“The economic costs Airbnb imposes likely outweigh the benefits.”
I don’t think anybody will be surprised by this study whose conclusions are that AirBnB is a drain on society and should be taxed and regulated mercilessly.
Month: April 2019
Something that sounds so basic and is so very important but that can be very difficult to achieve when you’re in the thick of it: “Work on the business, not in the business.”
As you’ll see, everything is slightly approximate, slightly exaggerated — so that each step in the argument takes you further from what you’re prepared to agree to.
It turns out Harari’s books only go downhill after Sapiens.
A worth-while apology for Design Thinking:
“This is why I advise executives study design. If culture is driven by leadership behavior, then culture change is primarily driven by leadership behavior change. Design has a lot of techniques to offer.”
https://medium.com/columbus-egg/design-thinking-as-decision-framing-7d6795542421
The newsworthy thing about the Accenture/Hertz story is not that they failed to deliver but how badly they failed and that they are getting sued for it. Getting something that’s not very good for far too much money is an accepted part of doing business with consultancies of that size.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/23/hertz_accenture_lawsuit/
“Everyone else, money manager big or small, met with him virtually, over Zoom. When Yuan flew to New York for the IPO, it was just his eighth work trip in five years.”
Zoom is the real deal and the story behind its success is immensely inspiring.
“They’re really good at the PR thing, and it really feels like gaslighting.”
The Correspondent miscommunicated the goals of their extremely well-funded crowdfunding campaign and now their first employee speaks out on their shady practices. Not to mention that a lot of what the Correspondent writes is unreadable and/or compromised.
Given their track record, I can’t blame people everywhere NIMBYing Google out of their neighborhoods.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90336151/sidewalk-labss-smart-city-plans-face-legal-challenge
Fuck you a million times.
Clear words for the liberal Dutch audience from Mona Eltahawi who cancelled her talk at De Balie because of their platforming of far right speakers.
The men I work with are not the geniuses of Menlo Park, the ones who retreated to garages and emerged with hardware that changed the world. They’re ensemble actors in an industry that favors singular greatness. They have not made fortunes or founded startups but have benefited from their proximity and physical resemblance to those who have.
https://www.artpractical.com/column/the-metrics-of-backpacks/
A handy checklist of what you need to take into account when you do (remote) mob programming. Every time we’ve used mobbing as an approach it has paid off thusfar so I’m very interested in deepening the practice.
A clear write-up of how GOV.UK kept things running smoothly while their petitions website suffered an immense rush of signatures.
Zoom is an excellent video-conferencing app which turns out to be built on some technical excellence of its own (running WASM encoders and decoders in the browser).
I can’t really get enough of Haidt takedowns like this one in the Guardian.
The core irony of The Coddling of the American Mind is that, by opposing identity politics, its authors try to consolidate an identity that does not have to see itself as such. Enjoying the luxury of living free from discrimination and domination, they therefore insist that the crises moving young people to action are all in their heads.
In their safe space of TED talks and thinktanks and think pieces, the genteel crusaders against “political correctness”create their own speech codes. As their constituency shrinks, their cant of progress starts to sound hysterical. The minds they coddle just may be their own.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/20/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind-review
Kim Kardashian West is active in prison reform and studying law. There are no limits to what anybody can do.
https://www.vogue.com/article/kim-kardashian-west-cover-may-2019
That was a very good episode of The Cultures with an especially interesting treatment of community (by Naomi I guess) “as a framework of how and why to get on with people that you don’t like.”contrasting it with the current digital culture where everybody has to cultivate a likable persona.
Looking forward to the Micromobility Summit coming to Berlin this year. I hope we manage to have some serious progress on infrastructure and street legal scooters by then.
Some amazing work by Morten Just turning a phone into a 3D mouse using all the sensors that it has embedded in it. This is mindblowing and hints at all the things that are already possible using the technology we have.
https://medium.com/rotato/the-3d-mouse-in-your-pocket-b3984c5c3b3a
Barcelona is implementing a traffic transition we here in Berlin can only dream of.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/11/18273896/barcelona-spain-politics-superblocks
“Really, though, it was the same liberal fantasy, where everyone could laugh together because they were all on the right side of history.”
Despite all the recommendations, I’ve always managed to resist watching Parks and Recreations. I have no time or patience for hopepunk.
Berlin opens its first mobility hub and makes it look about as shabby as the average parking lot in Kreuzberg (which is what it is).
Nice to see some positive urban development coming from Turkey for a change.
If Berlin votes to expropriate Deutsche Wohnen, it will be a welcome step towards decommodification of housing. Not to mention the long overdue correction that it will give the local housing market.
Here is the sad recounting how the Dutch media fueled the rise of a white nationalist politician to the point where he’s polling as the second largest party now.
I’ve got a Patagonia down jacket and I’m glad that they are taking a stand against the appropriation of the brand by finance bros.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/patagonia-power-vest-policy-change
Most of my programming career has been focused on keeping things simple and eschewing premature abstractions summarized aptly by: “duplication is far cheaper than the wrong abstraction”
Existing code exerts a powerful influence. Its very presence argues that it is both correct and necessary. We know that code represents effort expended, and we are very motivated to preserve the value of this effort. And, unfortunately, the sad truth is that the more complicated and incomprehensible the code, i.e. the deeper the investment in creating it, the more we feel pressure to retain it (the “sunk cost fallacy“). It’s as if our unconscious tell us “Goodness, that’s so confusing, it must have taken ages to get right. Surely it’s really, really important. It would be a sin to let all that effort go to waste.”
https://www.sandimetz.com/blog/2016/1/20/the-wrong-abstraction
An elaboration on High Output Management split into “Running yourself”and “Running your team”by Keith Rabois.
http://delian.io/lessons-3
The best thing about ContraPoints is that she gives the most charitable possible treatment to in this case Gender Critical people (the other time it was Incels) and then still rips them for all that they are.