar suburb, tech billionaire, tech worker, techlash, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, TikTok, transit-oriented development, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban planning, urban renewal, VTOL, walkable city, We are as Gods, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, work culture , Yom Kippur War, young professional

While the companies claimed to support efforts to establish more bike lanes and other infrastructure, they seemed to do little to change the existing mobility calculus and instead relied much more on effectively taking sidewalk space for themselves without permission. In San Francisco, the city even seized improperly parked scooters for a time. The ineffectiveness of micromobility companies was put on full display after the initial wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. With cities in various stages of lockdown and people needing to socially distance from one another, many cities closed streets or converted on-street parking to sidewalk extensions. As the summer of 2020 approached, there were bicycle shortages around the world as the number of cyclists soared and many cities added temporary bike lanes that gave way to permanent changes.

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The financialization of land and property has caused housing prices in major cities to soar, even after the 2008 housing crash. Housing has become a speculative investment that wealthy people buy up even if they have no intention of living in their properties, because it is seen as a safe investment with high returns—and as billionaires saw their net worth soar through the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, they have more money than ever to sink into speculative assets. With property already at unaffordable levels for a growing segment of the population, autonomous vehicles (in the form that is promised by tech executives) could act as a relief valve that makes it feasible for more people to move even farther from the city center in search of homes and rental units that do not eat up the majority of their incomes because the commute will be more tolerable.

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In May 2020, Uber invested $85 million in Lime (another micromobility company) in exchange for taking Jump off its hands and, more importantly, its balance sheet. Jump had been losing $60 million a quarter. Weeks later, Jump’s e-bikes were being crushed at disposal sites around the United States even as there was a bicycle shortage in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. The perception that bikes and scooters were so disposable they should just be trashed instead of repainted and deployed into Lime’s fleet, or donated to charities, or even sold to people who might want to ride them illustrated the flawed model that the micromobility industry is designed around.

pages: 26 words: 5,240

Autism After the Pandemic: A Step by Step Guide to Successfully Transition Back to School and Work by James Ball, Kristie Lofland

autism spectrum disorder, coronavirus, COVID-19, Silicon Valley, social distancing

The first tip in Autism After the Pandemic is “no surprises.” Surprises scare people with autism. If a child or an adult is going to a new school or job, visiting before they start is highly recommended. Th is book has step-by-step instructions for teaching skills and strategies to prevent meltdowns, learn new skills, and to cope and grow in a work or school environment, and it is a valuable resource in families returning to a “new normal.” — Temple Grandin, Author of The Way I See It and The Loving Push We have arrived at a new normal: life after the arrival of COVID-19. How do we help those with developmental and/ or intellectual disabilities and those on the autism spectrum return to school or adult services?

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A Teaching Strategy that can Save You Time: Chaining https://autismclassroomresources.com/a-teaching-strategy-that-can-save-you-time-chaining/ Accessible ABA website: Use Chaining and Task Analysis to Help Your Child with Autism https://accessibleaba.com/blog/chaining-task-analysis-autism REINFORCEMENT/MOTIVATIONAL SYSTEM Autism Behavior Therapy website: Free Printable First-and-Then Board https://autismbehaviourtherapy.com/free-printable-first-and-then-board/ StoryboardThat website: First Then Board Printable Template https://www.storyboardthat.com/storyboards/mon_shari/first-then-template Teachers Pay Teachers website: First-Then Schedule Board Freebie https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/First-Then- Schedule-Board-Freebie-713428 ANTICIPATE THEIR SENSORY NEEDS AND BE PREPARED Noodle Nook website: COVID-19 Social Story FREE! http://www.noodlenook.net/covid-19-social-story-free/ PA Autism website: Wearing a Mask Social Story https://paautism.org/resource/wearing-mask-social-story/ Teachers Pay Teachers website: “We Wear Masks” – Coronavirus Social Story about Wearing a Mask https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/We-Wear-Masks-Coronavirus-Social-Story-about-Wearing-a-Mask-5425981 Autism Little Learners website: Seeing People Wearing Masks Story https://www.autismlittlelearners.com/2020/04/seeing-people-wearing-masks-story.html Autism Research Institute website: I Can Wear a Mask Social Story https://www.autism.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/I-can-wear-a-mask-1-1.pdf YouTube – Jordan Drane: Wearing a Mask: A Social Narrative for Children https://www.youtube.com/watch?

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Follow this process for each step: allowing the elastic to be put behind their ears, etc., until the person is wearing the mask. This may take several trials for each individual step. Try not to move ahead too quickly. The following websites contain social narratives and visual supports on wearing a mask and/or how COVID-19 will affect school and/or work. PARENT CHECKLIST Schedule sensory breaks Have brain breaks (Go Noodle, Adventures to Fitness, etc. are all fun apps to use) Break as often as needed, but return to schedule ASAP and pick up where you left off EXAMPLE: Ideas for sensory activities for home and classroom: Stretchy resistance bands Bouncing on exercise ball Tactile sensory bins Fidgets Sensory bottles or tubes Wall or chair push ups Squeezing Play-Doh or thera-putty Incorporate brain breaks Please reference Recommended Resources 20 to 26 at the back of the book.

pages: 413 words: 115,274

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar

A Pattern Language, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, big-box store, bike sharing, Blue Bottle Coffee, car-free, congestion pricing, coronavirus, COVID-19, digital map, Donald Shoup, edge city, Ferguson, Missouri, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, Google Earth, income inequality, indoor plumbing, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, Lyft, mandatory minimum, market clearing, megastructure, New Urbanism, parking minimums, power law, remote working, rent control, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Seaside, Florida, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, SimCity, social distancing, Stop de Kindermoord, streetcar suburb, text mining, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, TikTok, traffic fines, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, walkable city, WeWork, white flight, Yogi Berra, young professional

Hundreds of citizens sat in their cars, voting with clickers and following the action on a hyperlocal car radio broadcast. The awareness that the COVID-19 virus did not spread outdoors came painfully slowly. At the beginning of April, Oakland announced it would close seventy-four miles of streets to cars, to give people space to get outside. Cities like San Francisco and Chicago soon followed suit. At the end of April, the Lithuanian city of Vilnius decided to speed the reopening of its cafés, bars, and restaurants by offering public space for socially distanced tables. By midsummer, almost every American city and suburb had done the same. Within weeks, in cities from coast to coast, the atmosphere changed from plague-induced lockdown to outdoor carnival.

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Long Beach City College created a program for students to sleep in its parking lot. Cities like San Diego, Seattle, and Phoenix (as well as smaller municipalities like Palo Alto and Encinitas, California) developed similar programs to meet the need. José Trinidad Castañeda helped create the one in Fullerton. In Las Vegas, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the city turned over a parking lot to homeless people in tents, giving everyone a parking space to live in. At the same time, cities tuned up parking regulations to criminalize vehicular homelessness—or at least push people sleeping in their cars into out-of-the-way areas like industrial zones.

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Chapter 13 How Americans Wound Up Living in the Garage At the start of 2020, José Trinidad Castañeda was living with his mom. Reluctant to drain his savings in a rental market where a one-bedroom apartment went for north of $1,500 a month, Trinidad Castañeda shared a small house with his mother and two sisters. This made him typical of his generation: Even before COVID-19, 46 percent of eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-olds lived with their parents. After COVID-19, that figure rose to 52 percent—the highest mark since the Great Depression. What made José atypical was that the hypothetical apartment that was out of his reach was not one in Boulder, Colorado, or Washington, DC, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, to name just a few cities where high rent has forced young people into cramped, shared quarters.

pages: 302 words: 96,609

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Big Tech, California gold rush, Cape to Cairo, clean water, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, energy transition, global supply chain, Google Earth, Livingstone, I presume, Mahatma Gandhi, megacity, private military company, Scramble for Africa, social distancing, tech baron, transatlantic slave trade, vertical integration

After the collapse at Kamilombe, I was unable to return to the Congo until 2021 due to travel restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic. When I finally returned, it was immediately clear that the pandemic had caused conditions to deteriorate considerably. Most foreign mining companies suspended operations for extended periods during 2020 and 2021 out of safety concerns for their staffs; however, demand for cobalt only increased. Billions of people around the world relied more than ever on rechargeable devices to continue working or attending school from home. “COVID put pressure on artisanal miners to supply cobalt when the mines closed,” explained Dr.

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There are many episodes in the history of the Congo that are bloodier than what is happening in the mining sector today, but none of these episodes ever involved so much suffering for so much profit linked so indispensably to the lives of billions of people around the world. The field research for this book was conducted during trips to the Congo’s mining provinces in 2018, 2019, and 2021. Travel during 2020 was not possible due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic wreaked havoc across the globe, its impact on the destitute people mining for cobalt remains largely unassessed. When industrial mines went into lockdown for extended periods during 2020 and 2021, demand for cobalt did not graciously hibernate. It only grew as people across the world relied more than ever on their rechargeable devices to continue working or attending school from home.

…

It only grew as people across the world relied more than ever on their rechargeable devices to continue working or attending school from home. The increased demand for cobalt pressured hundreds of thousands of Congolese peasants who could not survive without the dollar or two they earned each day to clamber into the ditches and tunnels, unprotected, to keep the cobalt flowing. COVID-19 spread rapidly in the artisanal mines of the Congo, where mask wearing and social distancing were impossible. The sick and dead infected by the disease were never counted, adding an unknown number to the industry’s bleak tally. To obtain the testimonies included in this book, I devoted as much time as possible listening to the stories of those living and working in the mining provinces.

pages: 300 words: 81,293

Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives by Stefan Al

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, biodiversity loss, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, carbon footprint, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, colonial rule, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, digital twin, Disneyland with the Death Penalty, Donald Trump, Easter island, Elisha Otis, energy transition, food miles, Ford Model T, gentrification, high net worth, Hyperloop, invention of air conditioning, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, Marchetti’s constant, megaproject, megastructure, Mercator projection, New Urbanism, plutocrats, plyscraper, pneumatic tube, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, Sidewalk Labs, SimCity, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, social distancing, Steve Jobs, streetcar suburb, synthetic biology, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the built environment, the High Line, transit-oriented development, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, tulip mania, urban planning, urban sprawl, value engineering, Victor Gruen, VTOL, white flight, zoonotic diseases

The mathematics of social networks explain that the bigger the city, the more social connectivity per capita. However, while social connectivity is good for exchanging ideas and making financial transactions, it also speeds up more dubious activities and virus transmissions. When the pandemic and social distancing called into question dense urban life, skyscrapers took on a new meaning. While compact cities may have contributed to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, its opposite, urban sprawl, may have been a cause. Zoonotic diseases, which spring from animals to humans, are a result of our increasing wildlife-human interface. They are partially a consequence of the destruction of nature through deforestation and unbridled suburbanization.

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Since it maximizes the number of people on a given plot of land, it can offset the higher land cost. Meanwhile, it makes for more compact and dense urban living, allowing for more possible social connections between people, which can stimulate economic growth. But, as COVID-19 showed, there are downsides to density. Skyscraper living can be more contagious, with aerosols easily spread in crowded elevators and improperly ventilated high-rise shafts. The pandemic-induced urban exodus may grind the supertall outburst to a halt. Some countries have decided to base their national policy on the positive relationship between urbanization and economic growth. China has added roughly half a billion people to its cities, and has the largest amount of supertall buildings.

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The Burj Khalifa was completed in 2009 just as the Dubai property market collapsed. Throughout history, the hubris of tall structures, like the Tower of Babel or the Easter Island moai, have seemed to tempt the gods, leading to societal breakdown. In 2020, with a wave of new supertalls in New York still under construction, COVID-19 hit. The pandemic brought the city to an abrupt halt, including its feverish construction activity. Was the curse striking again, with New York’s record-breaking skyscrapers the latest symptoms of excess, and looming economic decline? Economists have since debunked the supposed “Skyscraper Curse.” The tallest towers are not a leading indicator of economic peaks.

pages: 426 words: 136,925

Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, call centre, carried interest, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, death of newspapers, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, edge city, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jessica Bruder, jitney, Kiva Systems, lockdown, Lyft, mass incarceration, McMansion, megaproject, microapartment, military-industrial complex, new economy, Nomadland, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, Ralph Nader, rent control, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, strikebreaker, tech worker, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, uranium enrichment, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, white flight, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, Works Progress Administration

She had been working as a picker at the Broening Highway warehouse, where the GM plant used to be, until she had her baby, her second child, just as the pandemic was arriving. Her husband also worked as a picker, but at the other Amazon warehouse, at Sparrows Point, and he, too, had taken time off from the job, because there had been a lot of coronavirus cases there. The company’s initial reaction to the pandemic was to announce that it was seeding a charitable fund for its temp workers and contract delivery drivers who lacked health coverage and to encourage the public to donate to it. This met with some derision. It also promised two weeks of paid leave to anyone with a COVID-19 diagnosis and offered unpaid time off, without risk of being penalized for missing shifts, to anyone who wanted to stay home as a precaution.

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more than NASA’s entire budget: Christopher Mims, “Not Even a Pandemic Can Slow Down the Biggest Tech Giants,” The Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2020. “the extreme divergence in the health of different types of companies”: Austan Goolsbee, “Big Companies Are Starting to Swallow the World,” The New York Times, September 30, 2020. “Covid-19 … has injected Amazon with a growth hormone”: Daisuke Wakabayashi, Karen Weise, Jack Nicas, and Mike Isaac, “Lean Times, but Fat City for the Big 4 of High Tech,” The New York Times, July 31, 2020. the company has … added more than 425,000 employees worldwide: Karen Weise, “Pushed by Pandemic, Amazon Goes on a Hiring Spree Without Equal,” The New York Times, November 27, 2020.

…

Its stock surged so much in mid-April—up by more than 30 percent on the year, as the pandemic was nearing its deadliest period—that Jeff Bezos’s net worth increased by $24 billion in the span of only two months. In late July, Amazon announced that its profit had doubled in the second quarter, with sales up by a stunning 40 percent from those a year earlier. On the news, its share price surged yet higher—by early September, it was up by 84 percent on the year, more than double the rise of other tech giants. “Simply put, Covid-19, in our view, has injected Amazon with a growth hormone,” wrote one industry analyst in a note to investors.

pages: 453 words: 122,586

Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market by Nicholas Wapshott

2021 United States Capitol attack, Alan Greenspan, bank run, basic income, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, California gold rush, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Donald Trump, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, fiat currency, financial engineering, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, God and Mammon, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, laissez-faire capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, lockdown, low interest rates, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, market bubble, market clearing, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, seminal paper, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now, Works Progress Administration, zero-sum game

While there were small rebellions from Tea Party types about the effects of the lockdown on businesses, it rarely extended beyond rallies to protest the mandatory wearing of masks in public when “social distancing”—leaving a gap of six feet between one person and the next—was not possible. Would Friedman have worn a mask? It is hard to imagine that Rose would have allowed him to risk his life on such a slender principle. The COVID pandemic showed not only that big government was necessary but that it was both the lender of last resort and the only means of keeping the tens of millions suddenly made unemployed44 from starving.

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While both Keynesians and Friedmanites could claim that the remedy of pumping liquidity into the economy was true to their masters’ wishes, the COVID crisis dealt a severe blow to Friedman’s desire for smaller government and the removal of government from interference in the marketplace. The federal government was now in total control of the market, and decided which businesses were allowed to operate, which lived, which died. The universal response to COVID among responsible governments was that only “big government” was capable of providing the wherewithal to limit, then overcome, the pandemic. Countries with small or incompetent governments—usually presiding over countries with small or broken economies—could not cope with the medical disaster that overtook them.

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Friedman’s novel plan for a negative income tax to replace traditional welfare payments attracted support from across the political spectrum, including from Samuelson, who praised it as “an idea whose time has come.”55 The idea morphed into the “universal basic income” in which the state would provide a minimum wage to everyone as a right. The COVID-19 pandemic saw governments around the world adopting similar schemes, at least temporarily, though the prospect of a world economy dependent upon robots rather than humans made more likely permanent direct state funding of those not needed for work. Friedman’s long march was always as much political as economic.

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Yergin

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", 3D printing, 9 dash line, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, addicted to oil, Admiral Zheng, Albert Einstein, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bakken shale, Bernie Sanders, BRICs, British Empire, carbon tax, circular economy, clean tech, commodity super cycle, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, failed state, Ford Model T, geopolitical risk, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hydraulic fracturing, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, James Watt: steam engine, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, LNG terminal, Lyft, Malacca Straits, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, Masayoshi Son, Masdar, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, new economy, off grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, paypal mafia, peak oil, pension reform, power law, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, super pumped, supply-chain management, TED Talk, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, women in the workforce

Perhaps a complacency developed—not among people focused on infectious diseases, but more generally after the relative success and limited numbers affected—in controlling SARS (8,098 people became sick, 774 died), MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) (2,494 cases, 858 deaths), and Ebola 2014–2016 (11,325 deaths).3 Only at the beginning of March did it become apparent that this coronavirus was far more transmissible. On March 6, the day OPEC-Plus broke up, 101,000 people were infected by COVID-19 worldwide, and more cases were emerging in Europe and the United States. “No handshake policy” was turning into “social distancing.” Offices emptied, businesses shuttered, schools and restaurants closed, conferences were canceled, airports emptied, travel stopped, and people were told to stay home. The unprecedented drop in oil demand during the first three months of the year—eight million barrels per day—would pale in comparison to what ensued in the months that followed.

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., 48 politics of, xviii variety of approaches to, 412 Clinton, Bill, 130, 153, 172, 216–17 Clinton, Hillary, 103, 150, 237–38 coal and China’s economic growth, 155–56 and electric vehicles, 339 and energy transition challenges, 378–79 and Germany’s response to Fukushima disaster, 87 and hydrogen, 404 impact of shale gas on, 12, 33 and railroad transportation, 20 and Russia’s “pivot to the east,” 116–17 and varied approaches to climate change, 412 cobalt, 345 Cold War, xiv, xx, 60, 69–70, 80, 90, 121, 348, 426 Coldwell, Pedro Joaquín, 275 USS Cole bombing, 249, 264 colonialism, 193–96, 196–200, 197 Commanding Heights, The (Yergin and Stanislaw), xx commodity supercycle, 56–57, 77 ConocoPhillips, 65 container shipping, 161–64 Continental Resources, 19–20 COP 20 (Copenhagen) meeting, 381 coronavirus pandemic, xiii–xiv, xvii, 311–12, 322–23 and Brazil, 45 and carbon emissions, 411–12 and China, xvii and China Belt and Road Initiative, 180–81 and Chinese economy, 132 and containerization, 163 and current geopolitical challenges, 424, 430 and electric vehicle technology, 339, 344, 373 and energy transition challenges, xv, xx, 416–18, 420 and global energy trends, 426, 427–28, 430 and global oil market, 313, 314–15 and green deal proposals, 393, 428 impact on global geopolitics, 62, 65 and Iraq, 235 and oil price war, 318, 321–22 origins of, 311–12 and ride-hailing services, 365 and Russian interests in Central Asia, 125–26 and Saudi oil industry, 310 and U.S.–China relations, 124, 130–31, 174 and Yemen, 251 corruption, 93, 167, 233–34, 292–93, 421 Council of Ministries (Soviet Union), 73 COVID-19. See coronavirus pandemic Crane, Christopher, 400 Crimea, xvi, 93, 94–96, 96, 115, 124–25, 246 Cultural Revolution, 147–48, 166, 340 cyber security and warfare, 70, 171, 355 Cyprus, 109, 256, 257 Dakota Access pipeline, 49–51, 50, 391 Damman #7 well, 295 Daqing oil field, 156 Darby, Abraham, 378, 429 Das Kapital (Marx), 148 decarbonization, xix, 86, 377, 385, 390, 390–91, 404 “decoupling,” xvii, xx, 130–31 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 347–49 Democratic Party (U.S.), xvii, 55, 64, 391 Democratic Republic of Congo, 345 Dempsey, Martin, 246 Deng Xiaoping, 147–48, 163, 167, 425 Denmark, 344, 400 dependency, 43, 232 developed countries, 382, 408, 412 developing countries, xix, 56, 382, 407–10, 412, 413 Devon Energy, 8, 9–10 DiDi, 362–64, 365, 369, 372 diesel fuel and vehicles, 54, 335–37 Diess, Herbert, 337 direct air capture, 405 distributed energy systems, 399–400 divestment movement, 385–86.

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The epidemic in China was turning into a global pandemic. Sixteen years earlier, in 2004, the National Intelligence Council, a research organization in the U.S. intelligence community, had published a report titled Mapping the Global Future, which presented scenarios for the year 2020. One of the scenarios imagined was a pandemic in 2020. It was eerily prophetic, even as to the year: It is only a matter of time before a new pandemic appears, such as the 1918–1919 influenza virus that killed an estimated twenty million worldwide. Such a pandemic in megacities of the developing world . . . would be devastating and could spread rapidly throughout the world.

pages: 309 words: 96,168

Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths From the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs by Reid Hoffman, June Cohen, Deron Triff

"Susan Fowler" uber, 23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Anne Wojcicki, Ben Horowitz, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Broken windows theory, Burning Man, call centre, chief data officer, clean water, collaborative consumption, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, desegregation, do well by doing good, Elon Musk, financial independence, fulfillment center, gender pay gap, global macro, growth hacking, hockey-stick growth, Internet of things, knowledge economy, late fees, Lean Startup, lone genius, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Network effects, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, polynesian navigation, race to the bottom, remote working, RFID, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Susan Wojcicki, TaskRabbit, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, two and twenty, work culture , Y Combinator, zero day, Zipcar

All of this inspired Sarah to create some new offerings and features on Nextdoor—and the platform quickly pivoted from mere neighborly networking to more of an active outreach and informational clearinghouse. Sarah began by creating the COVID-19 Help Center, a central resource for accurate pandemic information and ways to support local businesses. She followed that up by launching the Neighborhood Help Map, which made it easy for neighbors to find and offer help based on proximity to where they lived. Later in 2020, that map showed it had staying power as it morphed into a Voter Help Map, which matched up people who needed help printing out their voter registration materials with neighbors who could print at home. When the pandemic hit, Nextdoor had been in the process of alpha testing a new Groups product.

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But it takes a leap of faith, Robert says. “And most people don’t have the courage for that, because you tend to hire what you know.” One last point on diversity: If you want a wide range of perspectives, don’t allow your company to be fenced in, geographically. There’s a strong movement now, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, toward remote offices or distributed companies. This trend may prove to be a boon to cognitive diversity, according to Wences Casares, founder and CEO of Xapo, the digital currency company. Xapo is not huge—only about three hundred employees—but they are spread out in sixty-two locations around the globe.

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When the pandemic hit, Nextdoor had been in the process of alpha testing a new Groups product. Sarah decided to stop testing and just launch it. “It had been trapped in the slog of iteration and we just said, ‘Okay, enough, rip the Band-Aid off.’ ” Nextdoor Groups became virtual meetups that helped to ease the psychological impact of social distancing, an idea with lasting value for elderly neighbors beyond the pandemic era. You could say the crisis lit a fire under Nextdoor, forcing them to come up with new ideas and act on ones that weren’t quite ready to launch. “I think in times of crisis your customers give you a little bit more latitude for things that might not be perfect,” Sarah says.

pages: 309 words: 121,279

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

air freight, airport security, Anthropocene, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, barriers to entry, big-box store, bitcoin, British Empire, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, climate anxiety, coronavirus, COVID-19, Crossrail, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, global pandemic, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, John Snow's cholera map, Kintsugi, lockdown, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, oil shale / tar sands, planned obsolescence, refrigerator car, sharing economy, social distancing, space junk, Suez canal 1869, Tim Cook: Apple

In the distance, three slight figures are coming back down with their hauls. Three girls, barely teenagers, are walking in concert, bags of trash balanced on their heads. I count at least a dozen children on the mountain, and more nearby, helping parents while they sort, or playing among the garbage. The state provides free schooling, but when they shut during the Covid pandemic, few of the children had laptops or smartphones to study from home, so most chose to go to work with their parents. ‘They realise they can earn money at such a young age,’ Anwar says, ‘so that is why you see a lot of kids dropping out of school.’ The pickers are worried that we’ll be spotted if we climb higher, so we head back to the clearing.

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For a small donation – families typically pay anywhere from 500 to 2,000 rupees (£5–20) – he will surrender your loved ones to the afterlife, while you watch from the safety of the bank. Every morning, Feroz rises at 4 a.m. and comes to the river, staying until the sun sets. During the heights of the Covid pandemic – thought to have killed as many as 4.7 million people in India, the highest total of any country – Feroz was performing the rites for as many as fifty families per day. ‘I used to be drunk all the time,’ he says. ‘I would take a glass of alcohol, go in there, dump the ashes, then I would come back and drink another glass.’

