Tuesday, February 02, 2021

In The News (14)


Everyday Covid mistakes we are all still making  A common problem is not connecting the dots between the people you see in one context, and those you see in another. “For instance, young people often feel they can mix freely with their peers, because they know their peers are not at high risk. Then they’ll go and see their grandparents, and be more careful with them – but not as careful as they need to be, given that they’ve been mixing freely with their peers, who’ve been mixing freely with everybody” ............. Even if young people avoid their grandparents, but mix freely with their parents, their parents might then go and see the grandparents. ............ If you can smell someone’s garlic or alcohol breath, or cigarette smoke, you’re inhaling air carrying not just the smell of the garlic, alcohol or smoke, but any virus that’s leaving their nose or mouth if they’re infected .............. just as you’ll eventually detect the smell of cigarette smoke if someone lights up on the opposite side of the office, airborne viruses gradually accumulate in stuffy indoor conditions, which is why ventilation is so important. ............ People should be conscious of ventilation in the workplace, shops, or any enclosed space – including at home, which is where most transmission takes place.” .............  and the virus doesn’t smell of anything, so you don’t know  

Has the Pandemic Transformed the Office Forever? Companies are figuring out how to balance what appears to be a lasting shift toward remote work with the value of the physical workplace. .........  digital tools such as e-mail, Excel, Google Docs, video conferencing, virtual whiteboarding, and chat channels like Slack ................  Twenty-seven per cent of the American workforce will be remote in 2021 ......... About twenty million workers have moved—many of them out of major cities—or are planning to. .......... Everyone said that they missed seeing their colleagues in person, but very few workers envisaged returning to the office five days a week. One to three days was more appealing. ........... humans can maintain stable social relationships with no more than a hundred and fifty people at any one time. ..........  without the company’s New York headquarters, people who worked in other cities and countries felt much more involved. One worker wrote, “New York has stopped acting like it’s New York and everyone else.” ......... “The office can be very overwhelming and very hard to concentrate, that’s been the best part about working from home, being able to focus” ................ people working in open offices take sixty-two per cent more sick leave, according to a 2011 Danish study. ............  Creating a successful digital product such as Google’s Ad Words—an invention that helped turn the money-losing search company into an advertising-driven colossus—often involves cross-disciplinary teams of engineers, marketers, and product managers. ............. I couldn’t concentrate. I missed my colleagues. Whether walled, open, or cloud-based, an office is about the people who work there. Without the people, the office is an empty shell.

Amsterdam Is Embracing a Radical New Economic Theory to Help Save the Environment. Could It Also Replace Capitalism?   Inner Ring: Twelve essentials of life that no one in society should be deprived of; Outer Ring: Nine ecological limits of earth’s life-­supporting systems that humanity must not collectively overshoot; Sweet Spot: The space both environmentally safe and socially just where humanity can thrive ........... the goal of getting “into the doughnut” should replace governments’ and economists’ pursuit of never-ending GDP growth. ............ denim is one of the most resource-intensive fabrics in the world, with each pair of jeans requiring thousands of gallons of water and the use of polluting chemicals.  


COVID has decimated women's careers — we need a Marshall Plan for Moms, now  a Marshall Plan for Moms—one that includes a monthly, means-tested $2,400 monthly payment to the women ......... mothers’ unpaid, unseen, unappreciated labor.  

As Biden gets into gear, could a Federal Reserve interest rate rise be on the cards? The Fed’s dilemma is whether the new US president’s stimulus plan risks overheating the US, given that the economy is being swamped with liquidity from the central bank’s bond buy-back scheme

China-US tensions: meet us halfway to build trust and ease conflict, former Chinese vice-premier urges Biden Zeng Peiyan tells Hong Kong forum confrontation between the two global powers need not be inevitable Hong Kong chief executive appeals for new US administration to view the national security law ‘in a fair manner’

Helping Kids Is a Very Good Idea Republicans won’t support the Democrats’ proposal, but they should.
Capitol Riot Puts Spotlight on ‘Apocalyptically Minded’ Global Far Right Leaderless but united by racist ideology that has been supercharged by social media, extremists have built a web of real and online connections that worries officials. ........ For many, the idea of an international nationalist movement is an oxymoron. 

The Dark Reality Behind Saudi Arabia’s Utopian Dreams  the Line, a postmodern ecotopia to be built on the kingdom’s northwest coast. It will be a narrow urban strip 106 miles long with no roads, no cars and no pollution. ...........  plans to pour $500 billion into the Line and related projects .......... The hubris underlying these proposals, nourished by generations of yes men (including well-paid Western consultants), will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in Saudi Arabia. ............. What the prince doesn’t say is that there are already thousands of people living in harmony with nature in the same area: a tribal community that has been there for centuries and is now being replaced by the project. .......... Narrow-minded clerics preside over corrupt bureaucracies that are resistant to change.  




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