It is another Friday, and my four blog readers know it is time to look at the signs of the bad economy. Let's see what we got this week.
Education News
- As if the testing companies' racket was not bad enough, now a company has a way of detecting when students are not making effort on standardized tests, i.e. when they are just doing "rapid guessing", i.e. just marking answers to get it over with. Story via The Hechinger Report. Here is a radical suggestion: maybe educational institutions should cut back on their obsession with assessment and multiple choice tests that do not really mean anything.
Rural News
- The headline pretty much says it all: "21 states have no local newspaper with dedicated reporter to cover their representatives and senators in D.C." Story via The Rural Blog.Not that newspapers overall get read that much anyhow, but there you have it. They can barely keep track of the shenanigans in D.C.
Health and Medical News
- This week, another story of seniors not being able to afford their prescriptions, so they are skimping or outright just not taking their needed medications, this time out of Oregon. Story via Public News Service.
Meanwhile back in the US colony
- Two years later, Puerto Rico is still struggling to recuperate from Hurricane Maria. Story via Mother Jones.
The Bad Economy Around the World
- I always pay attention to economic news out of the African continent, specially ones about foreign investors because often they just reflect a new version of the big colonial game. This time, we have news that Japan is one of the top investors to expand solar power there. From the story, "Mitsubishi joins a host of top investors, including European power utilities, that are exploring off-grid technology as a way of expanding their exposure to renewables and tapping new pools of customers." Story via African Stand.
In Other News of the Bad Economy
- The Atlantic has an expose article on the immigrants in the United States who really do the meatpacking. The article is by Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation. Here is one of the article's quotes by the author: "Over the years, I’ve spent time with countless farmworkers and meatpacking workers who entered the United States without proper documentation. Almost all of them were hardworking and deeply religious. They had taken enormous risks and suffered great hardships on behalf of their families. Today workers like them are the bedrock of our food system. And they are now being scapegoated, hunted down, and terrorized at the direction of a president who inherited about $400 million from his father, watches television all day, and employs undocumented immigrants at his golf resorts." A hat tip to Food Politics blog. On a side note, I read Fast Food Nation a while back; no review on the blog since I did it before I started reviewing books formally.
- Inc. noticed that Facebook did a subtle change that could suggest they may (or not) charge for their social media site down the road. So naturally the magazine asked "would you pay for Facebook?" After a laugh, I said fuck no, which I get the impression many would also say. As I have said before, were it not for the fact I have some family there that are not likely to move elsewhere if I move, plus the fact my library has a Facebook page I help maintain, I would have deleted Facebook a long time ago. Who knows? Day can still come I do delete them and forget them.
- So a question for readers out there: would YOU pay for Facebook if they decided to start charging you for it? Even if, maybe for example, they charge and you get no advertising.
- Meanwhile, Google is yet again shutting down another product that does relatively well because, well, fuck you, because they can mostly. By their own admission, "While Hire has been successful, we're focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio." Story via UPI. For me, I am reminded of when they shut down Google Reader, which was a good product, but again, they were "focusing [their] resources on other products. . . ". Hire was basically one of those things Google bought with other products of a small start up, and I guess now they are done playing with it, so shut it down. Oh well.
Hustlin' in the Bad Economy
- "Hustlin' in the Bad Economy" is meant to highlight folks who have to get creative somehow to make a buck in the bad economy. So this story, via HBS Working Knowledge, about influencers in the beauty market would qualify. However, I have mixed feelings since, to be honest, I find the whole "influencer" stuff (not just for makeup, but for just about anything) on YouTube and Instagram to be mostly a crock. But hey, you gotta give the devil their credit, if they can make something more than just getting some product for compensation and exposure, if they can actually make a buck or two, hey, that is hustlin' in the bad economy. The article does note the brands do pay (no specifics on numbers, i.e. what they would pay an individual, but they do mention how much is spent overall). By the way, in the case of this makeup and beauty market, it is mainly a women's market, and a powerful market it is if you look at the numbers.
Hold My Beer (Serious fuckery in the bad economy)
- And in some more tech company fuckery, Amazon is opening one of their retail stores right across the street from the venerable and independent Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN. Story via LitHub. Why? Again, because fuck them and fuck you, that is why.
Uber Rich
- P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula sums up well the issue of relying on the uber rich for funding good things like education, science research, and services. This is specially evident in places like higher education. He writes in part, "Look around your university. See all those fancy buildings named after well-off alumni? That’s the problem, that we rely on the whims of assholes who inherited or stumbled into or stole great wealth, and they use science as Epstein did, as a cosmetic to cover up their crimes and make themselves look better than they are." This reminds me of the old quote attributed to Balzac, that also serves as the epigraph opening Mario Puzo novel The Godfather: "Behind every great fortune, there is a crime."
Finally, this week we have one of the
Great Debates of Our Time
- Via the BBC, do you dip or smother your food in ketchup? Feel free to comment on this great issue of significance (or anything else in this weeks post).
No comments:
Post a Comment