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The ‘dump’ was a scrapyard – albeit a very large and well documented one, and one where the environmental controls were, as they are in many poor, informal settlements in the Global South, tragically lacking. I’m writing in the past tense because Agbogbloshie38 no longer exists – at least, not in the form that it once did. In 2021, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, the Ghanaian police raided and demolished the scrapyard. A couple of days after my meeting with Evans, I head there to see it for myself. From Old Fadama, I can look out across the Odaw river to where Agbogbloshie – the dump, but also the homes around it – once stood. The site has been razed.

pages: 312 words: 108,194

Invention: A Life by James Dyson

3D printing, additive manufacturing, augmented reality, Boris Johnson, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon footprint, coronavirus, country house hotel, COVID-19, electricity market, Elon Musk, Etonian, Fellow of the Royal Society, Ford Model T, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Indoor air pollution, James Dyson, James Watt: steam engine, lockdown, microplastics / micro fibres, mittelstand, remote working, rewilding, Saturday Night Live, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, uranium enrichment, warehouse automation, Winter of Discontent, Yom Kippur War, young professional

The latter might be very much bigger and more powerful than our tiny electric motors, yet the principles of airflow are equally important to the successful working of both. As if by chance, Prime Minister Boris Johnson called me on March 13, 2020, saying he needed fifty thousand ventilators in six weeks in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The project was announced publicly four days later. We repurposed the very buildings at Hullavington that had been devoted to the development of the car. It was fortunate that we had a pristine new factory available to make a medical product such as this. We started as a relatively small team of engineers and designers, understanding the clinical need and the specification of the ventilator.

…

We are sorry that these facts were not always reflected in our coverage, and we apologise for not doing so. Covid-19 created the most difficult circumstances facing business and the public in my lifetime. Many economies face a grave future as the world begins to recover, although the difference between the performance of Western and emerging and developing Asian economies is significant. In December 2019, national debt in Western countries was 103 percent of GDP, rising to 124 percent a year later. Asian debt rose from 53 to 63 percent of GDP, showing how these economies, although affected by the pandemic, were running much tighter ships than the West. Where Western economies contracted by 5.8 percent between December 2019 and December 2020, the figure for Asia was just 1.7 percent and, according to the IMF (International Monetary Fund), these are expected to grow by an average 5.9 percent by mid-decade, well above what can be expected of Western countries.

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However, we would like to offer master’s degrees and doctorates soon and in time we might want to start something similar in Singapore. We want our undergraduates to have the experience of working in our overseas centers. They have been excited by this, but in 2020, conditions surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, both political and practical, meant this was, temporarily at least, out of the question. It has been more than worthwhile. One day in October 2020, I received an email out of the blue. I share it here for obvious reasons. Good morning James, Thank you for your praise and thank you for starting the Institute in 2017—I’m having a fantastic time!

pages: 536 words: 126,051

Emotional Ignorance: Lost and Found in the Science of Emotion by Dean Burnett

airport security, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, call centre, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, COVID-19, double empathy problem, emotional labour, experimental economics, fake it until you make it, fake news, fear of failure, heat death of the universe, impulse control, lockdown, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microbiome, mirror neurons, neurotypical, New Journalism, period drama, pre–internet, Snapchat, social distancing, theory of mind, TikTok, Wall-E

It was a tricky situation. But then, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic happened, and the world went into lockdown as the virus tore across the globe. At first, I felt I was well placed to ride things out. I already worked from home, my job wasn’t under threat, my wife and children and I are quite a harmonious group. This will be fine, I figured. This will be fine. Then, in March that year, my father contracted the virus. Eventually, he was admitted to hospital. And I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t help, I couldn’t go to see him. It was a pandemic; we were all locked down, hospitals were quarantined, and all medical staff were working desperately hard to save lives.

…

Still, I will say that having more upsetting and vivid dreams than usual was rather annoying, given all the other emotional issues I was trying to get to grips with. In some ways it is unsurprising, though: the sudden loss of a loved one undeniably makes your daily life a fog of emotional turmoil and confusion, so why wouldn’t your dreams follow suit? It’s the same brain responsible for everything, after all. I’m not alone, either. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to people worldwide being more scared, confused, anxious, angry, and stressed than usual. The overall mental health impacts will take years to uncover and unpack, but interestingly, at the time of writing, I’m seeing a lot of people online opening up about the weird, unsettling dreams they’re regularly having.

…

absence of emotions: DB’s imagined scenario 1, 2, 3; negative consequences of 1; in science fiction 1, 2, 3, 4 acting work: actor/character relationship 1; emotional labour 1 action representation network (brain) 1 adolescence and early adulthood: brain development 1; crushes 1, 2; intense emotions 1; nightmare frequency 1, 2; safe exposure to negative emotions 1, 2; social media use 1 see also infancy and childhood affect: definition and components 1; versus basic emotions 1 airport security, facial recognition technology 1 altruism 1, 2 amygdala (brain region): and dreaming 1; and emotional regulation 1, 2; and emotions processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; gender differences 1; influence of testosterone 1; and memory formation 1; as part of olfactory system 1 AND model of nightmare production 1 anger: as ‘basic’ emotion 1, 2; and colour red 1, 2; DB’s anger during grief 1, 2, 3; facial expression of 1, 2; as ‘masculine’ 1(fn); and motivation 1, 2 see also negative emotions angular gyrus (brain region) 1, 2 anosmia (inability to smell) 1 anterior cingulate cortex (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 anterior olfactory nucleus (brain region) 1 anxiety: caused by work 1; performance anxiety 1; social anxiety 1, 2, 3; and status 1; vagus nerve stimulation treatment 1 see also negative emotions; stress apatheia (ultimate goal of Stoicism) 1 appraisal theory 1, 2 approach-attachment behaviour 1 approach versus avoid motivation 1, 2 arguments with romantic partner 1 arousal (component of affect) 1, 2, 3 asexuality 1 @AstroKatie (Katherine Mack) 1 attachment during early childhood 1, 2 see also parent emotional bond attention restoration, and colour green 1 auditory cortex (brain region) 1, 2(fn) auditory processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5(fn) autism 1, 2 automated voices and announcements, annoyance caused by 1 avatar therapy 1 avoid versus approach motivation 1, 2 babies in the womb, playing music to 1, 2 baby-parent emotional bond 1, 2, 3 see also attachment during early childhood Bain, Alexander 1 Baron-Cohen, Simon 1 Barrett, Lisa Feldman 1, 2 basal ganglia (brain region) 1 basic emotions theory 1, 2, 3, 4 BDSM (sexual practice) 1, 2 belief perseverance 1 Bell, Charles 1, 2 bias: confirmation bias 1, 2, 3; fading affect bias 1, 2, 3; ingroup versus outgroup bias 1; negativity bias 1, 2 Blackmore, Chris 1, 2, 3 blinking, by cartoon characters 1 blood sugar, effect on emotions 1 blue colour, associations and effects 1, 2, 3 body, emotions experienced in see physiology-emotion connection body language: communicating emotion 1, 2, 3, 4; mimicry 1; missing from communication technologies 1 brain: body’s influence on 1; competing resource demands 1, 2, 3; development 1; distinguishing what is real/not real 1, 2; emotions as conscious or subconscious processes 1; gender differences (beliefs and experimental studies) 1; influence of oestrogen and testosterone 1; left brain/right brain facts and myths 1, 2, 3(fn), 4(fn); lobotomies 1; mirror neurons 1, 2, 3, 4; nervous and endocrine system regulation 1; neurotransmitters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; reward pathway and system 1, 2, 3, 4; somatic marker hypothesis 1; spindle cells 1; synapses 1, 2; triune model 1, 2 see also cognition (thinking); learning (of information); memory(ies) brain, functional regions: action representation 1; auditory processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5(fn); cognition 1, 2, 3, 4; disgust 1; emotional regulation 1, 2; emotions (overview) 1, 2, 3; fear 1; imagination 1; intention processing 1; language processing 1; love 1, 2; lust 1, 2; memories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; motivation 1, 2; olfactory processing 1, 2; visual processing 1, 2, 3 see also specific brain regions brain scans, limitations for studying emotions 1 brainstem 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 breastfeeding 1, 2 Broca’s area (brain) 1 Brown, Thomas 1, 2 Buddhism 1 bullying online 1 burnout 1, 2 Bushman, B.J. 1 bystander effect 1 cancer awareness, role of news and media 1 canned laughter, annoyance caused by 1, 2 categories and types of emotion: basic emotions (theory) 1, 2, 3, 4; identified by James McCosh 1 see also identifying and defining ‘emotions’ cats and other pets, emotional attachment to 1 caudate nucleus (brain region) 1 celebrity endorsements 1, 2, 3, 4 cerebellum (brain region) 1, 2, 3 childbirth, role of oxytocin 1 childhood see infancy and childhood chilli, enjoyment of pain caused by 1 cigarette smoke, DB’s memories and associations 1, 2 cognition-emotion relationship see emotion-cognition relationship cognition (thinking): brain regions associated with 1, 2, 3, 4; effect of love on 1; executive control 1, 2, 3; ‘flow’ state 1; and intrusive thoughts 1; and motivation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and social relationships 1, 2 see also learning (of information) cognitive dissonance 1 colours: cultural associations 1; in DB’s friend’s home 1, 2; emotional response to 1; and visual processing 1, 2, 3 communicating and sharing emotions: machine detection of emotions 1, 2; nonverbal information 1, 2, 3; online versus in-person 1, 2; at work 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 see also emotional contagion; empathy; facial expressions and emotions communication technologies see phone calls; social media and online communication; therapeutic applications of technologies; video calls confirmation bias 1, 2, 3 conformity 1, 2, 3, 4 consciousness, evolution of 1 consolidation of memories 1, 2, 3, 4 conspiracy theories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 see also deception; misinformation and ‘fake news’ constructed emotions theory 1, 2 corpus callosum (brain region) 1 cortex/neocortex (brain region) (in general) 1 see also specific regions of the cortex cortisol 1 cross-race effect 1 crushes, in adolescence 1, 2 crying: DB’s (in)ability to cry 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; gender differences 1; induced by TV and films 1; types and functions of tears 1 cuteness and cute aggression 1 cyberbullying 1 dancing 1 Darwin, Charles 1, 2 deception: automated voices and announcements 1; response to 1, 2; self-deception 1 see also manipulation of emotions; misinformation and ‘fake news’ defining ‘emotions’ 1, 2, 3, 4 deindividuation and ‘mob mentality’ 1 depression: caused by work 1, 2; gender differences 1; and gut microbiome 1; and memory 1; post-natal depression 1, 2; vagus nerve stimulation treatment 1 Diana, Princess of Wales, impact of death 1 digestive system, influence of 1, 2 disgust: as ‘basic’ emotion 1, 2; brain region associated with 1; and colour green 1; facial expression of 1, 2; and horror 1; and memory 1; and suppressed motivation 1 see also negative emotions doctors, emotional aspects of work 1 dopamine 1 drama therapy 1 dreams and nightmares: AND model 1; bizarre nature of 1, 2; DB’s bad dreams 1, 2, 3; due to COVID-19 pandemic 1, 2; and emotion processing 1; Freud’s interpretations 1; and memory consolidation 1; and mental health 1; post-traumatic 1; prevalence of nightmares 1; recurring 1; threat simulation theory 1 Dunbar’s number (of social relationships) 1 dysgranular field (brain region) 1 dysphoria 1 see also depression e-learning, motivation in 1 earworms 1 Ekman, Paul 1, 2, 3, 4 Eleri, Carys 1 embarrassment 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 see also negative emotions emojis and emoticons 1 emotion-cognition relationship: appraisal theory 1, 2; in attention and focus 1, 2, 3, 4; belief perseverance 1; cognitive dissonance 1; competition for brain’s resources 1, 2; confirmation bias 1, 2, 3; distinction recognised by Stoics 1; in effect of emotions experienced 1; in empathy 1; in ‘flow’ state 1; interrelatedness (in general) 1, 2, 3, 4; in learning and information processing 1, 2, 3; in love 1; motivated reasoning 1; in motivation 1, 2, 3; negativity bias 1, 2; role of imagination 1; shared evolutionary origin 1; in stage fright 1 emotion-memory relationship: appraisal theory 1, 2; emotions triggered by memories 1, 2, 3, 4; fading affect bias 1, 2, 3; happy memories being more detailed 1; for implicit memories 1; later emotions changing memories 1, 2, 3; longevity and potency of emotional memories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; in memory consolidation 1, 2; in PTSD 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; role of nightmares 1; suppressing emotional memories 1 emotional contagion: dangers of ‘mob mentality’ 1; versus empathy 1; evolutionary importance 1; from groups of people 1, 2, 3; from music 1, 2, 3; neurological mechanism for 1; from social media 1 emotional detachment/suppression at work 1, 2, 3, 4 emotional manipulation see manipulation of emotions emotional processing 1, 2 emotional regulation, brain regions responsible for 1, 2 emotional relationships: attachment during early childhood 1, 2; friendships 1, 2; one-sided see parasocial (one-sided) relationships; parent-baby emotional bond 1, 2, 3; role of neurotransmitters 1, 2; romantic see romantic relationships; see also social relationships emotions: causing change 1; as conscious/subconscious processes 1; historical study of 1; identifying and defining 1, 2, 3, 4; language of 1, 2 see also categories and types of emotion; communicating and sharing emotions; emotion relationship; emotion relationship; negative emotions; physiology connection; positive emotions; specific emotions empathy: and autism 1, 2; in babies 1; and body language mimicry 1; versus emotional contagion 1; evolutionary importance 1, 2, 3; influence of own emotions on 1; as ingrained 1, 2; ingroup versus outgroup bias 1; versus mentalising (theory of mind) 1; neurological mechanism for 1, 2, 3, 4; and physical pain 1; in romantic relationships 1; as selfish/unselfish 1 endocannabinoids 1 endocrine system 1 endorphins 1, 2 envy 1, 2 see also negative emotions episodic memories 1, 2, 3 evaluative conditioning 1 excitation transfer theory 1 executive control 1, 2, 3 see also cognition (thinking) existential dread, as a motivator 1 explicit memories 1 extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation 1 Facebook: DB’s use of 1, 2; research into emotional manipulation 1, 2, 3 see also social media and online communication faces, seeing in inanimate objects 1 facial colour changes 1 facial expressions and emotions: in artificial/CGI faces (uncanny valley) 1; automated emotion recognition 1; in cartoon characters (blinking) 1; cross-cultural similarities and differences 1, 2; difficulties distinguishing between emotions without context 1, 2, 3; early writings on 1; Ekman’s work 1, 2, 3, 4; ‘invisible’ emotions 1; involuntary nature of expressions 1, 2, 3, 4; online curation of emotions portrayed 1 facial paralysis, and empathy 1 facial recognition, cross-race effect 1 facial recognition technology 1 fading affect bias 1, 2, 3 ‘fake news’ see misinformation and ‘fake news’ fandom 1, 2 see also parasocial (one relationships fear: as ‘basic’ emotion 1, 2; brain region associated with 1; enjoyment of 1, 2; facial expression and colour 1, 2; as first emotion 1; of flying 1; and horror 1; and imagination 1; and motivation 1, 2, 3; in PTSD 1; smell of (in sweat) 1 see also negative emotions films and TV causing negative emotions 1, 2, 3, 4 Firth-Godbehere, Richard 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 flat Earth conspiracy theory 1, 2 ‘flow’ state 1 flying, fear of 1 football shirts, red colour’s competitive advantage 1 Freud, Sigmund 1, 2 friendships 1, 2 see also emotional relationships; social relationships frosty atmospheres, emotional contagion 1, 2 funerals: crying at 1; of DB’s father 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; emotional contagion at 1, 2; live streaming 1, 2 gender differences: adolescent crushes 1(fn); attitudes towards infidelity 1; in brains (beliefs and experimental studies) 1; in brains (DB’s impossible experiment) 1; in emotional regulation and expression 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; ‘maternal instinct’ 1; mental health problems 1; other physiological differences 1; societal influences 1 gender discrimination 1, 2, 3 goal distraction 1 green colour, associations and effects 1, 2, 3 grief: DB’s acceptance of emotions 1; DB’s anger 1, 2, 3; DB’s attempts to disguise grief 1; DB’s emotional confusion 1, 2, 3; DB’s (in)ability to cry 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; DB’s motivation and productivity 1, 2; DB’s need to talk after funeral 1; at death of Princess Diana 1; emotional processing 1, 2; shared grieving 1; stages of 1 see also negative emotions guilt 1 see also negative emotions habituation 1, 2 ‘hangry’ behaviour 1 happiness 1 hippocampus (brain region): and dreaming 1; and emotional regulation 1; and emotions processing 1, 2, 3; and imagination 1; and memory 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and navigation 1 Holmes and Rahe stress scale 1, 2 Holmes, Sherlock (analogy for action representation) 1 hormones: cortisol 1; digestive 1, 2; effect of tears on 1; influence on the brain (and emotions) 1; oestrogen 1, 2; oxytocin 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; testosterone 1, 2, 3; vasopressin 1, 2, 3 see also endocrine system horror (emotion) 1 horror movies 1, 2, 3 hypothalamus (brain region) 1, 2, 3 hysteria 1 Icke, David 1 identification, in parasocial relationships 1 identifying and defining ‘emotions’ 1, 2, 3, 4 imaginary friends 1 imagination and mental imagery 1, 2 imitation of observed actions 1 implicit memories 1 impression management 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 infancy and childhood: attachment with primary caregiver 1, 2; breastfeeding 1, 2; DB’s memories of 1, 2; emotional experiences 1; empathy in babies 1; imaginary friends 1; importance of sense of smell 1; learning from media characters 1; nightmare frequency 1, 2; oxytocin in newborns 1; parent-baby emotional bond 1, 2, 3 see also adolescence and early adulthood inferior frontal cortex (brain region) 1, 2 inferior parietal cortex (brain region) 1 infidelity, emotional versus sexual 1 insular cortex (insula) (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 intelligence, and brain anatomy 1 intention processing 1 intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation 1 intrusive thoughts 1 Izard, Carroll E. 1 jealousy 1 Kübler-Ross, Elizabeth 1 language of emotions 1, 2 language processing 1 learning (of information): from media characters 1; motivation 1, 2; from other people 1, 2; processing demands and information prioritisation 1, 2; from senses 1 LeDoux, Joseph 1 left brain/right brain facts and myths 1, 2, 3(fn), 4(fn) limbic system (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 lobotomies 1 Lomas, Tim 1 London taxi drivers, brain study 1 losing oneself in a book/film 1 love: brain regions associated with 1, 2; demands on the brain 1; effect on cognition 1; for family and friends 1, 2(fn); role of dopamine 1; romantic love 1, 2, 3 see also romantic relationships lust and sexual attraction: asexuality 1; brain regions associated with 1, 2; and romantic relationships 1, 2; Stoics’ rejection of 1, 2; suppression of 1 Mack, Katherine (@AstroKatie) 1 mammal brain (region) 1, 2, 3, 4 manipulation of emotions: by authorities 1; for marketing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; response to 1; by social media 1; by traditional news and media 1, 2, 3, 4 marketing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 McCosh, James 1 medical work, emotional aspects 1 memory(ies): brain regions associated with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; changeable nature of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; connections with objects 1, 2, 3, 4; consolidation 1, 2, 3, 4; DB’s memories of early childhood 1, 2; DB’s memories of his father 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; episodic memories 1, 2, 3; explicit memories 1; fading affect bias 1, 2, 3; forgetting memories 1; and imagination 1; implicit memories 1; and music 1; procedural memories 1; reminiscence bump 1; retroactive memory enhancement 1; semantic memories 1; and sleep 1; and smell(s) 1, 2, 3, 4; suppression of 1; as synapses 1, 2; working memory 1; Zeigarnik effect 1 see also emotion relationship mental health/illness: and social media 1; and status 1; therapeutic applications of technologies 1 see also anxiety; depression; PTSD; schizophrenia mental imagery and imagination 1, 2 mentalising (theory of mind) 1, 2 mirror neurons 1, 2, 3, 4 mirroring body language 1 misinformation and ‘fake news’: about COVID-19 pandemic 1, 2; David Icke’s space lizards 1; flat Earth theory 1, 2; and social media/internet 1, 2, 3, 4; susceptibility to 1 see also deception ‘mob mentality’ (deindividuation) 1 Moebius syndrome (facial paralysis) 1 monkey experiments, mirror neurons 1 Morgan, Matt 1 motivated reasoning 1 motivation: approach-attachment behaviour 1; approach versus avoid motivation 1, 2; brain regions associated with 1, 2; and cognition 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; DB’s experiences during grief 1, 2; and emotions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation 1; and novelty 1, 2, 3, 4 motivational salience 1 music: dancing 1; DB’s emotional response to 1, 2, 3, 4; differentiating between voice and instruments 1; earworms 1; emotional contagion from 1, 2, 3; emotional response to 1, 2; evolutionary significance 1, 2; and memory 1 musical expectancy 1, 2 navigation, role of hippocampus 1 negative emotions: and attention/focus 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and creativity 1; emotion processing 1, 2; feeling good whilst experiencing 1, 2, 3; induced by TV and films 1, 2, 3, 4; and intrusive thoughts 1; and memory 1, 2, 3; as more impactful than positive emotions 1; negativity bias 1, 2; and novelty 1; and performance 1 see also specific emotions negativity bias 1, 2 nervous systems: enteric (‘second brain’) 1; parasympathetic 1, 2, 3; regulation by brain 1; somatic and autonomic 1; sympathetic 1, 2, 3 neurotransmitters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 news and media (traditional): credibility 1, 2, 3, 4; emotional content 1, 2, 3, 4; precursors to 1 see also conspiracy theories; misinformation and ‘fake news’; social media and online communication nightmares see dreams and nightmares noises, emotional response to 1, 2, 3 see also music novelty 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 objects, and memories 1, 2, 3, 4 oestrogen 1, 2 olfactory bulb and cortex (brain region) 1, 2, 3 olfactory system 1, 2, 3, 4 one-sided relationships see parasocial (one-sided) relationships online communication see social media and online communication online learning, motivation in 1 orbitofrontal cortex (brain region) 1, 2 oxytocin 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 pain (physical): and empathy 1; enjoyment of 1, 2 paracingulate sulcus (brain region) 1 parasocial (one-sided) relationships: adolescent crushes 1, 2; benefits 1, 2; ending the relationship 1; with fictional characters 1, 2, 3, 4; identification with the object 1; with imaginary friends 1; losing oneself in a narrative 1; meeting the object 1; negative aspects 1; neurological mechanisms 1; with people you haven’t met 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 parasympathetic nervous system 1, 2, 3 Parch (TV drama), actor’s experiences 1 pareidolia 1 parent-baby emotional bond 1, 2, 3 see also attachment during early childhood ‘passions’ 1, 2, 3 pathos 1 performance anxiety (stage fright) 1 personality, influence of early experiences 1, 2 phone calls: DB’s last call to father 1; lack of nonverbal emotional cues 1; walking around during 1 physiology-emotion connection: body influencing emotion 1; emotion influencing the body 1; somatic marker hypothesis 1 see also crying Pickle (DB’s cat) 1 Pixar movies 1, 2(fn), 3 positive emotions: and attention/focus 1, 2; and memory 1, 2 see also specific emotions ‘Positive Lexicography’ project 1 post-natal depression 1, 2 posterior parietal cortex (brain region) 1, 2 prefrontal cortex (brain region): cognitive functions 1, 2, 3; and emotional regulation 1, 2; and emotions processing 1, 2; and imagination 1; influence of testosterone 1; and memory 1; and mentalising (theory of mind) 1; and motivation 1, 2 pride 1 procedural memories 1 processing (negative) emotions 1, 2 Proust, Marcel, In Search of Lost Time 1 psycho-emotional tears 1, 2 PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 racism: cross-race effect 1; and oxytocin 1 rage see anger red colour, associations and effects 1, 2, 3 relationships see emotional relationships religious perspectives on emotions 1 reminiscence bump 1 reptile brain (region) 1 ‘resting bitch face’ 1 retroactive memory enhancement 1 reward, and motivation 1 reward pathways of brain 1, 2, 3, 4 Ridley, Rosalind 1 Rippon, Gina 1, 2, 3 romantic relationships: adolescent crushes as preparation for 1; attitudes towards infidelity 1; disagreements and disputes 1; emotional connection between partners 1, 2; empathy versus problem ‘fixing’ in 1; long-term relationships 1, 2; love in 1, 2, 3; negative emotions in 1; online versus in-person 1; and own identity 1, 2; physical attraction in 1, 2; role of oxytocin 1; stress associated with losing partner 1, 2; trumpeting on social media 1 see also emotional relationships sadness: as ‘basic’ emotion 1; and colour blue 1, 2; enjoyment of 1, 2, 3; facial expression of 1 schadenfreude 1, 2 schizophrenia 1 scientific method 1, 2 scientists: motivations 1, 2, 3; popular portrayal as lacking emotion 1 self-deception 1 semantic memories 1 Sesame Street (TV) show, learning from 1 sex differences see gender differences sexism see gender discrimination sexual activity, BDSM 1, 2 sexual attraction see lust and sexual attraction sharing emotions see communicating and sharing emotions Simpsons, The (TV show), blinking in 1(fn) Singer, Tania 1 sleep 1, 2, 3 see also dreams and nightmares smell(s): anosmia (inability to smell) 1; DB’s memories of cigarette smoke 1, 2; and emotions 1, 2; evolutionary importance 1, 2, 3; and memory 1, 2, 3, 4; olfactory system 1, 2, 3, 4 social anxiety 1, 2, 3 social media and online communication: adolescents 1; adults/older people 1; emojis and emoticons 1; and emotional contagion 1; impression management 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; lack of nonverbal emotional cues 1, 2; live streaming funerals 1, 2; machine detection of emotions 1; negative aspects 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; online versus in-person emotions and personae 1; positive aspects 1, 2; versus real-world interactions, cognitive demands 1; and reward 1, 2, 3; and self-deception 1; and self-validation 1, 2, 3; and status 1, 2 see also conspiracy theories; Facebook; misinformation and ‘fake news’; news and media (traditional); video calls social relationships: cognitive load associated with 1, 2; Dunbar’s number 1; friendships 1, 2; one-sided see parasocial (one-sided) relationships; see also emotional relationships somatic marker hypothesis 1 spicy food, enjoyment of pain caused by 1 spindle cells 1 Spiner, Brent 1 sports kit, competitive advantage of wearing red 1 SPOT (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) programme 1 stage fright 1 stalkers 1 Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV series): Data actor’s experience of fans 1; Data’s inability to choose ice-cream flavour 1 Star Trek (TV series): Stoicism of Vulcans 1, 2; universal use of English language 1 Starbucks (branding) 1 status: and emotions 1; and social media 1, 2; subjective status and mental health 1 Stoics and Stoicism 1, 2 stress: benefits of green environments for 1; caused by uncertainty 1; caused by work 1, 2; coping mechanisms 1; cortisol 1; Holmes and Rahe stress scale 1, 2; PTSD 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and status 1; Yerkes-Dodson curve 1 see also anxiety; negative emotions striatum (brain region) 1 study of emotions (historical) 1 suicide 1, 2 superior temporal cortex (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 suppression of emotions: during disagreements with romantic partner 1; in learning and decision making (as impossible) 1; at work 1, 2, 3, 4 supramarginal gyrus (brain region) 1 surprise 1, 2 sympathetic nervous system 1, 2, 3 synapses (neuron connections) 1, 2 taxi drivers, brain study 1 tears, types and functions of 1 teenage years see adolescence and early adulthood temporal lobe (brain region) 1, 2 testosterone 1, 2, 3 thalamus (brain region) 1, 2, 3 theories of emotions see basic emotions theory; constructed emotions theory theory of mind (mentalising) 1, 2 thinking see cognition (thinking) threat simulation theory 1 transportation phenomenon 1 triune brain model 1, 2 TV and films causing negative emotions 1, 2, 3, 4 types of emotion see categories and types of emotion uncanny valley 1 uncertainty, unpleasant nature of 1 vagus nerve 1 valence (component of affect) 1, 2 vasopressin 1, 2, 3 video calls: DB’s call with friends after father’s funeral 1; lack of nonverbal emotional cues 1 virtual reality (VR) 1 visual cortex (brain region) 1, 2 visual processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 see also colours voice characteristics, and communicating emotion 1 volcano/cupcake scenario (competing motivations) 1 wine tasting and appreciation 1 work and workplaces: communicating the wrong emotions at work 1; DB’s job embalming cadavers 1, 2, 3(fn); emotional aspects of medical work 1; emotional detachment/suppression 1, 2, 3, 4; emotional labour of acting work 1; mental health problems caused by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; performance appraisals 1, 2; wellbeing initiatives 1, 2 working memory 1 yawning, as contagious 1 Yerkes-Dodson curve 1 Zeigarnik effect (tendency to forget completed tasks) 1 ‘zone,’ state of being in 1 Zoom calls see video calls About the Author Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist, blogger, sometimes-comedian and author.

