Category: Worth Your Time

1. The man controlling Russian media (for Putin)
2. If you’re interested in “fair” water pricing, then read this paper [pdf] on Nairobi’s system: “we find that high-income residential and nonresidential customers receive a disproportionate share of subsidies and that subsidy targeting is poor even among households with a private metered connection.”
3. “Why should migrants respect borders when we didn’t respect theirs?” Good question.
4. GMO crops in Spain/Portugal increased profits, and lowered herbicide, insecticide and diesel use. Adopt!
5. Google and Amazon allow you to opt out of spying — a little.
6. George Orwell’s 1984 is ever more relevant: “The crucial issue was not that Trump might abolish democracy but that Americans had put him in a position to try. Unfreedom today is voluntary. It comes from the bottom up.”
7. A fantastic hitjob on Uber, a company that’s taken $70 billion from gullible investors who bought the “Uber Technologies, Inc. operates as a technology platform for people and things mobility” lie.
8. American rivers are too full (climate disruption!) for barges to move. Chaos in the Midwest. Will they vote for “Mr Coal Trump” again? (Don’t let USACE near this problem — they caused it with all the channeling, etc.)
9. The mathematics of digital compression
10. A Dutch researcher wins the “Borlaug food prize” for suppling better seeds to millions of small farmers.

H/T to DL

1. Looking for inspiration regarding specialization? Listen to this
2. So what happens after we reach “peak mobile”?
3. If you want to geek out on the complexity of the energy transition (from fossil fuels), then check out this energy model. It focuses on the EU, but there’s a LOT of data and complexity to explore!
4. What’s Really Driving the Cryptocurrency Phenomenon? Related: Nothing Can Stop The Bitcoin Protocol and the trust among developers of a trustless protocol
5. The supporters of populists have a lot in common with the Germans who chose Hitler.
6. Indoor pollution is a real problem (even in Amsterdam) — and it’s worse in theatres!
7. How many times will your town flood before you call it quits? This Maryland town had three “1 in a 1,000 year” storms in 3 years.
8. This [pdf] is the best analysis of the connection between drought, climate change and the war in Syria
9. Whoops! One cotton bag has 7,000x the impact of one plastic bag!
10. An excellent podcast on affordable housing policies (fails)

1. The collapse of civilization (probably due to climate change) will affect different classes in different ways
2. The brutal indifference of colonial murder
3. An interesting discussion of doctors, aging and genetic ethics
4. The young are impulsive and emotional, which is why they might rescue us.
5. Ukraine’s new president might be a comedian, but he’s got the right ideas for his people.
6. Fairbnb is about to launch. I’ve given advice to them on how to help (rather than harm) communities.
7. Soldiers know the difference between a plan and a strategy. Do their superiors?
8. Is your neighborhood livable? We have 6/6 within walking distance of our flat.
9. A nicely balanced article on climate-change-induced conflict
10. Helping whistleblowers uncover financial crimes

1. Used stuff is not “dumped” on poor people, but bought by them
2. Remote sensing will help us find/measure air pollution from power plants
3. History’s “message” often depends on the identity of the narrator
4. “When I walked into the Bronx I was an atheist. It was something I was sure about. After years of traveling America, I wasn’t so sure.”
5. Why books (and lectures) don’t work. Thought provoking…
6. Beautiful water photos
7. Time to call it Climate Change Crisis
8. One statistical “success” lead to a thousand useless publications
9. A really good analysis of the Muller Report (and Trump’s chaos)
10. Spying is getting very complicated (and these tools will be used on us)

H/T to PB

1. Minimum wages help low paid workers overcome “unequal market power” in setting wages, but they can — in “loose” labor markets — still make it harder to get hired.
2. More evidence of sexism in the economics profession (as well as the clueless behavior of manspaining graduate student trolls)
3. How your diet drives climate change — and what to do about it
4. Are subscription services encouraging over-consumption?
5. A pretty accurate vies of the “downside” of Amsterdam 😉
6. Environmental justice needs more attention (and action!)
7. Watch this TED talk on working as a team instead of competing to beat each other.
8. Listen to this interview on trusting the poor (rather than treating them as babies) as a means of helping them improve their lives.
9. I support replacing student debt by taking an equity stake in their future.

