When the Job Shoves You, Bionic Shoes
In 1977, the perfectly named Johnny Paycheck sang the lyrics, Take this job and shove it, landing a number one hit, inspiring a movie, and creating a lasting anthem and adage. But another lyric might more aptly fit our current moment: Take these employees and shove them. When push comes to shove, today’s corporations are making more money while employing fewer people. “In 1985, IBM was America’s most valuable company, one of its most profitable, and among its largest employers, with a payroll of nearly 400,000. Today, Nvidia is nearly 20 times as valuable and five times as profitable as IBM was back then, adjusted for inflation. Yet it employs roughly a 10th as many people. That simple comparison says something profound about today’s economy: Its rewards are going disproportionately toward capital instead of labor. Profits have soared since the pandemic, and the market value attached to those profits even more. The result: Capital, which includes businesses, shareholders and superstar employees, is triumphant, while the average worker ekes out marginal gains. The divergence between capital and labor helps explain the disconnect between a buoyant economy and pessimistic households.” WSJ (Gift Article): The Big Money in Today’s Economy Is Going to Capital, Not Labor. (Alt link.) Capital gains are going up, the value placed on human capital is going down. And, of course, these trends are only being accelerated by technological shifts and political winds. Yale economist, Pascual Restrepo, explains: “There will be winners: workers whose jobs require social skills, proximity or manual labor, and consumers, who get cheaper products and services. The biggest winners of all? Shareholders.”
+ “Anyone subcontracting tasks to AI is clever enough to imagine what might come next—a day when augmentation crosses into automation, and cognitive obsolescence compels them to seek work at a food truck, pet spa, or massage table. At least until the humanoid robots arrive.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): America Isn’t Ready for What AI Will Do to Jobs. (They may have an inkling, though. What a new Gallup poll shows about the depth of Americans’ gloom.)
+ And about our new immigrant unfriendly policies that are supposedly going to create more jobs for Americans? Binyamin Appelbaum in the NYT (Gift Article): What Replaces Deported Immigrant Workers? Not Americans. “There is a big hole in the seductively simple argument that Mr. Trump’s policy will push employers to hire Americans: For many jobs, the cheaper and more likely replacement is a robot. And the jobs that can’t be done by robots? Many will simply leave the country.”
+ It doesn’t take an AI program to figure out that these factors will contribute to an already massive economic divide. And we’re engineering it to be even wider. Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet report plunging tax bills thanks to AI investment and new rules in Washington. Meanwhile, US consumer delinquencies jump to highest in almost a decade.
+ Related: Here’s a flight tracker showing all the private jets leaving the Bay Area after the Super Bowl.
Pet Detective
One of the better Super Bowl ads was for Amazon Ring’s Search Party feature that gives neighbors a way to combine their security cam feeds to quickly locate missing pets. Amazon’s CEO says the feature helped bring home 99 dogs in 90 days. But like many security stories, there is another side to this one. “Chris Gilliard, a privacy expert and author of the upcoming book Luxury Surveillance, told 404 Media these features and its Super Bowl ad are ‘a clumsy attempt by Ring to put a cuddly face on a rather dystopian reality: widespread networked surveillance by a company that has cozy relationships with law enforcement and other equally invasive surveillance companies.'” With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet.
+ Most of us want more security and technology enables us to get it. But most of us don’t want that same technology used for every purpose. Flock cameras to make school parking lots more secure? Sounds great. But what about this? Local police aid ICE by tapping school cameras amid Trump’s immigration crackdown. “The data raises questions about the degree to which campus surveillance technology intended for student safety is being repurposed to support immigration enforcement.”