One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, assortative mating, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business logic, carbon footprint, carbon tax, classic study, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, congestion charging, congestion pricing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cross-subsidies, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, drive until you qualify, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, gentrification, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Induced demand, industrial cluster, Kowloon Walled City, low interest rates, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, Mercator projection, minimum wage unemployment, moral panic, New Urbanism, open borders, open immigration, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, secular stagnation, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, Silicon Valley, social distancing, superstar cities, tech worker, the built environment, Thomas Malthus, transit-oriented development, white flight, working-age population, Yogi Berra

The basic pattern of elites departing disease-ravaged cities for country strongholds is familiar from plague outbreaks in early modern Europe and cholera in the nineteenth century, and reflects the reality that throughout history there has been a tension between the economic opportunities presented by city living and the vulnerability to disease induced by crowding. That said, there is some reason to doubt the cogency of the link between density and disease vulnerability in the specific case of COVID-19. America’s second-densest city, San Francisco, wasn’t even close to being the second-hardest-hit city. Both San Francisco mayor London Breed and California governor Gavin Newsom were quick to issue social distancing orders in mid-March, while New York City mayor Bill de Blasio was slower to take equally robust action and New York governor Andrew Cuomo stepped in as the main leader of the response only once the situation was already out of control.

…

But for its trouble, California has by far the more dynamic economy—hosting four of the world’s ten most valuable companies, as well as much of America’s start-up scene and cultural exports. Natural resources just aren’t that big a deal in the modern economy. However, the threat of infectious disease is a constant reminder that society is built on a biological foundation. The specter of disease The COVID-19 pandemic that burst out of China in 2020 hit New York City extremely hard and extremely quickly. Many wealthy New Yorkers fled to their second homes in the suburbs or to vacation destinations throughout the East Coast. The basic pattern of elites departing disease-ravaged cities for country strongholds is familiar from plague outbreaks in early modern Europe and cholera in the nineteenth century, and reflects the reality that throughout history there has been a tension between the economic opportunities presented by city living and the vulnerability to disease induced by crowding.

…

Large families don’t generate more emissions because children are particularly resource intensive (quite the opposite, they are smaller than adults and don’t drive cars), it’s because they contain more people. You could just as easily reduce emissions by encouraging people to commit suicide. And even though the COVID-19 pandemic caused a drastic reduction in short-term greenhouse gas emissions by shutting down the economy and a longer-term change in the trend by killing people, nobody is glad it happened. If the risk were that one additional person would tip the whole world onto a path of inevitable extinction, that would be different.

pages: 308 words: 97,480

The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet

2021 United States Capitol attack, Airbnb, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, Columbine, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, disinformation, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, fake news, false flag, gentrification, George Floyd, Howard Zinn, intentional community, Jeffrey Epstein, lockdown, Occupy movement, operation paperclip, Parler "social media", prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, QAnon, sensible shoes, social distancing, Upton Sinclair, W. E. B. Du Bois, We are the 99%, white flight, white picket fence, young professional

The Church of the Insurrection, later that night Nisenan land Vessels, Church of Glad Tidings Double-vetted, I drove an hour north, through flat land and orange groves, to the Church of Glad Tidings in Yuba City. “Yuba-dooba-doo!” as Glad Tidings’ cherub-cheeked Pastor Dave Bryan called it, or sometimes “Foreversville.” From the beginning of the pandemic, Pastor Dave refused for his church any Covid precautions. Instead, “we advertised we will be open every night.” Every night for a month he led his flock in prayer. The state said “lockdown”; he said “revival.” The church never closed its doors. “No one else had the courage,” he said, and for that Glad Tidings graduated from a local profile to a national one.

…

“There’s a lot of drops,” Pastor Dave told me by phone after we met in Bossier City. By “drops” he meant clues. The pandemic was in full and terrible blossom, and tens of thousands of Americans had already died from a virus that Trump had attempted to laugh off. His rallies temporarily suspended, he’d stumbled on daily televised coronavirus briefings as a form of mass spectacle, a way to continue attacking the media and dismissing the experts and disseminating secret codes. The two-hour performances weren’t meant to inform or comfort or unite. They were Trump’s rallies for what would prove to be an all-too-brief era of social distancing. The president’s most devoted followers continued to parse his words, his gestures, even the color of his ties for hidden meaning.

…

“Coincidence,” explained Dave, “is just a spectacular thing, that God remains anonymous.” For instance: Covid-19. He told me Scripture teaches that what your enemies—here he meant China, which he thought had intentionally created the disease, and Dr. Fauci, who had tried to spread it—intend as evil against you, God will make good. Is that not the whole point of the risen Christ? The meaning of every martyr? But what about the dead who don’t rise? Not Jesus, not Ashli—all those already gone, killed by Covid? “This will blow your mind,” Dave said. Covid was real and the dead were many, but there was a “good part”: the godless churches, the ones with crosses instead of swords, had closed their doors.

pages: 655 words: 156,367

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle

2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, David Graeber, death from overwork, defund the police, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, George Floyd, George Gilder, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, Haight Ashbury, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Ida Tarbell, immigration reform, informal economy, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kitchen Debate, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, millennium bug, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, new economy, New Journalism, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, oil shock, open borders, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Powell Memorandum, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Seymour Hersh, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, super pumped, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, urban decay, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

Sanders shared Warren’s antagonism to corporate power. If anything, his plans were more ambitious than hers, as he sought to make his social democratic vision a reality in American life.27 Pandemic The 2020 presidential campaign coincided with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which lent new urgency to the issues that critics of neoliberalism had been raising. In political economic terms, the pandemic worked to intensify a development that the decline in the neoliberal order had already set in motion: namely, a conviction that government was the only institution with the wherewithal to address severe economic and social hardship.

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The two countries signed the agreement in January 2020, with Trump hailing it as a major victory for his administration and for the nation. Across the first year of the agreement, however, multiple reports suggested that China was doing little to increase its American imports to stipulated goals. As was the case with so many Trump initiatives, there seemed to be little consistency or follow-through. And the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic at the very moment when the trade deal was signed upended global trade in ways wholly independent of US-China trade negotiations.12 Still, Trump’s constant bluster about the evils of free trade, his repeated threats to impose tariffs, and his hostility to the many countries seen by his administration as having gained a trade advantage over the United States pushed a neoliberal world to reassess long-standing beliefs and strategies.

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Glenn, 47 Capital for the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 254–55 capitalism American capitalism, 20, 31, 42–43, 139 in China, 10 communism and, 141, 147–48 crony capitalism, 201 curtailing destructive chaos of, 23 free market capitalism, 4–5, 99–100, 105, 108–9, 120–21, 133–34, 144–45, 173, 195–96, 204, 254–55 globalization of, 145–46 internationalist capitalist economy, 31 market capitalism, 195–96, 200 neoliberalism and, 4–12 Capitalism and Freedom (Friedman), 94–95 Capitol Hill violence (2021), 1, 288–89 capture thesis (political science), 159 Carnegie, Andrew, 169 Carter, Jimmy, 64–69, 121–22 Castle Rock Entertainment, 172 Catholic Americans, 133 Catholics, 27, 118–19 Cato Institute, 102–3, 109 Center for American Progress, 278–79 Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 280 Chamberlain, Neville, 55 Chauvin, Derek, 286 Chicago School of Economics, 90–91, 201 China, 10, 37, 271–72 Chinese Communist Party, 143, 145–46 Chinese democracy movement, 143 Chomsky, Noam, 254–55 Christie, Chris, 268 Chrysler Corporation, 62 Churchill, Winston, 36–37 Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), 67 civil rights, 49, 50–51, 117, 124–25, 138 Civil Rights Act (1964), 53–54, 95, 125 Civil War, 79–80 classical liberalism, 5–9, 25–26, 93 Clinton, Bill minority homeowners under, 212, 213–14 neoliberalism and, 1, 2–4, 11, 137–38 New Deal order and, 152–64 New Left and, 14–15 political dissent, 179–88 restructuring of political economy, 4–5 Telecommunications Act, 164, 165–73, 181 Wall Street reform and, 173–78 Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bill and, 153, 154–55, 186–87 election loss, 265–66 neoliberalism and, 260–65 Obama, Barack and, 222, 223–24 Sanders, Bernie and, 254–55, 259–62 Trump, Donald and, 250 CNN, 128, 172 Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), 198 Cobb, Jelani, 263–64 Cohen, Michael, 245–46 Cohn, Gary, 270–71, 276 Cold War era, 10, 11–12, 29, 35–47, 48–54, 129–32 collective bargaining, 27–28, 81–82, 85 collectivism, 23, 73–74, 82–84, 85, 86, 100–1 Colloque Lippmann, 73–74, 86–87, 135–36 Comey, James, 265–66 Coming Apart (Murray), 231–34 Commodity Futures Modernization Act (2000), 213 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), 141–42 Communications Act (1934), 26, 125–26, 165, 170 Communications Decency Act, 169–70 communism capitalism and, 141, 147–48 cybernetic revolution and, 161–63 economic stagnation under, 69 impact on neoliberalism, 10–12, 20–21 labor movement militancy, 23 New Deal order and, 10–12, 27–35 Republican Party and, 38–47 World War II impact on, 33–35 Community Action Program, 159 conformism, 95–96 conservatism, 4–12, 28, 38 The Constitution of Liberty (Hayek), 97–98 consumer spending crisis, 214–15 Coors, Joseph, Jr., 108–9, 114 corporate welfare, 180–81 cosmopolitanism, 5, 8–9, 13, 182–83, 186, 208, 209 Council of Economic Advisers, 66, 171, 224, 284 Court, Warren, 118–19 Covid-19 pandemic, 272, 279–81, 282–83 crime rates, 1980s, 130–31 Croly, Herbert, 80–82 crony capitalism, 201 Cuban Missile Crisis, 219–20 culture wars, 4–5, 14, 15, 186–88 cybernetic revolution, 161–63 Daily Kos (blog), 278–79 Dart, Justin, 110–12 Debs, Eugene, 82–83 Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Graeber), 252–53 Defense Production Act (1950), 280 deindustrialization, 63–64 democracy American democracy, 1, 7, 282–83, 287–88, 289 Chinese democracy movement, 143 communism and, 187–88 Iraq war and, 195–96, 197–98, 203–4 liberal democracy, 147–48, 277 media corporations and, 165 neoliberalism impact on, 7, 91–92, 96–97 New Leftists impact on, 66 popular democracy (Ralph Nader), 66, 143 proletarian democracy, 33 social democracy, 6–7, 34–35 Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), 137–38, 180–81 Democratic National Committee, 64–65 Democratic Party. see also specific Democratic presidents acquiescence/resistance to neoliberalism, 135–40 African Americans, shift to, 48–49 civil rights and, 117 electoral constituencies and, 21–22 Keynesian economic ideas, 22–23 neoliberal order and, 2–3 New Deal order and, 20–27, 118, 152–64 support from religious groups, 27 white supremacy and, 49 Deng Xiaoping, 143, 145–46, 187–88 deregulation, 5, 68, 156–57, 228, 276 Disloyal (Cohen), 245–46 Disney Corporation, 172 Dixiecrats, 117–18 Dole, Robert, 209 Dow Jones Industrial Average, 60–61, 220–21 Duggan, Lisa, 102 Dukakis, Michael, 137 Dyson, Esther, 160–61, 162–63 economic liberalism, 76–78 economic recession, 48, 107–8 Economic Recovery Tax Act (1981), 122 Efron, Edith, 111–12 Eisenhower, Dwight D.

pages: 272 words: 76,154

How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World by Dambisa Moyo

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, algorithmic trading, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Bretton Woods, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, collapse of Lehman Brothers, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, deglobalization, don't be evil, Donald Trump, fake news, financial engineering, gender pay gap, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, hiring and firing, income inequality, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, long term incentive plan, low interest rates, Lyft, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, multilevel marketing, Network effects, new economy, old-boy network, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Pershing Square Capital Management, proprietary trading, remote working, Ronald Coase, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, surveillance capitalism, The Nature of the Firm, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade route, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, Vanguard fund, Washington Consensus, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture

These include challenges to the efficacy of multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organization (WTO), which have governed the global system and brought stability over the past fifty years. Rising trade protectionism and mounting regulatory requirements are affecting all manner of industries and sectors, including banking, food, and technology. And of course, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how extreme global events could lead to international border closings and trade disruptions. These shifts are leading to a fall in global trade volumes, declining cross-border capital flows, and dwindling immigration. Boards would be wise to look for members who have a strong knowledge of worldwide economic trends and geopolitical dynamics and a network of political connections around the world.

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China is also seeking to gain a greater global foothold in trade, capital flows, and investments through the multi-continent Belt and Road Initiative, which includes infrastructure investment across sixty-eight countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East to develop improved trade routes by land and sea. As a result, a growing proportion of the global economy will be guided by China. The 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic initially showcased the power authoritarian governments have over governments that rest on democratic freedom. An authoritarian government could quickly apply the levers it had—such as the ability to restrict freedom of movement and quarantine its population by decree—to control the spread of the disease, while governments in the United States and Europe hesitated before imposing similar restrictions in the hope of preserving individual freedoms, a bedrock principle of democratic capitalism.

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GitLab, a technology company that hosts and manages coding projects for businesses, describes itself as all remote, with employees of all levels spread across sixty countries and no centralized headquarters. GitLab’s founder and CEO, Sid Sijbrandij, is so confident that remote working is the way of the future that the company has published a publicly accessible guide to managing and operating a remote workforce. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that working from home may be the most effective option for millions of workers across virtually all sectors. Government requests for people to shelter in place accelerated boardroom discussions around remote workforces, which centered on several important questions: how managers can best manage workers from afar, how to maintain workforce productivity, how best to mitigate cyber risk and ensure data privacy, and how to oversee health concerns including the mental well-being of all employees.

pages: 234 words: 67,589

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future by Ben Tarnoff

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic management, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, business logic, call centre, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, decentralized internet, deep learning, defund the police, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, disinformation, Edward Snowden, electricity market, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial intermediation, future of work, gamification, General Magic , gig economy, God and Mammon, green new deal, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Leo Hollis, lockdown, lone genius, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Menlo Park, natural language processing, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, pets.com, profit maximization, profit motive, QAnon, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, smart grid, social distancing, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, techlash, Telecommunications Act of 1996, TikTok, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, undersea cable, UUNET, vertical integration, Victor Gruen, web application, working poor, Yochai Benkler

In 2015, when the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans who had used smartphones to apply for jobs—perhaps the most essential online activity of all—they struggled with a number of tasks, from navigating websites not optimized for mobile to entering large amounts of text and submitting required files. Smartphones simply make poor substitutes for home broadband; those who are compelled to rely on them are at a significant disadvantage. The COVID-19 crisis greatly magnified those disadvantages. As lockdowns and social distancing pushed more of people’s lives online, a decent home internet connection became all the more essential. In response, the many millions of Americans without one flocked to the parking lots of schools, libraries, and other institutions that continued to offer free Wi-Fi.

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These homes not only receive internet for zero or low cost, depending on residents’ ability to pay, they also get access to a private network—an intranet—that lets them communicate with one another and find information on local resources like food pantries and translation services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as connectivity became even more crucial, EII organizers also helped create several Wi-Fi hotspots in the three neighborhoods. “If the community has ownership of the infrastructure, then they’re more likely to participate in its maintenance, evolution, and innovation,” Diana Nucera, founder and former director of DCTP, told YES!

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This loss of dynamism wasn’t limited to the US; the story in Western Europe and Japan was much the same. Each subsequent decade has marked further decline: these economies performed more poorly in the 1980s than in the 1970s, and more poorly in the 1990s than in the 1980s. The opening decades of the twenty-first century, with the Great Recession and the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, have been especially dismal. But stagnation, as the economist Thomas Piketty has shown, isn’t bad for everyone. As the US economy has slowed down, it has also become more unequal: since the 1970s, the richest .01 percent of Americans have more than quintupled their share of the country’s total wealth.

pages: 292 words: 94,660

The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back by Jacob Ward

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, AI winter, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Amazon Mechanical Turk, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Broken windows theory, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, deep learning, Donald Trump, drone strike, endowment effect, George Akerlof, George Floyd, hindsight bias, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeffrey Epstein, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Lyft, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, natural language processing, non-fungible token, nudge unit, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, QAnon, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, selection bias, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, smart cities, social contagion, social distancing, Steven Levy, survivorship bias, TikTok, Turing test

And so the week of April 20, an FAA-licensed drone pilot began flying passes above citizens playing soccer in the park, standing in line outside the local Trader Joe’s, and walking the streets of downtown Westport, not only to determine whether they were standing too close (the drone carried loudspeakers so it could tell people to leave a closed park or to maintain better social distance), but also to potentially identify symptoms of COVID-19. Chief Koskinas explained that his department has adopted radical new technology in the past. Sandy Hook is a half-hour drive north of Westport, and the 2012 murder of twenty children there transformed his department. Before then, he told me, “we were preparing and training differently.

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After five weeks of lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic, when it first became clear that this would be a deep and vast economic crisis, with more than 26 million Americans filing for unemployment by late April, the national and international mood turned toward a desire for some way to monitor the spread of the virus while somehow getting back to public life. The president of the Veneto region in Italy, where the first known Italians had died of the virus, talked about creating some sort of work-license system for people who had tested positive for COVID antibodies. Public health officials in the United Kingdom and elsewhere began openly discussing the possibility of a “passport” given to those with the necessary antibody test results or a vaccination card that would allow them to work and travel again.

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Use of that data then deepens the inequity.”6 The tendency to broadly apply the rulings of artificial intelligence when human systems are overwhelmed by human need damages independent judgment everywhere—not just in the courts. And it’s when we strap AI and high expectations onto a broken system that things really go wrong. By January 2021, ten months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic fallout in the United States was severe and deepening. The service industry was decimated as restaurants, hair salons, and gyms faltered and closed. The head of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys told me his members were preparing for an avalanche of lost homes and cars as American entrepreneurs everywhere threw whatever they could at saving their businesses.

pages: 362 words: 87,462

Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, call centre, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, demand response, Donald Trump, emotional labour, fake news, financial independence, Firefox, gamification, gig economy, Google Chrome, helicopter parent, impulse control, Jean Tirole, job automation, job satisfaction, Lyft, meta-analysis, Minecraft, New Journalism, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, social distancing, strikebreaker, TaskRabbit, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, uber lyft, working poor

This swift, expansive response rose up in a matter of days and took effect long before our state and local government started requiring us to isolate. Like climate change, COVID-19 began as a mostly abstract fear. Like climate change, the virus was terrifying to think about, and we knew serious damage was inevitable. The news presented us with dozens of apocalyptic-seeming projections of how the COVID-19 disaster might play out, just as they do with climate change. Yet individual people rapidly started making responsible, altruistic choices to address the pandemic, despite having spent years doing comparatively little to address climate change. Why? I think the difference is that with the coronavirus, people felt empowered to make a meaningful choice.

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Eventually we stopped the e-mail thread, because it was getting a bit heated. I walked away from the conversation certain I was right. Then COVID-19 hit the United States. I was astonished by how rapidly and selflessly the people around me responded. Long before any of them were legally required to, my friends and neighbors started isolating themselves. Local theaters and bars canceled performances in order to reduce crowding. Restaurants began offering free food delivery to elderly people and the newly unemployed. People placed loving but firm pressure on those who refused to socially distance. This swift, expansive response rose up in a matter of days and took effect long before our state and local government started requiring us to isolate.

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The news coverage of worst-case scenarios, such as how brutally the virus hit Italy, filled people with terror, but the response of countries like South Korea and Taiwan provided crucial, motivating counterexamples. In countries where people took the pandemic seriously, thousands of lives were spared. We weren’t just being fed messages of doom, we were also given hope. Though each of us was terrified by the onslaught of bad news about COVID-19, we also knew where to look for advice about how to respond. The steps we needed to take were clear and feasible, and we knew that everyone else was also taking them. Stay inside. Wear a mask. Deliver groceries to elderly people around you.

pages: 598 words: 150,801

Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth by Selina Todd

assortative mating, Bletchley Park, Boris Johnson, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, deskilling, DIY culture, emotional labour, Etonian, fear of failure, feminist movement, financial independence, full employment, Gini coefficient, greed is good, housing crisis, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, meritocracy, Nick Leeson, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, profit motive, rent control, Right to Buy, school choice, social distancing, statistical model, The Home Computer Revolution, The Spirit Level, traveling salesman, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, Yom Kippur War, young professional

Manual workers and domestic servants were at the bottom, despite the fact that British industry and most middle-class households depended utterly on their labour.2 And hugely vital but unpaid tasks, like mothering, were ignored. This classification of people’s work – updated but not much changed over the past century – continues to shape policymakers’ understandings of valuable and less-valuable work. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed just how flawed this hierarchy is. Cleaners, carers, shop workers and delivery drivers have played vital roles in keeping society going. The pandemic has made clear to many what these workers already knew: that all these jobs require skill. Cleaning – to take just one example – requires attention to detail, stamina, speed and care. If cleaners don’t do a good job, the consequences for public health can be disastrous.

