Good Articles That Don't Deserve Their Own Threads

doghouse said:
As a rule I never link the Guardian, but this is a pretty decent piece.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...ality-religion-robots-sapiens-book?CMP=twt_gu
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Easier to just remove the section that are surplus to requirements; rather than feed them and supply them with virtual reality distractions.

There was a Dan Brown novel - 'Inferno' where the plan was to leak a virus that made a fraction of those in contact with it sterile. A Malthusian solution to population growth.
 
Kingstonian said:
Easier to just remove the section that are surplus to requirements; rather than feed them and supply them with virtual reality distractions.

There was a Dan Brown novel - 'Inferno' where the plan was to leak a virus that made a fraction of those in contact with it sterile. A Malthusian solution to population growth.
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Think the point is that it's all distraction anyway, e.g. work, play, games whatever.

Dan Brown went off a cliff after Lost Symbol. Not sure what happened, but seems like he is entirely too in love with himself.
 
Rambo said:
Yes, i understand that, thank you. What I'm having trouble wrapping my head around is why the simple fact of employing a writer who you do not like discredits an article in the same paper by a completely different author. And not even a journalist mind you.
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What are you talking about? I like Greenwald. doghouse doghouse said he doesn't click on the Guardian, not me.
 
Full surveillance footage of Times Square attack 2017

"I smoked marijuana," he told police, according to court documents. "I laced the marijuana with PCP."

Embedded media from this media site is no longer available
 
Hidden ways that architecture affects how you feel

"Greater interaction across the disciplines would, for example, reduce the chances of repeating such architectural horror stories as the 1950s Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St Louis, Missouri, whose 33 featureless apartment blocks – designed by Minoru Yamasaki, also responsible for the World Trade Center – quickly became notorious for their crime, squalour and social dysfunction. Critics argued that the wide open spaces between the blocks of modernist high-rises discouraged a sense of community, particularly as crime rates started to rise."

The World Trade Center promoted crime, squalor and social dysfunction in Manhattan too? Well, I was too young to witness it.
 
güero said:
It is the appalling architecture that promotes crime, squalor and social dysfunction. e.g.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/architect-totalitarian-13246.html "Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social Reform."
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What? Brasilia is a ghetto?

The-National-Congress-of-Brazil-by-Oscar-Niemeyer1-537x285.jpg
 
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/sears-canada-future-1.4158495

Sears is about to go kaput in Canada.

"'The company is 60 or 70 per cent smaller than it was at peak,' said Antony Karabus, CEO of HRC Retail Advisory.

'It's very hard to cut sufficient costs and invest sufficiently in systems and merchandise development when your business has dropped over 70 per cent in 10-plus years.'"

How does an organisation run itself into the ground like this? How do the board, executives, management and staff just watch as crown jewels are all sold off all the whilst the business model falters? It didn't happen overnight either.

Meanwhile in the Amazon acquires Whole Foods story, Amazon's sales have quintupled since 2010.
 
Fwiffo said:
What? Brasilia is a ghetto?

The-National-Congress-of-Brazil-by-Oscar-Niemeyer1-537x285.jpg
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Not quite, the politicians are there in the week, but come Friday they're out of there to Sao Paolo or Rio for some serious R&R.

Fwiffo said:
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/sears-canada-future-1.4158495

Sears is about to go kaput in Canada.

"'The company is 60 or 70 per cent smaller than it was at peak,' said Antony Karabus, CEO of HRC Retail Advisory.

'It's very hard to cut sufficient costs and invest sufficiently in systems and merchandise development when your business has dropped over 70 per cent in 10-plus years.'"

How does an organisation run itself into the ground like this? How do the board, executives, management and staff just watch as crown jewels are all sold off all the whilst the business model falters? It didn't happen overnight either.

Meanwhile in the Amazon acquires Whole Foods story, Amazon's sales have quintupled since 2010.
Click to expand...

With these big retail outfits it's a case of believing it's cyclical and the good times will come back. Reality is their business model is dead. You can get shit online with more ease and cost effectively. The record companies too fucked-up by underestimating the digital market and its implications, but I believe they can make a come back, the big retailers are finished.
 
Fwiffo said:
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/sears-canada-future-1.4158495

Sears is about to go kaput in Canada.

"'The company is 60 or 70 per cent smaller than it was at peak,' said Antony Karabus, CEO of HRC Retail Advisory.

'It's very hard to cut sufficient costs and invest sufficiently in systems and merchandise development when your business has dropped over 70 per cent in 10-plus years.'"

How does an organisation run itself into the ground like this? How do the board, executives, management and staff just watch as crown jewels are all sold off all the whilst the business model falters? It didn't happen overnight either.

Meanwhile in the Amazon acquires Whole Foods story, Amazon's sales have quintupled since 2010.
Click to expand...

Fwiffo said:
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/sears-canada-future-1.4158495

Sears is about to go kaput in Canada.

"'The company is 60 or 70 per cent smaller than it was at peak,' said Antony Karabus, CEO of HRC Retail Advisory.

'It's very hard to cut sufficient costs and invest sufficiently in systems and merchandise development when your business has dropped over 70 per cent in 10-plus years.'"

How does an organisation run itself into the ground like this? How do the board, executives, management and staff just watch as crown jewels are all sold off all the whilst the business model falters? It didn't happen overnight either.

