Financial Incentives and Other Nudges Do Not Increase COVID-19 Vaccinations among the Vaccine Hesitant NBER. From the Abstract: “Consistent with backlash concerns, financial incentives and negative messages decreased vaccination rates for some subgroups. Financial incentives and other behavioral nudges do not meaningfully increase SARS-CoV-2 vaccination rates amongst the vaccine hesitant.” What a shame. Bribes don’t work. Perhaps the neoliberal necrosis isn’t as advanced as we imagine.
Contestants from 55 countries entered over 9000 photos in the Close-Up Photographer of the Year competition for 2021 and now the winners have been announced. I’ve included a few of my favorites above (from top to bottom): Pål Hermansen, Johan De Ridder, Håkan Kvarnstrom, and Bruno Militelli. (via in focus)
Vice: “The newly obtained document shows in granular detail the sort of data that the country’s carriers keep, and for how long. Much of the information reiterates what we already knew about law enforcement access to telecommunications data—how officials can request location data from a telecom with a warrant or use court orders to obtain other information on a phone user, for example. But the document does provide insights on what exactly each carrier collects, a more recent run-down of how long each telecom retains certain types of data for, and images of the tool the FBI makes available to law enforcement agencies across the country to analyze cell phone tower data. Ryan Shapiro, executive director of nonprofit organization Property of the People, shared the document with Motherboard after obtaining it through a public record act request. Property of the People focuses on obtaining and publishing government records.
What Schumacher knew but Marx denied - with all the terrible consequences that the twentieth century produced - was that the solution to the triumph of want, as far as there can ever be one, is not political revolution followed by a grand new social structure, but something harder and less spectacular: spiritual vigilance. The problem of want can be guided by systems and cultures, but it is, ultimately, a matter of the heart. Want will dissolve everything, if we let it, and new structures will not prevent that. Guarding the heart is the best defence against the acid. Via https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/
People Aren’t Meant to Talk This Much The Atlantic (John Siman). PMC proto-fascists show their true colors. The subhead: “Breaking up social-media companies is one way to fix them. Shutting their users up is a better one.”
Facebook tells staff to preserve documents amid heated inquiries Guardian