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After the First World War, it suited many employers to employ a large number of female clerks on tasks considered skilled twenty years earlier, but increasingly defined as routine, and therefore paid less. By contrast, after the Second World War, Labour’s establishment of a comprehensive welfare state demanded thousands more teachers and health workers. The war – like the Covid-19 pandemic of the twenty-first century – demonstrated that nurses, social workers, ambulance drivers and home helps were vital to society. In 1945, voters, and the Labour government they elected, took seriously the need to rebuild Britain. They recognised that only the state could undertake such an enormous task, and that prioritising education, healthcare, housing and work, was the best response to the upheaval and destruction caused by the war.

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Many wanted to make a useful contribution to society; some aspired to shape their country’s future. Climbing a few rungs up the ladder rarely delivered these dreams. We need to create a future that will, because we require imaginative thinking, big ambitions and hope to tackle the pressing problems of the twenty-first century, including climate change, pandemics like COVID-19, automation and an ageing population. The labour movement pioneers of the early twentieth century and the leftists of the 1970s remind us that an unequal hierarchy of wealth and power is only one model for organising society. They envisioned egalitarian alternatives that are worth pursuing.

pages: 372 words: 98,659

The Miracle Pill by Peter Walker

active transport: walking or cycling, agricultural Revolution, autonomous vehicles, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, car-free, Coronary heart disease and physical activity of work, coronavirus, COVID-19, driverless car, experimental subject, James Watt: steam engine, Kickstarter, lockdown, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, randomized controlled trial, Sidewalk Labs, social distancing, Stop de Kindermoord, the built environment, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, twin studies, Wall-E, washing machines reduced drudgery

Some of the obligations cover social care for vulnerable children, but the great majority of the cost is for older people, and it is hard to overstate how much of a financial challenge this has already become. I can remember speaking to the leader of one English council, who told me that in just five years, the costs of social care in his borough had risen by 25 per cent. Another English council, in 2018, had to formally declare it could not meet its obligations.21 The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on people living in care homes illustrated the strains felt on the sector, with the virus often spread between homes by agency staff working long hours in multiple locations. Councils and care providers are still awaiting a long-promised UK government plan for the sector. The situation is the same in many other countries.

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Calculating an overall economic cost is hugely difficult, but one study by the London-based World Obesity Forum, which gathers scientific expertise on the subject, estimated that by 2025 the total global bill connected to obesity would be around £950 billion.20 The association of excess weight with generally poorer health outcomes has been highlighted anew by the coronavirus pandemic. To reiterate, this book is being written during the period of its peak in the UK, and many of the public health lessons are only emerging. But one repeated feature of studies both in China and Europe has been the greater probability of obese patients to require hospital treatment for the Covid-19 virus, and also to die. The energy balance How did the world get to this point? The answer in its broadest terms was expressed with great eloquence more than sixty years ago by one of the first experts to warn about the then-nascent obesity crisis.

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He is critical of the English school curriculum’s apparent lack of interest in physical development, saying that even in kindergarten settings it can be ‘quite narrow’ and insufficiently play-based. This, he argues, has to change: ‘It’s adults that stop children from moving, and what we’re trying to do is unlock their ability to be able to move, and reset childhood to a certain degree. If these weeks with COVID-19 have taught us anything, it’s that movement is probably more important now than it ever has been. You can have an education system that, of course, educates children to be able to pursue the careers and the life that they want, but they also need the fundamentals of wellbeing in order to be able to achieve that.

pages: 282 words: 85,658

Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century by Jeff Lawson

Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, big-box store, bitcoin, business process, call centre, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, create, read, update, delete, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, DevOps, Elon Musk, financial independence, global pandemic, global supply chain, Hacker News, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kanban, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, microservices, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, software as a service, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Telecommunications Act of 1996, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, transfer pricing, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, web application, Y Combinator

I believe that work and customer engagement have changed fundamentally during the pandemic and will never go back to the old way again. Millions of people have embraced new technologies; they will not want to go back. This was largely a one-way acceleration toward digital. Customers will become accustomed to these digital experiences, and expectations will just continue to rise quickly. Companies that get this right will have loyal, engaged, productive customers. Those that don’t will struggle even more than before the COVID-19 crisis. But the good news is—you got this. I hope this book helped show you the path to partnership with software developers.

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As I was finishing the book something happened that made this transformation far more urgent. The coronavirus pandemic that struck in early 2020 forced the world to reconfigure itself in real time as cities shut down, children learned at home, companies sent workers home, hospitals were overwhelmed with patients, and more. Suddenly digital transformation projects slated to take place over several years were happening in days or weeks. It was the great digital acceleration, not by choice but by existential necessity driven by the largest global pandemic in a century. As economic activity slowed to a crawl, it was literally Build vs.

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Like everyone else, Twilio sent our employees home and kept the company running with everyone working remotely. That was especially challenging because our business didn’t drop off during the global shutdown. Our customers asked their developers to invent solutions to the onslaught of problems that COVID-19 brought them. Instead of taking it easy, our three thousand–plus Twilions were running harder than ever to handle a surge of demand from our existing customers and thousands of new customers who needed help—right away. From our front-row seat, we saw innovation that demonstrated so many of the principles I’ve written about in this book.

pages: 430 words: 111,038

Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera

Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, cognitive dissonance, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Etonian, European colonialism, food miles, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, Neil Armstrong, period drama, phenotype, Rishi Sunak, school choice, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, Shamima Begum, social distancing, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, women in the workforce

In May the Sydney Morning Herald observed that, unlike Italy, the United Kingdom had had ‘time to prepare for the coronavirus tsunami’ but had failed to act, Libération, the French centre-left newspaper, reported ‘breathtaking shortages’, ‘fiasco’ and a nonchalant handling of the crisis by the Johnson government, the New Yorker said that despite its ‘internationally respected public-health apparatus’ Britain had taken an ‘obvious misstep’ in hesitating to implement a national lockdown, while in Turkey the Anadolu state news agency warned that the UK’s death toll from the crisis could be worse than those of Italy or Spain and that Boris Johnson’s crisis management of the pandemic should be questioned and examined in terms of this projected outcome.10 The Irish Times put it most damningly of all, some days later: ‘Another example of British exceptionalism backfiring in grand style, some might say, and a bad omen for Brexit, the UK’s other social-distancing project.’ 8. Dirty Money Few areas of Britain feel more quintessentially English than the Cotswolds, with its thatched cottages, rolling hills, overpriced garden centres and pubs that present themselves as high-end restaurants.

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And it happened in 2020 around the Black Lives Matter movement, and around the coronavirus crisis when the public suddenly seemed to appreciate that BAME staff not only accounted for a disproportionate segment of NHS medical staff (44 per cent, when the 2011 Census puts the BAME population in England and Wales at 14 per cent) but were dying at seven times the rate of white colleagues. I met some relatives of black and Asian doctors who had died of Covid-19 for Channel 4 News and The Times. It was emotional. Medicine runs in many immigrant families, and some of the bereaved were themselves doctors, going back to work to face the virus that had killed their loved ones. Many of the deceased had experienced racism even as they built the NHS: studies confirm that not only are BAME doctors routinely racially abused, but they’re also pushed towards ‘Cinderella’ specialities such as geriatric medicine rather than the higher-status disciplines.

…

There is evidence that we refused to subscribe to European efforts to source ventilators, going our own way, only to face a serious shortage. As Google and Apple combined to develop a global tracing app, we went it alone to develop our own NHS app, with disappointing results. When the world’s nations rushed to quarantine foreign visitors arriving in their airports, we let them in, and then when Covid seemed to become less of a threat to the world after its initial onslaught, our advice switched to quarantine. Our politicians gloated endlessly about how we were leading the world in efforts to find a vaccine, while the Health Secretary boasted in June, amid disastrous mortality figures, that ‘British science is among the best in the world.’

pages: 197 words: 53,831

Investing to Save the Planet: How Your Money Can Make a Difference by Alice Ross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, British Empire, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean tech, clean water, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, decarbonisation, diversification, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, family office, food miles, Future Shock, global pandemic, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, green transition, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, impact investing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, off grid, oil shock, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, precision agriculture, risk tolerance, risk/return, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, uber lyft, William MacAskill

Lift-sharing services like Uber or Lyft are one obvious example, while in China, start-up YCloset, which allows users to rent clothes and jewellery, attracted investment from Chinese technology giant Alibaba in 2018. A circular economy in fashion could also be given a boost by the coronavirus pandemic, as people practising social distancing look to refresh their wardrobes cheaply or repair what they already own. In April 2020, analysts at HSBC said that they saw ‘significant opportunities’ for fashion companies that were exploring things like rental clothing platforms and repair services. Such companies include H&M, Patagonia and the RealReal.

…

Analysts at Morgan Stanley said in March: ‘With the disruption caused by the Covid-19 crisis, “social” considerations are back at the forefront of ESG. Corporate decisions affecting workers … have become increasingly important as a wider array of investors have begun looking at companies through an ESG lens.’ Analysts at Barclays predicted that the coronavirus crisis could even accelerate investors’ interest in climate change, arguing that while ESG implementation might be delayed in the short term, ‘it is unlikely to be abandoned in the long run – and it may even accelerate in a post-Covid-19 world’. Of course, not all the developments were positive.

…

As a result, the EU has now restricted the use of biofuel in transport that can be counted as renewable energy to just 7 per cent. But biofuels are proving attractive in the aviation industry. Flights make up more than 2 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – or at least they did before the 2020 pandemic grounded airlines. This means that if global aviation were a country, it would rank in the top 10 emitters. It remains to be seen how long it will take for aviation to match its pre-pandemic emissions, with many airlines warning that they will not see a recovery to 2019 levels of activity for years to come. An EU report from 2019 notes that, while sustainable aviation fuels such as electrofuels (which, if produced from renewable electricity, are potentially zero emission) have the potential to significantly reduce emissions, their use is minimal and likely to remain limited in the short term.

pages: 345 words: 92,063

Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business by Julie Battilana, Tiziana Casciaro

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, Andy Rubin, Asperger Syndrome, benefit corporation, Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boris Johnson, British Empire, call centre, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, deep learning, different worldview, digital rights, disinformation, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, feminist movement, fundamental attribution error, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, Greta Thunberg, hiring and firing, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, mega-rich, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, School Strike for Climate, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tacit knowledge, tech worker, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, zero-sum game

Sometimes, as we struggle to see through the fog of our self-focus, events much larger than ourselves remind us and rekindle our empathy. The COVID-19 pandemic helped some to see that the unilateral exercise of individual power is futile and counterproductive.45 And many more of us have awakened to the truth of scientists’ dire warnings about the boomerang effects of invading and destroying ecosystems46 and “the need for a more holistic ‘one health’ approach [that] views human, animal, and environmental health as interconnected.”47 Life-altering experiences such as the pandemic also make us more aware of our impermanence, which has long been one of the defenses humans put up against the other great danger of power: hubris.

…

In the face of this increased pressure, many corporate leaders have expressed their desire to serve other stakeholders in addition to their shareholders.36 In August 2019, the Business Roundtable, whose membership includes the CEOs of most major U.S. corporations, issued a statement rejecting the primacy of shareholders in favor of creating value for their employees and stakeholders, including their customers, and society at large. But when it comes to accountability to these groups, as of a year later, at least, not much had changed. A study revealed that when COVID started spreading in the spring of 2020, companies that signed the Business Roundtable statement fired their employees 20 percent more than those that did not sign the statement.37 They were also less likely to donate to relief efforts, offer customer discounts, or shift production to pandemic-related goods. The takeaway is not surprising: If we leave it to those in power to change, they may change their discourse but rarely their behavior. The good news is that new structures and systems that hold companies accountable not only for their financial performance, but also for their social and environmental impact, make real change possible.38 The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board created in 2011 by Jean Rogers, whom you met in chapter 6, is a prime example.39 The metrics that standard setting organizations like SASB have created are not, in themselves, enough to drive change.

…

Research in evolutionary psychology highlights how people internalize experiences of social acceptance and rejection in ways that can profoundly shape their assessment of their own worth.40 Kids understand early on the power of threatening to withdraw their friendship from another child, even if they don’t understand that the power derives from depriving a vulnerable peer of a key source of self-worth and a potential defense against mean-spirited bullies. Ultimately, the people we love matter more to us than anything else. Anyone who has come close to death will tell you that their loved ones were all they thought about in those final moments.41 The pain of being denied a last farewell to hospitalized family members was what made COVID-19 so heartbreaking for so many people. We can accept death, but not death without those we love.42 Love is easily leveraged as a source of power: Threaten someone I love, and I will yield to you to ensure the safety of my loved one. At the same time, I will do all that’s in my power to stop you. Affiliation can also be leveraged to divide us.

pages: 247 words: 60,543

The Currency Cold War: Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony by David G. W. Birch

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, bank run, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, cashless society, central bank independence, COVID-19, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, Diane Coyle, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial exclusion, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, global reserve currency, global supply chain, global village, Hyman Minsky, information security, initial coin offering, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market design, Marshall McLuhan, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, one-China policy, Overton Window, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Pingit, QR code, quantum cryptography, race to the bottom, railway mania, ransomware, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subscription business, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, Vitalik Buterin, Washington Consensus

You will read in the pages ahead, for example, about outgoing Bank of England governor Mark Carney’s bold vision for the International Monetary Fund to steward creation of a digitally rendered ‘synthetic hegemonic currency’ to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve unit. But it took a third, massively disruptive societal upheaval – the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic – to turn this gradual two-trend convergence into something even more powerful and urgent. The global health crisis of 2020, which quickly also became a financial, economic and political crisis, threatens to redraw the boundaries of economic power – not only across countries, but also within them – as centralized governments’ failure to rapidly respond has shone a light on alternative models that embrace decentralized governance.

…

Of course, an issuer might decide to pay positive interest on digital currency balances, and there are observers who feel that in cases where the issuer is the central bank, this might simplify monetary policy. The idea of using some form of digital currency to helicopter-drop money directly to citizens is not new (Hockett 2019a). It was, however, brought back into sharp focus because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The first draft of the Democratic Party’s stimulus proposal for the United States (the 1,100-page-long Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act) included a provision for the use of digital currency to make direct stimulus payments via a ‘digital dollar wallet’ that ‘represents holdings in an electronic device or service that is used to store digital dollars that may be tied to a digital [identity] or physical identity’ (my emphasis).

…

Meanwhile, as governments and companies fight over who gets to define our future fiat-backed currency system, we cannot discount the role of decentralized alternatives such as Bitcoin, even as sideline players. David and I might disagree on this, but I see post-Covid-19 political fragmentation breeding demand for Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention, which will represent an alternative – if not a more stable – store of value. Trust in both governments and corporate gatekeepers will be challenged by Covid-19 politics. Those who bemoan the lack of accountability in unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus packages could be very amenable to a new idea of money. For others who fear the surveillance powers of both corporate- and state-issued currencies, the alternative of depoliticized, pro-privacy digital currencies such as Bitcoin will be attractive.

pages: 412 words: 97,696

Bad Actors by Mick Herron

butterfly effect, fake news, Kickstarter, place-making, social distancing

But he was awake again two hours later, Bachelor’s story climbing round his head. It was absurd, of course, and would lead nowhere—obviously—but at least the older man hadn’t asked him the favour he’d been dreading. There was that memory, too, of Bachelor’s concern when he, Lech, had been locked in Covid’s monstrous offices. He was remembering a line his father had enjoyed quoting—everyone is more or less of Polish origin. It seemed to fit Bachelor. Another reason for Lech not turning his back. Which was why, the following afternoon, he’d wandered from the office he shared with Roddy Ho to talk with Louisa Guy, whose room was on the floor above, its view ever so slightly better than his.

…

“And if Sparrow can suggest that’s what’s happened here, that you had de Greer disappeared before she could stage-manage an international spook scandal, then that’s the bigger story and you’re the bad guy. Worst case scenario, from his point of view, it all gets wrapped inside an official inquiry, and by the time the report’s made public we’re too busy locking down Covid-25 to give a toss. And best case . . .” “I’ve triggered an illegal abduction, possibly murder, to preserve the Service’s reputation.” “And you’ll be hung, drawn and quartered,” said Lamb. “But for that to hold water,” Diana said slowly, “de Greer would have to disappear for real. You think he planned to kill her?”

…

This, the bedrock of his political philosophy, had seen Sparrow through some shaky patches. He’d occasionally been knocked off balance, true. We don’t need no stinking lockdown, he remembered telling the PM. What are we, French? But even this had an upside, distracting attention from a harder Brexit than the wet-legged had been expecting, and post-Covid paranoia was a flame worth fanning. Take the anti-vaxxers, or the G5 arsonists, whose celebrity-endorsed idiocy made the Home Secretary look a model of reason . . . Every national panic permitted a government to lace its boots tighter, which was why every government needed a visionary unafraid to sow chaos.

pages: 424 words: 123,180

Democracy's Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them by Dan Bouk

Black Lives Matter, card file, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, desegregation, digital map, Donald Trump, George Floyd, germ theory of disease, government statistician, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, index card, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, linked data, Mahatma Gandhi, mass incarceration, public intellectual, pull request, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Scientific racism, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social distancing, surveillance capitalism, transcontinental railway, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, Works Progress Administration, zero-sum game

And in early March, as the first round of census self-response invitations went out in the mail, the COVID-19 pandemic had crashed the party. Our family hunkered down in New York City. We sewed our first masks from old dish towels. The Census Bureau paused its operations in the field. People started talking about “delaying” the release of census data, which sounded crazy to me.49 I didn’t realize how serious this crisis was. The delay happened. It had to happen. The bureau needed more time: more time to get enumerators out knocking on doors and time to convince people to answer those doors during a pandemic; more time to sort through all the responses received online, on the phone, or through the mail; more time to debug the tabulation software and check for errors.

…

Cohen, Lizabeth Cohen, Patricia Cline columns; deportations related to; for head of household; for income; for “Indians not taxed”; for migration; for occupation; padding affecting; race indicated in; for relation Combs, George Combs, Henry Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels) Communists completeness computers concentration camps confidentiality: of census; Census Bureau promising; Congress tightening of; of data; draft and; World War II breaking Congress,7; census authorized by; census confidentiality tightened by; disfranchisement data presented to; see also House of Representatives congressional districts Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) Conner, Eugene E. Constitution cooperation: census requiring; with enumerators; officials needing; wage reporting “Counting for Dollars 2020” (report) COVID-19 pandemic Craig, David R. Curtis, Cathrine data: for African American genealogies; algorithms trained by; Big; British colonial; in census; in China; computers impacting; confidentiality of; in controversy; democracy linked to; on disfranchisement; Douglass, F., in; Dublin, L., and; enumerators influencing; errors in; fear of; frame of; fraud deterred by; genealogies and histories of; House of Representatives divided by; of individuals; of Japanese Americans; machines reading; names in; as numbers; objectivity of; partners in; poem reframing; politics shaping; Question Men and; race in; reform directed by; representation shaped by; of sampling; silences in; small-area; in South Africa; stories in; as text; for training enumerators; World War II weaponization of Davis, Lillian Rita Dearborn, Mina H.

…

She said: “If New York had had eighty-nine more people, they would have received one more seat.” Eighty-nine people! Newspapers ran with that number the following day. Twitter trembled with the outrage of pundits who didn’t realize that New York’s performance in the census had been spectacular but instead complained that their state had been robbed. They blamed COVID—the interruptions it had caused, the people it had displaced or killed—for the loss of a House seat, and they blamed the Census Bureau for missing, somehow, those eighty-nine people. They talked about lawsuits or recounts. (Though, as of this writing, neither has happened.) I shook my head in disbelief.

pages: 410 words: 120,234

Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings by Earl Swift

Apollo 11, Apollo 13, COVID-19, data acquisition, Internet Archive, low earth orbit, Mars Rover, Menlo Park, Neil Armstrong, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, zero-sum game

That said, the Horizon runabout so evokes Greg Bekker’s thinking (as does the report’s assertion that wheels would work just fine on the lunar surface, well before that became a popular view) that I’m moved to consider another possibility: that ABMA and Transportation Corps engineers working on Horizon conferred with Bekker’s lab at Detroit Arsenal, which was within the same army command. At this writing, that remains a speculation; amid the disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic, I have yet to find documentation that spells out such an arrangement. Another possibility is that Bekker wasn’t the only guy thinking as he did. Georg von Tiesenhausen, an ABMA and Marshall engineer whose papers are archived at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, is widely credited with producing the first design of a lunar roving vehicle—in fact, he’s often mistakenly said to have had a role in the eventual lunar rover, which he did not.

…

See also Apollo 17 Chevrolet Corvair, 100 Chrysler Corporation, 74, 143 Chrysler rover, 162–63, 163, 166–67 Cinder Lake, 124–31, 125, 137, 199, 240, 288 Cinder Lake Crater Field No. 1, 124–25 Cinder Lake Crater Field No. 2, 128–29 Circular spline, 88–89, 154, 326n City College of New York, 76 Clarke, Rosemary, 26 Cobra, 42, 65, 320n Cold welding, 298–99 Collier’s, 31–36, 52–53, 96, 130, 184, 268 Colorado Plateau, 121–22 Computation Lab, 221 Cone Crater, 10–13 Conrad, Charles “Pete,” 15–16 “Contractor penetration,” 189–90 Coon Butte, 121–22 Cooper, Gary, 27 Covid-19 pandemic, 302, 324n Cowart, Eugene, 192, 218, 259, 300, 301 Craig, Elbert “E. B.”, 193–94, 197 Crew station, 152–53, 185–86 Cronkite, Walter, 110 Curiosity, 296 Dannenberg, Konrad, 30, 78 Davidson Center for Space Exploration, 4–7, 18 Davy Crockett (TV show), 35 Delco Electronics, 207, 344 Delco Retirees Group, 314 Dembling, Paul, 167–68 Deployment gear, 158, 217–21, 231–32 Descartes Highlands, 251, 252–53, 254, 258, 297, 298 Detroit Arsenal, 42–43, 49, 50, 55, 59, 203, 324n Detroit Free Press, 105, 161 Development mule (test mule), 102–4, 329n Direct ascent, 90–91 Disc brakes, 163 Disney, Walt, 35–36 Disneyland, 35–37 Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, 25 Dornberger, Walter, 25, 26, 28 Douglas Aircraft Company, 74 Drive train, 153–54, 178–79, 202 Duke, Charles “Charlie,” 252–70, 298, 349n Apollo 17 and, 286 background of, 252 development of LRV, 209, 214, 250 first EVA (EVA-1), 253–60 Grover testing, 200, 200–201, 203, 221, 222 mission report, 269–70 second EVA (EVA-2), 260–64 third EVA (EVA-3), 265–69 Eagle (LM-3), 15, 147–48, 252.

…

We’ve worked together for nearly twenty years, during which I’ve never stopped wondering how I could have so lucked out. He is fierce. He is brave. He is a warrior in the cause of righteousness—and me. Finally, I’m much obliged to those people who kept me moored to reality while I was chained to my keyboard, a period that coincided with the emergence of Covid-19 and the strange and terrible times that followed. Amy Walton has backed this project from its start, and supported me for nearly two decades. I’m deeply thankful to have her in my life. My dear friend Laura LaFay has read every word between these covers, several times. She’s one of the best writers I know, and an incisive reader and editor.

pages: 687 words: 165,457

Exercised: The Science of Physical Activity, Rest and Health by Daniel Lieberman

A. Roger Ekirch, active measures, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, classic study, clean water, clockwatching, Coronary heart disease and physical activity of work, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, death from overwork, Donald Trump, epigenetics, Exxon Valdez, George Santayana, hygiene hypothesis, impulse control, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, libertarian paternalism, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, phenotype, placebo effect, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), social distancing, Steven Pinker, twin studies, two and twenty, working poor

Endurance athletes such as cross-country skiers had a stunning two-thirds lower risk of heart attacks than average Finns, while power athletes like weight lifters and wrestlers had one-third higher rates of heart attacks.48 Bottom line: weight training isn’t bad, but don’t skip the cardio. Respiratory Tract Infections and Other Contagions As I edit these words in March 2020, COVID-19, the worst pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu, is overwhelming the globe, causing massive numbers of people to fall ill, many to die, and plunging the world into economic crisis. The virus is a stark reminder that contagious diseases have never ceased to pose a profound and terrifying threat to human health. Even though the majority of people who get COVID-19 experience only mild to moderate symptoms, it is many times deadlier than most viral infections of the respiratory tract, including influenza.

