UK corporate tax revenues, as a percentage of gdp
Suspected Chinese spies charged with obstructing US Huawei investigation
It's time to bring Frank and Fearless back to the APS
NY Times: She’s Inheriting Millions. She Wants Her Wealth Taxed Away.
More Than Half of People are Frustrated by Digital Government Services GovExec: “People want an easy-to-use digital government customer service experience, according to an Accenture report released Wednesday, as more than half of respondents found it frustrating to access government services. According to the report, people want their government service experiences to be simple, secure and have a human element. Specifically, respondents said it should be simple and easy for people to get the help they need, governments should strengthen security practices and there should be a balance between human and digital interactions. In particular, the report found that most people complained about lengthy and confusing processes when it comes to public services. Only 36% of people said that government agency processes and interactions are intuitive and 41% said that government processes are clear and understandable. Notably, 46% of respondents said they would be more likely to use digital technology to access government services if the technology was easier to use…”
Is Rishi too rich to be PM? Unherd. Deadly subhead: “People won’t accept austerity from a man with a heated pool.”
CBSNews: “Hackers have stolen more than $3 billion in cryptocurrency so far this year, shattering the previous record of $2.1 billion set in 2021, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. A big chunk of that $3 billion, around $718 million, was taken this month in 11 different hacks, Chainalysis said in a series of tweets posted Wednesday. “October is now the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity, with more than half the month still to go,” the company tweeted. After four hacks yesterday, October is now the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity, with more than half the month still to go. So far this month, $718 million has been stolen from #DeFi protocols across 11 different hacks. In past years, hackers focused their efforts on attacking crypto exchanges, but those companies have since strengthened their security, Chainalysis said. These days, cybercriminals are targeting “cross-chain bridges,” which allow investors to transfer digital assets and data among different blockchains…”
She’s made 1,750 Wikipedia bios for female scientists who haven’t gotten their due Washington Post
Washington Post: “On a whim, Jess Wade typed out her first Wikipedia page five years ago. It was a biography of Kim Cobb, an American climatologist who — despite earning several scientific accolades — had never been written about on the popular online encyclopedia. “I met her at a science event, and I was massively impressed,” said Wade, 33, a British physicist, who, after a quick search online, was stunned to see that Cobb had no profile on the public platform.
Wade had stumbled into something she found troubling: Cobb was one of countless deserving women whose names — and lengthy list of achievements — had yet to be chronicled on Wikipedia, the go-to site for an estimated 2 billion people a month who are seeking information about individuals, ideas and topics large and small. So, since 2017, Wade has written more than 1,750 Wikipedia pages for women and minority scientists and engineers whose accomplishments were not documented on the site…”
Tamil Nadu: “Two-thirds of this deficit was made up within 6 months after school reopening. Further, while learning loss was regressive, the recovery was progressive. A government-run after-school remediation program contributed ~24% of the cohort-level recovery, and likely aided the progressive recovery.”
The bosses who silently nudge out workers
Employers are often reluctant to fire employees for myriad reasons. But quietly side-lining them in the hope that they’ll quit often leads to even greater harm.
When marketing manager Eliza returned from holiday, she received an email from her boss asking her to arrive at work early the next day. “I instantly feared the worst,” she explains. “I knew the job wasn’t the best fit. I’d had my probation previously extended; there was an expectation of weekend working and post-work drinking that didn’t suit me. I thought he’d used my time off as an opportunity to fire me.”
However, when Eliza arrived at her boss’s office, she wasn’t immediately let go. Instead, she was informed of a company restructure – her job description was being completely rewritten. Someone else would take over her tasks, and she would be expected to work remotely in a new admin role.
In the weeks that followed, Eliza’s professional life became much quieter. Instead of formulating the London-based events agency’s marketing strategy from the office or attending live shows as part of her remit, her main duties now consisted of simply being available between 0900 and 1800, sending the occasional email and completing the odd routine task from home.
Eliza had effectively been frozen out by her employer. Barely a month later, she quit. “It was humiliating – I was made to feel worthless,” she says. “It was the worst experience of my career: I’d rather have been just fired on the spot and paid off than have to go through that.”