H/T to PB

 

1. Bad news: Global soil fertility gone in 30-60 years due to overuse of pesticides and fertilizers. Good news: Some (small %) of farmers are returning to “bio-organic” practices. Hurry!
2. How to be a good parent
3. “The idea that mass catering must be devoid of pleasure is false“
4. Play the “evolution of trust” game 🙂
5. In praise of dementia (assuming you have caregivers!)
6. The best advice. Really.
7. The market is betting on climate change (happening)
8. London’s congestion charging has improved quality of life
9. I agree that Bernie should give away his $2 million. It may be the easiest spending to defeat the “billionaire” thief-in-chief.
10. A charming video on the chalk that mathematicians love, featuring my old boss 🙂

H/Ts to PB and RN

1. Capetown avoided Day Zero with some action (including cutting off farmers) and luck
2. In “shocked, I’m shocked” news, there’s a rise in addition among pot smokers in the legal and highly innovative US market. Addiction is often a symptom of deeper problems, and neither pot, nor alcohol, tobacco,  cocaine, etc. will fix them!
3. Turning away from the modern world to a more balanced life.
4. Lying for a good cause: Nature documentaries
5. Why Americans break so many driving laws (and kill people)
6. Paul Romer has good opinions on economics and cities
7. Margaret Atwood is wise
8. The rise of audiobooks
9. Rules for civil servants, 1949 edition
10. Paper vs blowdryers in public bathrooms

1. The U.S. government puts social housing in flood zones #mixedmessages
2. From Gentrification to Decline: How Neighborhoods Really Change
3. How businesses are undermining our privacy
4. Far-right European parties are adopting Republican strategies to label attempts to slow climate change as leftist conspiracies against the working classes. Sad that those same working classes are going to suffer the most.
5. Will profit seekers help reduce the rate of climate change? Maybe.
6. Listen to this discussion of America’s history, people and divisions
7. Notes on being tall
8. Greed, deception and Leonardo
9. Are dentists working for or against us? (I see some troubling parallels to my own experiences here.)
10. So maybe there are some good reasons to avoid Huawei and 5G

1. More bad news on climate change triggered this excellent rant on America’s failure to do anything substantial to block a catastrophe for humanity. (Oh, and for Americans as well, for all those #MAGA people out there…)
2. The origins of kindergarten… before it was turned into a toy store
3. More information on America’s broken medical system: Overpriced drugs
4. An ex-libertarian’s quest to rebuild the center right (I’m in this group)
5. A white basketball player reflects on fan racism and the NBA
6. Why are we so bad at planning cities?
7.  Is there any hope for humanity??
   

   SCIENTISTS: “We’ve produced the first-ever image of a supermassive Black Hole, 55-million light years away”
   RESPONSE: “Oooh!”

   SCIENTISTS: “We’ve concluded that humans are catastrophically warming Earth”
   RESPONSE: “That conflicts with what I want to be true, so it must be false”

   — Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) April 10, 2019

8. A Dutch artist made a book of all the addresses of “mailbox companies” that register in the Netherlands to avoid taxes. Here’s her TEDx talk.
9. Here’s the Flying Money 2018 Reader [pdf] of how Amsterdam is part of (as victim and conspirator) international money laundering.
10. The “Chicago boys” who built Chile’s free market economy

1. What’s the value of your time? Why do Americans work so much?
2. Do you take too long to reply to email?
3. I guess the Dutch are right to be skeptical of over-medication
4. Amsterdam was bike heaven in the 1950s (and again, in Dutch)
5. Why rent control doesn’t work (“and then what happens?”)
6. I agree: The Trump administration sacrifices American political authority for American power
7. Canada’s community-sourced anti-poverty works work better.
8. Social media platforms destroy your value to make themselves profits (best analysis I’ve heard in years).
9. I’ve switched to DuckDuckGo for search. It works, and it’s private
10. Amsterdam is eliminating parking to leave more space for people. Does your city care more about people or cars?