…

Other infectious diseases like AIDS, hepatitis, and tuberculosis also take the lives of substantial numbers of people around the world annually. You may be wondering what physical activity has to do with contagions like respiratory tract infections (RTIs). During epidemics like COVID-19, health officials urge us to wash our hands more often and more thoroughly, to practice social distancing, to cough into our elbows, and—trickiest of all—to stop touching our faces. These fundamental, sensible measures effectively help impede transmission of the virus. Other key, proven treatments include vaccines that teach our immune systems to protect us from particular viruses, and antiviral medicines.

…

Contagious pathogens flourish in crowded, unhygienic conditions, and when they jump to humans from other species, they are especially dangerous because no one’s immune system has encountered them before. So, while hunter-gatherers suffer from plenty of infectious illnesses, highly contagious epidemic diseases like COVID-19 are partly mismatches made possible by civilization, and that explains why social distancing and handwashing are key tools to fight them.49 Persistent lack of physical activity may be an additional, partial mismatch for the immune system. There are longstanding concerns that excessively demanding physical activities like running a marathon can compromise the immune system’s capabilities, but several lines of evidence indicate that regular, moderate physical activity has the potential to reduce the risk of contracting certain contagious diseases, including RTIs.50 In addition, exercise appears to slow the rate at which the immune system deteriorates as we age.51 But exercise is no magic bullet.

pages: 405 words: 112,470

Together by Vivek H. Murthy, M.D.

Airbnb, call centre, cognitive bias, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, death from overwork, gentrification, gig economy, income inequality, index card, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, longitudinal study, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, medical residency, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, social intelligence, stem cell, TED Talk, twin studies, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft

What I could not anticipate, however, was the unprecedented test that our global community would face just as this book was going to press. In the first weeks of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic turned physical human contact into a potentially mortal threat. The novel coronavirus was on the loose, like an invisible stalker, and any of our fellow human beings could have been its carrier. Almost overnight, it seemed, getting close enough to breathe on another person became synonymous with danger. The public health imperative was clear: to save lives, we’d need to radically increase the space between us. As I write these words, we are still in the middle of this pandemic. With health workers at risk, hospital equipment in short supply, and death rates from the coronavirus spiking by the day, governments the world over have mandated “social distancing,” closed schools and most businesses, and ordered everyone but essential service workers to stay home.

…

If we could not touch, how could we love? Even that term, social distancing, seemed to condemn us to loneliness. And then there was the issue of trust. Fear of infection and panic over the potential economic fallout drove some to ignore the official mandates and hoard emergency supplies. Alongside the looming specter of a global financial recession rose an equally disturbing prospect of a social recession—a fraying of communal bonds that deepens in severity the longer we go without human interaction. As the pandemic continues, however, it becomes ever clearer that social distancing is a misnomer. To be sure, we must practice physical distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19, but socially, we may emerge from this crisis feeling closer to friends and family members than ever before.

…

And all over the world, families, friends, and strangers have been performing acts of generosity—bringing groceries to the ill and elderly, calling to check on vulnerable neighbors, and sharing local updates on everything from grocery store hours to the availability of toilet paper. (Who knew that toilet paper would be such a hot commodity in a pandemic!) We are fortunate today that technology offers us ready opportunities to strengthen our connections remotely. The pandemic is inspiring creativity online as artists dance and sing together through videos from home. Families celebrate birthdays through FaceTime. Audiences enjoy live opera performances streamed over the internet, and students, from kindergartners to doctoral candidates, meet in classes online.

pages: 705 words: 192,650

The Great Post Office Scandal: The Fight to Expose a Multimillion Pound Scandal Which Put Innocent People in Jail by Nick Wallis

Asperger Syndrome, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business process, call centre, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Dominic Cummings, forensic accounting, Internet Archive, Kickstarter, lockdown, paper trading, social distancing, Wayback Machine, work culture

Press scrums are largely predictable, but they can develop a strange dynamic. This particular one was hopelessly disorganised because of the COVID-inspired one-way system at the court gates, which meant the usual location for after-court media statements was blocked. The assembled TV crews were reluctant to suggest the Subpostmasters group together anyway – pictures of loads of Subpostmasters huddled in front of a bunch of microphone stands could see journalists accused of encouraging people to break social-distancing rules. Without any consensus on what to do, the whole thing became a free-for-all. Harjinder Butoy didn’t realise he was one of the first Subpostmasters to come out of court.

…

Confirmation was received shortly after we delivered the final cut to BBC1. The Prime Minister would be using Panorama’s prime time evening slot to announce an immediate total lockdown, in an attempt to arrest the escalating coronavirus pandemic. ____________________ 1 Something which seems to happen a lot. 2 Pub quiz fact: Nadine Dorries was the first. CCRC REFERRAL The next few weeks were difficult. For many it was touched by tragedy. The horror of the pandemic as it laid waste to thousands of lives will stay lodged in the national consciousness for decades. Practical considerations about safety and day-to-day living put everything else into sharp relief.

…

She said she’d call me back with more information. She didn’t.1 ____________________ 1 In June 2021, seven months after it was submitted, the Ombudsman told me it was still deciding whether or not to investigate the JFSA’s complaint. PRESUMPTIONS ABOUT MACHINES AND AI With Christmas out of the way, and January’s Covid lockdown keeping many people at home, the appellants’ barristers got to work on how they would present their clients’ cases to the Court of Appeal. Between them, Flora Page, Paul Marshall and Lisa Busch had got limb 2 on the table without any prospect of delaying a result. Now it was up for grabs, Lisa began to collaborate with Tim Moloney.

pages: 332 words: 100,245

Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives by Michael A. Heller, James Salzman

23andMe, Airbnb, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, British Empire, Cass Sunstein, clean water, collaborative consumption, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, endowment effect, estate planning, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, Garrett Hardin, gig economy, Hernando de Soto, Internet of things, land tenure, Mason jar, Neil Armstrong, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil rush, planetary scale, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, rent control, Richard Thaler, Ronald Coase, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, The future is already here, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, Tragedy of the Commons, you are the product, Zipcar

Maybe the Supreme Court should reserve seats for student groups. Or auction the seats and use the revenue for guided high school tours of its awe-inspiring building. Or—and this is our view—the Court should implement a different path to access altogether, such as video livestreaming arguments so they are freely available to everyone online. During the COVID-19 shutdown, the Court moved partway there with audio livestream, and the administration of justice did not noticeably falter. Put another way, every rule for making things mine rewards a different idea about what to value, like the options for the rocking chair we discussed in the Introduction.

…

Think about the last time you were in the checkout line at the supermarket with your shopping cart. Imagine a stranger had come up, peered into your cart, taken out the cereal box, then looked again and grabbed the carton of milk. This seems insane. It never happens (although we did come across one example during the panicky early days of COVID-19: toilet paper filching). You would probably shout at the person, “What the—what are you doing? That’s mine!” But why are the cereal box and milk carton yours? You haven’t bought them yet. What makes you so confident, even though your physical possession is not legal ownership? Retailers have always understood, and taken advantage of, this possession instinct by creating conditions where customers can get attached to products for sale.

…

The conflicts are growing more acute: as beach-spreaders are pushing the boundaries of possession, rising sea levels are shrinking New Jersey beaches. Local residents pay for lifeguards and beach upkeep and get mad when beach-spreaders keep them away from the water. Regional variations in beach possession symbols matter even more in the COVID-19 era. That’s why White House coronavirus adviser Deborah Birx urged beachgoers to defend circles of sand around their umbrellas: “Remember that is your space, and that is the space you need to protect.” She was arguing for uniform beach spacing nationwide. Bad ownership design can have deadly consequences in New Jersey, Florida, and elsewhere.

pages: 442 words: 85,640

This Book Could Fix Your Life: The Science of Self Help by New Scientist, Helen Thomson

Abraham Wald, Black Lives Matter, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, classic study, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, David Attenborough, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, Flynn Effect, George Floyd, global pandemic, hedonic treadmill, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, lock screen, lockdown, meta-analysis, microbiome, nocebo, placebo effect, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Sheryl Sandberg, social distancing, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, TED Talk, TikTok, ultra-processed food, Walter Mischel

You might assume that there are more people having to deal with more uncertainty and more anxiety as a result of coronavirus and its legacy. But some researchers have suggested it could go the other way, making people less anxious, because they go on with their life even though they are experiencing more uncertainty. Future studies may show that successfully making it through something as big as Covid-19, a year-long limbo for some, can make the small things much easier to cope with. HOW TO TREAT CHRONIC ANXIETY As we’ve seen, stress is a natural response which puts our bodies in a state of preparedness, making us more aware of danger or uncertainty – something with an upside and a downside.

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One study found that untrained observers who watch a video of the first twenty to thirty seconds of a job interview were astonishingly accurate at predicting whether the applicant would be offered the job. That doesn’t mean the observers were especially good at picking good candidates. It means the interviewers, despite being fully trained, still go with their initial gut instinct. Unless you’re still in the midst of social distancing, shaking hands with your interviewer is probably the second opportunity you’ll get to make an impression. Seize it – but not too hard. Several studies have found that people unconsciously equate a firm handshake with an extroverted, sociable personality – and that’s more likely than a shy disposition to please an interviewer.

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Again, it’s based on the best recent scientific research that I and my New Scientist colleagues have unearthed. This time, the aim is to provide you with a comprehensive and evidence-based guide to a smarter, happier and less stressful life. When I agreed to write this book, I couldn’t know that I would end up writing most of it during a global pandemic lockdown. At the time of writing, the future still looks increasingly uncertain. There’s never been a better time to understand exactly how your brain works and how to use it to maximise the best aspects of your life, or help you cope when things go wrong. And there are life fixes that do work.

pages: 362 words: 134,405

Completely Mad: Tom McClean, John Fairfax, and the Epic of the Race to Row Solo Across the Atlantic by James R. Hansen

Apollo 11, back-to-the-land, British Empire, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, Easter island, Neil Armstrong, Skype, social distancing, UNCLOS

For the 1,080 seconds of “Ocean Cloud,” the listener is away from Earth—or as one line of the song’s lyrics say: Between two planets In between the points of light Between two distant shorelines Here am I Listening to “Ocean Cloud,” we, too, are in a rowboat, alone, on the open sea. When the song ends, we have fallen in love with Don Allum and with the ocean. Some of us who really cherish the song feel like we have become a better person. By early 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, I became seriously interested in writing the story of Don Allum. I exhausted the internet, reading everything I could find about him. The best source was the website of the Ocean Rowing Society International. Founded in 1983, it is the governing body for international ocean rowing and the official adjudicator of ocean rowing records.

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Outside of the ocean rowing community, however, very little about this drama was at all well known, which made it even more important for me to bring the extraordinary story to the wider world. Critically important was whether there was sufficient source material for telling the story of their race across the Atlantic in 1969. Though the shutdowns brought on by COVID-19 would make it impossible for me to conduct the necessary research abroad, I became convinced that there was a way to do it. I exhausted what could be found via the internet. That research started by scouring the website of the Ocean Rowing Society International. Since its establishment in 1983, the ORSI had documented all known ocean rows while adjudicating records and firsts in consultation with Guinness World Records.

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Even before my outrigger made it all the way across the ocean, he gave me a thorough critique of the ocean route I was navigating and making suggestions to correct and improve it. The toughest decision of who to put on the boat and who to leave on shore came when considering what to do with my wife, Peggy. As it turned out, she had to be on the vessel but at a distance. An outbreak of a new plague called COVID-19 required that Completely Mad be conceived, built, and taken across to its destination in an unusual type of ship quarantine. My outrigger had to stay on a very strict navigational course, which restricted me—if I can be rightfully be called “the skipper”—as well as my laptop and books, to an exposed position at the helm (i.e., the island in our kitchen) while all sorts of noisy, intervening actions took place hourly all around me.

pages: 297 words: 84,447

The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet by Arthur Turrell

Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington, autonomous vehicles, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, Donald Trump, Eddington experiment, energy security, energy transition, Ernest Rutherford, Extinction Rebellion, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Higgs boson, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ITER tokamak, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, lockdown, New Journalism, nuclear winter, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, precautionary principle, Project Plowshare, Silicon Valley, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tunguska event

But these punishing timescales aren’t unusual among the new wave of private sector star builders, such as General Fusion, LPP Fusion, Lockheed Martin, TAE Technologies, HyperJet Fusion Corporation, MIFTI, Proton Scientific, Helion Energy, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Renaissance Fusion, Zap Energy, HB11-Energy, Pulsar Fusion, and the list goes on. There are now more than twenty-five private sector fusion firms. Most are promising to deliver energy from nuclear fusion reactions in years rather than decades. Commonwealth Fusion Systems says it will achieve net energy gain by 2025 and a pilot power plant by 2033. The deadly Covid-19 pandemic may slow these timescales, but the intention is clear: fusion sooner rather than later.9 There’s fierce competition between the star-building start-ups. It’s hard not to imagine the race to demonstrate gain—and, even more so, to build a prototype power plant—being a winner-take-all contest.

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If you’re in a mostly empty train carriage, you’re unlikely to bump into other passengers despite the shaking of the train as it goes over the tracks. Now imagine it’s rush hour. There’s barely a patch of free space. No matter how small the bump, you’re so close to your neighbors that you’re constantly colliding with them. That’s why social distancing is used to slow the spread of pandemics. And it’s also why packing more nuclei into the same amount of space—or increasing the plasma density—means more collisions, and more chances for fusion. For fusion to work, the plasma has to be kept hot, as dense as possible, and well confined. Rutherford died in 1937, just one year before physicists demonstrated that chains of fission reactions could be strung together to scale up indefinitely the energy released.

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We filled the glasses to the brim, placed the laminate on top, and then turned the whole thing over. Try it at home. If you’re really, really careful then you can remove the laminate and have an entirely full glass of water sitting, quite happily, upside down. Instabilities need a tiny seed from which their exponential growth can start, just as a pandemic starts with a single infected person. Without any imperfections in their interface, water and air can sit in a delicate, unstable balance. It was at this point, with two dozen glasses of water precariously looming over the classroom, that I told the students to give the water the tiniest of nudges with a finger or a pen tip and—almost instantly, as the instability grew, the water lost to gravity at every desk.

Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Ritchie

Albert Einstein, anesthesia awareness, autism spectrum disorder, Bayesian statistics, Black Lives Matter, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, citation needed, Climatic Research Unit, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, fake news, Goodhart's law, Growth in a Time of Debt, Helicobacter pylori, Higgs boson, hype cycle, Kenneth Rogoff, l'esprit de l'escalier, Large Hadron Collider, meta-analysis, microbiome, Milgram experiment, mouse model, New Journalism, ocean acidification, p-value, phenotype, placebo effect, profit motive, publication bias, publish or perish, quantum entanglement, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, replication crisis, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Stanford prison experiment, statistical model, stem cell, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, Thomas Bayes, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, University of East Anglia, Wayback Machine

Since a preprint can be posted online without any oversight, we should certainly be extra sceptical about them, while scientists should have the intellectual humility not to publicise their work before it’s been at least looked over by their peers.86 As the scientific ecosystem changes, journalists will become more aware that there are different ‘stages’ of scientific publication and that they should be particularly cautious of papers that are still at the earlier ones. Soon after the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in early 2020, preprints appeared on a major biological preprint server that sparked widespread discussion about the origins and effects of the virus. Some of the papers were of obviously low quality, rushed out to capitalise on the media frenzy about the pandemic. Others included phrasing that, whether inadvertently or otherwise, seemed to stoke conspiracy theories about the virus having been designed deliberately as a biological weapon.

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ABC News abortion Abu Ghraib prison abuse (2003) accidental discoveries Acta Crystallographica Section E acupuncture Afghan hounds Agence France-Presse AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) Alchemist, The (Bega) Alexander, Benita Alexander, Scott algorithms allergies Alzheimer, Aloysius Alzheimer’s Disease Amazon American Journal of Potato Research Amgen amygdala amyloid cascade hypothesis anaesthesia awareness Fujii affair (2012) outcome switching Anaesthesia & Analgesia animal studies antidepressants antipsychotics archaeology Arnold, Frances arsenic artificial tracheas asthma austerity Australia Austria autism aviation Babbage, Charles Bacon, Francis bacteria Bargh, John Bayer Bayes, Thomas Bayesian statistics BDNF gene Before You Know It (Bargh) Bega, Cornelis Begley, Sharon Belgium Bell Labs Bem, Daryl benzodiazepines bias blinding and conflict of interest De Vries’ study (2018) funding and groupthink and meaning well bias Morton’s skull studies p-hacking politics and publication bias randomisation and sexism and Bik, Elisabeth Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Biomaterials biology amyloid cascade hypothesis Bik’s fake images study (2016) Boldt affair (2010) cell lines China, misconduct in Hwang affair (2005–6) Macchiarini affair (2015–16) meta-scientific research microbiome studies Morton’s skull studies Obokata affair (2014) outcome switching preprints publication bias replication crisis Reuben affair (2009) spin and statistical power and Summerlin affair (1974) Wakefield affair (1998–2010) biomedical papers bird flu bispectral index monitor black holes Black Lives Matter blinding blotting BMJ, The Boldt, Joachim books Borges, Jorge Luis Boulez, Pierre Boyle, Robert brain imaging Brass Eye vii British Medical Journal Brock, Jon bronchoscopy Broockman, David Brown, Nick Bush, George Walker business studies BuzzFeed News California Walnut Commission California wildfires (2017) Canada cancer cell lines collaborative projects faecal transplants food and publication bias and replication crisis and sleep and spin and candidate genes carbon-based transistors Cardiff University cardiovascular disease Carlisle, John Carlsmith, James Carney, Dana cash-for-publication schemes cataracts Cell cell lines Cell Transplantation Center for Open Science CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) chi-squared tests childbirth China cash-for-publication schemes cell line mix-ups in Great Famine (1959–1961) misconduct cases in randomisation fraud in chrysalis effect Churchill, Winston churnalism Cifu, Adam citations clickbait climate change cloning Clostridium difficile cochlear implants Cochrane Collaboration coercive citation coffee cognitive dissonance cognitive psychology cognitive tests coin flipping Colbert Report, The Cold War collaborative projects colonic irrigation communality COMPare Trials COMT gene confidence interval conflict of interest Conservative Party conspicuous consumption Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP) ‘Coping with Chaos’ (Stapel) Cornell University coronavirus (COVID-19) Corps of Engineers correlation versus causation corticosteroids Cotton, Charles Caleb creationism Crowe, Russell Csiszar, Alex Cuddy, Amy CV (curriculum vitae) cyber-bullying cystic fibrosis Daily Mail Daily Telegraph Darwin Memorial, The’ (Huxley) Darwin, Charles Das, Dipak datasets fraudulent Observational publication bias Davies, Phil Dawkins, Richard De Niro, Robert De Vries, Ymkje Anna debt-to-GDP ratio Deer, Brian democratic peace theory Denmark Department of Agriculture, US depression desk rejections Deutsche Bank disabilities discontinuous mind disinterestedness DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) domestication syndrome doveryai, no proveryai Duarte, José Duke University duloxetine Dutch Golden Age Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research Dweck, Carol economics austerity preprints statistical power and effect size Einstein, Albert Elmo Elsevier engineering epigenetics euthanasia evolutionary biology exaggeration exercise Experiment, The exploratory analyses extrasensory perception faecal transplants false-positive errors Fanelli, Daniele Festinger, Leon file-drawer problem financial crisis (2007–8) Fine, Cordelia Fisher, Ronald 5 sigma evidence 5-HT2a gene 5-HTTLPR gene fixed mindset Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Frequency Questionnaires food psychology Formosus, Pope foxes France Francis, Pope Franco, Annie fraud images investigation of motives for numbers Open Science and peer review randomisation Freedom of Information Acts French, Chris Fryer, Roland Fujii, Yoshitaka funding bias and fraud and hype and long-term funding perverse incentive and replication crisis and statistical power and taxpayer money funnel plots Future of Science, The (Nielsen) gay marriage Gelman, Andrew genetically modified crops genetics autocorrect errors candidate genes collaborative projects gene therapy genome-wide association studies (GWASs) hype in salami-slicing in Geneva, Switzerland geoscience Germany Getty Center GFAJ-1 Giner-Sorolla, Roger Glasgow Effect Goldacre, Ben Goldsmiths, University of London Golgi Apparatus good bacteria Good Morning America good scientific citizenship Goodhart’s Law Goodstein, David Google Scholar Górecki, Henryk Gould, Stephen Jay Gran Sasso, Italy grants, see funding Granularity-Related Inconsistency of Means (GRIM) grapes Great Recession (2007–9) Great Red Spot of Jupiter Green, Donald Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Gross, Charles ground-breaking results groupthink ‘Growth in a Time of Debt’ (Reinhart and Rogoff) growth mindset Guzey, Alexey gynaecology h-index H5N1 Haldane, John Burdon Sanderson Hankins, Matthew HARKing Harris, Sidney Harvard University headache pills heart attacks heart disease Heathers, James height Heilongjiang University Heino, Matti Henry IV (Shakespeare) Higgs Boson Hirsch, Jorge HIV (human immunodeficiency viruses) homosexuality Hong Kong Hooke, Robert Hossenfelder, Sabine Houston, Texas Hume, David Huxley, Thomas Henry Hwang, Woo-Suk hydroxyethyl starch hype arsenic life affair (2010) books correlation versus causation cross-species leap language and microbiome studies news stories nutrition and press releases spin unwarranted advice hypotheses Ig Nobel Prize images, fraudulent impact factor India insomnia International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology Ioannidis, John IQ tests Iraq War (2003–11) Italy Japan John, Elton Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology Journal of Environmental Quality Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine Journal of Personality and Social Psychology journals conflict of interest disclosure fraud and hype and impact factor language in mega-journals negligence and Open Science and peer review, see peer review predatory journals preprints publication bias rent-seeking replication studies retraction salami slicing subscription fees Jupiter Kahneman, Daniel Kalla, Joshua Karolinska Institute Krasnodar, Russia Krugman, Paul Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words (Cotton) LaCour, Michael Lancet Fine’s ‘feminist science’ article (2018) Macchiarini affair (2015–16) Wakefield affair (1998–2010) language Large Hadron Collider Le Texier, Thibault Lewis, Jason Lexington Herald-Leader Leyser, Ottoline Lilienfeld, Scott Loken, Eric Lost in Math (Hossenfelder) low-fat diet low-powered studies Lumley, Thomas Lysenko, Trofim Macbeth (Shakespeare) Macbeth effect Macchiarini, Paolo MacDonald, Norman machine learning Macleod, Malcolm Macroeconomics major depressive disorder Malaysia Mao Zedong MARCH1 Marcus, Adam marine biology Markowetz, Florian Matthew Effect Maxims and Moral Reflections (MacDonald) McCartney, Gerry McCloskey, Deirdre McElreath, Richard meaning well bias Measles, Mumps & Rubella (MMR) measurement errors Medawar, Peter medical research amyloid cascade hypothesis Boldt affair (2010) cell lines China, misconduct in collaborative projects Fujii affair (2012) Hwang affair (2005–6) Macchiarini affair (2015–16) meta-scientific research Obokata affair (2014) outcome switching pharmaceutical companies preprints pre-registration publication bias replication crisis Reuben affair (2009) spin and statistical power and Summerlin affair (1974) Wakefield affair (1998–2010) medical reversal Medical Science Monitor Mediterranean Diet Merton, Robert Mertonian Norms communality disinterestedness organised scepticism universalism meta-science Boldt affair (2010) chrysalis effect De Vries’ study (2018) Fanelli’s study (2010) Ioannidis’ article (2005) Macleod’s studies mindset studies (2018) saturated fats studies spin and stereotype threat studies mice microbiome Microsoft Excel Milgram, Stanley Mill, John Stuart Mindset (Dweck) mindset concept Mismeasure of Man, The (Gould) Modi, Narendra money priming Mono Lake, California Moon, Hyung-In Morton, Samuel Motyl, Matt multiverse analysis nanotechnology National Academy of Sciences National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) National Institutes of Health National Science Foundation Nature cash-for-publication and cell line editorial (1981) impact factor language in Obokata affair (2014) Open Access and open letter on statistical significance (2019) replication research Schön affair (2002) Stapel affair (2011) Nature Neuroscience Nature Reviews Cancer NBC negligence cell line mix-ups numerical errors statistical power typos Netflix Netherlands replication studies in Stapel’s racism studies statcheck research neuroscience amyloid cascade hypothesis collaborative projects Macleod’s animal research studies replication crisis sexism and statistical significance and Walker’s sleep studies neutrinos New England Journal of Medicine New York Times New Zealand news media Newton, Isaac Nielsen, Michael Nimoy, Leonard No Country for Old Men Nobel Prize northern blots Nosek, Brian Novella, Steven novelty Novum Organum (Bacon) Nuijten, Michèle nullius in verba, numerical errors nutrition Obama, Barack obesity Obokata, Haruko observational datasets obstetrics ocean acidification oesophagus ‘Of Essay-Writing’ (Hume) Office for Research Integrity, US Oldenburg, Henry Open Access Open Science OPERA experiment (2011) Oransky, Ivan Orben, Amy Organic Syntheses organised scepticism Osborne, George outcome-switching overfitting Oxford University p-value/hacking alternatives to Fine and low-powered studies and microbiome studies and nutritional studies and Open Science and outcome-switching perverse incentive and pre-registration and screen time studies and spin and statcheck and papers abstracts citations growth rates h-index introductions method sections results sections salami slicing self-plagiarism university ranks and Parkinson’s disease particle-accelerator experiments peanut allergies peer review coercive citation fraudulent groupthink and LaCour affair (2014–15) Preprints productivity incentives and randomisation and toxoplasma gondii scandal (1961) volunteer Wakefield affair (1998–2010) penicillin Peoria, Illinois Perspectives in Psychological Science perverse incentive cash for publications competition CVs and evolutionary analogy funding impact factor predatory journals salami slicing self-plagiarism Pett, Joel pharmaceutical companies PhDs Philosophical Transactions phlogiston phosphorus Photoshop Physical Review physics placebos plagiarism Plan S Planck, Max plane crashes PLOS ONE pluripotency Poehlman, Eric politics polygenes polyunsaturated fatty acids Popper, Karl populism pornography positive feedback loops positive versus null results, see publication bias post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) power posing Prasad, Vinay pre-registration preclinical studies predatory journals preprints Presence (Cuddy) press releases Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea (PREDIMED) priming Princeton University Private Eye probiotics Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences prosthetic limbs Przybylski, Andrew psychic precognition Psychological Medicine psychology Bargh’s priming study (1996) Bem’s precognition studies books Carney and Cuddy’s power posing studies collaborative projects data sharing study (2006) Dweck’s mindset concept Festinger and Carlsmith’s cognitive dissonance studies Kahneman’s priming studies LaCour’s gay marriage experiment politics and preprints publication bias in Shanks’ priming studies Stanford Prison Experiment Stapel’s racism studies statistical power and Wansink’s food studies publication bias publish or perish Pubpeer Pythagoras’s theorem Qatar quantum entanglement racism Bargh’s priming studies Morton’s skull studies Stapel’s environmental studies randomisation Randy Schekman Reagan, Ronald recommendation algorithms red grapes Redfield, Rosemary Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (Babbage) Reinhart, Carmen Rennie, Drummond rent-seeking replication; replication crisis Bargh’s priming study Bem’s precognition studies biology and Carney and Cuddy’s power posing studies chemistry and economics and engineering and geoscience and journals and Kahneman’s priming studies marine biology and medical research and neuroscience and physics and Schön’s carbon-based transistor Stanford Prison Experiment Stapel’s racism studies Wolfe-Simon’s arsenic life study reproducibility Republican Party research grants research parasites resveratrol retraction Arnold Boldt Fujii LaCour Macchiarini Moon Obokata Reuben Schön Stapel Wakefield Wansink Retraction Watch Reuben, Scott Reuters RIKEN Rogoff, Kenneth romantic priming Royal Society Rundgren, Todd Russia doveryai, no proveryai foxes, domestication of Macchiarini affair (2015–16) plagiarism in salami slicing same-sex marriage sample size sampling errors Sanna, Lawrence Sasai, Yoshiki saturated fats Saturn Saudi Arabia schizophrenia Schoenfeld, Jonathan Schön, Jan Hendrik School Psychology International Schopenhauer, Arthur Science acceptance rate Arnold affair (2020) arsenic life affair (2010) cash-for-publication and Hwang affair (2005) impact factor LaCour affair (2014–15) language in Macbeth effect study (2006) Open Access and pre-registration investigation (2020) replication research Schön affair (2002) Stapel affair (2011) toxoplasma gondii scandal (1961) Science Europe Science Media Centre scientific journals, see journals scientific papers, see papers Scientific World Journal, The Scotland Scottish Socialist Party screen time self-citation self-correction self-plagiarism self-sustaining systems Seoul National University SEPT2 Sesame Street sexism sexual selection Shakespeare, William Shanks, David Shansky, Rebecca Simmons, Joseph Simonsohn, Uri Simpsons, The skin grafts Slate Star Codex Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute Smaldino, Paul Smeesters, Dirk Smith, Richard Snuppy social media South Korea Southern blot Southern, Edwin Soviet Union space science special relativity specification-curve analysis speed-accuracy trade-off Spies, Jeffrey spin Springer Srivastava, Sanjay Stalin, Joseph Stanford University Dweck’s mindset concept file-drawer project (2014) Prison Experiment (1971) Schön affair (2002) STAP (Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency) Stapel, Diederik statcheck statistical flukes statistical power statistical significance statistical tests Status Quo stem cells Stephen VI, Pope stereotype threat Sternberg, Robert strokes subscription fees Summerlin, William Sweden Swift, Jonathan Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Sydney Morning Herald Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Górecki) t-tests Taiwan taps-aff.co.uk tax policies team science TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Texas sharpshooter analogy Thatcher, Margaret theory of special relativity Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman) Thomson Reuters Tilburg University Titan totalitarianism toxoplasma gondii trachea translational research transparency Tribeca Film Festival triplepay system Trump, Donald trust in science ‘trust, but verify’ Tumor Biology Turkey Tuulik, Julia Twitter typos UK Reproducibility Network Ulysses pact United Kingdom austerity cash-for-publication schemes image duplication in multiverse analysis study (2019) National Institute for Health Research pre-registration in Royal Society submarines trust in science university ranks in Wakefield affair (1998–2010) United States Arnold affair (2020) arsenic life affair (2010) austerity Bargh’s priming study (1996) Bem’s precognition studies California wildfires (2017) Carney and Cuddy’s power posing studies Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion climate science in creationism in Das affair (2012) De Vries’ drug study (2018) Department of Agriculture Dweck’s mindset concept Fryer’s police brutality study (2016) image duplication in Kahneman’s priming studies LaCour affair (2014–15) Morton’s skull studies Office for Research Integrity Poehlman affair (2006) pre-registration in public domain laws Reuben affair (2009) Stanford Prison Experiment Summerlin affair (1974) tenure Walker’s sleep studies Wansink affair (2016) universalism universities cash-for-publication schemes fraud and subscription fees and team science University College London University of British Columbia University of California Berkeley Los Angeles University of Connecticut University of East Anglia University of Edinburgh University of Hertfordshire University of London University of Pennsylvania unsaturated fats unwarranted advice vaccines Vamplew, Peter Vanity Fair Vatican Vaxxed Viagra vibration-of-effects analysis virology Wakefield, Andrew Walker, Matthew Wansink, Brian Washington Post weasel wording Weisberg, Michael Wellcome Trust western blots Westfall, Jake ‘Why Most Published Research Findings Are False’ (Ioannidis) Why We Sleep (Walker) Wiley Wiseman, Richard Wolfe-Simon, Felisa World as Will and Presentation, The (Schopenhauer) World Health Organisation (WHO) Yale University Yarkoni, Tal Yes Men Yezhov, Nikolai Z-tests Ziliak, Stephen Zimbardo, Philip Zola, Émile About the Author Stuart Ritchie is a lecturer in the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London.

