Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times on how many companies digitally monitor their employees’ time in some pretty invasive and distrustful ways.
This includes taking screenshots and photos randomly in 10-minute chunks and actually docking pay if you don’t appear productive. So every trip to the bathroom is possible lost pay. 🤦🏻♂️
And hospice workers being paid by productivity points. 😳 “A visit to the dying: as little as one point.”
And social workers being penalized for not typing on their keyboard while actively counseling patients in drug treatment facilities. 🤨
But the brilliance of this article is how they present it.
To let you appreciate how annoying this kind of digital surveillance is, the article tells you as you read it if you’ve been “idle” for too long. It ends with a summary of your reading efficiency stats, which will inevitably make you feel weird. 😂
Nobody tells a great story like Throughline. This podcast gives new twists on old stories, from ancient collapses of civilization to modern controversies. Every story is a slice of history told with a tight narrative and professional production, including deft use of sound effects. This is not some dude blabbing about history.
In their episode about Tenochtitlan, they dive deep into the brutal Spanish conquest of Mexico. They start out describing ancient Aztect capital of Tenochtitlan (aka Mexico City) as an immense ancient metropolis, one of the largest cities in the world at the time (and now). It is full of towering temples, canals, schools, and a Venice-like network of waterways for transport and irrigation and composting. This is a city that smells sweet.
The Aztecs are advanced and powerful, but they can be pretty brutal conquerers themselves and have made plenty of their own local enemies.
Then the Spanish show up. ⚔️ It’s a fascinating and pretty terrifying story.
Since I first discovered the care-free movement years ago, I’ve always been a sucker for ways to get around besides those same old gas-guzzling, traffic-jamming cars.
It just seems like walking, biking, and taking a ride on something are more fun than cars. Mass transit makes the world more beautiful and is better for the planet.
Here’s a great overview of how cities across the world are finding better, electric options for moving lots of people around.
If you had told me a few years ago that homes would be “printed” at all, much less a full village of them down in Mexico, I would have laughed. But here it is, the strange and sometimes beautiful world of tomorrow.
Sure, these “printed” homes are IKEA-showroom-small at 500 square feet. But they are real homes – and real stylish, with interestingly rounded corners and a traditional terracotta look. These homes are not chintzy at all. They have already survived a magnitude 7.4 earthquake.
The houses are made with a a Vulcan II printer, developed by an Austin-based construction technology company. The building material is called “lavacrete”. The process is controlled by a smartphone. Three people can build a house in less than a day.
Here’s a pretty fascinating story about the collapse of the complex, globalized society of the late Bronze Age around 1200 BC. As we’re facing climate change, political polarization, and a raging virus, it’s an interesting listen. 😬
About 3000 years ago, it got bad. There was famine, drought, and earthquakes. And worst of all, the mysterious Sea People were attacking out of nowhere without warning or mercy. ⚔️
But this chaos eventually became a rebirth that led to the alphabet, iron working, monotheism, the Greek and Roman empires, etc. Basically, Western civilization.
The historian notes that, more often than not, civilization pulls back from the brink before it gets toooo bad, so he’s optimistic.
Hats off to the The Daily Show for finding an oddly humorous perspective on the current Afghanistan tragedy. Definitely more succinct and funnier than mine.
What would you change about the following narrative?
9/11 attack on the US from an Afghanistan-based terrorist group
Invades Afghanistan, topple the government, and occupy with an international security force
Provide security, promote democracy, invest in education and infrastructure
Keep nation building
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Kill Osama Bin Laden
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
Keep nation building for another year, more dead
It’s not a great story, is it?
It’s unfortunate and ugly, but it was time to go. Would another year of nation building have helped? Were things getting any better?
I don’t doubt the good intentions of the war, and I don’t doubt the skill and courage of the brave people who fought it. I thank our soldiers for their service and give them my utmost admiration for sticking faithfully to the mission despite it’s impossible challenges. 🇺🇸
I hate that the ugly Taliban is taking back over, but their deeds are between them and their own god now. The US Army is out of that equation.
Here’s a clip from a pretty relevant movie that came out 4 years ago about a war that had already been going on for 12 years. Despite some serious overacting by Brad Pitt, it’s a pretty damned good movie and dead on. It shows a good and capable man trying to win an impossible war.
I guess if you’re an island in the far reaches of the North Atlantic, then you’re pretty self-sufficient and can try stuff out on your own terms. Thank you, Iceland’s Association for Sustainability and Democracy 🇮🇸 (hey, we could use one of those! 🇺🇸), for experimenting with a 4-day workweek.
It turns out the reduced workweek is a win all around. According to Mashable, the extra day was shaved off largely by “delegating and prioritising tasks more effectively”, plus fewer and shorter meetings.
patmcg.com 