Rebooting Shoes
“Amplify is designed for that everyday athlete to give them the energy they need to go further, to go faster, with greater levels of confidence. It’s like an e-bike for your feet.” NPR: How bionic sneakers could change human mobility. (I only hope they make the same sound as the Six Million Dollar Man’s bionics…)
Five Ring Circus
“Instantly, scoreboards showed Aicher had finished in 1 minutes, 36.14 seconds — four-hundredths of a second behind. Johnson sighed and rubbed a hand over her head in relief. Johnson ultimately won and Aicher took the silver, their careers forever altered by that tiny difference determined by the most important team at the Olympics you don’t know about — the Omega timekeepers.” The most important team at the Olympics isn’t a country. It’s the timekeepers. “Since the Swiss timing giant sent employees with 30 stopwatches to Los Angeles for the 1932 Olympics, Omega’s business of keeping results at the Olympics has grown so large and sophisticated that a delegation from the company is already in Los Angeles preparing for the Olympics’ return in 2028.”
+ Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympic hex continues after faltering in team combined slalom.
+ Speed skating star Leerdam wins gold as fiance Jake Paul weeps. (The former was enjoyable, the latter more so.)
+ “A postrace interview with the bronze medal winner in the men’s Olympic biathlon competition on Tuesday took an unexpected turn when he revealed in a live broadcast that he had been unfaithful to his girlfriend.” (He basically seemed to be trying to get her back. Will it, or a bronze, be enough?)
Extra, Extra
Bet Threat: Legalized gambling in many states meant that millions of people were suddenly walking around with souped-up casinos in their pockets. Prediction markets mean that people in all 50 states can bet on anything, anytime. “Everything is gambling now”: How betting is taking over America. “These days, you can wager on everything from Sunday’s Super Bowl LX, November’s midterm elections, March’s Oscars, this winter’s weather, the words that commentators will use — even the second coming of Jesus Christ.” The stats are already insane. “Nearly 40 percent of men and 20 percent of women gamble online daily. Two percent of these bettors gamble more than ten hours a day … Most bettors are men. They’ve gotten younger and younger as sports betting companies gamified gambling. Pokémon, the trading card and video game mega-franchise, co-opted slot machine and casino imagery in the 1990s, and technology companies latched on, eager to bring in young gamblers to replace the old heads. Public schools see problems with boys, and sports betting stokes some school officials’ fears of it becoming as ubiquitous as cellphones and as poisonous as social media.” Prospect: The Scourge of Online Sports Betting.
+ Harm to Table: “A number of people working at hunger relief organizations and in education, who asked not to be identified for the record for fear of retribution, said the food instability and lack of access to social services are not simply a byproduct of the ICE crackdown but rather part of the agency’s strategy, essentially weaponizing food. Among other tactics, they said, the agency is tracking food delivery volunteers and staking out donation distribution centers.” NYT (Gift Article): Hungry Families, ICE and Secret Grocery Networks in Minneapolis. This is America, folks. And from ProPublica: Letters from the Children Detained at ICE’s Dilley Facility. From a nine year-old: “Seen how people like me, immigrants are been treated changes my perspective about the U.S.”
+ Death Wish Granted: “A small group of conservative activists has worked for 16 years to stop all government efforts to fight climate change. Their efforts seem poised to pay off.” Trump Allies Near ‘Total Victory’ in Wiping Out U.S. Climate Regulation.
+ No Longer Deep Sixed: “If we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those three million files.” Democratic congressman Ro Khanna names six men appearing in unredacted Epstein files.
+ Guthrie Case: “The FBI on Tuesday released new surveillance photos from the night Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, disappeared. The images show someone wearing a ski mask and gloves.”
+ Update: Measles Bad: “Dr. Mehmet Oz has urged Americans to get vaccinated against measles, one of the strongest endorsements of the vaccine yet from a top health official in the Trump administration, which has repeatedly undermined confidence in vaccine safety.” (In addition to the public statement, he might want to send an internal memo.)
+ Winter is Coming: “As tensions with Russia in the Arctic rise, U.S. Special Forces have been prepping for the future or war in the high north in Sweden.” How do you fight where it’s hard to even survive? In this video piece, WSJ’s Sune Rasmussen joined U.S. Green Berets in a grueling Arctic training camp to find out.
Bottom of the News
“Teratophiliacs were once a niche group that bonded over their sexual attraction to monsters in obscure forums. Now—as online communities proliferate and genres like romantasy grow—monster p-rn is going mainstream.” GQ: Inside the Booming Business of Monster P-rn. (This gives new meaning to doing the Monster Mash.)