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Original study: Lawrence E. Williams & John A. Bargh, ‘Keeping One’s Distance: The Influence of Spatial Distance Cues on Affect and Evaluation’, Psychological Science 19, no. 3 (Mar. 2008): pp. 302–8; https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02084.x; Replication: Harold Pashler et al., ‘Priming of Social Distance? Failure to Replicate Effects on Social and Food Judgments’, PLOS ONE 7, no. 8 (29 Aug. 2012): e42510; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0042510 12. Original study: Theodora Zarkadi & Simone Schnall, ‘“Black and White” Thinking: Visual Contrast Polarizes Moral Judgment’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 49, no. 3 (May 2013): pp. 355–59; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.11.012; Replication: Hans IJzerman & Pierre-Jean Laine, ‘Does Background Color Affect Moral Judgment?

pages: 470 words: 137,882

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, desegregation, Donald Trump, global pandemic, Gunnar Myrdal, mass incarceration, microaggression, Milgram experiment, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, out of africa, Peter Eisenman, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, social distancing, strikebreaker, transatlantic slave trade, W. E. B. Du Bois, zero-sum game

By the time the presidential impeachment trial ended on February 5, 2020, it had been 329 days since the last press briefing at the White House, held on March 11, 2019. Then the worst pandemic: Dan Diamond, “Trump’s Mismanagement Helped Fuel Coronavirus Crisis,” Politico, March 7, 2020, https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/03/07/trump-coronavirus-management-style-123465; Michael D. Shear et al., “The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to Covid-19,” New York Times, March 28, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-pandemic.html; David Frum, “This Is Trump’s Fault: The President Is Failing, and Americans Are Paying for His Failures,” Atlantic, April 7, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/americans-are-paying-the-price-for-trumps-failures/609532/.

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“To a watching world,” wrote The Guardian, “the absence of a fair, affordable US healthcare system, the cut-throat contest between American states for scarce medical supplies, the disproportionate death toll among ethnic minorities, chaotic social distancing rules, and a lack of centralised coordination are reminiscent of a poor, developing country, not the most powerful, influential nation on earth.” The pandemic, and the country’s fitful, often self-centered lack of readiness, exposed “a failure of character unparalleled in US history,” in the words of Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University. The pandemic forced the nation to open its eyes to what it might not have wanted to see but needed to see, while forcing humanity to contemplate its impotence against the laws of nature.

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As Europeans explored the world, they began using the word to refer to the new people they encountered. Ultimately, “the English in North America developed the most rigid and exclusionist form of race ideology,” the Smedleys wrote. “Race in the American mind was and is a statement about profound and unbridgeable differences….It conveys the meaning of social distance that cannot be transcended.” Geneticists and anthropologists have long seen race as a man-made invention with no basis in science or biology. The nineteenth-century anthropologist Paul Broca tried to use thirty-four shades of skin color to delineate the races, but could come to no conclusion.

pages: 296 words: 83,254

After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back by Juliet Schor, William Attwood-Charles, Mehmet Cansoy

1960s counterculture, Airbnb, algorithmic management, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American Legislative Exchange Council, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, bike sharing, Californian Ideology, carbon footprint, clean tech, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, Community Supported Agriculture, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deskilling, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, financial independence, future of work, gentrification, George Gilder, gig economy, global supply chain, global village, haute cuisine, income inequality, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, jitney, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Kelly, Lyft, Marshall McLuhan, Mason jar, mass incarceration, Mitch Kapor, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, peer-to-peer rental, Post-Keynesian economics, precariat, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent gap, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ruby on Rails, selection bias, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, Stewart Brand, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, wage slave, walking around money, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, working poor, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

—SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN, author of The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) “Before the pandemic, the gig economy was structurally racist, ecologically destructive, and profoundly exploitative. There’s every danger that the reconstruction will be worse. Yet this nuanced and sophisticated study also shows, through the analysis of gig economy workers themselves, that flexibility, a shared sense of purpose, and a commitment to sharing more is well within our grasp. As we turn to imagine what kind of economy and society we want after COVID-19, the work of Schor and her students will be indispensable.” —RAJ PATEL, Research Professor, Lyndon B.

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Kelly emphasized that she preferred to not talk to the taskers she hired: “A to B flawless, minimal interaction.” She laughed, then admitted, “That sounds horrible.” Kelly came to feel that the platforms were doing the opposite of what their supporters expected. Instead of fostering social connection, they were intensifying social distance. Kelly had been an employee but recently started her own software business. She had a lot of experience on platforms, having used Airbnb, Turo, and TaskRabbit. On the consumer side, she thought that the platforms were great for people like her, “who work 100 hours a week.” These people have ample disposable income but no time.

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See also community sharing; nonprofits; platforms, for-profit; and capitalism, 2, 6, 37–39; and community initiatives, 8; defining, 191–94; environmental impacts, 28, 114–20; as household space, 30; idealist discourse, 5, 11, 21; impacts of, 108–10; and inequality, 96, 104; and labor market, 8; and management, 7; and municipal governments, 172; participant characteristics, 189–90; personal authenticity, 29; rationale for, 115; and social activism, 7, 19; and social relations, 163–64; stranger sharing, 7, 31–32; studies of, 12–13; and technology, 21; and urban problems, 107–8; and work experience, 4 “Sharing Nicely,” 163 Sharing Economy, The, 12 sharing workforce, 43–45, 77, 190 Shauna, 122 Sheldon, Michael, 79 Shift, 170 Shira, 103, 106, 111 short-term rentals, 160 Silicon Valley, 23–24 Simon, Herbert, 79 SitterCity, 27 Skillshare, 127 Slee, Tom, 13, 193 Smart, 170 Smith, Yves, 37 SnapGoods, 34 snobbery, 124, 132–38 social connection, 55, 78, 111–14, 128 social distancing, 113–14 social dumping, 153 social exclusion, 124, 132–41 social isolation, 48 social sharing, 164, 191 Spinlister, 35 Srnicek, Nick, 13 state legislatures, 157–58 statistical discrimination, 84, 89 Stephanie, 21 Stocksy United, 148–49, 164–71, 188, 192 stranger sharing, 7, 31–32, 192 structural inequality, 85, 92 Suhani, 30, 52 Sundararajan, Arun, 11–12, 83 super-platforms, 151 supplemental earners, 49–57, 96, 110; and algorithmic control, 68–70; characteristics of, 72; and financial security, 103–4 Sweden, 153, 173 taking (advantage), 159 Takl, 27 Tamara, 68–69 Tanwen, 51 TaskRabbit, 4–5, 9–10, 21, 35; earnings, 73–74; ease of access, 45–46; employee rights, 161; identity conflicts, 100–101; individual control, 77; origin story, 25; pivot, 74; racial bias, 86–87, 91–92; ratings, 63–64; social connection, 112; supplemental earners, 50–51; tasks, 27; transaction fees, 86; worker experience, 40–41, 52, 58–60 Tawana, 32, 85, 88–89, 174 taxi industry, 97, 109; demise of, 34; and ride-hailing, 102, 156, 161 technical control, 67 technology.

Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World by Matt Alt

4chan, Apollo 11, augmented reality, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, fake news, financial engineering, game design, glass ceiling, global pandemic, haute cuisine, hive mind, late capitalism, lateral thinking, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, military-industrial complex, New Urbanism, period drama, Ponzi scheme, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strikebreaker, three-martini lunch, union organizing, work culture , zero-sum game

Yet we know we’d never go back; our futures depend on us mastering the technologies that connect, soothe, and bind us. If there is any one lesson to learn from the heroes of the stories that unfolded in these pages, it is that the way out of the strange post-capitalist techno-political hellscape we find ourselves in is to create. Take the COVID-19 epidemic, which profoundly disrupted public life beginning in early 2020. As orders to “shelter in place” and “socially distance” turned people around the world into involuntary hikikomori, many turned to the old tools of the otaku to soothe their loneliness: games, videos, and playthings. A surge in demand at streaming services such as Netflix and PlayStation Network forced the companies to throttle back server speeds as the sheer volume of entertainment data began to overwhelm European telecom networks.

…

A surge in demand at streaming services such as Netflix and PlayStation Network forced the companies to throttle back server speeds as the sheer volume of entertainment data began to overwhelm European telecom networks. And then there is the curious case of the Nintendo Switch title Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It was released on March 20, seemingly terrible timing amid a global pandemic. It sold 11.77 million copies in just twelve days. In this customizable simulation of outdoor life, populated by bobbleheaded kawaii animal characters, millions escaped the tedium of societal lockdowns by taking online trips to virtual islands built by their friends. I don’t think the future will be made in Japan.

pages: 564 words: 168,696

Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science by James Poskett

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, anti-communist, Bartolomé de las Casas, British Empire, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clockwork universe, colonial rule, Columbian Exchange, complexity theory, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, Dmitri Mendeleev, Donald Trump, double helix, Drosophila, Edmond Halley, Ernest Rutherford, European colonialism, Fellow of the Royal Society, German hyperinflation, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of gunpowder, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, John Harrison: Longitude, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, lone genius, mass immigration, megacity, Mount Scopus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, personalized medicine, polynesian navigation, Republic of Letters, Silicon Valley, social distancing, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Virgin Galactic

That enables us to know in advance what will happen and what areas should be attacked.’ Security is also a major driver of AI investment in the UAE. The Emirati security services are already using facial-recognition software to track the population and stifle political dissent. During the COVID-19 pandemic, police in Dubai even used the same software to monitor whether individuals were adhering to social distancing guidelines.13 The forces of globalization and nationalism are shaping the growth of AI as the New Cold War plays out across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The same is true of another major field of scientific research, one that has echoes of the original Cold War of the twentieth century.

…

And it was here, next to the Black Sea, that Mechnikov began to work on the evolution of immunity in marine animals.35 Whilst Darwin had emphasized that natural selection involved the struggle between individuals within a species, Mechnikov highlighted the role of disease. Throughout the nineteenth century, the world experienced multiple waves of pandemics, ranging from cholera to influenza. These grew in severity over the course of the century, as the world became increasingly connected via new industrial technologies like railways and steamships, allowing disease to spread at a faster rate. Mechnikov himself lived through one of the most deadly cholera outbreaks of the nineteenth century, in which over a million people died in Russia between 1846 and 1860.

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney

Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, autism spectrum disorder, British Empire, colonial rule, dark matter, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Jenner, experimental subject, Ford Model T, Francisco Pizarro, global pandemic, Hernando de Soto, Higgs boson, invisible hand, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, nocebo, placebo effect, social distancing, trade route, urban renewal

That is potentially the difference between an overwhelmed public health infrastructure, where patients can’t get treated, doctors and nurses are pushed beyond exhaustion and dead bodies accumulate in morgues, and a functioning system that, though stretched to its limit, is still managing the flux of the sick. In 1918, as soon as the flu had become reportable and the fact of the pandemic had been acknowledged, a raft of social distancing measures were put in place–at least in countries that had the resources to do so. Schools, theatres and places of worship were closed, the use of public transport systems was restricted and mass gatherings were banned. Quarantines were imposed at ports and railway stations, and patients were removed to hospitals, which set up isolation wards in order to separate them from non-infected patients.

…

There is one final possibility: that none of the three theories is correct, and the real origin of the pandemic has yet to be proposed. 12 Counting the dead How many had died? People wanted to know from the moment it was over, not only to gauge the pandemic’s impact on humanity, and to set the historical record straight, but also to extract lessons from it for the future. They had an idea of the scale of the previous flu pandemic, the Russian flu of the 1890s. It had killed around a million people. If the Spanish flu were in that ballpark, then perhaps a flu pandemic was simply something that happened periodically, and one had to learn how to manage it.

…

Where data were available, he could calculate excess mortality rates–a measure of the number of people who died over and above what might have been expected in a ‘normal’ or non-pandemic year–but these hid a multitude of diagnostic sins. There was no such thing as a ‘laboratory confirmed death’ from flu in 1918, because nobody knew that flu was caused by a virus. What’s more, flu pandemics don’t really start or stop. They invade the seasonal flu cycle, grotesquely distorting its morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death) curves, then recede until those curves reveal themselves again. Even now that the tools exist to differentiate seasonal and pandemic strains, defining a pandemic’s limits is an essentially arbitrary task. In 1991, two American epidemiologists, David Patterson and Gerald Pyle, raised Jordan’s bid to 30 million–hinting at a bigger disaster, though still not one on the scale of the Second World War, which eliminated roughly twice as many souls.

pages: 414 words: 101,285

The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do About It by Ian Goldin, Mike Mariathasan

air freight, air traffic controllers' union, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, butterfly effect, carbon tax, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, connected car, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, discovery of penicillin, diversification, diversified portfolio, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, energy security, eurozone crisis, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, high-speed rail, income inequality, information asymmetry, Jean Tirole, John Snow's cholera map, Kenneth Rogoff, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, mass immigration, megacity, moral hazard, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open economy, precautionary principle, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reshoring, risk free rate, Robert Solow, scientific management, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social contagion, social distancing, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, systems thinking, tail risk, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, vertical integration

The authors conjectured that although more affluent economies might primarily be concerned with preventing and eventually containing the spread of a new global virus, developed economies might prefer to focus their scarce resources on understanding the transmission patterns of more common but still fatal diseases such as diarrheal or respiratory diseases. LESSONS FROM PANDEMIC MANAGEMENT David M. Bell et al. contrast the measures taken to deal with the H1N1 virus (swine flu) in Mexico City and New York in 2009. In Mexico the government invoked its emergency powers on 24 April in anticipation of widespread panic. These allowed the authorities to engage in an intensive media campaign, as well as to put measures in place for social distancing and the dissemination of antiviral drugs. In an attempt to control the spread of the virus through the education system, the government instigated the screening of all schoolchildren throughout the country.

…

In addition, diseases such as cholera, malaria, and the plague, once believed eradicated, have returned with even greater virulence.4 In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the world was threatened by at least three major pandemics: SARS, H1N1 (“swine flu”), and H5N1 (“bird flu”). The hallmarks of globalization—connectivity and integration—create the potential for negative externalities in the field of health, just as they do in other sectors. Definition of a Pandemic Characterizing a pandemic is not a straightforward task, and there is no one agreed definition. WHO provided a formal definition only in 2009, “despite ten years of issuing guidelines for pandemic preparedness” activities.5 WHO eventually defined a pandemic as an influenza exhibiting “community level outbreaks” and “human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries.”6 Immunologists characterize pandemics more generally as exhibiting wide geographic extension, disease movement, high attack rates, minimal population immunity, novelty, infectiousness, contagiousness, and severity.7 Similarly, the U.S.

…

In our tightly integrated world, these precautionary measures require worldwide monitoring, timely detection, and effective intervention to prevent the spread of pandemics. CASE STUDIES Our case studies reveal key lessons for pandemic management. By looking at specific examples we can better understand the theoretical risks we have identified and maximize our ability to react to future threats. Recent research has indicated that influenza pandemics follow a cyclical pattern, with similar viruses appearing every 10–15 years.20 This would make the world long “overdue” for a pandemic. Our case studies shed some light on the possible origins and implications. Historical Pandemics The first recorded transnational epidemic dates back to 430 BC.

Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities by Vaclav Smil

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apollo Guidance Computer, autonomous vehicles, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon tax, circular economy, colonial rule, complexity theory, coronavirus, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Easter island, endogenous growth, energy transition, epigenetics, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, general purpose technology, Gregor Mendel, happiness index / gross national happiness, Helicobacter pylori, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Hyperloop, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, knowledge economy, Kondratiev cycle, labor-force participation, Law of Accelerating Returns, longitudinal study, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, market bubble, mass immigration, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, meta-analysis, microbiome, microplastics / micro fibres, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, old age dependency ratio, optical character recognition, out of africa, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, power law, Productivity paradox, profit motive, purchasing power parity, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Republic of Letters, rolodex, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, South China Sea, synthetic biology, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, three-masted sailing ship, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, trade route, urban sprawl, Vilfredo Pareto, yield curve

Simulations of an influenza pandemic in Italy by Rizzo et al. (2008) provide a good example of the possible impact of the two key control measures, antiviral prophylaxis and social distancing. In their absence, the epidemic on the peninsula would follow a Gaussian curve, peaking about four months after the identification of the first cases at more than 50 cases per 1,000 inhabitants, and it would last about seven months. Antivirals for eight weeks would reduce the peak infection rate by about 25%, and social distancing starting at the pandemic’s second week would cut the spread by two-thirds. Economic consequences of social distancing (lost school and work days, delayed travel) are much more difficult to model.

…

Economic consequences of social distancing (lost school and work days, delayed travel) are much more difficult to model. As expected, the diffusion of influenza virus is closely associated with population structure and mobility, and superspreaders, including health-care workers, students, and flight attendants, play a major role in disseminating the virus locally, regionally, and internationally (Lloyd-Smith et al. 2005). The critical role played by schoolchildren in the spatial spread of pandemic influenza was confirmed by Gog et al. (2014). They found that the protracted spread of American influenza in fall 2009 was dominated by short-distance diffusion (that was partially promoted by school openings) rather than (as is usually the case with seasonal influenza) long-distance transmission.

