Links Oct 13-Nov 2 2019
Wednesday Oct 30, 2019
James Wolcott's beautifully written review of the Susan Sontag biography, blended with his own memory of her. lrb.co.uk
"I worked at an engineering-heavy university for the past 15 years. Year after year, the freshman class is more and more social app-savvy, and less and less tech-savvy." reddit.com
A reporter who accidentally uncovered a nationwide scam run by fake hosts on AirBnB still didn't leave said hosts a negative review, for fear of receiving downrates herself. vice.com
“Most of us have been taught to ignore that,” she says, and to favor our “saboteur” or “fear self.” The fear self manifests in several ways: “There are the toos,” Hellerer tells me. “ ‘I’m too old,’ ‘I’m too young.’ ” There are the enoughs: “ ‘I won’t make enough money.’ ” And the shoulds: “Mine was ‘No one should go to Stanford and become a career coach.’ ” thecut.com
Startups looking to suck CO2 from the air are suddenly luring big bucks. technologyreview.com
Seems we should incorporate nomad solar panels into our daily lives to truly prepare for emergencies. rei.com
Or just get a hinky solar hand-crank NOAA AM/FM radio with both iPhone and Android smartphone charging ports. amazon.com
"'Over the past decade, there has been no progress in either mathematics or reading performance, and the lowest performing students are doing worse,' Peggy G. Carr, the associate commissioner of the center, said in a statement." nytimes.com
Dec 2004: "In Against Interpretation, published in 1966, she [Susan Sontag] saw more clearly than most that the future defeat of official Communism was inscribed in its negation of literature." slate.com
"Not only is that less than the 20% increase registered on a broad basket of goods over the span, but key costs that play an outsize role in middle-class budgets have increased much more: home prices are up 26%, medical care 33%, and college costs a whopping 45%. To keep up, Americans borrowed. A lot." bloomberg.com
China Says It Will Roll Out 'National Security' Steps for Hong Kong. nytimes.com
Pelosi wants Americans to see the trial of Donald Trump. nbcnews.com
Dahlia Lithwick wrote about "The Demoralizing Reality of Life Under Trump: Every day is the same, but still awful." slate.com
Tuesday Oct 22, 2019
"Owners of nonresident Airbnb-style properties — facing a Dec. 1 deadline that could shut them down — are pushing the Zoning Board of Appeals to reclassify their buildings as 'boutique hotels' or 'executive suites' and are facing pushback from fed-up neighbors." bostonherald.com
Anonymous shell companies, like the LLC owners of properties doing illegal renovations, pose a major risk to our national security, and there is a bill to end this practice, Micheal Chertoff writes. thehill.com
A site called Study Hall is to 2019 what MediaBistro was to the aughts. studyhall.xyz
A podcast by Scott Hanselman is applauded by WOC for including, shining light on, under-recognized techies. hanselminutes.com
A little-known legality in California known as an "over-the-fence rule" which prohibits the distribution of excess power from a solar energy producer to more than two nearby properties is seen as an "investment-choking regulation" shunting the growth of renewable energy microgrids and keeping us dependant on fossil fuels. scholarship.law.berkeley.edu
Logic is a print magazine about technology that publishes three times per year, with a small digital footprint. (Another one is called logicmag.io
Offscreen magazine is another, covering "The Human Side of Technology". offscreenmag.com
Much good reporting lately on the housing crisis, this time from the upstream causes, includes "Homewreckers" by reveal. revealews.org/homewreckers
The Robots Aren’t Coming for Our Jobs, the Oligarchs Are: prospect.org
To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution: theguardian.com
People like Maddow, and the hosts of Gaslit Nation, imply much of the corruption we're seeing right now traces up to oligarchs -- who benefit from "oil and gas" (but not coal) -- aggressively resisting a transition to renewable energy, and California now looks like it's shedding reliance on gas.latimes.com
"'State government cannot solve housing affordability alone. We need others to join Facebook in stepping up,' California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement." latimes.com
"Zuckerberg: a leader who stands for nothing and allows for everything, as long as it’s profitable." latimes.com
Making a Virtue Out of Neglect: How Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism Exacerbates Big Tech’s Absentee Ownership Problem: balkin.blogspot.com
Vinyl records are on pace to outsell CDs for the first time since the '80s: newschannel5.com
This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
