Friday, November 09, 2018

Myths Of The Gig Economy


Power never concedes anything without a fight.





NSW judge lashes Mehajer in bail decision

THE READ: "In order to build a successful enterprise, you have to identify a clear mission from the outset and find effective ways to share that mission with your people." How a publishing empire began from a house in suburban Boston. By Glenn Rifkin in Fast Company.


Priceless trove of poems by English writer Gerard Manley Hopkins is discovered | Daily Mail Online

The librarian who showed me the treasure said that merely to open it made her go weak at the knees. It had the same effect on me. Indeed, when I opened it and turned its pages, I found tears coursing down my cheeks. All these poems were written in obscurity, and without any hope of being published. Yet they are among the most magnificent things written in English



Myths Of The Gig Economy


he gig economy has not only turned millions of Americans into contractors, but it’s given the more successful entrepreneurs the tools to grow even faster. A fast-moving startup can secure talent as it needs it, outsource more quotidian tasks like payroll, and stay lean and mean; indeed, I see entrepreneurs employ this approach through my work at EY supporting creative, successful startups. But there are lots of myths about gig work, whether full-time or part time.

MARIE COLVIN DEDICATED HER EXTRAORDINARY LIFE TO DESCRIBING “WHAT REALLY HAPPENS IN WARS” The Intercept


How Architectural Digest Documented Conspicuous Wealth


Si Newhouse had apprehended the seismic shift then afoot in the upper-income levels of American taste—away from the discreet cultivation of East Coast grandees like the Rockefellers and Mellons (which I’ve called stealth wealth), and toward the unabashed display of new money that characterized the Reagan Revolution, especially on the West Coast and across the Sun Belt, where the operative attitude was “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” And no magazine reflected that change more accurately than Architectural Digest. … Read More


Soaring Prices For Antiquities Raise New Looting Fears


A bidding war at Christie's last week sent the price of a 3,000-year-old stone relief from $7 million to more than $28 million, setting a world record for ancient Assyrian artworks and raising fears among some archaeologists that soaring prices will fuel the market for looted antiquities as well as legally acquired ones. … Read More



Thurman, Neil J. and Fletcher, Richard, Are Newspapers Heading Towards Post-Print Obscurity? A Case Study of the Independent’s Transition to Online-Only (2018). Digital Journalism, doi: 10.1080/21670811.2018.1504625. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3256638 [h/t Joe Hodnicki]

“With print circulations in decline and the print advertising market shrinking, newspapers in many countries are under pressure. Some — like Finland’s Taloussanomat and Canada’s La Presse — have decided to stop printing and go online-only. Others, like the Sydney Morning Herald, are debating whether to follow. Those newspapers that have made the switch often paint a rosy picture of a sustainable and profitable digital future. This study examines the reality behind the spin via a case study of The Independent, a general-interest UK national newspaper that went digital-only in March 2016. We estimate that, although its net British readership did not decline in the year after it stopped printing, the total time spent with The Independent by its British audiences fell 81%, a disparity caused by huge differences in the habits of online and print readers. This suggests that when newspapers go online-only they may move back into the black, but they also forfeit much of the attention they formerly enjoyed. Furthermore, although The Independent is serving at least 50% more overseas browsers since going online-only, the relative influence on that growth of internal organizational change and external factors — such as the “Trump Bump” in news consumption — is difficult to determine.”


Missions and adaptation: The latest installments of the innovation facets series 

We need a better way of thinking and talking about public sector innovation. To that end, OPSI is developing an innovation model where we explore its different facets. We already looked at how innovation is multi-faceted, how different types of innovation lead to different types of change and the facet #1 enhancement-oriented innovation. Now, we are looking at the facet #2 mission-oriented innovation. This is the kind where there is a clear outcome or overarching objective for which innovation is harnessed. Read the mission-oriented innovation blog and check out the video

Adaptive innovation describes situations where the purpose to innovate may be the discovery process itself, driven by new knowledge or the changing environment. When the environment changes, it can be necessary to respond in kind with innovation that helps adapt to the change. Read the facet #3 adaptive innovation blog and check out the video 

Part 4 of Innovation 101: Implementation.  

Canadian innovation system review: OPSI will give an overview of the findings from the first ever review of the innovation system of the Public Service of Canada. It will take place on December 5th: 3:30pm CET. Read more here 




Widely criticised draft laws aimed at beefing up protections for whistleblowers are being reworked by the federal government which will aim to get them through parliament by the end of the year.
The long-awaited reforms to Australia's private sector whistleblower laws were introduced to the Senate a year ago, but have not progressed amid concerns flagged by experts that they were "inadequate" and an "opportunity lost", as well as criticism from Labor, the Greens and the Centre Alliance.
Extreme Risk





SAME OLD SONG AND DANCE: The man who has told Americans more than 6,420 documented falsehoods accused a CNN reporter of being "a rude, terrible person" and goes on a racist jag in defending his self-declared "nationalist" label. The count of Trump falsehoods (as of Nov. 1). Meanwhile, the Democratic House says it will prioritize its probes on allegations of money laundering, Russian interference and Trump family finances.


COUNTERINTUITIVE?: "The Republicans’ midterm defeat has made the president more desperate to undermine the rule of law," The Atlantic's Adam Serwer writes. Trump's defeat, Serwer argues, will make him more dangerous in the drive toward his one ideological commitment: "His racially exclusive vision of American citizenship."


‘GROSS’: That’s the political editor of the conservative TownHall.com site on Trump’s takedown of defeated Republicans the president deemed insufficiently loyal. “I like & respect every defeated House member he gracelessly and gratuitously singled out for derision,” Guy Benson tweeted.


WILL OTHER REPUBLICANS SPEAK OUT?: That's Jill Abramson's question as racism gets more overt and anti-Semitic symbols crop up in GOP ads. "Mitt Romney, coming to the Senate from Utah, forcefully denounced Trump in 2016. Could he emerge as a voice of conscience?" the former New York Times editor asked in The Guardian.