…

Seasonal influenza epidemics cannot be prevented and their eventual intensity and human and economic toll cannot be predicted—and these conclusions apply equally well to the recurrence of a worldwide diffusion of influenza viruses causing pandemics and concurrent infestation of the world’s inhabited regions. These concerns have been with us ever since we understood the process of virulent epidemics, and it only got more complicated with the emergence of the H5N1 virus (bird flu) in 1997 and with a brief but worrisome episode of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). In addition, judging by the historical recurrence of influenza pandemics, we might be overdue for another major episode. We can identify at least four viral pandemics during the 18th century, in 1729–1730, 1732–1733, 1781–1782, and 1788–1789, and there have been six documented influenza pandemics during the last two centuries (Gust et al. 2001).

pages: 290 words: 85,847

A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next by Tom Standage

accelerated depreciation, active transport: walking or cycling, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-city movement, bike sharing, car-free, carbon footprint, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Chris Urmson, City Beautiful movement, Clapham omnibus, congestion charging, coronavirus, COVID-19, deep learning, Didi Chuxing, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Elaine Herzberg, Elon Musk, flex fuel, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, garden city movement, General Motors Futurama, Ida Tarbell, Induced demand, interchangeable parts, invention of the wheel, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, jitney, Joan Didion, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Lyft, Marshall McLuhan, minimum wage unemployment, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, peak oil, prompt engineering, Ralph Nader, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rosa Parks, safety bicycle, self-driving car, social distancing, Steve Jobs, streetcar suburb, tech bro, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbiased observer, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, W. E. B. Du Bois, walkable city, white flight, wikimedia commons, Yom Kippur War, Zipcar

Drive-ins and parking lots around the world have also hosted socially distanced church services, concerts, theatrical performances, and, in Germany, even a drive-in nightclub. But drive-in cinemas cannot compete with the convenience of online streaming, while dating has moved from the front porch, to the back seat, to dating apps. Fast-food chains have also seen slowing demand in recent years, as consumers have become more health conscious, moved upmarket to “fast casual” restaurants, or switched to ordering food by smartphone from the couch, rather than by intercom from the driver’s seat—another trend accelerated by the pandemic. Although one group did embrace malls as a social space—American teenagers, for whom malls became a place to hang out with friends, go for a meal or a snack, watch a movie, and generally see and be seen—malls are also in retreat.

…

The pandemic has also encouraged more people to adopt e-commerce and teleworking, which substitute for car journeys and are likely to persist, to some extent, after the pandemic has passed. KPMG, a consultancy, predicts that the pandemic will result in a world of “fewer trips, fewer miles, and fewer cars.” Commuting and shopping, the company notes, account for 40 percent of miles driven in America, and the pandemic-induced boosts to e-commerce and teleworking will have “powerful and enduring” effects, reducing the number of vehicles on American roads by 7 million to 14 million. And cities have taken the opportunity provided by lockdown to reclaim street space from cars, with road closures, the creation of new bike lanes, and the introduction of wider sidewalks.

…

In retrospect the global financial crisis of 2007–9 may simply have delayed some young Americans’ entry into the housing market. The coronavirus pandemic has also increased the appeal of suburbs relative to city centers. One of the chief drawbacks of suburbs—the need to commute—goes away if you can work from home, which about half of American workers can. And staying at home is more pleasant if you have more space. A shift toward working remotely, some if not all of the time, is likely to be an enduring legacy of the pandemic. If workers only go in to the office on certain days or for certain activities, that could reshape commuting patterns and reduce traffic.

pages: 493 words: 98,982

The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, global supply chain, helicopter parent, High speed trading, immigration reform, income inequality, Khan Academy, laissez-faire capitalism, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, open immigration, Paris climate accords, plutocrats, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, smart grid, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, Yochai Benkler

People throughout the world were implored, and in many cases required, to observe social distancing, to abandon work and stay at home. Those unable to work remotely faced lost wages and disappearing jobs. The virus posed the greatest threat to those of advanced age, but could also infect the young, and even those who could ride it out had parents and grandparents to worry about. Morally, the pandemic reminded us of our vulnerability, of our mutual dependence: “We are all in this together.” Public officials and advertisers reached instinctively for this slogan. But the solidarity it evoked was a solidarity of fear, a fear of contagion that demanded “social distancing.” The public health required that we express our solidarity, our shared vulnerability, by keeping our distance, by observing the strictures of self-isolation.

…

Rather than deduct a certain amount of each worker’s earnings, the government would contribute a certain amount, in hopes of enabling low-income workers to make a decent living even if they lack the skills to command a substantial market wage. 51 A dramatic version of the wage subsidy proposal was enacted by a number of European countries when the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 locked down their economies. Rather than offer unemployment insurance to workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic, as the U.S. government did, Britain, Denmark, and the Netherlands covered 75 to 90 percent of wages for companies that did not lay off workers. The advantage of the wage subsidy is that it enables employers to retain workers on their payroll during the emergency, rather than fire them and force them to rely on unemployment insurance.

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Meanwhile, those who reaped the economic bounty of global markets, supply chains, and capital flows had come to rely less and less on their fellow citizens, as producers and as consumers. Their economic prospects and identities were no longer dependent on local or national communities. As the winners of globalization pulled away from the losers, they practiced their own kind of social distancing. The political divide that mattered, the winners explained, was no longer left versus right but open versus closed. In an open world, success depends on education, on equipping yourself to compete and win in a global economy. This means that national governments must ensure that everyone has an equal chance to get the education on which success depends.

pages: 482 words: 117,962

Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future by Ian Goldin, Geoffrey Cameron, Meera Balarajan

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, conceptual framework, creative destruction, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, endogenous growth, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, guest worker program, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, labour mobility, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, life extension, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, machine readable, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, old age dependency ratio, open borders, out of africa, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, Richard Florida, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, spice trade, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, women in the workforce, working-age population

“Cameron Backs Immigration Cap to Curb Population Rise,” 11 January 2010. 5. Thanks to Kathleen Newland for noting this development. 6. Stephen Nickell, 2009. “Migration Watch.” Prospect Magazine, 23 July 2009, issue 161. 7. Laurie Garrett. 2005. “The Next Pandemic?” Foreign Affairs 84 (4); Michael T. Osterholm. 2005. “Preparing for the Next Pandemic,” New York Times, 21 June 2005. 8. See Alan Dowty. 1989. Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on Freedom of Movement. London: Yale University Press, pp. 68–76. 9. Hiroyuki Tanaka. 2008. “North Korea: Understanding Migration to and from a Closed Country,” Migration Policy Institute.

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People frequently move more than once, and migration has evolving social dynamics that take into account economic cycles, immigration policies, and political conditions. Despite the complexity of decisions to migrate, a number of factors associated with the most recent wave of globalization, including transportation and communication technologies, have collapsed social distances and make it easier to move than ever before. Immigration regulations aim to manage flows to meet public policy goals. These regulations have evolved from earlier practices of using nation-based quotas to encompass a range of migration “channels.” Economic channels bring in students and highly skilled migrants, as well as low-skilled workers to meet temporary labor demands.

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Globalization is not only influencing how policy-makers think about migration, it is also leading more and more people to move. In the words of Jan Aart Scholte, globalization is characterized by the “deterritorialization” of exchanges and relationships—an observation that is just as true for social relations as economic ones.11 The growth of communications technologies has collapsed social distance between people separated by thousands of miles. In early 2009, an estimated 1.5 billion people were regular users of the Internet, and the UN estimates that more than 60 percent of the people in the world have a mobile phone subscription (up from less than 20 percent in 2002).12 Air transport costs also fell rapidly between the 1960s and 1990s, enabling people to more easily travel to see loved ones, do business, or move their families.13 Whereas in the mid-nineteenth century, a family fleeing Russia for the United States would have left their home without being certain that they would ever speak to or see their relatives and friends again, today those social ties would remain intact.

pages: 112 words: 34,520

Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to Happiness: THE FEELGOOD BOOK OF THE YEAR by Bill Bailey

coronavirus, COVID-19, happiness index / gross national happiness, lockdown, social distancing, Stephen Hawking

They are, in no particular order, kindness, a sense of our common humanity, and being more aware of our emotions. All eminently sensible ideas, that could apply to this or any other hardship. But sometimes I wonder, how can we go back to the way we were after all this? We get to know our neighbours better, having conversations on doorsteps and front paths while socially distancing. We exchange pleasantries from behind masks in the corner shop, like it’s a regular thing. But this is far from normal, and underneath I feel uneasy. We don’t really know what the long-term effects of this disruption and enforced isolation will be. So we carry on as best we can, trying to stay positive, trying to be productive.

…

To my family and friends, and all those who have shared in these adventures CONTENTS Foreword 1 Crazy Golf 2 A Clear-out 3 Wild Swimming 4 Little Things 5 Music 6 Caring for Plants 7 Restraint 8 Singing 9 Sport 10 Art 11 Personal Reflection 12 Swearing 13 The Unexpected 14 Playing the Gamelan 15 Laughing 16 Equations 17 Paddleboarding 18 Reading 19 Trees 20 Confronting Your Fears (Part 1) 21 Dogs 22 Confronting Your Fears (Part 2) 23 Birdsong 24 Dancing 25 Pleasure 26 Jogging 27 Cycling 28 Being Someone to Rely On 29 Walking 30 Letter Writing 31 Generosity 32 Belonging 33 Being in Nature 34 Speaking Another Language 35 Simplicity 36 Love About Bill Bailey Thank you FOREWORD This book was written during the coronavirus pandemic, largely while we were in lockdown. During this unexpected quiet time at home, I finally got around to archiving my comedy shows, and I was struck, firstly by how much longer my hair was back in the day, and secondly by how much happiness has been a subject that I have explored in my sketches and gigs over many years, to the point that it appears as a constant thread running through it all.

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As the taste-free, low-fun almost-food sticks to the roof of my mouth, I am struck by how readily the memory of my disco knockback came to mind. At least it was just me who witnessed the holly blue getting mugged off, not a disco full of his mates. I wonder if my memories, unreliable at the best of times, appear more intense due to a heightened sense of awareness elicited by this pandemic. Certainly I’ve read many news stories of people experiencing extremely vivid dreams during lockdown. Our sleep patterns are all over the place. I had a dream in which I saw everyone I’ve ever met, while I drank sherry wearing just a towel. Things are not right. We’ve all been forced to spend more time with ourselves, in the company of our own thoughts.

pages: 481 words: 121,300

Why geography matters: three challenges facing America : climate change, the rise of China, and global terrorism by Harm J. De Blij

agricultural Revolution, airport security, Anton Chekhov, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, British Empire, colonial exploitation, complexity theory, computer age, crony capitalism, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Eratosthenes, European colonialism, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global village, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, Internet Archive, John Snow's cholera map, Khyber Pass, manufacturing employment, megacity, megaproject, Mercator projection, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nelson Mandela, Oklahoma City bombing, out of africa, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, social distancing, South China Sea, special economic zone, Thomas Malthus, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, UNCLOS, UNCLOS

USES AND MISUSES OF MAPS When geographers are asked to provide an example of the practical utility of maps in solving real-world problems, we like to go back to the story of Dr. John Snow, a London physician-geographer who lived through several of the dreadful cholera pandemics that ravaged much of the world during the nineteenth century. No one knew for sure how cholera spread, making the disease especially frightening, and many victims died within a week of infection. Dr. Snow had come to believe that contaminated water was to blame, but he had no proof of it. When the pandemic that had begun elsewhere in 1842 reached England, London's densely populated Soho District, near Picadilly Circus, READING MAPS AND FACING THREATS 43 Fig. 2-6 was hard hit.

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It is a priority for Americans and their allies to get the capital functioning again, but the task is overwhelming in the face of unanticipated sabotage, persistent obstruction, and growing resentment. During the year following the American intervention, the situation in Iraq deteriorated drastically, at great cost to the civilian population and considerable loss to the military. A combination of terrorism and insurgency eroded security and put social distance between the occupiers and the occupied, worsening relations and eroding trust. A scandal involving mistreatment of prisoners by United States soldiers did further damage. Bomb attacks killed hundreds of recruits waiting to join Iraq's new police and army. In effect Iraq was a failed state, and it attracted (by late 2004 estimates) between 10,000 and 20,000 foreign jihadists from near and far, bent upon driving the infidels out.

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The European Union continued to expand, taking in ten new members in May 2004 and incorporating 25 of Europe's 39 countries with others waiting in the v/ings. The name Yugoslavia disappeared from the map even as others emerged: East Timor, Papua, Padania, Transdniestria, Limpopo, Utta-ranchal. And new terms in common usage reflected the new era: pandemic, jihad. War on Terrorism, Sunni Triangle. 4 WHY GEOGRAPHY MATTERS Is there a common denominator for all this change? Can our world and its transformations be better appreciated through a particular perspective? This book answers both questions with one affirmation: geography. In truth, geography itself has gone through several transformations in recent times.

pages: 227 words: 67,264

The Breakup Monologues: The Unexpected Joy of Heartbreak by Rosie Wilby

Airbnb, Brexit referendum, Burning Man, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, Donald Trump, fear of failure, George Santayana, Jeremy Corbyn, Kintsugi, lateral thinking, lockdown, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), social contagion, social distancing, zero-sum game

But it’s good to just give it a go.’ ‘Yes, I suppose it might get my creative juices flowing.’ ‘Yeah…that…and it’ll mean that you’ll wash your hair and put makeup on.’ During my final months of writing this book, the UK is plunged into lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. The changes to society and how we can interact are unprecedented. Early suggestions from sociologists are that the pandemic has completely reshaped our close relationships. In every country that has had a lockdown, divorce rates have surged. Perhaps that is no surprise. Divorces normally peak just after holiday seasons at Christmas and summertime when people have had no escape from one another.

…

Meanwhile, video dating is becoming a new trend among singletons, with camera shunning, call screening and falsely blaming a poor internet connection becoming the latest forms of ghosting. Girlfriend and I are incredibly lucky. Our families are healthy. And we have enough money to live on. For us, staying at home is not a hardship. It is a joy. So while the deadly reasons behind social distancing seem too terrible to dwell on, this new silence feels golden – literally so as we walk Dog in deserted fields on glorious spring days. As we listen to a woodpecker drilling a tree, the kind of sound that is typically drowned out by the pace of twenty-first century life, I celebrate having an abundance of time and headspace to enjoy being in love.

pages: 379 words: 113,656

Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan J. Watts

AOL-Time Warner, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business process, corporate governance, Drosophila, Erdős number, experimental subject, fixed income, Frank Gehry, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, independent contractor, industrial cluster, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, Milgram experiment, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Murray Gell-Mann, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, PalmPilot, Paul Erdős, peer-to-peer, power law, public intellectual, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Savings and loan crisis, scientific worldview, Silicon Valley, social contagion, social distancing, Stuart Kauffman, supply-chain management, The Nature of the Firm, the strength of weak ties, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, Y2K

In a highly homophilous network, only individuals who share the smallest of groups can be connected, yielding a fragmented world of isolated cliques. And when homophily is zero, we get the equivalent of the Kleinberg condition, where individuals make associations at all scales of social distance with equal likelihood. Social distance, therefore, functions in much the same way as it does in Kleinberg’s model. But now there are many kinds of distance to which we might refer when assessing the likelihood that two people will meet. Whereas Kleinberg’s lattice effectively locates individuals solely in terms of their geographical coordinates, individuals in the real world derive their notions of distance from an assortment of social dimensions.

…

To see how it works, let’s return to the example of the hypothetical Chinese peasant farmer. In choosing our friend Erica as our first intermediary, we are making use of two sets of information. First, our notion of social distance leads us to conclude that we are quite distant from our target. But it also tells us what groups someone would need to belong to in order to be close. Our notion of social distance thus helps us identify conditions that make an individual a good candidate for passing the message to. And second, we make use of our local knowledge of the network to determine if any of our friends satisfy any of these conditions—that is, do any of our friends belong to at least one group that makes them closer to the target?

…

A substantial array of definitions and techniques have been introduced over the years, bearing exotic names like blockmodels, hierarchical clustering, and multidimensional scaling. But all of them are essentially designed to extract information about socially distinct groups from purely relational network data, either in terms of some direct measure of “social distance” between actors or by grouping actors according to how similar their relations are to other actors in the network. Networks, according to this view, are the signature of social identity—the pattern of relations between individuals is a mapping of the underlying preferences and characteristics of the individuals themselves.

pages: 379 words: 109,612

Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future by John Brockman

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Asperger Syndrome, availability heuristic, Benoit Mandelbrot, biofilm, Black Swan, bread and circuses, British Empire, conceptual framework, corporate governance, Danny Hillis, disinformation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Emanuel Derman, epigenetics, Evgeny Morozov, financial engineering, Flynn Effect, Frank Gehry, Future Shock, Google Earth, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, index card, information retrieval, Internet Archive, invention of writing, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Large Hadron Collider, lifelogging, lone genius, loss aversion, mandelbrot fractal, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Neal Stephenson, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, pneumatic tube, Ponzi scheme, power law, pre–internet, Project Xanadu, Richard Feynman, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, satellite internet, Schrödinger's Cat, search costs, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, smart grid, social distancing, social graph, social software, social web, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, telepresence, the medium is the message, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, trade route, upwardly mobile, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Catalog, X Prize, Yochai Benkler

By “Internet” I, at least, mean a sociocultural condition in which we are more readily and seamlessly connected to more people, with varying degrees of closeness and remoteness; to more social and organizational structures, both those we belong to and those we don’t; and to more cultural artifacts and knowledge-embedded objects. An e-mail with an inchoate thought, half a fragment to a friend, is the kind of thing I can do today with more people than those with whom I can readily grab a cup of coffee; I can also do it with people whose friendship I value but who are geographically remote. Social distance has moderated as well. Sending an e-mail to a stranger who stands in an organizational, institutional, or socially proximate role is slightly easier and considered less intrusive than making a phone call used to be. Most radical is the recognition that someone, somewhere, entirely remote in geographic, social, or organizational terms, has thought about something similar or pertinent.

…

Neuroses and false beliefs are buttressed. We all worry about our health; in the past, we would look around us and find that no one else was worrying or ill. But consult the Internet and 1,278,000 people (at least!) are worrying, and they’ve even developed Websites to talk about their worry. The 2009 swine flu pandemic has been a damp squib, but you wouldn’t have known that from the frenzy. The bad mathematics can also give us a sense that we have something useful to say. We’d all like to be taken seriously, and evolution has probably equipped us to think we are more effective than we really are; it seeds us with just that little bit of narcissism.

…

Primate brains changed dramatically from early apes at 400 cc to Habilis at 750 cc to Neanderthal at 1,500 cc. “How did that change the way you think?” and “For what purpose?” How will we think to rebuild the ozone after the next nearby supernova? Or nudge the next earth-targeted asteroid? Or contain a pandemic in our dense and well-mixed population? And how will we prepare for those rare events by solving today’s fuel, food, psychological, and poverty problems, which prevent 6.7 billion brains from achieving our potential? The answer is blowin’ in the Internet wind. Replacing Experience with Facsimile Eric Fischl and April Gornik Visual artists We might rephrase the question as “How has the Internet changed the way you see?”

pages: 352 words: 104,411

Rush Hour: How 500 Million Commuters Survive the Daily Journey to Work by Iain Gately

Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, autonomous vehicles, Beeching cuts, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business intelligence, business process, business process outsourcing, California high-speed rail, call centre, car-free, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Clapham omnibus, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, connected car, corporate raider, DARPA: Urban Challenge, Dean Kamen, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, don't be evil, driverless car, Elon Musk, extreme commuting, Ford Model T, General Motors Futurama, global pandemic, Google bus, Great Leap Forward, Henri Poincaré, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Jeff Bezos, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, low skilled workers, Marchetti’s constant, planned obsolescence, postnationalism / post nation state, Ralph Waldo Emerson, remote working, safety bicycle, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, social distancing, SpaceShipOne, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, Suez crisis 1956, telepresence, Tesla Model S, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, urban planning, éminence grise

To say the least, life would be much more involved and intense.’ Hall broke down our need for personal space into four categories: intimate distance, i.e. how close we allow our kin and lovers to be, which emphasizes contact rather than separation; personal distance – how close we stand to people at a drinks party before the drink takes over; social distance, which roughly corresponds to how close we like to get to strangers when doing business with them; and public distance, which politicians and pop stars and other performers enjoy when on stage, where they communicate with their audiences through gestures and postures. He labelled his new science proxemics.

…

Unless and until we evolve into creatures that have no such needs, and have erased the desires to hunt and gather from our nature, there will be a Clapham omnibus, or its latter-day equivalent, ferrying people between their places of labour and rest. Unless, of course, we won’t have to work in the future, or companionship goes out of fashion after, say, a deadly global pandemic. Would we then commute for nostalgia, or even pleasure? Has commuting worked its way so deep into our culture that we’d find it hard to give up absolutely? Or would we frown on it, as we do slavery and burning witches, as belonging to an ignorant, violent and primitive past? People have been predicting both the imminent demise and the perpetual rise of commuting almost since it started.

…

But there’s no need to fear 9 billion, or indeed 9,000 billion. In a 1964 essay, ‘How Many People Can the World Support?’, John Heaver Fremlin, an English physicist, argued that limitations on human population growth were determined by physics rather than biology. Barring catastrophes such as a meteorite strike, an apocalyptic war or a deadly global pandemic; and assuming that the entire surface of the planet, ‘land and sea alike’, was covered with 2,000-storey buildings; that people ate their dead and their sewage; that both the north and south poles had been melted on purpose; and there was absolute and eternal world peace; then mother earth could carry up to 60,000,000,000,000,000 (sixty thousand trillion) people by around the year 2964.

pages: 511 words: 151,359

The Asian Financial Crisis 1995–98: Birth of the Age of Debt by Russell Napier

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Berlin Wall, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, capital controls, central bank independence, colonial rule, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, discounted cash flows, diversification, Donald Trump, equity risk premium, financial engineering, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, hindsight bias, Hyman Minsky, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, if you build it, they will come, impact investing, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, lateral thinking, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, mass immigration, means of production, megaproject, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, Money creation, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, negative equity, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, Pearl River Delta, price mechanism, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Scramble for Africa, short selling, social distancing, South China Sea, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, yield curve

It also has a much larger aim, in that it seeks to show how that crisis led to the creation of a global financial architecture that produced the biggest debt boom in history. It is a debt boom that has, by 2021, already led to spectacular economic busts, mass insolvency, crippling unemployment, the displacement of millions of people and radical political change. With world debt-to-GDP ratios at record highs even before the impact of the Covid-19 induced economic crisis, the negative direct economic, social and political consequences from this age of debt will likely plague the global outlook for at least another generation. How the Asian financial crisis established the foundations for this new age of debt relates to the policy choices of the Asian authorities that were a direct consequence of the crisis.

…

To my mother and two brothers, I owe everything for their love and support over many years. Though my Dad is not around anymore he is with us all every day in many different ways and his strong, simple but wise advice is always present. Writing books is an anti-social activity even if done in a period of social distancing. This means being away from family life for an extended period and thus any book is always the result of a burden shared. To Sheila, Rory and Dylan for all their help and support my thanks and love. Without family, what’s the point anyway? Russell Napier, Scotland, 2021 Part One: Learning the hard way - a beginner’s guide Tuesday, 9 September 1997 Harry – Hello.

pages: 589 words: 147,053

The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth by Robin Hanson

8-hour work day, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blockchain, brain emulation, business cycle, business process, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, deep learning, demographic transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental subject, fault tolerance, financial intermediation, Flynn Effect, Future Shock, Herman Kahn, hindsight bias, information asymmetry, job automation, job satisfaction, John Markoff, Just-in-time delivery, lone genius, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, market design, megaproject, meta-analysis, Nash equilibrium, new economy, Nick Bostrom, pneumatic tube, power law, prediction markets, quantum cryptography, rent control, rent-seeking, reversible computing, risk tolerance, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, Thomas Malthus, trade route, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Vernor Vinge, William MacAskill

Because of this abstract-far construal, the construal-level theory of psychology predicts many features of the beliefs we will tend to hold about the distant future, regardless of whether we have good reasons to hold such beliefs. For example, we tend to see fewer relevant categories of people, places, and things in the future, with the items in each category being more uniform. We expect things to be further away in both spatial and social distance, and expect events to be more novel, hypothetical, and unlikely. We expect analogies to be more relevant than math-like analysis, and we overconfidently expect both theories and analogies to apply more exactly with fewer exceptions. We expect to hear case-based arguments for claims, rather than feature-based arguments against claims.

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Each of these correlations suggests a plausible theory about the origin of this value difference. For example, perhaps growing rice requires more community support, perhaps collectivist norms grew over the farming era, or perhaps community values were an adaptive response to more frequent farming era pandemics or invasions (Fincher et al. 2008; Talhelm et al. 2014; Ola and Paik 2015). Most of these theories suggest that community values will be higher in denser regions. Many animals, including human foragers, are more pro-social when food is less reliable or more cooperation is required to obtain food.

