It Was The Government That Produced COVID-19 Vaccine Success Health Affairs Blog (run75441). Hoisted from comments.
Column: Bitcoin, dogecoin, NTFs, GameStop — is this the peak of investment absurdity? Mike Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times.
Work from Home & Productivity: Evidence from Personnel & Analytics Data on IT Professionals
Becker Friedman Institute Working Paper, May 6, 2021: Work from Home & Productivity: Evidence from Personnel & Analytics Data on IT Professionals , Michael Gibbs, Friederike Mengel, Christoph Siemrot.
“Using personnel and analytics data from over 10,000 skilled professionals at a large Asian IT services company, we compare productivity before and during the work from home [WFH] period of the Covid-19 pandemic. Total hours worked increased by roughly 30%, including a rise of 18% in working after normal business hours. Average output did not significantly change. Therefore, productivity fell by about 20%. Time spent on coordination activities and meetings increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank considerably. Employees also spent less time networking, and received less coaching and 1:1 meetings with supervisors. These findings suggest that communication and coordination costs increased substantially during WFH, and constituted an important source of the decline in productivity. Employees with children living at home increased hours worked more than those without children at home, and suffered a bigger decline in productivity than those without children.”
Whyw are architectural awards going to buildings that are drab and lifeless? Modern architecture has taken a very, very wrong turn ... more »
A Day in Roaring 20's Berlin | 1927 AI Enhanced Film [ 60 fps,4k]
Library architecture and design: a worldwide guide
Amazon blocks 10 billion—yes, billion—listings in massive counterfeit crackdown
AP via Fortune – “Amazon, which has been under pressure from shoppers, brands and lawmakers to crack down on counterfeits on its site, said [in its 2020 Brand Protection Report] Monday that it blocked more than 10 billion suspected phony listings last year before any of their offerings could be sold. The numbers were released in Amazon’s first report on its anti-counterfeiting efforts since it announced new tools and technologies in 2019. The number of blocked phony listings last year was up about 67% from the year before. The Seattle-based e-commerce behemoth said the number of counterfeiters attempting to sell on the site rose as scammers tried to take advantage of shoppers who were buying more online during the pandemic. Amazon has been wrestling with counterfeits for years. But since 2019, it has warned investors in government filings that the sale of phony goods poses a risk to the company and its image. Brands may not want to sell their items on the site if they know there are fake versions being offered. And knock-offs could cause shoppers to lose their trust in Amazon. Counterfeiters try to get their products on Amazon through its third-party marketplace, where sellers can list their items directly on the site. The company destroyed 2 million counterfeit products sent to its warehouses last year before they could be sold. And it said fewer than 0.01% of all items bought on the site received counterfeit complaints from shoppers…”
Space humility
People who see our planet from outer space experience profound awe, humility, and a recognition of the fragility of life. They return to Earth changed.
1. David Thomson, A Light in the Dark: A History of Movie Directors. One of the best attempts to make the auteur notion intelligible to the modern viewer, he surveys major directors such as Welles, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Godard and others. Stephen Frears is the dark horse pick, and he recommends the Netflix show Ozark. I always find Thomson worth reading.
2. Wenfei Tong, Bird Love: The Family Life of Birds. Now this is a great book, wonderful photos, superb analytics and bottom-line approach throughout. By the way, “Superb fairywrens are particularly adept at avoiding incest.”
3. William Deresiewicz, The Death of the Artist: How Creators are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech. Ignore the subtitle (which itself illustrates a theme of the book), this is the best book on the economics of the arts — circa 2021 — in a long time. “The good news is, you can do it yourself. The bad news is, you have to.” Every aspiring internet creator, whether “artist” or not, should read this book. If you don’t think of your career itself as a creative product — bye-bye!
I very much enjoyed Richard Thompson (with Scott Timberg), Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice, 1967-1975, still smarter than the competition and you don’t even have to know much about Thompson.
Dorothy Sue Cobble, For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality is a serious and thorough yet readable account of what the title promises, with a minimum of mood affiliation.
Joanne Meyerowitz, A War on Global Poverty: The Lost Promise of Redistribution and the Rise of Microcredit. A history of antipoverty efforts, with an emphasis on the shift toward “enterprise” in the 1980s, with the microcredit treatment being mostly pre-Yunus.
Mathilde Fasting has edited After the End of History: Conversations with Frank Fukuyama.
Julian Baggini’s The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well is not written for me, but it is a lively and useful introduction to one of humanity’s greatest minds.
Don’t forget Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Bettering Humanomics: A New, and Old, Approach to Economic Science.
Arrived in my pile there is William D. Nordhaus, The Spirit of Green: The Economics of Collisions and Contagions in a Crowded World, and in September Adam Tooze is publishing Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy, and also for September there is Gregg Easterbrook’s Blue Age: How the US Navy Created Global Prosperity — And Why We’re in Danger of Losing It