Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Co-working spaces are part of the new economy

Wall Street Journal Book Review:  The Cure for Poverty?, by Edward Glaeser (Harvard) (reviewing Annie Lowrey, Give People Money (2018) & Andrew Yang, The War on Normal People (2018))

Your weekly white paper: A study finds that exaggerated stories foster more closeness between people than honesty
↩︎ Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 

Airports Where You’re Most Likely To Be Hacked

Fortune: “Public Wi-Fi in airports might seen like a godsend to business travelers and weary parents. But it’s often a fast lane for hackers to access your information. Cloud security company Coronet has compiled a list of America’s most cyber insecure airports. And nowhere is worse than San Diego. Coronet looked at data from the 45 busiest airports over a five-month period, starting in January, then gave each airport a threat index score, based on the device vulnerability and Wi-Fi network risks.
Devon Zuegel says that our cities and the people who live in them would be much better off if we designed them around people and not cars.

Unfortunately, America’s inherited infrastructure is more like the old Embarcadero Highway than the boulevard that replaced it. Urban planners spent the 20th century building cities for cars, not people, and alternatives to driving have been systemically undervalued. This legacy has resulted in substandard health outcomes, missed economic opportunities, and a shortage of affordable housing. 

We can’t wait around for another earthquake to reverse generations of bad policy. Luckily, it doesn’t require a natural disaster to begin reshaping our infrastructure. Small changes can have an outsized impact in expanding alternatives for how people move around. Rebuilding our infrastructure to enable walking, cycling, and mass transit would bring health and economic benefits that far outweigh its price tag. 

People who live in rural areas more or less need their own cars in order to do anything, but private cars in cities are much less necessary. Cities should optimize for buses, subways, cyclists, and pedestrians — they get people to where they’re going without all the outsized infrastructure, waste, and pollution. *repeatedly sticks pin into voodoo doll of Robert Moses* 
Mike West: "Hook, line and sinker. Mainstream media has swallowed the government’s latest PR stunt on tax as if it were the most unimpeachable of peer-reviewed scientific formulae. When it comes to rewriting political press releases, they’ve put Pravda in the shade.
The scourge of multinational tax avoidance has apparently been fixed, you see. Sorted, problem solved, nothing to see here. Small people are now the scapegoats. Small people don’t tend to make party donations.
So it is that a credulous press has been running the government’s conveniently manufactured “tax gap” figures.  The corporate “tax gap” is apparently just $2.5 billion while individuals are responsible for a “tax gap” of  $8.7 billion; three times the size. This “tax gap” is an estimate of how much tax is missing; how much, that is, the Tax Office reckons it is owed by tax avoiders.
Tax dodging is of course rife across all demographics, and the tax gap figure for individuals, small-time tax dodgers – this $8.7 billion – may be close to the mark. Not the $2.5 billion though ascribed to large companies, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Co-working spaces are part of the new economy
Shared work spaces are emerging in regulatory voids left by outdated policy frameworks. To exist, they are relying on the forward thinking of local innovators seeking to revitalise urban centres.

Drawing inspiration from imaginative planners past
Looking back at Melbourne’s planning history, we might be able to find some inspiration to deal with rapid growth by thinking outside the box.

‘The 30-minute city’ & the reconceptualisation of the role of agencies
Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth are already way out of kilter with the goal supported by the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader.

Cities are complex systems – let’s start looking at them that way
After thousands of years of progress in urban development, we plateaued some 60 years ago. Cities are not safer, healthier, more efficient, or more equitable. They are getting worse on these measures. 

Tales of the New Cold War: 1 of 2: Trump & Putin speak of war and treason. Stephen F. Cohen @NYU @Princeton eastwestaccord.com. (podcast) The John Batchelor Show. Part 2. Normally, I would never say a podcast with no transcript is a must-listen. But this is refreshingly sane, so grab a cup of coffee.

Helsinki Talks – How Trump Tries To Rebalance The Global Triangle Moon of Alabama
BAR Book Forum: Jeremy Kuzmarov’s and John Marciano’s “The Russians are Coming, Again” Black Agenda Report
A walk on the wild side as Trump meets Putin at Finland station Pepe Escobar, Asia Times
Climb Down From the Summit of Hostile Propaganda Consortium News. Oddly, no coverage of the open letter mentioned in the artiicle.
Why Trump Is Getting Away With Foreign-Policy Insanity Foreign Policy. “Although ‘the Blob’ has reined Trump in to some degree, the relentless drumbeat of criticism from angry liberal interventionists and equally vehement ‘never Trump’ neoconservatives hasn’t had much impact on Trump’s support or on the president’s own convictions. The question is, why?” Because they’ve lost legitimacy. And for good reason.
Democrats want Trump’s interpreter to testify before Congress CNN. I don’t think the Norms Fairy would like that…
* * *
Mueller Reveals Russia Investigation Just Elaborate Sting To Nail Clinton Child Sex-Slavery Ring The Onion

From the Start, Trump Has Muddied a Clear Message: Putin Interfered NYT
What Mueller’s Latest Indictment Reveals About Russian and U.S. Spycraft The Intercept. Surely the more sophisticated our techniques are revealed to be, the greater attribution issues become?
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