…

If we compare an em era with a continuation of the industrial era without ems, the em civilization quickly has vastly more economic power, and so all else equal is better able to withstand physical disasters like earthquakes, asteroids, or volcanoes, events whose size and chances aren’t much influenced by the existence of ems. The em era might induce more biological disasters such as pandemics, chemical pollution, or global warming, but it seems vastly better able to withstand such things. The ability of an em civilization to withstand war or other unspecified social collapses depends on the size of the smallest unit of industrial production able to restart em civilization after a severe collapse.

pages: 296 words: 98,018

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist lawyer, affirmative action, Airbnb, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 747, Brexit referendum, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, David Heinemeier Hansson, deindustrialization, disintermediation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, fake news, food desert, friendly fire, gentrification, global pandemic, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Hyperloop, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Kibera, Kickstarter, land reform, Larry Ellison, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, microaggression, new economy, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parag Khanna, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, profit maximization, public intellectual, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, tech baron, TechCrunch disrupt, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the High Line, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Two Sigma, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, Virgin Galactic, work culture , working poor, zero-sum game

It had helped Bernie Sanders’s unlikely primary challenge, and then Donald Trump’s unlikely election victory—made all the stranger by the fact that Trump incarnated the very problem he named. Was it inevitable that the leaders of a democracy should affiliate mostly with plutocrats after their time in public office? Was that not related to the problems of mistrust and alienation and social distance that lurked behind the anger now confronting elites? Clinton said he had made 649 speeches for money, by his last count, and paid nearly half of the income in taxes, and donated some of it to charity, and helped aging friends and relatives with medical bills. (He pointed out that you don’t owe any gift tax if you pay the health care provider directly.)

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“There’s a general understanding of how the world works that lies behind those kinds of initiatives, which I think is false,” he said. “And that understanding is that what the world suffers from is a lack of true international cooperation.” This understanding is right on some issues, such as global pandemics and climate change, he said. “But in most other areas, when you think about them, whether it’s international finance, whether it’s economic development, whether it’s business and financial stability, whether it’s international trade—the problem, it seems to me, is not that we don’t have sufficient global governance, that we don’t have sufficient global cooperation, that we’re not getting together enough.

Beautiful Visualization by Julie Steele

barriers to entry, correlation does not imply causation, data acquisition, data science, database schema, Drosophila, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, global pandemic, Hans Rosling, index card, information retrieval, iterative process, linked data, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, no-fly zone, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, performance metric, power law, QR code, recommendation engine, semantic web, social bookmarking, social distancing, social graph, sorting algorithm, Steve Jobs, the long tail, web application, wikimedia commons, Yochai Benkler

Most of the studies came to highly similar conclusions, and all found two distinct clusters in the data. However, there is not total agreement about who is in each cluster, especially for women #8–18. This table illustrates membership groupings well, but it does not reveal network roles and social distances. The network map in Figure 7-7 does reveal the nuances of the social structure and shows the points of failure in the network—that is, where it is most likely to break down. For instance, if woman #3 were to move away, the network would be disrupted the most. It would be interesting to see how both woman #4 and woman #9 would respond to the exit of woman #3.

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Autopsy protocols and photographs used as evidence in criminal cases can be difficult for jurors to understand. VA visualizations are typically clearer (Figures 18-4 and 18-9). Storage of VA data poses few problems, whereas autopsy records such as tissue sections are difficult to store indefinitely (Figure 18-16). With potential global pandemics such as bird flu (avian influenza A) and swine flu (the H1N1 virus) posing an increasing threat, the practice of eviscerating the victims can pose serious health risks to coroners, pathologists, and medical examiners. With a VA, these risks are minimized. However, virtual autopsies also have several shortcomings: For MDCT, soft tissue discrimination is low.

pages: 317 words: 101,475

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones

Asperger Syndrome, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, call centre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, credit crunch, deindustrialization, Etonian, facts on the ground, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, green new deal, hiring and firing, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, mass immigration, meritocracy, Neil Kinnock, Occupy movement, pension reform, place-making, plutocrats, post-war consensus, race to the bottom, Right to Buy, rising living standards, social distancing, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, We are the 99%, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working-age population

There are simply not enough jobs to go round. But with this reality largely ban- ished from our newspapers and TV screens, and with tax-avoiding businesspeople a distant, abstract concept for most, it is a challenging case to make. The demonizarion of working-class people also stems from insecu- rity, or 'social distancing' from those in superficially similar circumstances. Britain'Thinks revealed that those belonging to groups most likely to be stigmatized as chavs can often be among the most vociferous in their chav-bashing, One long-term incapacity benefit claimant denounced chavs who were supposedly milking the system; so did two unemployed teenage mothers.

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Baltimore had 1 per cent of the UK's population, but its murder rate was around a third of the UK's. In their effort to create caricatures of depraved working-class com- munities, the Tories were not above citing blatantly false information.In a propaganda leaflet entitled Labour's Two Nations published in early 2010, they released some astounding figures that suggested a teenage pregnancy pandemic was sweeping through Britain's poor communi- ties. The document repeatedly affirmed that women under eighteen were 'three times more likely to be pregnant in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived areas. In the most deprived areas 54 per cent are likely to fall pregnant before the age of 18, compared to just 19 per cent in the least deprived areas.'

pages: 334 words: 103,106

Inheritance by Leo Hollis

British Empire, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, coronavirus, Fellow of the Royal Society, forensic accounting, high net worth, housing crisis, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, land bank, Leo Hollis, lockdown, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, place-making, side hustle, social distancing, South Sea Bubble, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, urban planning

It echoes the words of New Yorker Jane Jacobs, seen by many as the patron saint of modern urbanism: ‘Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.’13 And this is clearly the lesson being put to the test with the current development of the square and its concerted programme of public engagement. This has included a running blog, an Instagram feed and a Twitter account, socially distanced events in the square and, during lockdown, a series of Zoom webinars where experts and stakeholders have discussed ideas of urban nature, community building, well-being and sustainability. There has also been a wide consultation on design; for example, by 14 August 2020 the website noted that it had held eighteen events, reached 1,066 people and collected over 3,000 pieces of feedback.

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But with the defeat of the Jeremy Corbyn project in the General Election of December 2019, these progressive debates about the future of the ground beneath our feet are unlikely to be revived any time soon. And so, for the moment, the interest of land wins. It is what drives the modern city, and without addressing the question of land itself, the city cannot change. Acknowledgements THE BOOK WAS completed in strange circumstances. As I was working on the final chapters, the pandemic arrived and the normal course of things halted. In particular, libraries and archives were closed. So much information can be found online today but this does not replace the actual physical encounter of historical documents. I missed my days in the basement of the London Library, the National Archives, the Westminster Archives and in Chester City Archives.

pages: 440 words: 128,813

Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago by Eric Klinenberg

carbon footprint, citizen journalism, classic study, deindustrialization, digital rights, fixed income, gentrification, ghettoisation, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, longitudinal study, loose coupling, mass immigration, megacity, New Urbanism, Oklahoma City bombing, postindustrial economy, smart grid, smart meter, social distancing, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, urban renewal, War on Poverty

According to Jacobs, density and public activity are necessary preconditions for vigorous neighborhood social networks. Residents of city neighborhoods without comfortable and secure streets and sidewalks, without places that draw people out of their homes and into the public, are more likely to suffer from literal isolation and social distance. This chapter argues that place-specific social ecology and its effects on cultural practices account for much of the disparity in the heat wave mortality rates for the two Lawndales. The local social environment has a strong impact on older residents, for whom health problems that limit mobility can make it difficult to access places out of the neighborhood.

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This service delivery strategy was understandable to Chicago seniors who had adopted similar routines for going out in their neighborhoods. Yet the mornings-only visitation policy constrained the options for service delivery and reception among residents of stigmatized black neighborhoods. The social distance between seniors residing in Chicago’s most troubled areas and the state agents responsible for serving them helps to account for the gulf of understanding that separated city workers from isolated seniors during the heat wave. It also explains why political leaders on the South Side accused the city of neglecting the needs of their communities, and why some have not given up the case.47 SHOPPING FOR SERVICES IN THE EMPOWERMENT ERA The rhetoric of abandonment and vulnerability used by Chicago’s dissident political figures stands in sharp contrast with the language of empowerment and consumerism promulgated by the city government.

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A second problem is the expectation that city residents, including the elderly and frail, will be active consumers of public goods, smart shoppers of services made available in the market rather than “citizens” entitled to social protection. This market model of governance creates a systemic service mismatch, whereby people with the weakest capabilities and greatest needs are the least likely to get them. Third, the social distance between city administrators and the disadvantaged people they serve is increasing. As governments operate more like professional firms, commissioners become CEOs, agencies subcontract more services out to private companies, and police officers replace aldermen and precinct captains as the community sentries, political organizations risk losing contact with citizens and—as in the heat wave commission report stating that isolated residents do not want support—failing to understand their needs.

pages: 471 words: 109,267

The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain? by Polly Toynbee, David Walker

Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, banking crisis, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blood diamond, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, call centre, central bank independence, congestion charging, Corn Laws, Credit Default Swap, Crossrail, decarbonisation, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Etonian, failed state, first-past-the-post, Frank Gehry, gender pay gap, Gini coefficient, high net worth, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, market bubble, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, millennium bug, moral panic, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, pension reform, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, Right to Buy, shareholder value, Skype, smart meter, social distancing, stem cell, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, University of East Anglia, working-age population, Y2K

What happened at Clapham Park was a microcosm of New Labour, with its hyperbolic promises brought down to earth by hard, basic economic and social realities. One target was to equalize the value of property on the estate with the surrounding area. But the surrounding area became wealthier as property prices inflated, and the social distance between Clapham Park and well-off Clapham is wider than ever. CHAPTER 6 Old and young Labour created the first minister for children. Good idea. They wanted the Department for Children, Schools and Families to wrap the ‘whole child’. But on the ground this never happened. The criminal child stayed under the eye of the justice ministry; the sporty child was supported by culture, media and sport.

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From ‘the globe’ came a wave of asylum seekers, preoccupying ministers and distorting Labour’s plans. The Cabinet Office National Security Strategy (2008) declared that no state threatened the UK directly. Instead, it was at risk from globalization’s stepchildren – international terror, WMD, implosion of failed states, pandemics and transnational crime. Labour tried to give the ‘international community’ some bite. The trials of Slobodan Miloševic and Radovan Karadžic at the International Criminal Court offered a sense that justice might prevail, however long and tortuous the road. Ministers signed the Ottawa Convention to outlaw anti-personnel landmines.

pages: 467 words: 116,094

I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That by Ben Goldacre

Aaron Swartz, call centre, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, Desert Island Discs, Dr. Strangelove, drug harm reduction, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, Firefox, Flynn Effect, Helicobacter pylori, jimmy wales, John Snow's cholera map, Loebner Prize, meta-analysis, moral panic, nocebo, placebo effect, publication bias, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), seminal paper, Simon Singh, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Fry, sugar pill, the scientific method, Turing test, two and twenty, WikiLeaks

In 2004 Dietrich and colleagues conducted a huge series of structured interviews with three representative population samples in Germany, Russia and Mongolia. Endorsing biological factors as the root cause for schizophrenia was associated with a greater desire for social distance. And lastly, more compelling than any individual study, a review of the literature to date in 2006 found that overall, biogenetic causal theories, and labelling something as an ‘illness’, are both positively related to perceptions of dangerousness and unpredictability, and to fear and desire for social distance. They identified nineteen studies addressing the question. Eighteen found that belief in a genetic or biological cause was associated with more negative attitudes to people with mental health problems.

…

., Oppenheimer E. (1982), Heroin Addiction. London: Tavistock Press United Nations Drug Control Program, World Drug Report. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997 Vaillant, G.E., ‘Centennial Address, Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs’. Proc R Soc Med, November 1984 World Health Organisation, The HIV/AIDS Pandemic, 1994 Overview, WHO/GPA/TCO/SEF/94.4, 1994 LIBEL NMT Is Suing Dr Peter Wilmshurst. So How Trustworthy Is This Company?Let’s Look at Its Website … NMT is Suing: http://www.badscience.net/2010/12/nmt-are-suing-dr-wilmshurst-so-how-trustworthy-are-they/ MIST trial was funded: http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/CIRCULATIONAHA.107.727271v1 go to its website: http://www.nmtmedical.com/ outcome of MIST trial: http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/CIRCULATIONAHA.107.727271v1 really was negative: http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/short/CIRCULATIONAHA.107.727271v1 a lengthy correction: http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/120/9/e71 2005 NMT report: http://www.snl.com/IRWebLinkX/GenPage.aspx?

pages: 1,261 words: 294,715

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky

autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, biofilm, blood diamond, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Brownian motion, car-free, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, corporate personhood, corporate social responsibility, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, desegregation, different worldview, domesticated silver fox, double helix, Drosophila, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Flynn Effect, framing effect, fudge factor, George Santayana, global pandemic, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, intentional community, John von Neumann, Loma Prieta earthquake, long peace, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, microaggression, mirror neurons, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mouse model, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, nocebo, out of africa, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, Philippa Foot, placebo effect, publication bias, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, Rosa Parks, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, social contagion, social distancing, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steven Pinker, strikebreaker, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, trolley problem, twin studies, ultimatum game, Walter Mischel, wikimedia commons, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

There was also the suggestion that mirror neuron–mediated perspective taking is particularly concerned with social interactions. Rizzolatti, for example, showed that mirror neuron activity was greater when the observed individual was closer.36 But importantly, this isn’t just literal distance but something resembling “social” distance; as evidence, mirror neuron activity would decrease if there was a transparent barrier between the observer and observed. In Gallese’s words, “this shows the relevance of mirror neurons when mapping the potentialities for competition or cooperation between agent and observer.” The notion that mirror neurons aid us in understanding someone else’s actions, leading to our understanding someone else, period, has been heavily criticized on two grounds, most notably by Hickok.

…

., “Oxytocin at the First Stages of Romantic Attachment: Relations to Couples’ Interactive Reciprocity,” PNE 37 (2012): 1277. 29. B. Ditzen, et al., “Intranasal Oxytocin Increases Positive Communication and Reduces Cortisol Levels During Couple Conflict,” BP 65 (2009): 728; D. Scheele et al., “Oxytocin Modulates Social Distance Between Males and Females,” J Nsci 32 (2012): 16074; H. Walum et al., “Genetic Variation in the Vasopressin Receptor 1a Gene Associates with Pair-Bonding Behavior in Humans,” PNAS 105 (2008): 14153; H. Walum et al., “Variation in the Oxytocin Receptor Gene Is Associated with Pair-Bonding and Social Behavior,” BP 71 (2012): 419. 30.

…

In chapter 15 we’ll touch on “behavioral immunity,” the ability of numerous species to detect cues of illness in other individuals; as we’ll see, implicit cues about infectious disease make people more xenophobic. Similarly, historical prevalence of infectious disease predicts a culture’s openness to outsiders. Moreover, other predictors of cultural tightness include having high historical incidence of pandemics, of high infant and child mortality rates, and of higher cumulative average number of years lost to communicable disease. Obviously, weather influences the incidence of organized violence—consider the centuries of European wars taking a hiatus during the worst of winter and the growing season.51 Even broader is the capacity of weather and climate to shape culture.

pages: 467 words: 149,632

If Then: How Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, Apollo 11, Buckminster Fuller, Cambridge Analytica, company town, computer age, coronavirus, cuban missile crisis, data science, desegregation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, fake news, game design, George Gilder, Grace Hopper, Hacker Ethic, Howard Zinn, index card, information retrieval, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, job automation, John Perry Barlow, land reform, linear programming, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, New Journalism, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, packet switching, Peter Thiel, profit motive, punch-card reader, RAND corporation, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, SimCity, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, Stewart Brand, technoutopianism, Ted Sorensen, Telecommunications Act of 1996, urban renewal, War on Poverty, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog

Simulmatics failed, but not before its scientists built a very early version of the machine in which humanity would in the early twenty-first century find itself trapped, a machine that applies the science of psychological warfare to the affairs of ordinary life, a machine that manipulates opinion, exploits attention, commodifies information, divides voters, fractures communities, alienates individuals, and undermines democracy. “What does it take for people to recognize a dystopia?” the virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier asked in 2019, anguished, heartbroken.1 Long before the age of quarantine and social distancing, Simulmatics helped atomize the world. It had begun sixty years before, with the best of intentions. In 1959, hoping to build a better America, Simulmatics pioneered the use of computer-run simulation, pattern detection and prediction in American political campaigning, segmenting the electorate into voter types and issues into clusters in order to advise candidates about strategies for voter-targeted issues.

…

Kennedy and, 120, 167 — Johnson and, 75–76, 167, 182, 258 — reaction to space race and arms race, 78 — sit-ins, 101, 106, 196, 199, 234, 275 — Stevenson and, 42–43, 63, 66 Clark, Kenneth and Mamie, 85 Clinton, Bill, 303, 304 Clinton, Hillary, 303, 304 Cold War — as battle over the future, 35, 208–9 — beginning of, 15 — in Burdick’s fiction, 28 — effects of, 49–50, 135, 163 Coleman, James — American Sociological Association presidency, 303 — Bureau of Applied Social Research and, 84–85 — commodification of attention, 145 — Equality of Educational Opportunity (Coleman Report), 259, 303 — friendship with McPhee, 84–85, 87, 89, 137 — insufficiency of data for models, 145 — letter of support for Popkin, 310 — marketing for Simulmatics, 137, 142, 152 — preparation for 1962 Times election coverage, 154–55, 164, 362n — Project Camelot, 209 — resignation from Simulmatics, 271 — riot prediction project, 260–62 — simulation games designed by, 258–59, 377n — Simulmatics stock offering and, 139 — Simulmatics’ Urban Studies Division, 258–59 Coleman, John, 85 Coleman, Lucille (Lu) Ritchey, 84–85, 89, 144, 270 Coleman, Thomas, 85 Collingwood, Charles, 24–25 Collins, Ella, 252 Columbia Pictures, 173–74, 175, 364n Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, 287 Committee for the Re-election of the President, 308, 309 Communications Act of 1934, 23, 316 compilers, 69, 70 “Computer Politics” (Kristol), 367n computer revolution — ARPANET, 284, 296, 310–11, 312, 313–15, 316, 318 — hackers, 312, 313, 326 — no safeguards on data collection and analysis, 315, 323 — personal computers, 310, 313, 318 — Pool, arguments against regulation, 315–17, 318 — Pool, writing about emerging technologies, 277–79, 299, 316–17, 318–19, 323 — Stewart Brand promotion of, 310, 311–12, 314, 317–18 — see also artificial intelligence computers, early — development during and after World War II, 68–70 — mainframe computer in 1956, 8 — presidential election of 1952, 24–26, 69, 122, 150 — see also specific topics Cook, Mike, 303 coronavirus and social distancing, 5, 322 Corrupt Practices Act, 23 Counterfeit World (Galouye), 187–88 counterinsurgency — McNamara’s theory, 208–9 — progress measurement by counting deaths, 212–13 — Simulmatics program, 49, 200, 209, 211, 213, 216, 258 Cronkite, Walter, 24–25, 267 Cuban Missile Crisis — aftermath, 163, 169 — Andrei Gromyko, 157, 160 — beginning of, 156 — end of, 162–63 — ExComm (Executive Committee of the National Security Council), 157, 162 — John F.

…

In engineering, computer-aided pattern detection and prediction has improved the safety of buildings, factories, and vehicles. In environmental science, it is essential in reckoning with catastrophic climate change. In astronomy, it has made possible the seeing of new stars. In medical research, pharmacology, and public health, it helps researchers find cures for diseases, avert epidemics, and defeat pandemics. Nothing could be more vital. But the study of the human condition is not the same as the study of the spread of viruses and the density of clouds and the movement of the stars.4 Human nature does not follow laws like the law of gravity, and to believe that it does is to take an oath to a new religion.5 Predestination can be a dangerous gospel.

pages: 506 words: 151,753

The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze by Laura Shin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, Airbnb, altcoin, bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, cloud computing, complexity theory, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, DevOps, digital nomad, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Dutch auction, Edward Snowden, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial independence, Firefox, general-purpose programming language, gravity well, hacker house, Hacker News, holacracy, independent contractor, initial coin offering, Internet of things, invisible hand, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, litecoin, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, off-the-grid, performance metric, Potemkin village, prediction markets, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Satoshi Nakamoto, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, social distancing, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Turing complete, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks

Much gratitude to the many sponsors of my shows over the years. I truly appreciate the support that you’ve given me, my podcasts and videos, and the audience of Unchained. Shoutout to Focusmate, which was crucial to my writing this book. Thanks to my close friends who put up with my long periods of being socially distanced—well before the pandemic—due to this book: in addition to my readers, Stacie, Tom, Beckey, Hande, Mariana, Graciela, Gizem, Vanessa, Jessica, Alden, Fiona, Daniel, and Colleen, you all hold a place in my heart. To my very cool, creative, and brave ancestors: even though we never shared breath together on Earth, your life stories have inspired me for decades, and I hope my work carries on your legacy.

pages: 596 words: 163,682

The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind by Raghuram Rajan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, airline deregulation, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Build a better mousetrap, business cycle, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, central bank independence, computer vision, conceptual framework, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, data acquisition, David Brooks, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, deskilling, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, facts on the ground, financial innovation, financial repression, full employment, future of work, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, household responsibility system, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, income inequality, industrial cluster, intangible asset, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, Les Trente Glorieuses, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Money creation, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, race to the bottom, Richard Thaler, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working-age population, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

As the community grows larger, therefore, we can call the professional midwife when a child is being born and the professional fire service when a cat is stuck up a tree, instead of our neighbor. Members have more choice, and the quality of goods and services they have access to increases, but the breadth of interactions that take place between members narrows. This social distancing or alienation once again diminishes the strength of relationships and the value of community. Members could try to preserve a sense of community as it grows larger and more anonymous, urging everyone to take into account community benefits in deciding whether to transact locally or in the larger marketplace.

…

Of the over two hundred thousand one-room schools in 1915, only twelve hundred were open in 1975.29 Progressives were not just concerned about the inequality in funding but about educational outcomes in general. Reformers like John Dewey, who founded the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School, believed that with industrialization and the growing divide between labor and capital, as well as the increasing ethnic and religious fragmentation of American society, the social distance between groups would tend to increase. The primary school brought together students from diverse backgrounds, while the high school drew students from a still larger geographic area. A rounded school education would give students the experience of interacting with a more diverse population, draw them into civic participation, and inculcate a more democratic attitude toward debating differences.

…

Many of the sailors on board were dead, covered with black boils that gave the illness its name, the Black Death. The Sicilian authorities ordered the “death ships” out of the harbor, but it was too late. Over the next five years, and over the course of subsequent recurrences, the bubonic plague pandemic would wipe out an estimated third of Europe’s population. The humanitarian catastrophe had a thin silver lining. The lucky peasantry that survived the Black Death now could farm much larger land holdings, could concentrate on better land, and were thus significantly richer. For instance, in 1341 in the English village of Stoughton, 52 percent of landholdings were eleven acres or less.

pages: 918 words: 257,605

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, algorithmic bias, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bartolomé de las Casas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, book scanning, Broken windows theory, California gold rush, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, connected car, context collapse, corporate governance, corporate personhood, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, digital capitalism, disinformation, dogs of the Dow, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, fake news, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, future of work, game design, gamification, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Ian Bogost, impulse control, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, linked data, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, means of production, multi-sided market, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Occupy movement, off grid, off-the-grid, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, precision agriculture, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, recommendation engine, refrigerator car, RFID, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, smart cities, Snapchat, social contagion, social distancing, social graph, social web, software as a service, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, two-sided market, union organizing, vertical integration, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, Wolfgang Streeck, work culture , Yochai Benkler, you are the product

.… It passes far beyond purely economic interests, for it consists in the establishment of a social and moral order sui generis.18 Durkheim’s vision was neither sterile nor naive. He recognized that things can take a dark turn and often do, resulting in what he called an “abnormal” (sometimes translated as “pathological”) division of labor that produces social distance, injustice, and discord in place of reciprocity and interdependency. In this context, Durkheim singled out the destructive effects of social inequality on the division of labor in society, especially what he viewed as the most dangerous form of inequality: extreme asymmetries of power that make “conflict itself impossible” by “refusing to admit the right of combat.”

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The result is an emergent system that allows us to peer into one version of a future defined by a comprehensive fusion of instrumentarian and state power. China’s vision is intended as the solution to its own unique version of the curse of social dissolution. Writing in Foreign Policy, journalist Amy Hawkins explains that China’s pandemic of social distrust is the problem to which the social credit system is addressed as the cure: “To be Chinese today is to live in a society of distrust, where every opportunity is a potential con and every act of generosity a risk of exploitation.”31 A fascinating empirical study of social trust in contemporary China actually finds high levels of “in-group” trust but discovers that these are correlated with negative health outcomes.