Jan 30, 2023 3 min read

You Should Read - Jan 27

Just One Thing

Every Riot Is a Police Riot
Some thoughts on police murder in America, and the gravity of intent.

Police kill citizens. It’s something they do. It’s something they receive immunity from our courts for doing, most of the time. And most data will show that if you are a Black citizen, then you are 2.5 to 3 times more likely to be murdered in any encounter with the police. And there is data that shows that if you are Black, you are going to get far more spins at the police-encounter wheel than a citizen deemed “white”— far more likely to be policed, in other words—pulled over, targeted for questioning, harassed, menaced, arrested, beaten, killed.

A lot of people upon hearing this desire, say things like, “but if the police weren’t there, who would keep us safe?”—which reveals to me that for a lot of people, the news of yet another Black person murdered by police gives them a certain sense of safety—or at least does not complicate their supposition, that the police exist to keep them safe.

The Layoff Contagion

As a snapshot of the current zeitgeist, my LinkedIn News headlines the other day is hard to beat:

Economy expands at healthy clip
High-earning men working less: Study
Latest layoffs: Companies making cuts
Americans are burdened by rent

Culture Study Layoff Brain
⇒ This was going to be the Just One Thing for this week, until I ran across the article above re: policing. The links below are referenced in this essay, pulled out here to spotlight.

Gen The Generation Shaped By Layoffs: For young people, layoffs are now part of the fabric of working life. It’s taking a deep toll on their psyches and careers.

The Atlantic The Tech-Layoff ‘Contagion’: Tens of thousands of people have been laid off from large tech and media companies in the past 12 months. The reasons for this are not obvious.

Stanford University Why are there so many tech layoffs, and why should we be worried? Stanford scholar explains

Layoffs often do not cut costs, as there are many instances of laid-off employees being hired back as contractors, with companies paying the contracting firm. Layoffs often do not increase stock prices, in part because layoffs can signal that a company is having difficulty. Layoffs do not increase productivity. Layoffs do not solve what is often the underlying problem, which is often an ineffective strategy, a loss of market share, or too little revenue. Layoffs are basically a bad decision.

Harvard Business Review What Companies Still Get Wrong About Layoffs

McSweeny's Macroeconomic Changes Have Made It Impossible for Me to Want to Pay You

Collected Ephemera

Fortune Half of Global GDP Relies on Nature–But It’s Being Wiped Out: Here’s the business case for investing in biodiversity.

Barron's Future Returns: ESG-Related Ventures Are a ‘Bright Spot’ in Private Markets

CounterPunch Swiss Miss: FBI as “Good Guys”?

New York Magazine The Uprising That Ran Out: The death of Keenan Anderson marks the end of an era.

CrimethInc. What They Mean When They Say "Peace" (2014)

Vice CYBER: The Nextdoor Poster to Political Activist Pipeline: How a hyperlocal social media site became a hotbed of political organization.

Bill McKibben Protest Isn't Terrorism: Rhetorical escalation can be deadly

Improved Initiative Attempting To Tighten Control is Leading To Wizards' Downfall
⇒ "Wizards" being "Wizards of the Coast", the Hasbro division responsible for the games Dungeons & Dragons and Magic the Gathering.

Forbes The Iconfactory Co-Founder Gedeon Maheux Talks Accessibility On Twitter, ‘The Blow’ Of Losing Twitterrific In New Interview

Five Thirty-Eight Republicans Didn’t Get Less Popular After All That Speaker Drama — They Were Already Unpopular

Dwell Tidycore Makes a Real Mess: How organization content ignores the most important part of being neat: buying less.
⇒ On the heels of this article, it comes out that Marie Kondo has given up trying to be tidy.

Bloomberg YouTube Illegally Uses Return-to-Office Push to Derail Union, Complaint Claims: Alphabet Workers Union files complaint with US labor board; Contract workers at Texas site have been called back to work

Matthew Bell Why VR/AR Gets Farther Away as It Comes Into Focus

The Marshall Project The Many Ingenious Ways People in Prison Use (Forbidden) Cell Phones: Despite the security concerns of administrators, incarcerated people use phones to hustle, make TikToks, or publicize prison conditions.

Dan Hon Your Timeline Needs a DJ
⇒ I haven't read this. I was sold on the headline.

The Wabbit Hole

Selections from my Wikipedia searches this past week...