Meanwhile in the Amazon acquires Whole Foods story, Amazon's sales have quintupled since 2010.
Click to expand...

Because it was and is a one-trick pony that did not take opportunities to diversify. Classic business school case study. Think Kodak. One-trick pony that did not embrace digital until too late.

Almost 90% of the Fortune 500 companies that existed in the mid-50's were gone by 2014.
 
Thruth said:
Because it was and is a one-trick pony that did not take opportunities to diversify. Classic business school case study. Think Kodak. One-trick pony that did not embrace digital until too late.

Almost 90% of the Fortune 500 companies that existed in the mid-50's were gone by 2014.
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Kodak was first in on digital, but considered it not viable. That was back in the 70s, they were well ahead of the game.
 
Lord Buckley said:
Kodak was first in on digital, but considered it not viable. That was back in the 70s, they were well ahead of the game.
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True. But they mismanaged their entry into digital while still trying to protect their legacy in film-based technology plus their foray into digital printing was a failure. All this resulted in bankruptcy in 2012 followed by a rebirth. Holding onto one legacy without being able to crack a new one was the downfall.
 
THIS IS THE BEST ARTICLE OF THE YEAR. MILLENNIALS WILL SAVE US AFTER ALL!!!!!!!!!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-old-timey-jobs-are-hot-again-1496754001?mod=e2tw
Why Old-Timey Jobs Are Hot Again
Millennials are driving a resurgence of age-old crafts, choosing to become bartenders, butchers and barbers in part as a reaction to the digital age


BN-TR757_CRAFTj_GR_20170601153607.jpg


Bartender E.J. Psilas makes a cocktail at Green Russell, a Bonanno Concepts bar in Denver, in February. Occupations such as bartender, butcher, furniture maker and fishmonger are making a resurgence among young middle-class urbanites.PHOTO: RYAN DAVID BROWN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By
Lauren Weber
June 6, 2017 9:00 a.m. ET
181 COMMENTS

Gentrification isn’t just taking place in working-class neighborhoods. It’s happening to jobs, too.

Walk around parts of Brooklyn, Portland or Pittsburgh, and you’ll find stylish cocktail bars, barbers and the occasional butcher shop staffed by young, college-educated employees. For an affluent segment of today’s urban economy, these jobs have been revalued from low-status semi-manual labor to glamorous occupations, says sociologist Richard Ocejo.

In his new book “Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy,” Mr. Ocejo examines the forces driving a resurgence of occupations such as butcher and bartender among young middle-class urbanites. A similar dynamic is at work with a handful of other jobs, including craft brewer, bookbinder, furniture maker and fishmonger.

The Labor Department projects that between 2014 and 2024 the number of bartenders and barbers in the U.S. will grow 10%, while butchers will see a 5% increase, compared with a 7% job growth for all occupations over the same period. Median pay for these jobs was less than $30,000 a year in 2016.

Millennials are drawn to these occupations, in part, as a reaction to “the ephemerality of the digital age,” says Mr. Ocejo, a sociology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the City University of New York Graduate Center.

MORE IN MANAGEMENT & CAREERS


Distinct from many of today’s most vaunted jobs in fields like information technology and financial services, these trades “are based in using your hands, with actual tools and materials, to provide a tangible concrete product,” he says.

To attract young people with college degrees and other options in the labor market, jobs usually have an element of performance to them, Mr. Ocejo says. In most of the careers he studied for “Masters of Craft,” workers interact closely with customers, often in a public setting where their skill and knowledge can be admired. That’s why some manual positions like electrician and plumber are unlikely to experience the same “revalorization,” he says.


Unlike real-estate gentrification, where the arrival of more affluent people displaces lower-income residents in a neighborhood, hipsters generally aren’t displacing workers at more conventional businesses in the same industry, Mr. Ocejo says.

A trendy whole-animal butcher isn’t pushing out the local butcher shop, he says, since it likely “closed a long time ago when the Italians moved out.” And it isn’t hurting the halal butchers in the neighborhood either, since those shops serve a different clientele.

“They’ve created a niche that didn’t exist before, and they’re operating along parallel but very, very separate paths” with pre-existing businesses, Mr. Ocejo says.

But with aesthetics playing such a key role in the craft-business ideal—from bartenders with suspenders and handlebar mustaches to tattooed butchers carving an unusual cut of meat—Mr. Ocejo says the jobs tend to attract people from similar cultural backgrounds, creating a barrier for others.

“It’s very difficult if you are from a working-class background or a minority to get one of these jobs, which would give you higher wages, networking opportunities and more interesting work,” he says. “That’s a challenge for these companies: to become more inclusive and not just hire people who look like them or are part of their social network.”
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Lord Buckley said:
Kodak was first in on digital, but considered it not viable. That was back in the 70s, they were well ahead of the game.
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In a lot of this stuff timing (i.e. - mainly luck) is the essence.
Printing high quality photos and albums off digital is a the go now but its only recent. No one wanted to do it when digital first came in.

Look at Apple; never did anything innovative in technology that wasn't 5 years old but they had great marketing (bullshit), knew their market, and design and timing.
 
fxh said:
Look at Apple; never did anything innovative in technology that wasn't 5 years old but they had great marketing (bullshit), knew their market, and design and timing.
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You mean now is the time to get an overpriced watch or a monopole speaker that will talk (or spy) on me?

I remember the Rio MP3 players before iPod and PDAs before iPhone yeah.
 
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